The Mother: It’s just to say: “It is like that.” It is a statement, nothing more.  What is surprising is that people have never thought about it. If they moved in the spirit with the freedom of full consciousness, this would not surprise them at all, because they would know it very well, that it is like that, that it is a sensuous way of approaching the truth. Only, you see, in this domain they are not yet absolutely independent, so usually they think in a classical or traditional or habitual manner, or in accordance with what they have learnt or read, but without the freedom of independence.


The Mother: It is simply a slightly paradoxical way of saying things, in order to strike, strike the thought — that’s all. But you must not think that it is a condemnation of poetry. It’s very far from that.  Why shouldn’t he be?  Doesn’t think?


The Mother: That means...?  It’s not that. You mean: when do we say that a poet is inspired? Usually we say that a poet is inspired when he receives inspirations. (


The Mother: )  What you mean but don’t say... it’s those who go beyond thought, silence their thoughts, those who have an absolutely silent and immobile mind, who open to inner regions and write almost automatically what comes to them from above. That’s what you meant but didn’t say. But that’s quite a different thing, and it happens once in a thousand years. It’s not a frequent phenomenon.


The Mother: First of all one must be a yogi to be able to do all that. But an inspired poet, as we call him... that’s something absolutely different. All men of some genius, that is, those who have an opening upon a world slightly higher than the ordinary mind, are called “inspired”. One who makes some discoveries is also inspired.


The Mother: Each time one is in contact with something a little higher than the ordinary human ﬁeld, one is inspired. So when one is not altogether limited by the ordinary consciousness one receives inspirations from above; the source of his production is higher than the ordinary mental consciousness.  That’s all? No more questions?   One feels a silence, and then?


The Mother: No. If you, in your consciousness, reach a state of silence, you perceive your state of silence everywhere, but others don’t necessarily perceive it. You perceive it because you are in that state.  It is the same as with those who become aware of the Divine in themselves: they see the Divine everywhere, but others are not necessarily conscious of that. It’s because you have entered into that state; as you are conscious of this state, you are conscious of it wherever it is; and in fact it is everywhere, somewhere, not superﬁcially and outwardly, but inwardly.


The Mother: That one is outside the silence? Then one is in the noise! I don’t quite understand what...  Probably because you are more in things than in yourself at that time. It means that you have become aware of the silence more outside yourself than within yourself.


The Mother: This simply means that one suddenly comes under the inﬂuence of a higher force of which one is not conscious; one is conscious only of the effect, but not of the cause. That’s all. It’s nothing more than that. If you were conscious you would know what makes you silent, what makes you meditate, what kind of force has entered into you or acts upon you or inﬂuences you and puts you in the silence. But as you are not conscious, you are aware only of the effect, the result, that is, the silence that comes into you.


The Mother: Fully! But for this one must work a little within oneself. One must withdraw from the surface.  Almost totally, everybody lives on the surface, all the time, all the time on the surface. And for them it’s even the only thing which exists — the surface.


The Mother: And when something compels them to draw back from the surface, some people feel that they are falling into a hole. There are people who, if they are drawn back from the surface, suddenly feel that they are crumbling down into an abyss, so unconscious they are!  They are conscious only of a kind of small thin crust which is all that they know of themselves and things and the world, and it is so thin a crust! Many! I have experienced, I don’t know how often...


The Mother: I tried to interiorise some people and immediately they felt that they were falling into an abyss, and at times a black abyss. Now this is the absolute inconscience. But a fall, a fall into something which for them is like a non-existence, this happens very often. People are told: “Sit down and try to be silent, to be very quiet”; this frightens them terribly.  A fairly long preparation is needed in order to feel an increase of life when one goes out of the outer consciousness.


The Mother: It  is already a great progress. And then there is the culmination, that when one is obliged for some reason or other to return to the outer consciousness, it is there that one has the impression of falling into a black hole, at least into a kind of dull, lifeless greyness, a chaotic mixture of disorganised things, with the faintest light, and all this seems so dull, so dim, so dead that one wonders how it is possible to remain in this state — but this of course is the other end — unreal, false, confused, lifeless!  ( )  So, shall we try to enter within, to see if there is a black hole or not?


The Mother: Only... I would very much like nobody to move, get up or go away.  Those who are not sure of being able to remain still — I request them to go away! For, if they get up during the meditation, they disturb everything.


The Mother: Here’s someone already moving over there. He has heard nothing and he is moving.  Don’t speak French? If they don’t speak French why are they here? I don’t speak in any other language except French here!


The Mother: ( )  I haven’t understood either. Isn’t there a clause of the sentence missing? I too haven’t understood the structure of this sentence.


The Mother: ( ) It seems to me that there’s at least a word missing.  (Pavitra)


The Mother: No. It may be like this in English. I can imagine the English sentence, but in French it is not clear. ( )


The Mother: Yes, it is right at the beginning. ( ) Oh!  Yes, yes... it is not clear.


The Mother: (Pavitra)  So, now do you understand? ... Is that all?


The Mother: This depends on the point of view one takes.   If it is from the point of view of yoga and of the person who wants to do the work, it is preferable to let him choose, because he can be, for example, under the illusion that he is capable of doing something and he is not; or he has an ambition, he wants to do something to satisfy his self-love, his vanity. And so, if he is allowed to do so, as the work that’s done here is under the inﬂuence of the Truth-Consciousness, his incapacity for the work will appear immediately, and he will be able to make progress; whereas if I see that a particular person is capable of doing a particular work — another work, you understand — and I tell him, “No, that work does not suit you, it is better that you do this one,” he will never be convinced (he or she, it doesn’t matter), he will always think that it’s an arbitrary decision, that it’s simply because one preferred his doing this thing or that. So from his personal point of view it is better to let him do what he asks for, so that he may make the progress he ought to make.


The Mother: If it happens that he is very conscious of the work he can do and asks precisely for the work he ought to do, then it is good, there’s no more discussion, it is very good.  But in certain cases, perhaps it is not very good to let somebody muddle up and disturb the work in order that he may have an experience of this. So if the work which is to be done is more important than the person’s yoga, he is told, “No, I am sorry, but you are not capable of doing that. You must do this.” Only, this increases the difﬁculty for him (or her), as I said; for he will remain convinced that his choice was better than the one made by somebody else; whereas by experience, when he has really failed in what he has undertaken, he will understand that he has made a mistake.


The Mother: Now, I am repeating it: if he happens to be conscious of what he can truly do, one has only to let him do what he wants, it is very good, this. There’s no problem. There is no difference between the perception of what he ought to do and what he chooses to do; in this case there is no problem. So it depends absolutely on the case, and on the nature of the work to be done.   It’s exactly the same thing as the problem of the education of children.


The Mother: There are all kinds of different and even opposite theories. Some people say, “Children must be left to have their own experience because it is through experience that they learn things best.” Like that, as an idea, it is excellent; in practice it obviously requires some reservations, because if you let a child walk on the edge of a wall and he falls and breaks a leg or his head, the experience is a little hard; or if you let him play with a match-box and he burns out his eyes, you understand, it is paying very dearly for a little knowledge! I have discussed this with... I don’t remember now who it was...


The Mother: an educationist, a man concerned with education, who had come from England, and had his ideas about the necessity of an absolute liberty.  I made this remark to him; then he said, “But for the love of liberty one can sacriﬁce the life of many people.” It is one opinion. ( )


The Mother: At the same time, the opposite excess of being there all the time and preventing a child from making his experiment, by telling him, “Don’t do this, this will happen”, “Don’t do that, that will happen” — then ﬁnally he will be all shrunk up into himself, and will have neither courage nor boldness in life, and this too is very bad.  In fact it comes to this: One must never make rules.  Every minute one must endeavour to apply the highest truth one can perceive. It is much more difﬁcult, but it’s the only solution.


The Mother: Whatever you may do, don’t make rules beforehand, because once you have made a rule you follow it more or less blindly, and then you are sure, ninety-nine and a half times out of a hundred, to be mistaken.  There is only one way of acting truly, it is to try at each moment, each second, in each movement to express only the highest truth one can perceive, and at the same time know that this perception has to be progressive and that what seems to  you the most true now will no longer be so tomorrow, and that a higher truth will have to be expressed more and more through you. This leaves no room any longer for sleeping in a comfortable tamas; one must be always awake — I am not speaking of physical sleep — one must be always awake, always conscious and always full of an enlightened receptivity and of goodwill. To want always the best, always the best, always the best and never tell oneself, “Oh! It is tiring!


The Mother: Let me rest, let me relax! Ah, I am going to stop making an effort”; then one is sure to fall into a hole immediately and make a big stupid blunder!  The rest must not be one which goes down into the inconscience and tamas. The rest must be an ascent into the Light, into perfect Peace, total Silence, a rest which rises up out of the darkness. Then it is true rest, a rest which is an ascent.


The Mother: Read what?  Whatever is that? ( )  (The child gives Mother a copy of these “Classics”)


The Mother: Well, what is this stuff? ( ) Ooooh!  Where does it come from, this thing?


The Mother: It is American? ( ) Well, my children, it is lamentably vulgar! There, that’s all I can say about it.


The Mother: There are hundreds of copies?  (Another child) (Pavitra) (Second child) (First child) (Second child)  Yes, it is a sign of the times. It is the vulgarisation of everything: the vulgarisation of ideas, the vulgarisation of masterpieces, the vulgarisation of history, everything; everything put as low as possible, so that one doesn’t need to raise oneself, one can crawl on the ground and have this. It is the descent of the consciousness as low as possible and then one wallows there!


