The Mother: Second point, the terrestrial creation is a purely material creation and is a sort of materialisation and condensation of the universal creation, but in the universal creation this difference does not necessarily exist. All the possibilities are there, and all things possible have existed and still exist, and this differentiation is not at all the basis of creation.  So your question does not stand, for it is incorrect.  I am telling you it has not been like that from the beginning. A zoologist could tell you that there are species which are not like that at all.


The Mother: Nature has tried this method — it tries many things, it has made all possible species, made the two in one, made every possible thing.... It tries like this because probably this appears more practical to it! I don’t know. That’s all.  But on the other planes, even in the terrestrial world, the more subtle planes of the terrestrial world, even in the subtle physical and the vital and mental, there are beings divided in two like this, but also beings which are neither male nor female.


The Mother: They exist. For instance, in the vital world, it is extremely rare  to come across differentiations of sex, the beings are usually sexless. And I strongly suspect that the world of the gods as described to us by men, has been largely inﬂuenced by human thought. In any case, there are many deities who are without sex.  In all the stories told of the pantheons of all countries, there is a good deal that has been strongly inﬂuenced by human thought.


The Mother: So, this difference is simply a means used by Nature to achieve its aim, that’s all, nothing more than that. We must take it like that. It is not an eternal symbol — not at all.  Now, there are many people who are very keen on this distinction — they may keep it if they like! — but it is not at all something ﬁnal or eternal... or perfect in itself. It was perhaps the ideal of the overmind creation, that is possible... and yet, even then not totally, only partially.


The Mother: But still those who are so fond of this differentiation — let them keep it if they like! If it gives them pleasure.... It has its advantages and disadvantages, many disadvantages.   What?


The Mother: I don’t say it doesn’t exist, I say it is not a general rule and that, on the contrary, one meets sexless beings more often than those with sex. And it is also probable that in the vital world this differentiation has come mostly due to the inﬂuence of the earth.   And so, now? Why these questions and what are you driving at?


The Mother: That’s what I want to know. Who told you that from the beginning of the universe it has been like that?... People who are extremely keen that it should continue to be like that? I say, if they like it, let them continue, nobody will disturb them.   If it makes them happy!


The Mother: Usually this kind of transformation proceeds from above downwards, not from below upwards.  Obviously, if you are a thorough-going materialist, you will say that it is the development of the form which brings out new capacities; but still, this is not quite correct, it is not exactly like this that things usually happen, and I challenge you to transform your body before your mind has been transformed. Just try, let us see!  You cannot move a ﬁnger, say a word, walk one step without the mind’s intervention; so with what instrument are you going to transform your body if your mind is not already transformed?  If you remain in the state of ignorance — of perfect ignorance, I might say — which your mind is in at present, how do you expect your body to be transformed?


The Mother: Where is the greatest resistance? ... In your head. ( )


The Mother: This is not a special case. Most often what refuses most to change is the physical mind — so obstinate, isn’t it, in the conviction of its own competence, ooh!... In the love it has for its own ignorance, its own way of thinking, its own way of seeing, its own way of not knowing.  Is that all?... All right!


The Mother: Then we won’t say anything more.  Oh! Oh!... ( )....


The Mother: There, that’s the remedy.    It is precisely about this progressive transformation that I am going to speak to you this evening.... I have often been asked this question, “Why, after having posited as an ideal principle that when we deal with our body we ought to do it with the knowledge that it is only a result and an instrument of the supreme Reality of the universe and of the truth of our being, — why, after having taught this and shown that this is the truth to be realised, do we have in the organisation of our Ashram, doctors, dispensaries, a physical education of the body based on modern theories accepted everywhere?” And why, when some of you go for a picnic do I forbid you to drink water from just anywhere and tell you to take ﬁltered water with you? Why do I have the fruit you eat disinfected, etc.?


The Mother: All this seems contradictory, but this evening I intend to explain something to you which, I hope, will put an end to this feeling of a contradiction in you. In fact, I have told you many a time that when two ideas or principles apparently seem to contradict one another, you must rise a little higher in your thought and ﬁnd the point where the contradictions meet in a comprehensive synthesis.  Here, it is very easy if we know one thing, that the method we use to deal with our body, maintain it, keep it ﬁt, improve it and keep it in good health, depends on the state of consciousness we are in; for our body is an instrument of our  consciousness and this consciousness can act directly on it and obtain what it wants from it.  So, if you are in an ordinary physical consciousness, if you see things with the eyes of the ordinary physical consciousness, if you think of them with the ordinary physical consciousness, it will be ordinary physical means you will have to use to act on your body. These ordinary physical means make up the whole science which has accumulated through thousands of years of human existence.


The Mother: This science is very complex, its processes innumerable, complicated, uncertain, often contradictory, always progressive and almost absolutely relative! Still, very precise results have been achieved; ever since physical culture has become a serious preoccupation, a certain number of experiments, studies, observations have accumulated, which enable us to regulate diet, activities, exercise, the whole outer organisation of life, and provide an adequate basis so that those who make the effort to study and conform strictly to these things have a chance to maintain their body in good health, correct the defects it may have and improve its general condition, and even achieve results which are sometimes quite remarkable.  I may add, moreover, that this intellectual human science, such as it is at present, in its very sincere effort to ﬁnd the truth, is, surprisingly enough, drawing closer and closer to the essential truth of the Spirit. It is not impossible to foresee the movement where the two will unite in a very deep and very close understanding of the essential truth.  So, for all those who live on the physical plane, in the physical consciousness, it is physical means and processes which have to be used in dealing with the body.


The Mother: And as the vast majority of human beings, even in the Ashram, live in a consciousness which, if not exclusively physical, is at least predominantly physical, it is quite natural for them to follow and obey all the principles laid down by physical science for the care of the body.  Now, according to what Sri Aurobindo teaches us, this is not a ﬁnal realisation, nor is it the ideal to which we want to  rise. There is a higher state than this, in which the consciousness, though it still remains principally mental or partially mental in its functioning, is already open to higher regions in an aspiration for the spiritual life, and open to the supramental inﬂuence.  As soon as this opening occurs, one passes beyond the state in which life is purely physical — when I say “physical” I include the whole mental and intellectual life and all human achievements, even the most remarkable; I am speaking of a physical which is the summit of human capacities, of an earthly and material life in which man can express values of a higher order from the mental and intellectual point of view — one can go beyond that state, open oneself to the supramental force which is now acting on earth and enter a transitional zone where the two inﬂuences meet and interpenetrate, where the consciousness is still mental and intellectual in its functioning, but sufﬁciently imbued with the supramental strength and force to become the instrument of a higher truth.


The Mother: At present this state can be realised on earth by those who have prepared themselves to receive the supramental force which is manifesting. And in that state, in that state of consciousness, the body can beneﬁt from a much better condition than the one it was in before. It can be put into direct contact with the essential truth of its being, to the extent that,, at every moment it knows instinctively, or intuitively, what is to be done and that it can do it.  As I say, this state can now be realised by all those who take the trouble of preparing themselves to receive the supramental force, to assimilate it and obey it.  Of course, there is a higher state than this, the state Sri Aurobindo speaks of as the ideal to be fulﬁlled: the divine life in a divine body.


The Mother: But he himself tells us that this will take time; it is an integral transformation which cannot be achieved in a moment. It will even take quite a long time. But when it is accomplished, when the consciousness has become a supramental consciousness, then action will no longer be determined at every  moment by a mental choice or be dependent on the physical capacity: the entire body will spontaneously, integrally, be the perfect expression of the inner truth.  This is the ideal we must keep before us, for the realisation of which we must strive; but we must not delude ourselves and think that it can be a rapid transformation, miraculous, immediate, marvellous, without effort and without labour.  However, it is no longer only a possibility, it is no longer even only a promise for a far-off future: it is something which is in the making.


The Mother: And already one can not only foresee but feel the moment when the body will be able to repeat integrally the experience of the most spiritual part of the being, as the inner spirit has already done, and will itself be able to stand in its bodily consciousness before the supreme Reality, turn to it integrally and say in all sincerity, in a total self-giving of all its cells: “To be Thyself — exclusively, perfectly — Thyself, inﬁnitely, eternally... very simply.”   Do you have any questions? No?  What do you mean by a question that doesn’t come spontaneously?  It depends on what you ﬁnd!


The Mother: If the question is interesting... Because you make an effort to ﬁnd it, it doesn’t mean that it is necessarily bad.  Do you have a question of this kind?   Then....


The Mother: ()  In fact, if one reads attentively what Sri Aurobindo has written, all that he has written, one would have the answer to every question. But there are certain moments and certain ways of presenting ideas which have a dynamic effect on the consciousness and help you to make a spiritual progress. The presentation, to be effective, must necessarily be the spontaneous expression of an immediate experience. If things which have already been said are repeated in the same manner, things which belong to  past experiences, it becomes a sort of teaching, what could be called didactic talk, and it sets off some cells in the brain, but in fact is not very useful.


