The Mother: He was afraid I would ask him questions. So then, nothing more? Nobody has anything to say?  The faith spoken about is faith in the divine Grace and the ﬁnal success of the undertaking. You have begun the yoga and have faith that you will go through to the end of your yoga.


The Mother: But if you spend your time looking at all that prevents you from advancing, then ﬁnally you say, “Ah, I shall never succeed! It is not possible.  If it goes on in this way, I shall never get there.” So this is to lose one’s faith. One must always keep the faith that one is sure to succeed.


The Mother: Many people begin, and then after some time come and tell you, “Oh, I shall never be able to go through. I have too many difﬁculties.” So this means not having faith. If one has started,  one begins with the faith that one will reach the goal. Well, this faith should be kept till the very end.


The Mother: Keeping one’s faith, one attains the end. But if in the middle of the road you turn back saying, “No, I can’t”, then, obviously you will not reach the end. Some people start on the way and then, after some time, they ﬁnd it heavy-going, tiring, difﬁcult, and also that they themselves, their legs, don’t walk well, their feet begin to ache, etc. You see, they say, “Oh, it is very hard to go forward.” So instead of saying, “I have started, I shall go through”, which is the only thing to do, they stand there, stop there, lamenting and saying, “Oh, I shall never be able to succeed”, and then they leave the path.


The Mother: So, obviously, if they leave the path, they will never succeed. This is to lose one’s faith.  To keep one’s faith is to say, “Good, I have difﬁculties but I am going on.” Despair — that’s what cuts off your legs, stops you, leaves you like this: “It is over, I can’t go on any longer.”  It is indeed ﬁnished, and that’s something which should not be allowed.


The Mother: When you have started, you must go to the very end. Sometimes, you see, to people who come to me with enthusiasm I say, “Think a little, it is not an easy path, you will need time, you will need patience. You will need much endurance, much perseverance and courage and an untiring goodwill. Look and see if you are capable of having all this, and then start. But once you have started, it is ﬁnished, there is no going back any more; you must go to the very end.”


The Mother: Sometimes I tell them, I tell them that I give them a few days or a few months. There are some to whom I have given a few years for reﬂection. I told them, “Look well, be quite sure.” But once they come and say, “Now I have decided, I want to start”, it is good. Now, one must go on to the very end, whatever the cost; even if it is very difﬁcult, one has to go to the very end.


The Mother: In this, you see, there are many different cases, and they depend on the nature of the drawing back. If it is a small set-back or a small halt, you can start again. But it is ten times more difﬁcult than before.   Why?


The Mother: Because it is so. Because you have accumulated obstacles in yourself by your cowardice and weakness. All those difﬁculties which you must conquer are like spiritual tests which you have to pass. And if you fail in your test, well, the next one will be much more difﬁcult. This is the general occult law.


The Mother: One can’t escape it. If you are faced with making an effort and making progress, if you fail... And note that in the present conditions you are not warned beforehand, which makes the test much more difﬁcult to pass. In former days, the days of old, the candidates were told, “Now, prepare yourself. You are going to undergo terrible trials: you will be enclosed in a cofﬁn, you will have to face terrible dangers.


The Mother: But these are tests to ﬁnd out if you have the necessary qualities.” A man forewarned, you understand, is as good as ten, as we say. Once they were warned that it was a trial, they did not take it seriously and it was much easier.  But that’s no longer the practice. This is no longer done.


The Mother: It is life itself, the circumstances of each day which are the trials through which you have to pass. Some people instinctively feel that they are facing a decision that’s to be taken, a special effort that’s to be made, and they make this effort within themselves and cross the step. These acquire a much greater strength to cross the next step. When one has gained a small victory over one’s lower being, the next time one has a much greater strength to take the next step. On the contrary, if one is blind, ignorant, stupid or ill-willed and, instead of saying “yes” to the trial that faces him, he revolts or refuses it, then, you see, this is expressed by: “One has not passed his test, one has failed in his test.”


The Mother: But the next time, one is compelled not only to make an effort  to conquer this, but to make a still greater effort to redress the wrong one has done to himself. So it is much more difﬁcult.  But these things happen to everyone on the path, all the time, perhaps even daily. There are small things, there are things a little bigger. The small ones one can turn, you see, by chance the right way.


The Mother: For the big ones one must ﬁrst have a kind of instinct. One must pay attention and do the right thing in the right way. But there are other things still. When one is at a critical moment of one’s development, and it is absolutely necessary to cross the step in order to go forward — at that moment, there are always two possibilities: that of crossing the step, and then one immediately makes a terriﬁc progress; or else to become slack, and then this indeed is more than a halt, even more than a set-back, it can be a very serious fall into a chasm. There are abysses from which one does not come up again; and so, in this case it means a life lost.


The Mother: But if one has within oneself, besides the part that has given way and fallen, if somewhere one has a very ardent ﬂame, if one is ready for anything, all possible suffering, all possible effort, all possible sacriﬁces to redress what one has done, in order to climb back from the bottom of the abyss, to ﬁnd the path again, one can do it. This ﬂame has the power to call the Grace. And with the Grace there is nothing impossible. But it must be a real ﬂame, something very powerful, because when one is at the bottom of the hole it is not easy to come out of it. Between the ﬁrst kind, which is simply a little halt on the way and which makes the next step just a little more difﬁcult, and the last one I am speaking about, there are many degrees; and so one can’t say that if one leaves the path it is for a lifetime.


The Mother: That would be only an extreme case.  But if one leaves the path, it is even very difﬁcult to ﬁnd it again. What is strange is that in leaving it one loses it. There are legends of this kind in all countries: of people who have left the path and then later searched for it and never found it again. It was as if it had vanished.


The Mother: They lost it and this truly is a very sad thing.   But when you are on the path, I said this — I was just saying it — when you are on the path, do not ever leave it. Wait a little, you can hesitate as long as you want before taking it; but the minute you set your foot on it, it is ﬁnished, don’t leave it.  Because this has consequences which can even extend to several lives. It is something very serious.


The Mother: That is why, besides, I never push anyone to enter the path of Yoga. You are quite a number of children here; I have never asked anyone — only those who came to me and told me, “I want it.” And to these also, unless I am absolutely sure of them because it is written in their destiny that they have come for that, I always say, “Think about it, think, be quite sure that this is what you want and nothing else.” And when they have reﬂected and decided, it is ﬁnished.


The Mother: One should no longer move away, one should go straight to the end. I mean, one should not leave the path any more. One should go forward at all costs and try not to stop too often on the way, because it is easier to continue even if it is hard, you see, than to begin all over again when one has stopped. A much greater effort is needed to get going again than to continue on the way. And you see, logically I should not say it, but I have already warned all who are here, I have told them, “Don’t ever take lightly all the circumstances of each day, all the tiny little things of life, all the small events, you know; never take all this lightly.”


The Mother: Never react with your lower being. Each time you are told to do something or not to do it — you are not told this very often, but each time you are told, before reacting think a little, try to ﬁnd in yourself the part which reacts. Do not react just like that with what is most commonplace in you. Enter within yourself, try to ﬁnd the best in yourself and with this you must react.  There are people who mark time for years because they haven’t done this.


The Mother: There are others who seem to ﬂy, so fast do they go, because they pay attention to this. And those who don’t do that throw the blame always on the Divine. They accuse the Grace. They tell her, “It is You who deceived me, it is You  who put me into difﬁculty, it is You who made me stumble, it is You who are a monster”, not exactly in these words, but their thought is like this. And so, naturally, they make their case worse because they push away even the help they could have had in their difﬁculty.


The Mother: There we are.  I could tell you many more things, but it will come gradually.  In any case, if you can keep within yourself a conﬁdence, a candid trust which does not argue, and the sense of... yes, it is truly a kind of trust that what is done for you, in spite of all appearances, is always the best thing to lead you in the quickest way possible out of all your difﬁculties and towards the goal... if you can keep that strong in you, well, your path will become tremendously easier.


The Mother: You will tell me that it is very difﬁcult to keep it, but children keep it very well. They must have truly come upon particularly detestable parents to lose it; but if their parents are simply good enough, they keep this very well. Well, it is this attitude; if you can tell yourself, “Good, perhaps the divine Grace deserves our conﬁdence”, simply this, nothing else, you will avoid many difﬁculties, many. In fact this avoids many difﬁculties even in ordinary life, and many worries. And particularly here, if you can do that, well, you will see things which seemed formidably difﬁcult dissolving suddenly like clouds.


The Mother: There we are, that’s all.  , my children.    So? ()


The Mother: No questions? () You have a question?  Why is it like that? ()


The Mother: Because one must have a very strong, very powerful nature, with great inner strength in order to have a great capacity for yoga; and very strong natures have also very strong difﬁculties.  People who are neutral, dull, unimportant, usually go their own little way without being disturbed very much. But they cannot do anything very much, their road is very small and very short; they reach the end very quickly. They can’t do much. But people who have a strong nature have also strong difﬁculties.


The Mother: For it is absolutely impossible in this world to be without difﬁculties.   So long as the world remains what it is and one participates in the world, one necessarily participates in its difﬁculties.  It is only by a very persistent effort that one can succeed in overcoming his difﬁculties; and yet it seems impossible to cut oneself off completely from one’s solidarity with the rest of the world. Therefore a perfect purity, a perfect perfection seem impossible so long as the world has not reached at least a certain degree of perfection.