The Mother: Oh, no! It is repulsive!  However, that’s your business! If you like to live like animals which love to waddle in mud, do that, it’s your affair.


The Mother: That’s all.  It is deplorable!  Good, the question is closed, without any amendment.  Now I don’t give orders; each one follows his own consciousness. If you want to go down it is a very good means.


The Mother: ( )  If you want to go up, well, I advise you to throw it away into the street. Oh! It doesn’t matter where.


The Mother: It’s not worth keeping — anywhere.   Yes.  They have asked me. Just asked me.  Well!


The Mother: Is it in the Library that you get these things?   Ah! ()  Just imagine, even when these things are given to you on a record (we had some records) well, even that... I was just on the point of saying, “Well, it is a little vulgar.”


The Mother: Because, so that the record may sell and be heard by everybody, they bring down the artistic value of the thing a little, in order to put it within the range of the public... and it was a bit grandiloquent, forced, it did not have all the purity of the original. was played to us one day, you know. Well, there already I made my reservations; I told myself, “It is falsifying people’s taste.” Instead of having the pure nobility of the thing, it exaggerates just a little in order to please the greatest number.


The Mother: So you understand, this was already a summit in comparison. At least, it had some aspirations to artistic realisation. It was not altogether well realised but there was an effort.  This thing is the very opposite. Still...!


The Mother: Now, be courageous! How many of you have read these books?  ().  Good heavens! And you have the cheek to ask me to give meditations!


The Mother: Well, here’s a ﬁne preparation for meditating!    Good.  Well, this evening I won’t give you any meditation. It will be for next week, if you like, but not this evening.


The Mother: There, then!.   Yes, surely. You don’t understand?  If you don’t do anything, you cannot have any experience.


The Mother: The whole life is a ﬁeld of experience. Each movement you make, each thought you have, each work you do, can be an experience, and an experience; and naturally work in particular is a ﬁeld of experience where one must apply all the progress which one endeavours to make inwardly.  If you remain in meditation or contemplation without working, well, you don’t know if you have progressed or not. You may live in an illusion, the illusion of your progress; while if you begin to work, all the circumstances of your work, the contact with others, the material occupation, all this is a ﬁeld of experience in order that you may become aware not only of the progress made but of all the progress that remains to be made. If you live closed up in yourself, without acting, you may live in a completely subjective illusion; the moment you externalise your action and enter into contact with others, with circumstances and the objects of life, you become aware absolutely objectively of whether you have made progress or not, whether you are more calm, more conscious, stronger, more unselﬁsh, whether you no longer have any desire, any preference, any weakness, any unfaithfulness — you can become aware of all this by working.


The Mother: But if you remain enclosed in a meditation that’s altogether personal, you may enter into a total illusion and never come out  of it, and believe that you have realised extraordinary things, while really you have only the impression, the illusion that you have done so.  That’s what Sri Aurobindo means.   Yes, because all this is founded upon the teaching that life is an illusion. It began with the teaching of the Buddha who said that existence was the fruit of desire, and that there was only one way of coming out of misery and suffering and desire; it was to come out of existence.


The Mother: And then this continued with Shankara who added that not only is it the fruit of desire but it is a total illusion, and as long as you live in this illusion you cannot realise the Divine. For him there was not even the Divine, I think; for the Buddha, at least, there wasn’t any.  That depends on what you call “experience”. They certainly had an inner contact with something.  The Buddha certainly had an inner contact with something which, in comparison with the external life, was a non-existence; and in this non-existence, naturally, all the results of existence disappear.


The Mother: There is a state like this; it is even said that if one can keep this state for twenty days, one is sure to lose one’s body; if it is exclusive, I quite agree with it.  But it may be an experience which remains at the back, you see, and is conscious even while not being exclusive, and which causes the contact with the world and the outer consciousness to be supported by something that is free and independent. This indeed is a state in which one can truly make very great progress externally, because one can be detached from everything and act without attachment, without preference, with that inner  freedom which is expressed outwardly.  Yet this is the real necessity: once this inner freedom has been attained and the conscious contact with what is eternal and inﬁnite, then, without losing this consciousness one must return to action and let that inﬂuence the whole consciousness turned towards action.  This is what Sri Aurobindo calls bringing down the Force from above.


The Mother: In this way there is a chance of being able to change the world, because one has brought in a new Force, a new region, a new consciousness and put it into contact with the outer world.  So its presence and action will produce inevitable changes and, let us hope, a total transformation in what this outer world is.  So we could say that the Buddha quite certainly had the ﬁrst part of the experience, but that he never dreamt of the second, because it was contrary to his own theory. His theory was that one had to run away; but it is obvious that there is only one way of escape, to die, and yet, as he himself has said so well, you may be dead and be completely attached to life and still be in the cycle of births and not have liberation. And in fact he has admitted the idea that it is by successive passing lives on the earth that one can manage to develop oneself to reach this liberation.


The Mother: But for him the ideal was that the world would not exist any longer. It was as though he accused the Divine of having made a mistake and that there was only one thing to do, to rectify the mistake by annulling it. But naturally, to be reasonable and logical, he did not admit the Divine. It was a mistake made by whom, how, in what way? — this he never explained.


The Mother: He simply said that it was made and that the world had begun with desire and had to end with desire. He was just on the point of saying that this world was purely subjective, that is, a collective illusion, and that if the illusion ceased the world would cease to be. But he did not come so far. It is Shankara who took over and made the thing altogether complete in his teaching.  If we go back to the teaching of the Rishis, for example, there was no idea of ﬂight out of the world; for them the realisation  had to be terrestrial.


The Mother: They conceived a Golden Age very well, in which the realisation would be terrestrial. But starting from a certain decline of vitality in the spiritual life of the country, perhaps, from a different orientation which came in, you see... it is certainly starting from the teaching of the Buddha that this idea of ﬂight came, which has undermined the vitality of the country, because one had to make an effort to cut oneself off from life. The outer reality became an illusory falsehood, and one had no longer to have anything to do with it. So naturally one was cut off from the universal energy, and the vitality went on diminishing, and with this vitality all the possibilities of realisation also diminished.


The Mother: But it is very remarkable... I have met many people who were trying this method of detachment and separation from life, and living exclusively in the inner reality. These people, almost all of them, had in the outer life absolutely gross defects. When they returned to the ordinary consciousness, they were very much lower than one of the ´elite, for instance, a man of great culture and great intellectual and moral development. These people in their ordinary conduct, when they came out of their meditation, their exclusive concentration, lived very grossly.


The Mother: They had very, very ordinary defects, you see. I knew many of this kind. Or perhaps they had come to a stage where their outer life was a sort of dream in which they were, so to say, not existing. But one had altogether the impression of beings who were completely incomplete, totally incomplete, that is, outwardly there was nothing at all.  Yes, very difﬁcult!


The Mother: But they came out of it completely, they left it as one takes off a cloak, then they put it aside and entered another part of their being. And this is what happened exactly, it was as though they took away this consciousness, laid it aside and entered another part of their being. And in their meditation, as long as they remained there, it was very good. But these people, most of them, when in that state, were in a kind of samadhi, and they could not even speak; and so when they came back and returned to the ordinary consciousness, it was just where it was before, completely unchanged; there was no contact.


The Mother: You see, what makes the thing difﬁcult for you to understand is that you concretely, practically, that there are... different planes of your being, as of all beings, which may not have any contact among themselves, and that one may very well pass from one plane to another, and live in a certain consciousness, leaving the other absolutely asleep. And moreover, even in activity, at different times different states of being enter into activity, and unless one takes the greatest care to unify them, put them all in harmony, one of them may pull from one side, another from the other, and a third pull from the third, and all of them be absolutely in contradiction with one another.  There are people who in a certain state of being are constructive, for example, and capable of organising their life and doing very useful work, and in another part of their being they are absolutely destructive and constantly demolish what the other has constructed. I knew quite a number of people of this kind who, apparently had a rather incoherent life, but it was because the two parts of the being, instead of completing each other and harmonising in a synthesis, were separated and in opposition, and one undid what the other did, and all the time they passed like this from one to the other. They had a disorganised life.


The Mother: And there are more people of this kind than one would think!  There are very outstanding examples, striking ones, so clear and distinct they are; but less totally opposed conditions, though all the same in opposition to one another, occur very, very often.   Besides, one has oneself the experience, when one has tried to make progress; there is one part of the being which participates in the effort and makes progress, and suddenly, without rhyme or reason, all the effort one has made, all the consciousness one has gained, capsizes in something which is quite different, opposed, over which one has no control.  Some people can make an effort the whole day through, succeed in building something within themselves; they go to sleep at night and the next morning all that they had done on the previous day is lost, they have lost it in a state of unconsciousness. This happens very often, these are not exceptional cases, far from it.


The Mother: And this is what explains, you see, why some people — when they withdraw into their higher mind for instance — can enter into very deep meditation and be liberated from the things of this world, and then when they return to their ordinary physical consciousness, are absolutely ordinary if not even vulgar, because they haven’t taken care to establish any contact, and to see that what is above acts and transforms what is below.   That’s all.  That!... Some people say he was an Avatar, others say no, but this, to tell you the truth, it is...


