The Mother: And then, that’s it; if you make a mistake, you say, “Oh! He has a living soul” — it is not that, it is his vital.  In order to ﬁnd the soul you must go in this way ( ), like this, draw back from the surface, withdraw deep within and enter, enter, enter, go down, down, down into a very deep hole, silent, immobile, and there, there’s a kind of... something warm, quiet, rich in substance and very still, and very full, like a sweetness — that is the soul.  And if one is insistent and is conscious oneself, then there comes a kind of plenitude which gives the feeling of something complete that contains unfathomable depths in which, should one enter, one feels that many secrets would be revealed... like the reﬂection in very peaceful waters of something that is eternal.   And one no longer feels limited by time.


The Mother: One has the feeling of having always been and of being for eternity.  That is when one has touched the core of the soul.  And if the contact has been conscious and complete enough, it liberates you from the bondage of outer form; you no longer feel that you live only because you have a body. That is usually the ordinary sensation of the being, to be so tied to this outer form that when one thinks of “myself” one thinks of the body.  That is the usual thing.


The Mother: The personal reality is the body’s reality.  It is only when one has made an effort for inner development and tried to ﬁnd something that is a little more stable in one’s being, that one can begin to feel that this “something” which is permanently conscious throughout all ages and all change, this something must be “myself”. But that already requires a study that is rather deep. Otherwise if you think “I am going to do this”, “I need that”, it is always your body, a small kind of will which is a mixture of sensations, of more or less confused sentimental reactions, and still more confused thoughts which form a mixture and are animated by an impulse, an attraction, a desire, some sort of a will; and all that momentarily becomes “myself” — but not directly, for one does not conceive this “myself” as  independent of the head, the trunk, the arms and legs and all that moves — it is very closely linked.  It is only after having thought much, seen much, studied much, observed much that you begin to realise that the one is more or less independent of the other and that the will behind can make it either act or not act, and you begin not to be completely identiﬁed with the movement, the action, the realisation — that something is ﬂoating.


The Mother: But you have to observe much to see that.  And then you must observe much more still to see that this, the second thing that is there, this kind of active conscious will, is set in motion by “something else” which watches, judges, decides and tries to found its decisions on knowledge — that happens even much later. And so, when you begin to see this “something else”, you begin to see that it has the power to set in motion the second thing, which is an active will; and not only that, but that it has a very direct and very important action on the reactions, the feelings, the sensations, and that ﬁnally it can have control over all the movements of the being — this part which watches, observes, judges and decides.   That is the beginning of control.


The Mother: When one becomes conscious of that, one has seized the thread, and when one speaks of control, one can know, “Ah!  Yes, this is what has the power of control.”  This is how one learns to look at oneself.    Anyway, we have now reached a certitude since there is already a beginning of realisation. We have the proof that in certain conditions the ordinary state of humanity can be exceeded and a new state of consciousness worked out which enables at least a conscious relation between mental and supramental man.


The Mother: It can be asserted with certainty that there will be an intermediate specimen between the mental and the supramental being, a kind of superman who will still have the qualities and in part the nature of man, that is, who will still belong in his most external form to the human being with its animal origin, but will transform his consciousness sufﬁciently to belong in his realisation and activity to a new race, a race of supermen.  This species may be considered a transitional species, for  one can foresee that it will discover the means of producing new beings without going through the old animal method, and these beings — who will have a truly spiritual birth — will constitute the elements of the new race, the supramental race.  So we could call supermen those who, in their origin, still belong to the old method of generation but in their achievement are in conscious and active contact with the new world of supramental realisation.  It seems — it is even certain — that the very substance which will constitute this intermediate world that is already being built up, is richer, more powerful, more luminous, more resistant, with certain subtler, more penetrating new qualities, and a kind of innate capacity of universality, as if its degree of subtlety and reﬁnement allowed the perception of vibrations in a much wider, if not altogether total way, and it removes the sensation of division one has with the old substance, the ordinary mental substance. There is a subtlety of vibration which makes global, universal perception a spontaneous and natural thing.


The Mother: The sense of division, of separation, disappears quite naturally and spontaneously with that substance. And that substance is at present almost universally diffused in the earth atmosphere. It is perceptible in the waking state, simply with a little concentration and a kind of absorption of consciousness, if this is retracted, withdrawn from the ordinary externalisation which seems more and more artiﬁcial and false. This externalisation, this perception which formerly was natural, now seems false, unreal and completely artiﬁcial; it does not at all answer to things as they are, it belongs to a movement which does not correspond to anything really true.  This new perception is asserting itself more and more, becoming more and more natural, and it is even sometimes difﬁcult to recapture the old way of being, as though it were vanishing into a misty past — something which is on the point of ceasing to exist.


The Mother: One may conclude from this that the moment a body, which  was of course formed by the old animal method, is capable of living this consciousness naturally and spontaneously, without effort, without going out of itself, it proves that this is not one single exceptional case but simply the forerunner of a realisation which, even if it is not altogether general, can at least be shared by a certain number of individuals who, besides, as soon as they share it, will lose the perception of being separate individuals and become a living collectivity.  This new realisation is proceeding with what one might call a lightning speed, for if we consider time in the ordinary way, only two years have passed — a little more than two years — from the time the supramental substance penetrated into the earth atmosphere to the time the change in the quality of the earth atmosphere took place.  If things go on advancing at this speed, it seems more than possible, almost evident, that what Sri Aurobindo wrote in a letter is a prophetic announcement: The supramental consciousness will enter a phase of realising power in 1967.   Not to be discouraged! Despondency leads nowhere.


The Mother: To begin with, the ﬁrst thing to tell yourself is that you are almost entirely incapable of knowing whether you are making progress or not, for very often what seems to us to be a state of stagnation is a long — sometimes long, but in any case not endless — preparation for a leap forward. We sometimes seem to be marking time for weeks or months, and then suddenly something that was being prepared makes its appearance, and we see that there is quite a considerable change and  at a time.  As with everything in yoga, the effort for progress must be made for the love of the effort for progress. The joy of effort, the aspiration for progress must be enough in themselves, quite independent of the result. Everything one does in yoga must be done for the joy of doing it, and not in view of the result one wants to obtain....


The Mother: Indeed, in life, always, in all things, the result does not belong to us. And if we want to keep the right attitude, we must act, feel, think, strive spontaneously, for  is what we must do, and not in view of the result to be obtained.  As soon as we think of the result we begin to bargain and that takes away all sincerity from the effort. You make an effort to progress because you feel within you the need, the  need to make an effort and progress; and this effort is the gift you offer to the Divine Consciousness in you, the Divine Consciousness in the Universe, it is your way of expressing your gratitude, offering your self; and whether this results in progress  or not is of no importance. You will progress when it is decided that the time has come to progress and not because you desire it.


The Mother: If you wish to progress, if you make an effort to control yourself for instance, to overcome certain defects, weaknesses, imperfections, and if you expect to get a more or less immediate result from your effort, your effort loses all sincerity, it becomes a bargaining. You say, “See! I am going to make an effort, but that’s because I want this in exchange for my effort.” You are no longer spontaneous, no longer natural.  So there are two things to remember.


The Mother: First, we are incapable of judging the result ought to be. If we put our trust in the Divine, if we say... if we say, “Well now, I am going to give everything, everything, all I can give, effort, concentration, and will judge what has to be given in exchange or even whether anything should be given in exchange, and I do not know what the result should be.” Before we transform anything in ourselves, are we quite sure of the direction, the way, the form that this transformation should take? — Not at all. So, it is only our imagination and usually we greatly limit the result to be obtained and make it altogether petty, mean, superﬁcial, relative.


The Mother: We do not know what the result can truly be, what it ought to be. We know it later. When it comes, when the change takes place, then if we look back, we say, “Ah! That’s it, that is what I was moving towards” — but we know it only later.  Before that we only have vague imaginations which are quite superﬁcial and childish in comparison with the true progress, the true transformation.


The Mother: So we say, ﬁrst point: we have an aspiration but we don’t really know the true result we ought to obtain. Only the Divine can know that.  And secondly, if we tell the Divine, “I am giving you my effort, but, you know, in exchange I must make progress, otherwise I won’t give you anything at all!” — that is bargaining.  That’s all.


The Mother: ()  A spontaneous act, done because one cannot do otherwise, and done as an offering of goodwill, is the only one which truly has any value.   As I had foreseen, I have received a shower of questions to oblige me to explain mentally my supramental experience of the third of February.  You want to make me speak and mentalise the experience until a new system is established and you can sit down comfortably in your new mental construction.... I am sorry to have to disappoint you but this is absolutely impossible.


The Mother: And if you want to understand what I have written, well, make an effort to have a supramental consciousness.  That is all I have to say to you.  And beware of the mania of wanting to replace an old dogma by a new one and saying, “Oh! All that was false, but now we are going to work out a ﬁne practical guide to conduct which will be the true one.”  Well, a mental construction will never be true, and I refuse to make one.


The Mother: I was obliged to use words which men understand, but I did it in the most incoherent way possible! in order not to be too mental, and I refuse to be coherent in the mental fashion; and that, not only for the questions I have here or those I have received in letters, but for all those that are still to come on the same subject. So it will be useless to ask me any.  I would advise the same thing to everyone: Make an effort, work, open yourself, give yourself up entirely to the new Force, and a day will come when you will have the experience.  With the experience you will understand precisely how useless the questions were.