The Mother: Even the ascetic, the solitary, who goes and sits in a cave or under a tree or in the jungle, cannot completely free himself from solidarity with the rest of the world. The air he breathes is full of all the vibrations of the world, the food he eats, whatever it may be, even if it is reduced to the minimum,  contains the vibrations of the world; and so, it is enough for him to exist to be in solidarity with the difﬁculties of the world.  That is why, in fact, the way is so long. Even without having any other consideration than that of what one is absorbing constantly into oneself when breathing or eating, all these things one must constantly transform as one goes on absorbing them. It is a continuous alchemy in which one absorbs a particular kind of vibration containing all the possible disorders and must transmute this into something which is ready to receive the light from above.


The Mother: And this work is perpetual, and perpetually renewed. So it is impossible to live in this world, in the world as it is, and become perfect without the world itself making a great progress.  ( )


The Mother: So? There are no questions today?  Very much!  I was just speaking about this with someone today, and I said that if one can become fully conscious of one’s psychic being, at the same time one understands, necessarily, the reason of one’s present existence and the experience this psychic being wants to have; and instead of having it somewhat half consciously and more than half unconsciously, one can shorten this experience and so help one’s psychic being to cover in a limited number of years the experiences it would perhaps take several lifetimes to go through. That is to say, the help is mutual.


The Mother: The psychic, when it has an inﬂuence on the outer life, brings to it light, order and quietude and the joy of the divine contact. But also the physical being, the body-consciousness — if it is identiﬁed with the psychic consciousness, and through that learns what kind of experience the psychic being wants to have — can help it to have  these experiences in a very brief time, and not only save time but save many lives for the psychic being. It is a mutual help.  In brief, this is what yoga means. Yoga helps you to become fully conscious of your destiny, that is, your mission in the universe, and not only at the present moment but what it was in the past and what it will be in the future.


The Mother: And because of this knowledge you can gather by a concentration of the consciousness all these experiences in a very short time and gain lives, do in a few years what could take a fairly considerable number of lives to achieve. The psychic being goes progressively through all these experiences towards its full maturity and complete independence, its liberation — in the sense that it no longer needs any new life. If it wants to come back to the physical world, it returns, because it has something to do there and it chooses freely to return. But till then, till this liberation, it is compelled to return to have all the experiences it needs. Well, if it happens that once the physical being is developed and conscious enough and has enough goodwill to be able to become fully aware of the psychic being, it can then and there create all the circumstances, the outer experiences necessary for the psychic being to attain its maturity in this very life.


The Mother: ()  Not necessarily more than those who don’t do it. Because by the very fact that they roam there, they are a little more armed, they are a little accustomed to this world, it is not for them an altogether unknown domain; they have already gone there and, for instance, they might have had quite a few unpleasant experiences and learnt how to defend themselves. It is true that usually the only defence one has in these cases is to rush back into one’s body, and this is just the thing one can no longer  do. But all the same, they have a little bit of experience, while those who go there without knowing anything about it, and who have never had this consciousness, when they are thrown into this world, it is like being thrown into an altogether unpleasant unknown with a total unawareness of the means of defending oneself.


The Mother: I think that those who have dreams, what they call dreams, and who are conscious of them, are in a much better position; even if their dreams are not very beautiful, they are in a much more favourable condition than those who are quite unconscious. Because once one has left his body, whether one is conscious or unconscious, whether one is developed or not, one always goes out into the same domain to begin with — unless one is a yogi who can do what he likes with himself, but that, you know, is so rare a case that one can’t consider it. All men when they leave their body are ﬂung into a domain of the lower vital which has nothing particularly pleasant about it.  And strange, there is still another thing I was speaking about today.  The most important thing in this case is the last state of consciousness in which one was while both were joined together, when the vital being and the body were still united.


The Mother: So the last state of consciousness, one may say the last desire or the last hope or the last aspiration, has a colossal importance for the ﬁrst impact the being has with the invisible world. And here the responsibility of the people around the dying man is much greater than they think. If they can help him to enter his highest consciousness, they will do him the greatest service they can. But usually what they do is to cling to him as much as they can, and to pull him towards them with a ﬁerce selﬁshness; the result, you see, is that instead of being able to withdraw in a slightly higher consciousness which will protect him in his exit, he is gripped by material things and it is a terrible inner battle to free himself from both his body and his attachments.  In fact, you see — I say except for a very few, so few that one can hardly speak about them — all men live in a total ignorance,  a total ignorance of the way to live, not of the things in the universe but simply of the most elementary knowledge of living.


The Mother: They don’t know how to live. All the time they do things they should not do, and I am not speaking of satisfying desires and all that, I am speaking simply of the life of each moment, the movement of each instant; because one is in a state of total ignorance, one does exactly the opposite of what one should do to get the result one wants. One tries to follow some aim, whatever it may be — it may be a selﬁsh aim, it may be a disinterested aim, it may be a material aim, it may be a spiritual aim, but one wants to get somewhere — and one does just the opposite of what is necessary to go there, all the time. And if you are simply just a little attentive and are able to look at yourself at any minute, whatever be the thing you have to do, stop for half a second and look at yourself and ask, “Do I know what I have to do?” If you are sincere you will see that you don’t know it at all.


The Mother: You do it automatically, instinctively, by habit or else with some kind of impulse, you see; but to know: “Is this what must be done? Is it in this way that it ought to be done?” — I don’t think once in a thousand times you can answer.  And then, when the problem of wanting to help someone comes up...


The Mother: If you have goodwill and want to help someone... You don’t know how to help yourself to begin with, but still, you are not selﬁsh; at a particular moment you want to help someone, and then comes this question: “What should I do?” You know nothing at all about it. “What does he need?”  I mean not only material things but the feeling you must have, the thought you must have, the word you ought to say.


The Mother: If you just take a step backward, you look at yourself, but you know nothing about it; you do it like that, haphazardly, at random, in the hope that it will succeed, but the knowledge is not there.  Without speaking, naturally, about... I am not speaking of people who know nothing at all and who, when they happen to have even a child, don’t even know what is to be done to keep it clean and healthy. I am not even speaking of this kind of ignorance,  because this everybody recognises. I knew, you see, countless mothers who hadn’t of what had to be done to keep their children healthy.


The Mother: I am not even speaking of this.  Because this — if one reads a book, works a little, studies, one can at least have a minimum of knowledge.  I am speaking simply of a slightly higher stage: morally, your moral, psychological relation with people. You are with someone who is in difﬁculty. Do you know what you should say to him?


The Mother: Do you even know the cause, the origin of his difﬁculty?  What is going on in him? You may guess, you may imagine it, you may deduce, may reason, but you don’t know!  To have this certitude, the knowledge, the knowledge to know: “That’s it”, this you don’t have. “Is it this, is it like that?


The Mother: If I do this, will that happen? And if I do that, is that what will happen?” And you go on, you may go on and on for hours, hesitating, groping, asking yourself.... And this is exactly what Sri Aurobindo has written in his last article which appeared in the He says that if you want to prepare for the descent of the supermind, ﬁrst of all your mind of ignorance and incapacity must be replaced by a mind of light which sees and knows.


The Mother: And this is the ﬁrst step! Before this step is crossed, one cannot go forward. It is not to discourage you that I tell you this, but it is for those who believe that one has only to say, “Oh, I want the supramental light”, and it will come just like that, as when one says, “I want to drink a glass of water” and drinks it up. Not so easy! There we are.


The Mother: Now then, has anyone a question? No?  Well, Friday, which is my reading day, is the thirty-ﬁrst. The thirty-ﬁrst is the eve of the ﬁrst. On the eve of the ﬁrst, usually, a long time ago — you were very small, perhaps you weren’t even there — I used to read the prayer at midnight, just when we passed from one year to the next.


The Mother: Now it is too late, we people tire ourselves out very much the whole day and need to sleep quietly. ( )  No, no, I won’t do it. (


The Mother: ) Only, on that day, at this time,  instead of reading anything at all, I shall read the prayer for 1955 to you, and you will listen. And if any of you want to ask questions, I shall answer you, and we shall ﬁnish our year in this way... not till midnight! ( ) We shall end our year like this.


The Mother: Here we are.  There, my children, that’s all?   I am going to read the prayer to you in French — it is a message not a prayer — in French and in English. And then I have brought two of Sri Aurobindo’s replies to questions which have not been published anywhere, and you will be the ﬁrst to hear them.  And then two... not poems, some lines; a very short little poem and just a stanza from another poem, which are a magniﬁcent illustration of our message for the next year.


The Mother: This message was written because it is foreseen that next year will be a difﬁcult year and there will be many inner struggles and even outer ones perhaps. So I tell all of you what attitude you should take in these circumstances. These difﬁculties may perhaps last not only twelve months, that is, one full year, but perhaps fourteen months; and during these fourteen months you must make an effort never to lose the attitude about which I am going to speak to you just now.  In fact, I insist that the more difﬁcult things are, the more you must remain quiet, and the more should you have an unshakable faith. Of all things this is the most important.


The Mother: Usually, as soon as things become difﬁcult, human beings get agitated, become irritated, get terribly excited and they make the difﬁculties ten times more difﬁcult. So I am warning you right away that this is not to be done, that you must do the opposite; and what I am going to read to you is precisely what you must repeat to yourself as soon as you feel some anxiety or worry within you; you must remember what I am telling you today and remember it throughout the year. You can repeat it morning and evening proﬁtably. Here, then.