The Mother: For me, for what I am trying to do, action in silence is much more important.... The force which is at work is not limited by words, and this gives it an inﬁnitely greater strength, and it expresses itself in each consciousness in accordance with its own particular mode, which makes it inﬁnitely more effective. A certain vibration is given out in silence, with a special purpose, to obtain a deﬁnite result, but according to the mental receptivity of each person it is expressed in each individual consciousness exactly in the form which can be the most effective, the most active, the most immediately useful for each individual; while if it is formulated in words, this formula has to be received by each person in its ﬁxity — the ﬁxity of the words given to it — and it loses much of its strength and fullness of action because, ﬁrst, the words are not always understood as they are said and then they are not always adapted to the understanding of each one.  So, unless a question immediately gives rise to an experience which can be expressed as a new formula, in my opinion it is always better to keep silent. Only when the question is living can it give rise to an experience which will be the occasion of a living teaching.


The Mother: And for a question to be alive, it must answer an inner need for progress, a spontaneous need to progress on some plane or other — on the mental plane is the most usual way, but if by chance it answers an inner aspiration, a problem one is tackling and wants to solve, then the question becomes interesting and living and truly useful, and it can give rise to a vision, a perception on a higher plane, an experience in the consciousness which can make the formula new so that it carries a new power for realisation.  Apart from such cases I always feel that it is much better not to say anything and that a few minutes of meditation are always more useful.   What I read at the beginning ought to serve to canalise the thought, to direct and focus it on a particular problem or a set of ideas or a new possibility of understanding which comes from the passage read; and in fact it is almost like a subject of meditation suggested for the silence which follows the reading.  To speak for the sake of speaking is not at all interesting — there are schools for that! Not here.


The Mother: ( )  (Another child)   It is always better, for meditation — you see, we use the word “meditation”, but it does not necessarily mean “moving ideas around in the head”, quite the contrary — it is always better to try to concentrate in a centre, the centre of aspiration, one might say, the place where the ﬂame of aspiration burns, to gather in all the energies there, at the solar plexus centre and, if possible, to obtain an attentive silence as though one wanted to listen to something extremely subtle, something that demands a complete attention, a complete concentration and total silence.


The Mother: And then not to move at all. Not to think, not to stir, and make that movement of opening so as to receive all that can be received, but taking good care not to try to know what is happening while it is happening, for if one wants to understand or even to observe actively, it keeps up a sort of cerebral activity which is unfavourable to the fullness of the receptivity — to be silent, as totally silent as possible, in an attentive concentration, and then be still.  If one succeeds in this, then, when everything is over, when  one comes out of meditation, some time later — usually not immediately — from within the being something new emerges in the consciousness: a new understanding, a new appreciation of things, a new attitude in life — in short, a new way of being.  This may be fugitive, but at that moment, if one observes it, one ﬁnds that something has taken one step forward on the path of understanding or transformation. It may be an illumination, an understanding truer or closer to the truth, or a power of transformation which helps you to achieve a psychological progress or a widening of the consciousness or a greater control over your movements, over the activities of the being.


The Mother: And these results are never immediate. For if one tries to have them at once, one remains in a state of activity which is quite the contrary of true receptivity. One must be as neutral, as immobile, as passive as one can be, with a background of silent aspiration not formulated in words or ideas or even in feelings; something that does this () in an ardent vibration, but which does not formulate, and above all, does not try to understand.  With a little practice one reaches a state which may be obtained at will, in a few seconds, that is, one doesn’t waste any of the meditation time. Naturally, in the beginning, one must slowly quieten the mind, gather up one’s consciousness, concentrate; one loses three-quarters of the time in preparing oneself.


The Mother: But when one has practised the thing, in two or three seconds one can get it, and then one beneﬁts from the whole period of receptivity.  Naturally, there are still more advanced and perfected states, but that comes later. But already if one reaches that state, one proﬁts fully by the meditation.  We are going to try.  ()


The Mother: The description Sri Aurobindo gives here of the possibility of a prolonged fast while maintaining all activities, is a description of his own experience.  He is not speaking of a possibility but of something he has done. But it would be a great mistake to believe that it is an experience that can be imitated in its outer appearance; and even if one managed to do it by an effort of will, it would be perfectly useless from the spiritual point of view, if the experience has not been preceded by a change of consciousness which would be a preliminary liberation.  It is not by abstaining from food that you can make a spiritual progress. It is by being free, not only from all attachment and all desire and preoccupation with food, but even from all need for it; by being in the state in which all these things are so foreign to your consciousness that they have no place there.


The Mother: Only then, as a spontaneous, natural result, can one usefully stop eating. It could be said that the essential condition is to forget to eat — forget, because all the energies of the being and all its concentration are turned towards a more total, more true inner realisation, towards this, imperative preoccupation with the union of the whole being, including the bodily cells, with the vibration of the divine forces, with the supramental force which is manifesting, so that this may be the true life: not only the purpose of life, but the essence of life, not only an imperative need of life, but all its joy and all its When that is there, when this realisation is attained, then to eat or not to eat, to sleep or not sleep, all this has no longer any importance. It is an outer rhythm left to the play of the universal forces as a whole, ﬁnding expression through the circumstances and people around you; and then the body, united, totally united with the inner truth, has a suppleness, a constant adaptability:  if food is there, it takes it; if it isn’t there, it doesn’t think about it. And so too with all things.... This is not life!


The Mother: They are modes of existing to which one adapts oneself without giving it any thought. This gives you the feeling of a kind of blossoming, as a ﬂower opens on a plant, a sort of activity which does not come from a concentrated will but is in harmony with all the forces around you, a way of being which is adapted to the circumstances you live in, which have absolutely no importance in themselves.  There comes a moment when, free from everything, one needs practically nothing, and one can use anything, do anything without this having any real inﬂuence on the state of consciousness one is in. This is what really matters. To try through outer gestures or arbitrary decisions which come from a mental consciousness aspiring for a higher life can be a means, not a very effective one but still a sort of reminder to the being that it ought to be something other than what it is in its animality — but it’s not that, it’s not that at all!


The Mother: A person who could be entirely absorbed in his inner aspiration, to the point of not giving any thought or care to these external things, who would take what comes and not think about it when it doesn’t, would be inﬁnitely farther on the path than someone who undertakes ascetic practices with the idea that this will lead him to realisation.   that is truly effective is the change of consciousness; it is the inner liberation through an intimate, constant union, absolute and inevitable, with the vibration of the supramental forces. The preoccupation of every second, the will of all the elements of the being, the aspiration of the entire being, including all the cells of the body, is this union with the supramental forces, the divine forces. And there is no longer any need at all to be preoccupied with what the consequences will be. What has to be in the play of the universal forces and their manifestation will be, quite naturally, spontaneously, automatically, there is no need to be preoccupied with it.


The Mother: The only thing that matters is the constant, total, complete contact — constant,  yes, constant — with the Force, the Light, the Truth, the Power, and that ineffable delight of the supramental consciousness.  That is sincerity. All the rest is an imitation, it is almost a part one plays for oneself.  Perfect purity is, to be ever more and more, in a selfperfecting becoming. One must never pretend that one: one must, spontaneously.


The Mother: This is sincerity.   That depends on the person! If it is someone who is doing yoga, it is quite obviously a difﬁculty in his spiritual life. If it is somebody who is not at all engaged in yoga and who lives an ordinary life in the most ordinary manner, it is an ordinary accident. It depends absolutely on the person.


The Mother: The outer phenomena may be similar, but the inner causes are absolutely different. No two illnesses are alike, though labels are put on diseases and attempts made to group them; but in fact every person is ill in his own way, and his way depends on what he is, on his state of consciousness and the life he leads.  We have often said that illnesses are always the result of a disturbance of equilibrium, but this disturbance can occur in completely different states of being. For the ordinary man whose consciousness is centred in the physical, outer life, it is a purely physical disturbance of equilibrium, of the functioning of the different organs. But when behind this purely superﬁcial life, an inner life is being fashioned, the causes of illness change; they always become the expression of a disequilibrium between the different parts of the being: between the inner progress or effort and the outer resistances or conditions of one’s life, one’s body.


The Mother: Even from the ordinary external point of view, it has been recognised for a very long time that it is a fall in the resistance of the vitality due to immediate moral causes which is always at the origin of an illness. When one is in a normal state of equilibrium and lives in a normal physical harmony, the body has a capacity of resistance, it has within it an atmosphere strong enough to resist illnesses: its most material substance emanates  subtle vibrations which have the strength to resist illnesses, even diseases which are called contagious — in fact, all vibrations are contagious, but still, certain diseases are considered as especially contagious. Well, a man who, even from the purely external point of view, is in a state in which his organs function harmoniously and an adequate psychological balance prevails, has at the same time enough resistance for the contagion not to affect him. But if for some reason or other he loses this equilibrium or is weakened by depression, dissatisfaction, moral difﬁculties or undue fatigue, for instance, this reduces the normal resistance of the body and he is open to the disease. But if we consider someone who is doing yoga, then it is altogether different, in the sense that the causes of disequilibrium are of a different nature and the illness usually becomes the expression of an inner difﬁculty which has to be overcome.