The Mother: I think that this ﬁrst thing, that the Avatar comes to the earth to prove that the Divine can... it is not so much to prove by words as to prove by a certain realisation; and I think that it would be rather this aspect of the Divine which is constructive and preservative, rather than a transformative and destructive aspect. You see, to use the Indian names known in India, well, I think they are Avatars of Vishnu who come rather to prove  that the Divine can come upon earth; whereas each time Shiva has manifested he has always manifested like this, in beings who have tried to ﬁght against an illusion and demolish what is there.  I have reasons to think that the Buddha was one.


The Mother: To speak more accurately, he manifested something of the power of Shiva: it was the same compassion, the same understanding of all the misery, and the same power which destroys — obviously with the intention of transforming, but destroys rather than constructs. His work does not seem to have been very constructive.  It was very necessary to teach men practically not to be egoistic; from that point of view it was very necessary. But in its deeper principle it has not helped very much in the transformation of the earth.  As I said, you see, instead of helping the descent of the higher Consciousness into the terrestrial life, it has strongly encouraged the separation of the deeper consciousness, which he said was the only true one, from all outer expression.


The Mother: Now, you see, this question of the Divine upon the earth: well, quite naturally those who believed in him have made a god of him. One has only to see all the temples and all the Buddhist godheads to know that human nature has always the tendency to deify what it admires.  So, there it is!  Take interest? How do you mean?


The Mother: Yes, but I don’t understand “taking interest”. One may like these  things because one has no taste, but I don’t see what is meant by “taking interest”. One takes interest in a study, one takes interest in a work, one takes interest in the progress to be made, but... One may indulge in an activity of idleness, but that doesn’t mean that one can take any interest in it.  Has to?


The Mother: Why? To earn your living? ( )  But everything that brings down the consciousness is an obstacle in one’s progress.


The Mother: If you have a desire it creates an obstacle in your progress; if you have a bad thought or bad will, it creates an obstacle in your progress; if you welcome some kind of falsehood, it creates an obstacle in your progress; and if you cultivate vulgarity in yourself, it creates an obstacle in your progress; everything which is not in keeping with the Truth creates an obstacle to progress; and there are hundreds of these things every day.  For example, every movement of impatience, every movement of anger, every movement of violence, every tendency to dissimulation, every deformation of the truth, whether big or small, every bad will, every partial judgment, every preference, every encouragement to bad taste and to... yes, to vulgarity, all this is constantly in the way. All this, every one of these movements, big or small, passing or lasting, all are like so many stones to build the wall to prevent yourself from progressing. It is not one thing only, there are hundreds of them, thousands.  It is enough to have a preference in oneself, it is enough to be impatient, enough to have a little desire to conceal something, enough to feel a disgust, a distaste for effort, it is enough...


The Mother: anything at all is enough, which has something to do with desires, repulsions, all that, for it to impede your progress. And then,  from the point of view of the intellectual being, the artistic being, the side of inner and outer culture, every lack of taste, whatever it may be, is a terrible obstacle.  This world, I must say, is a world of extremes from the point of view of taste, artistic and literary culture; on one side, it makes a great effort to discover something that’s very high, very pure, very noble, and on the other, at the other end, it  sinks into a vulgarity which certainly is inﬁnitely greater than the vulgarity of the past two or three centuries. What is curious is that, going back two or three centuries, people who were uncultured were gross, but their grossness resembled that of animals, and there was not much perversion in it; there was a little, because as soon as the mind is there, perversion comes in, but there was not a great deal of perversion.


The Mother: But now, what does not rise to the mountain-peak, what remains on groundlevel, is perverted in its grossness, that is, it is not only ignorant and stupid, it is ugly, dirty and repugnant, it is deformed, it is wicked, it is low. And it is indeed the wrong use of the mind which has produced this. Without the mind this perversion did not exist, but it’s the wrong use of the mind which produces this perversion. Well, it has become what is ugly from every point of view, now, what is vulgar and ugly.  There are things, things considered very pretty nowadays...


The Mother: I have seen photographs or reproductions which are considered very ﬁne but they are vulgar in their perversion, and  yet people go into ecstasies over them and ﬁnd them pretty! It’s because there is something deformed, not only without culture, not only undeveloped, but deformed, something that’s much worse, because it is much more difﬁcult to restore something perverted and deformed than to enlighten something ignorant and uneducated. Well, I think some things have been great instruments of perversion, and among these one may put the cinema.  It could have been, and I hope it will become, an instrument of education and development; but for the moment it has been an instrument of perversion, and of a truly hideous perversion:  perversion of taste, perversion of consciousness, and everything with a terrible moral and physical ugliness.


The Mother: Yet it is something which can be used for education, progress, culture and artistic development; and from this point of view it could be a means of spreading beauty and culture much more widely and making them much more accessible to all, than the former methods could do. But it is always like this — for what can be better, if it is not better, it becomes worse. And as I said at the beginning, we are in a period of excesses — excess in every way — a thing tries excessively to perfect itself and falls into excesses of perversion which, relatively, are as great if not greater. And if one looks attentively at oneself, one becomes aware that naturally, as one lives in the world as it is at present, one shares in its vulgarity, and that unless one observes oneself closely and constantly puts the light of one’s highest consciousness upon oneself, one risks making mistakes in taste, from the spiritual point of view, rather frequently.  There we are!


The Mother: Now I am going to give you a meditation this evening, and I am going to see whether you are capable of taking a cerebral bath. Cleansing!  Truly speaking, each time it ought to be different.  The ﬁrst time I told you to meditate upon what we had read, didn’t I? Well, if you like, today we could try to let a purifying consciousness enter into us, which will give us, as I just said jokingly, a brain bath, that is, a good little cleansing — a light which puriﬁes and cleans.


The Mother: But it’s just the attitude of a true politician which I have given here. It’s the ideal politician, my child. One can’t make a better one. It is the circumstances, he says that himself: “a greater force than mine...” it’s the way the world is organised; he started with the best intentions, he tried his very best, he could do nothing, because one can’t do anything in the present circumstances and with politics as it is practised at present.


The Mother: Usually people are not frank enough to say what I have made him say. I have made him speak the truth and this proves that he is extremely frank; otherwise, usually they cover all their misdeeds with beautiful words, but the misdeeds are there all the same. The world is organised in such a way that one can’t be otherwise. If one were a man who did not accept any kind of compromise, one could not remain in politics; one would quite simply be pushed out by the very force of things. There will be a time when all this will change, but not yet.


The Mother: Politics is perhaps the last thing which will change. There are many others which must change before. It is certainly one of the most recalcitrant things.  There are two things which it is very difﬁcult to change: ﬁnance and politics; the ﬁeld of money and the ﬁeld of government are the two points where man is weakest and most attached to falsehood. So, probably, transformation will come there last  of all.


The Mother: One can hope for a social transformation, an economic transformation, a transformation of education; one can hope for all this long before the transformation of politics and of ﬁnance.  I wrote this precisely to show people what the real state of the world is, and to give an indication of the way to get out of it.  But when we are at the point of coming out, you will see that it is not so easy. Perhaps the ﬁrst thing that will be transformed will be the scientiﬁc world, it is possible; because there a very great sincerity is required and a very persevering effort, and these already are qualities which open for you the door to a higher life.... But we shall come to this next time... no, not next time, after two lessons.


The Mother: Here we are, my children. No other questions? Nobody has anything to say?  He has not said that he was religious at all.


The Mother: He hasn’t told us that. He hasn’t said that it was for spiritual or religious reasons that he was trying to do this.   Note that they are all going to a congress on human progress, they are not going to a religious conference at all.  In fact your question makes no sense, because there is nothing in the universe which is not made by the Divine, so from that point of view the question makes no sense.


The Mother: Consciously, in himself, he should be a religious man for him to do something for religious reasons. It is not mentioned, and deliberately not mentioned, so as not to introduce another factor in the problem.  He is not doing this at all as a service to the Divine. He is doing it because he has humanitarian ideas and is trying to improve the human situation upon earth, that’s all. All of them, by the way, all are in the same condition.


The Mother: But this is taken almost exactly after one of them, a famous ﬁgure.  All, all are the Divine’s instruments, if you want to look at it in a certain way. No, they were not at all consciously the Divine’s instruments; not conscious at all, at all, at all. They used to mouth big religious words. I took them away because they were insincerities and I wanted to make my fellow as sincere as possible, and their big religious words were absolutely insincere, it was blackmail; the proof is that they forgot them all immediately as soon as they were victorious.


The Mother: What! How did he...?  (Pavitra)  But who knew it, my man or the other...


The Mother: (Pavitra)  Yes, naturally, all goodwill is open to a deeper consciousness.  That goes without saying. I tell you, I have taken very exceptional persons who are ready to understand, otherwise it could  not be done. I have made them better than they really are, because all had something else behind their aspiration; they are not aware of it, but these are people on the point of understanding and it is in this way, you see, that I could organise the thing; it is not an exact copy of nature, it is something arranged to prove something — that’s all — as always in literature.


The Mother: Gives the hope! I think that it’s not this that gives the hope; if one had before oneself only the model of those who exist in the world, there wouldn’t be much hope.   Oh! It is very easy.