The Mother: Now, ﬁrst in French:  Now here is the English:  Now I shall read to you two questions which were asked and Sri Aurobindo’s answers. It’s not that the questions express a very high state of mind, but I am afraid many people let themselves fall into this kind of mental state. And so I think the answers will be very useful to many people also.  Here’s the ﬁrst question:


The Mother: Here is Sri Aurobindo’s answer. Notice his humour. I draw your attention to his humour.   The second one:  The answer:  too


The Mother: This indeed is a programme for next year, my children. I hope that next year I shall be able to say that many have tried to make their external life the expression of their deeper aspiration. For the moment there are not very many.  Now, as we have spoken about difﬁculties, I am going to read to you two things which will give you just a little glimpse of what true consciousness is, that which is free from all difﬁculties, that which is above all conﬂicts.  The ﬁrst one goes like this — you have read it perhaps but I don’t think you could have quite understood it.


The Mother: It is called And then this:  There we are.  Now, I said that if someone asks “reasonable” questions, I shall perhaps answer.  You mean from what point of view?  All human will which is against the divine Will is an antidivine will. That’s all.


The Mother: No matter where it manifests, even in you!  There are no party politics in the divine life, you know.  () There are only states of consciousness.  () You have a question to ask, you?


The Mother: Explain? There is no explanation. They speak for themselves, very clearly. It cannot be explained — poetry. You must feel it and not reason about it.


The Mother: Poetic inspiration is beyond the reason.  You must not bring it down into the domain of reason, because then it is spoilt. It is felt much more than... it can be understood by an inner contact much more than by words.  Ah that, my child, you may ask... Well, there are people who believe in the stars, they will tell you, “Ask the stars.”


The Mother: It is like  that! Why do you take a certain number of years to grow up?  Because the nature of things is like that. Well, the nature of this conﬂict is like that. That is to say, a certain development of forces is necessary to obtain the result; and this development of forces extends over a given number of months approximately.


The Mother: (Mother not having heard the question well, the child repeats it.)  No, this is not what it means. It means that ﬁnally the Victory is certain. Whatever may be the course of events and the ups and downs and the difﬁculties and the different issues of the different conﬂicts, at the end of the curve one is sure of the Victory, for the Divine is sure to be victorious. It may take a longer or shorter time.


The Mother: I have said — in English I used “ﬁnally”: that ﬁnally no human will can prevail against the divine Will. Finally means in spite of everything... what we may call divine patience. In spite of all divine patience, there is a given moment when human will exhausts its strength and the divine Will prevails.  We always measure time by our small human duration; but naturally the divine forces do not have the same measure as ours, and what may seem to us long or uncertain is for them the most direct way, in spite of everything, to reach there. In the given set of circumstances it is the most direct way to reach the goal: this goal is the expression of the divine Will, whatever it may be.


The Mother: So what seems to us, for instance, a long, tortuous, uncertain road seems so because we do not see the whole picture, because we see only a very tiny part which is in our proportion. Our vision  is very very short, very short behind, very short in front. I mean the ordinary human vision. For example, there isn’t one man in a million who can say what is going to happen to him ten years hence, though he may make many plans and projects and try to organise his life; but he can’t say with certitude what will happen, because his vision is very short. The divine vision is not like that.


The Mother: It [human vision] is very short, very limited in space, very linear; this means that things follow one after another; while the vision of the Divine is a global vision which sees the problem in all its totality, not only on the surface but in the depths also, and contains all the elements of the problem and resolves it without neglecting any points. But man follows a straight line and all that escapes his straight line and which he does not care for would not be done if it were he who decided things; whereas the march of the Divine is a global march which takes in the whole universe in its entirety and goes forward on the most direct road in relation to this universe and this set of circumstances. And the most direct road may be circular, it is not necessarily a straight line.   Ah, yes!


The Mother: Next year... in a few hours! () So?  Generally. The world, India, the Ashram and individuals. Everyone according to his mode, naturally not in the same way for all.


The Mother: Some things will seem easier than others. But generally speaking it is — if you like I can tell you — it is the last hope of the adverse forces to triumph against the present Realisation.  If one holds on fast during these months, after that they will  not be able to do anything very much, it will be a crumbling resistance. That’s it: it is essentially the conﬂict of the adverse forces, the anti-divine forces which are trying to push back the divine Realisation as much as they can... they hope, for thousands of years, you see.


The Mother: And it is this conﬂict which has come to its crisis. It is their last chance; and as those who are behind their external action are altogether conscious beings, they know very well that it is their last chance, and they will put all they can into it, and what they can is much. These are not ordinary little human consciousnesses. They are not human consciousnesses at all. They are consciousnesses which, compared with human possibilities, seem to be divine in their power, their strength, even their knowledge.


The Mother: Therefore it is a terriﬁc conﬂict and one wholly concentrated on the earth, because they know that it is upon earth that the ﬁrst victory has to be won — the decisive victory, a victory which will determine the course of the earth’s future.  Those who are noble-hearted and hold up their heads when things become dangerous, can be happy. It is an opportunity to rise above oneself. There we are.  How can one change will into the divine Will?


The Mother: I don’t understand your question.  (Another child, repeating) Well, it’s because it is not well expressed that I don’t understand.  Change, that is transform one’s will into the divine Will? Is that what you want to say?  Well, ﬁrst you must want it.


The Mother: Afterwards you must have a great  aspiration. And then you must continue to want it, and continue to aspire and not give way when difﬁculties come, and continue until you succeed. That’s all. And then, a certain number of things are necessary, as for example not to be selﬁsh, not to have a small narrow-mindedness, not to live with preferences, not to have desires, not to have mental opinions — many things. It is a fairly long process because you must change your ordinary nature.


The Mother: This is the ﬁrst condition.  To break all the limits of one’s mind, break all the desires of one’s vital, break all the preferences of one’s physical nature.  After that one may hope to be in contact with the divine Will; and then, later, one must not only be in contact with it, but live integrally this Will, that is, be uniﬁed in all one’s being: not have a single bit which goes on this side and another bit which goes on that. You must be entirely in one single will.  If you face it, yes.


The Mother: That is, as soon as you are in front of a difﬁculty, if instead of giving way like a coward you begin trying to conquer it, then you may be sure that the Divine is behind you. But if you are cowardly, the Divine will not be there. That is, your cowardice cuts you off from the Divine. But if you resist and want to conquer, you may be sure that the Divine will be there to help you. There’s not the shadow of a doubt about it.


The Mother: Whether he deliberately puts difﬁculties in your path? No. That’s not his way.   No, but think of what you are saying. If by having a difﬁculty you become conscious, you see, it does not mean that the Divine created the difﬁculty to make you conscious; and your question seems to say that.


The Mother: But it isn’t true. One can say from an altogether impersonal point of view that the adverse forces — which of course are responsible for all difﬁculties — that the adverse forces are tolerated in the world in so far as they serve to make the world completely conscious. This indeed is true. But it seems to me a very human way of putting it because it could be said that as long as the world is not perfectly conscious, this allows the existence of these adverse forces. That is, it conditions them.


The Mother: The world’s unconsciousness conditions the existence of these forces. So, one can as well say this as say that the forces are tolerated so long as the world is unconscious. I don’t know if you are following. These are two opposite ways of saying the same thing and neither is perfectly true. But both contain something correct, yet something which is quite different.


The Mother: And in fact, if one wants to say the thing exactly, one can only say, “Things are like that because they are like that.”  This is the only way of not making a mistake. If you say, “The world is like that because it is like that”, then here you are sure you are saying something approximately correct — approximately. But if you try to explain, you will see an atom in a world and will take this atom for an explanation. You would have to give all the explanations and even many others in order to approach the reality.


The Mother: That’s what I just said, you know: that the human mind is linear in its action. It sees ideas one after another. Naturally when one speaks it is even ten times worse. One is obliged to say one word after another and this becomes frightful. But most people, almost all human beings think linearly.


The Mother: They think one thing after another. They can’t think of many things at once. Only very few individuals are capable of thinking of, say, about twenty things at the same time. You can try, you will see. You think things one after another, one after another....


The Mother: The succession may be very fast, but it is a succession. It is a very different kind of vision and a very different functioning, not of the mind but of intellectual powers, which can see things in their totality and all at the same time. But even when you see them like that, if you want to try to describe them, either by writing or speaking, you can’t put down everything at the same time nor say everything at the same time; you are obliged to use one word after another, and so it necessarily becomes... it destroys the truth of the thing, it becomes linear, which means that the truest things cannot be said. Everything one says is always a diminution of the truth.


The Mother: What should you do? Be very good (), very good, very quiet, work well, be very obedient, do what you are told, and be regular at school. () All this — it is very important.  That, my child, depends on you.


The Mother: If during these fourteen months you make much progress, you become very good and very reasonable, very conscious and very regular, after this it will be  much easier. But if you spend your time in letting time pass without making any progress, you will ﬁnd yourself in the same position where you now are, not better.  It is precisely a chance given to everyone to make progress .  If he doesn’t use it, so much the worse for him, he will remain where he is.


The Mother: And instead of being a conscious element in the world, he will be a cork upon the waters, tossed by circumstances. And with anything that happens, he will be carried away without having the least control over what is happening.  Because the ﬁrst thing necessary to have a control over events is to be absolutely conscious and master of oneself ; and I think you are pretty far from this realisation — which means that you must make a great effort throughout this period and manage to become a little more conscious and a little more self-controlled.  You must not think that suddenly it will be a beatiﬁc paradise where all your defects will disappear as by magic.


The Mother: It is not like that.  Your defects will disappear if you do what is necessary for them to disappear, not otherwise.  Else you may continue in the easier years with the same defects, and you will be the same little Madhusudan who will not have changed.  Here we are, my children. I think that’s enough.


The Mother: Nobody has anything to say?  !