The Mother: The intention of Nature? ... It is what Sri Aurobindo has said from the beginning, that, hidden in the depths, at the core of matter, there is the Divine Presence and that the whole terrestrial evolution is made to prepare the return of the creation to its origin, to this Divine Presence which is at the centre of everything — that is the intention of Nature.  The universe is an objectivisation of the Supreme, as if He had objectivised himself outside of himself in order to see himself, to live himself, to know himself, and so that there might be an existence and a consciousness capable of recognising him as their origin and uniting consciously with him to manifest him in the becoming. There is no other reason for the universe.


The Mother: The earth is a kind of symbolic crystallisation of universal life, a reduction, a concentration, so that the work of evolution may be easier to do and follow. And if we see the history of the earth, we can understand why the universe has been created. It is the Supreme growing aware of himself in an eternal Becoming; and the goal is the union of the created with the Creator, a union that is conscious, willing and free, in the Manifestation.  That is the secret of Nature. Nature is the executive Force, it is she who does the work.


The Mother: And she takes up this creation, which appears to be totally inconscient but which contains the Supreme Consciousness and sole Reality and she works so that all this can develop, become self-aware and realise itself fully. But she does not show it from  the very beginning. It develops gradually, and that is why at the start it is a secret which will be unveiled as it nears the end.  And man has reached a point in the evolution high enough for this secret to be unveiled and for what was done in an apparent inconscience to be done consciously, willingly, and therefore much more rapidly and in the joy of realisation.  In man one can already see that the spiritual reality is being developed and that it is going to express itself totally and freely.


The Mother: Formerly, in the animal and the plant, it was... it was necessary to be very clear-sighted to see it, but man is himself conscious of this spiritual reality, at least in the higher part of his human existence. Man is beginning to know what the Supreme Origin wants of him and is collaborating in carrying it out.  Nature wants the creation to become conscious of being the Creator himself in an objectivisation, that is to say, there is no difference between the Creator and the Creation, and the goal is a conscious and realised union. That is the secret of Nature.


The Mother: Whose inconscience?  No, Nature is not unconscious, but she has an of unconsciousness. It began with the inconscience, but in the depths of the inconscience there was consciousness, and this consciousness is gradually developing. For instance, mineral nature, stones, earth, metals, water, air, all this seems to be quite unconscious, although if one observes closely... And now science is discovering that this is only an appearance, that all this is only  concentrated energy, and of course it is a conscious force which has produced all this.


The Mother: But apparently, when we see a rock, we don’t think it is conscious, it does not give the impression of being conscious, it seems to be altogether unconscious.  It is the appearance that is inconscient. It becomes more and more conscious. Even in the mineral kingdom there are phenomena which reveal a hidden consciousness, like certain crystals, for instance. If you see with what precision, what exactitude and harmony they are formed, if you are in the least open, you are bound to feel that behind there’s a consciousness at work, that this cannot be the result of unconscious chance.


The Mother: Have you seen rock-crystals? ... You have never seen a rockcrystal?  It is pretty, isn’t it? It is something very artistic.


The Mother: And the movements of the sea, the movements of the air, of the wind, one can’t help feeling that behind there is a consciousness or even many consciousnesses at work. In fact, it is like that. Only the most superﬁcial appearance is inconscient.  ( )


The Mother: Is that all?  Indeed, in every being, the whole process of evolution is reproduced, as if at a dizzy speed one were reviewing all that has been done, and as if it were necessary to relive all that in a ﬂash before taking the next step.  ( ) The start, the great journey in the inconscience, in darkness, oblivion, unconsciousness, the awakening... and the return to the light.   As the beginnings of the supramental life, which must be the next realisation in the unfolding of the universe, develop, perhaps not in a very obvious way but very surely, it becomes more and more  obvious that the most difﬁcult way to approach this supramental life is intellectual activity.


The Mother: It could be said that it is much more difﬁcult to pass from the mental to the supramental life than to pass from a certain psychic emotion in life — something that is like a reﬂection, a luminous emanation of the divine Presence in matter — to the supramental consciousness; it is much easier to pass from that into the supramental consciousness than to pass from the highest intellectual speculation to any supramental vibration. Perhaps it is the word that misleads us! Perhaps it is because we call it “supramental” that we expect to reach it through a higher intellectual mental activity? But the fact is very different. With this very high, very pure, very noble intellectual activity, one seems to move towards a kind of cold, powerless abstraction, a frozen, an icy light which is surely very remote from life and still further away from the experience of the supramental reality.


The Mother: In this new substance which is spreading and acting in the world, there is a warmth, a power, a joy so intense that all intellectual activity seems cold and dry beside it. And that is why the less one talks about these things the better it is. A single moment, a single impulse of deep and true love, an instant of the understanding which lies in the divine Grace brings you much closer to the goal than all possible explanations.  Even a kind of reﬁned sensation, subtle, clear, luminous, acute, which penetrates deep, opens the door for you more than the subtlest explanations.  And if we carry the experience still further, it seems that when one comes to the work of transformation of the body, when some cells of the body, more ready than others, more reﬁned, more subtle, more plastic, are able to feel concretely the presence of the divine Grace, the divine Will, the divine Power, this Knowledge that is not intellectual but a knowledge


The Mother: by identity, when one feels this in the cells of the body, then the experience is so total, so imperative, so living, concrete, tangible, real that everything else seems a vain dream.   And so we may say that it is truly when the circle is complete and the two extremities touch, when the highest manifests in the most material, that the experience will be truly conclusive.  It seems that one can never truly understand until one understands with one’s body.   It is a mind that does not attempt to deceive itself. And in fact it is not an “attempt”, for it succeeds very well in doing it!


The Mother: It would seem that in the ordinary psychological constitution of man, the almost constant function of the mind is to give an acceptable explanation of what goes on in the “desirebeing”, the vital, the most material parts of the mind and the subtlest parts of the body. There is a kind of general complicity in all the parts of the being to give an explanation and even a comfortable justiﬁcation for everything we do, in order to avoid as far as possible the painful impressions left by the mistakes we commit and undesirable movements. For instance, unless one has undergone or taken up a special training, whatever one does, the mind gives itself a favourable enough explanation of it, so that one is not troubled. Only under the pressure of outer reactions or circumstances or movements coming from other people, does one gradually consent to look less favourably at what one is and does, and begins to ask oneself whether things could not be better than they are.  Spontaneously, the ﬁrst movement is what is known as self-defense.


The Mother: One puts oneself on one’s guard and quite spontaneously one wants a justiﬁcation... for the smallest things, absolutely insigniﬁcant things — it is a normal attitude in life.  And explanations — one gives them to oneself; it is only under the pressure of circumstances that one begins to give them to others or to another, but ﬁrst one makes oneself very comfortable; ﬁrst thing: “It was like that, for it had to be like that, and it happened because of this, and...”, and it is always the fault of circumstances or other people. And it truly requires an effort   — unless, as I say, one has undergone a discipline, has acquired the habit of doing it automatically — it requires an effort to begin to understand that perhaps things are not like this, that perhaps one has not done exactly what one ought to have done or reacted as one should.


The Mother: And even when one begins to see it, a much greater effort is needed to recognise it... ofﬁcially.  When one begins to see that one has made a mistake, the ﬁrst movement of the mind is to push it into the background and to put a cloak in front of it, the cloak of a very ﬁne little explanation, and as long as one is not obliged to show it, one hides it. And this is what I call “lack of mental honesty”.  First, one deceives oneself by habit, but even when one begins not to deceive oneself, instinctively there is a movement of trying, trying to deceive oneself in order to feel comfortable.  And so a still greater step is necessary once one has understood that one was deceiving oneself, to confess frankly, “Yes, I was deceiving myself.”


The Mother: All these things are so habitual, so automatic, as it were, that you are not even aware of them; but when you begin to want to establish some discipline over your being, you make discoveries which are really tremendously interesting. When you have discovered this, you become aware that you are living constantly in a... the best word is “self-deception”, a state of wilful deceit; that is, you deceive yourself spontaneously. It is not that you need to reﬂect: spontaneously you put a pretty cloak over what you have done so that it doesn’t show its true colours... and all this for things which are so insigniﬁcant, which have so little importance! It would be understandable, wouldn’t it, if recognising your mistake had serious consequences for your very existence — the instinct of self-preservation would make you do it as a protection — but that is not the question, it concerns things which are absolutely unimportant, of no consequence at all except that of having to tell yourself, “I have made a mistake.”


The Mother: This means that an effort is needed in order to be mentally  sincere. There must be an effort, there must be a discipline.  Of course, I am not speaking of those who tell lies in order not to be caught, for everybody knows that this should not be done. Besides, the most stupid lies are the most useless, for they are so ﬂagrant that they can’t deceive anyone. Such examples occur constantly; you catch someone doing something wrong and tell him, “That’s how it is”; he gives a silly explanation which nobody can understand, nobody can accept; it is silly but he gives it in the hope of shielding himself.


The Mother: It is spontaneous, you see, but he knows this is not done. But the other kind of deception is much more spontaneous and it is so habitual that one is not aware of it. So, when we speak of mental honesty, we speak of something which is acquired by a very constant and sustained effort.  You catch yourself, don’t you, you suddenly catch yourself in the act of giving yourself somewhere in your head or here (), here it is more serious... giving a very favourable little explanation. And only when you can get a grip on yourself, there, hold fast and look at yourself clearly in the face and say, “Do you think it is like that?”