The Mother: It’s simply because they don’t at all understand that it is very easy that I say that it is the last thing that will happen. These things are only appearances and superﬁcial ideas and interests — interests! not even true interests: ideas which they have about their interests. But if the true solution were found... not if it were found — perhaps it is found — if the true economic solution were applied, the very basis of their problems would collapse, there would remain only the political attitude which is very, very superﬁcial. It is very shallow, it has no depth, it is above all just words, very hollow words; it sounds very loud because it is hollow, they are big words. But, you see, the only fairly true support of their attitude lies in the two things I have spoken about: a ﬁnancial support and an economic support.


The Mother: Well, if the economic problem were solved, that is, if the solution were applied, the major part of the support of these political differences would disappear. It is based almost exclusively on an opposite way  of looking at the problems of life and the solution of these problems: these think that it is like this, the others think that it is like that. I am speaking of the most sincere ones, not of those who have constructed things out of nothing at all, precisely, as I said, to make a lot of noise and have a lot of inﬂuence.  But if we go to the heart of the question, there isn’t so much difference.  There are many people — I am speaking of people, not of individuals but governments — who pretend that they are not communists and have a way of acting that’s absolutely communistic, still more drastic than the communists’.


The Mother: Therefore all this is a matter of words. One puts words as one puts a certain cloak on the things one does, it changes just the appearance, but the inside is not very different. Besides, one thing is quite simple, that the whole of mankind follows an evolution, an evolutionary curve, and that there are ages, certain ages in which there is a certain experience which becomes almost universal, that is, terrestrial, entirely terrestrial, but indeed under different names, labels, words; it is nearly the same experience which continues. So there are the old ones which are in the course of disappearing and yet cling on, which yet change the appearance and the substance of certain new things. But it’s only like the tail of something.


The Mother: The whole new movement is going towards an experience which becomes as common as possible, because it is useful only if it is common. If it is localised, it is like a mushroom, it gives no fruit for the general human consciousness. The great human experiences have to be gone through, more or less thoroughly, by the whole of mankind, and it is done in this way. It is only man’s thoughts which ﬁx other words, other forms, other reasons, other justiﬁcations, other legitimisations on what they do; but when one comes to the fact it is very similar. Only, in order to do that, particularly, it is necessary to see beyond the simple appearances.


The Mother: Known to whom?  Ah, of course!   Unfortunately, things become completely clear-cut in this way — to the extent that one can say these are for and these against — only when there is that frightful materialisation of a war, because at that moment it is obvious that the victory of one side is preferable to the victory of the other, not that these are better than the others — this is understood, that from the divine point of view all are equal in worth, it’s the same thing — but because the consequences of the victory are such that the victory of one side is better than that of another. But this is when the thing becomes absolutely brutal, a reciprocal extermination.


The Mother: Otherwise, to tell the real truth, the divine Force acts for its work everywhere, in men’s errors as in their goodwill, through ill-will as through favourable things. There is nothing that’s not mixed; nowhere is there something which could be said to be truly a pure instrument of the Divine, and nowhere is there an absolute impossibility of the Divine’s using a man or action to go forward on the path. So, as long as things are uncertain , the Divine works everywhere almost equally. If men go in for such a great madness, then it is different.


The Mother: But it is truly a “great madness”, in the sense that it precipitates a whole mass of individuals and wills into an activity which leads straight to destruction — their own destruction. I am not speaking of bombs and the destruction of a city or a people, I am speaking of destruction as it is spoken about in the Gita, you see, when it  is said that the Asura goes to his own destruction. That’s what happens, and this is a very great misfortune, because it is always better to be able to save, illumine, transform, than to have to destroy brutally. And it is this terrible choice of the war which is its true horror; it’s that it materialises the conﬂict so brutally and totally that some elements which could have been saved during peace are, because of war, necessarily destroyed — and not only men and things but forces, the conscience of beings.  Politics!


The Mother: I told you at the very beginning that politics is something completely... unconverted. Then how can there be a true political role?  India has a role to fulﬁl in the world. But this is something ideal and one that requires a conversion which... in any case, it has not yet taken place, as far as I know. From the superﬁcial, external point of view she could play her part if she were sincere.


The Mother: That’s all that I can say. But it is also necessary to have the precise knowledge.  ( )  These things cannot be spoken about.


The Mother: What? My Statesman! All must ﬁnd the truth. Then naturally when they have all found the truth, things will be different.


The Mother: So!... We are going to ponder over this problem!   My children, I have to tell you to begin with that this is “literature”. So you should not ask me for explanations.


The Mother: It is a literary way of speaking, you must understand it in a literary way; it is a literary description of the word; it is very precise, but it is literary. So I cannot produce literature on this literature. One must have the taste for forms, for a beautiful way of saying things, a little exceptional, not too banal; but it is just one way, it’s a way of saying things which is charming. Literature exists completely in the way of saying things. You catch what you can of what’s behind.


The Mother: If you are indeed open to the literary meaning, it evokes things for you; but it cannot be explained. It is a means of evocation which corresponds also with music. Naturally, one can analyse literature and see how the sentence is constructed, but this is like your changing a human being into a skeleton.  It is not pretty, a skeleton. It’s the same thing.


The Mother: If in music you study counterpoint, and if this note must necessarily bring in this other, and this group of notes has necessarily to bring in that one, you spoil the music too, you make a skeleton of the music; it is not interesting. These things have to be felt with the corresponding senses, the charm of the phrase with the literary sense — catching the harmony of words and what it evokes.  In each one of these persons it is the same thing: you are given a description of people who have reached the highest human possibility. It is obvious that this Writer is a very great one, the best that can be conceived. Well, he has come to this.


The Mother: And then at last he has realised that it was hollow, that he lacked the essential thing. And for all it will be the same experience.  Last time we said that it was an exceptional Statesman.  Well, we can say this time that it is an exceptional Writer who has reached the psychological point where he can awaken to another consciousness, a higher consciousness. And yet the description he gives is truly that of the highest human possibilities.


The Mother: He did not see things as they are, lifeless, he saw the spirit which was behind, he communicated with it, he tried to express it and he made... he went as far as a human consciousness can go. And then he found himself before a precipice. How to cross over to the other side? Everything is like that, you see.


The Mother: We shall have to repeat the same thing each time.   There, then.  No questions?  It can help you to become more intelligent, to understand things better, to have a sense of literary forms, to cultivate your taste, to know how to choose between a good and a bad way of saying things, to enrich your spirit.


The Mother: It can help you in a hundred different ways.  There are many different kinds of progress. And if one wants to progress integrally, one must progress in all these different directions. Well, this one is an intellectual and artistic progress at the same time, in which both combine. One plays with ideas, is capable of understanding them, classifying them, organising them, and at the same time one plays with the form of these ideas, the way of expressing them, the way of saying, the way of presenting them and making them intelligible.


The Mother: You see, there is no excuse for reading any odd novels except when they are remarkably written and you want to learn the language — if they are written either in your own language or in another one and you want to study this language, then you may read anything at all provided that it is well written. It’s not what is said that’s interesting, it’s the way of saying it. And so the way to read it is exactly to be concerned only with the way it has been said, and not with what is said, which is uninteresting. Only, for instance, in a book, there are always descriptions; well, you see how these descriptions are made and how the author has chosen the words to express things. And for ideas it is the same thing: how he has made his characters speak; you take no interest in what they say but in how they say it.


The Mother: If you take certain books like study books, to learn just how to write sentences well and express things as you should, because these books are very well written, what the story is has not much importance.  But if you start reading books for what they narrate, then in that case you must be much stricter and not take things which darken your consciousness, because that’s a waste of time; it’s worse than a waste of time. So, things like vulgar stories which are written in a vulgar way, about these, you see, there’s no longer any question. These things you should never touch. And yet this is the currency which circulates everywhere, above all in our times, it seems, because men have invented methods for cheap printing, for making cheap illustrations.


The Mother: So they ﬂood the country and all other countries with worthless literature, which is badly written, ill-conceived, and which expresses vulgar things and coarsens you with vulgar ideas and completely spoils your taste through vulgar pictures. All this happens because from the point of view of production they succeed in making things very cheap, what are called popular editions “accessible to all”. But as the aim of these people is not at all either to educate or to  help men to progress, far from that — they hope on the contrary that people don’t progress, because if they did they would no longer buy their wares — so their intention is to make money at the expense of those who read their literature, and so the more it sells, the better it is. It may be frightful, but it’s very good if it sells well. It’s the same thing with art, the same thing with music, the same thing with drama.


The Mother: The latest scientiﬁc discoveries, applied to life, have put within the reach of everyone all kinds of things which formerly were reserved only for the intellectual and artistic ´elite; and to justify their effort and proﬁt by their work, they have made things which can sell most, that is, the lowest, most ordinary, most vulgar things, the easiest to understand because they require no effort and no education. And the whole world is drowned under these things, to such an extent that when there’s someone who has written a good book or a ﬁne play, there is no longer any place for him anywhere, because the whole place has been taken up by these things.  Naturally there are sensible people who try to react; but it is very difﬁcult. First of all the commercial mentality should be driven out from the world. This will take some time.


The Mother: There are a few signs that it is perhaps less respected than before. There was a time when, you see, one was considered a criminal if he didn’t know how to do business, and he who had the audacity to spend his capital, even for very good things, was ﬁt to be sent to a madhouse. It is a little better now, but still we are quite far from the real situation; there is yet the golden calf, there, reigning over the world; before it is pulled down some time will yet go by, I am afraid. This has so perverted men’s mind, that it is for them the criterion. You see, in America when someone is spoken about, it is said: “He, oh, he is worth a million dollars!”