The Mother: How can you do it? By trying.  First you must be conscious of the kind of attunement you want to realise. You must become aware of the points where this harmony does not exist; you must feel them and understand the contradiction between the inner consciousness and certain outer movements. You must become conscious of this ﬁrst, and once you are conscious of it, you try to adapt the outer action, outer movements to the inner ideal.


The Mother: But ﬁrst of all you must become aware of the disharmony. For there are many people who think that everything is going well; and if they are told, “No, your outer nature is in contradiction with your inner aspiration”, they protest. They are not aware. Therefore, the ﬁrst step is to become aware, to become conscious of what is not in tune.  To begin with, most people will say, “What is this inner consciousness you are telling me about?


The Mother: I don’t know it!” So, obviously, they cannot establish any harmony if they are not even conscious of something within which is higher than their ordinary consciousness. This means that many preparatory stages are needed, preparatory states of awareness, before being ready for this harmonisation.  You must ﬁrst of all know what the inner aim of the being is, the aspiration, the descending force, what receives it — everything must become conscious. And then, afterwards, you must look at the outer movements in the light of this inner  consciousness and see what is in tune and what is not.


The Mother: And then, when you have seen what does not harmonise, you must gather the will and aspiration to change it and begin with the easiest part. You should not begin with the most difﬁcult thing, you should begin with the easiest, the one you understand best, most easily, the disharmony which seems most evident to you.  Then from there, gradually, you will go to the more difﬁcult and more central things... Why do you happen to twist your ankle?...  (


The Mother: )  The earth? Did I say the earth?  Yes, it is possible, it is a way of speaking. And so, if we are not able to win the victory...?


The Mother: Delayed perhaps by several centuries. This is precisely what the adverse forces are trying to bring about, and so far they have always succeeded — in putting off the thing. Always they have succeeded. “This will be for another time”, and the other time... perhaps after hundreds or thousands of years. And this is what they want to try to do once again.


The Mother: Perhaps all this is decreed somewhere. It is possible. But it is also possible that though it is decided, in order that the thing may take place as it ought to it is not good to reveal what is decided. There are many  things like that, because people are neither conscious enough nor pure enough to do what they should do, exactly as they should do it, with full knowledge of the result; for the result, ninetynine times out of a hundred, is not what they desire — or if it is what they desire, it is modiﬁed, it is mixed, diluted, there are differences, differences enough not to be fully satisfactory.  So if one knew ahead exactly what was going to happen, one would remain seated, quietly, and would do nothing any longer.


The Mother: One would say, “Good, if this must happen, it is good, I have nothing more to do.” That is why one doesn’t know. But he who can act in all circumstances in full knowledge of the cause, knowing what the result of his action will be, and at the same time can do a certain thing which is sometimes even in contradiction with this result, that person indeed can know. But I don’t think there are many like that. In ordinary life people say that for someone to realise something, he ought always to aim much farther than the goal he has to attain; that all who have realised something in life, all the great men who have created, realised something, their aim, their ambition, their plan was always much greater, vaster, more complete, more total than what they did.


The Mother: They always fell short of their expectation and hope. It is a weakness, but it comes from what I said, that unless one has a very great ideal before him and the hope of realising it, one doesn’t put out all the energies of the being and therefore doesn’t do what is necessary to attain even the nearest goal, except, as I said, when one can act with the clear vision that “this is what ought to be done” and without the slightest worry about the consequences and the result of what one does; but this is difﬁcult.   Ah! Cou´e.


The Mother: You don’t know the story of Cou´e? Cou´e was a doctor. He used to treat by psychological treatment, auto-suggestion, and he called this the true working of the imagination;  and what he deﬁned as imagination was faith. And so he treated all his patients in this way: they had to make a kind of imaginative formation which consisted in thinking themselves cured or in any case on the way to being cured, and in repeating this formation to themselves with sufﬁcient persistence for it to have its effect. He had very remarkable results.


The Mother: He cured lots of people; only, he failed also, and perhaps these were not very lasting cures, I don’t know this. But in any case, this made many people reﬂect on something that’s quite true and of capital importance: that the mind is a formative instrument and that if one knows how to use it in the right way, one gets a good result.  He observed — and I think it is true, my observation agrees with his — that people spend their time thinking wrongly. Their mental activity is almost always half pessimistic, and even half destructive. They are all the time thinking of and foreseeing bad things which may happen, troublesome consequences of what they have done, and they construct all kinds of catastrophes with an exuberant imagination which, if it were utilised in the other way, would naturally have opposite and more satisfying results.


The Mother: If you observe yourself, if you... how to put it?... if you catch yourself thinking — well, if you do it suddenly, if you look at yourself thinking all of a sudden, spontaneously, unexpectedly, you will notice that nine times out of ten you are thinking something troublesome. It is very rarely that you are thinking about harmonious, beautiful, constructive, happy things, full of hope, light and joy; you will see, try the experiment. Suddenly stop and look at yourself thinking, just like that: put a screen in front of your thought and look at yourself thinking, off-hand, you will see this at least nine times out of ten, and perhaps more. (It is very rarely, very rarely that one has in the whole day, suddenly, a dazzling thought about what is going to happen or the state one is in or the things one wants to do or the course of his life or world circumstances — it depends, you see, on your preoccupation).


The Mother: Well, you will see, it is almost always foreseeing  a bigger or smaller, more or less vast catastrophe.  Say you have the slightest thing that is not getting on quite well; if you think of your body, it is always that something unpleasant is going to happen to it — because when everything goes well, you don’t think about it! You will notice this: that you act, you do all that you have to do, without having a single thought about your body, and when all of a sudden you wonder whether there isn’t anything that’s going wrong, whether there is some uneasiness or a difﬁculty, something, then you begin to think of your body and you think about it with anxiety and begin to make your disastrous constructions.  Whereas Cou´e recommended... It was in this way that he cured his patients; he was a doctor, he told them, “You are going to repeat to yourself: ‘I am being cured, gradually I am getting cured’ and again, you see, ‘I am strong, I am quite healthy and I can do this, I can do that’.”


The Mother: I knew someone who was losing her hair disastrously, by handfuls. She was made to try this method. When combing her hair she made herself think, “My hair will not fall out.” The ﬁrst and second time it did not work, but she continued and each time before combing the hair she used to repeat with insistence, “I am going to comb my hair but it won’t fall out.” And within a month her hair stopped falling.


The Mother: Later she again continued thinking, “Now my hair will grow.” And she succeeded so well that I saw her with a magniﬁcent head of hair, and it was she herself who told me this, that this was what she had done after being on the point of becoming bald. It is very, very effective.  Only, while one is making the formation, another part of the mind must not say, “Oh, I am making a formation and it is not going to be successful”, because in this way you undo your own work.  Cou´e — it was at the beginning of the century, I think...


The Mother: ( .)   (Pavitra)    Yes, that’s right, the beginning of the century, the ﬁrst quarter of the century.


The Mother: You knew him?  (Pavitra)  Ah, ah! Tell us about it.  (Pavitra)


The Mother: Oh! If one lost one’s temper: “I am becoming better and better, I don’t lose my temper now.” ( )


The Mother: (Pavitra)  That’s really good. Why, and if you repeat to a child, if you make him repeat, “I am good, day by day more and more.”  “I am better and better, I am more and more obedient.”  Oh, but this is very ﬁne.


The Mother: ( ) The other day you wanted to know what to do for children who are difﬁcult to bring up.  Here you are, you can try this. “I am more and more regular at school.”


The Mother: And then again, “I don’t tell lies any more. I shall never lie again.”  (Pavitra)  Oh, one ﬁnishes in the present. And how long did it take?


The Mother: (Pavitra)  It depends on the case. “I shall not tell lies again, it is my last lie.” ()  So, we stop.


The Mother: For instance, when the guru tells you to do something, if you begin to ask, “Why should I do it? What is the necessity of doing it? Explain to me what I must do. Why do I have to do it?” This is called questioning.


The Mother: To resist means to try to evade the order and not accomplish it. So naturally this increases the difﬁculties very much. There is the explanation later. Sri Aurobindo says that this was the reason why an absolute unquestioning surrender was demanded; no argument was allowed in those days. You were told, “Do this”; it had to be done.


The Mother: You were told, “Don’t do it”; it had not to be done, and nobody had the right to ask why. If one didn’t understand, so much the worse for him.  It’s not like that here. You have the right to ask all that you want. Only, it is true that there are times when it doesn’t help.


The Mother: If one begins to argue in his mind, “Why have we been told to do this? Why are we told not to do that?” and so on, this does not help. It increases difﬁculties very much, it hardens the consciousness, it puts a thick shell over it and so prevents it from being receptive. It is as though you were putting a varnish upon something to prevent its being touched.  That means? When the mind aspires, it aspires.


The Mother: Yes, but the mind also can aspire. But psychic aspiration is more powerful than mental aspiration, and the mind must have its own will. If one speaks of the mental will and the psychic aspiration it does not mean that the mind has no aspiration and the psychic no will. It is just saying what is the most important thing in each of these. But it doesn’t mean that it has only this.


The Mother: It can have all the other movements too.   Yes, that’s quite true.  What is it? It is because you have no contact with your psychic being when the door is closed.


The Mother: And if the door opens, then naturally you will beneﬁt by all the psychic consciousness, and will know the things you want to.  Ah, I was expecting this question. The right spirit means what he has explained in the following sentence: to keep one’s trust, to remain quiet — I think it is there a little farther off — wait patiently for the attack to pass, keep one’s trust. It is not there?  Then it is in another passage.