The Mother: So each one should ﬁnd out for himself why he is ill.  From the ordinary point of view, in most cases, it is usually fear — fear, which may be mental fear, vital fear, but which is almost always physical fear, a fear in the cells — it is fear which opens the door to all contagion. Mental fear — all who have a little control over themselves or any human dignity can eliminate it; vital fear is more subtle and asks for a greater control; as for physical fear, a veritable yoga is necessary to overcome it, for the cells of the body are afraid of everything that is unpleasant, painful, and as soon as there is any unease, even if it is insigniﬁcant, the cells of the body become anxious, they don’t like to be uncomfortable. And then, to overcome that, the control of a conscious will is necessary. It is usually this kind of fear that opens the door to illnesses.


The Mother: And I am not speaking of the ﬁrst two types of fear which, as I said, any human being who wants to be human in the noblest sense of the word, must overcome, for that is cowardice. But physical fear is more difﬁcult to overcome; without it even the most violent attacks could be repelled. If one has a minimum of control over the body, one can lessen its effects, but that is not immunity. It is this kind of trembling of material, physical  fear in the cells of the body which aggravates all illnesses.  Some people are spontaneously free from fear even in their body; they have a sufﬁcient vital equilibrium in them not to be afraid, not to fear, and a natural harmony in the rhythm of their physical life which enables them to reduce the illness spontaneously to a minimum.


The Mother: There are others, on the other hand, with whom the thing always becomes as bad as it can be, sometimes to the point of catastrophe. There is the whole range and this can be seen quite easily. Well, this depends on a kind of happy rhythm of the movement of life in them, which is either harmonious enough to resist external attacks of illness or else doesn’t exist or is not sufﬁciently powerful, and is replaced by that trembling of fear, that kind of instinctive anguish which transforms the least unpleasant contact into something painful and harmful.  There is the whole range, from someone who can go through the worst contagion and epidemics without ever catching anything to one who falls ill at the slightest chance. So naturally it always depends on the constitution of each person; and as soon as one wants to make an effort for progress, it naturally depends on the control one has acquired over oneself, until the moment when the body becomes the docile instrument of the higher Will and one can obtain from it a normal resistance to all attacks.


The Mother: But when one can eliminate fear, one is almost in safety. For example, epidemics, or so-called epidemics, like those which are raging at present — ninety-nine times out of a hundred they come from fear: a fear, then, which even becomes a mental fear in its most sordid form, promoted by newspaper articles, useless talk and so on.   In most cases the use of medicines — within reasonable limits, that is, when one doesn’t poison oneself by taking medicines — is simply to help the body to have conﬁdence. It is the body which heals itself. When it wants to be cured, it is cured.


The Mother: And this is something very widely recognised now; even the most traditional doctors tell you, “Yes, our medicines help, but it is not the medicines which cure, it is the body which decides to be cured.” Very well, so when the body is told, “Take this”, it says to itself, “Now I am going to get better”, and because it says “I am going to get better”, well, it is cured!  In almost every case, there are things which help — a little — provided it is done within reasonable limits. If it is no longer within reasonable limits, you are sure to break down completely.  You cure one thing but catch another which is usually worse.


The Mother: But still, a little help, in a way, a little something that gives conﬁdence to your body: “Now it will be all right, now that I have taken this, it is going to be all right” — this helps it a great deal and it decides to get better and it is cured.   There too, there is a whole range of possibilities, from the yogi who is in so perfect a state of inner control that he could take poison without being poisoned to the one who at the least little scratch rushes to the doctor and needs all sorts of special drugs to get his body to make the movement needed for its cure.  There is the whole possible range, from total, supreme mastery to an equally total bondage to all external aids and all that you absorb from outside — a bondage and a perfect liberation. There is the whole range.


The Mother: So everything is possible. It is like a great key-board, very complex and very complete, on which one can play, and the body is the instrument.  That is not enough. A mental resolution is not enough, no. There  are subtle reactions in your body which do not obey the mental resolution, it is not enough.


The Mother: Something else is needed.  Other regions must be contacted. A power higher than the mind’s is needed.  And from this point of view, all that is in the mind is always subject to inner questioning. You take a resolution but you can be sure that something will always come in which perhaps may not openly ﬁght this resolution but will question its effectiveness.


The Mother: It is enough, you see, to be subject to the least doubt for the resolution to lose half its effect. If at the same time as you say “I want”, there is something silently lurking, somewhere behind, in the background, something which asks itself, “What will the result be?” that is enough to ruin everything.  This play of the mind’s working is extremely subtle and no ordinary human means can succeed in controlling it perfectly.  For instance, this is well known among people who practise yoga and want to control their body: if through an assiduous yogic effort they have succeeded in controlling something in themselves — a particular weakness of the body, an opening to a certain disequilibrium — if they have managed to do this and had some result, for instance the disappearance of this disequilibrium for a very long time, for years, well, if one day at a particular moment, suddenly, the thought crosses their mind that “Ah! Now it is done”, the very next minute it returns. That is enough.


The Mother: For it proves that they have come into contact with the vibrations of the thing they had rejected, on a plane where they are vulnerable, the plane of thought, and that for some reason or other in the play of forces, they are open, and it comes back.  This is something very well known in yoga. The simple fact of observing the victory one has gained — observing it mentally, you see, thinking about it — is enough to destroy the effect of the yoga which may have existed for years. A mental silence strong enough to prevent all outer vibrations from coming in, is indispensable. Well, that is something so difﬁcult to achieve that one must really have passed from what Sri Aurobindo  calls “the lower hemisphere” to the higher, exclusively spiritual hemisphere, for it not to happen.


The Mother: No, it is not in the mental ﬁeld that the victories are won.  It is impossible. It is open to all inﬂuences, all contradictory currents. All the mental constructions one makes carry their own contradiction with them. One can try to overrule it or make it as harmless as possible, but it exists, it is there, and at the slightest weakness or lack of vigilance or inadvertance, it enters, and destroys all the work.


The Mother: Mentally, one arrives at very few results, and they are always mixed. Something else is needed. One must pass from the mind into the domain of faith or of a higher consciousness, to be able to act with safety.  It is quite obvious that one of the most powerful means for acting on the body is faith. People who have a simple heart, not a very complicated mind — simple people, you see — who don’t have a very great, very complicated mental development but have a very deep faith, have a great power of action over their bodies, very great.


The Mother: That is why one is quite surprised at times: “Here’s a man with a great realisation, an exceptional person, and he is a slave of all the smallest physical things, while this man, well, he is so simple and looks so uncouth, but he has a great faith and goes through difﬁculties and obstacles like a conqueror!”  I don’t say that a highly cultured man can’t have faith, but it is more difﬁcult, for there is always this mental element which contradicts, discusses, tries to understand, which is difﬁcult to convince, which wants proofs. His faith is less pure. It is necessary, then, to pass on to a higher degree in the evolutionary spiral, pass from the mental to the spiritual; then, naturally, faith takes on a quality of a very high order. But I mean that in daily life, ordinary life, a very simple man who has a very ardent faith can have a mastery over his body — without it being truly a “mastery”; it is simply a spontaneous movement — a control over his body far greater than somebody who has reached a much higher development.


The Mother: It is something so personal, so individual, that it is impossible to reply. As I said, for each one the case is absolutely different, and one can’t give an explanation for these things without going into the details of the functioning. For each one, the case is different.  And for every thing, every event, there are as many explanations as there are planes of consciousness.


The Mother: In a way... well, in an over-simpliﬁed way, one may say that there is a physical explanation, a vital explanation, a mental explanation, a spiritual explanation, there is... There is an entire gradation of countless explanations that you could give for the same phenomenon. None is altogether true, all have an element of truth.  And ﬁnally, if you want to enter the ﬁeld of explanations, if you take one thing and follow it up, you always have to explain it by another, and you may go round the world indeﬁnitely and explain one thing by another without ever reaching the end of your explanation.


The Mother: Indeed, when one sees this in its totality and its essence, the wisest thing one can say is: “It is like that because it is like that.”    Is it possible? You are asking whether it is possible?... Everything is possible. What do you want to know?


The Mother: Whether this has already been done?  Not as far as the most material plane; as far as the perceptible subtle physical — perceptible by the intermediary senses, between the physical senses and those of the subtle physical; for instance, like a breath felt as a gentle breeze, like certain perceptions of smell, like subtle perfumes. Naturally, those who have an inner vision can see, but for the most material senses there  is not — how shall I put it? — not the permanence given by the physical body as we know it materially. There are phenomena, yes, that can even be seen, but they are ﬂeeting. There is no stability, the stability in matter, the has not been acquired.


The Mother: I mean there is a contact, there is even the contact of touch, there is a perception, but there isn’t the permanence given by the material body. They are transient phenomena which, naturally, don’t give you the same feeling of an altogether tangible reality.  Still, the inﬂuence is constant, the intervention is constant, the perception is constant, but there is not the stability of a body which... well, which, when it goes out of the room and returns, it comes back the same as it went out, you understand? Or when you sit down in a certain place, it occupies that place in a very concrete way.  I cannot say because I don’t know everything that has happened and is happening on earth, but as far as I know, this has not yet been achieved, this concrete permanence.


The Mother: Yet, it was of matter, for there was sight, touch, hearing.  But hearing doesn’t need to be very material: the sounds of the subtle physical life, its vibrations can be heard very well; and quite strangely, it is hearing and smell which seem to be the most permanent in the subtle physical world, more so than the perception of form — and also a certain sense of contact which is very, very concrete. Only, this heavy material presence of a physical body which occupies an absolutely deﬁnite and concrete place and prevents any other thing from occupying the same place, this does not yet seem to be possible; therefore, what has so far been achieved has after all to be a little more ﬂuid than the heaviest kind of matter.   You mean for a more complete materialisation?