The Mother: , then, if you are very courageous and put a very strong pressure, in the end you tell yourself, “Yes, I know very well that it is not like that!”  It sometimes takes years. Time must pass, one must have changed much within oneself, one’s vision of things must have become different, one must be in a different condition, in a different relation with circumstances, in order to see clearly, completely, how far one was deceiving oneself — and at that moment one was convinced that one was sincere.   ()


The Mother: It is probable that perfect sincerity can only come when one rises above this sphere of falsehood that is life as we know it on earth, mental life, even the higher mental life.  When one springs up into the higher sphere, into the world  of Truth, one will be able to see things as they truly are, and seeing them as they are, one will be able to live them in their truth. Then all falsehoods will naturally crumble. And since the favourable explanations will no longer have any purpose, they will disappear, for there will be nothing left to explain.  Things will be self-evident, Truth will shine through all forms, the possibility of error will disappear.


The Mother: Today I have been asked to speak to you about the Avatar.  The ﬁrst thing I have to say is that Sri Aurobindo has written on this subject and the person who has asked me the question would do well to begin by reading what Sri Aurobindo has written.  I shall not speak to you about that, for it is better to read it for yourself.  But I could speak to you of a very old tradition, more ancient than the two known lines of spiritual and occult tradition, that is, the Vedic and Chaldean lines; a tradition which seems to have been at the origin of these two known traditions, in which it is said that when, as a result of the action of the adverse forces — known in the Hindu tradition as the Asuras — the world, instead of developing according to its law of Light and inherent consciousness, was plunged into the darkness, inconscience and ignorance that we know , the Creative Power implored the Supreme Origin, asking him for a special intervention which could save this corrupted universe; and in reply to this prayer there was emanated from the Supreme Origin a special Entity, of Love and Consciousness, who cast himself directly into the most inconscient matter to begin there the work of awakening it to the original Consciousness and Love.


The Mother: In the old narratives this Being is described as stretched out in a deep sleep at the bottom of a very dark cave, and in his sleep there emanated from him prismatic rays of light which gradually spread into the Inconscience and embedded themselves in all the elements of this Inconscience to begin there the work of Awakening.  If one consciously enters into this Inconscient, one can still see there this same marvellous Being, still in deep sleep, continuing his work of emanation, spreading his Light; and he will continue to do it until the Inconscience is no longer inconscient, until Darkness disappears from the world — and the whole creation awakens to the Supramental Consciousness.  And it is remarkable that this wonderful Being strangely resembles the one whom I saw in vision one day, the Being who is at the other extremity, at the conﬁnes of form and the Formless. But that one was in a golden, crimson glory, whereas in his sleep the other Being was of a shining diamond whiteness emanating opalescent rays.  In fact, this is the origin of all Avatars.


The Mother: He is, so to say, the ﬁrst universal Avatar who, gradually, has assumed more and more conscious bodies and ﬁnally manifested in a kind of recognised line of Beings who have descended from the Supreme to perfect this work of preparing the universe so that, through a continuous progression, it may become ready to receive and manifest the supramental Light in its entirety.  In every country, every tradition, the event has been presented in a special way, with different limitations, different details, particular features, but truly speaking, the origin of all these stories is the same, and that is what we could call a direct, conscious intervention of the Supreme in the darkest matter, without going through all the intermediaries, in order to awaken this Matter to the receptivity of the Divine Forces.  The intervals separating these various incarnations seem to become shorter and shorter, as if, to the extent that Matter  became more and more ready, the action could accelerate and become more and more rapid in its movement, more and more conscious too, more and more effective and decisive.  And it will go on multiplying and intensifying until the entire universe becomes the total Avatar of the Supreme.    In fact, so long as there is any doubt or hesitation, so long as one asks oneself the question of whether one has or hasn’t realised this eternal soul in oneself, it proves that the contact has not taken place.


The Mother: For, when the phenomenon occurs, it brings with it an inexpressible something, so new and so deﬁnitive, that doubt and questioning are no longer possible. It is truly, in the absolute sense of the phrase, a new birth.  You become a new person, and whatever may be the path or the difﬁculties of the path afterwards, that feeling never leaves you. It is not even something — like many other experiences — which withdraws, passes into the background, leaving you externally with a kind of vague memory to which it is difﬁcult to cling, whose remembrance grows faint, blurred — it is not that.   You a new person and deﬁnitively that, whatever happens


The Mother: .  And even all the incapacity of the mind, all the difﬁculties of the vital, all the inertia of the physical are unable to change this new state — a new state which makes a break in the life of the consciousness. The being one was before and the being one is after, are no longer the same. The position one has in the universe and in relation to it, in life and in relation to it, in understanding and in relation to it, is no longer the same: it is a true reversal which can never be undone again. That is why when people tell me, “I would like to know whether I am in contact with my soul or not”, I say, “If you ask the question, that is enough to prove that you are not.


The Mother: You don’t need an answer, you are giving it to yourself.” When it is, it is that, and then it is ﬁnished, it is no longer anything else.  And since we are speaking of that, I shall remind you of what Sri Aurobindo has said, repeated, written, afﬁrmed and said over and over again, that his yoga, the integral yoga, can begin that experience, not before.  So, one must not cherish any illusions and fancy that one can begin to know what the supermind is and form any idea of it or assess it in any way, however minimal, before having had  experience.  Therefore, if you want to advance on the path, you must very modestly start on your way towards the new birth, ﬁrst, and realise it before cherishing the illusion that you can have supramental experiences.


The Mother: To console you I may tell you that by the very fact that you live on earth at this time — whether you are conscious of it or not, even whether you want it or not — you are absorbing with the air you breathe this new supramental substance which is now spreading in the earth atmosphere. And it is preparing things in you which will manifest, as soon as you have taken the decisive step.   ( )


The Mother: Whether this will help you to take the decisive step or not is another question which remains to be studied, for the experiences which are occurring and will occur more and more frequently now, being of a radically new kind, we can’t know beforehand what is going to happen; we must study, and after a thorough study we shall be able to say with certainty whether this supramental substance makes the work of new birth easier or not.... I shall tell you this a little later. For the moment it is better not to rely on these things and, very simply, to start on your way to be born into the spiritual life.  When this happens to you, almost all the questions you ask yourself or ask me will be solved.  And anyway, your attitude to life will be different that you will understand what is meant when one speaks of living spiritually.


The Mother: And at that moment you will also understand a thing, a very great thing: how to live without ego.  Until then, you cannot understand it. The whole of life is so dependent on the ego that it seems absolutely impossible to live and act except with or by the ego, but after this new birth you can look at the ego with a smile and say to it, “My friend, I don’t need you any more.”  This is also one of the results which brings you a very decisive sense of liberation.   That depends on what we call “being”.


The Mother: If for “being” we substitute “presence”, yes, there is a spiritual presence in everyone.   If we call “being” an organised entity, fully conscious of itself, independent, and having the power of asserting itself and ruling the rest of the nature — no! The possibility of this independent and all-powerful being is in everybody, but the realisation is the result of long efforts which sometimes extend over many lives.  In everyone, even at the very beginning, this spiritual presence, this inner light is there....


The Mother: In fact, it is everywhere. I have seen it many a time in certain animals. It is like a shining point which is the basis of a certain control and protection, something which, even in half-consciousness, makes possible a certain harmony with the rest of creation so that irreparable catastrophes may not be constant and general. Without this presence the  disorder created by the violences and passions of the vital would be so great that at any moment they could bring about a general catastrophe, a sort of total destruction which would prevent the progress of Nature. That presence, that spiritual light — which could almost be called a spiritual consciousness — is within each being and all things, and because of it, in spite of all discordance, all passion, all violence, there is a minimum of general harmony which allows Nature’s work to be accomplished.


The Mother: And this presence becomes quite obvious in the human being, even the most rudimentary. Even in the most monstrous human being, in one who gives the impression of being an incarnation of a devil or a monster, there is something within exercising a sort of irresistible control — even in the worst, some things are impossible. And without this presence, if the being were controlled exclusively by the adverse forces, the forces of the vital, this impossibility would not exist.  Each time a wave of these monstrous adverse forces sweeps over the earth, one feels that nothing can ever stop the disorder and horror from spreading, and always, at a certain time, unexpectedly and inexplicably a control intervenes, and the wave is arrested, the catastrophe is not total. And this is because of the Presence, the supreme Presence, in matter.


The Mother: But only in a few exceptional beings and after a long, very long work of preparation extending over many, many lives does this Presence change into a conscious, independent, fully organised being, all-powerful master of his dwelling-place, conscious enough, powerful enough, to be able to control not only this dwelling but what surrounds it and in a ﬁeld of radiation and action that is more and more extensive... and effective.      One point is very remarkable — I don’t remember whether Sri Aurobindo speaks about it in what follows — but among the four activities or realisations he mentions — religion, occultism, spiritual philosophy and spiritual experience — which are necessary for the development and transformation of man, all are not equally accessible to humanity.  The one which can be practised and, one might say, “understood” — although it is certainly not an “understanding” — by the greatest number of human beings — those who live almost exclusively in the physical consciousness — is the religious method, precisely because it is based on ﬁxed creeds and practices. Simply by an act of faith or a collective suggestion — above all a collective suggestion — many human beings who have not yet reached any considerable inner development can take up the path of religion.  For occultism we must already have come to a second stage of development and be more conscious in the vital world to be able to come into contact with the play of forces, which is indispensable in order to manipulate them.