The Mother: In any case the right spirit means not to lose courage, not to lose one’s faith, not to be impatient, not to be depressed; to remain very quiet and peaceful with as  much aspiration as one can have, and not worry about what is happening. To have the certitude that this will pass and all will be well. This indeed is the best thing.  Not to be depressed — it is extremely important. Depression is a sign of weakness, of a bad will somewhere, and bad will in the sense of a refusal to receive help, and a kind of weakness that’s content to be weak.


The Mother: One becomes slack. The bad will is obvious, because there’s a part of your being which tells you at that moment, “Depression is bad.” You know that you shouldn’t get depressed; well, the reply of that part which is depressed is almost, “Shut up! I want my depression.” Try, you will see, you can try.


The Mother: It is always like that. Eh, it is not true?  And then later one says again, “Afterwards, afterwards I shall see... for the moment I want it, and besides I have my reasons.”  There you are. It is a kind of revolt, a weak revolt, the revolt of something weak in the being.


The Mother: Yes. When one comes out of the depression and one’s bad will, well, then one realises that there was an attack and that some progress had to be made, and that in spite of everything something within has made progress, that one has taken a step forward. Usually, hardly consciously, it is something which needs to progress but doesn’t want to, and so takes this way; like a child who sulks, becomes low-spirited, sad, unhappy, misunderstood, abandoned, helpless; and then, refusing to collaborate, and as I just said, indulging in his depression, to show that he is not happy. It is specially in order to show that one is not satisﬁed that one becomes depressed. One can show it to Nature, one can show it (that depends on the case, you see), one can show it  to the Divine, one can show it to the people around one, but it is always a kind of way of expressing one’s dissatisfaction.


The Mother: “I am not happy about what you demand”, but this means, “I am not happy. And I shall make you too see it, that I am not happy.”  There you are.  But when it is over, and when for some reason or other one has made the necessary effort to come out of it, and has come out, one usually realises that something in the being has changed, because, in spite of all bad will, most often the progress was accomplished — not very swiftly, not very brilliantly, not for one’s greater glory, surely, but still the progress was made.  Something has changed.


The Mother: That’s all?   There are individual egos and collective egos. For example, the national ego is a collective ego. A group may have a collective ego.


The Mother: The human race has a collective ego. It is bigger or smaller.  The individual ego is the ego of a particular person; it is the smallest kind of ego. Oh, there is of course a vital ego, a mental ego and a physical ego but these are minor individual egos. But this means the ego of a particular person.


The Mother: One has many egos inside oneself. One becomes aware of them when one begins to destroy them: when one has destroyed an ego, that which was most troublesome, usually it creates a kind of inner cyclone. When one comes out of the storm, one feels, “Ah, now it is over, everything is done, I have destroyed the enemy inside me, all is ﬁnished.” But after a while, one notices that there is another, and another still, and yet again another, and that in fact one is made of a heap of little egos which are absolutely a nuisance and which must be overcome one after another.   I think it is the ego that makes each one a separate being, in all possible ways.


The Mother: It is the ego which gives the sense of being a person separate from others. It is certainly the ego which gives you the sense of the “I”, “I am”, “I want”, “I do”, “I exist”, even the very famous “I think therefore I am” which is... I am sorry but I think it is a stupidity — but still it is a celebrated stupidity — well, this too is the ego. What gives you the impression that you are Manoj is the ego, and that you are altogether different from this one and that one; and what prevents your body from melting away like that, dissolving in a common mass of physical vibrations, is the ego;


The Mother: what gives you a deﬁnite form, a deﬁnite character, a separate consciousness, the sense that you exist in yourself, independently of all others, indeed, something like that; if one does not reﬂect, spontaneously one has the sense that even if the world disappeared, one would be there, one would remain what one is. This of course is the super-ego.  Certainly, if one were to lose one’s ego too soon, from the vital and mental point of view one would again become an amorphous mass. The ego is surely the instrument for individualisation, that is, until one is an individualised being, constituted in himself, the ego is an absolutely necessary factor. If one had the power of abolishing the ego ahead of time, one would lose one’s individuality.


The Mother: But once the individuality has been formed, the ego becomes not only useless but harmful. And only then comes the time when it must be abolished. But naturally, as it has taken so much trouble to build you, it does not give up its work so easily, and it asks for the reward of its efforts, that is, to enjoy the individuality.  Yes, I tell you. What can it be due to if not to the ego?


The Mother: Just now you were asking why there is an individual ego...  There is a family ego, and it is very interesting because it is the family ego which makes all the members of a family resemble  each other in some way or other; they are not the same but resemble one another. One knows that they belong to the same family and if one goes far back to the ancestors, one sees that there is a similarity all down the line. Well, it is the family ego, which is much more lasting than the individual ego; and there is a national ego. And the families which are not much intermixed, you see, which have remained without intermixing very much, as for example, in the time of the aristocrats, the aristocracy did not mix much, they remained in one lineage, well, the characteristics of the ego are very clear; for instance, the Bourbon families, the families of...


The Mother: in France it is like that; from top to bottom, we ﬁnd them very similar among themselves in their appearance.  Naturally, as soon as races, species, nationalities intermix, it produces a mixture of egos. And then the horizon begins to widen. It is as when one tries to widen his mind, to understand many different things, study many languages, the knowledge of many countries and ages, one widens his ego very much, one begins to grow less narrow-minded. Naturally, with yoga one can overcome all this consciously.


The Mother: Yes. Usually collective egos are inferior in quality to individual egos. Instead of being a multiplication or even an addition, it becomes a diminution, usually. Psychologically it is a well-known fact.


The Mother: Take men individually, they show common sense. But put them all together, it makes a stupid human mass.  That’s all?  Sri Aurobindo has spoken at the beginning of experiences which become impure through ambition or vanity or... he explains it.


The Mother: And so, puriﬁcation of experience means to make the experience  sincere and motiveless. To take away all one’s motives of ambition and vanity, of desire, power, etc. This is called purifying the experience, making it sincere, spontaneous and not mixing it with desires and ambitions. There are spiritual ambitions, he speaks of them, and these are even the most dangerous.  There we are.


The Mother: That’s all?   Eh?  I haven’t spoken about a crisis in 1957. That is a fulﬁlment, not a crisis.


The Mother: The crisis comes before, this is the result. It is a victory, it is not a crisis. I don’t know what he has written. I don’t remember now. But certainly I did not speak to him about a crisis.


The Mother: ( ) In ’57?  Never in my life... I never said this. And it is not there in what he has written, because I would never have let it pass.


The Mother: There is the possibility of a war but I didn’t say ’57. ( ) There is the possibility of a war. Yes.


The Mother: Perhaps this is part of the difﬁculties I spoke to you about last time. But I did not place it in ’57 at all.  ()  There we are. That’s all?


The Mother: Finished.   Work? What exactly do you want to know? What it ought to do? Or what should one...?


The Mother: The role of the higher mind? It ought to receive inspirations from above, ought to transmit them in the form of ideas to the most material mind, so that the latter may execute things, make formations. It serves as an intermediary between the higher power and the active mind. The higher mind is a mind of ideaformation and at the same time... ( .)  That’s its purpose.


The Mother: It can also try to give some understanding of things which are above the more ordinary mentality, to explain, to clarify general ideas and the principles which go beyond them.  If the world were not there, it wouldn’t be there. “If”! The moment you put an “if”, your question no longer makes sense.  Things are as they are because they are as they are.


The Mother: They are like that because they have to be like that; otherwise they would not be like that. So one can’t say, “If it were not like that, how would it be?” That’s a question which makes no sense. It is like that, it is like that.   If you change anything at all in the world, it becomes another world.


The Mother: If you say, “We are going to take this away from the world” — but if that thing were not there it would be another world, it would not be the world as it is. These are vain speculations, useless, you understand. Things are like that. We must start from what is and go elsewhere. But we can’t say, “What exists... if it were otherwise...”


The Mother: What’s the good? It is like that.  All that you can say is, “Since the hostile forces are there, what is the best way of using them, of making use of their presence?” That’s a question with some sense. But if you tell me, “If they were not there?”


The Mother: Excuse me, they are there! It is beside the point, you see, they there. We must take them as they are.  Therefore, all that you can do is to say, “I would like them not to be there.” This indeed is quite justiﬁed.


The Mother: But one must work in order to make them useless. Then they will no longer be there.   When they become useless, they will disappear from the world.  We must take things as they are at present and go forward to something else which, we hope, will be better than what is.


The Mother: That’s all that one can do.   Yes. So? You don’t know that?


The Mother: You ought to know it.   Some people always imagine that catastrophes are the result of the divine Will. There are others — as soon as they receive a force, they are terribly upset; and then they tell you, “Ah, when the Divine acts He upsets one completely.” It is absolutely wrong.


The Mother: It is not the Divine who upsets you, it is your own imperfection or else it may be just an attack of one of the forces he speaks about — the adverse forces. But if you have no imperfection you cannot be upset. Still, it is certainly not the Divine who upsets you. It is as in what follows this, where it is said: it is not the Mother who is testing you, it is the outer circumstances.   It isn’t very comfortable this way?


The Mother: () You seem to be sorry that it isn’t the Divine who causes the upsettings.  The upsetting is always caused by a resistance. If there were no resistance there would be no upsetting. So it can be a resistance which is the cause of cataclysms, earthquakes and cyclones, tidal waves, engulfment of continents, volcanic eruptions, etc.


The Mother: No. He has said in the book that they have assigned it to themselves. He has said in the text: “The hostile forces have a certain self-chosen function,” that is, it is they who have decided to do this.  But what do you want to ask? Why have they been given these functions?