The Mother: ... It depends on the power of manipulating the vibrations of matter. This power of manipulation is necessarily the result of a certain state of  consciousness. And all depends on the standpoint that is taken, for no individual progress can come about without what could be called the “authorisation” of the divine Will. Ultimately, nothing in creation can happen without the sanction of the divine Will.


The Mother: So...   Like what?   Ah!


The Mother: Excuse me, you must not confuse things. There are two things. There is the possibility of a purely supramental creation on one hand, and the possibility of a progressive transformation of a physical body into a supramental body, or rather of a human body into a superhuman body. Then it would be a progressive transformation which could take a certain number of years, probably a considerable number, and would produce a being who would no longer be a “man” in the animal sense of the word, but would not be the supramental being formed fully outside all animality, for its present origin is necessarily an animal one. So, a transmutation may take place, a transformation that’s enough to liberate the being from this origin, but all the same it wouldn’t be a purely and entirely supramental creation.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo has said that there will be an intermediary race — a race or perhaps some individuals, we don’t know — an intermediary rung which could serve as a passage or could be perpetuated according to the needs and necessities of creation. But if one starts from a body formed in the same way as human bodies are at present, the result will never be the same as a being formed entirely according to the supramental method and process. It will perhaps be more on the superhuman side in the sense that all animal expression may disappear, but it won’t  be able to have the absolute perfection of a body that’s purely supramental in its formation.  What, what are you saying?  Accepts?


The Mother: What do you mean, “accepts”?  But it is not like that, it is not a bottle into which one pours some liquid! It’s not that!  Are you asking whether the body will keep its masculine or feminine form? Probably this will be left to the choice of the being who enters the house, the occupant....


The Mother: Does it interest you very much, this difference? ( )  From what point of view? If it is the physical appearance, I agree — and yet, not so much as all that, but still...


The Mother: From what point of view?  The idea! But that’s the fault of the person who thinks! One can very well dispense with thinking. You know, these very petty limits of thought are things which ought to disappear before you  can even attempt to transform your body.


The Mother: If you still have these very petty ideas which are purely animal, there is not much hope that you could begin the least process for the transformation of your body. You must ﬁrst transform your thought.... For that is something which is still crawling far down below. If you are not able to feel that a conscious and living being can be quite free, even in a certain deﬁnite form, from all feeling of sex, it... it means that you are still up to your neck in the original animality.


The Mother: What about the actuality?  You spend your time thinking about it?  But one may live twenty-four hours out of twenty-four without giving a single thought to this difference! You must really be hypnotised by this affair. Do you suppose that when I speak to you I think that you are a man and when I speak to Tara I think she is a woman?


The Mother: Ah! but it is not at all necessary.  In theory! What theory?


The Mother: Well, it’s a great pity both for you and for the other person.   No, it is just the very opposite of what ought to happen!  When you are in contact with someone and speaking with him, it is precisely to what surpasses all animality that you should speak; it is to the soul you must speak, never to the body. Even more is asked of you, for you are asked to address the Divine — not even the soul — the one Divine in every being, and to be conscious of that.  If you alone are conscious?


The Mother: And what do you know about it?  And how and on what plane do you judge that the other is not conscious?  But perhaps he thinks the same of you!  Well, I tell you that so long as it is not the divine Presence you address when you speak to someone, it means you are not conscious of it in yourself. And then it’s terribly presumptuous to judge what state the other person is in.


The Mother: What do you know about it? If you yourself are not conscious of the Divine in the other being, what right have you to say whether he is conscious of it or not? On what basis? Your small outer intelligence? But it knows nothing!


The Mother: It is quite incapable of perceiving anything whatever.  Unless your vision is the vision of the Divine in all things, you have not only no right but no capacity to judge the state which others are in. And to pronounce a judgment on someone without having this vision spontaneously, effortlessly, is precisely an example of the mental presumptuousness of which Sri Aurobindo always spoke.... And it so happens that one who has the vision, the consciousness, who is capable of seeing the truth in all things, never feels the need to judge anything  whatever. For he understands everything and knows everything.


The Mother: Therefore, once and for all, you must tell yourselves that the moment you begin to judge things, people, circumstances, you are in the most total human ignorance.  In short, one could put it like this: when one understands, one no longer judges and when one judges, it means that one doesn’t know.  Judging people is one of the ﬁrst things which must be totally swept away from the consciousness before you can take even a step on the supramental path, because that is not a material progress or a bodily progress, it is only a very little progress of thought, mental progress. And unless you have swept your mind clean of all its ignorance, you cannot hope to take a step on the supramental path.


The Mother: In fact, you have said something terrible. When you said, “I cannot speak to his soul if he is a brute”, well, you have given yourself away... you have stuck a label on yourself. There you are.


The Mother: All those who have truly and sincerely had the experience of the divine Presence, all those who have truly been in contact with the Divine, have always said the same thing: that sometimes, even often, it is in what is most decried by men, most despised by men, most condemned by human “wisdom”, that one can see the divine light shining.  They are not mere words, they are living experiences.  All these ideas of good and evil, good and bad, higher, lower,  all these notions belong to the ignorance of the human mind, and if one really wants to come into contact with the divine life, one must liberate oneself totally from this ignorance, one must rise to a region of consciousness where these things have  reality. The feeling of superiority and inferiority completely disappears, it is replaced by something else which is of a very different nature — a sort of capacity for ﬁltering appearances, penetrating behind masks, shifting the point of view.


The Mother: And these are not words, it is altogether true that   changes its appearance, totally, that life and things are completely different from what they appear to be.  All this contact, this ordinary perception of the world loses its reality completely. This is what appears unreal, fantastic, illusory, non-existent. There is something — something very material, very concrete, very physical — which becomes the reality of the being, and which has nothing in common with the ordinary way of seeing. When one has this perception — the perception of the work of the divine force, of the movement being worked out behind the appearance, the appearance, through the appearance — one begins to be ready to live something truer than the ordinary human falsehood.


The Mother: But not before.  There is no compromise, you see. It is not like a convalescence after an illness: you must change worlds. So long as your mind is real for you, your way of thinking something true for you, real, concrete, it proves that you are not there yet. You must ﬁrst pass through to the other side.


The Mother: Afterwards you will be able to understand what I am telling you.   Pass through to the other side.  It is not true that one can understand little by little, it is not like that. This kind of progress is different.


The Mother: What is more true is that one is shut up in a shell, and inside it something is happening, like the chick in the egg. It is getting ready in there.  It is in there. One doesn’t see it. Something is happening in the shell, but outside one sees nothing.


The Mother: And it is only when all is ready that there comes the capacity to pierce the shell and to be born into the light of day.  It is not that one becomes more and more perceptible or visible: one is shut in — shut in — and for sensitive people there is even that terrible sensation of being compressed, of trying to pass through and then coming up against a wall. And then one knocks and knocks and knocks, and one can’t go through.  And so long as one is there, inside, one is in the falsehood.  And only on the day when by the Divine Grace one can break the shell and come out into the Light, is one free.


The Mother: This may happen suddenly, spontaneously, quite unexpectedly.  I don’t think one can go through gradually. I don’t think it is something which slowly wears and wears away until one can see through it. I haven’t had an instance of this so far. There is rather a kind of accumulation of power inside, an intensiﬁcation of the need, and an endurance in the effort which becomes free from all fear, all anxiety, all calculation; a need so imperative that one no longer cares for the consequences.


The Mother: One is like an explosive that nothing can resist, and one bursts out from one’s prison in a blaze of light.  After that one can no longer fall back again.  It is truly a new birth.   I have been asked if we are doing a collective yoga and what the conditions for the collective yoga are.  I might tell you ﬁrst of all that to do a collective yoga we must be a collectivity (!) and then speak to you about the different conditions required for being a collectivity.


The Mother: But last night () I had a symbolic vision of our collectivity.  I had this vision in the early part of the night, and it made me wake up with a rather unpleasant impression. Then I went back to sleep and had forgotten it, and just now when I thought of the question I have been asked, the vision suddenly came back.  It returned with a great intensity and so imperatively that now when I wanted to tell you exactly what kind of a collectivity we want to realise in accordance with the ideal Sri Aurobindo has given in the last chapter of — a supramental, gnostic collectivity, the only one which can practise Sri Aurobindo’s integral yoga and be physically realised in a progressive collective body that grows more and more divine — the memory of this vision became so imperative that it prevented me from speaking.  Its symbol was very clear though of quite a familiar kind, so to speak, but so unmistakably realistic in its familiarity....


The Mother: If I were to relate it to you in detail, probably you wouldn’t even be able to follow; it was very complicated. It was the image of a kind of — how to put it? — of an immense hotel in which all earthly possibilities were accommodated in different rooms.  And all this was in a state of constant transformation: fragments or entire wings of the building were suddenly demolished and rebuilt while all the people were still staying in them, in such a way that if a person went somewhere even inside this huge hotel, he ran the risk of not ﬁnding his room again when he wanted to get back to it! For it had been demolished and was being rebuilt  on another plan. There was order, organisation...


