The Mother: This is mental control.  I think it is only the savage who doesn’t have it, one who lives in a jungle, you know, who is not in contact with anybody. And yet, even he should control himself, for something will go terribly wrong with him if he doesn’t control himself. In his case too the mind must act to prevent him from doing things which will cause him serious trouble. This is the nature of the human being: to have a kind of mental activity in him which governs the rest of his being, more or less.


The Mother: And his level of civilisation depends exactly on the point this control has reached, and naturally, as I said, on the value of the controlling mental construction.  Almost. You see, there is just a little difference, but not much.   The mechanical mind is still more stupid than the physical mind.


The Mother: The physical mind is what we spoke about one day, that which is never sure of anything.  I told you the story of the closed door, you remember. Well, that is the nature of the physical mind. The mechanical mind is at a lower level still, because it doesn’t even listen to the possibility of a convincing reason, and this happens to everyone.   Usually we don’t let it function, but it comes along repeating the same things, absolutely mechanically, without rhyme or reason, just like that.


The Mother: When some craze or other takes hold of it, it goes... For example, you see, if it fancies counting: “One, two, three, four”, then it will go on: “One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four.” And you may think of all kinds of things, but it goes on: “One, two, three, four”, like that... ()  Or it catches hold of three words, four words and repeats them and goes on repeating them; and unless one turns away with a certain violence and punches it soundly, telling it, “Keep quiet!”, it continues in this way, indeﬁnitely.  There are ideas and thoughts which come from beyond and above, and then these are only given a form by the mind.


The Mother: In fact, this is what I was just going to say. The true writer, the true thinker, the true orator does not construct thoughts in his head, he receives an inspiration from above, and while entering his mind it is formulated into words. But the source of thought is very much higher.  But what you wanted to say was, “Are there thoughts which come from below?” These are not thoughts.


The Mother: They are just impulses which are translated into words in the consciousness, formulated in words, but these are not thoughts. They have a different nature.  Subconscient? It is what is half conscious, you see. And we say “sub”, because that means “below” the consciousness.


The Mother: It is something more obscure than the consciousness, but which, at the same time, is like a lower substratum supporting the consciousness. It is like those stores from which one would  draw out something quite unformed, a formless substance which could be translated into forms or translated into actions or translated into impulses or even into feelings. But it is like those stores containing a considerable number of fairly mixed things, not very distinct, but which would be very rich in possibilities; only they would have to be drawn out into the light and organised, classiﬁed, put into shape so as to give them a value.  So long as they are there, it is a mass, a mixture, certainly subconscient, that is to say, half-conscious, semi-conscious, in which everything is muddled up. It lacks organisation and classiﬁcation.


The Mother: It is the characteristic of consciousness to organise and classify... classiﬁcation, putting into order, arranging logically... there are varieties of logic, but still, some logic, a beginning of logic. There are higher and higher kinds of logic, more and more superior. But even preliminary logic is the ﬁrst work of the consciousness.  But consciousness is plunged — plunged as though by its roots — into this domain, and draws up as it would draw up sap; it constantly pumps this subconscient which it has to transform into something organised.


The Mother: That is why we spend our time re-doing the same work. If we had a small limited amount of consciousness which was our own, as some people imagine it, like a small bag full of consciousness, you know, which is one’s own consciousness, well, when you have put it in good order and organised it well, your work will be done, and you can be quiet. But it is not at all like that, it is not at all like that.  Even as there are elements of consciousness which escape and evaporate, which spread out, there is this constant rising, as from a deep ground, of something that asks to be made conscious. And your work has to be perpetually re-done.


The Mother: But one can — if one is careful and attentive — instead of re-doing exactly the same thing each time, one can re-do it with a little progress. Then the movement is not rectilinear, but a movement which goes like this... you see (). One  seems at times to be going back, but that’s in order to go farther and farther forward.  Perhaps, yes; that is to say, one may have silence in the mind and not have peace in the heart. It can very well happen that the mind is quite silent and immobile but that, all the same, here, in the heart something vibrates and throbs.


The Mother: This usually proves that one is pretty divided. But many people are divided.  One can indeed have mental silence and not have peace in the heart. It can very well happen that the mind is quite silent and immobile, but that, despite this, there are still tremblings in the nerves which continue vibrating and jumping there, and yet the mind is quite silent. But if the silence is kept long enough, the rest must necessarily follow.


The Mother: Quietude and calm? Yes, almost.  Of course there are very different kinds of calm and very different kinds of peace, and to each a different word could be given, another name, if one wanted to be quite precise and exact.


The Mother: But then, it is a work which means constructing a vocabulary for oneself and, obviously, when one has to speak always to the same people and the number is limited, one can build up a vocabulary precise enough for there not to be any need to explain the words used.  But if you are communicating with new people or those outside, you would have to begin your work all over again, for it is something, in short, quite... not only relative but quite arbitrary.  My words are given a certain meaning, each one gives them a certain meaning, and people don’t understand one another well unless they have the habit of speaking to each other and are in agreement, at least tacitly, about the meaning of the words  they use. You speak to a new person who comes from quite a different environment — say, someone who comes from another country than yours — and has, for instance, a very, very different trend of thinking. Well, you say something to him, he does not understand what you tell him.


The Mother: He understands something else which is in his head, because he doesn’t give the same meaning as you to the words you use. It is when people have the habit of speaking to one another, when they have taken care to make their vocabulary precise, that they can speak to one another with the least lack of understanding or, if you like, the maximum understanding.   Ah! First of all you must feel the need for it.


The Mother: This is the most important point. It is to have a certain inner humility which makes you aware of your helplessness without the Grace, that truly, without it you are incomplete and powerless. This, to begin with, is the ﬁrst thing.  It is an experience one can very well have. When, you see, even people who know nothing ﬁnd themselves in quite difﬁcult circumstances or facing a problem which must be solved or, as I just told you, an impulse which must be overcome or something that has disturbed them


The Mother: ... and then they realise they are lost, they don’t know what to do — neither their mind nor their will nor their feelings help — they don’t know what to do, then it happens; there is within them something like a kind of call, a call to something which can do what one cannot. One aspires to something which is capable of doing what one can’t do.  This is the ﬁrst condition. And then, if you become aware that it is only the Grace which can do that, that the situation in which you ﬁnd yourself, from there the Grace alone can pull you out, can give you the solution and the strength to come out of it, then, quite naturally an intense aspiration awakes in you, a consciousness which is translated into an opening. If you call,  aspire, and if you hope to get an answer, you will quite naturally open yourself to the Grace.


The Mother: And later — you must pay great attention to this ( ) — the Grace will answer you, the Grace will pull you out of the trouble, the Grace will give you the solution to your problem or will help you to get out of your difﬁculty. But once you are free from trouble and have come out of your difﬁculty, don’t forget that it is the Grace which pulled you out, and don’t think it is yourself. For this, indeed, is the important point. Most people, as soon as the difﬁculty has gone, say, “After all, I pulled myself out of the difﬁculty quite well.”  There you are.


The Mother: And then you lock and bolt the door, you see, and you cannot receive anything any more. You need once again some acute anguish, some terrible difﬁculty for this kind of inner stupidity to give way, and for you to realise once more that you can do nothing. Because it is only when you grow aware that you are powerless that you begin to be just a little open and plastic. But so long as you think that what you do depends on your own skill and your own capacity, truly, not only do you close one door, but, you know, you close lots of doors one upon another, and bolt them. You shut yourself up in a fortress and nothing can enter there.


The Mother: That is the great drawback: one forgets very quickly. Quite naturally one is satisﬁed with one’s own capacity.   Ah, yes, ah, yes! Ah, it is very difﬁcult to be sincere....


The Mother: That is why the blows multiply and sometimes become terrible, because that’s the only thing which breaks your stupidity. This is the justiﬁcation of calamities. Only when you are in an acutely painful situation and indeed before something that affects you deeply, then that makes the stupidity melt away a little. But as  you say, even when there is something that melts, there is still a little something which remains inside. And that is why it lasts so long...


The Mother: How many blows are needed in life for one to know to the very depths that one is, that one can do, that one, that one is, that there is no entity without the divine Consciousness and the Grace. From the moment one knows it, it is over; all the difﬁculties have gone. When one knows it integrally and there is nothing which resists... but till that moment...


The Mother: And it takes very long.  Because that would kill you. For if the blow is strong enough to cure you, it would simply crush you, it would reduce you to pulp. It is only by proceeding little by little, little by little, very gradually, that you can continue to exist. Naturally this depends on the inner strength, the inner sincerity, and on the capacity for progress, for proﬁting by experience and, as I said a while ago, on If one is lucky enough not to forget, then one goes much faster.


The Mother: One can go very fast. And if at the same time one has that inner moral strength which, when the red-hot iron is at hand, does not extinguish it by trying to pour water over it, but instead goes to the very core of the abscess, then in this case things go very fast also. But not many people are strong enough for this. On the contrary, they very quickly do this (), like this, like this, in order to hide, to hide from themselves. How many pretty little explanations one gives oneself, how many excuses one piles up for all the foolishnesses one has committed.


The Mother: Yes, it depends on people; it depends, as I said, on their capacity  for progress, and on their strength and their resistance. But I know very few people who don’t need blows at all.  The blow? Not necessarily.  If you swallow a poison and are poisoned, it won’t be Mahakali’s fault.