The Mother: As for spiritual philosophy, only the few who have a fairly complete mental development and are fully conscious on the intellectual plane, can usefully adopt this method; otherwise it is a dead letter for all those who don’t have an ability for mental gymnastics and so cannot follow all the acrobatics of the mind.  And ﬁnally, Sri Aurobindo has told us somewhere in  that to follow the path of spiritual experience, one must have within oneself a “spiritual being”, one must be “twice born” as it is said, for if one doesn’t have a spiritual being within,  which is at least on the point of becoming self-aware, one may try to imitate these experiences but it will only be crude imitation or hypocrisy, it won’t be a reality.  Therefore, in order to follow these four paths simultaneously and to practise them with an integral beneﬁt for the being, one must already be a complete individual, capable of having a conscious life in the four principal elements of human and spiritual nature.


The Mother: Of course, this inner development is not always apparent and we may meet someone who has within him a conscious spiritual entity, ready for the most beautiful experiences, though externally he seems quite crude and incomplete.  Nor is it necessary to follow this development in the order in which it has been mentioned, but if we want our realisation to be integral and to arrive at a total transformation of our being, we must be able to use the essence of what each of these methods can bring.  The psychic or spiritual consciousness gives you the deep inner realisation, contact with the Divine, liberation from external fetters; but for this liberation to be effective, for it to have an action on the rest of the being, the mind must be open enough to be able to hold the spiritual light of Knowledge, the vital must be powerful enough to handle the forces behind appearances and dominate them, and the physical should be disciplined, organised enough to be able to the deep experience, in the movements of each day and each moment, and live it integrally.   If one of these things is lacking, the result is not complete.


The Mother: One can make light of this thing or that under the pretext that it is not the most important, the central Thing — and to neglect outer things certainly cannot prevent you from entering into spiritual communion with the Supreme, but that is good only for a ﬂight from life.   If we are to be total, complete beings, to have an integral realisation, we should be able to express our spiritual experience mentally, vitally and physically. And the more our expression is  perfect, executed by a complete and perfect being, the more integral and perfect will our realisation be.  For someone who wants to follow the integral yoga nothing is useless and nothing must be neglected....


The Mother: The main thing is to know how to put each thing in its place and to hand over the government to what truly has the right to govern.    This seems to be a very exact description of individual development. It is exactly like that. And so you lose patience or lose courage, for you feel that you are not advancing. But when you engage in the development of the body — material, physical development — when you want the physical body to do sadhana, it is exactly like that.


The Mother: You begin by trying out all kinds of things without precision or exactitude, without knowing which end to begin with, and you feel you are groping, searching, going round and round and going nowhere. And then, gradually, one thing comes up and then another, and it is only much later that something like a programme begins to be worked out. And this description Sri Aurobindo gives at the end, when the goal of evolution emerges and becomes perceptible, how much care must be taken for it not to be engulfed once again in the primal Inconscience!  And that is why the work seems... interminable. And yet this is the only way it can be done.


The Mother: The road to be covered between the usual state of the body, the almost total inconscience to which we are accustomed because we are “like that”, and the perfect awakening of consciousness, the response of all the cells, all the organs, all the functionings... between the two there seem to be centuries of labour. However, if one has learnt to open, to aspire, give oneself up, and if one can make use of these same movements in the body, teach the cells to do the same thing, then things go much faster. But much faster does not mean fast; it is still a long and slow work. And each time that an element which has not entered the movement of transformation wakes up to enter it, one feels that everything must be started again — all that one believed had been done must be done once more.  But it is not true, it is not the same thing that one does again, it is something similar in a new element which was either forgotten or else left aside because it was not ready, and which, now that  it is ready, awakens and wants to take its place.


The Mother: There are many elements like that....  The body seems to you to be something very simple, doesn’t it? It is a body, it is “my” body, and after all it has a single form — but it is not like that! There are hundreds of combined entities unaware of each other, all harmonised by something deeper which they do not know, and having a perception of unity only because they are not conscious of the multiplicity of the elements and their divergence.  In fact, this multiplicity and divergence are the cause of most disorders and even illnesses.


The Mother: Something is going well, you have caught the guiding thread, you are following your path, you think you are going to get a result, and then, suddenly, there!  — something happens quite unexpectedly, you did not know it was there: it wakes up and insists on joining the march. But it creates a terrible disorder and you must begin everything over again.  The sadhana of all the inner beings, inner domains, has been done by many people, has been explained at length, systematised by some, the stages and paths have been traced out and you go from one stage to another, knowing that it has to be like that; but as soon as you go down into the body , it is like a virgin forest....


The Mother: And everything is to be done, everything is to be worked out, everything is to be built up. So you must arm yourself with patience, patience, and not think that you are good for nothing because it takes so much time.  You must never be despondent, never tell yourself, “Oh! This is not for me!” Everyone can do it, if he puts into it the time, the courage, the endurance and the perseverance that are demanded.


The Mother: But all this is needed. And above all, above all, never lose heart, be ready to begin the same thing again ten times, twenty times, a hundred times — until it is really done.  And one often feels that unless done, unless the work is ﬁnished, well, it is as if one had done nothing.    Faith is certainly a gift given to us by the Divine Grace. It is like a door suddenly opening upon an eternal truth, through which we can see it, almost touch it.


The Mother: As in everything else in the ascent of humanity, there is the necessity — especially at the beginning — of personal effort. It is possible that in some exceptional circumstances, for reasons which completely elude our intelligence, faith may come almost accidentally, quite unexpectedly, almost without ever having been solicited, but most frequently it is an answer to a yearning, a need, an aspiration, something in the being that is seeking and longing, even though not in a very conscious and systematic way. But in any case, when faith has been granted, when one has had this sudden inner illumination, in order to preserve it constantly in the active consciousness individual effort is altogether indispensable. One must to one’s faith, one’s faith; one must seek it, cultivate it, protect it.  In the human mind there is a morbid and deplorable habit of doubt, argument, scepticism.


The Mother: is where human effort must be put in: the refusal to admit them, the refusal to listen to them and still more the refusal to follow them. No game is more dangerous than playing mentally with doubt and scepticism. They are not only enemies, they are terrible pitfalls, and once one falls into them, it becomes tremendously difﬁcult to pull oneself out.  Some people think it is a very great mental elegance to play with ideas, to discuss them, to contradict their faith; they think that this gives them a very superior attitude, that in this way they are above “superstitions” and “ignorance”; but if you listen to suggestions of doubt and scepticism, you fall into the grossest ignorance and stray away from the right path. You enter into confusion, error, a maze of contradictions....


The Mother: You are not always sure you will be able to get out of it. You go so far away from the inner truth that you lose sight of it and sometimes lose too all possible contact with your soul.  Certainly a personal effort is needed to preserve one’s faith, to let it grow within. Later — much later — one day, looking  back, we may see that everything that happened, even what seemed to us the worst, was a Divine Grace to make us advance on the way; and then we become aware that the personal effort too was a grace. But before reaching that point, one has to advance much, to struggle much, sometimes even to suffer a great deal.


The Mother: To sit down in inert passivity and say, “If I am to have faith I shall have it, the Divine will give it to me”, is an attitude of laziness, of unconsciousness and almost of bad-will.  For the inner ﬂame to burn, one must feed it; one must watch over the ﬁre, throw into it the fuel of all the errors one wants to get rid of, all that delays the progress, all that darkens the path. If one doesn’t feed the ﬁre, it smoulders under the ashes of one’s unconsciousness and inertia, and then, not years but lives, centuries will pass before one reaches the goal.  One must watch over one’s faith as one watches over the birth of something precious, and protect it very carefully from everything that can impair it.  In the ignorance and darkness of the beginning, faith is the most direct expression of the Divine Power which comes to ﬁght and conquer.


The Mother: In the life of societies it is a necessity, for it serves as a corrective to collective egoism which, without this control, could take on excessive proportions.  The level of collective consciousness is always lower than the individual level. It is very noticeable, for example, that when men gather in a group or collect in great numbers, the level of consciousness falls a great deal. The consciousness of crowds is much lower than individual consciousness, and the collective consciousness of society is certainly lower than the consciousness of the individuals constituting it.  There it is a necessity.


The Mother: In ordinary life, an individual, whether he knows it or not, always has a religion but the object of his religion is sometimes of a very inferior kind.... The god he worships may be the god of success or the god of money or the god of power, or simply a family god: the god of children, the god of the family, the god of the ancestors. There is always a religion. The quality of the religion is very different according to the individual, but it is difﬁcult for a human being to live and to go on living, to survive in life without having something like a rudiment of an ideal which serves as the for his existence. Most of the time he doesn’t know it and if he were asked what his ideal is, he would be unable to formulate it; but he has one, vaguely, something that seems to him the most precious thing in life.


The Mother: For most people, it is security, for instance: living in security, being in conditions where one is sure of being able to go on existing. That is one of the great “aims”, one might say,  one of the great motives of human effort. There are people for whom comfort is the important thing; for others it is pleasure, amusement.  All that is very low and one would not be inclined to give it the name of an ideal, but it is truly a form of religion, something which may seem to be worth consecrating one’s life to.... There are many inﬂuences which seek to impose themselves on human beings by using that as a basis.