The Mother: and there was the fantastic chaos I have described, and in that there was a symbol. There was a symbol which certainly applies to what Sri Aurobindo writes here on the necessity of the transformation of the body, what kind of transformation should take place for life to become a divine life.  It was somewhat like this: somewhere in the centre of this huge building, a room was reserved — in the story, as it seemed, it was reserved for a mother and her daughter. The mother was a very old lady, a self-important matron with much authority and her own views on the whole organisation. The daughter had a sort of power of movement and activity which made it possible for her to be everywhere at once even while remaining in that room which was... well, a little more than a room; it was a sort of apartment, and its main feature was to be right in the centre.


The Mother: But she was in constant argument with her mother. The mother wanted to keep things as they were with the rhythm they had, that is, with precisely that habit of demolishing one thing to build another out of it, and then again demolishing another to rebuild another one — which gave the building an appearance of frightful confusion. And the daughter didn’t like that and had another plan. She wanted above all to bring something quite new into this organisation, a sort of super-organisation which would make all this confusion unnecessary. Finally, as it was impossible to come to an understanding, she had left the room to go on a sort of round of inspection....


The Mother: She went her round, saw everything, then she wanted to go back to her own room — for it was her room as well — to take some decisive action. And it was then that something rather peculiar began to happen. She remembered quite well where her room was, but each time she set out to go there by one route either the stairs disappeared or things were so changed that she could no longer recognise her way! And so she went here and there, climbed up and down,  searched, went in and out... impossible to ﬁnd the way back to her room!


The Mother: As all this was taking a physical appearance, which was, as I said, very familiar and very ordinary, as always in these symbolic visions, somewhere there was — how to put it? — the administration of this hotel, and a woman who was a kind of manager, who had all the keys and knew where everybody was staying. So the daughter went to this person and asked, “Can you show me the way to my room?” — “Oh, yes, certainly, it is very easy.” All the people around looked at her as though saying, “How can you say that?” But she got up and, with authority, asked for a key, the key of the room, and said, “I’ll take you there.” Then she took all sorts of routes, but all so complicated, so bizarre!


The Mother: And the daughter followed her very attentively so as not to lose sight of her. And just at the moment when obviously they should have reached the place where this so-called room was, suddenly the manager — we shall call her the manager — the manager with her key... disappeared! And this feeling of disappearance was so acute that... everything disappeared at the same time.  If... To help you to understand this riddle, I could tell you that the mother is physical Nature as it is and the daughter is the new creation.


The Mother: The manager is the mental consciousness, organiser of the world as Nature has made it until now, that is, the highest sense of organisation manifested in material Nature as it is now. This is the key to the vision. Naturally, when I woke up I knew immediately what could solve this problem which had seemed absolutely insoluble. The disappearance of the manager and her key was a clear indication that she was quite incapable of leading to its true place what could be called the creative consciousness of the new world.  I knew it but I didn’t have the vision of the solution, which means that this is something which is yet to be manifested; this was not yet manifested in that building — that fantastic structure — and this is precisely the mode of consciousness which would transform this incoherent creation into something real, truly  conceived, willed, executed, with a centre which is in its true place, a recognised place, with a effective power.


The Mother: ( )  It is quite clear in its symbolism, in the sense that all possibilities are there, all activities are there, but in disorder and confusion.  They are neither coordinated nor centralised nor uniﬁed around the single central truth and consciousness and will. And we come back, then, to... precisely this question of a collective yoga and the collectivity which will be able to realise it.


The Mother: And what should this collectivity be?  It is certainly not an arbitrary structure like those made by men, in which they put everything pell-mell, without order or reality, and the whole thing is held together only by illusory links, which were symbolised here by the walls of the hotel, and which, in fact, in ordinary human constructions — if we take as an example a religious community — are symbolised by the monastery building, identical clothes, identical activities, even identical movements — I’ll make it more clear: everybody wears the same uniform, everybody rises at the same hour, eats the same things, offers the same prayers together, etc., there is a general uniformity. And naturally, inside, there is a chaos of consciousnesses, each one going according to its own mode, for this uniformity which goes as far as an identity of belief and dogma, is an altogether illusory identity.  This is one of the most usual types of human collectivity: to be grouped, linked, united around a common ideal, a common action, a common realisation, but in a completely artiﬁcial way.


The Mother: As opposed to this, Sri Aurobindo tells us that a true community — what he calls a gnostic or supramental community — can exist only on the basis of the inner realisation of each of its members, each one realising his real, concrete unity and identity with all the other members of the community, that is, each one should feel not like just one member united in some way with all  the others, but all as one, within himself. For each one the others must be himself as much as his own body, and not mentally and artiﬁcially, but by a fact of consciousness, by an inner realisation.  ( )  That means that before hoping to realise this gnostic collectivity, each one should ﬁrst become — or at least begin to become — a gnostic being.


The Mother: This is obvious; the individual work should go on ahead and the collective work should follow; but it so happens that spontaneously, without any arbitrary intervention of the will, the individual progress is controlled, so to speak, or held back by the collective state. Between the individual and the collectivity there is an interdependence from which one can’t totally free oneself, granting that one tries. And even a person who tried in his yoga to liberate himself totally from the terrestrial and human state of consciousness, would be tied down, in his subconscious at least, to the state of the mass, which acts as a brake and actually backwards. One can try to go much faster, try to drop all the weight of attachments and responsibilities, but despite everything, the realisation, even of one who is at the very summit and is the very ﬁrst in the evolutionary march, is dependent on the realisation of the whole, dependent on the state of the terrestrial collectivity. And that indeed one back, to such an extent that at times one must wait for centuries for the Earth to be ready, in order to be able to realise what is to be realised.


The Mother: And that is why Sri Aurobindo also says, somewhere else, that a double movement is necessary, and that the effort for individual progress and realisation should be combined with an effort to try to uplift the whole mass and enable it to make the progress that’s indispensable for the greater progress of the individual: a mass-progress, it could be called, which would allow the individual to take one more step forward.  And now, I shall tell you that this is why I thought it would  be useful to have some group meditations, in order to work on the creation of a common atmosphere that’s a little more organised than... my big hotel of last night!  So, the best use one can make of these meditations — which are gradually becoming more frequent since now we are also going to replace the “distributions” by short meditations — is to go within, into the depths of one’s being, as far as one can go, and ﬁnd the place where one can feel, perceive and perhaps even create an atmosphere of unity in which a force for order and organisation will be able to put each element in its place and make a new coordinated world arise out of the present chaos.  That’s all.   We said that we were going to prepare ourselves methodically for the sadhana....


The Mother: There is one point on which I have already insisted strongly, but unfortunately without much result among you all. And I thought that perhaps it would be good to begin with that to prepare you for a future sadhana.  So, the subject of our meditation this evening will be this: “On the harm done by incontinence of speech.”  Very often I have told you that every word spoken uselessly is dangerous chatter. But here, the situation has reached the very limit — there are things which have been said, said over and over again, repeated by all those who have tried to perfect humanity, unfortunately without much result — it is a question of malicious gossip... of slander, of that pleasure taken in speaking ill of others.


The Mother: Anyone who indulges in this kind of incontinence debases his consciousness, and when to this incontinence is added the habit of vulgar quarrelling, expressed in coarse language, then that amounts to suicide, spiritual suicide within oneself.  I stress this point and insist that you take it seriously.   ()    s¯uks.ma ´sar¯ıra


The Mother: It is quite difﬁcult to free oneself from old habits of being and to be able to freely conceive of a new life, a new world. And naturally, the liberation begins on the highest planes of consciousness: it is easier for the mind or the higher intelligence to conceive of new things than for the vital being, for instance, to feel things in a new way. And it is still more difﬁcult for the body to have a purely material perception of what a new world will be.  Yet this perception must the material transformation; ﬁrst one must very concretely the strangeness of the old things, their lack of relevance, if I may say so.


The Mother: One must have the feeling, even a material impression, that they are outdated, that they belong to a past which no longer has any purpose. For the old impressions one had of past things which have become historic — which have their interest from that point of view and support the advance of the present and the future — this is still a movement that belongs to the old world: it is the old world that is unfolding with a past, a present, a future. But for the creation of a new world, there is, so to speak, only a continuity of transition which gives an appearance — an impression rather — the impression of two things still intermingled but almost disconnected, and that the things of the past no longer have the power or the strength to endure, with whatever modiﬁcations, in the new things. That other world is necessarily an  new experience. One would have to go back to the time when there was a transition from the animal to the human creation to ﬁnd a similar period, and at that time the consciousness was not sufﬁciently mentalised to be able to observe, understand, feel intelligently — the passage must have been made in a completely obscure way.


The Mother: So, what I am speaking about is absolutely new,  in the terrestrial creation, it is something unprecedented, truly a perception or a sensation or an impression... that is quite strange and new. ( ) A disconnection: something which has overstayed its time and has only quite a subordinate force of existence, from something totally new, but still so young, so imperceptible, almost weak, so to say; it hasn’t yet the power to impose and assert itself and to predominate, to take the place of the other.


