The Mother:   Danger and risk form part of all forward movement. Without them, nothing would ever move; besides, they are indispensable in forming the character of those who want to progress.    Two things need to be done. Children must be taught: a) not to tell a lie, whatever the consequences; b) to control violence, rage, anger.


The Mother: If these two things can be done, they can be led towards superhumanity.  There is an idea that if one breaks conventions, restrictions, one is free from the limitations of ordinary humanity. But this is wrong.  Those two things must be achieved to be able to be what may be called “superman”: not to tell lies and to control oneself.  A complete devotion to the Divine is the last condition, but these are the ﬁrst two things to be achieved.§


The Mother:   Discipline is indispensable to be a man. Without discipline one is nothing but an animal. I give you two weeks to show that you really want to change and become disciplined. If you become disciplined and obedient I am willing to give you another chance.


The Mother: But do not try to be deceitful... At the least sign of insincerity, I shall have to send you away.  One begins to be a man only when one aspires to a higher and truer life and accepts a discipline of transformation.  For this one must begin by mastering one’s lower nature and one’s desires.


The Mother: To the students To be noisy in class is an act of selﬁsh stupidity.  If you don’t intend to attend the class silently and attentively, it is better not to come.     It is forbidden to ﬁght at school, to ﬁght in class, to ﬁght in the playground, to ﬁght in the street, to ﬁght at home (whether at your parents’ house or in a boarding).  Always and everywhere children are forbidden to ﬁght among themselves, for each time that one gives a blow to another, one gives it to one’s own soul.


The Mother:   I suggest the same remedy as the one I was using in my childhood when disagreeing with my young playmates. I was at that time, as you are, very sensitive and I felt hurt when abused by them, especially by those whom I had shown only sympathy and kindness. I used to tell myself: “Why be sorry and feel miserable?


The Mother: If they are right in what they say, I have only to be glad for the lesson and correct myself; if they are wrong, why should I worry about it — it is for them to be sorry for their mistake. In both cases the best and the most digniﬁed thing I can do is to remain strong, quiet and unmoved.”  This lesson which I was giving myself and trying to follow when I was eight years old, still holds good in all similar cases.    Some words to the children.


The Mother: 1. Never make fun of anyone if you do not want others to make fun of you.  2. Always act in a respectable way if you want others to respect you.  3. Love everybody if you want everybody to love you.


The Mother: As girls and boys are educated together here we have always insisted on the relations between them to be those of simple  comradeship without any mixture of sex feeling and sensuality; and to avoid all temptation they are forbidden to go in one another’s room and to meet anywhere privately. This has been made clear to everybody. And if these rules are strictly followed, nothing unpleasant can happen.    Why do you believe in what the astrologers say?


The Mother: It is the belief that brings the trouble.  Sri Aurobindo says that a man becomes what he thinks he is.  Try this method of thinking that you are a good boy and will become sex-free.   Try this method for years persistently and obstinately without admitting any doubt or discouragement, and after ﬁve years you will tell me the result.


The Mother: Be very careful never to have a doubt about the result.  You are attaching too much importance to this sex affair.  Do not think of it at all — be interested in activities, try to grow in knowledge and consciousness and kick away the sex thought and the sex impulse when it comes — then you can hope of becoming one of my soldiers.


The Mother:  I have already asked of you all not to think that you are girls or boys, but equally endeavouring to ﬁnd, become and manifest the Divine.    A simple notion of medical knowledge may be useful in taking away this silly old harmful feeling of shame which brings perversion.     This is just a joke... or a twist of the mind and a clever way of refusing to understand what is meant by the advice.


The Mother:   Yes, try — it is very much needed. Money seems to have become the Supreme Lord these days — truth is receding in the background, as for Love, it is quite out of sight!  I mean Divine Love because what human beings call love is a very good friend of money.


The Mother:    When a child wants to impress you by telling you stories of the wealth of his family, you must not keep quiet.


The Mother: You must explain to him that worldly wealth does not count here, only the wealth that has been offered to the Divine has some value; that you do not become big by living in big houses, travelling by ﬁrst-class and spending money lavishly. You can increase in stature only by being truthful, sincere, obedient and grateful.§    I have said, and I insist on this decision, that children below 15 should not go to bed later than 9 o’clock — those who do are being disobedient and this is regrettable.


The Mother: Because, symbolically, during the hours till midnight, the sun is setting, while from the very ﬁrst hour after midnight the sun begins to rise.  Blessings.     When the sun sets, a kind of peace descends upon the earth and this peace is helpful for sleep.


The Mother: When the sun rises, a vigorous energy descends upon the earth and this energy is helpful for work.   When you go to bed late and get up late, you contradict the forces of Nature and that is not very wise.  Blessings.


The Mother:   An obedient, docile and affectionate attitude. They are your elder brothers and sisters who take a lot of trouble for the sake of helping you.  Blessings.    HOLIDAYS


The Mother: Neither one nor the other is true.  Neither one nor the other is false.  Both of them, and many others, are the more or less distorted expression of my synthesising and harmonising will.  To each one individually my reply, if he is sincere, is the expression of his need.


The Mother:  To go to one’s parents is to return to an inﬂuence generally stronger than any other: and few are the cases where parents help you in your spiritual progress, because they are generally more interested in a worldly realisation.  Parents who are chieﬂy interested in spiritual realisation do not usually ask their children to go back to visit them.  Blessings.    The students who are not present for the beginning of the schoolyear on 16th December will not be allowed to attend classes for the entire school-year.   Holidays Shall we say?


The Mother: There are two kinds of them: traditionally, the Lord for six days (or aeons) worked to create his world and the seventh He stopped for rest, concentration and contemplation. This can be called the day of God.   The second one is: the men, the creatures, during six days work for their personal interests and egoistic motives, and the seventh they stop working to take rest and have time to look inwardly or upwardly, in contemplation of the source and origin of their existence and consciousness, in order to take a dip in It and renew their energies.  It is scarcely necessary to mention the modern manner of understanding the word or the thing, that is to say, all the possible ways of wasting time in a futile attempt at amusing oneself.


The Mother:   In the beginning the organisation of the week was conceived in this way: six days of work for the collectivity to which the individual belonged; the seventh day of the week was reserved for the inner quest for the Divine and the offering of one’s being to the divine will. This is the only meaning and the only true reason for the so-called Sunday rest.   Needless to say, sincerity is the essential condition for realisation; all insincerity is a degradation.


The Mother:  STUDIES ELSEWHERE  I intended to let you go for your studies to England without telling you anything about it, because each one must be free to follow the path he has chosen. But after what you have written I feel compelled to write to you.  No doubt from the exterior point of view, you will ﬁnd in England all that you want for learning what human beings generally call knowledge,


The Mother: but from the point of view of Truth and Consciousness, you can ﬁnd nowhere the atmosphere in which you are living here. Elsewhere you can meet with a religious or a philosophic spirit, but true spirituality, direct contact with the Divine, constant aspiration to realise Him in life, mind and action are in the world realised only by very rare and scattered individuals and not as a living fact behind any university teaching however advanced it may be.  Practically, as far as you are concerned, there will be a great risk of drifting away from the experience you have realised and


The Mother: then you cannot know what will happen to you.  That is all I wanted to say — now it is left to you to choose and decide.     This uncertainty and these departures are caused by the lower nature which resists the inﬂuence of the yogic power and tries to slow down the divine action, not through ill-will, but in order to be sure that nothing is forgotten or neglected in the haste to reach the goal. Few are those ready for a total consecration.


The Mother: Many children who have studied here need to come to grips with life before they can be ready for the divine work and that is why they leave in order to go through the test of the ordinary life.   ( )  Those who to learn, have here all the possibilities to do so. The only thing that one has outside, but does not have here, is the moral constraint of an external discipline.  Here one is free and the only constraint is the one that one sets, when one is.


The Mother: Now it is for you to decide.      They


The Mother: can be told that they should not be here. We are not imposing any Yoga on them; but they should lead a hygienic and decent life, and if they do not want it, they should go elsewhere.   You can bring me one of them who is really very poor in studies.  I shall not speak, but I’ll try something.


The Mother: If it succeeds, then you can bring me the others.§     (


The Mother: )  You can tell them that if they do not believe they can learn here something that is not taught elsewhere, they can very well change schools. We shall not miss them.  It is better to have a selected few than a commonplace mass.   ( ) I can tell you immediately that all depends on what you expect from life.


The Mother: If it is to live an ordinary or even successful life according to the usual old type, go to America and try your best.  If, on the contrary, you aspire at getting ready for the future and the new creation it prepares, remain here and prepare yourself for what is to come.    We want here only those children who want to prepare themselves for a new life and who put progress before success in life.  We do not want those who want to prepare themselves to earn a living and to achieve worldly success.


The Mother: They can go elsewhere.  The children — to understand what we expect of them, they should be over ten years of age — who are ready for a new  adventure, who want a new life, who are ready for a higher realisation, who want that the world should change and no longer be what it has been for so long , are welcome.  We shall help them.§   , my child, never forget what your experience was, and do not let any external darkness penetrate and veil your consciousness.


The Mother: I am with you.   , my children, I wish that life may prove happy for you, and that one day you may be born into the Light and Truth.   To love to learn is the most precious gift that one can make to a child, to learn always and everywhere.