The Mother: The feeling of insecurity, uncertainty, is a kind of tool, a means used by political or religious groups to inﬂuence individuals. They play on these ideas.  Every political or social idea is a sort of lower expression of an ideal which is a rudimentary religion. As soon as there is a faculty of thought, there is necessarily an aspiration for something higher than the most brutal daily existence from minute to minute, and this is what gives the energy and possibility of living.  Of course, one could say that it is the same thing for individuals as for collectivities, that their value is exactly proportionate to the value of their ideal, their religion, that is, of the thing they make the summit of their existence.


The Mother: Of course, when we speak of religion, if we mean the recognised religions, truly, everyone has his own religion, whether he knows it or not, even when he belongs to the great religions that have a name and a history. It is certain that even if one learns the dogmas by heart and complies with a prescribed ritual, everybody understands and acts in his own way, and only the name of the religion is the same, but this same religion is not the same for all the individuals who think they are practising it.  We can say that without some expression of this aspiration for the Unknown and the highest, human existence would be very difﬁcult. If there were not at the heart of every being the hope of something better — of whatever kind — he would have difﬁculty in ﬁnding the energy needed to go on living.


The Mother: ( )   But as very few individuals are capable of thinking freely, it is much easier to join a religion, accept it, adopt it and become a part of that religious collectivity than to formulate one’s own cult for oneself. So, apparently, one is this or that, but in fact it is only an appearance.   There are different kinds of intuition, and we carry these capacities within us.


The Mother: They are always active to some extent but we don’t notice them because we don’t pay enough attention to what is going on in us.  Behind the emotions, deep within the being, in a consciousness seated somewhere near the level of the solar plexus, there is a sort of prescience, a kind of capacity for foresight, but not in the form of ideas: rather in the form of feelings, almost a perception of sensations. For instance, when one is going to decide to do something, there is sometimes a kind of uneasiness or inner refusal, and usually, if one listens to this deeper indication, one realises that it was justiﬁed.  In other cases there is something that urges, indicates, insists — I am not speaking of impulses, you understand, of all the movements which come from the vital and much lower still — indications which are behind the feelings, which come from the affective part of the being; there too one can receive a fairly sure indication of the thing to be done. These are forms of intuition or of a higher instinct which can be cultivated by observation and also by studying the results.


The Mother: Naturally, it must be done very sincerely, objectively, without prejudice. If one wants to see things in a particular way and at the same time practise this observation, it is all useless. One must do it as if one were looking at what is happening from outside oneself, in someone else.  It is one form of intuition and perhaps the ﬁrst one that usually manifests.  There is also another form but that one is much more difﬁcult to observe because for those who are accustomed to think,  to act by reason — not by impulse but by reason — to reﬂect before doing anything, there is an extremely swift process from cause to effect in the half-conscious thought which prevents you from seeing the line, the whole line of reasoning and so you don’t think that it is a chain of reasoning, and that is quite deceptive.


The Mother: You have the impression of an intuition but it is not an intuition, it is an extremely rapid subconscious reasoning, which takes up a problem and goes straight to the conclusions. This must not be mistaken for intuition.  In the ordinary functioning of the brain, intuition is something which suddenly falls like a drop of light. If one has the faculty, the beginning of a faculty of mental vision, it gives the impression of something coming from outside or above, like a little impact of a drop of light in the brain, absolutely independent of all reasoning.  This is perceived more easily when one is able to silence one’s mind, hold it still and attentive, arresting its usual functioning, as if the mind were changed into a kind of mirror turned towards a higher faculty in a sustained and silent attention.


The Mother: That too one can learn to do. One learn to do it, it is a necessary discipline.  When you have a question to solve, whatever it may be, usually you concentrate your attention here ( ), at the centre just above the eyes, the centre of the conscious will. But then if you do that, you cannot be in contact with intuition. You can be in contact with the source of the will, of effort, even of a certain kind of knowledge, but in the outer, almost material ﬁeld; whereas, if you want to contact the intuition, you must keep this () completely immobile.


The Mother: Active thought must be stopped as far as possible and the entire mental faculty must form — at the top of the head and a little further above if possible — a kind of mirror, very quiet, very still, turned upwards, in silent, very concentrated attention. If you succeed, you can — perhaps not immediately — but you can have the perception of the drops  of light falling upon the mirror from a still unknown region and expressing themselves as a conscious thought which has no connection with all the rest of your thought since you have been able to keep it silent. That is the real beginning of the intellectual intuition.  It is a discipline to be followed. For a long time one may try and not succeed, but as soon as one succeeds in making a “mirror”, still and attentive, one always obtains a result, not necessarily with a precise form of thought but always with the sensations of a light coming from above.


The Mother: And then, if one can receive this light coming from above without entering immediately into a whirl of activity, receive it in calm and silence and let it penetrate deep into the being, then after a while it expresses itself either as a luminous thought or as a very precise indication here (), in this other centre.  Naturally, ﬁrst these two faculties must be developed; then, as soon as there is any result, one must observe the result, as I said, and see the connection with what is happening, the consequences: see, observe very attentively what has come in, what may have caused a distortion, what one has added by way of more or less conscious reasoning or the intervention of a lower will, also more or less conscious; and it is by a very deep study — indeed, almost of every moment, in any case daily and very frequent — that one succeeds in developing one’s intuition. It takes a long time. It takes a long time and there are ambushes: one can deceive oneself, take for intuitions subconscious wills which try to manifest, indications given by impulses one has refused to receive openly, indeed all sorts of difﬁculties. One must be prepared for that.


The Mother: But if one persists, one is sure to succeed.  And there comes a time when one feels a kind of inner guidance, something which is leading one very perceptibly in all that one does. But then, for the guidance to have its maximum power, one must naturally add to it a conscious surrender: one must be sincerely determined to follow the indication given by  the higher force. If one does that, then... one saves years of study, one can seize the result extremely rapidly. If one also does that, the result comes very rapidly.


The Mother: But for that, it must be done with sincerity and... a kind of inner spontaneity. If one wants to try without this surrender, one may succeed — as one can also succeed in developing one’s personal will and making it into a very considerable power — but that takes a very long time and one meets many obstacles and the result is very precarious; one must be very persistent, obstinate, persevering, and one is sure to succeed, but only after a great labour.   Make your surrender with a sincere, complete self-giving, and you will go ahead at full speed, you will go much faster — but you must not do this calculatingly, for that spoils everything!  (


The Mother: )  Moreover, whatever you may want to do in life, one thing is absolutely indispensable and at the basis of, the capacity of concentrating the attention. If you are able to gather together the rays of attention and consciousness on one point and can maintain this concentration with a persistent will, can resist it — whatever it may be, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one. But this discipline must be followed in a constant and, it may be said, imperturbable way; not that you should always be concentrated on the same thing — that’s not what I mean, I mean learning to concentrate.  And materially, for studies, sports, all physical or mental development, it is absolutely indispensable.


The Mother: And the value of an individual is proportionate to the value of his attention.  And from the spiritual point of view it is still more important. There is spiritual obstacle which can resist a penetrating power of concentration. For instance, the discovery of the psychic being, union with the inner Divine, opening to the higher spheres, can be obtained by an intense and obstinate power of concentration — but one must learn how to do it.   There is nothing in the human or even in the superhuman ﬁeld, to which the power of concentration is not the key.


The Mother: You can be the best athlete, you can be the best student, you can be an artistic, literary or scientiﬁc genius, you can be the greatest saint with that faculty. And everyone has in himself a tiny little beginning of it — it is given to everybody, but people do not cultivate it.    Oh! Oh!...


The Mother: Do you mean automatic writing?  That depends on the people who do it. Sometimes there are no forces at all! It is the mental and vital vibrations of the people who use the planchette, and it is their own subconscious ideas which they bring up, ninety-eight times out of a hundred. If they are in contact with invisible entities, it may be all sorts of things but nothing very advisable!


The Mother: Almost with certainty it could be said that it is not what people think it is, in the sense that most often they try to evoke what they call the “spirit” of a dead person, a relative or a friend or someone they loved and with whom they wish to remain in touch; and besides, they ask them the most foolish questions.  Fortunately they don’t succeed in disturbing them....  From this point of view one can say that if you had a relation of deep and sincere love with someone who has passed away, left his body, and if you are calm and strong enough yourself, this person may choose to take shelter vitally in your atmosphere — the atmosphere of the one he loves — for a more or less long period. In this case it means that the relation was very close, very intimate, and if you are not altogether materialistic to the point of not having any direct mental perception, you can remain in mental contact with this person, in communication with him.   It is a rather exceptional case, for usually if your atmosphere is calm and strong enough to be able to truly serve as a protection, the person who has left his body enters into a deep rest there, and it is not at all good to disturb it; and the best thing you can do is to enfold this person with your love and leave him in peace.