The Mother: It is you who will have swallowed the poison.  If one puts oneself into absolutely ridiculous conditions, one is in a state in which one is bound to break one’s head or arm or back; because you are not in a state of true equilibrium, you can’t accuse the divine forces. It is the normal mechanical consequence of the stupidity committed, of the inner state.  It makes you feel very happy. It gives you a sweet warmth in the heart, like that.


The Mother: You feel quite satisﬁed.  Yes, one must have a sincerity in the aspiration, really want to progress. One must truly say, “Yes, I want to progress” with sincerity... “Whatever happens, I want to progress.” Then it comes.


The Mother: But as I said, it comes with a power of plenitude which holds an intense joy. When one has taken a decision, has decided to stop something in oneself, just not to repeat a stupidity one has committed, or to do something which one ﬁnds impossible or difﬁcult to do and which, one knows, should be done, and when one has taken the decision and has put in the full sincerity of one’s will, well, then if a terrible blow comes to compel you to do what you have decided to do, it is a blow, but you feel gloriﬁed, you are quite happy, it is magniﬁcent, you see, you feel something magniﬁcent here ().   There is such a big difference between the mishaps that come to you just because you are in a purely external, mechanical, physical consciousness and in a state of ignorance which makes you commit all possible follies which naturally bring their consequences, inevitably — there is such a great difference between this and the altogether higher state to which you rise when you have determined to master yourself, to live only in the consciousness of Truth, whatever the cost, no matter what the price of progress, to progress... and the things that happen to you then are so full of meaning, you see so clearly in them that shining truth, that light which illumines you on the path as though you had a beacon, here, to guide you... you see so clearly!


The Mother: It is no longer something that crushes you, like a block of stone falling on your back. It is an overpowering resplendence.  That is why one always says: it is only the ﬁrst step that needs an effort. The ﬁrst step means: come out from that level and climb to this one. After that everything, everything changes.


The Mother: But one must come out completely from that level, one must not remain there, one must not try to keep one foot here and one foot there, for that will not do.   There you are, my children.    The Purusha?


The Mother: What is it in the being? Knowledge. The conscious being.  True creation means the new supramental creation, the one we want to realise here. When we speak of a new transformed world, it is the supramental creation.


The Mother: “Eagerness”? It is vehemence, it is violence. It is an excessive ardour; and “rajasic” — it is the over-active and violent element, it is the turbulent element in the being. Rajasic — that’s the nature of all transports, ﬂarings-up and enthusiasms, and of all violences and passions, and all over-activity also, in contrast to tamas which is inert, and to sattwa which is balanced. This is the over-active and violent element.


The Mother: This is rather a consequence than a fact. When one keeps one’s consciousness on a higher level, naturally it serves as a ﬁlter for thoughts and allows only thoughts of a higher nature. But it is rather a consequence than a fact. To keep one’s consciousness in a higher state is to raise it above the lower levels in the being, it is to keep it in the light, in the peace, in the higher knowledge and harmony; that is, to place one’s consciousness as high as possible in one’s being, at the level where one is liberated from all lower movements. Then naturally, if the consciousness is there, the thoughts it receives are those of a higher order.


The Mother: And thought is only one form of activity of the consciousness, it is not the stuff of consciousness. There is a consciousness without thought, there is a very much higher state of consciousness in which there are no thoughts. It is a consciousness that can have a very perfect knowledge of things, without it being expressed in thoughts and words. Thought is only one form of activity.


The Mother: From the higher regions of consciousness. You see, if you open to the higher regions of consciousness and the force descends from  above, quite naturally it establishes a silence in the lower regions, for they are governed by this higher power which descends.  This comes from higher regions of the mind or from beyond, even from the supermind. So when this force and consciousness come down and enter into the consciousness of a lower plane, this consciousness becomes naturally quiet, for it is as though invaded, ﬂooded by that higher light which transforms it.  In fact, this is even the only way of establishing a constant silence in one’s mind.


The Mother: It is to open oneself to higher regions and let this higher consciousness, force, light descend constantly into the lower mind and take possession of it. And here, when this happens, this lower mind can remain constantly quiet and silent, because it is this one which acts and ﬁlls the whole being. One can act, write and speak without the mind being active, with this force which comes from above penetrating the mind and using it; and the mind itself becomes just a passive instrument.  And in fact, this is the only way of establishing silence; for once this is established, the silence is established, the mind does not stir any longer, it acts only under the impulsion of this force when it manifests in it.


The Mother: It is like a very quiet, very silent ﬁeld and the force when it comes puts the elements into movement and uses them, and it ﬁnds expression through the mind without the mind’s being agitated. It remains very quiet.  By aspiration, the rejection of the lower movements, a call to a higher force. If you do not accept certain movements, then naturally, when they ﬁnd that they can’t manifest, gradually they diminish in force and stop occurring. If you refuse to express  everything that is of a lower kind, little by little the very thing disappears, and the consciousness is emptied of lower things. It is by refusing to give expression — I mean not only in action but also in thought, in feeling.


The Mother: When impulses, thoughts, emotions come, if you refuse to express them, if you push them aside and remain in a state of inner aspiration and calm, then gradually they lose their force and stop coming. So the consciousness is emptied of its lower movements.  But for instance, when undesirable thoughts come, if you look at them, observe them, if you take pleasure in following them in their movements, they will never stop coming. It is the same thing when you have undesirable feelings or sensations: if you pay attention to them, concentrate on them or even look at them with a certain indulgence, they will never stop. But if you absolutely refuse to receive and express them, after some time they stop.


The Mother: You must be patient and very persistent.   In a great aspiration, if you can put yourself into contact with something higher, some inﬂuence of your psychic being or some light from above, and if you can manage to put this in touch with these lower movements, naturally they stop more quickly.  But before even being able to draw these things by aspiration, you can already stop those movements from ﬁnding expression in you by a very persistent and patient refusal. When thoughts which you do not like come, if you just brush them away and do not pay them any attention at all, after some time they won’t come any longer.


The Mother: But you must do this very persistently and regularly.  Why make such a great effort? In what sense? You want to make this effort for a personal reason? Is it for your personal satisfaction that you want to make this effort?


The Mother: It is like those  people who say, “But if it is not who work and if it is not  work, how can I work?” It is the same thing, and yet it is like that. If you feel like that, it means that you still need, need very much, your ego and that if your ego were suddenly taken away from you, you could no longer do anything. If you need a personal motive in order to do something, it means that you are still entirely in your ego, you understand. So long as it is necessary, one has to remain in it.


The Mother: Only, you must not then think that you can go fast. It takes a very long time, sometimes several lives, sometimes a great number of lives. If you need personal reasons for doing things, you have only to wait till you grow out of it and understand that it is not for a personal reason that you must do things.  For example, it is not for a personal reason that you must want perfection, it is not for a personal reason that you must want union with the Divine, it is not for a personal reason that you must want the supramental transformation. If it is for your own good and for a personal reason, well, follow your path; I tell you, you will get there — after a certain number of lives.


The Mother: You see, there is a state in which one can’t even understand how one can exist without a personal reason. So long as it is like that... If perchance I were suddenly to take away from you your personal consciousness and reason, you would exist no longer. So you must wait quietly till you can realise within yourself that this is not the true cause of things.


The Mother: Eh? Nothing to be done but wait? For me!... It is who mark time waiting for you to be ready! ()  It is a very delicate problem, because for a very long time if someone does not feel, does not have this personal aspiration to perfect himself, the personal aspiration to enter into contact with the Divine, the personal aspiration to realise the supramental consciousness, well, he says as you were just saying,


The Mother: “Then what’s the use of doing anything? The only thing is to remain quiet.” Well, as long as it is like that, and as long as you have not developed in yourself enough consciousness for it to be otherwise, there is nothing to say and nothing to do. I have only to wait.


The Mother: Yes.  For some it can go faster; if suddenly something is reversed within them and they have an experience — even if it be only the experience of identiﬁcation with the psychic — then all of a sudden they understand. Identiﬁcation with the psychic means an identiﬁcation with the divine Consciousness. So, immediately they understand; they understand and this even makes them laugh. One feels how foolish one was! ()


The Mother: This sense of one’s own person becomes a kind of cage, a prison which shuts you in, prevents you from being true, from knowing truly, acting truly, understanding truly. It is as though someone had put you in a very hard shell and you were compelled to stay there.  This is the ﬁrst sensation you have. Afterwards you begin to tap against the shell in order to break it. Sometimes it resists very long.


The Mother: But still, when you begin to feel this, that what you believed to be yourself, the person doing things and for whom they are done, the person who exists and makes you what you are, yes, when you pass from this to the consciousness that this is a prison preventing you from being truly yourself, then you have made great progress, and there is hope. You feel yourself stiﬂed, crushed, absolutely shut up in a prison without air, without light, without an opening, and then you begin pushing from inside, pushing, pushing, pushing so that it may break.  And the day it breaks, the day it opens, suddenly, you enter the psychic consciousness. And then you understand. And then,  truly, if you have a sense of humour, you laugh; you realise your stupidity.


The Mother: Yes, well, that’s it, exactly. You are in the period of becoming an individual. And so long as one is in this period of becoming an individual, well, one must wait until this period passes, that is, till you have become a conscious individual. Perfectly. It is that.


The Mother: Oh, if you take humanity at large, certainly! And the great mass of mankind will never become individuals, it will always be an amorphous mass, all intermingled, like that (). To become an individual is what Sri Aurobindo calls becoming truly a mental man. Well, if you have read, you will see that already it is not so easy to become a truly mental man who thinks by himself, is free from all outer inﬂuences, who has an individuality, who exists, has his reality; even that is not so easy.