The Mother: This indeed is the greatest compliment one can pay. And it is this: someone asks, “Do you know this person? What is he worth?”  — “He is worth a hundred thousand dollars”, “He is worth ﬁve hundred dollars.” So this means that he has a position which  brings him this.


The Mother: “Is he intelligent, is he stupid? Is he...” This is not at all important. “Is he a good man or a bad one?” That makes no difference at all!


The Mother: “Is he a rich man or a poor one?” If he is rich, ah, ah! “I would like to know him very much! If he is poor, I have nothing to do with him.” There!


The Mother: Naturally America is a young country, so its ways are those of a child, but of a fairly ill-bred child. But the older countries have become too old and can no longer react, they shake their heads and wonder if after all this youth is not right. Everything is like that. The world is very ill.  That’s all.


The Mother: It would be better to ask someone who knows. If you ask someone who, at least, has taste and some knowledge of literature, he won’t make you read badly written books. Now, if you want to read something which helps you from the spiritual point of view, that’s another matter, you must ask someone who has a spiritual realisation to help you.  You see, there are two very different lines; they can converge because everything can be made to converge; but as I said, there are two lines really very different. One is a perpetual choice, not only of what one reads but of what one does, of what one thinks, of all one’s activities, of strictly doing only what can help you on the spiritual path; it does not necessarily have to be very narrow and limited, but it must be on a little higher plane than the ordinary life, and with a concentration of will and aspiration which does not allow any wandering on the path, going here and there uselessly.


The Mother: This is austere; it is difﬁcult to take up this when one is very young, because one feels that the instrument that he is has not been sufﬁciently formed or is not rich enough to be allowed to remain what it is without growing and progressing. So, generally speaking, except for a very small number, it comes later, after a certain development and some  experience of life. The other path is that of as complete, as integral a development as possible of all human faculties, of all that one carries in himself, all one’s possibilities, then, spreading out as widely as possible in all directions, in order to ﬁll one’s consciousness with all human possibilities, to know the world and life and men and their work as it now is, to create a vast and rich base for the future ascent.  Usually this is what we expect of children; except as I said, in absolutely rare, exceptional cases of children who have in them a psychic being which has already had all the experiences before incarnating this time, and no longer needs any more experiences, which only wants to realise the Divine and live Him. But these, you see, are one-in-a-million cases.


The Mother: Otherwise, till a certain age, so long as one is very young, it is good to develop oneself, to spread out as much as possible in all directions, to draw out all the potentialities one holds, and turn them into expressed, conscious, active things, so as to have a fairly solid foundation for the ascent. Otherwise it is a bit poor.  That is why you must learn, love to learn, always learn, not waste your time in... well, in ﬁlling yourself with useless things or doing useless things. You must do everything with this aim, to enrich your possibilities, develop those you have, acquire new ones, and become as complete, as perfect a human being as you can. That is, even on this line you must take things seriously, not simply pass your time because you are here, and waste it as much as possible because you have to pass it somehow.


The Mother: That is the attitude of men in general: they come into life, they don’t know why; they know that they will live a certain number of years, they don’t know why; they think that they will have to pass away because everybody passes away, and they again don’t know why; and then, most of the time they are bored because they have nothing in themselves, they are empty beings and there is nothing more boring than emptiness; and so they try to ﬁll this by distraction, they become absolutely useless, and when they reach the end they have wasted their  whole existence, all their possibilities — and everything is lost.   This you will see: take a thousand men, out of them at least nine hundred and ninety are in this condition. It happens that they are born in certain circumstances or certain others, and they try, you see, to pass their time as well as they can, to be bored as little as possible, to suffer as little as possible, to have as good a time as possible; and everything is dull, lifeless, useless, stupid, and absolutely without any result.


The Mother: There, then. This is the majority of human beings, and they don’t even think... they don’t even ask themselves, “But indeed, why am I here? Why is there an earth? Why are there men?


The Mother: Why do I live?” No, all these things are absolutely uninteresting. The only interesting thing is to try to eat well, to have good fun, be nicely distracted, well married, have children, earn money and have all the advantages one can get from the point of view of desires, and above all, above all not think, not reﬂect, not ask any questions, and avoid all trouble. Yes, and then get out of it like that, without too many catastrophes. This is the general condition; this is what men call being reasonable.


The Mother: And in this way the world can turn round indeﬁnitely for eternity, it will never progress. And this is why all these are like ants; they come, crawl, die, go away, come back, crawl again, die again, and so on. And it can last for eternities like this. Fortunately there are some who do the work of all the others, but it’s only these who will make everything change one day.  So the ﬁrst problem is to know on which side one wants to be: on the side of those who are doing something or the side of those who do nothing; on the side of those who, perhaps, will be able to understand what life is and do what is necessary for this life to culminate in something, or else of those who hardly care to understand anything at all and try to pass their time in having as few botherations as possible.


The Mother: Above all, no botherations!  There we are. This is the ﬁrst choice. After this there are many others.   So there, my children.


The Mother: Now, if you wish to have a meditation, say so. Yes or no?  Yes? Good!


The Mother: Try to eliminate from your consciousness all that is darkly attached to living uselessly.   I had the intention of leaving out the last speeches and going straight to the answer of the Unknown Man. But... I shall tell you, because it didn’t raise... it seemed to me that it didn’t give rise to enough questions to justify all the time we would spend in reading it...


The Mother: but it happens that, for this one, “The Scientist”, someone who, by the way, is not here, has urgently asked two questions which seem interesting to me. So I shall read “The Scientist” today, and next week we shall directly take up “The Unknown Man”.  ( )  So, will you read them, Pavitra? You can’t see well?


The Mother: We can switch on the light again.  (Pavitra)  That is, put plainly the question is this: Isn’t ignorance the ﬁrst and perhaps even the evil of humanity?  Science, which considers the world from the most material point of view, has asserted it; and one of the greatest spiritual masters, one of the greatest enlighteners and minds which have  sought for the solution of the ills of humanity on the extreme opposite plane, has said the same thing — I am speaking of the Buddha. And both are at once right and wrong, in the sense that each of them sees only one side of the question.


The Mother: It is true that one can reduce the difﬁculty to a certain aspect and that this makes it easier to solve the problem, though it’s not sure whether the solution is absolutely effective. But in any case, if we speak of ignorance, if we see the problem from the angle of ignorance — that it’s because man doesn’t have the knowledge that he can’t be saved — it seems obvious. But what knowledge are we speaking about?   The scientist will tell you: Study the laws of Nature, know all that it can teach you and it will give you the knowledge which will enable you to master life and become its possessor instead of being possessed by it.


The Mother: But here we see, according to what we have just read, that as he goes on studying and searching, sincerely and more and more deeply, he becomes aware that there is something which eludes him, because, quite naturally, he comes to the limit of the material world and, there, he faces a precipice; he can no longer carry on his research in what is beyond, because the same methods don’t sufﬁce.  But if we take the question from the other end, we shall see that the ignorance the Buddha was speaking about was not at all that which consists in not knowing that if one swallows poison one is poisoned, or that if one keeps his head under water without breathing, he is sure to be drowned ; it is not even in not knowing how Nature builds the atoms; but for him ignorance consisted in believing that the world was real and that life could be good if one had the good luck to live in favourable conditions.  To come into the world was to be born into ignorance; it was the result, according to him, of a desire to live; and as this desire for life was in itself the supreme ignorance, if one abolished desire, quite naturally after some time one would abolish life, since it is its result — life, the world and all this unhealthy and baneful appearance


The Mother: .   So for him, to come out of the ignorance meant coming out of this false conviction that the world was something real, and above all, from the desire to live which was the supreme stupidity. Only, he found himself facing another problem which was at least as serious, if not still more so than the problem of the scientist. It was that his remedy was good only for the individual; it could apply only to an extremely limited number of individuals who had already undergone countless experiences, through lives as countless, to await the time when they were ready to understand this truth and liberate themselves from the world by liberating themselves from desire, and disappear into Nirvana.  But how can these ﬁnal conversions be sufﬁciently multiplied so as to succeed in making the world disappear?


The Mother: This seems impossible, because the process is progressive and one must pass through all the stages of conscious life until one comes to the state when he is ready to take ﬂight into Nirvana. And so, during all this time, what happens to all these poor people, not only to people but to animals also and to plants, to all this life which suffers and struggles and strains? So, even deprived of all hope... because at least the scientists tell you, “We are going to ﬁnd the means of making life more comfortable for you.” They don’t seem to have discovered this very well, because this kind of comfort complicates life and doesn’t make it more pleasant.  Still at least they give you a gleam of hope, while the other tells you, “Wait, wait.


The Mother: When your turn comes you will pass over to the other side.” But while waiting one is not happy. So perhaps it could be said that this way of approaching the problem is not altogether satisfactory, for it is a purely and exclusively mental way, and can satisfy only those who have a mental life, and they do not form the majority. Besides, this is what has caused all religions to be vulgarised, even those which had at the start something very high and very true to give; they have been obliged to reduce it to the proportion of the human consciousness. For humanity suffers and it is not with beautiful ideas that it is cured.


The Mother: Something else is necessary. This perhaps we shall see at the end when we come to it. For the moment...  (Pavitra)  Yes, there is a way: it is by identiﬁcation.