The Mother: It is an invaluable possession for every living being to have learnt to know himself and to master himself. To know oneself means to know the motives of one’s actions and reactions, the why and the how of all that happens in oneself. To master oneself means to do what one has decided to do, to do nothing but that, not to listen to or follow impulses, desires or fancies.  To give a moral law to a child is evidently not an ideal thing; but it is very difﬁcult to do without it. The child can be taught, as he grows up, the relativity of all moral and social laws so that he may ﬁnd in himself a higher and truer law.


The Mother: But here one must proceed with circumspection and insist on the difﬁculty of discovering that true law. The majority of those who reject human laws and proclaim their liberty and their decision to “live their own life” do so only in obedience to the most ordinary vital movements which they disguise and try to justify, if not to their own eyes, at least to the eyes of others. They give a kick to morality, simply because it is a hindrance to the satisfaction of their instincts.  No one has a right to sit in judgment over moral and social laws, unless he has taken his seat above them; one cannot abandon them, unless one replaces them by something superior, which is not so easy.  In any case, the ﬁnest present one can give to a child would be to teach him to know himself and to master himself.


The Mother:   P T S T  1. Complete self-control not only to the extent of not showing any anger, but remaining absolutely quiet and undisturbed under all circumstances.   2. In the matter of self-conﬁdence, must also have a sense of the relativity of his importance.


The Mother: Above all, must have the knowledge that the teacher himself must always progress if he wants his students to progress, must not remain satisﬁed either with what he is or with what he knows.  3. Must not have any sense of essential superiority over his students nor preference or attachment whatsoever for one or another.  4. Must know that all are equal spiritually and instead of mere tolerance must have a global comprehension or understanding.


The Mother: 5. “The business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material.” (Sri Aurobindo, )    Never forget that to be a good teacher one has to abolish in oneself all egoism.


The Mother:   And to be worthy of teaching according to the supramental truth given us by Sri Aurobindo there should no longer be any ego.     All studies, or in any case the greater part of studies consists in learning about the past, in the hope that it will give you a better understanding of the present. But if you want to avoid the danger that the students may cling to the past and refuse to look to the future, you must take great care to explain to them that the purpose of everything that happened in the past was to prepare what is taking place now, and that everything that is taking place now is nothing but a preparation for the road towards the future, which is truly the most important thing for which we must prepare.


The Mother: It is by cultivating intuition that one prepares to live for the future.    Think rather of the future than of the past.   TEACHING  The school should be an opportunity for progress for the teacher as well as for the student.


The Mother: Each one should have the freedom to develop freely.  A method is never so well applied as when one has discovered it oneself. Otherwise it is as boring for the teacher as for the student.    There is one thing that I must emphasise. Don’t try to follow what is done in the universities outside.


The Mother: Don’t try to pump into the students mere data and information. Don’t give them so much work that they may not get time for anything else. You are not in a great hurry to catch a train. Let the students understand what they learn. Let them assimilate it.


The Mother: Finishing the course should not be your goal. You should make the programme in such a way that the students may get time to attend the subjects they want to learn. They should have sufﬁcient time for their physical exercises. I don’t want them to be very good students, yet pale, thin, anaemic. Perhaps you will say that in this way they will not have sufﬁcient time for their studies, but that can be made up by expanding the course over a longer period.


The Mother: Instead of ﬁnishing a course in four years, you can take six years. Rather it would be better for them; they will be able to assimilate more of the atmosphere here and their progress will not be just in one direction at the cost of everything else. It will be an all-round progress in all directions.§     That depends.


The Mother: It cannot be made the general rule; for many of them it would not be much use. They have not reached a stage where they would be able to concentrate more on certain subjects if they had fewer subjects to study. The only result would be to encourage them to slacken — the very opposite of concentration! — and it would lead to a waste of time.   The solution does not lie there.


The Mother: What you should do is to teach the children to take interest in what they are doing — that is not the same thing as interesting the students! You must arouse in them the desire for knowledge, for progress. One can take an interest in anything — in sweeping a room, for example — if one does it with concentration, in order to gain an experience, to make a progress, to become more conscious. I often say this to the students who complain of having a bad teacher. Even if they don’t like the teacher, even if he tells them useless things or if he is not up to the mark, they can always derive some beneﬁt from their period of class, learn something of great interest and progress in consciousness.


The Mother: Most teachers want to have: students who are studious and attentive, who understand and know many things, who can answer well — good students. This spoils everything.   The students begin to consult books, to study, to learn. Then they rely only on books, on what others say or write, and they lose contact with the superconscient part which receives knowledge by intuition.


The Mother: This contact often exists in a small child but it is lost in the course of his education.  For the students to be able to progress in the right direction, it is obvious that the teachers should have understood this and changed their old way of seeing and teaching. Without that, my work is at a standstill.§


The Mother: (  )  To the teachers: It is not so much the details of organisation as the that must change.  It seems that unless the teachers themselves get above the usual intellectual level, it will be difﬁcult for them to fulﬁl their duty and accomplish their task.    It is not through uniformity that you obtain unity.


The Mother: It is not through uniformity of programmes and methods that you will obtain the unity of education.  Unity is obtained through a constant reference, silent or expressed, as the case demands, to the central ideal, the central force or light, the purpose and the goal of our education.  The true, the supreme Unity expresses itself in diversity. It is mental logic that demands sameness. In practice, each one must ﬁnd and apply his own method, that which he understands and feels.


The Mother: It is only in this way that education can be effective.    A progress guided by the soul and not subjected to habits, conventions or preconceived ideas.


The Mother: (  )   First for the teachers: I am satisﬁed with the ﬁgures indicated in the report. In spite of what one might think, the proportion of very good students is satisfactory. If out of 150 students, there are 7 individuals of genuine value, it is very good.


The Mother: Now for the organisation:  The classes as a whole may be reorganised so as to fulﬁl the needs of the majority, that is to say, of those who, in the absence of any outside pressure or imposed discipline, work badly and make no progress.  But it is essential that the present system of education in the new classes should be maintained, in order to allow outstanding individuals to show themselves and develop freely. That is our true aim. It should be known — we should not hesitate to proclaim it — that the whole purpose of our school is to discover and encourage those in whom the need for progress has become conscious enough to direct their lives.


The Mother: It ought to be a privilege to be admitted to these Free Progress classes.   At regular intervals (every month, for example) a selection should be made and those who cannot take advantage of this special education should be sent back into the normal stream.  The criticisms made in the report apply to the teachers as much as to the students. For students of high capacity, one teacher well versed in his subject is enough — even a good textbook, together with encyclopedias and dictionaries would be enough.


The Mother: But as one goes down the scale and the capacity of the student becomes lower, the teacher must have higher and higher capacities: discipline, self-control, consecration, psychological understanding, infectious enthusiasm, to awaken in the student  the part which is asleep the will to know, the need for progress, self-control, etc.   Just as we organise the school in such a way as to be able to discover and help outstanding students, in the same way, the responsibility for classes should be given to outstanding teachers.  So I ask each teacher to consider his work in the school as the best and quickest way of doing his Yoga. Moreover, every difﬁculty and every difﬁcult student should be an opportunity for him to ﬁnd a divine solution to the problem.


The Mother:   On Z’s insistence, I had indicated a ﬁrst exercise — but the results were rather unfortunate, and I had to stop.  When the time has come, these things come naturally, spontaneously, so to say, and it is better not to make any arbitrary resolutions.


The Mother: This cannot be done by any external method. It depends almost entirely on the teacher’s attitude and consciousness. If he does not have the vision and the inner knowledge himself, how can he transmit them to his students?   To tell the truth, we rely mainly on the all-surrounding atmosphere charged with spiritual force, which has an effect even if it is not perceived or felt.


The Mother:  To the teachers and students: The “Vers la Perfection” classes are in accord with the teaching of Sri Aurobindo.  They lead towards the realisation of the Truth.  Those who do not understand that are turning their backs on the future.    ( )


The Mother: Your difﬁculty comes from the fact that you have still the old belief that in life some things are high and others low. It is not exact. It is not the things or the activities that are high or low, it is the consciousness of the doer which is true or false.  If you unite your consciousness with the Supreme Consciousness and manifest It, all you think, feel or do becomes luminous and true. It is not the subject of the teaching which is to be changed, it is the consciousness with which you teach that must be enlightened.


The Mother:   The contradiction comes from the fact that you want to ” and this is impossible. It is an attitude, an inside attitude mostly but which governs the outside action as much as It is something to be much more than to be taught.    It will be put into practice in the best way possible, according to the capacity of each teacher.


The Mother: (  )  It would be inﬁnitely preferable that the division should disappear immediately. The effectiveness of what you suggest will become apparent only in practice.


The Mother: Therefore it seems to me that the best thing is to try, either for a full year if the results are slow  to show themselves, or for three months if the results are clearly apparent by then.  With sincerity and ﬂexibility you should be able to solve the problem.     It is all right. Now the important point is to apply it with sincerity and thoroughness.


The Mother: Blessings.    School is just a preparation to make the students capable of thinking, studying, progressing and becoming intelligent if they can — all that must be done during the and not only in school.      It is not quite like that.