The Mother: But, by a kind of Grace, it can happen that before becoming an individual, if someone has within himself an aspiration, if he feels the need to awaken to something which would want more, want something better, which feels how very small it is to be an individual, something which really seeks beyond the ordinary limits, well, even before becoming an individual, he may suddenly have the experience of a contact with his psychic which opens all the doors for him. They close again later, but once they have opened you never forget it. The remembrance remains very vividly; and this helps. It should happen to you here.   That is, the ﬁrst step is the identiﬁcation, and then, once you can keep this identiﬁcation, the psychic governs the rest of the nature and life.


The Mother: It becomes the master of existence. So this is what we mean by the psychic coming in front. It is that which governs, directs, even organises the life, organises the consciousness, the different parts of the being. When this happens, the work goes very fast. Very fast, well... relatively very fast.


The Mother: In the human consciousness everything is When we compare the time that is necessary to realise something with the average length of human existence, it seems interminable. But happily there comes a time when one escapes from this notion, when one begins to feel no longer according to human measures.  As soon as one is truly in touch with the psychic, one loses this kind of narrowness and of anxiety also, this anxiety which is  bad: “I must be quick, I must be quick, there is not much time, I must hurry, there is not much time.” One does things very badly or doesn’t do them at all any more.


The Mother: But as soon as there is a contact with the psychic, then indeed this disappears; one begins to be a little more vast and calm and peaceful, and to live in eternity.  As I said just now, probably because you still need it very much, isn’t that so? In order to become a conscious, individualised being, one needs his ego; that is why it is there. It is only when one has realised his own individuality sufﬁciently, has become a conscious, independent being with its own reality, that he no longer needs the ego. And at that time one can make an effort to get rid of it.


The Mother: Unfortunately most people, as soon as they become real individuals, have such a sense of their importance and their ability that they no longer even think at  all of getting rid of their ego. But that of course is something else.  Here I don’t let you go to sleep. I remind you from time to time of the true thing. But you are all very young, you see, and a certain number of years are, years of intensive inner formation, to become a being who thinks for himself, is conscious of his own will, and conscious of his own nature, his purpose of existence, independent of the human mass.


The Mother: A certain time is necessary. Some children begin when If one begins very early, when one is twenty one can be quite formed. But you must begin when very small, and consciously, very consciously; you must begin with a sense of observation of all the movements in yourself, of their relation with others, of — precisely, of your degree of independence, real individuality, of knowing where impulses come from, where other movements come from: whether it is contagion from outside or something that arises from within yourself. A very profound study of all the movements in oneself is necessary in order to succeed simply in crystallising a being who is a little conscious, conscious.  But when you live ﬂuidly, so to say, when you don’t even know what goes on inside you, have some sort of vague impressions, if you question yourself, at least ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if you ask yourself, “Why did I think like that?


The Mother: Why did I feel like that?”, even “Why did I do that? ”, then the reply is almost always the same: “I don’t know. It came like that, that’s all.” That is to say, you are not at all conscious.  Are you able to know, when you are with others, what comes from you and what from the others?


The Mother: To what extent their way of being, their particular vibrations act upon you? You are not aware of this at all. You live in a kind of “approximate” consciousness, half-awake, half-asleep, in something very vague, where you have to grope like this in order to catch things. But do you have a precise, clear, exact notion of what goes on in you, why it goes on in you? And then, this: the vibrations which come to you from outside and those which come from within you?


The Mother: And  then, again, what can come from others, changing all this, giving another orientation? You live in a kind of hazy ﬂuidity, certain small things suddenly crystallise in your consciousness, you have just caught them for a moment; and it is just clear enough like that, as though there was a projector, just something passing on the screen and becoming clear for a second: the next minute everything has become vague, imprecise, but you are not aware of this because you have not even asked yourself the question, because you live in this way. It stops here, begins here, ends here. That’s all. You do from day to day, minute to minute, things which you do, like that...


The Mother: it happens to be like that.  It will come. It will come. Surely it will come. I am not going to leave you like that....


The Mother: Shake you up a little — I am going to shake you up a little. I shall do what is necessary for this.  So there we are.  The effect of an aspiration? Well, it takes away your quietude, that is the ﬁrst effect.


The Mother: It makes you agitated, nervous, impatient and dissatisﬁed when you don’t immediately obtain what you have asked for, and usually as vehement in your despair and dissatisfaction as in the aspiration, with a strong sense of your helplessness.  It is not quite the same thing. It is not a matter of desire, it is a question of aspiration. But aspirations can be of this kind.  Desire is altogether something else.


The Mother: Desire is something which acts completely horizontally.  In your ordinary consciousness you want something; you do not have the least idea of aspiring for some existing thing or some progress or a higher knowledge or greater realisation. You see  an object in a shop and want it. That’s it. Or it crosses your mind that it would be good to eat a certain thing, and you want it.


The Mother: These are desires; they concern things on the same plane as you.  Moreover, in desires also some people are obstinate, vehement, and some have fugitive and weak desires. There are both types.  But what Sri Aurobindo speaks about here is truly an aspiration, it is about someone who aspires for the spiritual life but with a vehement passion; and naturally this upsets everything.


The Mother: Besides, the result he obtains — if he does obtain a result at all — is very mixed; and it is muddy, as he says, altogether impure, ordinary. We must not confuse what he calls “rajasic eagerness” with intensity, because intensity can be very vast, very calm and very pure and give a considerable strength to the aspiration. But this has nothing to do either with a rajasic movement or with desire.  And, to take an example, you can understand it in this way: if you have an aspiration, say, suddenly you think of the possibility of progress and have an aspiration for progress; but if a desire is mixed with your aspiration, you will have the desire to progress for the powers this will give you or the importance it will give you or the improvement in your living conditions. You go and immediately mix all kinds of little very personal reasons with your aspiration.


The Mother: And to tell the truth, very few people have a very pure aspiration. An aspiration, a will to progress, just that; it stops there. Because one aspires for progress and then, there we are, let us not go farther. We want progress. But usually there get mixed up with it all kinds of desires for the results of this progress.


The Mother: And so desire comes in, you see; this brings exactly what he says, a consciousness which is impure and muddy, and inside this nothing higher can come. This must be completely eliminated to begin with. If one looks at oneself very sincerely, very straightforwardly and very severely, one very quickly perceives that very few things, very few movements of consciousness are free from being mixed with desires. Even in what you take for a higher movement, there is always... no,  happily not always, but most often there is a desire mixed. The desire of the sense of one’s importance, if only this, that kind of self-satisfaction, the satisfaction of being someone superior.


The Mother: This is of course much better than those who want to become yogis in order to astound their neighbours and exercise authority over others, and so that others may be full of admiration and of respect for them. How many things are truly ? Pure aspiration? You must have already attained a very high level, that level I spoke of, on which one can look at oneself with a smile, a slightly ironic smile, and have the feeling that one was so small, so small, so small, so petty, so and so   After that things go better.


The Mother: But for what a time the movements are always turned back upon themselves! You start off in a sweep, as though you were springing forward in the face of this universe, and you turn back upon yourself, expecting a small result, a small satisfaction, a very tiny satisfaction, even if it be just your own self-appreciation: “Oh, what a ﬁne aspiration I had!”  There you are.   You must ﬁrst of all be conscious and become aware that they are coming, that these movements... that there is a pressure; and then, you must have a will, the will not to accept them; and then again you learn, it is... how to put it?...


The Mother: it is a little trick one must learn, a movement of the consciousness, of the will, and at the same time as though you were using a force that emanates from the body; and ﬁnally do this (), to push back the movement and not accept it.  But ﬁrst of all you must be conscious. If you are not conscious you can do nothing. You must ﬁrst see the pressure, the inﬂuence, the suggestion, whatever it may be, the thing coming from outside; you must feel it coming, see it, observe it and then take a decision, refuse, not want it. These are three consecutive things.


The Mother: It depends on the case, my child. The right spirit is the will to perfect oneself, or the will to be calm, or... it depends, you see, depends on the circumstances. That is why he has not stated it precisely, in this way or that; it means that in each circumstance there is a spirit which is the suitable spirit, the one you ought to have, the attitude you must inwardly take. It depends on the case.  For example, you see, as soon as one feels a wave of physical disequilibrium, of ill health coming, well, to concentrate in the right spirit is to concentrate in an inner calm, a trust in the divine Grace, and a will to remain in physical equilibrium and good health.


The Mother: This is the right spirit. In another case, one may feel a wave of anger or a ﬁt of temper coming from outside; then one should withdraw into an inner calm, a detachment from superﬁcial things, with a will to express only what comes from above and always be submissive to the divine Will. This is the right spirit. And in each case it is something like that.  Naturally it always comes back to the same thing, that one must remember the Divine and put oneself at His service and will what He wills.


The Mother: But in one case you may want the calm, in the other you may want the force, in another still you may want health, in yet another something which resists the pressure from outside.   When one is perplexed, when one has to make a choice, when one doesn’t know what the right thing to do is — you see, one has to choose among two or three or four possible decisions and doesn’t know which is the right one, then one must put oneself as far as possible in contact with one’s psychic being and the divine Presence in one, present the problem to this psychic consciousness and ask for the true light, the true decision, the  one most in accordance with the divine Will, and try to listen and receive the inspiration.   In each case, you see, it is the right attitude.