The Mother: So there is a concomitance but, as I said, with a disconnection, that is, the connection between the two is missing.  It is difﬁcult to describe, but I am speaking to you about it because this is what I felt yesterday evening. I felt it so acutely... that it made me look at certain things, and once I had seen them I felt it would be interesting to tell you about them.  ( )


The Mother: It seems strange that something so new, so special and I might say so unexpected should happen during a ﬁlm-show. For people who believe that some things are important and other things are not, that there are activities which are helpful to yoga and others which are not, well, this is one more opportunity to show that they are wrong. I have always noticed that it is unexpected things which give you the most interesting experiences.  Yesterday evening, suddenly something happened which I  have just described to you as best I could — I don’t know if I have succeeded in making myself understood — but it was truly quite new and altogether unexpected. We were shown, comparatively clumsily, a picture of the temple on the banks of the Ganges, and the statue of Kali — for I suppose it was a photograph of that statue, I could not manage to get any precise information about it — and while I was seeing that, which was a completely superﬁcial appearance and, as I said, rather clumsy, I saw the reality it was trying to represent, what was behind, and this put me in touch with all that world of religion and worship, of aspiration, man’s whole relationship with the gods, which was — I am already speaking in the past tense — which was the ﬂower of the human spiritual effort towards something more divine than man, something which was the highest and almost the purest expression of his effort towards what is higher than he.


The Mother: And suddenly I had, the impression that it was another world, a world that had ceased to be real, living, an outdated world which had lost its reality, its truth, which had been transcended, surpassed by something which had taken birth and was only beginning to express itself, but whose  was, so true, so sublime, that all this became false, unreal, worthless.  Then I truly understood — for I understood not with the head, the intelligence but with the body, you understand what I mean — I understood in the cells of the body — that a new world and is beginning to grow.  And so, when I saw all this, I remembered something that had happened.... I think I remember rightly, in 1926.  Sri Aurobindo had given me charge of the outer work because he wanted to withdraw into concentration in order to hasten the manifestation of the supramental consciousness and he had announced to the few people who were there that he  was entrusting to me the work of helping and guiding them, that I would remain in contact with him, naturally, and that through me he would do the work.


The Mother: Suddenly, immediately, things took a certain shape: a very brilliant creation was worked out in extraordinary detail, with marvellous experiences, contacts with divine beings, and all kinds of manifestations which are considered miraculous. Experiences followed one upon another, and, well, things were unfolding altogether brilliantly and... I must say, in an extremely interesting way.  One day, I went as usual to relate to Sri Aurobindo what had been happening — we had come to something really very interesting, and perhaps I showed a little enthusiasm in my account of what had taken place — then Sri Aurobindo looked at me... and said: “Yes, this is an Overmind creation. It is very interesting, very well done.


The Mother: You will perform miracles which will make you famous throughout the world, you will be able to turn all events on earth topsy-turvy, indeed,...” and then he smiled and said: “It will be a success. But it is an Overmind creation. And it is not success that we want; we want to establish the Supermind on earth. One must know how to renounce immediate success in order to create the new world, the supramental world in its integrality.”  With my inner consciousness I understood immediately: a few hours later the creation was gone... and from that moment we started anew on other bases.


The Mother: Well, I announced to you all that this new world was born.  But it has been so engulfed, as it were, in the old world that so far the difference has not been very perceptible to many people. Still, the action of the new forces has continued very regularly, very persistently, very steadily, and to a certain extent, very effectively.  And one of the manifestations of this action was my experience — truly so very new — of yesterday evening. And the result of all this I have noted step by step in almost daily experiences.


The Mother: It could be expressed succinctly, in a rather linear way: First, it is not only a “new conception” of spiritual life  and the divine Reality. This conception was expressed by Sri Aurobindo, I have expressed it myself many a time, and it could be formulated somewhat like this: the old spirituality was an escape from life into the divine Reality, leaving the world just where it was, as it was; whereas our new vision, on the contrary, is a divinisation of life, a transformation of the material world into a divine world. This has been said, repeated, more or less understood, indeed it is the basic idea of what we want to do. But this could be a continuation with an improvement, a widening of the old world as it was — and so long as this is a conception up there in the ﬁeld of thought, in fact it is hardly more than that — but what has happened, the really new thing, is that a new world is It is not the old one transforming itself, it is a world which is


The Mother: And we are right in the midst of this period of transition where the two are entangled — where the other still persists all-powerful and entirely dominating the ordinary consciousness, but where the new one is quietly slipping in, still very modest, unnoticed — unnoticed to the extent that outwardly it doesn’t disturb anything very much, for the time being, and that in the consciousness of most people it is even altogether imperceptible. And yet it is working, growing — until it is strong enough to assert itself visibly.  In any case, to simplify things, it could be said that characteristically the old world, the creation of what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind, was an age of the gods, and consequently the age of religions. As I said, the ﬂower of human effort towards what is above it gave rise to innumerable religious forms, to a religious relationship between the best souls and the invisible world. And at the very summit of all that, as an effort towards a higher realisation there has arisen the idea of the unity of religions, of this “one single thing” which is behind all these manifestations; and this idea has truly been, so to speak, the extreme limit of human aspiration.


The Mother: Well, that is at the frontier, it is something that still belongs to the Overmind world, the Overmind creation and which from there seems to  be looking towards this “other thing” which is a new creation it cannot grasp — which it tries to reach, feels coming, but cannot grasp. To grasp it, a reversal is needed. It is necessary to leave the Overmind creation. It was necessary that the new creation, the supramental creation should take place.  And now, all these old things seem so old, so out-of-date, so arbitrary — such a travesty of the real truth.


The Mother: In the supramental creation there will   The whole life will be the expression, the ﬂowering into forms of the divine Unity manifesting in the world. And there will no longer be what men now call gods.  These great divine beings themselves will be able to participate in the new creation; but to do so, they will have to put on what we could call the “supramental substance” on earth. And if some of them choose to remain in their world as they are, if they decide not to manifest physically, their relation with the beings of a supramental earth will be a relation of friends, collaborators, equals, for the highest divine essence will be manifested in the beings of the new supramental world on earth.


The Mother: When the physical substance is supramentalised, to incarnate on earth will no longer be a cause of inferiority, quite the contrary. It will give a plenitude which cannot be obtained otherwise.  But all this is in the future; it is a future... which has , but which will take some time to be realised integrally.   Meanwhile we are in a very special situation, extremely special, without precedent.


The Mother: We are now witnessing the birth of a new world; it is very young, very weak — not in its essence but in its outer manifestation — not yet recognised, not even felt, denied by the majority. But it is here. It is here, making an effort to grow, absolutely of the result. But the road to it is a completely new road which has never before been traced out — nobody has gone there, nobody has done that! It is a beginning, a


The Mother: So, it is an absolutely unexpected and unpredictable adventure.   There are people who love adventure. It is these I call, and I tell them this: “I invite you to the great adventure.”  It is not a question of repeating spiritually what others have done before us, for our adventure begins beyond that. It is a question of a new creation, entirely new, with all the unforeseen events, the risks, the hazards it entails — a, whose goal is certain victory, but the road to which is unknown and must be traced out step by step in the unexplored.


The Mother: Something that has never been in this present universe and that will be again in the same way. If that interests you... well, let us embark. What will happen to you tomorrow — I have no idea.  One must put aside all that has been foreseen, all that has been devised, all that has been constructed, and then... set off walking into the unknown. And — come what may!


The Mother: There.   Has no one any questions on the text?... I have nothing special to tell you this evening, and if you are not curious to know what the new perfections of the body could be...  These are occult processes for acting on the body — the Tantric ones, at any rate — while the modern methods of development follow the ordinary physical process to give the body all the  perfection it is capable of in its present state.... I don’t quite grasp your question.


The Mother: The processes are completely different.  The basis of all these methods is the power exercised by the conscious will over matter. Usually it is a method which someone has used fairly successfully and set up as a principle of action, which he has taught to others who in turn have continued and perfected it until it has taken a somewhat ﬁxed form of one kind of discipline or another. But the whole basis is the action of the conscious will on the body. The exact form of the method is not of primary importance.


The Mother: In various countries, at various times, one method or another has been used, but always behind it there is a canalised mental power which acts methodically. Of course, some methods try to use a higher power which would in its turn transmit its capacity to the mental power: if a power of a higher order is infused into the mental method, this method naturally becomes more effective and powerful. But essentially all these disciplines depend above all on the person who practises them and the way he uses them. One can, even in the most material, ordinary processes, make use of this altogether external basis to infuse into them powers of a higher order. And all methods, whatever they may be, depend almost exclusively on the person who uses them, on what he puts into them.


The Mother: You see, if the matter is considered in its most modern, most external form, how is it that the movements we make almost constantly in our everyday life, or which we have to make in our work if it is a physical work, do not help or help very little, almost negligibly, to develop the muscles and to create harmony in the body? These same movements, on the other hand, if they are made consciously, deliberately, with a deﬁnite aim, suddenly start helping you to form your muscles and build up your body. There are jobs, for instance, where people have to carry extremely heavy loads, like bags of cement or sacks of corn or coal, and they make a considerable effort; to a certain extent they do it with an acquired facility, but that doesn’t give them harmony of the body, because they don’t do it with the of  developing their muscles, they do it just “like that”. And someone who follows a method, either one he has learnt or one he has worked out for himself, and who makes these very movements with the will to develop this muscle or that, to create a general harmony in his body — he succeeds. Therefore, in the conscious will, there is something which adds considerably to the movement itself.