The Mother: There is nothing that ﬁnally does not help. If they did it deliberately, they would no longer be hostile forces, they would be collaborators. For you must take care of one thing, you must not speak of “hostile forces” when thinking of forces which are hostile to us. These forces are not hostile to human beings, to their quietude or happiness, they are hostile to the divine Work.  And usually I have heard many people speaking of “hostile forces” — for instance, “the hostile forces of illness which attack me”.


The Mother: This is too personal a point of view, it may not be the result of hostile forces; you call them hostile because they attack you. But in fact, when one speaks of hostile forces it means forces hostile to the divine Work or the divine Will. So, if they  collaborated with this Work, they would no longer be hostile, you see. That’s quite peremptorily logical.  Therefore, one can’t say that it is any kind of work for the progress of humanity or even for the progress of the universe.


The Mother: But there is nothing, not even the most hostile things, which can’t be used for the divine Work. It depends on how it is taken. But it must be said that in their relation with human beings they take a very wicked pleasure in testing them. For example, if you are not extremely strong and extremely sincere, and you tell yourself, “Oh, I am sure of my faith” — this for instance among many other things — immediately something happens which is going to try to shake your faith completely. This is one...


The Mother: I suppose that’s their diversion, their amusement.  How many times, you know, when someone boasts... it may be very childishly... but when someone boasts about something: “Oh, I am sure of that, I shall never make that mistake”, immediately I see a hostile formation passing there, like that, and it enters by the little hole made by the boasting. It enters within, like that, and then penetrates, and so prepares everything for you to do exactly what you didn’t want to. But this is an amusement, it is certainly not to help you to progress.


The Mother: ( ) But if you know how to take it, it does help you to progress. You say, “Good, another time I won’t boast.”


The Mother: And as these forces are very conscious on the mental and vital plane, one doesn’t even need to pronounce the words. If the thought... for example, if you have worked well to correct something, either a bad habit or a material weakness, anything, you have worked hard to correct this thing, and as you have worked well you have succeeded to a certain extent. Then, if simply mentally you state that you have succeeded, the next minute it begins again. It is... you see, you must not even think, it is not a question of saying, the question is simply of thinking: “Why, it was like that before, and now it is like this.


The Mother: Ah, it is ﬁne!” Finished. The next minute it begins again.  And this is certain, because there are witnesses all around  you who are notoriously malicious, and this amuses them terriﬁcally. Sometimes I actually even hear them laughing when someone says something frankly.


The Mother: I hear a little laugh like that.  Oh, it amuses them very much. And the next minute or the next day, crash! It is undone.


The Mother: Ah! From the practical point of view, you must be in a state of inner silence, with a mental activity exclusively occupied with forming the thing you want to do, the progress you want to accomplish, that is to say, the mental construction you need for your work. And your capacity for observation — it is inﬁnitely preferable, I could say absolutely indispensable, to use it to observe your ﬁeld of action, the processes you employ for your action, the results obtained, the principle you can arrive at from the experience, the knowledge you can obtain, indeed, all these things... but not to turn back on yourself and look at yourself acting. It is this movement of making oneself the object of observation which is dangerous. And this always causes unpleasantness, sometimes a very serious one.


The Mother: Well, most people pass their time looking at themselves, at what they are doing, how they are living, and this makes them very... what is called in English self-conscious, that is, instead of sincerely being in what they are doing and exclusively in what they are doing, they look at themselves acting and appreciate or belittle themselves, according to their particular nature. Some people look at themselves acting with great complacency and an extreme satisfaction and consider themselves truly very remarkable. Others, on the contrary, have the critical mind and pass their time criticising themselves all the while. Well, neither is better than the other.


The Mother: They are equally bad. The best thing is not to be occupied with oneself. If one has a work to do, the best is to see to that work and naturally the best way of doing it. This of course is always good. But not to — whether one does it well or not — to look at  oneself doing it and appreciate oneself; that is useless.


The Mother: To discover how to do the work and what is the best way of doing it is very useful. But to look at oneself doing it and admire or belittle oneself, that’s not only useless but disastrous.  Oh, what does it mean: a well-developed psychic being? But I have explained this to you at full length. Wasn’t it last week or was it the week before?


The Mother: Why, yes, I said how psychic beings develop slowly from the ﬁrst divine spark to the formation of a completely constituted being, absolutely conscious and independent. So when we speak of a well-developed being, a well-developed psychic, we speak of a psychic being that has nearly reached the maximum point of its formation.  What imperfections?  But excuse me! Don’t mix up the psychic being with the outer being.


The Mother: The psychic being may be perfect and the outer being may be idiotic. Don’t confuse the two. They have nothing to do... unfortunately they have nothing to do with each other, most of the time. For the outer being is not at all conscious of the psychic being; but to the extent that it is conscious it reﬂects the perfection of this psychic.


The Mother: If you want to speak of the circumstances, not of the character, why would a psychic being not have difﬁculties in the world?  If the world were entirely psychic, I would understand. But it  isn’t. It is just the very opposite, and I think the more psychic one is, usually, the more difﬁculties he has. Only, one is armed to face the difﬁculties.


The Mother: But the more psychic one is, the more is he in contradiction with the present state of the world. So when one is in opposition with something, the result is difﬁculties. And I have noticed that most often those who have many difﬁculties are those who are in a more or less close contact with their psychic being. If you want to speak about outer circumstances — I am not speaking of the character, that’s quite different, but of outer circumstances — the people who have to struggle most and would have most reason to suffer are those who have a very developed psychic being.  First, the development of the psychic being has a double result which is concomitant.


The Mother: That is, with the development of the psychic being, the sensitivity of the being grows. And with the growth of sensitivity there is also the growth of the capacity for suffering; but there is the counterpart, that is, to the extent to which one is in relation with the psychic being, one faces the circumstances of life in an altogether different way and with a kind of inner freedom which makes one capable of withdrawing from a circumstance and not feeling the shock in the ordinary way. You can face the difﬁculty or outer things with calm, peace, and a sufﬁcient inner knowledge not to be troubled. So, on one side you are more sensitive and on the other you have more strength to deal with the sensitivity.


The Mother: No urgent question?  What is an urgent question? Who can tell me?  Ah, I would have said that it is a question... if one didn’t ask it today he couldn’t sleep tonight. (


The Mother: )  That indeed is the only question that’s truly urgent. There we are. So there isn’t any, is there? You are all going to sleep very well!


The Mother: ( )   Yes, that’s true. But are you conscious of the question which will make you progress? If you are already conscious of this, it is surely something.


The Mother: It is half the progress made already. Are there any questions like that? Someone ripe for progress? Good, then it will be for next time.   It is the divine Presence which sees from within what is incomplete and imperfect in the working of the present being.


The Mother: The divine Consciousness is present in the psychic being and it sees what is imperfect and at the same time it is aware of the attacks, and it knows what should be done to repulse them. But for this, one must be conscious of his psychic being. It is always the same thing. We always come back to the same thing.  Why does one commit suicide?


The Mother: Because one is a coward.... When one is cowardly one always suffers.   The psychic being comes with a deﬁnite purpose to go through a set of experiences and to learn and make progress. Then if you leave before its work is ﬁnished it will have to come back to do it again under much more difﬁcult conditions.


The Mother: So all that you have avoided in one life you will ﬁnd again in another, and more difﬁcult. And even without leaving in this way, if you have difﬁculties to overcome in life, you have what we usually call a test to pass, you see; well, if you don’t pass it or turn your back upon it, if you go away instead of passing it, you will have to pass it another time and it will be much more difﬁcult than before.   Now people, you know, are extremely ignorant and they think that it is like this: there is life, and then death; life is a bunch of troubles, and then death is an eternal peace. But it is not at all like that. And usually when one goes out of life in an altogether arbitrary way and in an ignorant and obscure passion, one goes straight into a vital world made of all these passions and all this ignorance.


The Mother: So the troubles one wanted to avoid one ﬁnds again without even having the protection which the body gives, for — if you have ever had a nightmare, that is, a rash excursion in the vital world, well, your remedy is to wake yourself up, that is to say, to rush back immediately into your body. But when you have destroyed your body you no longer have a body to protect you. So you ﬁnd yourself in a perpetual nightmare, which is not very pleasant. For, to avoid the nightmare you must be in a psychic consciousness, and when you are in a psychic consciousness you may be quite sure that things won’t trouble you. It is indeed the movement of an ignorant darkness and, as I said, a great cowardice in front of the sustained effort to be made.


The Mother: Well, perhaps it is something which does not like our lessons.  But still, today it is because it’s the 26th of January; it has fallen on this day.   In making a noise? Because they like to deaden themselves.


The Mother: In silence they have to face their own difﬁculties, they are in front  of themselves, and usually they don’t like that. In the noise they forget everything, they become stupeﬁed. So they are happy.  Constantly man rushes into external action in order not to have time to observe himself and how he lives. For him this is expressed by the desire to escape from boredom.


The Mother: Indeed, for some people it is much more tiresome to remain quiet — seated, or to be still. So for them it represents an escape from boredom: to make a lot of noise, to commit many stupidities, and become terribly restless; it is their way of escaping boredom. And when they sit quietly and look at themselves, they are bored. Perhaps because they are boring. That’s very likely.


The Mother: The more boring one is, the more one is bored. Very interesting people usually are not bored.  It continues until one stops being cowardly, till one understands that it’s not something to be done. One can overcome one’s cowardice. There isn’t a thing one can’t overcome if one wants to.