The Mother: You do not understand the French expression “passer”. However, in English it is the same thing; I don’t know what the text is in English, but “comes ﬁrst”, do you understand what “comes ﬁrst” means? It means that before every other consideration it is the Divine who is the ﬁrst consideration — that all other considerations which are not the Divine are secondary, without importance. That is, as we have just explained for instance: when you have to make a choice, you must choose according to the divine inspiration or what will bring you closer to the Divine or put you in the best situation to attain to the Divine, because it is the Divine who comes ﬁrst, all personal interest or personal satisfaction must come afterwards. First the Divine.


The Mother: And consecration to the Divine must come ﬁrst, everything else comes afterwards. If it comes, it comes; if it doesn’t, it does not matter. What matters is the seeking for the Divine, this is the ﬁrst thing, the thing that comes before everything, the most important thing. This is what it means.  Something...?


The Mother: Ah, it must be... You see, these are answers to letters. People used to write something and Sri Aurobindo copied  what they said, you understand; and probably this person said that he felt within him “something truer”. And so he says: this “something truer” in you is certainly the psychic.


The Mother: This we have explained many, many times. But the ﬁrst thing is to want it, and know precisely that this comes ﬁrst, before all other things, that this is the important thing. That is the ﬁrst condition; all the rest may come later, this is the condition. You see, if once in a while, from time to time, when you have nothing to do and all goes well and you are unoccupied, suddenly you tell yourself, “Ah, I would like so much to ﬁnd the Divine!” — well, this — it may take a hundred thousand years, in this way.  But if it is the important thing, the only thing that matters, and if everything else comes afterwards, and you want nothing , then — this is the ﬁrst condition.


The Mother: You must ﬁrst establish this, later we may speak of what follows. First this, that all the rest does not count, that only counts, that one is ready to give up everything to have this, that it is the only thing of importance in life. Then one puts oneself in the condition of being able to take a step forward.  I don’t remember exactly what I said, but there is one thing: if you make a mistake that it is a mistake and committing it all the same, then you do that. If through ignorance you make a mistake because you don’t know that it is a mistake, you may have very unpleasant consequences but you won’t push away  the Divine, because you have done the thing through ignorance.


The Mother: That’s not to say that the fault is not a fault! It is a fault all the same, but as I said, you are not in the state in which you push away the divine Grace. But if you know that it is a fault and commit it all the same, each time you do so you are pushing away the divine Grace, and you push it away a little farther.  Pushed by what? Ah, this is exactly what happens!


The Mother: It is the lower nature, the instincts of the subconscient which govern you and make you do things you should not do. And so it is a choice between your will and accepting submission. There is always a moment when one can decide. It goes to the point where as I said there is even a moment when one can decide to be ill or not to be ill. It even goes so far that a moment comes when one can decide to die or not to die.


The Mother: But for that one must have an awakened consciousness because this speck is inﬁnitesimal in time and like the hundredth part of a second, and because before it one can do nothing and after it one can do nothing; but at that moment one can. And if one is absolutely awake, one can, at that moment, take the decision.  But for ordinary things, as for example, giving way before an impulse or refusing it, it is not a space, not even the space of a second; one has plenty of time before one, one certainly has several minutes. And it is a choice between weak submission and a controlling will. And if the will is clear, if it is based on truth, if truly it obeys the truth and is clear, it always has the power to refuse the wrong movement.


The Mother: It is an excuse you give yourself when you say, “I could not.” It is not true. It is that truly you have not wanted it in the right way. For there is always the choice between saying “yes” and saying “no”. But one chooses to be weak and later gives oneself this excuse, saying, “It is not  my fault; it was stronger than I.”


The Mother: It is your fault if the thing was stronger than you. Because you are not these impulses, you are a conscious soul and an intelligent will, and your duty is to see that is what governs you and not the impulses from below.  These of course are just deﬁnitions. It depends on the sentences, the context, the way the words are used, etc.  It simply means thought expressing the truth.


The Mother: Inevitably a thought which expresses the truth is necessarily a thought which is pure, for otherwise it could not express the truth.  Vast? Ah, there are many ways of doing this.  The easiest way is to identify yourself with something vast.  For instance, when you feel that you are shut up in a completely narrow and limited thought, will, consciousness, when you feel as though you were in a shell, then if you begin thinking about something very vast, as for example, the immensity of the waters of an ocean, and


The Mother: if really you can think of this ocean and how it stretches out far, far, far, far, in all directions, like this ( ), how, compared with you, it is so far, so far that you cannot see the other shore, you cannot reach its end anywhere, neither behind nor in front nor to the right or left... it is wide, wide, wide, wide... you think of this and then  you feel that you are ﬂoating on this sea, like that, and that there are limits.... This is very easy. Then you can widen your consciousness a little.


The Mother: Other people, for example, begin looking at the sky; and  then they imagine all those spaces between all those stars, and all... that kind of inﬁnity of spaces in which the earth is a tiny point, and you too are just a very tiny point, smaller than an ant, on the earth. And so you look at the sky and feel that you are ﬂoating in these inﬁnite spaces between the planets, and that you are growing vaster and vaster to go farther and farther. Some people succeed with this.  There is a way also by trying to identify yourself with all things upon earth.


The Mother: For example, when you have a small narrow vision of something and are hurt by others’ vision and point of view, you must begin by shifting your consciousness, try to put it in others, and try gradually to identify yourself with all the different ways of thinking of all others. This is a little more ... how shall I put it? ... dangerous. Because to identify oneself with the thought and will of others means to identify oneself with a heap of stupidities () and bad wills, and this may bring consequences which are not very good. But still, some people do this more easily.


The Mother: For instance, when they are in disagreement with someone, in order to widen their consciousness they try to put themselves in the place of the other and see the thing not from their own point of view but from the point of view of the other. This widens the consciousness, though not as much as by the ﬁrst ways I spoke about, which are quite innocent. They don’t do you any harm, they do you much good. They make you very peaceful.  There are lots of intellectual ways of widening the consciousness.


The Mother: These I have explained fully in my book. But in any case, when you are bored by something, when something is painful to you or very unpleasant, if you begin to think of the eternity of time and the immensity of space, if you think of all that has gone before and all that will come afterwards, and that this second  in eternity is truly just a passing breath, and that it seems so utterly ridiculous to be upset by something which in the eternity of time is... one doesn’t even have the time to become aware of it, it has no place, no importance, because, what indeed is a second in eternity? If one can manage to realise that, to... how to put it?... visualise, picture the little person one is, in the little earth where one is, and the tiny second of consciousness which for the moment is hurting you or is unpleasant for you, just this — which in itself is only a second in your existence, and that you yourself have been many things before and will be many more things afterwards, that what affects you now you will have probably completely forgotten in ten years, or if you remember it you will say, “How did I happen to attach any importance to that?”...


The Mother: if you can realise that ﬁrst and then realise your little person which is a second in eternity, not even a second, you know, imperceptible, a fragment of a second in eternity, that the whole world has unfolded before this and will unfold yet, indeﬁnitely — before, behind — and that... well, then suddenly you sense the utter ridiculousness of the importance you attach to what happened to you.... you feel... to what an extent it is absurd to attach any importance to one’s life, to oneself, and to what happens to you. And in the space of three minutes, if you do this properly, all unpleasantness is swept away. Even a very deep pain can be swept away.


The Mother: Simply a concentration like this, and to place oneself in inﬁnity and eternity. Everything goes away. One comes out of it cleansed. One can get rid of attachments and even, I say, of the deepest sorrows — of everything, in this way — if one knows how to do it in the right way. It immediately takes you out of your little ego.


The Mother: There we are.   By wanting it to be very ﬁrm! ()  No, this seems like a joke... but it is absolutely true.


The Mother: One  does not want it truly. There is always, if you... It is a lack of sincerity. If you look sincerely, you will see that you have decided that it will be like this, and then, beneath there is something which has not decided at all and is waiting for the second of hesitation in order to rush forward. If you are sincere, if you are sincere and get hold of the part which is hiding, waiting, not showing itself, which knows that there will come a second of indecision when it can rush out and make you do the thing you have decided not to do...


The Mother: But if you want it, in the world can prevent you from doing what you want. It is because one doesn’t know how to will it. It is because one is in one’s will. If you are not divided in your will, I say that nothing, nobody in the world can make you change your will.  But one doesn’t know how to will it.


The Mother: In fact one doesn’t even want to. These are velleities: “Well, it is like this.... It would be good if it were like that... yes, it would be better if it were like that... yes, it would be preferable if it were like that.”


The Mother: But is not to will. And always there at the back, hidden somewhere in a corner of the brain, is something which is looking on and saying, “Oh, why should I want that? After all one can as well want the opposite.” And to try, you see... Not like that, just wait...


The Mother: But one can always ﬁnd a thousand excuses to do the opposite.   And ah, just a tiny little wavering is enough... pftt... the thing swoops down and there it is.


The Mother: But if one if one really that is the thing, and truly wants this, and if one is entirely concentrated in the will, I say that there is in the world that can prevent one from doing it, from doing it or being obliged to do it. It depends on what it is.   One wants. Yes, one wants, like this ().


The Mother: One wants: “Yes, yes, it would be better if it were like that. Yes, it would be ﬁner also, more elegant.”... But, eh, eh, after all one is a weak creature, isn’t that so? And then one can always put the blame upon something else: “It is the inﬂuence coming from outside, it is all kinds of circumstances.”   A breath has passed, you see.