The Mother: But obviously it is a means which eludes absolutely all physical methods. I think that this weakness comes solely from the method used, because one has remained in an absolutely superﬁcial consciousness; and the phenomenon which took place the ﬁrst time takes place again a second time. If you push your investigation far enough, you suddenly come to a point where your physical methods are no longer of any worth. And in fact one can know only what one is. So if you want to know the universe, you must become the universe.


The Mother: You cannot become the universe physically, you know; but perhaps there is a way of becoming the universe: it is in the consciousness.  If you identify your consciousness with the universal consciousness, then you know what is happening.  But that’s the only way; there are no others. It is an absolute fact that one knows only what one is, and if one wants to know something, one must become that. So you see, there are many people who say, “It is impossible”, but that’s because they remain on a certain plane.


The Mother: It is obvious that if you remain only on the material plane or even on the mental plane, you cannot know the universe, because the mind is not universal; it is only a means of expression of the universe; and it is only by an essential  identiﬁcation that you can then know things, not from outside inwards but from inside outwards. This is not impossible. It is altogether possible. It has been done. But it can’t be done with instruments, however perfected they may be.


The Mother: Here one must once again make something else intervene, other regions, other realities than purely material ones, including the mind which belongs to the physical life, the terrestrial life.   One can know everything, but one must know the way.  And the way is not learnt through books, it cannot be written in numbers. It is only by practising...


The Mother: And here then, it demands an abnegation, a consecration, a perseverance and an obstinacy — still more considerable than what the sincerest, most honest, most unselﬁsh scientists have ever shown. But I must say that the scientiﬁc method of work is a marvellous discipline; and what is curious is that the method recommended by the Buddha for getting rid of desires and the illusion of the world is also one of the most marvellous disciplines ever known on the earth. They are at the two ends, they are both excellent; those who follow one or the other in all sincerity truly prepare themselves for yoga. A small click, somewhere, is enough to make them leave their fairly narrow point of view on one side or the other so as to be able to enter into an integrality which will lead them to the supreme Truth and mastery.  I don’t know whether ignorance is the greatest obstacle on the path of humanity...


The Mother: We said that it was an almost exclusively mental obstacle and that the human being is much more complex than a mental being, though he is supremely mental, for he is its new creation in the world. He represents the last possibility of Nature, and in that, naturally his mental life has taken immense proportions, because he has the pride of being the only one upon earth to have it. He does not always make a good use of it, still it is like this. But it’s not here that he will ﬁnd the solution. He must go beyond.


The Mother: There we are.  Now, has someone else a question? No? No one? ( ) Do you have a question?


The Mother: You think so? Who has told you this?   (in the text)   Ah, ah!


The Mother: It’s he () who has said it. ( )  Perhaps man had to prepare his mind ﬁrst. In the Stone Age his mind was a little rustic, eh!


The Mother: there wasn’t much stuff there.  He had to develop it before being able to go beyond it. It has taken a long time but we have all the same come to something.  It is quite obvious that from the purely mental point of view, of the physical mind, well, we have come a long way since the Stone Age. It is said that we haven’t made much progress because there’s something else which has not been much developed; just because we were much too occupied in playing with a new instrument; yes, it is so interesting to have a new game here!


The Mother: People played with it, they tried all the ways of using it. From the practical point of view their games were above all applications of this, yes! Even the atomic bomb is yet a way of playing; it is a little macabre but still it is a game. It is not with a clear, deﬁnite vision, a plan, an organisation to make the whole thing advance towards the goal, the true goal. It is not that.


The Mother: It was absolutely... it is still... like children in a recreation courtyard: they invent, they search, play, ﬁnd out, they jostle one another, ﬁght, make up, quarrel, discover, destroy, construct. But there is a plan behind; there was a plan; there is still a plan; there is more and more of a plan. And perhaps all this that is playing on the surface, despite all, is leading to something which will come forth one day; perhaps if we speak of it now and think so much about it, it is perhaps... at a given moment surely it must come about, eh!


The Mother: It may take place slowly, by stages, but still there is  a moment when it begins to take place. So it is perhaps that we have reached this moment.  However, we must not anticipate, we shall speak about it next time.  There, then, is that all?


The Mother: No more questions? Nothing? () You have nothing to say this evening?...


The Mother: No? Good. Then,, my children.   When is it going to happen, eh? There.


The Mother: That’s the question I was waiting for.   () What did you want to ask?  You see, I know how to read thoughts.


The Mother: And so, if I were to say that it depends upon you? It is not altogether true, but still there is something true in it.  I think that this will happen the moment there is a sufﬁciently large number of consciousnesses which feel absolutely that it cannot be otherwise. Now, most people, the immense majority among you have to make an effort to imagine what it will be, and at best, speculate upon it and perhaps hope that this transformation will make things more pleasing, more pleasant — something like that. But your consciousness is so attached to what is, that it even ﬁnds it difﬁcult to imagine that things can be otherwise.


The Mother: And until what must be becomes for a sufﬁciently big group of consciousnesses an inevitable necessity, and all that has been and all that still is at present appears like an absurdity which cannot last... it is at that moment that this can take place, not before.  There remains a problem, namely, whether it is something which can take place and will take place individually before occurring collectively. It is probable. But no individual realisation can be complete nor even approach this perfection if it is not in harmony with at least a group of consciousnesses representative of a new world.


The Mother: In spite of everything there is so great an interdependence of the individual and the collectivity,  that the individual realisation, despite all, is limited, impoverished by the irresponsive atmosphere — if I may say so — of what surrounds it. And it is certain that the entire terrestrial life has to follow a certain curve of progress, so that a new world and a new consciousness can manifest. And that is why I said at the beginning that it depends at least partially on you.  Have you ever tried to picture what this new consciousness could be and what a new race could be like, and ﬁnally what a new world could be like?  By analogy, it is quite obvious that the arrival of man upon earth has changed the earth-condition.


The Mother: I cannot say that from a certain point of view this was for the greatest good of all, because there are many who have suffered terribly from it, and here it is obvious that the complications the human being has brought into life have not always been very favourable either for him or for others. But from a certain point of view this has brought about a considerable progress, even in the lower species: man meddled with the life of animals, he meddled with the life of plants, he meddled with the life of metals, of minerals; as I said, it was not always for the greatest joy of those he dealt with, but still it certainly changed their conditions of life considerably.  Well, in the same way, it is probable that the supramental being, whatever it might be, will considerably change the life of the earth. In our heart and our thought we hope that all the evils the earth suffers from will be at least ameliorated if not cured, and that the general conditions will be more harmonious, and in any case more tolerable. This may happen, because it was the very nature of the mental consciousness which incarnated in man, who acted for his own satisfaction, with his own development in view and without much consideration for the consequences of his actions.


The Mother: Perhaps the Supermind will act more harmoniously.  In any case we hope so. That is how we conceive of it.  But I am asking you, in turn, a question: have you thought of it? Have you thought of what it could be?


The Mother: ( ) You, have you thought about it? (  ) You?


The Mother: No? You have thought about it? Then tell me what you have thought. Naturally I am not asking you to repeat to me what you have read in Sri Aurobindo’s books, because that’s not what is in question: you must endeavour to imagine and live something yourself.  Can’t you tell me?


The Mother: Nor you? You can’t tell me?   Perfect! Perfect in comparison with us but not in comparison with what will come later.


The Mother: The world is in perpetual movement and perpetual progression, and it is very obvious that each time a new consciousness has manifested upon earth, one has felt that it would be... perhaps not a deﬁnitive realisation but in any case a considerable progress. And it is also very obvious that for... say, the consciousness of an elephant or a dog... human capacities are something absolutely marvellous. To the extent they are able to understand it, imagine it, sense it — dogs sense them — human faculties are for them something divine. And it is because we, indeed, have come to a stage where we perceive something beyond (that’s what I have said in there, haven’t I?),  it’s because of this that we are not satisﬁed with all that we do;


The Mother: it’s because of this that there is the feeling that whatever we may do, there is something which escapes us — that the real thing escapes us, that we are turning round it but don’t touch it. It’s because we are ready for this something. Otherwise, if we did not understand that, we would be absolutely satisﬁed with what we can do and there would simply remain the effort to do it better and better. It is the beginning of a new expression. This need, for instance, of something which would be more essentially true; something which would be... on which one could count, which does not collapse when one leans upon it, something which gives us a lasting, permanent support; this need of eternity which we  have in ourselves, this need of an absolute, of an absolute truth, an absolute good, an absolute beauty — this indeed awakens at the moment one is ready to receive a new consciousness.


The Mother: It is certain that for a very long time, perhaps from the very beginning (not the beginning from the evolutionary standpoint, because there were periods of intermediate beings who were much nearer the animal than the true man), when this human form was developed enough and ready to receive something from above, when the ﬁrst beings of the higher worlds incarnated in human forms, from that time there were always individuals who carried in themselves this need for eternity and the absolute. But it was something individual. And it is only gradually and very progressively, through consecutive periods of light and darkness, that in the whole of humanity something has awakened to the need of a higher good.  It is quite obvious that now, through all the swirlings and all the stupidities, there is an awakening need, almost a kind of sensation of what this could and should be — which means that the time is near. For a very long time it has been said, “It will be, it will be”, and it was promised...