The Mother: Therefore, even if it were possible to enter into communication with him by this means, which I would call very crude, it would be improper to do so. But usually, people who have the capacity, the faculties required to serve as a shelter for some time, a transitional shelter for those who have gone, do not have this ridiculous idea of disturbing the rest of the one they love by tapping on a planchette... fortunately!  But those who indulge in this exercise, an exercise of unhealthy curiosity, get what they deserve; for the atmosphere we live in is ﬁlled with a great number of small vital entities which are born of unsatisﬁed desires, vital movements of a very low type, also the decomposition of larger beings of the vital world; indeed, it is swarming with them, you see. It is surely a protection that most people do not see what is going on in this vital atmosphere, for it is not especially pleasant; but if they have the presumption to want to come into contact with it and set about trying automatic writing or table-turning or... indeed, anything of this kind, out of an unhealthy curiosity, well, what happens is that one of these small entities or several of them have fun at their expense and collect all the necessary indications from their subconscious mind and then furnish these things to them as clear proofs that they are the person who has been called!  I could write a book for you with all the examples I have known of these stories, for people are very proud of doing things like this and immediately write them down, giving “proofs” of the truth of the experience which are so ridiculous that they should be enough to show them that someone was making fun of them!


The Mother: I had another instance, very recently, of somebody who fancied that he had entered into contact with Sri Aurobindo  and was receiving sensational revelations from him — that was comical in the extreme.  But anyway, as a rule, it is — oh! most often — it is your own forces, your subconscious mental and vital forces which you put into the planchette — and you make sensational revelations to yourself! One can do many things in this way.... Once I wanted to prove to people that what they were evoking was nothing but themselves; so I had a little fun, simply with a concentration of the will, tapping the furniture, making tables walk and, well!...


The Mother: As for automatic writing, you only have to withdraw your conscious will into yourself, to let your hand go — just like this () — and leave it free, and then the hand will begin to make movements; but there is a little part in you which is interested and would like these movements to make sense and this little part appeals to the subconscious mind which begins to make sensational revelations. Indeed, it is a booby-trap, all this business, unless one does it scientiﬁcally — but then, scientiﬁcally, one realises that it leads to nothing, nothing at all except just passing your time in what you consider an interesting way.  In some cases vital entities really get hold of you, and there it is dangerous. But fortunately these cases are not very frequent.  Then it becomes very dangerous.


The Mother: A very long time ago when I was in France, I knew the case of a man who, through practices of this kind, had put himself into contact with a vital entity. This man happened to be a gambler and he spent his time speculating and playing roulette.  He spent part of the year at Monte Carlo playing roulette and the rest of the time he lived in the south of France and speculated on the Stock Exchange. And now, some being was really using him — it was through automatic writing — using him, and for years it gave him absolutely precise, exact indications. When he played roulette it used to tell him, “Bid on this number or this place”, and he would win.


The Mother: Naturally he just worshipped this “spirit” which gave him such sensational revelations. And at the Exchange it also told him, “Speculate on this or on that” and  gave him all the indications. This man became colossally rich.  He used to boast to all his friends about the method by which he had grown rich.  Someone put him on his guard, told him, “Be careful, this doesn’t look very honest, you should not trust this spirit.”


The Mother: He fell out with this person. A few days later he was in Monte Carlo and... He always played for high stakes, you see; since, naturally, he always won and would break the bank, he was much feared.  Then the spirit told him, “Stake everything, you have on this....” He did, and at a single stroke lost everything!


The Mother: And yet, he still had some money left from his Stock Exchange speculations. He said to himself, “It is bad luck.” Again he received a very precise indication, “Do this”, as usual. And he did it — he was completely cleaned out! And to ﬁnish the job, the spirit told him, just for the fun of it, “Now, you are going to commit suicide.


The Mother: Put a bullet through your head”. And he was so much under its inﬂuence, he did so.... That’s the end of the story. And this is an authentic story. So, the least one can say is that it is dangerous, it is much better not to indulge in occupations of this kind.


The Mother: No! Either they are rather senseless amusements or else they are unwholesome occupations.   Yogic Sadhan  No, no!


The Mother: It is not that at all. You must not confuse things. That was something different. Sri Aurobindo with whom he was in contact, he did it deliberately and chose the person he was in touch with, and that had nothing to do with the little entities I am speaking about, nothing at all, at all. It was something that took place in the mental world, directly; you must not confuse things.


The Mother: This has no connection, none at all.  ()   One can, if one has the knowledge, the control, the power, the ability to go into a certain state of passivity — one can very easily lend one’s hand to someone, deliberately, knowing who it is and acting on a higher plane, but that already demands a great consciousness and a great self-mastery, which is not within everybody’s reach. One must have quite a considerable inner development to be able to see whom one is dealing with on a particular plane and willingly lend oneself to the experiment with full knowledge of what one is doing and without losing one’s control. Not everybody can play with that.


The Mother: But to work the planchette, one only has to delude oneself enough for it to start working!  It was simply to make an experiment, that’s all.  ( )  It is not a good way of approach, as a general rule, for in the inner ﬁeld, in the domain of inner development, this corresponds to the need to read novels.


The Mother: People whose minds are insufﬁciently developed, whose minds are still in a tamasic state and half inert, need to read novels in order to wake up. It is not the sign of a very commendable state or at any rate a very high one. Well, in the ﬁeld of inner development this corresponds to the same thing. When one is in a very rudimentary state, when one has no intense inner life, one needs to read novels or to create novels for oneself, and then one indulges in experiments of this kind and believes one is doing very interesting things.... This has the same interest as novels — not even literary novels but cheap romances, those published on the back of newspapers.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo told me that some people needed this because their minds were so inert that this shook them and woke them  up a little! Well, that is the same thing. Some people may need to do exercises of this kind to awaken their vital a little, which is sleepy and inert and... this gives them a little interest in life.  But still, one can’t say that these are very valuable occupations.


The Mother: They are pastimes, amusements.  And this has never served to prove anything to anybody.  One could say, “Oh! It is to make you understand that there is an inner life, an invisible life, and it puts you in touch with things you don’t see and proves to you that they exist”. That is not true.


The Mother: Unless you have a spiritual within you, capable of awakening and living its own life, all these things teach you nothing at all. I knew some people — one of them especially, who was a man of science, intelligent, a man of real ability; he had studied higher science, become an engineer and held an important position; this man was a member of a society known as “spiritualist”, which had found a medium who really had quite exceptional abilities. And he used to attend all the with the idea of learning, to convince himself and have tangible proofs of the existence of an invisible world, the concrete and real existence of an invisible world. He had seen all that could be seen, under the strictest control, in the most scientiﬁc way possible — all the tests were provided for, down to the least detail. He told me about the most extraordinary things he had seen; I held in my hand a piece of something resembling the plastic cloth they make nowadays, which is not woven, a piece of plastic — but in those days there was no plastic, it had not yet been discovered, it was a long time ago — I held it in my hand, a piece, like this, torn, with a small design which was very pretty.


The Mother: He told me how it had happened. When the medium had been put into trance, a person had appeared dressed in a robe of this substance — it was a materialisation; this person had passed in front of him and, like the little brute he was, he had torn off a piece to have a proof, and he kept the piece. The medium screamed — and everything, everything immediately vanished.... But the piece remained in  his hand and he gave it to me. I gave it back to him.


The Mother: He had simply shown it to me, I held it in my hand.  So that was something quite concrete, you see, for he still had the piece; he could not tell himself it was a hallucination.  Well, in spite of all this, in spite of the most extraordinary stories which could make a whole book, he did not believe!  He could not explain. And he wondered who was mad, whether it was himself or the others or...


The Mother: This had not helped his knowledge progress even half a step forward.  One cannot believe these things unless one carries them within oneself.  No external proofs you can have will ever give you any knowledge. When you are inwardly developed, are capable of having a direct and inner contact with these things, then you know what they are, but no material proof — material and of this kind — can give you the knowledge if within you you do not have the capable of having this knowledge.  Therefore, the conclusion is that this kind of experiment is absolutely useless.


The Mother: For those who have an inner being, one day or another, life will see to it that they awaken and will bring them into contact with what they need in order to know.  I consider these things to be an unhealthy curiosity, that’s all.   We have already spoken about this, about collective prayers, the use that has been made of them. I believe that it has even been published in the  Besides, there are different kinds of collective prayer, just as there are different kinds of collectivities.


The Mother: There is the anonymous mass, the crowd, formed by chance circumstances, without any inner coordination, impelled by the force of circumstance, as for instance when a king or a person who attracts public attention is in a critical situation, either ill or the victim of an accident, and the people gather to obtain news and also to express their feelings; and through chance circumstances people have collected there, that is, there is no inner link except that of the same emotion or interest. There have been cases of crowds spontaneously beginning to pray to ask for the recovery of someone in whom they were specially interested. Of course, these very crowds can gather for a completely different purpose, out of hatred, and their cries are also a sort of prayer, a prayer to the adverse and destructive forces.  Those movements are spontaneous, not organised, unexpected.  There is also the collectivity formed by individuals who have gathered together around an ideal or a teaching or an action they want to carry out, and who have an organising link between them, the link of the same purpose, the same will and the same faith.


The Mother: These can gather in a methodical manner to practise common prayer and meditation, and if their aim is high, their organisation good, their ideal powerful, through their prayers or meditations these groups can have a considerable effect on  world events or on their own inner development and collective progress. These groups are necessarily far superior to others, but they don’t have the blind strength of the mobs, the collective action of the crowd. They replace this vehemence, this intensity by the strength of a deliberate and conscious organisation.  At all times there have been on earth groups organised in this way. Some of them have had a historical life, a historical action in the world, but as a rule they have not succeeded better with the crowd, the mass, than exceptional individuals.