The Mother: Those who really want to practise physical culture as it is conceived now, everything they do, they do consciously.  They walk downstairs consciously, they make the movements of ordinary life consciously, not mechanically. An attentive eye will perhaps notice a little difference but the greatest difference lies in the will they put into it, the consciousness they put into it.  Walking to go somewhere and walking as an exercise is not the same thing. It is the conscious will in all these things which is important, it is that which brings about the progress and obtains the result.


The Mother: Therefore, what I mean is that the method one uses has only a relative importance in itself; it is the will to obtain a certain result that is important.  The yogi or aspiring yogi who does to obtain a spiritual result or even simply a control over his body, obtains these results because it is with this aim that he does them, whereas I know some people who do exactly the same things but for all sorts of reasons unrelated to spiritual development, and who haven’t even managed to acquire good health by it! And yet they do exactly the same thing, sometimes they even do it much better than the yogi, but it doesn’t give them a stable health... because they haven’t thought about it, haven’t done it with this purpose in mind. I have asked them myself, I said, “But how can you be ill after doing all that?” — “Oh! but I never thought of it, that’s not why I do it.”


The Mother: This amounts to saying that it is the conscious will which acts on matter, not the material fact.  But you only have to try it, you will understand very well what I mean. For instance, all the movements you make when dressing, taking your bath, tidying your room... no matter what; make them consciously, with the will that this muscle should  work, that muscle should work. You will see, you will obtain really amazing results.  Going up and down the stairs — you cannot imagine how useful that can be from the point of view of physical culture, if you know how to make use of it.


The Mother: Instead of going up because you are going up and coming down because you are coming down, like any ordinary man, you go up with the consciousness of all the muscles which are working and of making them work harmoniously. You will see. Just try a little, you will see! This means that you can use all the movements of your life for a harmonious development of your body.  You bend down to pick something up, you stretch up to ﬁnd something right at the top of a cupboard, you open a door, you close it, you have to go round an obstacle, there are a hundred and one things you do constantly and which you can make use of for your physical culture and which will demonstrate to you that it is the consciousness you put into it which produces the effect, a hundred times more than just the material fact of doing it.


The Mother: So, you choose the method you like best, but you can use the whole of your daily life in this way.... To think constantly of the harmony of the body, of the beauty of the movements, of not doing anything that is ungraceful and awkward. You can obtain a rhythm of movement and gesture which is very exceptional.  We are going to meditate on all this.   It is the same as the uninvolved one!


The Mother: It is the same thing when Sri Aurobindo says that if the Divine were not at the centre of everything, He could never manifest in the world; it is the same thing when he says that essentially, in its origin and deepest structure, the creation is divine, the world is divine; and that is why this divinity will be able to manifest one day, become tangible, express itself fully in place of all that veils and deforms it at present. Up to now, all that has manifested of this divinity is the world as we know it; but the manifestation is boundless, and after this mental world as we know it, of which the apex and prototype is man, another reality will manifest, which Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind, for it is in fact the next step after the mind; so, seen from the world as it is, it will naturally  be “supramental”, that is, something above the mind. And he also says that it will truly be the changing of one world into another, for so far the whole creation belonged to what he calls “the lower hemisphere” as we know it, which is governed by Ignorance and based upon the Inconscient, whereas the other one will be a complete reversal, the sudden appearance of something which will belong to quite a different world, and which instead of being based on Ignorance will be based upon Truth. That is why it will truly be a new world. But if the, the principle of this world were not included in the world as we knew it, there would be no hope of the one being transformed into the other; they would be two worlds so totally different and opposed that there would be no contact between them and that necessarily, as soon as one came out of this world and emerged into the world of Truth, Light and Knowledge, one would become, so to speak, imperceptible, non-existent for a world belonging exclusively to the Ignorance and the Inconscience.


The Mother: How is it that even when this change has taken place, there will be a connection and this new world will be able to act upon the old one? It is that in its essence and principle the new is already enclosed, involved in the old world. So, in fact, it is there, inside, in its very depths, hidden, invisible, imperceptible, unexpressed, but it is there, in its essence. Still, unless from the supreme heights the supramental consciousness and force and light manifest directly in the world, as it happened a year and a half ago, this Supermind which in is at the very bedrock of the material world as it is, would never have any possibility of manifesting itself. Its awakening and appearance below will be the response to a touch from above which will bring out the corresponding element hidden in the depths of matter as it is now....


The Mother: And this is precisely what is happening at present. But as I told you two weeks ago, this material world as it actually, visibly is, is so powerful, so absolutely real for the ordinary consciousness, that it has engulfed, as it were, this supramental force and consciousness when it manifested, and  a long preparation is necessary before its presence can be even glimpsed, felt, perceived in some way or other. And this is the work it is doing now.  How long it will take is difﬁcult to foresee. It will depend a great deal on the goodwill and the receptivity of a certain number of people, for the individual always advances faster than the collectivity, and by its very nature, humanity is destined to manifest the Supermind before the rest of creation.


The Mother: At the basis of this collaboration there is necessarily the will to change, no longer to be what one is, for things to be no longer what they are. There are several ways of reaching it, and all the methods are good when they succeed! One may be deeply disgusted with what exists and wish ardently to come out of all this and attain something else; one may — and this is a more positive way — one may feel within oneself the touch, the approach of something positively beautiful and true, and willingly drop all the rest so that nothing may burden the journey to this new beauty and truth.   What is indispensable in every case is the will for progress, the willing and joyful renunciation of all that hampers the advance: to throw far away from oneself all that prevents one from going forward, and to set out into the unknown with the ardent faith that this is the truth of tomorrow,, which must necessarily come, which nothing, nobody, no bad will, even that of Nature, can prevent from becoming a reality — perhaps of a not too distant future — a reality which is being worked out now and which those who know how to change, how not to be weighed down by old habits, will have the good fortune not only to see but to realise.


The Mother: People sleep, they forget, they take life easy — they forget, forget all the time.... But if we could remember... that we are at an exceptional hour, a time, that we have this immense good fortune, this invaluable privilege of being present at the birth of a new world, we could easily get rid of everything that impedes and hinders our progress.    So, the most important thing, it seems, is to remember this fact; even when one doesn’t have the tangible experience, to have the certainty of it and faith in it; to remember always, to recall it constantly, to go to sleep with this idea, to wake up with this perception; to do all that one does with this great truth as the background, as a constant support, this great truth that we are witnessing the birth of a new world.  We can participate in it, we can become this new world.


The Mother: And truly, when one has such a marvellous opportunity, one should be ready to give up everything for its sake.   Yes.  Naturally, there are many ways of doing it and, in fact, each one should ﬁnd his own. But the starting-point may be very different, apparently almost the very opposite.  In former times, when yoga was a ﬂight from life, it was a common practice for people, apart from a few predestined ones, not to think about yoga until they were old, when they had experienced much, known all the vicissitudes of life, its pleasures, its sorrows, its joys and miseries, its responsibilities, disillusionments, indeed all that life usually brings to human beings; and naturally, all this had disabused them a little of their illusions about the joys of existence, so they were ready to think of something else, and their body, if not full of youthful enthusiasm (!), was at least not a hindrance, for as it had been satiated, it no longer asked for much....


The Mother: To start from this end is all very well when one wants to leave life behind with a spiritual attitude and does not expect any collaboration from it in the transformation. This is obviously the easiest method.  But it is also obvious that if one wants this material existence to in the divine life, to be the ﬁeld of action and realisation, it is preferable not to wait until with wear and tear the body becomes sufﬁciently... quiet so as not to obstruct the yoga. It is much better, on the contrary, to take it quite young when it is full of all its energies and can put enough ardour and  intensity into its aspiration. In this case, instead of relying on a weariness which no longer demands anything, one should rely on a kind of inner enthusiasm for the unknown, the new — for perfection.


The Mother: And if you have the good fortune to be in conditions where you can receive help and guidance from childhood, try while still very young to discern between the fugitive joys and superﬁcial pleasures life can give and the marvellous thing that life, action, growth would be in a world of perfection and truth, where all the ordinary limitations, all the ordinary incapacities would be done away with.  When one is very young and as I say “well-born”, that is, born with a conscious psychic being within, there is always, in the dreams of the child, a kind of aspiration, which for its child’s consciousness is a sort of ambition, for something which would be beauty without ugliness, justice without injustice, goodness without limits, and a conscious, constant success, a perpetual miracle. One dreams of miracles when one is young, one wants all wickedness to disappear, everything to be always luminous, beautiful, happy, one likes stories which end happily. This is what one should rely on. When the body feels its miseries, its limitations, one must establish this dream in it — of a strength which would have no limit, a beauty which would have no ugliness, and of marvellous capacities: one dreams of being able to rise into the air, of being wherever it is necessary to be, of setting things right when they go wrong, of healing the sick; indeed, one has all sorts of dreams when one is very young....