The Mother: thousands and thousands of years ago they had already begun to promise that there would be a new consciousness, a new world, something divine which would manifest upon earth, but it was said, “It will be, it will be”, like that; they spoke of ages, eons, thousands and millions of years. They did not have this sensation which we now have, that it must come, that it is very close. Of course human life is very short and there is a tendency to wish to shorten the distances so that they may be in proportion to the dimensions; but in spite of all, there will come a moment when it happens... there will be a time when it happens, there will be a time when the movement swings over into a new reality... There was a time when the mental being could manifest upon earth.


The Mother: The starting point might have been poor, very incomplete, very partial, but all the same there was a starting point. Why can’t it be now?... That’s all.   Perhaps if those who from the beginning have proclaimed that it would be, those very people say, “It is going to be...”, after all, perhaps they are the best informed.


The Mother: I am considering how from the beginning of the earth’s history (we shall not go farther back to the antecedents, you know, for we have already enough to do with the earth), from the beginning of the earth’s history, in one form or another, under one name or another, Sri Aurobindo has always presided over the great terrestrial transformations; and so when he tells you, “Well, this is the right time”, perhaps he knows. That’s all that I can say.  So, if it is the right time, this is how the problem is put: there are people who are ready or will become ready, and these precisely will be the ﬁrst to start on the new path. There are others who, perhaps, will become aware of it too late, who will have missed the opportunity; I think there will be many of this kind. But in any case, my point of view is this: even if there should be only half a chance, it would be worth the trouble of trying.


The Mother: For after all... I don’t know... I told you just now, there is a moment when life such as it is, the human consciousness such as it is, seems something absolutely impossible to bear, it creates a kind of disgust, repugnance; one says, “No, it is not that, it is not that; it can’t be that, it can’t continue.” Well, when one comes to this, there is only to throw in one’s — all one’s effort, all one’s strength, all one’s life, all one’s being — into this chance, if you like, or this exceptional opportunity that is given to cross over to the other side. What a relief to set foot on the new path, that which will lead you elsewhere!


The Mother: This is worth the trouble of casting behind much luggage, of getting rid of many things in order to be able to take that leap. That’s how I see the problem.  In fact it is the sublimest of adventures, and if one has in him in the slightest the true spirit of adventure, it is worth risking all for all. But those who are afraid, who wonder, “Am I not going to let go the substance for the shadow?” according to the most banal proverb one can imagine, those who tell themselves, “Bah!  After all it is better to proﬁt by what one has than to risk losing  everything, we don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, let us take precautions”...


The Mother: unfortunately this is very widespread, extremely widespread... well, about those who are in this state of mind, I can assure you of one thing: that even when the thing occurs before their very nose, they will not perceive it. They will say, “It is good, in this way I won’t regret anything.” It is possible. But perhaps later they will; this we do not know.


The Mother: In any case what call being sincere is this: if one thinks that this new realisation is the only thing which is truly worth being lived; if what is, is intolerable — not only for oneself, perhaps not so much for oneself... but still, if one is not absolutely selﬁsh and mean, one feels that, truly, it has lasted long enough, that one has had enough of it, that it must change — well, when one feels like that, one takes everything, all that one is, all that one can, all that one has, and one throws oneself into it completely without ever looking behind, and come what may! I indeed feel that it would be preferable even to plunge into an abyss in this way than to be on the shore, trembling and wondering, “What will happen to me tomorrow if I take this rather rash step?”  There we are.  It is preferable to buck up a little, as they say familiarly, and chance it!


The Mother: That’s my opinion.  Now if you have something else to say, say it. ( )  And you, are you among the satisﬁed ones or among those who want this to change?


The Mother: I won’t ask indiscreet questions!   ( )  To tell you the truth, not very much is asked for life at the moment: just a little — what I call little things.


The Mother: It is obvious,  yes... you see, if you were asked not to live completely like an animal... not completely, because not to live even partially is at present difﬁcult... however, not to live completely like an animal, that is a change in life. But it doesn’t go further than that. You are not asked to live like ethereal spirits; for the moment we go gently, progressively.  No, excuse me!


The Mother: You mean that one thinks that he can bring along his animality into the new consciousness?  But things are not as sharply cut as that. For the animality to disappear completely, the form must be totally transformed. As long as the body-functioning, for instance, remains what it is, well, we shall participate more than enough in the animality, you see; and this indeed can only disappear when, ah well, we no longer have a heart, lungs, a stomach, and all the rest. We say that this will come much later.


The Mother: In fact, the only thing which is very important for the moment is the change of consciousness. And don’t think that this is so easy. If you observe yourself attentively, you will perceive that you think, feel, experience and construct like a human animal, that is, like an infrarational being who is three-fourths subconscious, through almost the whole of your day. It is possible that at certain moments you escape from this; but you still need an effort to escape from it. It may happen spontaneously, as by grace, at certain moments; but most of the time you have to make an effort to be able to catch something which is not purely this.


The Mother: At any time whatever of your day, if you take just a small step backwards and observe yourself, you will catch yourself, you will see that. When is it that... suddenly, you see, if I said all of a sudden, here, now, “Look at yourself!” like that, without  warning you beforehand, what was it, there in the ﬁeld of your consciousness? If you catch that, you will see; certainly at least ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it is the animal that’s there; an animal which is a little improved, you know, not altogether a dog, not altogether a monkey, but still not very far from that.  There are many things which men have transformed into marvellous virtues, which I have found in animals as spontaneous movements — and they at least have the advantage of not being proud and not having any vanity.


The Mother: They did things spontaneously which, surely, were very remarkable — very remarkable in devotion, abnegation, foresight, educative sense. They did them spontaneously and without writing books on them and boasting about them as something marvellous. Therefore much is needed to come out of the animal, much more than one would think.  What, very close? The event?


The Mother: Yes. Otherwise we wouldn’t be speaking about it. If it had to happen in some thousands of years, it is obvious that we wouldn’t need to be concerned with it except as a far-off dream.  Ah, that!... It is possible; but perhaps not many — I mean perhaps not many people.


The Mother: There are beings who could look at themselves at any moment whatever, and who wouldn’t ﬁnd the animal. There are not many of them. One doesn’t speak of things unless one knows them — in any case, one should not.   (


The Mother: ) So you have something to say?   ( )  If you like, in a paradoxical form I would say: What the universe will become.


The Mother: I could also say: Its starting point and its culmination.  And also: What it is from all eternity.  Now, with all this, make up something.  I haven’t read that to you, and it is purposely that I didn’t read it to you. When one writes a drama for a public, one is obliged to say certain things which make it something accessible.


The Mother: Whether it is the truth? Yes... That’s all.  That... There was all the same a time when it became a man, isn’t that so?


The Mother: I told you that, from the standpoint of evolution it seems like that. I indeed am not very well up in all this, you see, I can’t tell you how it happened, at least not what science thinks it knows about what happened. I can tell you only what I know.  Well, there was a time when what we call the human form, that is, with human capacities, was ready enough for a being with mental consciousness, entirely conscious, to be able to incarnate in it — and this indeed was truly the ﬁrst man. Now, historically at what time this happened I can’t tell you; but it was a very long time ago.


The Mother: Sometime ago I came across some numbers, which seemed to me to be absolutely reasonable and accurate —   but that was extremely long ago. And for a long time it was like... a kind of vast and quiet state, as when the sea has reached high-tide and spreads out and is calm. It remained calm like that for a very, very, very, very long time; and it was only after very long that what we call human activity and human civilisation began to take place, and for this, even from the beginning of this till today...


The Mother: we have ﬁgures, haven’t we, approximately...?  () Pavitra, do you know them?  (Pavitra)  There are ﬁgures, but they are quite enormous.


The Mother: And this is only the period that can be called historic — though it isn’t so, ordinarily reckoning — but still, they have discovered signs, documents, indications, something which can give you an idea of the time. Well, all this happened only very long after the ﬁrst mental consciousness incarnated in a human form, which had become sufﬁciently human, you see, to become a man; and probably before this form was produced there must have been numerous trials of Nature which spread out, perhaps over thousands and thousands and millions of years. I don’t know. But there was a time, as I said, when this mental consciousness was able to come and take possession of a form. After this, as I also told you, for very, very long... in order that this form could adapt itself and perfect itself sufﬁciently to express this consciousness completely, a very, very, very long time was necessary — that is understood.


The Mother: Well, it is more than probable that (not more than probable, certain), that it will happen again in the same way.  There will come a time when a human consciousness is in the required state for a supramental consciousness to be able to enter this human consciousness and manifest.  But it is possible that before this becomes a new race like the human race, it may take very, very long. And it will be done progressively. But as I say, there is one thing: when it happens,  it will happen.


The Mother: It does not happen, does not stretch out like a rubber band, you see; there is a time when it happens, when the descent takes place, the fusion occurs, the identiﬁcation comes about. It can be done in a ﬂash. There is a moment when it occurs. Later it may take very, very, very long; one must not hope that overnight one is going to see supermen springing up here and there. No, it won’t be like that.


The Mother: Only, those who will have done what I have said, those who will have thrown themselves in entirely, risked all for all, those will know it. But they will be the only ones to know; they will know when it takes place.  The others? They will not even be aware of it! They will continue their stupid life, without knowing what has happened.


The Mother: (Laughter)  What is the attitude of man towards the animal? No, let us hope that he is a little more kind! ()  But you must not delude yourself.