The Mother: In all the sections, Primary, Secondary and Higher Course, the children will follow yogic methods in their education and prepare and try to bring down new knowledge.  So all the students can be said to be doing Yoga.  A distinction must be made, however, between those doing Yoga and the disciples. To be a disciple one has to surrender and the decision to do so must be full and spontaneous. Such decisions have to be taken individually — when the call comes — and it cannot be imposed or even suggested.§


The Mother: Blessings.     (  )


The Mother: The French book is the only one that seems possible to me — the others are forbidding and make you disinclined to work.  But I would not advise giving this French book to the students. They do not really need books. The teacher or teachers should use the book to prepare lessons that are adapted to the knowledge, the capacity and the needs of the students.


The Mother: That is to say that the teachers should learn what is in the book and transcribe it and explain it to the students, bit by bit, a little at a time, with plenty of explanations, comments and practical examples so as to make the subject accessible and attractive, that is, a living application instead of dead, dry theory.     We want here only children that can be considered as an ´elite.  The organisation must be made for them. Those who cannot ﬁt in, they have only to go after a one year trial.


The Mother: All that is useless — if the individual can progress at his maximum the group will necessarily beneﬁt by it. If the individual is submitted to the possibility and capacity of the group, he loses his chance of total progress.     The old method of teaching is obviously outdated and will be gradually abandoned throughout the whole world.  But to tell the truth, each teacher, drawing his inspiration from modern ideas, should discover the method which he ﬁnds best and most suited to his nature.


The Mother: Only if he does not know what to do may he join his class to those of X.     Ordinary classes belong to the past and will gradually disappear.  As for the choice between working alone or joining the “Vers la Perfection” classes, that depends on you.


The Mother: Because to teach and to conduct a class one must move away from theory and intellectual speculations to a very concrete application which has to be worked out in all its details.  Learning to teach while taking a class is certainly very good for the would-be teacher, but certainly less useful for the students.  To join “Vers la Perfection” is a kind of training which may be very useful for a beginner, who can easily learn the practical side of teaching there.  The choice is yours.


The Mother: Isn’t it possible to divide the class time into two parts (equal or unequal according to the need) and to try out both systems?  This would give diversity to the teaching and provide a wider ﬁeld for observation of the students and their capacities.    ( )


The Mother: All of them are both right and wrong at the same time.  First of all it seems that after the age of seven, those who have a living soul are so awake that they are ready to ﬁnd it, if they are helped. Below seven this is exceptional.  There are great differences among our children. First there are those who have a living soul.


The Mother: For them there is no question.  We must help them to ﬁnd it.   But there are others, the ones who are like little animals. If they are children from the outside, whose parents expect them to be taught — for them the “En Avant” classes are suitable. It is of no importance.


The Mother: The problem is not whether to have classes and programmes or not. The problem is to choose the children.   Up to the age of seven, children should enjoy themselves.  School should all be a game, and they learn as they play.


The Mother: As they play they develop a taste for learning, knowing and understanding life. The system is not very important. It is the attitude of the teacher that matters. The teacher should not be something that one endures under constraint. He should always be the friend whom you love because he helps and amuses you.


The Mother: Above the age of seven, the new system can be applied to those who are ready, provided that there is a class where the others can work in the ordinary way. And for that class the teacher should be convinced that what he is doing is the right method.  He should not feel that he is relegated to an inferior task.  When people do not agree, it is their pettiness, their narrowness which prevents them from doing so.


The Mother: They may be right in their idea... but they may not be doing the right thing, if they don’t have the necessary opening.   These things should be above considerations of personality.  It is a weakness to mix the two. There should be no considerations of personality.


The Mother: There are some things that we cannot do. For example, if we wanted to bring up all the children by the new method, we would have to take them all on trial for one or two months, ﬁnd out those who can follow, and send the others back to their families. It is impossible.  We must therefore produce the solution There are children who don’t like the new method — responsibility worries them.


The Mother: I have received intimations of this in letters from children.  We can only leave them as they are.  Everyone, without exception,, should  know that he is not someone who knows and applies what he knows. Everyone is learning to be what he should be and to do what he should do.§


The Mother:    I have read with satisfaction what you say about your work and I approve of it for.  But you must understand that other teachers can conceive their own work differently and be equally right.  I am surprised at your criticism of Y, for it does not correspond to what I know of him and his attitude.


The Mother: I take this opportunity to assure you that spiritual progress and the service of Truth are based on harmony and not on division and criticism.    Progress lies in widening, not in restriction.  There must be a bringing together of all points of view by putting each one in its true place, not an insistence on some to the exclusion of others.  True progress lies in the widening of the spirit and the abolition of all limits.


The Mother:  The teachers have to grow into the needed consciousness, emphasis should be on the actual experiences of work and there should be no difference in the child’s mind between work and play — all should be a joy of interest. It is the teacher’s job to create that interest.  If the interest is there, the right work will follow.


The Mother: He told me he liked much better to do manual work instead of studies. I thought he was right in his instinct and his choice was the best for his nature. So I gave him the permission required.    You must be very careful to see that there is no overlapping in the lessons that you teach.


The Mother: Your subjects are related to each other. If two teachers begin to speak on the same point, naturally there will be some difference in their points of view. The same thing seen from different angles looks different. This will bring confusion in the young minds of the students and they will start comparison amongst the teachers, which is not very desirable. So each one should try to take up his own subject without wandering about in other subjects.§


The Mother:    Regarding the questions that will be put to the students, I would ask the teachers to think with instead of with.  And, a little later, when it becomes normal for them to think with ideas, I shall ask of them a greater progress, which will be the decisive progress, that is, instead of thinking with ideas, to think with.


The Mother: When one can do that, one really begins to understand.     ideas  words    Our house has a very high tower; at the very top of that tower there is a bright and bare room, the last one before we emerge into the open air, into the full light.


The Mother: Sometimes, when we are at leisure to do so, we climb up to this bright room, and there, if we remain very quiet, one or more visitors call on us; some are tall, others small, some single, others in groups; all are bright and graceful.  Usually, in our joy at their arrival and in our haste to receive them well, we lose our tranquillity and come galloping down to rush into the large hall which forms the base of the tower and which is the store-room of words. Here, more or less excited, we select, reject, assemble, combine, disarrange, rearrange all the words within our reach in an attempt to transcribe this or that visitor who has come to us. But most often the picture we succeed in making of her is more like a caricature than a portrait.  And yet if we were wiser, we would remain up there at the summit of the tower, quite still, in joyful contemplation.


The Mother: Then, after a certain length of time, we would see the visitors themselves descending slowly, gracefully, calmly, without losing anything of their elegance or their beauty and, as they cross the store-room of words, clothing themselves effortlessly, automatically, with the words needed to make them perceptible even in the material house.  This is what I call thinking with ideas.  When this process is no longer mysterious to you, I shall explain what is meant by thinking with experiences.    When you think with words, you can express what you think with those words only.


The Mother: To think with ideas is to be able to put the same idea in many kinds of words. The words can also  be of different languages, if you happen to know more than one language. This is the ﬁrst, the most elementary thing about thinking with ideas.  When you think with experience, you go much deeper and you can express the same experience with many kinds of ideas.  Then thought can take this form or that form in any language and through all of them the essential realisation will remain unchanged.


The Mother:  To be convincing when you speak, think not in ideas but in experiences.     Did you attend the teachers’ meeting with X?


The Mother: They were meeting because in addition to their studies they wanted to give everyone a special project. They wanted to help them to discover what the scientists are discovering at the moment — “What is water?”, “Why does sugar dissolve in water?” — and all these things that are leading scientists to the conclusion that they know nothing.  So I asked them the question: “What is death?”  It is very important. For hundreds of years men have been asking this question.


The Mother: They don’t know.  The students will say that they don’t know what death is, but they will ﬁnd out by investigation. To understand this, you must know that ( ), and in the end the knowledge is much wider than if one follows a straight line.  In silence, one comes into contact with the Truth. Later, the idea descends, passes through the “library” of words and picks out the most suitable ones.


The Mother: At ﬁrst it comes hazily. You must continue until it becomes precise. You can note it down, but you should remain quiet and continue. Then you get the exact word.  The word that comes then is used in its essential sense, but not in its conventional sense.


The Mother: It is not quite the reality; they are the words which come closest to the reality. The teachers should do that. It would be very useful instead of ( ).  ( )


The Mother: I don’t know whether you have tried to get mental silence. You can spend your whole life on that and achieve almost nothing, whereas this is extremely interesting.  At ﬁrst nothing happens. You must stay like that: not actively — be in an aspiration towards the Divine. There must be no movement in the mind; it is not even surrender, it is a movement of perfect... something between self-giving and selfabdication.


The Mother: And if the mind makes an offering of its way of being, one day the answer comes spontaneously. It falls like a light.  The calmer you are, the more conﬁdence you have, the more attentive you are, the more clearly it comes. A time comes when one has only to do that ().... The student asks a question.


The Mother: You remain ()....   And above all, do not think actively:“I want to know... What should I say to him?” No!


The Mother: Then you will always get the answer for the student. Perhaps not the answer to the question he has asked, but the answer he needs. And it will always be interesting....  Up there, one knows. When you come to believe that the mind is powerless, that it knows nothing, you fall silent.


The Mother: You are more and more convinced that up there, there is a consciousness that not only knows but has the power, perceives the smallest detail and consequently the student’s need, and replies to that.  When you are convinced of that, you give up your personal intervention and say: “Take my place.”§    Certainly, it is the best thing to do.   Undoubtedly.