The Mother: You don’t know... something... a moment of unconsciousness... “Oh, I was not conscious.” You are not conscious because you do not accept... And all this because you don’t know how to will.


The Mother: To learn how to will is a very important thing. And to will truly, you must unify your being. In fact, to be a being, one must ﬁrst unify oneself. If one is pulled by absolutely opposite tendencies, if one spends three-fourths of one’s life without being conscious of oneself and the reasons why one does things, is one a real being? One does not exist.


The Mother: One is a mass of inﬂuences, movements, forces, actions, reactions, but one is not a being.  One begins to become a being when one begins to have a will.  And one can’t have a will unless one is uniﬁed.  And when you have a will, you will be able to say, say to the Divine: “I want what You want.” But not before that.


The Mother: Because in order to want what the Divine wants, you must have a will, otherwise you can will nothing at all. You would like to. You would like it very much. You would very much like to want what the Divine wants to do. You don’t possess a will to give to Him and to put at His service.


The Mother: Something like that, gelatinous, like jelly-ﬁsh... there... a mass of good wills — and I am considering the better side of things and forgetting the bad wills — a mass of good wills, half-conscious and ﬂuctuating....  Ah, that’s all, my children. That’s enough for today.


The Mother: There we are.  Only, put this into practice; just a little of what I have said, not all, eh, just a very little. There.   kartavyam karma  Faith that what happens is always for the best.


The Mother: We may for the moment not consider it as the best because we are ignorant and also blind, because we do not see the consequences of things and what will happen later. But we must keep the faith that if it is like that, if we rely on the Divine, if we give Him the full charge of ourselves, if we let Him decide everything for us, well, we must know that it is always what is best for us which happens.  This is an absolute fact. To the extent to which you surrender, the best happens to you. This may not be in conformity with what you would like, your preference or desire, because these things are blind: it is the best from the spiritual point of view, the best for your progress, your development, your spiritual growth, your life.


The Mother: It is always that. And you must keep this faith, because faith is the expression of a trust in the Divine and the full self-giving you make to the Divine. And when you make it, it is something absolutely marvellous. That’s a fact, these are not just words, you understand, it is a fact. When you look back, all kinds of things which you did not understand when they happened to you, you realise as the thing which was necessary in order to compel you to make the needed progress.


The Mother: , without exception. It is our blindness which prevents us from seeing it.   Blaming oneself? No, not necessarily. It may be useful, it is indeed useful from time to time in order to get out of the illusion of one’s own perfection.


The Mother: But one wastes much energy in self-criticism. It is much better to use this same energy in making progress, a concrete progress, something more useful.  For example, if you have thoughts which are unpleasant, ugly, vulgar and disturbing, and you say, “Ah, ah, how intolerable I am, I still have such thoughts, what a nuisance it is!”, it would be much better to use this very energy simply to do this () and drive away the thoughts.  And this is only the ﬁrst step. The second is to try to have other thoughts, to take interest in something else: either read or reﬂect, but in any case try to ﬁll your mind with something more interesting, to use your energy in constructing rather than in destroying.


The Mother: It is of course necessary from time to time to recognise one’s faults; it is altogether indispensable. But to dwell too much upon them is not necessary. What is necessary is to use all one’s energy in order to build up the qualities one wants to have and do what one wants to do. This is much more important.  This is in reply to someone, I don’t know to whom.


The Mother: Someone who wrote a letter and to whom Sri Aurobindo has replied: “At present your experiences are on the mental plane.” I don’t know what letter it was nor this person.  What does it mean? Well, these are experiences concerning thought, mental activity, the understanding of things, the observation of things, thought, deduction, reasoning, the contact  with teaching, knowledge, the result of this knowledge on your understanding — all these things which are purely mental. And in fact one should always begin with that.


The Mother: If one has vital experiences — for example, visions — certain vital experiences without having a sufﬁcient mental preparation, this may result in destroying one’s balance and, in any case, one understands nothing of what is happening and it is practically useless, if not harmful. On the other hand, if to begin with, one has developed his understanding, has studied, has understood and knows the reasons for things, and the goal of yoga, for instance, and if one has studied the methods of attaining it — indeed, the whole mental approach to the subject — then, when an experience comes one has a chance of being able to understand what it is; otherwise one understands nothing. A sufﬁcient mental preparation is needed — if not a complete one at least a sufﬁcient one — to be able to understand a little the experiences which come.  Ah, it depends on many things.... Some people have experiences quite spontaneously and it is understood that this depends on their former lives or the way in which they were formed, the forces which presided over the construction of their present physical being, and the inﬂuence they came under even before their birth.


The Mother: These people have experiences spontaneously. There are not many of these, but there are some. There are others for whom it is the result of a very sustained effort. They aspire to have experiences and impose a discipline upon themselves or adopt a discipline so as to be able to have them. Sometimes it takes very long to obtain something.


The Mother: It depends altogether upon the way one is built. I knew people who were ignorant, yes, and who had quite remarkable experiences of clairvoyance, of inner perception. They understood nothing of what was happening to them or of what they saw. But they had the gift.   No.


The Mother: It is not a question of “use”. Not everything in the world is utilitarian. It’s like that because it’s like that. Yes, you can say “what’s the use” to someone who is exclusively preoccupied with having experiences, who has no inner intellectual and spiritual preparation, and who through some sort of fantasy would like to have experiences. You could say to him, “Yes, what’s the use?


The Mother: It is not this that will lead you to the spiritual life. It can help you if you have taken up the path. And if you have taken up the path in all sincerity, well, they will come to the extent that they are useful. But to seek experience for experience’s sake is altogether useless.” And you can tell people, “What’s the good?


The Mother: It is a fantasy, a fantasy on another plane; it is another kind of desire, but it is a desire.”  However, in the normal course, to the degree that you progress inwardly, every step that you take towards the true consciousness is accompanied by a certain number of experiences corresponding to it which allow you to understand the situation you are in: this of course is normal. It ought to be like that.  But these usually are not such sensational experiences as to be made much of. People often have all of a sudden an illumination of consciousness, an inner indication, an unusual perception.


The Mother: But when they are not turned exclusively towards the desire to have experiences, they don’t attach much importance to it. Sometimes they don’t even attach enough importance.  The indication came, showed them something, but they were not even aware of it. Yet it is not these things which give you the impression that you are living in a wonderful world. These things are quite normal.


The Mother: Suddenly an opening in the mind, a  light that comes, one understands something which he did not before. You take that for a very natural phenomenon. But it is a spiritual experience — or the clear seeing of a situation, the understanding of what is happening in oneself, of the state one is in, the indication of the exact progress one ought to make, of the thing that’s to be corrected. This too is an experience and an experience that comes from within; it is an indication given to you by the psychic. People take this also as quite a natural fact.


The Mother: They do not attach any importance to it.  Usually people mean by “experience” either altogether extravagant phenomena, levitation and things like that, or else sensational visions: being able to see the future or seeing at a distance or maybe ordinary things like being able to tell where a lost object can be found or all kinds of little tricks like that.  This is what people call “experiences”.  Well, usually people who have these faculties are not well educated, but for some reason they are born with a gift, as some are born musicians, others painters, and others scientists.  These are born clairvoyants, and so it may be, when they are in need they use this faculty to earn their living, and they spoil it completely.


The Mother: If they happen to be in comfortable circumstances and do not need to earn their living, then they become famous among their friends. In any case, this is always an opportunity for a certain kind of commercialism. There are very few who can have these gifts without using them either to make a name for themselves or to earn money. But these gifts are not of a very high level. One can have them without having a very spiritual life.


The Mother: They do not depend at all on an inner spiritual height. One should not mistake them for signs of progress.  Besides, one thing is certain: those who do not have these faculties and want to acquire them, for instance the capacity of foresight, foreseeing what is going to come, which is analogous to prophecy, the capacity to know events before they happen — as I said, there are people who have this spontaneously because of some peculiarity from birth — and if one wants to acquire  them himself, that is to say, enter into contact with regions where these things can be seen — and not by chance or accidentally or without having any control over the thing, but on the contrary to see them at will — then this indeed means a work.  And that is why some people attach a very great value to these things. But they have some value only when they are under one’s control, done at will and the result of an inner discipline.


The Mother: In this case, yes, because this proves that you have entered into contact with a certain region where it is difﬁcult to enter consciously, at will, and permanently. It is very difﬁcult, it requires much development. And then, for you to be sure of what you have seen... because I haven’t told you that with these people who make a profession of their clairvoyance, it becomes... I said “commercialism”, but it is worse than that, you know, it is a fraud! When they do not see anything, they invent.


The Mother: When they make a profession of it, and people come to ask them something about the future, and they can see nothing at all, they are obliged to invent something, otherwise they would lose their reputation and their clientele. So this becomes a deception, you see, a falsehood, fraud or falsiﬁcation.  But when one wants to have a pure, correct information, to be in contact with the truth of things, and see in advance — not according to one’s petty mental construction, but how things are decreed, in the place where they are decreed and the time when they are decreed — then that requires a mental purity, a vital equilibrium, an absence of desire, of preference. One must never want anything to be of one kind or another, for this falsiﬁes your vision immediately.  All who have visions usually deform them,, almost .