The Mother: For the supramental consciousness man is truly stupid. Yes, even with all his perfections, all his realisations, all that, even with all his accomplishments, well, he seems stupid. Only, that’s no reason for illtreating him. But I don’t think that the superman will ill-treat anyone, just because he will have a consciousness which will be able to pass behind appearances. Let us hope that he will be quite kind.


The Mother: There we are. That’s all?   I think it is ﬁnished, unless someone has a important question to ask me. Pavitra?


The Mother: (Pavitra)  Ah! () Let us hope that it is not the same attitude as the one which man has towards all his gods, because he has rather ill-treated them. His prophets and his gods, he has put them upon the cross, he has stoned them, has burnt them alive  — indeed, man has behaved rather badly with all those who came to preach a new life to him.


The Mother: Let us hope that man becomes a little more reasonable... Now he would put them in prison.  No, not the being itself: the image he has manufactured after the event, and of which he has made a... a political action. Excuse me, it is god made in man’s image who has been put in temples and adored, for purely political reasons. But those who were in relation with... those who manifested in themselves the Divine Reality, they have been very badly received, always.


The Mother: History is there to prove it. Now, you see, men don’t throw stones any more, except at the poor Negroes sometimes in America; they don’t burn people alive any more, it is no longer the fashion — but they imprison, that happens. And in fact (I have said this already several times), what saves those who are not altogether men, is that today the world is in such a state of ignorance that people don’t even believe any more in the reality of their power.  But certainly if the governments believed in the reality of their power, they would have a bad time of it...  But let us hope that...


The Mother: I should say then as I said for men... that the superman will be quite kind. Well, let us hope for the superman that he will know how to defend himself, that he will have some means of defence, not too visible but sufﬁcient.   No. It is perhaps his greatest means — the gift of invisibility.  (


The Mother: )  You see, you always ask: “But why doesn’t he become a being manifesting supramental forces? Why doesn’t he suddenly become luminous physically? Then we would be able to know that it is he.” Well, you would see what happens to the poor fellow!


The Mother: And it would be only a small thing; to be a little luminous is only a very small thing!  That’s enough for today.   For each thing it is different.  For each activity, each realisation, each movement, there is a deﬁnite period of time, which differs. There are countless periods of time which are entangled; but each thing is regulated by a kind of rhythm which is this thing’s own rhythm.


The Mother: You see, for the facility of their outer existence, men have divided time more or less arbitrarily into years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, etc.; it is a rhythm that’s more or less arbitrary, because it has been created by man, but it has in itself a certain reality, for it corresponds to universal movements... as far as possible. And that is why, by the way, we celebrate the birthday, for example: because there is a certain rhythm in each one’s existence which is established by this regular return of circumstances analogous to those in which he was born.  And all movements — when you observe them, you become aware that they have a certain rhythm — the movements of inner consciousness, for example, not only from the point of view of understanding but that of personal reactions, of the ups and downs in progress; of a fairly regular periodic return, at once of advancing and recoiling, of difﬁculties and of helps. But if each person is attentive he realises that his own rhythm is absolutely particular to him; it is not the same rhythm as his neighbour’s.   But even as the seasons follow a certain rhythm, regular enough on the whole, so the individual life has its seasons.


The Mother: And when one studies oneself attentively, one ﬁnds out that there are even certain repetitions of analogous circumstances at regular intervals.  Even, very sensitive people become aware that there are certain days of the week or certain hours of the day when they can do things more easily. Some of them have particular difﬁculties on particular days and at particular hours; some on the contrary have better inspirations at particular moments — but every one has to ﬁnd this out in himself by observation. Naturally it is far from being absolute, it is not strict, and if it is troublesome, it can be eliminated very easily simply by a little effort of resolute will. But if it helps, one can make use of it.


The Mother: And all this, each thing having its own rhythm, well, it makes an extremely complicated criss-crossing of rhythms, which results in what we see: something which seems to have none — because it is too complicated, it is too complex.  Well, if... let us say, you know... we are speaking of yoga... if you observe in yourself a certain repetition of conditions, for example, that at a particular hour, a certain time of day, in certain circumstances, it is easier for you to concentrate or meditate, well, you make use of that by doing it at that time.  Naturally, you must not become its slave; one can use it but it must not become a necessity so that if the hour has gone by one can’t meditate then. But if it is a good help, one uses the help; it’s all a matter of observation.


The Mother: If you study yourself you can become aware that in the year certain periods come due not only to personal conditions but more general ones — conditions of Nature in general. There are times when you meet more difﬁculties in the sadhana; there are times, on the contrary, when you feel in yourself a greater push for the growth of knowledge and consciousness. This helps you  in the sense that, if at a given time you ﬁnd yourself in the midst of special difﬁculties or something that seems like a stoppage, instead of lamenting you tell yourself, “Why, it’s the usual time; it’s because we are at this particular time of the year.” And you wait with patience for the time to pass; or do what you can, but without being discouraged and saying, “Ah, look, I am not getting on, I am not making any progress.” It helps you to be reasonable.


The Mother: And naturally one can take one more step and take precautions in such a way... inner precautions to be independent of these external inﬂuences. But this comes much later, when one begins to be the conscious master of one’s sadhana. That comes afterwards.  Is that all?  Nothing over there?


The Mother: What do you want to know? What it is?  You have heard of the different centres, haven’t you? And these centres are usually represented as lotuses which at ﬁrst are closed and which gradually open as one progresses spiritually.  The lotus of knowledge is the thousand-petalled lotus.


The Mother: ( ) Is that it?... Yes, so it’s the one in the head; it’s the last in order, before those which are beyond the human body.  It is the lotus of knowledge, the thousand-petalled lotus which blooms; as it is the highest... perfection... it depends on what perfection!...   That is it.


The Mother: There is one above — above the head, but usually it’s not mentioned.  And in the usual order it’s the last to open. I say “in the usual order” because there are cases where it is otherwise: those below open after the upper ones. But still in the usual order, when we speak of the rising of the Kundalini, you see, from the centre of energy, well, it is as it goes on rising that it awakens the corresponding centres; and that centre is the one it reaches last. And as a matter of fact, when this happens, when it reaches that, it is the sign of perfection in the rising of the energy.


The Mother: ( )  I think I have spoken to you about these centres already, and to what each one of them corresponds.  That’s all?


The Mother: No. It’s not altogether like that.  What it means is that all things are potentially contained in the substance constituting man. Only, the organisation is different according to individuals; and the degree of awakening, of the capacity to respond is also different.


The Mother: And this is what makes the difference between the possibilities of individuals. But in fact, essentially each being contains in itself all the universal potentialities. To what extent he is capable of developing them... it’s a kind of hierarchy which is established among individuals and their degree of development.  But, essentially, in each one there is the Divine Presence and therefore the Supreme Consciousness.


The Mother: Only, for some to be able to become conscious of it, it will take thousands and thousands  of years, and others have by inner and outer circumstances come to the moment when they are ready to become aware of it. It is rather a hierarchy in realisation than one in potentialities.  Now in addition to this, some beings manifest something other than a purely human consciousness — but this is something additional; these are exceptional cases. But usually it’s like this: the substance itself contains all the possibilities.  It is as Sri Aurobindo says further on: If the Divine were not in you, never would you be able to know the Divine.


The Mother: That’s what it means.   Oh! It is compared with... it is still compared with a plant; and it is like something which keeps the bud of the ﬂower closed, which ties up, so to say, the bud or ﬂower, ties it up, closes it; these are the things which have to be broken so that the ﬂower can blossom.


The Mother: So it follows the comparison with the lotus, you see: what shuts in the soul, prevents it from being active and manifesting itself; that’s what has to be broken, like links, like ties, things which hold it in; this must be broken, more or less slowly, so that the soul may blossom like a ﬂower. These attachments... he explains what they are, you see... I think it’s here that he says that they are... (


The Mother: ) “obstacles to the inevitable efﬂorescence.”  He also says: “... conﬁned by attachment to ﬁnite appearances.” So it is the same thing, you see; it’s all that attaches you to the ordinary external consciousness, all that ties you to the ordinary life — that’s what shuts up the soul, here, like this, squeezed up closely.  This must be broken. There, then.


The Mother: Something, over there?     (Laughter)   Yes.


The Mother: According to the usual formula, it is like that. It can’t be learnt overnight, no, nobody believes that, I suppose! Only Sri Aurobindo has made... I don’t know, we haven’t yet read it today... he has made a distinction; he says...


The Mother: no, a little further on he speaks of — we shall see this next time — he speaks of the Guru... no... “the more powerful word of the living Guru”; it comes later.  That is, if it is necessary to prepare oneself by studying books, it is a preparation that takes quite a long time. But if it happens that one can receive a direct teaching, and in all circumstances, then it goes much more quickly. When you have nobody to guide you, and have to ﬁnd your way by the help of books, when you don’t even have anyone to tell you, “Read that book rather than this one”, when you have to ﬁnd out everything by yourself, it takes time. Many years.


The Mother: You see, it makes a difference — people don’t realise it — it makes a considerable difference to be able to ask the question of someone who has realised the thing, that is, one who has had all the experiences and has reached the end and has the knowledge of the thing. You can ask him: “Is this good? Is this useful, is this harmful?” Then in one minute you have the answer: “Yes, no, do this, read that, don’t do that.” And it is so convenient.