The Mother:   It is very difﬁcult to choose games which are useful and proﬁtable for a child. It asks for much consideration and reﬂection, and all that one does unthinkingly can have unhappy consequences.


The Mother:   If the children, even very small, are taught to put things in order, classify objects by kind, etc. etc., they like it very much and learn very well. There is a wonderful opportunity to give them good  lessons of arrangement and tidiness,, not theory.   Try and I am sure the children will help you to arrange things.


The Mother: Love and blessings.    Perhaps it would be good for the teachers themselves to learn ﬁrst the proper posture while writing?


The Mother: With my blessings.     This quotation is splendid and very, very useful.  Certainly the warning given by Sri Aurobindo must be strictly kept in mind when speaking to the young people who are bound to change their mind easily.  In class you must remain very objective.


The Mother: Blessings.    Yes, that.  Do not speak of yourself or your own experience.


The Mother:   Teachers must not be absent on the days and at the times of their classes. If a person is obliged to have external activities during school-hours, he cannot be a teacher.   DISCIPLINE Constraint is not the best or most effective principle of education. The true education should open out and reveal what is already there in these developing beings. Just as ﬂowers open out in the sun, children open out in joy.


The Mother: Obviously joy does not mean weakness, disorder and confusion, — but a luminous kindliness that encourages what is good and does not severely emphasise what is bad. Grace is always closer to the truth than justice.    Generally speaking, above the age of twelve all children need discipline.


The Mother: For them, discipline is an arbitrary rule that they impose on the little ones, without conforming to it themselves. I am opposed to that kind of discipline.    Example is the most powerful instructor. Never demand from a child an effort of discipline that you do not make yourself. Calm, equanimity, order, method, absence of useless words, ought to be constantly practised by the teacher if he wants to instil them into his pupils.


The Mother: The teacher should always be punctual and come to the class a few minutes before it begins, always properly dressed.  And above all, so that his students should never lie, he must never lie himself; so that his students should never lose their tempers, he should never lose his temper with them; and to have the right to say to them, “Rough play often ends in tears” , he should never raise his hand against any of them.  These are elementary and preliminary things which ought to be practised in all schools without exception.§


The Mother:   One can be in psychological control of the children only when one is in control of one’s own nature.     First, know thoroughly what you have to teach.


The Mother: Try to get a good understanding of your students and their particular needs.  Be very calm and very patient, never get angry; one must be master of oneself in order to be a master of others.    If you have to exercise authority, have authority over yourself ﬁrst. If you cannot keep discipline amongst the children, don’t beat or shout or get agitated — that is not permissible.


The Mother: Bring  down calm and peace from above and under their pressure things will improve.§    Oh, little children are wonderful! I see a lot of little children.  People have got into the habit of bringing them to me.


The Mother: And the consciousness that is already there in those who are less than two years old, is magniﬁcent. They are conscious. They don’t have the means to express themselves, the words are not there, but they are very conscious. And so to scold a child, that seems...!  The other day, the day before yesterday, one was brought to me, and he was grumbling.


The Mother: And of course his mother... So I gave him a rose: “See! It’s for you!” Of course, he didn’t understand the words, but he turned the rose this way and that, and he calmed down. Little children are wonderful.


The Mother: It is quite enough to surround them with things and to let them be. Never interfere unless it is absolutely necessary. And let them be. And never scold them.§


The Mother: You are a good teacher but it is your way of dealing with the children that is objectionable.   The children must be educated in an atmosphere of love and gentleness.


The Mother: No violence, never.  No scolding, never.  Always a gentle kindness and the teacher must be the  of the virtues the child must acquire.  The children must be to go to school, to learn, and the teacher must be their best friend who gives them the example of the qualities they must acquire.   And all that depends exclusively on the teacher.


The Mother: What he does and how he behaves.     It is not with severity but with that children are controlled.


The Mother:   I must tell you that if a teacher wants to be respected, he must be. X is not the only one to say that you use violence to make yourself obeyed; nothing is less respectable. You must ﬁrst control yourself and never use brute force to impose your will.


The Mother: I have always thought that something in the teacher’s character was responsible for the indiscipline of his students.  The most important is to master yourself and never lose your temper. If you don’t have control over yourself, how can you expect to control others, above all, children, who feel it immediately when someone is not master of himself?    To the teachers of all the infant classes One rule which must be rigorously applied: It is to hit the children — all blows are forbidden, even the slightest little slap or the so-called friendly punch. To give a blow to a child because he does not obey or does not understand or because he is disturbing the others indicates a lack of self-control, and it is harmful for both teacher and student.


The Mother: Disciplinary measures may be taken if necessary, but in complete calm and not because of a personal reaction.   Be completely silent yourself.  Bring a piece of cardboard with you, about one metre long, on which you write in very big letters, black on white, SILENCE (much bigger than that) and as soon as the students start talking, put the cardboard in front of you.  Blessings.


The Mother:  Never tell a child something it has to forget in order to truly know. Never do something in front of a child that it must not do when it is grown up.   Never forget that a little child under six knows much more than he can express.    HOMEWORK  I cannot say they are wrong.


The Mother: All the teachers who give lessons to a certain group of students should agree among themselves to allot the work so that the students are not overworked and can enjoy a rest and a relaxation that are.  This collective preparation must be ready before I can give any useful advice.  As for the subjects, it is indispensable to choose those which coincide with their experience so as to encourage introspection, observation and analysis of personal impressions.   ( )  This homework is a very thorny matter.


The Mother: Let those who want to do homework write to me directly about it.     If only you could write French a little more correctly!   You may do some homework if you really want to — but it is better to do a little well than to do much without care or concentration.


The Mother: If you want to be able to do anything at all, you must learn to discipline yourselves and to concentrate.    I do not agree that children should work at home. At home, they must be free to do what they wish.


The Mother: The solution to the problem can be found in the silence room.     This has come up after receiving many letters from both parents and children complaining that because of homework, the children go to bed late and are very tired as they do not sleep enough.


The Mother: I know that all these complaints are exaggerated, but they are also the indication that some progress must be made in the routine.  This project has to be worked out in its details with plasticity and suppleness.  I am not for treating all the children in the same way; it makes a kind of uniform level, advantageous for those that are backward but detrimental for those who can rise above the common height.   Those who want to work and learn must be encouraged.  But the energy of those who dislike studies must be turned to another outlet.


The Mother: Things are to be arranged and organised. The details of execution will be ﬁxed later on.  Blessings.   TESTS  I consider an examination as quite necessary.


The Mother: In any case there will be one in French.  My love and blessings.     It is not by conventional examinations that students can be selected for a class.


The Mother: It is only by developing in oneself the true psychological sense.   Select children who want to learn, not those who want to push themselves forward.   ()   It is very simple.


The Mother: It is because most of the children study because they are compelled to do so by their families, by custom and prevalent ideas, and not because they want to.   As long as their motive for studying is not rectiﬁed, as long as they do not work because they, they will ﬁnd all kinds of tricks to make their work easier and to obtain results with a minimum of effort.


The Mother: ( ) To be repeated each day by all the students:  It is not for our family, it is not to secure a good position, it is not to earn money, it is not to obtain a diploma, that we study.  We study to learn, to know, to understand the world, and for the sake of the joy that it gives us.     The only solution is to annul this test and all that are to come.


The Mother: Keep all the papers with you in a closed bundle — as something that has not been — and continue quietly your classes.   At the end of the year you will give notes to the students, not based on written test-papers, but on their behaviour, their concentration, their regularity, their promptness to understand and their openness of intelligence.  For yourself you will take it as a discipline to rely more on inner contact, keen observation, and impartial outlook.


The Mother: For the students it will be the necessity of understanding truly what they learn and not to repeat as a parrot what they have not fully understood.  And thus a true progress will have been made in the teaching.   With blessings.


The Mother: I ﬁnd tests an obsolete and ineffective way of knowing if the students are intelligent, willing and attentive.  A silly, mechanical mind can very well answer a test if the memory is good and these are certainly not the qualities required for a man of the future.  It is by tolerance for the old habits that I consented that those who want tests can have them. But I hope that in future this concession will not be necessary.  To know if a student is good needs, if the tests are abolished, a little more inner contact and psychological knowledge for the teacher.


The Mother: But our teachers are expected to do Yoga, so this ought not to be difﬁcult for them.     Naturally the teacher has to test the student to know if he or she has learnt something and has made a progress. But this test  must be individual and adapted to each student, not the same mechanical test for all of them.


The Mother: It must be a spontaneous and unexpected test leaving no room for pretence and insincerity.  Naturally also, this is much more difﬁcult for the teacher but so much more living and interesting also.  I enjoyed your remarks about your students. They prove that you have an individual relation with them — and that is essential for good teaching.  Those who are insincere do not truly want to learn but to get good marks or compliments from the teacher — they are not interesting.


The Mother:   The prizes certainly should not be based on competitive grades.  A prize of appreciation, of equivalent value, could be given to those who have exceeded a certain level of (1) capacity, plus (2) goodwill and regularity of effort.  Both should be there to warrant the prize.   STUDY OF WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO AND THE MOTHER


The Mother: To read my books is not difﬁcult because they are written in the simplest language, almost the spoken language. To draw proﬁt from them, it is enough to read with attention and concentration and an attitude of inner goodwill with the desire to receive and to live what is taught.  To read what Sri Aurobindo writes is more difﬁcult because the expression is highly intellectual and the language is much more literary and philosophic. The brain needs a preparation to be able truly to understand and generally a preparation takes time, unless one is specially gifted with an innate intuitive faculty.  In any case, I advise always to read at a time, keeping the mind as tranquil as one can, without making an effort to understand, but keeping the head as silent as possible, and letting the.