The Mother: One is cowardly because of what?  That means one can consider ignorance the cause of all bad things. But I think that one is cowardly because one is very tamasic and fears having to make an effort. In order not to be cowardly, one must make an effort, begin by an effort, and afterwards it becomes very interesting. But the best thing is to make the effort to overcome this kind of ﬂight out of oneself.


The Mother: Instead of facing the thing, one recoils, runs away, turns one’s back and runs away. For the initial effort is difﬁcult. And so, what prevents you from making an effort is the inert, ignorant nature.  As soon as you enter the rajasic nature, you like effort.  And at least the one advantage of rajasic people is that they are courageous, whereas tamasic people are cowards.


The Mother: It is the fear of effort which makes one cowardly. For once you have started, once you have taken the decision and begun the effort, you are interested. It is exactly the same thing which is the cause of some not liking to learn their lessons, not wanting to listen to the teacher; it is tamasic, it is to be asleep, it avoids the effort which must be made in order to catch the thing and then grasp it and keep it. It is half-somnolence. So it is the same thing physically, it is a somnolence of the being, an inertia.


The Mother: There are people who... I have known people who were physically very courageous, and were very, very cowardly morally, because men are made of different parts. Their physical being can be active and courageous and their moral being cowardly. I have known the opposite also: I have known people who were inwardly very courageous and externally they were terrible cowards. But these have at least the advantage of having an inner will, and even when they tremble they compel themselves.


The Mother: Once I was asked a question, a psychological question. It was put to me by a man who used to deal in wild animals. He had a menagerie, and he used to buy wild animals everywhere, in all countries where they are caught, in order to sell them again on the European market. He was an Austrian, I think. He had


The Mother: come to Paris, and he said to me, “I have to deal with two kinds of tamers. I would like to know very much which of the two is more courageous. There are those who love animals very much, they love them so much that they enter the cage without the least idea that it could prove dangerous, as a friend enters a friend’s house, and they make them work, teach them how to do things, make them work without the slightest fear. I knew some who  did not even have a whip in their hands; they went in and spoke with such friendliness to their animals that all went off well.  This did not prevent their being eaten up one day.


The Mother: But still — this is one kind. The other sort are those who are so afraid before entering, that they tremble, you know, they become sick from that, usually. But they make an effort, they make a considerable moral effort, and without showing any fear they enter and make the animals work.”  Then he told me, “I have heard two opinions: some say that it is much more courageous to overcome fear than not to have any fear.... Here’s the problem.


The Mother: So which of the two is truly courageous?”  There is perhaps a third kind, which is truly courageous, still more courageous than either of the two. It is the one who is perfectly aware of the danger, who knows very well that one can’t trust these animals. The day they are in a particularly excited state they can very well jump on you treacherously. But that’s all the same to them.


The Mother: They go there for the joy of the work to be done, without questioning whether there will be an accident or not and in full quietude of mind, with all the necessary force and required consciousness in the body. This indeed was the case of that man himself. He had so terriﬁc a will that without a whip, simply by the persistence of his will, he made them do all that he wanted. But he knew very well that it was a dangerous profession. He had no illusions about it.


The Mother: He told me that he had learnt this work with a cat — a cat!  He was a man who, apart from his work as a trader in wild animals, was an artist. He loved to draw, loved painting, and he had a cat in his studio. And it was in this way that he began becoming interested in animals. This cat was an extremely independent one, and had no sense of obedience.


The Mother: Well, he wanted to make a portrait of his cat. He put it on a chair and went to sit down at his easel. Frrr... the cat ran away. So he went to look for it, took it back, put it back on the chair without even raising his voice, without scolding it, without saying anything  to it, without hurting it of course or striking it.


The Mother: He took it up and put it back on the chair. Now, the cat became more and more clever. In the studio in some nooks there were canvasses, canvasses on which one paints, which were hidden and piled on one another, behind, in the corners. So the cat went and sat there behind them. It knew that its master would take some time to bring out all those canvasses and catch it; the man, quietly, took them out one by one, caught the cat and put it back in its place.


The Mother: He told me that once from sunrise to sunset he did this without stopping. He did not eat, the cat did not eat (), he did that the whole day through; at the end of the day it was conquered. When its master put it on the chair it remained there () and from that time onwards it never again tried to run away. Then he told himself, “Why not try the same thing with the bigger animals?” He tried and succeeded.


The Mother: Of course he couldn’t take a lion in this way and put it on a chair, no, but he wanted to get them to make movements — silly ones, indeed, such as are made in circuses: putting their forefeet on a stool, or sitting down with all four paws together on a very small place, all kinds of stupid things, but still that’s the fashion, that’s what one likes to show; or perhaps to stand up like a dog on the hind legs; or even to roar — when a ﬁnger is held up before it, it begins to roar — you see, things like that, altogether stupid. It would be much better to let the animals go round freely, that would be much more interesting. However, as I said, that’s the fashion.  But he managed this without any whipping, he never had a pistol in his pocket, and he went in there completely conscious that one day when they were not satisﬁed they could give him the decisive blow.


The Mother: But he did it quietly and with the same patience as with the cat. And when he delivered his animals — he gave his animals to the circuses, you see, to the tamers — they were wonderful.  Of course, those animals — all animals — feel it if one is afraid, even if one doesn’t show it. They feel it extraordinarily,  with an instinct which human beings don’t have. They feel that you are afraid, your body produces a vibration which arouses an extremely unpleasant sensation in them.


The Mother: If they are strong animals this makes them furious; if they are weak animals, this gives them a panic. But if you have no fear at all, you see, if you go with an absolute trustfulness, a great trust, if you go in a friendly way to them, you will see that they have no fear; they are not afraid, they do not fear you and don’t detest you; also, they are very trusting.  It is not to encourage you to enter the cages of all the lions you go to see, but still it is like that. When you meet a barking dog, if you are afraid, it will bite you, if you aren’t, it will go away. But you must really not be afraid, not only appear unafraid, because it is not the appearance but the vibration that counts.


The Mother: You have had enough of this noise, haven’t you?  I said it is a third kind who is the most courageous. Courage... it is courage in different places. The one who is friendly with animals, who has no fear — this is because there is a great physical afﬁnity between them, an intimacy for all kinds of reasons, you see, a spontaneous physical friendship.


The Mother: But we don’t know, if he suddenly awoke to a sense of danger whether he would keep up his courage. It is possible that he might lose it immediately.  On the other hand, the second one has no afﬁnity with animals, and so he fears them. But within himself he has much courage and goodwill, a will and mental courage and perhaps a vital one, which make him master his bodily fear and act as though he were not afraid. But the fear is there in the body.


The Mother: Only he has controlled it. Now it is to be seen whether physical courage or moral courage is greater. One is not greater than the other; it is courage in different domains.   Some people move without a quiver in the midst of all dangers. They have physical courage.


The Mother: Others... you see, during the wars a phenomenon occurred, we have all the study-cases possible. When the soldiers were in the trenches and were told to come out of their trench and go and occupy another, and they came out from the trench under enemy ﬁre which was right in front of them... then naturally if you value your life in the least, you cannot but be afraid — if you set store by your life; or of course, there are some who could be fearless, but then they would be yogis. Usually soldiers are not yogis, they are ordinary people, because everyone becomes a soldier. In the olden days, a very long time ago, it was those who loved battle who became soldiers.


The Mother: But it is no longer so. It is all the most peaceful poor devils who are taken and turned into soldiers, and everyone has to go in for it. So there isn’t one in a thousand who truly has the soldier’s temperament — surely not.   The great majority are people made for the ordinary life in the ordinary way, those who like quietness, you see, to have their little hum-drum routine of life.


The Mother: They don’t feel they are warriors at all. Therefore, it is difﬁcult to expect them to become heroes overnight. However, as the ofﬁcers have a pistol in their hands, and if not obeyed shoot one in the back, it is thought better to march on, you understand, than to be killed like a rat. There, the situation is like that. It is not very poetic but it is like that.


The Mother: Well, some people, you see, fell literally ill with all this when they had to get out — ill, I can say, they had diarrhoea, they were absolutely ill. They had to get out all the same, and they did, and then sometimes on the way they were seized by a great courage in face of the real danger.  Others went out like a block of wood, without even knowing what was going to happen, completely stupeﬁed by the intensity of the danger. There were some who offered to go out when the order was not given to all, when it was a mission that had to be fulﬁlled; there were men who offered themselves. But these knew very well what could be awaiting them.


The Mother: And so, here, these  were courageous people, but there weren’t many of them. There never are many.  Only, in the heat of action, when the atmosphere is at its utmost tension, there is a kind of collective suggestion which makes heroes of men for the time being. Afterwards it is ﬁnished, but at that moment one is heroic. But this of course is a collective suggestion.


The Mother: True courage, in its deepest sense, is to be able to face everything, everything in life, from the smallest to the greatest things, from material things to those of the spirit, without a shudder, without physically... without the heart beginning to beat faster, without the nerves trembling or the slightest emotion in any part of the being. Face everything with a constant consciousness of the divine Presence, with a total self-giving to the Divine, and the whole being uniﬁed in this will; then one can go forward in life, can face anything whatever. I say, without a shudder, without a vibration; this, you know, is the result of a long effort, unless one is born with a special grace, born like that. But this indeed is still more rare.  To overcome one’s fear means that there is one part of the being which is stronger than the other, and which has no fear and imposes its own intrepidity on the part which is afraid.