The Mother: They have always been suspected and subjected to attacks, persecutions, and often they have also been dissolved in a very brutal, obscure and ignorant way.... There were those semi-religious, semi-chivalric groups, gathered around a belief or rather a creed, with a deﬁnite aim, which have had a very interesting history in the world. And certainly, they have done much for collective progress through their individual effort.  There is an ideal organisation which, if fully realised, could create a kind of very powerful unity, composed of elements all having the same aim and the same will and with enough inner development to be able to give a very coherent body to this inner oneness of purpose, motive, aspiration and action.  At all times centres of initiation have tried this, more or less successfully, and this is always mentioned in all occult traditions as an extremely powerful means of action.


The Mother: If the collective unit could attain the same cohesion as the individual unit, it would multiply the strength and action of the individual.  Usually, if several individuals are brought together, the collective quality of the group is much lower than the individual value of each person taken separately, but with a sufﬁciently conscious and coordinated organisation, it would be possible, on the contrary, to the power of individual action.    Really!


The Mother: That is interesting!   () Has it been printed?  Oh! I like the last sentence very much!


The Mother: ( ) So, what do you expect me to do? ... To begin?


The Mother: But I have already started, haven’t I? Even before the ﬁve years have passed! It seems that on that day, I... Oh! I here — it is something I wrote...


The Mother: Conversations  There I have written about the confusion made between asceticism and spiritual life, and then I promise that one day I shall speak to you about the confusion people make between what they call God and what I call the Divine.  But I have already spoken to you about that several times, haven’t I?  I did not remember my promise but I have kept it without remembering it and even before the day came!


The Mother: Now, if you ask me a precise question on this subject, I shall see what I can say. What do you want to know about spiritual life?... Do you have a particular question?  Yes!... And giving you explanations on what I read.


The Mother: We have even begun, in the small class, to meditate on the disciplines which are necessary to lead a spiritual life. And when I took up the reading of the Dhammapada, we read many things leading to the knowledge of spiritual life. But if you have a precise question on a special point, you can ask it, I shall reply.   Ah!


The Mother: That is very simple; it is because it is too easy!... When you have to go all round the world to ﬁnd a teacher, when you have to give up everything to obtain only the ﬁrst words of a teaching, then this teaching, this spiritual help becomes something very precious, like everything that is difﬁcult to obtain, and you make a great effort to deserve it.  Most of you came here when you were very small, at an age when there can be no question of the spiritual life or spiritual teaching — it would be altogether premature. You have indeed lived in this atmosphere but without even being aware of it; you are accustomed to seeing me, hearing me; I speak to you as one does to all children, I have even played with you as one plays with children; you only have to come and sit here and you hear me speak, you only have to ask me a question and I answer you, I have never refused to say anything to anybody — it is so easy.  It is enough to... live — to sleep, to eat, to do exercises and study at school.


The Mother: You live here as you would live anywhere else. And so, you are used to it.   If I had made strict rules, if I had said, “I shall not tell you anything until you have truly made an effort to know it”, then perhaps you might have made some effort, but that’s not in keeping with my idea. I believe more in the power of the atmosphere and of example than of a rigorous teaching. I count more on something awakening in the being through contagion rather than by a methodical, disciplined effort.


The Mother: Perhaps, after all, something is being prepared and one day it will spring up to the surface.  That is what I hope for.  One day you will tell yourself, “Just think! I have been here so long, I could have learnt so much, realised so much and I never even thought of it! Only like that, now and then.”


The Mother: And then, on that day... well, on that day, just imagine, you are going to wake up all of a sudden to something you never noticed but which is deep within you and for the truth, thirsts for transformation and is ready to make the effort required to realise it. On that day you will go very fast, you will advance with giant strides.... Perhaps, as I said, that day has come now after ﬁve years? I said, “I give you ﬁve years....” Now the ﬁve years have passed, so perhaps the day has come!


The Mother: Perhaps you will suddenly feel an need not to live in unconsciousness, in ignorance, in that state in which you do things without knowing why, feel things without understanding why, have contradictory wills, understand nothing about anything, live only by habit, routine, reactions — you take life easy. And one day you are no longer satisﬁed with that.  It depends, for each one it is different. Most often it is the need to know, to understand; for some it is the need to do what must be done as it should be done; for others it is a vague feeling that behind this life, so unconscious, so futile, so empty of meaning, there is something to ﬁnd which is being lived — that there is a reality, a truth behind these falsehoods and illusions.  One suddenly feels that everything one does, everything one  sees, has no meaning, no purpose, but that something which has a meaning; that essentially one is here on earth for something, that all this — all these movements, all this agitation, all this wastage of force and energy — all that must have a purpose, an aim, and that this uneasiness one feels within oneself, this lack of satisfaction, this need, this for something must lead us somewhere else.


The Mother: And one day, you ask yourself, “But then, why is one born?  Why does one die? Why does one suffer? Why does one act?”  You no longer live like a little machine, hardly halfconscious.


The Mother: You want to feel truly, to act truly, to know truly.  Then, in ordinary life one searches for books, for people who know a little more than oneself, one begins to seek somebody who can solve these questions, lift the veil of ignorance. Here it is very simple. You only have to... do the things one does every day, but to do them with a purpose.  You go to the Samadhi, look at Sri Aurobindo’s picture, you come to receive a ﬂower from me, sit down to a lesson; you do everything you do but... with one question within you: Why?


The Mother: And then, if you ask the question, you receive the answer.   Why?  Because we don’t want life as it is any longer, because we don’t want falsehood and ignorance any longer, because we don’t want suffering and unconsciousness any longer, because we do not want disorder and bad will any longer, because Sri Aurobindo has come to tell us: It is not necessary to leave the earth to ﬁnd the Truth, it is not necessary to leave life to ﬁnd one’s soul, it is not necessary to give up the world or to have limited beliefs in order to enter into relation with the Divine.


The Mother: The Divine is everywhere, in everything, and if He is hidden... it is because we do not take the trouble to discover Him.  We can, simply by a sincere aspiration, open a sealed door in us and ﬁnd... that Something which will change the whole signiﬁcance of life, reply to all our questions, solve all our problems and lead us to the perfection we aspire for without knowing it,  to that Reality which can satisfy us and give us lasting joy, equilibrium, strength, life.  All this you have heard many a time.  You have heard it — Oh!


The Mother: There are even some here who are so used to it that for them it seems to be the same thing as drinking a glass of water or opening a window to let in the sunlight.  But since I promised you that in ﬁve years you would be able these things, to have a concrete, real, convincing experience of them, well, that means you ought to be ready and that we are going to begin.  We have tried a little, but now we are going to try seriously!  The starting-point: to want it, truly want it, to need it. The next step: to think,, of that.


The Mother: A day comes, very quickly, when one is unable to think of anything else.  That is the one thing which counts. And then...  One formulates one’s aspiration, lets the true prayer spring up from one’s heart, the prayer which expresses the sincerity of the need. And then...


The Mother: well, one will see what happens.  Something will happen. Surely something will happen. For each one it will take a different form.  That’s all.


The Mother: I am glad you gave me this.   As today is Sri Aurobindo’s birthday I thought that instead of reading the Dhammapada I could read to you something which will both interest you and show you how Sri Aurobindo visualised our relation with the gods.  You know, don’t you, that in India especially, there are countless categories of gods, who are all on different planes, some very close to man, others very close to the Supreme, with many intermediaries.  You will understand better what I want to tell you if I mention the gods of the Puranas — like those we saw the other day in the ﬁlm — who in many ways are, I must say, inferior to man (!) although they have inﬁnitely more power.  There are gods of the Overmind who are the great creators of the earth — until now.


The Mother: There are the gods of the Vedas who are mentioned in everything that has come down from the Rishis.  And there are the gods of the Supermind, those who are going to manifest on earth, although of course they exist from all eternity on their own plane.  Here Sri Aurobindo is speaking mostly about the Vedic gods, but not exclusively nor in a very deﬁnite way. At any rate these gods are higher than the gods of the Puranas.  Here is what Sri Aurobindo tells us.


The Mother: In fact, it is a prayer: Be wide in me, O Varuna; be mighty in me, O Indra; O Sun, be very bright and luminous; O Moon, be full of charm and sweetness.  Be ﬁerce and terrible, O Rudra;  be impetuous and swift, O Maruts; be strong and bold, O Aryama; be voluptuous and pleasurable, O Bhaga; be tender and kind and loving and passionate, O Mitra.  Be bright and revealing, O Dawn; O Night, be solemn and pregnant.  O Life, be full, ready and buoyant; O Death, lead my steps from mansion to mansion.


The Mother: Harmonise all these, O Brahmanaspati.  Let me not be subject to these gods, O Kali.  So Sri Aurobindo makes Kali the great liberating power who ardently impels you towards progress and leaves no ties within you which would hinder you from progressing.  I think this will be a good subject for meditation.  (


The Mother: )    It depends on the individual. Everyone has his own particular process. It depends altogether on each one.


The Mother: Some people may have an imagery which helps them; others, on the contrary, have a more abstract mind and only see ideas; others, who live more in sensations or feelings, have rather psychological movements, movements of inner feelings or sensations — it depends on each one. Those who have an active and particularly formative physical mind, see images, but everybody does not experience the same thing. If you ask the person next to you, for instance... ( ) When I give a subject, do you see images like that?