The Mother: This force received in the calm and the silence will do its work of light and, if needed, will create in the brain the necessary cells for the understanding. Thus, when one re-reads the same thing some months later, one perceives that the thought expressed has become much more clear and close, and even sometimes altogether familiar.  It is preferable to read regularly, a little every day, and at a ﬁxed hour if possible; this facilitates the brain-receptivity.     Savitri, The Life Divine Read a little at a time, read again and again until you have understood.   The true method is to read a little at a time, with concentration, keeping the mind as silent as possible, without actively trying to understand, but turned upwards, in silence, and aspiring for the light.


The Mother: Understanding will come little by little.  And later, in one or two years, you will read the same thing again and then you will know that the ﬁrst contact had been vague and incomplete, and that true understanding comes later, after having tried to put it into practice.     You came to earth to learn to know yourself.


The Mother: Read Sri Aurobindo’s books and look carefully within yourself as deeply as you can.     First of all read what Sri Aurobindo has written on education.


The Mother: Then you will have to ﬁnd a way to put it into practice.     Sri Aurobindo came upon the earth to announce the manifestation of the supramental world and not merely did he announce this manifestation but embodied also in part the supramental force and showed by example what one must do to prepare oneself for manifesting it. The best thing we can do is to study all that he has told us and endeavour to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new manifestation.  This gives life its real sense and will help us to overcome all obstacles.


The Mother: Let us live for the new creation and we shall grow stronger and stronger by remaining young and progressive.   Offer him your mind in all sincerity.   Fix a time when you can be quiet every day.


The Mother: Take one of Sri Aurobindo’s books. Read a sentence or two.  Then remain silent and concentrated to understand the deeper meaning. Try to concentrate deeply enough to obtain mental silence and begin again daily until you obtain a result.  Naturally you should not fall asleep.


The Mother:   If one reads Sri Aurobindo carefully one ﬁnds the answers to all that one wants to know.   By studying carefully what Sri Aurobindo has said on one can easily reach a complete knowledge of the things of this world.    Read Sri Aurobindo.


The Mother:  It is not by books that Sri Aurobindo ought to be studied but by subjects — what he has said on the Divine, on Unity, on religion, on evolution, on education, on self-perfection, on supermind, etc., etc.   Yes.


The Mother: For the, selections are better.    Very simple things as in “Elements of Yoga”.     Not from the Yoga point of view.


The Mother:   each individual teacher No, because it would not be plastic enough.     Yes.


The Mother:    No.    It depends entirely on the capacities of the students.


The Mother:   Surely the teacher can read to the students passages from Sri Aurobindo whenever he ﬁnds it useful.   He may read them himself, ask the students to read them aloud or silently, in the class or at home; it depends on the time and circumstances. The important thing is that Sri Aurobindo’s writings should not be chewed and presented to the students as a semi-digested food. The teacher may give all the elements of appreciation but the students should have the direct contact, the joy of illumination.


The Mother: The teacher should be careful not to interpose himself as a screen between the mind of the student and the great consciousness of Sri Aurobindo.  This is naturally left to the teacher.  You may do as you prefer, but as told above, care must always  be taken that Sri Aurobindo comes to the students after they have received the necessary information and preparation, but with all his freshness and power.  Why hesitate and limit yourself? You may surely quote other books of Sri Aurobindo or the Mother.§


The Mother:    ( )


The Mother: No! It won’t do. It is not to be done that way. You should begin with a big!  You were trying to show the continuity of history, with Sri Aurobindo as the outcome, the culmination.


The Mother: It is false entirely.  Sri Aurobindo does not belong to history; he is outside and beyond history.  Till the birth of Sri Aurobindo, religions and spiritualities were always centred on past ﬁgures, and they were showing as “the goal” the negation of life upon earth. So, you had a choice between two alternatives: either — a life this world with its round of petty pleasures and pains, joys and sufferings, threatened by hell if you were not behaving properly, or — an escape another world, heaven, nirvana, moksha....  Between these two there is nothing much to choose, they are equally bad.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo has told us that this was a fundamental mistake which accounts for the weakness and degradation of India.  Buddhism, Jainism, Illusionism were sufﬁcient to sap all energy out of the country.  True, India is the only place in the world which is still aware that something else than Matter exists. The other countries have quite forgotten it: Europe, America and elsewhere.... That is why she still has a message to preserve and deliver to the world.


The Mother: But at present she is splashing and ﬂoundering in the muddle.  Sri Aurobindo has shown that the truth does not lie in running away from earthly life but in remaining it, to , so that the Divine can manifest, in this .  You should say all this at the ﬁrst sitting. You should be square and frank... like that! ( .)


The Mother: Then, when this is told, strongly, squarely, and there is no doubt about it — and then only — you can go on and amuse them with the history of religions and religious or spiritual leaders.  Then — and then only — you will be able to show the seed of weakness and falsehood that they have harboured and proclaimed.  Then — and then only — you will be able to discern, from time to time, from place to place, an “intuition” that something else is possible; in the Vedas, for instance (the injunction to descend deep into the cave of the Panis); in the Tantras also... a little light is burning.§    Sri Aurobindo does not belong to the past nor to history.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo is the Future advancing towards its realisation.   Thus we must shelter the eternal youth required for a speedy advance, in order not to become laggards on the way.     Yes.


The Mother: Yes, to those who want to learn in school but not for those who wish to study alone.    Bulletin   If you want to use my articles or conversations, you should do it.


The Mother:    Sri Aurobindo should be read in English, and I should be read in French.


The Mother: I said it would take years to understand properly. But if you are intelligent you can understand something; and the teacher wants to assess your degree of intelligence.    Bulletin   You seem to forget that Sri Aurobindo wrote for so many years the whole of the in perfect mental silence leaving the inspiration from above to go through and manifest through his hands on the typewriter.


The Mother:   It is indeed a very good idea to study the. The little you can understand by yourself is better and more effective than an ocean of explanation from another.


The Mother: You may proﬁtably teach biology. And at the same time continue your study of Sri Aurobindo.  It is better to do what you do thoroughly and most seriously, than to multiply your occupations.  To be a good teacher is not easy; but it is very interesting and a good opportunity to develop oneself.


The Mother: As for reading the works of Sri Aurobindo, it opens the door of the future to us.    I suppose it is only as a gymnastic for the mind!    The Life Divine  If you read metaphysics and ethics, you must do it just as  to give a little exercise to your brain, but never lose sight of the fact that and that it is not in this way that one can get knowledge.


The Mother: Naturally, this does not hold good for   It seems to me that apart from the work at the Building Service, if you feel like studying, it would be more worthwhile to read Sri Aurobindo’s books seriously and carefully without rushing.  That will help you more than anything else for your sadhana.   .  My blessings.


The Mother:    (  )  1. Prayer (Sri Aurobindo, Mother — grant us your help in our endeavour to understand your teaching.)


The Mother: 2..  3. A moment of silence.  4. One question can be put by whoever wants to put a question on.


The Mother: 5. Answer to the question.  6..   This is the meeting of a but simply a class for studying Sri Aurobindo’s books.   LANGUAGES  To unite East and West, to give the best of one to the other and make a true synthesis, a university will be established for all kinds of studies.


The Mother: Our school will form a nucleus of that university.  In our school I have put French as the medium of instruction.  One of the reasons is that French is the cultural language of the world. The children can learn the Indian languages at a later stage. If more stress is laid upon Indian languages at present, then the natural tendency of the Indian mind will be to fall back upon the ancient literature, culture and religion.


The Mother: You know very well that we realise the value of ancient Indian things, but we are here to create something new, to bring down something that will be quite fresh for the earth. In this endeavour, if your mind is tied down to the ancient things, then it will refuse to go forward.  The study of the past has its place, but it must not hamper the work for the future.§    Something like that.


The Mother: All I can say is that we are considered to be one of the best — perhaps the very best — school in India for teaching French and I think it would be a good thing to deserve this appreciation.   In my relations with the children here, I always speak to them in French.    There are many reasons of which the deeper ones you ought to know in your heart without needing to be told.  Among the exterior ones I can say that French, being a very precise language, is better for Science than English which is far superior for poetry.


The Mother: There are also a few practical reasons among which is the fact, for all those who will have to earn their living when they are grown up, that all those who know French thoroughly well have most easily found employment.  Blessings.    French is indeed the most precise and clearest language. But from the spiritual point of view it is not true that French is the best language to use; for English has a suppleness, a ﬂuidity which French does not have, and this suppleness is indispensable for not deforming what is vaster and more comprehensive in the experience than what mental expression can formulate.


The Mother:  ()  = Kindness and goodwill; is to see the good side of everything. It is not mere optimism which closes its eyes from bad. It is rather a psychic vision which sees the Good everywhere.   There are many words which cannot be translated. Sri Aurobindo’s humour and irony cannot be translated into French.