The Mother: But this doesn’t necessarily imply that one is more courageous than the one who has no fear to master. Because the one who doesn’t have any fear to master... this means that he is courageous everywhere, in all the parts of his being. Now, there is an intrepidity which comes from unconsciousness and ignorance. Children, for example, who do not know about dangers, you see, do things they would not do if they had the knowledge of this danger.  This means that their intrepidity is an ignorant one.


The Mother: But true courage is courage with the full knowledge of the thing, that is, it knows all the possibilities and is ready to face everything without exception.   He has explained this before. The right attitude is the attitude of trust, the attitude of obedience, the attitude of consecration.  This person? Anybody at all.


The Mother: Anybody at all who... There are all kinds of ways of letting someone come between you and the divine force. First of all it is to attach a very great importance to your relation with someone. It is to listen to the advice given to you by someone who is not qualiﬁed. It is to want to please anybody at all, for any reason whatever.


The Mother: People do that constantly, don’t they?  Probably what is written here was to someone who had heard certain things and was attaching much importance to these things — advices or remarks or opinions — who was attaching importance to these things. So Sri Aurobindo told him: Let nobody come between you and the Divine.  Whoever it might be, parents, friends, no matter who, it is not any special person... It may even be for each one a special person...


The Mother: The body? This is the continuation of something. It is said that  some people are disgusted with life and want to leave it in the hope that another time it will be better. So it is said: It is useless to run away from your body, it won’t be easier without the body.


The Mother: On the contrary it will be much more difﬁcult. And the body is made for doing yoga. We are upon earth; the period one passes on earth is that in which one can make progress. One does not progress outside terrestrial life. The earthly, material life is essentially the life of progress, it is here that one makes progress.


The Mother: Outside the earthly life one takes rest or is unconscious or one may have periods of assimilation, periods of rest, periods of unconsciousness. But as for the periods of progress, they are on the earth and in the body. So, when you take a body it is to make progress, and when you leave it the period of progress is over.  And true progress is sadhana; that is, it is the most conscious and swiftest progress. Otherwise one makes progress with the rhythm of Nature, which means that it can take centuries and centuries and centuries and millenniums to make the slightest bit of progress.


The Mother: But true progress is that made by sadhana. In yoga one can do in a very short time what takes otherwise an interminable time. But it is always in the body and always upon earth that it is done, not elsewhere. That is why when one is in a body one must take advantage of it and not waste one’s time, not say, “A little later, a little later.” It is much better to do it immediately.


The Mother: All the years you pass without making any progress are wasted years which you are sure to regret afterwards.  Yes, all these things — they are replies to letters. You see, someone was complaining of a difﬁculty. And so, having read the letter Sri Aurobindo saw that in this person the difﬁculty must have come from a lack of trust and obedience. He tells him so.


The Mother: And as it is something that happens very frequently, as it is common enough, you see, it is useful for everybody.   One can never have the same experience twice because one is never the same person twice. Between the ﬁrst experience and the second, even if one hour has passed, you are no longer the same man and you can never reproduce identically the same thing.  If you take care to become more conscious, more sincere, more concentrated, the experience you have will be different, but it may be deeper and more clear. But if you cling to something you have had and want to reproduce the same thing, you will have nothing at all, because you can’t have the same thing and you are in a state in which you refuse to have a new experience, for you are attached to the past one.


The Mother: And usually when one has had an experience which was a revelation, something altogether important, one doesn’t want to leave it, one is afraid of not having it any longer, and so, in this movement of clinging to something, one prevents oneself from progressing and puts oneself in conditions in which one can’t have the next experience.  Well, this has to be understood, because it is an absolute fact: one can never have the same experience twice. There may be similar experiences, very close, and particularly some which appear similar, but these experiences... if one is absolutely sincere, impartial and like a blank page, he will perceive that there is a difference, sometimes an essential one, between the two, though in appearance they seem very close. But the more ready you are to leave behind all that you have experienced, in order to be able to go towards something better and higher, the faster you will go; the more you drag the heavy weight of all the past which you don’t want to get rid of, the slower is your advance.


The Mother: All the past should always be simply like a stepping-stone or a ladder, something to lead you farther; it should not have any other use except to push you forward. And if you can feel this and always turn your back on what is past and look at what you want to do, then you go much faster, you don’t waste time on the way. What makes you lose time is always this clinging to what has been, to what is, what seemed to you beautiful and good in what is past. This must only help you, you must not reject it, but it must help you to go forward, it must simply be something on which you lean to take a step forward.  Now, at a particular time, a set of circumstances, inner and outer, has caused one to be receptive to a certain vibration; for example, as you say, while looking at the stars or contemplating a landscape or reading a page or hearing a lecture, one has suddenly an inner revelation, an experience, something that strikes him and gives him the impression of being open to something new.


The Mother: But if you want to hold on to this tightly like that, you will lose everything, because one can’t keep the past, one must always go forward, advance, advance. This illumination must prepare you so that you can organise your whole being on this new level, in order to be able suddenly, one day, to leap up again to a higher step.  There is a horizontal advance between abrupt ascents. It is the moment of the abrupt ascent which gives you an impression of something like a revelation, a great inner joy. But once you have climbed the step, if you want to climb it once more you would have to go down again.


The Mother: You must go on preparing yourself at this level in order to climb another higher step. These things which suddenly give you a great joy are always ascents.  But these ascents are prepared by a slow work of horizontal progress, that is, one must become more and more conscious, establish more and more perfectly what one is, draw from it all the inner, psychological consequences, and in action also. It is a long utilisation of an abrupt leap and, as I say, there are two kinds of progress. But the horizontal progress is indispensable.


The Mother: You must not stop, you must not cling in this way to your vertical progress and not want to move because it has brought you a revelation. You must know how to leave it in order to prepare for another.   Obviously it is someone who had written an experience in which he was in contact with a sun and a light, and he wanted to take the support of these as a help in the sadhana. It is the answer to an experience.  Ah, yes, very contagious, my child.


The Mother: It is even much more contagious than illness. If someone next to you has a desire, immediately it enters you; and in fact it is mainly in this way that it is caught. It passes from one to another... Terribly contagious, in such a powerful way that one is not even aware that it is a contagion. Suddenly one feels something springing up in oneself; someone has gently put it inside.


The Mother: Of course, one could say, “Why aren’t people with desires quarantined?” Then we should have to quarantine everybody. ( )  The Buddha said that it comes from ignorance.


The Mother: It is more or less that. It is something in the being which fancies that it needs something else in order to be satisﬁed. And the proof that it is ignorance is that when one has satisﬁed it, one no longer cares for it, at least ninety-nine and a half times out of a hundred.  I believe, right at its origin it is an obscure need for growth,  as in the lowest forms of life love is changed into the need to swallow, absorb, become joined with another thing. This is the most primitive form of love in the lowest forms of life, it is to take and absorb.


The Mother: Well, the need to take is desire. So perhaps if we went back far enough into the last depths of the inconscience, we could say that the origin of desire is love. It is love in its obscurest and most unconscious form. It is a need to become joined with something, an attraction, a need to take, you see.


The Mother: Take for instance... you see something which is — which seems to you or is — very beautiful, very harmonious, very pleasant; if you have the true consciousness, you experience this joy of seeing, of being in a conscious contact with something very beautiful, very harmonious, and then that’s all. It stops there.  You have the joy of it — that such a thing exists, you see. And this is quite common among artists who have a sense of beauty.


The Mother: For example, an artist may see a beautiful creature and have the joy of observing the beauty, grace, harmony of movement and all that, and that’s all. It stops there. He is perfectly happy, perfectly satisﬁed, because he has seen something beautiful. An ordinary consciousness, altogether ordinary, dull like all ordinary consciousness — as soon as it sees something beautiful, whether it be an object or a person, hop! “I want it!”


The Mother: It is deplorable, you know. And into the bargain it doesn’t even have the joy of the beauty, because it has the anguish of desire. It misses that and has nothing in exchange, because there is nothing pleasant in desiring anything. It only puts you in an unpleasant state, that’s all.  The Buddha has said that there is a greater joy in overcoming a desire than in satisfying it.


The Mother: It is an experience everybody can have and one that is truly very interesting, very interesting.   There was someone who was invited — it happened in Paris — invited to a ﬁrst-night (a ﬁrst-night means a ﬁrst performance) of an opera of Massenet’s. I think... I don’t remember now whose it was.


The Mother: The subject was ﬁne, the play was ﬁne, and the music not displeasing; it was the ﬁrst time and this person was invited  to the box of the Minister of Fine Arts who always has a box for all the ﬁrst nights at the government theatres. This Minister of Fine Arts was a simple person, an old countryside man, who had not lived much in Paris, who was quite new in his ministry and took a truly childlike joy in seeing new things. Yet he was a polite man and as he had invited a lady he gave her the front seat and himself sat at the back. But he felt very unhappy because he could not see everything. He leaned forward like this, trying to see something without showing it too much.


The Mother: Now, the lady who was in front noticed this. She too was very interested and was ﬁnding it very ﬁne, and it was not that she did not like it, she liked it very much and was enjoying the show; but she saw how very unhappy that poor minister looked, not being able to see. So quite casually, you see, she pushed back her chair, went back a little, as though she was thinking of something else, and drew back so well that he came forward and could now see the whole scene. Well, this person, when she drew back and gave up all desire to see the show, was ﬁlled with a sense of inner joy, a liberation from all attachment to things and a kind of peace, content to have done something for somebody instead of having satisﬁed herself, to the extent that the evening brought her inﬁnitely greater pleasure than if she had listened to the opera. This is a true experience, it is not a little story read in a book, and it was precisely at the time this person was studying Buddhist discipline, and it was in conformity with the saying of the Buddha that she tried this experiment.