The Mother: I don’t think there is one in a million who doesn’t deform his vision, because the minute it touches the brain it touches the domain of preferences, desires, attachments, and this indeed is enough to give a colouring, a special look to what you have seen. Even if you have seen correctly, you translate it wrongly in your consciousness. This truly asks for a great  perfection. But you can have perfection without the gift of vision. And the perfection can be as great without the gift as with it.


The Mother: If it interests you specially, you can make an effort to obtain it. But only if it interests you specially. If you lay great store by knowing certain things, you can undertake a discipline; you may undertake a discipline also in order to change the functioning of your senses. I think I have already explained to you how one can hear at a distance, see at a distance, even physically; but this means considerable effort, which perhaps is not always in proportion to the result, because these are side issues, not the central, the most important thing. These are side issues which may be interesting, but in itself this is not the spiritual life; one may have a spiritual life without this.


The Mother: Now, the two together can give you perhaps a greater capacity.  But for this too you must tell yourself, “If I ought to have it — if I take the true attitude of surrender to the Divine and of complete consecration — if I ought to have it I shall have it. As, if I ought to have the gift of speech, I shall have it.” And in fact, if one is truly surrendered, in the true way and totally, at every minute one is what one ought to be and does what one ought to do and knows what one ought to know.


The Mother: This... but naturally, for this one should have overcome the petty limitations of the ego, and this does not happen overnight. But it can happen.  Another question?  My child, the vital soul is what animates the body, the life which animates the body. You see, in ordinary language it is said, “You die when your soul leaves your body” or “Your soul leaves your body when you die”, in one way or the other; but it is not the soul, it is not only this soul — what we call soul, I mean the psychic being — it is the vital being.


The Mother: When the vital being leaves the body for whatever reason, the body dies or death cuts off the  vital being from the body.... So it is in the sense of animating, that is, giving life.   Yes, the vital soul is full of desires. The vital being is full of desires.


The Mother: It is built of desires.   Get what? This — it is by... precisely by inner discipline; you can create your atmosphere by controlling your thoughts, turning them exclusively towards the sadhana, controlling your actions, turning them exclusively towards the sadhana, abolishing all desires and all useless, external, ordinary activities, living a more intense inner life, and separating yourself from ordinary things, ordinary thoughts, ordinary reactions, ordinary actions; then you create a kind of atmosphere around you.  For example, instead of reading any odd thing and chatting and doing anything whatever, if you read only what helps you to follow the path, if you act only in conformity with what can lead you to the divine realisation, if you abolish in yourself all desires and impulses turned towards external things, if you calm your mental being, appease your vital being, if you shut yourself against suggestions coming from outside and become immune to the action of people surrounding you, you create a spiritual atmosphere that nothing can touch it, and it depends  on circumstances or on whom you live with or on the conditions you live in, because you are enclosed in your own spiritual atmosphere.


The Mother: And that is how one obtains it: by turning  one’s attention to the spiritual life, by reading only what can help in the spiritual life, by doing only what leads you to the spiritual life, and so on. Then you create your own atmosphere.  But naturally, if you open all the doors, listen to what people tell you, follow the advice of this one and the inspirations of that one, and are full of desires for outside things, you cannot create a spiritual atmosphere for yourself. You will have an ordinary atmosphere like everybody else.  He has not put it that way, has he?


The Mother: You must take it in the way it helps you most. This is a very difﬁcult question.  Oh, I have already explained to you very often that when you live in an ordinary consciousness, and to the extent you remain on a certain plane which is a combination of the most material mind, vital, physical, that is, the ordinary plane of life, you are subject to the determinism of this plane and it is this subjection to the determinism of this plane which puts you exactly in these conditions, for you have deep within you something which aspires for another life but doesn’t yet know how to live that other life, and which pushes from inside in order to get the conditions necessary for this other life. These are inner conditions, they are not outer conditions. But this takes its support on outside obstacles in order to strengthen itself in its will to progress; and so, if you look at it from within, you can even say that it is you yourself who create the difﬁculties to help you to go forward.


The Mother: Now, if you enter another plane and tell yourself (but this is a thing subject to many explanations and discussions), if you say that there is nothing in the universe that is not the work of the Divine, which is essentially true, though not true here, then  you say, “Good. It is the Divine who organises everything; consequently it is He who has organised the difﬁculties also.” But this is indeed a very childish way of putting things — oversimple.  Only, as I said at the beginning, “If it helps you to think in this way, think in this way.” You see, thought is so approximate a thing, it is so far from truth...


The Mother: it is only a kind of vague, incomplete, confused reﬂection, full of falsehood, even at its best.  So, in truth, it is the moment to be practical and tell yourself, “Well, I shall adopt this thought if it helps me to progress.” But if you think that it is the absolute truth, you are sure to go wrong, for there is not a single thought which is the absolute truth.  Ah, yes, we are going to put into the books of the lending library of the University one of Sri Aurobindo’s short reﬂections, which is wonderful — I had it printed today — in which he says that any teaching, however great it may be, however pure, noble, true it may be, is only one aspect of the Truth and not the Truth itself (I am commenting, the text is not exactly this), it is not the entire Truth. Well, that is it.


The Mother: Whatever your thought may be, even if it is very high, very pure, very noble, very true, it is only a very tiny microscopic aspect of the Truth, and consequently it is not entirely true. So in that ﬁeld one must be practical, as I said, adopt the thought for the time being, the one which will help you to make progress when you have it. Sometimes it comes as an illumination and this helps you to progress. So long as it helps you to make progress, keep it; when it begins to crumble, not to act any longer, well, drop it, and try to get another which will lead you a little farther.  Many miseries and misfortunes in the world would disappear if people knew the relativity of knowledge, the relativity of faith, the relativity of the teachings and also the relativity of circumstances... to what extent a thing is so relatively important!


The Mother: For the moment it may be capital, it may lead you to life or to death — I am not speaking of physical life and death, I am  speaking of the life and death of the spirit — but this is for the moment; and when you have made a certain progress, when you have grown a few years older from the spiritual point of view, and you look back on this thing, this circumstance or idea which perhaps has decided your life, it will seem so relative, so insigniﬁcant to you... and you will need something much higher to make new progress.   If one could always remember this, well, one would avoid much sectarianism, much intolerance, and annul all quarrels immediately, because a quarrel means just this, that one thinks in one way and the other in another, that one has taken one attitude and the other another, and that instead of trying to bring them together and ﬁnd out how they could be harmonised, one puts them over against each other as one ﬁghts with one’s ﬁsts.  It is nothing else.


The Mother: But if you become aware of the complete relativity of your point of view, your thought, your conviction of what is good, to what an extent it is relative in the march of the universe, then you will be less violent in your reactions and more tolerant. Here we are.   Have you never felt this? As though you were a little behind or above things, and were looking at them taking place but were not doing anything yourself? Witness means an observer, someone who looks on and does not act himself.


The Mother: So, when the mind is very quiet, one can withdraw a little in this way from circumstances and look at things as though he were a witness, a spectator, and not participating in the action himself. This gives you a great detachment, a great quietude, and also a very precise sense of the value of things, because it cuts the attachment to action. When you know how to do this with yourself, when you can withdraw and watch yourself acting, you learn many things about yourself. When you are all mixed up and take part in the action, you do not observe yourself acting, you don’t know what you are like. But when you draw back and look at yourself, you can perceive many imperfections which you wouldn’t have seen otherwise.


The Mother: () Do you have a question to ask?  It is always the same thing: people writing letters, you understand; they describe their experiences. So he uses the same words that they use for answering. This “solid block” feeling within  oneself — he explains what it means: he says that it indicates the descent of a strength.  You see, there is a negative peace, that is, an absence of disturbance; but solid peace is a positive peace.


The Mother: One may feel a peace which is absolutely positive, which is not the negation of the absence of peace, a peace that is something solid, concrete, very... almost active, you see, that is, having a power of contagion, of spreading through the whole being and bringing peace even in places where there is none. This becomes something very positive and concrete... as though one were touching a solid object. This indeed is true peace. The other is just the preceding step — the negation of the disturbance — that is to say, one remains untroubled, one has no vibration which shows any disturbance.


The Mother: ( ) And then? Your question today?  Eh?


The Mother: It is not from this book? Oh! But we don’t have an entire library here. ( )


The Mother: () So, you have a question?  Everyone has in himself a being which he calls the “Self”, and which is completely silent and immobile. So, if one becomes conscious of this being in himself, one has the experience of the silent Self. It is an immobile and silent being which is within, which is like an aspect of the true being and also an aspect of the witness we were just speaking about. It is this silent being which, when it turns to things and looks at them, becomes the witness.


The Mother: But it can turn inwards, not look on, be in its silent  contemplation. It depends on which side one turns to. It is a solid point in the being, in which the light of truth shines.   Eh?


The Mother: Yes. The ﬁrst thing that comes is that... for example, if one has a certain experience of a particular kind — as one may have an experience of peace, an experience of calm, one may also have an experience of perfect benevolence, an experience of understanding or of compassion — the thing, the experience is as though the consciousness were possessed by one of these movements; and so there occurs this thing which seems strange afterwards, but which for the moment is altogether natural — one feels everywhere, in everyone, in the whole atmosphere, all around himself and, if the consciousness is vast enough, in the entire earth, exactly the peace or the compassion or the benevolence. And so one can say in all sincerity, with a completely living experience: “The universe is perfect benevolence.”  If you come out of it, naturally this does not apply any longer. But while you are in the experience, it is altogether true — at that time.