The Mother: Sometimes?   feel What is it, most often?  A sensation, yes. It is more frequently a sensation — I mean generally — more frequently a sensation or a feeling than an image. The image always comes to those who have a formative  mental power, an active physical mind.


The Mother: It is an indication that one is active in one’s mental consciousness.  (The child who had asked the ﬁrst question)  But everything is right if it has a result! Any means is good.  Why shouldn’t it be right?...


The Mother: Images like that are not necessarily ridiculous. They are not ridiculous, they are mental images. If they bring you some result, they are quite appropriate. If they give you an experience, they are appropriate.  For example, when I ask you to go deep down within yourselves, some of you will concentrate on a sensation, but others may just as well have the impression of going down into a deep well, and they clearly see the picture of steps going down into a dark and deep well, and they go down farther and farther, deeper and deeper, and sometimes reach precisely a door


The Mother: ; they sit down before the door with the will to enter, and sometimes the door opens, and then they go in and see a kind of hall or a room or a cave or something, and from there, if they go on they may come to another door and again stop, and with an effort the door opens and they go farther. And if this is done with enough persistence and one can continue the experience, there comes a time when one ﬁnds oneself in front of a door which has... a special kind of solidity or solemnity, and with a great effort of concentration the door opens and one suddenly enters a hall of clarity, of light; and then, one has the experience, you see, of contact with one’s soul.... But I don’t see what is bad in having images!  An imagination? But what is an imagination?...


The Mother: You cannot imagine anything which doesn’t exist in the universe! It is impossible to imagine something that doesn’t exist somewhere.    The only possibility is that one may not put one’s image in its place: either one gives it virtues and qualities it doesn’t have, or explains it with some other than the right explanation. But whatever one imagines exists somewhere; the main thing is to know where and to put it in its proper place.


The Mother: Of course, if after having imagined that you are in front of a door which is opening, you thought that it was really a physical door inside your body, that would be a mistake! But if you realise that it is the mental form taken by your effort of concentration, this is quite correct. If you go wandering in the mental world, you will see plenty of forms like that, all kinds of forms, which have no material reality but truly exist in the mental world.  You cannot think powerfully of something without your thought taking a form. But if you were to believe that this form was physical, that would obviously be an error, yet it really does exist in the mental world.


The Mother: Imagination is a power of formation. In fact, people who have no imagination are not formative from the mental point of view, they cannot give a concrete power to their thought.  Imagination is a very powerful means of action. For instance, if you have a pain somewhere and if you imagine that you are making the pain disappear or are removing it or destroying it — all kinds of images like that — well, you succeed perfectly.  There’s a story of a person who was losing her hair at a fantastic rate, enough to become bald within a few weeks,


The Mother: and then someone told her, “When you brush your hair, imagine that it is growing and will grow very fast.” And always, while brushing her hair, she said, “Oh, my hair is growing!  Oh, it will grow very fast!...” — And it happened! But what people usually do is to tell themselves, “Ah, all my hair is falling again and I shall become bald, that’s certain, it’s going to happen!”


The Mother: And of course it happens!    Meditate on a sentence?  Obviously on what it means.


The Mother: Yes. Then?  The sentence is already a mental formation; the mental formation is made. The sentence is the expression of the mental formation.


The Mother: So when you meditate on a sentence, there are two methods. There is an active, ordinary external method of reﬂecting and trying to understand what these words mean, understand intellectually what the sentence means exactly — that is active meditation. You concentrate on these few words and take the thought they express and try, through reasoning, deduction, analysis, to understand what it means.  There is another method, more direct and deep; it is to take this mental formation, this combination of words with the thought they represent, and to gather all your energy of attention on it, compelling yourself to concentrate all your strength on that formation. For instance, instead of concentrating all your energies on something you see physically, you take that thought  and concentrate all your energies on that thought — in the mind, of course.


The Mother: And then, if you are able to concentrate the thought sufﬁciently and stop it from vacillating, you pass quite naturally from the thought expressed by the words to the which is behind and which could be expressed in other words, other forms. The characteristic of the idea is the power to clothe itself in many different thoughts. And when you have achieved this, you have already gone much deeper than by merely understanding the words. Naturally, if you continue to concentrate and know how to do it, you can pass from the idea to the luminous force that is behind. Then you enter a much vaster and deeper domain.


The Mother: But that asks for some training. But still, that is the very principle of meditation.  If you are able to go deep enough, you ﬁnd the Principle and the Force behind the idea, and that gives you the power of realisation. This is how those who take meditation as a means of spiritual development are able to unite with the Principle which is behind things and obtain the power to act on these things from above.  But even without going so far — that implies a rather hard discipline, doesn’t it, a long-standing habit — you can pass quite easily from the thought to the idea, and that gives you a light and an understanding in the mind which enables you, in your turn, to express the idea in any form.


The Mother: An idea can be expressed in many different forms, in many different thoughts, just as when you come down to a more material level, a thought can be expressed through many different words. Going downwards, towards expression, that is, spoken or written expression, there are many different words and different formulas which may serve to express a thought, but this thought is only of the forms of thought which can express the idea, the idea behind, and this idea itself, if it is followed deeply, has behind it a principle of spiritual knowledge and power which can then spread and act on the manifestation.   When you have a thought you look for words, don’t you, and then you try to arrange these words to express your thought; you can use many words to express a thought, you tell yourself, “No, look, if I put this word instead of that, it would express what I am thinking much better.” That is what you learn when you are taught style, how to write.  But when I give you a written sentence which has the power to express a thought and tell you to concentrate on it, then, through this thought-form you can go back to the idea behind, which can be expressed in many different thoughts.


The Mother: It is like a great hierarchy: there is a Principle right at the top, which itself is not the only one, for you can go still higher up; but this Principle can be expressed in ideas, and these ideas can be expressed in a great number of thoughts and this great number of thoughts can make use of many languages and an even greater number of words.  When I give you a thought it is simply to help you to concentrate.... There are schools which put an object in front of you, a ﬂower or a stone, or any object, and then you sit around it and concentrate on it and your eyes go like this () until you become the object. That too is a method of concentration.  By gazing steadily like that, without moving, you ﬁnally pass into the thing you are gazing at.


The Mother: But you must not begin to gaze at all kinds of things: only gaze steadily at that. That gives you a look... it makes you squint.  All this is to learn concentration, that’s all.  Sometimes one of these sentences expresses a very deep truth.


The Mother: It is one of those happy sentences which are very expressive. So that helps you to ﬁnd the truth that is behind.  When we have ﬁnished the Dhammapada, that is what I intend to do. I am at present translating the latest of Sri Aurobindo’s books we have published,, and I intend, every Friday, to give one single sentence, one single aphorism — with or without the commentary as necessary — as a subject for meditation. We still have to see how we should  go about it....


The Mother: We could proceed in two different ways. As I am going to take them up in order, you will always know which one will be for the following week and prepare questions in advance; or else if you don’t prepare the questions in advance, perhaps it will be more interesting to take a sentence, to have a meditation on it, and in the following lesson to ask me questions on the sentence from the previous week. Then, from the questions I am asked , I shall choose those that seem to me the most intelligent and answer them. And later we shall take a new sentence which will serve as the subject for meditation on that day and the subject for questions the following week.


The Mother: And this I am going to do with a very precise, very deﬁnite purpose: to bring you out of your mental somnolence and compel you to reﬂect and try to understand what I tell you.... For, it makes a little noise in your ears, a still softer noise in your heads, and then it goes out from the other side, and then it is ﬁnished! Sometimes, very rarely, by a special grace, there is just a little effect here, like this (), which lasts like a little ﬂickering ﬂame — it burns, and then, pfft!... Something blows on it, it goes out and it is all ﬁnished.  When you told me the other day that I had promised to give you “lessons”, well, I took it very seriously.


The Mother: I am going to keep my promise. There.   Yes.  Imagination is something very complex and manifold — what is vaguely called “imagination”.  It can be the capacity for seeing and recording, noting the forms in some mental or other domain.


The Mother: There are artistic, literary, poetic domains, domains of action, scientiﬁc domains, all belonging to the mind — not a very high and abstract mind, a mind above the physical mind which, without our knowing it, pours out constantly through the individual and collective mind to manifest in action.  Some people, through a special faculty, are in contact with these domains, take up one formation or other that is there, draw them to themselves and give them an expression. This power of expression is different in different people, but those who can open themselves to these domains, to things there, to draw these forms towards themselves and express them — either in literature or in painting or music or in action or science — are, according to the degree of their power of expression either very highly talented beings or else geniuses.  There are higher geniuses still. They are people who can open to a higher region, a higher force which, passing through the mental layers, comes and takes a form in a human mind and reveals itself in the world as new truths, new philosophical systems, new spiritual teachings, which are the works and at the same time the actions of the great beings who come to take birth  on earth.


The Mother: That is an imagination which can be called “Truthimagination”. These higher forces, when they come down into the earth-atmosphere, take living, active, powerful forms, spread throughout the world and prepare a new age.  These two kinds of imagination are what could be called higher imaginations.  And now, to come down to a more ordinary level, everyone has in him, in a greater or lesser measure, the power to give form to his mental activity and use this form either in his ordinary activity or to create and realise something. We are all the time,, creating images, creating forms.