The Mother: Usually parents or teachers pass their time throwing cold water on it, telling you, “Oh! it’s a dream, it is not a reality.” They should do the very opposite! Children should be taught, “Yes, this is what you must try to realise and not only is it possible but it is if you come in contact with the part in you which is capable of doing this thing. This is what should guide your life, organise it, make you develop in the direction of the which the ordinary world calls illusion.”  This is what it should be, instead of making children  ordinary, with that dull, vulgar common sense which becomes an inveterate habit and, when something is going well, immediately brings up in the being the idea: “Oh, that won’t last!”, when somebody is kind, the impression, “Oh, he will change!”, when one is capable of doing something, “Oh, tomorrow I won’t be able to do it so well.”


The Mother: This is like an acid, a destructive acid in the being, which takes away hope, certitude, conﬁdence in future possibilities.  When a child is full of enthusiasm, never throw cold water on it, never tell him, “You know, life is not like that!” You should always encourage him, tell him, “Yes, at present things are not always like that, they ugly, but behind this there is a beauty that is trying to realise itself. This is what you should love and draw towards you, this is what you should make the object of your dreams, of your ambitions.”  And if you do this when you are very small, you have much less difﬁculty than if later on you have to undo, undo all the bad effects of a bad education, undo that kind of dull and vulgar common sense which means that you expect nothing good from life, which makes it insipid, boring, and contradicts all the hopes, all the so-called illusions of beauty.


The Mother: On the contrary, you must tell a child — or yourself if you are no longer quite a baby — “Everything in me that seems unreal, impossible, illusory, is what is true, is what I must cultivate.” When you have these aspirations: “Oh, not to be always limited by some incapacity, all the time held back by some bad will!”, you must cultivate within you this certitude that is what is essentially true and  is what must be realised.  Then faith awakens in the cells of the body. And you will see that you ﬁnd a response in your body itself. The body itself will feel that if its inner will helps, fortiﬁes, directs, leads, well, all its limitations will gradually disappear.


The Mother: And so, when the ﬁrst experience comes, which sometimes begins when one is very young, the ﬁrst contact with the inner joy, the inner beauty, the inner light, the ﬁrst contact with,  which suddenly makes you feel, “Oh! that is what I want,” you must cultivate it, never forget it, hold it constantly before you, tell yourself, “I have felt it once, so I can feel it again. This has been real for me, even for the space of a second, and that is what I am going to revive in myself”.... And encourage the body to seek it — to seek it, that it carries that possibility within itself and that if it calls for it, it will come back, it will be realised again.  This is what should be done when one is young. This is what should be done every time one has the opportunity to recollect oneself, commune with oneself, seek oneself.


The Mother: And then you will see. When one is normal, that is to say, unspoilt by bad teaching and bad example, when one is born and lives in a healthy and relatively balanced and normal environment, the body, spontaneously, without any need for one to intervene mentally or even vitally, has the certitude that even if something goes wrong it will be cured. The body carries within itself the certitude of cure, the certitude that the illness or disorder is sure to disappear. It is only through the false education from the environment that gradually the body is taught that there are incurable diseases, irreparable accidents, and that it can grow old, and all these stories which destroy its faith and trust.  But normally, the body of a normal child — the body, I am not speaking of the thought — the body itself feels when something goes wrong that it will certainly be all right again.


The Mother: And if it is not like that, this means that it has already been perverted. It seems  for it to be in good health, it seems quite abnormal to it if something goes wrong and it falls ill; and in its instinct, its spontaneous instinct, it is sure that everything will be all right.  It is only the perversion of thought which destroys this; as one grows up the thought becomes more and more distorted, there is the whole collective suggestion, and so, little by little, the body  loses its trust in itself, and naturally, losing its self-conﬁdence, it also loses the spontaneous capacity of restoring its equilibrium when this has been disturbed.   But


The Mother: if when very young, from your earliest childhood, you have been taught all sorts of disappointing, depressing things — things that cause decomposition, I could say, disintegration — then this poor body does its best but it has been perverted, put out of order, and no longer has the sense of its inner strength, its inner force, its power to react.  If one takes care not to pervert it, the body carries within itself the certitude of victory. It is only the wrong use we make of thought and its inﬂuence on the body which robs it of this certitude of victory. So, the ﬁrst thing to do is to cultivate this certitude instead of destroying it; and when it is there, no effort is needed to aspire, but simply a ﬂowering, an unfolding of that inner certitude of victory.  The body carries within itself the sense of its divinity.


The Mother: There.  This is what you must try to ﬁnd again in yourself if you have lost it.  When a child tells you a beautiful dream in which he had many powers and all things were very beautiful, be very careful never to tell him, “Oh! life is not like that”, for you are doing something wrong. You must on the contrary tell him, “Life  like that, and like that!”   So, what are you asking?


The Mother: What is excluded?  What do we exclude!... It depends on the person.  But what are you asking, really?


The Mother: Ah! that’s sensible. Here we profess we are excluding nothing.  That’s precisely the reason. We have taken up all human activities, whatever they may be, including those that are considered the least spiritual.


The Mother: But I must say it is very difﬁcult to change their nature! But still, we are trying, we put all possible goodwill into it.    There are two points which resist strongly — all that has to do with politics and all that has to do with money. These are the two points on which it is most difﬁcult to change the human attitude.


The Mother: In principle we have said that we have nothing to do with politics, and it is true that we have nothing to do with politics as it is practised at present. But it is quite obvious that if politics is taken in its true spirit, that is, as the organisation of human masses and all the details of government and regulation of the collective life, and relations with other collectivities — that is, with other nations, other countries — it must necessarily enter into the supramental transformation, for so long as national life and the relations between nations remain what they are, it is quite impossible to live a supramental life on earth. So it will just have to change; we shall have to deal with that too.  As for ﬁnancial matters, that is, ﬁnding a means of exchange and production which is simple — “simple”, well, which should be simple, simpler than the primitive system of exchange in which people had to give one thing to get another — something which could in principle be world-wide, universal; this is also altogether indispensable for the simpliﬁcation of life. Now, with human nature, just the very opposite is happening!


The Mother: The situation is such that it has become almost — intolerable. It has become almost impossible to have the least relation with other countries, and that much-vaunted means of exchange which should have been a simpliﬁcation has become such a complication that we shall soon reach a deadlock — we are very, very close to being unable to do anything, to being tied up in everything. If one wants the smallest thing from another country, one has to follow such complicated and laborious procedures that in the end one will stay in one’s own little corner and be satisﬁed with the potatoes one can grow in one’s garden, without hoping to know anything at all about what is going on and happening elsewhere.  Well, these two points are the most resistant. In the human consciousness this is most subject to the forces of ignorance,  inconscience and, I must say, quite generally, ill-will.


The Mother: This is what most refuses all progress and all advance towards the truth; and unfortunately, in every human individual this is also the point of resistance, the point that remains narrowly stupid and refuses to understand anything it is not used to. There it is truly a heroic act to want to take up these things and transform them. Well, we are trying this also, and unless it is done, it will be impossible to change the conditions of the earth.  It is relatively — very relatively — easier to change economic and social conditions than political and ﬁnancial ones. There are certain general, global ideas from the economic and social point of view which are accessible to human thought: certain liberations, a certain widening, a certain collective organisation, which do not seem absolutely senseless and unrealisable; but as soon as you touch on the other two questions, which are however of capital importance, especially the political question, it is quite otherwise....


The Mother: For, one might imagine a life which would get rid of all ﬁnancial complications — although, without playing on words, it would be a veritable impoverishment. In what ﬁnancial possibilities and processes bring, there is a very considerable wealth of possibilities, for if they were used in the right way and in the true spirit, that would simplify all human relations and undertakings to a very great extent and make possible a complexity of life which would be very difﬁcult under other conditions. But I don’t know why — except that the worst usually precedes the best — instead of taking the way of simpliﬁcation, men have followed the way of complication to such a point that, in spite of the aeroplanes which carry you from one end of the world to the other in two days, in spite of all the modern inventions which try to make life so “small”, so “close” that we could go round the world not in eighty days now but in a very few days, in spite of all that, the complications of exchange, for instance, are so great that many people can’t get away from home — I mean from the country they live in — because they have no means of going to another one and if they  ask for the money they need to live in another country they are told, “Is it very important for you to go? You could perhaps wait a little, because it is very difﬁcult for us at the moment....” I am not joking, it is quite serious, this does happen.


The Mother: That means we are becoming more and more the prisoners of the place where we are born, while all the scientiﬁc trends are towards such a great proximity between countries that we could very easily belong to the universe or, at any rate, to the whole world.  There. This is the situation. It has grown considerably worse since the last war; it grows worse year by year, and one ﬁnds oneself in such a ridiculous situation that, unfortunately, as one is at the end of one’s resources, to simplify what has been made so complicated, there is an idea in the earth-atmosphere — an idea which might be called preposterous, but unhappily it is much worse than preposterous, it is catastrophic — the idea that if there were a great upheaval, perhaps it would be better afterwards.... One is so jammed between prohibitions, impossibilities, interdictions, rules, the complications of every second, that one feels stiﬂed and really gets the admirable idea that if everything were demolished perhaps it would be better afterwards!...


The Mother: It is in the air. And all the governments have put themselves in such impossible conditions; they have become so tied up that it seems to them they will have to break everything to be able to move forward.... ( ) This is unfortunately a little more than a possibility, it is a serious threat.