The Mother: And then, if you push this, these experiences, farther (and this is exactly what happens to people who try to identify themselves consciously with the Divine), when you attain this identiﬁcation and have the consciousness of the Divine in you, instantly you feel that the Divine is everything and everywhere, in all things, that there is nothing but the Divine. And people who have had this experience have said this, they have said, “But there is only the Divine, all is Divine, the Divine alone exists.”  Yet, when one comes out of the experience, if one continues to say it, he almost tells a lie, in the sense that this no longer corresponds at all to the state of consciousness he is in.  When one is in an ordinary external consciousness, everything is not at all divine, far from it. So those who come and tell  you that in this external consciousness all is divine, are humbugs!


The Mother: But when they are in the experience and live the Divine, when they have become the Divine, then for them everything is divine.  They perceive nothing but the Divine, and they may say, “All is divine”, because they perceive only the Divine. But as soon as they come out of this experience, they can no longer say it.  But one may say anything. One may say, “All is peace, all is equanimity, all is compassion, all is comprehension, all is light.”


The Mother: Each time one sincerely has an experience and is entirely absorbed in the experience, all that one sees becomes identical with one, because in fact it is everywhere and when one becomes conscious of it in oneself, one becomes conscious of it in everything. It is true.  But it is not solely true, all the rest is also there. And the opposite is also true: when you enter a state of hatred and have the experience of hatred, the whole world for you is full of hatred; at that time almost nothing else exists but hatred.  The more your experience becomes absorbing for you, the more does all the rest become identical.


The Mother: No, it is just the opposite!  One becomes conscious of the reality only when one becomes conscious of it in oneself. All this is true. Indeed, it is true: you cannot say that it exists unless you experience it yourself.  When you do not experience it, if you say, “It is like this”, well...


The Mother: You can say, “There was a time when it was like this for me”; then that’s right. But if you say, “It is like this”, at a time when you don’t feel it, it is quite simply a mental statement.  But everything is there! Everything is there... all the things which you can experience and inﬁnitely more which you cannot, because a being is not absolutely complete in himself. If he were complete in himself, he could have the experience of the whole,  without any exception.


The Mother: And in fact, potentially it is like that.  Only, each one develops according to his own line. It comes to saying this: that one is conscious of the universe only to the extent to which the universe is in his consciousness. For you the universe stops at your consciousness, no matter what others may say. Everything that you read, for example, all the descriptions you are given, all the sentences you hear, you can understand only as far as they correspond to something in your consciousness; and if they are not in your consciousness, you do not understand them, and consequently they do not exist for you.


The Mother: But this does not mean that they do not exist outside you.   Yes.  Because one has become the Divine in oneself; so, in this case, the Divine is everywhere.


The Mother: Yes.   What does one see? ( )


The Mother: One perceives, if you like; one can see, but not see with a physical image. There is not only the physical sight, it is not seeing with... And in fact, one can see with one’s eyes, if the eyes are plastic enough to allow the higher Consciousness, the divine Consciousness to pass through them.   One can see also, one can see also, but one no longer sees things as they are physically, that’s natural.  If you keep a tiny part of your outer consciousness, if you are not entirely absorbed in the experience, you may see the two superimposed.


The Mother: But then the perception is not as clear and total. Yet it may happen that, for example, there is something in you which keeps the outer physical consciousness, and at the same time there is something which is sufﬁciently absorbed in the experience of the Divine for the Divine alone to count for you and the rest to be as if you were seeing a thing through a ﬁne veil, a very thin tissue or a transparent paper. Then the paper or tissue exists, but it does not prevent you from seeing things in the other way.  So one can, one can have the perception of the Divine in the world, in others, and at the same time see a kind of vague appearance of these things, and it gives you this experience — which may then remain very vividly in your consciousness — of the unreality of external forms; to what an extent it is only... yes, it is like a sheet of thin paper, it has no consistency, no body, it is something altogether superﬁcial and unreal; and the divine Presence, the divine Splendour behind, is the only thing which exists, which is true, solid, durable.


The Mother: This experience one can have.  If one were in contact with one’s psychic being all the time, yes. But it is a fact: from the moment one is in contact with one’s psychic being all the time, one is in contact with the divine Presence all the time. And you may reverse the statement and say, “I shall know that I am in contact with my psychic being all the time, when I am in contact with the divine Presence all the time, in all things. This will be a proof for me that I am in contact with my psychic being.”


The Mother: This changes the state of consciousness totally, totally, one cannot...  You know, there are people who come and ask you, “Am I conscious of my psychic being?” One can tell them, “This itself is the proof that you are not.” Because if you are, you can no longer ask this. It changes your state of consciousness completely.


The Mother: Is that all? Then... ( ) If we don’t need the text, you can ask your question.  What is...?


The Mother: There could be many reasons. It depends on the person you ask.  If you ask an astrologer he will tell you, “It is the stars, when the stars come into the same position, the same conditions recur.”  Well, this is not so wrong. It can be like that.


The Mother: It can also be the individual’s reaction to certain types of climate, you see, or to the sun’s position; or it may be quite simply a bad habit. That’s all. ( )  And if one forms...


The Mother: If by chance it has happened to you twice consecutively, then you form... you have a good formation, you see, which remains like that () in the subconscient, without showing itself — if you don’t observe it! And then, just when the time draws near, quite gently it pushes up from within and tells you, “Take care, the time is coming, the time is coming,  the time is coming!” So naturally, that comes along too. Usually these things are like that.


The Mother: But almost everything that happens in the physical is like that. The ﬁrst time it may be quite simply a concurrence of circumstances; then, the mind intervenes and makes a construction. Now, if one accepts the construction, one is sure that it functions with clockwork precision. But even if one says, “Oh, nonsense, it is only an idea!” and does this (), still the idea, instead of going away, enters inside, into the subconscient, simply the subconscious mind, and there it remains quietly. And then, when the time comes to manifest itself, from inside, like this, it makes a kind of... as though it were tickling the memory a little, nothing more than that, just that.


The Mother: If it rubs the memory just a little, like that, then suddenly one day you remember: “Why, last year, at this time I was ill.” And crash! There it is, it has entered. It has entered the zone of the active consciousness, and a few days later the thing happens.  But when you have had either an experience or, like this, some kind of phenomenon or an illness (above all in the case of illness or even an accident), the body remembers for a very long time.


The Mother: If you want to be completely cured, you must cure this memory in the body, this is absolutely indispensable. And whether you know it or not, you work in order to cure the memory in the body. When the remembrance is effaced, the body is truly healed.  Unfortunately, instead of destroying the remembrance, you push it back. Most of the time you push it down into the subconscient and sometimes into the inconscient, still more deep.


The Mother: Well now, if it is pushed back, if it is not completely effaced, then very gently, very gently, without seeming to do so at all it comes up to the surface; and something of which you have been cured for years, if by chance it crosses your mind simply like that, just like a little dart, as fast as that, like a passing dart:  “Why, at this time I had that”, you may be sure that sooner or later — a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours or days later,  it will return. You can... It may come back in a much milder form, it may come back in the same form, it may come even more strongly. That depends on your inner state.


The Mother: If you are in a pessimistic state, it will come back more strongly. If you are in an optimistic state, it will be much weaker. But it will come back and you will have to begin the battle all over again against the memory of your body so as to destroy it — if this time you are more attentive. If you can destroy it, you are cured. But if you don’t destroy it, it will return.


The Mother: It will take a longer or shorter time, it will be more or less total, but it will return. It can come back in a ﬂash. If you are wide awake and, when it returns, if you have enough knowledge and indeed enough clear-sightedness to tell yourself, “Well, here is that wretched remembrance come back again to play its tricks”, then you can give, can strike a violent blow and indeed destroy its reality. If you know how to do this, then it is an opportunity to get rid of the thing immediately. But it is not very easy to do this.


The Mother: Pavitra: How to do it? () How to do it? It is the same thing as, the same method as, knowing how to destroy a formation, you understand.


The Mother: It is a certain strength to dissolve things, which can undo formations. It depends on the nature of the formation. If it is like this, a formation of an adverse kind, then you need the force of a perfectly pure constructive light. If you have this at your disposal, all that you have to do is to bombard the thing with it, and you can dissolve it. But it is an operation which must be performed with inner forces; it cannot be done physically.


The Mother: That is why all physical remedies, you see, are simply palliatives; they are not cures, because they are not strong enough to touch the living centre of the thing.    ( )  The same phenomenon occurs with moral difﬁculties.


The Mother: If one could succeed in destroying their remembrance, destroying in oneself the memory of the state one is in when in that difﬁculty, if one is sincere it would be the end of all difﬁculties for ever.  ( )  When...?  Yes.


The Mother: Into conﬂict?   Yes, yes, I understand quite well.  It depends absolutely on the case. It is difﬁcult to say...


The Mother: First of all... ( ) If it is just an external and superﬁcial decision based on the little knowledge one has, and the little qualities and little defects one has, then naturally, if one comes into conﬂict  with other wills of a similar quality — you see, the wills may be different but the quality is the same, then one has to decide according to the circumstances and in accordance with the inner result one wants to get. It is very difﬁcult to say, in each case the decision must be different.