The Mother: English humour when translated into French sounds stupid and ﬂat; French humour when translated into English becomes cruel and meaningless. These two languages seem to be so similar and yet their genius is quite apart.     I shall send you the book [] tomorrow; but you must study grammar well if you want to understand what you read.


The Mother:   It is taught in advanced grammar courses, and there are also special books. One of the principal rules of style is that in a prose passage one should not use “I” except when it is absolutely impossible to avoid it, and  with “I”. This gives you an idea of what you must do to give some style to your daily report!


The Mother:   French must be written with simplicity and clarity.


The Mother: French gains by being written with simplicity and clarity; an accumulation of complicated images always renders the style pretentious.    My dear little smile, You are absolutely right, and I don’t see why, instead of reading interesting things, you should start doing boring exercises.  To learn a language one must read, read, read — and talk as much as one can.   With all my love.


The Mother:    The best is to speak... courageously at every opportunity.


The Mother:  If it is to learn French you should take a textbook of French literature to study and read one or two books by each author mentioned in the textbook, beginning at the beginning, that is, with the earliest authors.    I did not say that you should read only the earliest a


The Mother: uthors; I said you should read one or two books by mentioned in the literature course, with the earliest ones.     It is good that you read a lot of French, that will teach you how to write.    Words of the Mother  Words  It is quite all right because it obliges them to think in English which is the best way to learn a language.


The Mother:    The mother tongue is all right. But for those who want to do higher studies, the English is indispensable.  Blessings.


The Mother:   a common or international language If only language is known this is better.      Teach both, the true language and what it has become — that will be very interesting indeed — and more than anything else can cure them of the habit of speaking bad Hindi.


The Mother:  Continue without hesitation....  Amrita says that the situation of his Tamil class is much worse than that of the Hindi one. He says that he will continue even if the students come no more — he will teach to himself!    Hindi is good only for those who belong to a Hindi-speaking province.


The Mother: Sanskrit is good for all Indians.      I


The Mother: have the for Indian languages and continue to study Sanskrit when I have time.      The Sanskrit ought to be the national language of India.


The Mother: Blessings.    Yes.  Blessings.


The Mother: ()  (1) Tamil (2) French  (3) Simpliﬁed Sanskrit to replace Hindi as the language of India  (4) English as the international language.    F M’ H  V L          ARTS


The Mother: On the physical plane it is in beauty that the Divine expresses Himself.    In the physical world, of all things it is beauty that expresses best the Divine. The physical world is the world of form and the perfection of form is beauty. Beauty interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal.


The Mother: Its role is to put all manifested nature in contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, through harmony and a sense of the ideal which uplifts and leads towards something higher.    Let beauty be your constant ideal.   The beauty of the soul The beauty of sentiments The beauty of thoughts The beauty of the action The beauty in the work so that nothing comes out of your hands which is not an expression of pure and harmonious beauty.


The Mother: And the Divine Help shall always be with you.    Supreme art expresses the Beauty which puts you in contact with the Divine Harmony.    If art is to manifest something in the divine Life, there also a vast and luminous peace must express itself.


The Mother:   Spiritual beauty has a contagious power.   Beauty is the joyous offering of Nature.     True art means the expression of beauty in the material world.


The Mother: In a world wholly converted, that is to say, expressing integrally the divine reality, art must serve as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life.    In art also we must remain on the heights.


The Mother: Good taste is the aristocracy of art.      P


The Mother: The true painting aims at creating something more beautiful than the ordinary reality.   If you like — but drawings are best for learning.   For learning, it would be better to enlarge the drawing so as to bring out the details.    To learn means months and months of study before any picture can be done; studies from nature, drawing ﬁrst for a long time, painting only after.


The Mother: If you are ready to study hard and regularly, then you can begin, otherwise it is better not to try.   Naturally it depends on what the pictures are. Most often, they are about the things of the ordinary life, and therefore pull down the consciousness towards them.   “Cubism” and Other Ultra-Modernism  If these painters were sincere, if they truly painted what they feel and see, the picture would be the expression of a confused mind and an unruly vital.


The Mother: But, unhappily, the painters are not sincere and then these pictures are nothing else than the expression of a falsehood, an artiﬁcial imagination based only on the will to be strange and to bewilder the public in order to attract attention  and that has indeed very little to do with beauty.     The largest of the ﬂower-paintings is the best because it is more spontaneous and free.


The Mother: You must feel what you paint and do it with joy.   Copy many beautiful things, but try even more to catch the emotion, the deeper life of things.    My dear child, I have seen your paintings — they are almost perfect. But what they lack is not technique — it is.


The Mother: If you develop your consciousness you will spontaneously discover how to express yourself. Nobody, and especially not ofﬁcial teachers, can teach you that.  So to leave here and go anywhere else, to any of the “Art Academies”, would be to leave the light and step into a pit of obscurity and unconsciousness.  You cannot learn to be an artist with — it is as if you wanted to realise the Divine by imitating religious ceremonies.  Above all and always the most important thing is.


The Mother: Develop your inner being — ﬁnd your soul, and at the same time you will ﬁnd the true artistic expression.   With my blessings.


The Mother: Why do you want to do the details? That is not at all necessary.  Painting is not done to copy Nature, but to express an impression, a feeling, an emotion that we experience on seeing the beauty of Nature. It is this that is interesting and it is this that  has to be expressed, and it is because you have the possibility of doing this that I encourage you to paint.


The Mother: I have seen your paintings and certainly there has been progress over the last year.  Modern art is an experiment, still very clumsy, to express something other than the simple physical appearance. The idea is good — but naturally the value of the expression depends entirely on the value of that which wants to express itself.  At present almost all artists live in the lowest vital and mental consciousness and the results are quite poor.


The Mother: Try to develop your consciousness, endeavour to discover your soul, and then what you will do will be truly interesting.  This is the programme I am giving you for the year which starts for you today.   I am sorry to have to say that in the paintings, I do not see much improvement on last year. They lack sincerity and spontaneity; it is not, it is — and thought in a childish way.  What I said last year has yet to be achieved.


The Mother: The consciousness must grow in light and sincerity and the eyes must learn to see artistically.    I was not able to look at your paintings until today. Certainly they represent an effort, and the one which is framed is pleasing to the eye. But you too much and you do not enough.


The Mother: In other words, your vision is not original, spontaneous or direct, which means that your execution is still conventional and lacks originality — an imitation of what others do.   There is, behind all things, a divine beauty, a divine harmony: it is with this that we must come into contact; it is this that we must express.    M


The Mother: To all those who took part in today’s singing and music: Sri Aurobindo and myself have felt that there was a great progress this time. It was not only from the external point of view of execution, but in the greater aim of the concentration behind and in the inner attitude. May the day bring its benediction to all.


The Mother: I do not know who is spreading the rumour that I do not like music. That is not true at all — I like music very much, but it should be heard in a small circle, that is, played for ﬁve or six people at the most. When there is a crowd it becomes a social gathering, more often than not, and the atmosphere that is created is not good.


The Mother: To keep yourself occupied with music and writing is always good; for your nature ﬁnds there its inborn occupation and that helps to maintain the vital energy and keep the balance.  About sadhana I should like to ask you: why not do sadhana through your music? Surely meditation is not the only way of doing sadhana. Through your music bhakti and aspiration can grow and prepare the nature for realisation.  If moments of meditation and concentration come of themselves then it is all right; but there is no need to force it.


The Mother:   Music follows the rule of all things on earth — unless they are turned to the Divine they cannot be divine.    When somebody lives in a higher consciousness, the vibrations of this higher consciousness are manifested in whatever this person does, says or thinks. These higher vibrations are manifested by the very fact of the presence of this person upon earth.  Blessings.


The Mother:   You must have noticed that this tune generally comes after some trouble or chaos has been expressed. It comes as a solution to a problem. It means an advancement, a progress, a step forward in consciousness. It comes as an enlightenment.


The Mother: My music resembles the inner movements of the Sadhana. Sometimes a trouble, a chaos, a problem, a wrong movement which seemed conquered returns with a greater force. But then, as an answer or as an aid, the growth, the unveiling of the consciousness — and then the ﬁnal enlightenment.  This music is very difﬁcult to understand — especially for the Western mind.


The Mother: To people from the West it often means nothing; nor do they easily feel in them the corresponding movements. Mostly those who can appreciate the Indian Ragas can like that music; for there is some resemblance with the Ragas.   But here too from the point of view of form, all conventions of musical laws and notations are broken.    This music aims at awakening certain profound feelings.


The Mother: To hear it one should make oneself as silent and passive as possible. And if, in the mental silence, a part of the being can take the attitude of the witness who observes without reacting or participating, then one can take account of the effect which the music produces on the feelings and emotions; and if it produces a state of deep calm and of semi-trance, then that is quite good.     In the same way as one can share the emotions of another person by sympathy, spontaneously, by an afﬁnity more or less deep, or else by an effort of concentration which ends in identiﬁcation.


The Mother: It is this last process that one adopts when one listens to music with an intense and concentrated attention, to the point of checking all other noise in the head and obtaining a complete silence, into which fall, drop by drop, the notes of the music whose sound alone remains; and with the sound all the feelings, all the movements of emotion can be perceived, experienced, felt as if they were produced in ourselves.       You should eliminate the and keep only the music in both cases.