The Mother: But if one is one of those people who act only when they feel within that it is an order from the higher truth-consciousness, that “This I have decided to do because it has to be done whatever the consequences”, then if one comes into conﬂict with the preferences, wills, opposition of others, one must quite simply do this () and continue on one’s way. But it is only in this case that one has the right to do it.  When it is just a personal movement, moved by one’s personal preferences, one’s personal desires or even one’s personal conceptions, well, as soon as one meets with oppositions one must weigh the problem, see the facts and act according to... ( ) the best goodwill one has, the best perception one has.  And this depends absolutely on what one wanted to do, and the opposition one meets with. So it is impossible to make a rule of a general kind.


The Mother: There is only one thing that gives you the right to go straight on your path without caring for: that’s if you have been set going, set in motion by a higher truth. But you must be of that. You must not take your desire for the higher truth, you understand, because one very easily makes a mistake. You must know it, and have solid proofs to support it, and know that it is usually something which does not touch you personally. If you are in the least interested in it, one way or another, be on your guard and think twice before being convinced that it is the higher will and the expression of a truth.


The Mother: However, there are cases where it is like that. “ is what ought to be done; this indeed is the truth.” And then, whatever the opposition, one goes straight on one’s way, without worrying about circumstances or consequences. But it is only in this case  that one has the right to do it; that is, at the time the Divine acts in, you ought no longer to care for except the divine Will. But if it is not the divine Will, each problem must be resolved according to the case, the circumstances and...


The Mother: One meets somebody who chatters?  One just turns one’s back and goes away! ( )


The Mother: Very simple!  Eh?  So much the worse for him! () So much the worse for him.


The Mother: This is exactly the instance, one of the instances I spoke about: not to care. One can, if one likes the person very much and doesn’t want to displease him too much, one can tell him gently, “No, please, let us not talk uselessly, it is bad for everybody.”  That’s all. If it is someone you don’t care for or who is not important for you, you have only to turn your back upon him and go away.  Especially if he is a friend, someone who, like you, ought to know that this should not be done....


The Mother: In this case you must be categorical. If it is someone who, through a set of circumstances, ought to know like you that it is something that ought not to be done and if he begins to do it in spite of that, he is Because when one does something one knows one should not do, one becomes dishonest from that minute; and you are not  to have any consideration for such a person. You have only to turn round and walk away; and if he gets angry, so much the worse for him. He will only have to... the result will be that he will have to overcome his anger.


The Mother: That’s all. This will perhaps do him some good.   There is a great weakness in social relations, a great weakness; and that is why, in fact, one gets angry and gets carried away and says things one should not say. If one were not weak, one would never be violent.


The Mother: Weakness and violence are two things that go together. He who is truly strong is never violent. This is something one should always remember. Violence is a sign of a weakness somewhere. Of course, one sees a man with bulging muscles who is very strong, knocking down another with all his might, and one says, “He is strong!”


The Mother: It is not true. He has muscles, but morally he is very weak. So, he may be strong here and weak there. Usually this is what happens.  But I say, and also people who have observed animals, for example, animals which are very strong: how quiet they are.


The Mother: Naturally, when they run after their prey they put out all their energy; but it is not violence, it is energy. But if you have ever seen a lion — when it has nothing to do, it does not ﬁdget. If it is ill, it is restless. But if it is well, in good health, if it has nothing to do, it will not move, it will be quite still. It will look like a sage.


The Mother: ( )  Agitation, violence, anger, all these things are always, without exception, signs of weakness. And especially when one gets carried away in one’s speech and says things one should not say,  indeed is the sign of a frightful mental weakness — mental and vital — frightful. Otherwise you may hear all the insults in the world, people may tell you all possible stupidities; if you are not weak, you may perhaps not smile outwardly, for it is not always good taste to smile, but deep within you, you are smiling, you let it pass, it does not touch you....


The Mother: Simply, if your mind has formed the habit of being quiet as it is recommended here, and you have the perception of truth within yourself, you can hear  anything at all. It does not even produce the semblance of a vibration — everything remains absolutely immobile and quiet.  And then if the witness we were speaking about a while ago is there, looking on at the comedy, he surely smiles.  But if you feel the vibrations which come from the other person who throws on you all his violence and anger, if you feel this... at ﬁrst it does... and then, suddenly, there is a response; and then if you yourself begin to get into a temper, you may be sure that you are as weak as he.  Here you are, my children.


The Mother: I think this is enough for today.   It means that in the true inner being one feels perfectly free, and is free from everything. One has the feeling of a complete freedom — free from all external inﬂuences, free from all lower impulses, free from all bondage of thoughts, habits... ( )


The Mother: There, then.   ( )


The Mother: Do you have a question?  What? For no reason to stand back from her solicitude? You do not understand that? Why!


The Mother: Why don’t you understand? You don’t understand what this means or what? “Stand back” — do you not know what that means?  Ah, all right. Well, stand back means to withdraw, go farther away, escape, refuse, reject — all this.


The Mother: “Solicitude” — do you know what that means?  Not very well? It is... well, it is “care” in English, that is, attention, help, concern, precisely the concern to help and do good; this is solicitude.


The Mother: When you feel solicitude for someone, you  do... you ﬁnd out his needs and try to satisfy them; you have good thoughts, good feelings, you want to help, support, make him happy. This is solicitude. So, to stand back from solicitude is to refuse these things when they come, either to disregard them or refuse them.  However, very often one does it without knowing it.


The Mother: For example, every feeling of independence, of the need to look after oneself, of not wanting to submit to any discipline, any rule, of standing on one’s own feet, not wanting any support except one’s own, and being free, independent in one’s movements: this is to stand back from the divine solicitude. To want to do what one likes, one’s own will, in quite a free and independent way — “only doing what I want” — this is to stand back from the divine solicitude.  One does it quite frequently!  () You?  Usually the consciousness.


The Mother: There is an experience like this: some people may speak to me for half an hour, I don’t understand a tenth part of what they say; there are others who speak very softly, very slowly, very gently, and I don’t miss a single word. In one case, it is... it does not depend on the elocution and it does not depend on the expression, because I am used to understanding people even when they express themselves badly. I have been used to this for years. It is not that.


The Mother: It is that either they do not think clearly, or rather, to put it positively: those who think quite clearly, no matter what they say or how they say it, I understand them; while with those who do not think clearly it becomes more difﬁcult; and then, those who are in the habit of disguising their thought, who are not frank, who don’t say exactly what they think or  feel, who try to present things in a particular way, here, they may give me long speeches, I understand nothing. And I know what they are thinking but I don’t know what they are saying.  This happens very frequently: people talk to me, I hear nothing.  It happens like that, I don’t hear... “What? what? what?” And then, when it recurs twice or thrice, I am sure that it is this kind of thing, you know: they are not saying what they think, they are saying something with the intention of making some sort of impression, you see.


The Mother: They say this so that I may think so. So there it is useless, I don’t hear them. There are different degrees.  Is that all? () And you?


The Mother: Nothing? Nobody has any questions? It is not raining here, we see! ()  (In a low voice)  Ah, listen!


The Mother: I do not hear!  I have not yet understood. “”, that’s all I have heard. ( ) Eh?


The Mother: Say, say, speak, but think of what you are saying.  (In a loud voice) (The child laughs)  Ah!  (Another child)


The Mother: (Pavitra)  Passion! And heard “”! Good.


The Mother: So what about passion?  Weakness? No, it is a disorder of the vital. ( )


The Mother: The feeling  comes from the heart and then the vital gets hold of it and turns it into a passion. () And one step farther, and it becomes a madness. ( )


The Mother: So?  () Repeat that. How...?  Oh, “call”? Well, well.


The Mother: Make calm come to us, you mean? How?  Simply as when you want to call someone, you call him, don’t you? ( ) It is the same thing.


The Mother: You must remain as calm as you can and wish for calm, aspire for calm, call calm, like that, remaining as calm as you can at that moment. Ask to be yet calmer. Want calm. But all this calmly, because if you want it agitatedly, calm will not come.


The Mother: Do you see images when you meditate?  When the eyes are open or closed?  Closed. And what images? Colours or images?


The Mother: Well... Always or only sometimes?    And so?


The Mother: You are asking what it is? It can be many, many things.  It can be simply that, your physical eyes being closed, your inner eyes open and begin to see in their domain or in the subtle physical or the most material vital, it may be that.  It can be a projection of your own thoughts, that is, when you begin reﬂecting on something, certain images pass before you, like that; they pass rather before your mind than your eyes, and it is like an imaged objectivisation of your thought, your state of thought or state of consciousness. But then, it becomes quite clear, coherent and it is interesting.


The Mother: It can serve as an indication.  It can be something else also. If you are truly quiet and your mind is quiet, it can be... how shall I put it?... some kind of messages coming to you from other people or other worlds or other forces, which come to tell you something, to show you something; usually, if you see colours which are... pulsating, and then suddenly it is as though you were absorbing them: this usually indicates forces sent by someone or something, which come with some sort of power. They are some kind of messages.  So, if you are very quiet in your mind, sometimes they bring an indication of what they mean.


The Mother: Many things are possible and you must observe very attentively, but very quietly, without any mental activity, without seeking to understand at that time; because as soon as your mind becomes active and tries to understand, it will jam everything and probably you will not see anything any more.  But if you remain very quiet, only if you observe — as though you were silently looking at something, you understand — then you will begin seeing more precisely, and little by little distinguishing between different categories of things. You will be able to know what one thing is and what another etc., whether it comes from you or from outside, whether it is on a material plane or on another plane. All this is learnt through a very  quiet observation, quiet but very sharp, you understand; because there are very tiny shades, very tiny, between different things, and when you get used to distinguishing these nuances, you can discern exactly what it is.