The Mother: If you know how to write the music, make copies of the tunes you want to play (without copying the words). If you do not know how to write the music, ask someone who does — Jo for example — to do it for you or to teach you to do it.  Do not keep the books with you, for these books can have a bad inﬂuence.


The Mother: The role of music lies in helping the consciousness to uplift itself towards the spiritual heights.  All that lowers the consciousness, encourages desires and excites the passions, runs counter to the true goal of music and ought to be avoided.  It is not a question of name but of inspiration — and the spiritual consciousness alone can be the judge there.     ()


The Mother: The words are ridiculous and even in bad taste. Generally, when we studied a song, if the lyrics were unbecoming they would be changed and only the music retained.  Someone who has a sense of rhythm can do it very easily.


The Mother: (  )  It is all right on condition that it is not exclusive and that other religions are also represented.


The Mother:    P   Poetry is sensuality of the spirit.


The Mother:   For me true poetry is beyond all philosophy and beyond all explanation.    P


The Mother: Modern photography has become an art and, like all other arts, it can effectively express the inner feelings and the soul, with a true sense of beauty.     Photography is an art when the photographer is an artist.


The Mother: C   When one has the true attitude, everything can be an occasion to learn.  In any case, this excess should make you understand that the imperious desire of certain people to see ﬁlms is as pernicious as all other desires.


The Mother:   We would like to be able to show the children pictures of life as it should be, but we have not reached that point, far from it. These ﬁlms have yet to be made. And at present, most of the time, the cinema shows life as it should not be, so strikingly that it makes you disgusted with life.  This too is useful as a preparation.


The Mother: Films are permitted in the Ashram not as an amusement but as part of education. So we are faced with the problem of education.   If we consider that the child should learn and know only what can keep him pure of every low, crude, violent and degrading movement, we would have to eliminate at a stroke all contact with the rest of humanity, beginning with all these stories of war and murder, of conﬂict and deception which go under the name of history; we would have to eliminate all present contact with family, relatives and friends; we would have to exercise control over all the vital impulses of their being.  This was the idea behind the enclosed monastic life of convents, or the ascetic life in caves and forests.


The Mother: This remedy proved to be quite ineffectual and failed to pull mankind out of the mire.  According to Sri Aurobindo, the remedy is quite different.   We must face life as a whole, with all the ugliness, falsehood and cruelty it still contains, but we must take care to discover in ourselves the source of all goodness, all beauty, all light and all truth, in order to bring this source consciously into contact with the world so as to transform it.  This is inﬁnitely more difﬁcult than running away or shutting our eyes so as not to see, but it is the only truly effective way — the way of those who are truly strong and pure and capable of manifesting the Truth.


The Mother:   It is the vital that is affected and moved.  If you look mentally, the interest is no more the same; instead of being moved or troubled, you can judge quietly the value of the ﬁlm, whether it is well constructed and well acted and whether the pictures have any artistic value.  In the ﬁrst case you are “good public”, in the second you are more peaceful.  Blessings.


The Mother:   ()  Children below ﬁfteen years will see only educational ﬁlms.  Care should be taken in selecting ﬁlms to be shown in Auroville.§   All that encourages the lower movements and actions must be avoided.


The Mother:    Learn to


The Mother: be silent   The cinema is given for those who like to look at pictures and to listen to the music and the words, and they have a right to look and to hear quietly.  Those who cannot stop talking, chatting, laughing and making a noise or even running about, ought not to be there, because all what they do, they can do elsewhere without spoiling the pleasure of those who are not like them.  So here is the decision: a silent audience — or no cinema.


The Mother:  “The Wizard of Oz”  A short explanation will surely increase the interest of the picture to be shown to you tonight.  This picture is in three sections, two black and one, the most extensive, in colour. The two black sections (ﬁrst and last) show how things appear in the physical world; the coloured one expresses a similar sequence of events and similar characters in the vital world, the world where one can go when the body is in deep sleep, when one gets out of the body. So long as you have a physical body, no true harm can happen to you in the vital world, for the physical body acts as a protection, and you  can always return into it at will.


The Mother: This is shown in the picture in a classical way. You will see that the little girl wears on her feet some magic ruby-red slippers, and so long as she keeps the slippers on her feet nothing wrong can happen to her. The rubyred slippers are the sign and the symbol of the connection with the physical body, and as long as the slippers are on her feet, she can, at will, return to her body and ﬁnd shelter therein.  Two other details can be noted with interest. One is the snow shower that saves the party from the inﬂuence of the wicked witch who by her black magic has stopped their advance towards the emerald castle of beneﬁcent vitality.


The Mother: In the vital world, snow is the symbol of purity. It is the purity of their feelings and intentions that saves them from the great danger.  Note also that to go to the castle of the good wizard they must follow the broad path of golden bricks, the path of luminous conﬁdence and joy.  The second is: when Dorothy throws water on the straw man to save him from burning, some water falls on the face of the wicked witch who lit the ﬁre and at once she gets dissolved and dies. The water is the symbol of the power of puriﬁcation and no hostile being or force can resist this power handled with goodwill and sincerity.


The Mother: Finally, when the good fairy teaches the little girl how to go back home by knocking her red slippers one against the other, she says that nothing is better than home; by “home” she means the physical world which is the place of protection and realisation.  As you see, the subject of this picture is interesting and not altogether devoid of knowledge. Unhappily the rendering is not as beautiful and harmonious as it could have been. In the setup there are some serious faults of taste and many regrettable vulgarities.    OTHER SUBJECTS


The Mother: To know how to read and write, to speak at least one language correctly, to know a little general geography, have an overall view of modern science and know some rules of conduct — this is indispensable for living in a group or a community.   It seems to me that psychology without yoga is lifeless.  The study of psychology must necessarily lead to yoga, at least to practical yoga if not theoretical.   Do not divide what is one. Both science and spirituality have the same goal — the Supreme Divinity.


The Mother: The only difference between them is that the latter knows it and the other not.     There are a lot of things that we need to know, not because we ﬁnd them specially interesting but because they are useful and even indispensable; mathematics is one of them.  It is only when we have a strong background of knowledge that we can face life successfully.


The Mother:   History and geography can only become interesting to minds that are eager to know the earth on which they live.  Before one can take an interest in these two subjects, one must widen the horizons of one’s thirst for knowledge as well as one’s ﬁeld of consciousness.   They can help in several ways: 1. To become capable of receiving and bearing the light of the Truth, the mind must be made strong, wide and supple.  These studies are a very good way to achieve this.


The Mother: 2. If you study science deeply enough, it will teach you the unreality of appearances and thus lead you to the spiritual reality.  3. The study of all the aspects and movements of physical Nature will bring you into contact with the universal Mother, and so you will be closer to me.


The Mother: As for arithmetic, I am much more in favour of than of written arithmetic, with an emphasis on the development of the faculty of mental arithmetic. It is more difﬁcult, but it greatly increases the capacity for inner visualisation and reasoning. It is a very effective way of developing true intelligence instead of memorised knowledge.  When one knows mental arithmetic and arithmetic, it then takes very little time to learn written arithmetic.  With the help of similar objects — you can begin with the children themselves for small numbers and then take pebbles and counters when it comes to tens and hundreds.


The Mother: In this way, by taking a little trouble, you can teach them all the operations and so they become for the children something real and living which has a concrete meaning.   Our aim is not a national system of education for India, but an education for the world at large.     Yes, this is quite correct and part of what I would have said if I had had time to answer your questions.


The Mother: India has or rather the knowledge of the Spirit, but she neglected matter and suffered for it.  The West has the knowledge of matter but rejected the Spirit and suffers badly for it.  An integral education which could, with some variations, be adapted to all the nations of the world, must bring back the legitimate authority of the Spirit over a matter fully developed and utilised.   This is in short what I wanted to say.


The Mother: With blessings.   B I I E  Prepare her children for the rejection of falsehood and the manifestation of Truth.


The Mother: Make matter ready to manifest the Spirit.  To teach to the world that matter is false and impotent unless it becomes the manifestation of the Spirit.   Its only use is to make the material basis stronger, completer and more effective for the manifestation of the Spirit.  The unity of all the nations is the compelling future of the world.


The Mother: But for the unity of all nations to be possible, each nation must ﬁrst realise its own unity.  Unity must be a living fact and not the imposition of an arbitrary rule. When India will be one, she will have spontaneously a language understood by all.   Get out of conventions and insist on the growth of the soul.


The Mother: a) The almost exclusive importance given to success, career and money.  b) Insist on the paramount importance of the contact with the Spirit and the growth and manifestation of the Truth of the being.    To each one a has been given to do that work, because it is in realising these things in that one helps humanity to realise them upon earth.  The teacher must absolutely possess the qualities and the consciousness he wants his students to acquire.


The Mother: I would like them (the Government) to recognise Yoga as education, not so much for ourselves, but it will be good for the country.  Matter will be transformed, that will be a solid base. Life will be divinised. Let India take the lead.   M I  F I P


The Mother: In any country the best education that can be given to children consists in teaching them what the true nature of their country is and its own qualities, the mission their nation has to fulﬁl in the world and its true place in the terrestrial concert. To that should  be added a wide understanding of the role of other nations, but without the spirit of imitation and without ever losing sight of the genius of one’s own country. France meant generosity of sentiment, newness and boldness of ideas and chivalry in action.  It was that France which commanded the respect and admiration of all: it is by these virtues that she dominated the world.


The Mother: An utilitarian, calculating, mercantile France is France no longer. These things do not agree with her true nature and in practising them she loses the nobility of her world position.  This is what the children of today must be made to know.      OUTH does not depend on the small number of years one has lived, but on the capacity to grow and progress. To grow is to increase one’s potentialities, one’s capacities; to progress is to make constantly more perfect the capacities that one already possesses.


The Mother: Old age does not come from a great number of years but from the incapacity or the refusal to continue to grow and progress. I have known old people of twenty and young people of seventy. As soon as one wants to settle down in life and reap the beneﬁts of one’s past efforts, as soon as one thinks that one has done what one had to do and accomplished what one had to accomplish, in short, as soon as one ceases to progress, to advance along the road of perfection, one is sure to fall back and become old.  One can also teach the body that there is almost no limit to its growth in capacities or its progress, provided that one discovers the true method and the right conditioning. This is one of the many experiments which we want to attempt in order to break these collective suggestions and show the world that human potentialities exceed all imagination.


The Mother: N SPORTING activities those who want to be successful choose a certain line or subject which appeals more to them and suits their nature; they concentrate on their choice and take great care not to disperse their energies in different directions. As in life a man chooses his career and concentrates all his attention upon it, so the sportsman chooses a special activity and concentrates all his efforts to achieve as much perfection as he can in this line. This perfection comes usually by a building up of spontaneous reﬂex which is the result of constant repetition of the same movements. But this spontaneous reﬂex can be, with advantage, replaced by the faculty of concentrated attention. This faculty of concentration belongs not only to the intellectual but to all activities and is obtained by the conscious control of the energies.


The Mother: It is well known that the value of a man is in proportion to his capacity of concentrated attention, the greater the concentration the more exceptional is the result, to the extent that a perfect and unfailing concentrated attention sets the stamp of genius on what is produced. There can be genius in sports as in any other human activity.  Shall we then advise a limit to one action in order to achieve perfection in concentration?  The advantages of limitation are well known, but it has also its inconvenience, bringing narrowness and incapacity for any other line than the one chosen. This is contrary to the ideal of a perfectly developed and harmonised human being.


The Mother: How to conciliate these two contrary tendencies?  There seems to be only one solution to the problem. In the same way as an athlete develops methodically his muscles by a scientiﬁc and gradual training, the faculty of concentrated attention can be developed scientiﬁcally by a methodical training —  developed in such a way that concentration is obtained at will and on whatever subject or activity is chosen. Thus the work of preparation instead of being done in the subconscient by a slow and steady repetition of the same movements, is done consciously by a concentration of will and a gathered attention centred on one point or another according to plan and decision. The chief difﬁculty seems to be to obtain this power of concentration independent from all inner and outer circumstances — difﬁcult perhaps but not impossible for him who is determined and persevering.


The Mother: Moreover, whatever method of development is chosen, determination and perseverance are indispensable to obtain success.  The aim in the training is to develop this power of concentrating the attention at will on whatever subject or activity one chooses from the most spiritual to the most material, without losing anything of the fullness of the power, — for instance, in the physical ﬁeld, transferring the use of the power from one game to another or one activity to another so as to succeed equally in all.  This extreme attention concentrated on a game or a physical activity like lifting, vaulting, punching, running, etc., focusing all energies on any of these movements which bring about in the body the thrill of an exhilarating joy is the thing which carries with it perfection in execution and success. Generally this happens when the sportsman is especially interested in a game or an activity and its happening escapes all control, decision or will.  Yet by a proper training of concentrated attention one can obtain the phenomenon at will, on command, so to say, and the resulting perfection in the execution of any activity follows inevitably.


The Mother: This is exactly what we want to try in our Department of Physical Education. By this process the result may come more slowly than by the usual method, but the lack of rapidity will surely be compensated by a fullness and richness in the expression.   HE FLAG that is shown on the cover of our represents the symbol of a full-blown golden lotus with two rows of petals, four inside and twelve outside, at the exact centre of a silver-blue square.  This blue is the blue of the spirit and the gold is the colour of the Supreme Mother. The red of the cover surrounding the ﬂag signiﬁes the illumined physical consciousness.


The Mother: This ﬂag was originally chosen as the ﬂag of the J.S.A.S.A.; but later, when we celebrated India’s Independence Day (15 August 1947), we found that it also expressed the spiritual mission of the whole of India. So for us it is the symbolic ﬂag of a resurgent, united and victorious India rising above the torpor of the centuries, having cast off the shackles of enslavement and undergone all the pangs of a new birth to emerge once more as a great and united nation and lead the world and humanity towards the highest ideal of the spirit.  We therefore consider ourselves very fortunate to have a ﬂag with such a symbol and we cherish it deeply.   NE


The Mother: OF the most powerful aids that yogic discipline can provide to the sportsman is to teach him how to renew his energies by drawing them from the inexhaustible source of universal energy.  Modern science has made great progress in the art of nourishment, which is the best known means of replenishing one’s energies. But this process is at best precarious and subject to all kinds of limitations. We shall not speak about it here, for the subject has already been discussed at great length. But it is quite obvious that so long as the world and men are what they are, food is an indispensable factor.


The Mother: Yogic science knows of other ways of acquiring energy, and we shall mention two of the most important.  The ﬁrst is to put oneself in relation with the energies accumulated in the terrestrial material world and to draw freely from this inexhaustible source. These material energies are obscure and half unconscious; they encourage animality in man, but, at the same time, they establish a kind of harmonious relationship between the human being and material Nature. Those who know how to receive and use these energies are usually successful in life and succeed in everything they undertake. But they are still largely dependent on their living conditions and their state of bodily health.


The Mother: The harmony created in them is not immune from all attack; it usually vanishes when circumstances become adverse. The child spontaneously receives this energy from material Nature as he expends all his energies without calculating, joyfully and freely. But in most human beings, as they grow up, this faculty is blunted by the worries of life, as a result of the predominant place which mental activities come to occupy in the consciousness.  However, there is a source of energy which, once discovered,  is never exhausted, whatever the outer circumstances and physical conditions of life may be. It is the energy that can be described as spiritual, and is received no longer from below, from the inconscient depths, but from above, from the supreme origin of the universe and man, from the all-powerful and eternal splendours of the superconscient.


The Mother: It is there, all around us, permeating everything; and to enter into contact with it and to receive it, it is enough to aspire sincerely for it, to open oneself to it in faith and trust, to widen one’s consciousness and identify it with the universal Consciousness.  At the outset, this may seem very difﬁcult, if not impossible.  Yet by examining this phenomenon more closely, one can see that it is not so alien, not so remote from the normally developed human consciousness. Indeed, there are very few people who have not felt, at least once in their lives, as if lifted up beyond themselves, ﬁlled with an unexpected and uncommon force which, for a time, has made them capable of doing anything whatever; at such moments nothing seems too difﬁcult and the word “impossible” loses its meaning.  This experience, however ﬂeeting it may be, gives a glimpse of the kind of contact with the higher energy that yogic discipline can secure and maintain.


The Mother: The method of achieving this contact can hardly be given here. Besides, it is something individual and unique for each one, which starts from where he stands, adapting itself to his personal needs and helping him to take one more step forward.   The path is sometimes long and slow, but the result is worth the trouble one takes. We can easily imagine the consequences of this power to draw at will and in all circumstances on the boundless source of an energy that is all-powerful in its luminous purity.


The Mother: Weariness, exhaustion, illness, old age and even death become mere obstacles on the way, which a persistent will is sure to overcome.   NE OF the great problems in sports competitions is equity of judgment.  To avoid the clashes and quarrels which would otherwise be inevitable, it has been decided once and for all that the competitors would submit without argument to the judges’ decision. This may solve the problem for those who are being judged, but not for those who judge; for, if they are sincere, the more trust they are shown, the more care they should take to be absolutely correct in their judgments. That is why, to begin with, I eliminate all the cases in which the judgment is made beforehand, so to say, for reasons of policy or for any other reason.


The Mother: For although unfortunately this happens all too often, everyone agrees that it is vile and that human dignity demands that it should not be done.  As a rule, everything is thought to be all right when judgments are based on a thorough technical knowledge and on a sufﬁcient degree of impartiality. These judgments rely on senseperception, which is normally considered incontrovertible. In fact, however, this mode of perception is in itself uncertain. The sense-organs are directly under the inﬂuence of the psychological state of the individual who uses them, and thus the senseperceptions are altered, falsiﬁed, distorted in one way or another by the perceiver’s feelings towards the thing perceived.


The Mother: For example, those who belong to a group or an association are either too lenient or unduly severe towards the members of this group. From the point of view of truth, neither leniency nor severity is worth more than the other, for in both cases the judgment is based on a feeling and not on the objective and disinterested perception of the facts. This is a very obvious case, but even without going to this extreme, no human being, unless he is a Yogin, is free from these attractions and repulsions,  which are rarely perceived by the active consciousness, but which nonetheless exert a great inﬂuence on the functioning of the senses.  Only one who is above all likes and dislikes, all desires and preferences, can regard all things with perfect impartiality; the purely objective perception of his senses becomes like that of an extremely delicate and faultless mechanism which beneﬁts from the light of a living consciousness.  Here too yogic discipline will come to our aid by helping us to build characters of such nobility that they can become instruments of the truth.