The Mother: Yes, yes, He is! He is totally in it. He himself is the Play.  We speak of God, but we should remember that there are all these gradations of consciousness; and when we speak of God and His Play, we mean God in His transcendent state, beyond all the levels of matter, and when we speak of the Play we speak of God in his material state. So we say: Transcendent God is watching and playing — in Himself, by Himself, with Himself — His material game.


The Mother: But all language is a language of ignorance. Our entire way of expressing ourselves, everything we say and the way in which we say it, is necessarily ignorance. And that is why it is so difﬁcult to express something which is concretely true; this would require explanations which would themselves be full of falsehood, of course, or else extremely long. This is why Sri Aurobindo’s sentences are sometimes very long, precisely because he strives to escape from this ignorant language.  Our very way of thinking is wrong.


The Mother: The believers, the faithful, all of them — particularly in the West — when they speak of God, think of Him as “something else”, they think that He cannot be weak, ugly or imperfect — they think wrongly, they divide, they separate. It is subconscious, unreﬂecting thought; they are in the habit of thinking like this instinctively; they do not watch themselves thinking. For example, when they speak of  “perfection” in a general way, they see or feel or postulate precisely the sum-total of everything they consider to be virtuous, divine, beautiful, admirable — but it is not that at all! Perfection is something which lacks nothing. The divine perfection is the Divine in His entirety, which lacks nothing.


The Mother: The divine perfection is the Divine as a whole, from whom nothing has been taken away — so it is just the opposite! For the moralists divine perfection means all the virtues that they represent.  From the true point of view, perfection is the whole ( ), and it is precisely the fact that there can be nothing outside the whole. It is impossible that anything should be missing, because it is impossible for anything not to form part of the whole. There can be nothing which is not in the whole.


The Mother: Let me explain. A given universe may not contain everything, for a universe is a mode of manifestation; but there is every possible kind of universe. So I always come back to the same thing: there can be nothing which does not form part of the whole.  Therefore one can say that each thing is in its place, exactly as it should be, and that relations between things are exactly as they should be.  But perfection is only one special way of approaching the Divine; it is one side, and in the same way there are innumerable sides, angles or aspects, innumerable ways of approaching the Divine, for example: will, truth, purity, perfection, unity, immortality, eternity, inﬁnity, silence, peace, existence, consciousness, etc.


The Mother: The number of approaches is almost unlimited. With each one you approach or draw near or enter into contact with the Divine through one aspect and if you really do it, you ﬁnd that the difference is merely in the most external form, but the contact is identical. It is as if you were turning around a centre, a globe, and seeing it from many different angles as in a kaleidoscope; but once the contact is made, it is the same thing.  Perfection is therefore a global way of approaching the Divine: everything is there and everything is as it should be  — “should be”, that is to say, a perfect expression of the Divine; one cannot even say of His Will, for if you say “His Will” it is still something outside Him.  One can also say — but this is far, far below it — that He is what He is and exactly as He wants to be — with this “exactly as He wants to be”, one has come down by a considerable number of steps!


The Mother: But this is to give you the point of view of perfection.  Besides, divine perfection implies inﬁnity and eternity; that is to say, everything coexists outside time and space.  It is like the word “purity”; one could hold forth interminably on the difference between divine purity and what people call purity. The divine purity, at the lowest, allows no inﬂuence other than the divine inﬂuence — at the lowest. But that is already very much distorted; the divine purity means that there is only the Divine, nothing else — it is perfectly pure, there is only the Divine, there is nothing other than Him.


The Mother: And so on.  This very question of yours came to my vision, since I receive in my consciousness all the questions people ask.  To kill out of cruelty? To make others suffer out of cruelty?  And yet it is an expression of the Divine — we always come back to the same thing — but an expression which is distorted in its appearance.


The Mother: Can you tell me what lies behind it?  Cruelty was one of the things that was most repugnant to Sri Aurobindo, but he always said that it was the distortion of  an intensity, one could almost say the distortion of an intensity of love, something which is not satisﬁed with a middle course, which wants extremes — and that is justiﬁable.  I had always known that cruelty, like sadism, is a need for violent, extremely strong sensation, to penetrate a thick layer of tamas that feels nothing — tamas needs something extreme in order to be able to feel. The explanation may lie in this direction.  But at the origin there is still the problem that has never been solved: “Why has it become like this?


The Mother: Why this distortion? Why has it all been perverted?” Behind, there are beautiful things, very intense, inﬁnitely more powerful than what we can even bear, wonderful things, but why has all that become so frightful here? This is what came to me immediately when I read this aphorism.  The concept of sin is something that I do not understand and have never understood; original sin seems to me one of the most monstrous ideas that man could ever have — sin and I don’t go together!


The Mother: So naturally, I fully agree with Sri Aurobindo that there is no sin, this is understood, but...  Certain things, like cruelty, could be called “sin”, but I can only see this explanation, that it is a distortion of the taste or need for an extremely strong sensation. I have observed in cruel people that they feel Ananda at that moment; they ﬁnd an intense joy in it. So that is its justiﬁcation, only it is in such a state of distortion that it is repugnant.  As for the idea that things are not in their place, I understood it even when I was a child.


The Mother: It was only later that I was given the explanation by the person who taught me occultism, for, in his cosmogonic system, he explained the successive of the various universes by saying that with each universe an aspect of the Supreme would manifest itself, that each universe was built on one aspect of the Supreme and that one after another they had all returned into the Supreme. He enumerated all the  aspects that were manifested successively and with what logic! It was extraordinary — I have kept it somewhere, I forget where.  And he said that this time, it was — I do not remember exactly what number in the series — but it would be the universe which would not be withdrawn again, which would follow a progressive course of becoming that would be, so to say, indeﬁnite. And this universe represented equilibrium, not static but progressive equilibrium, that is to say, each thing in its place, exactly, each vibration, each movement in its place.


The Mother: The further down one goes, the more each form, each activity, each thing is exactly in its place in relation to the whole.  I was extremely interested, because later Sri Aurobindo said the same thing, that nothing is bad, it is just that things are not in their place — their place not only in space but also in time; their place in the universe, beginning with the worlds, the stars, etc., each thing exactly in its place. And so, when each thing is exactly in its place, from the most stupendous to the most microscopic, the whole will express the Supreme progressively, without any need of being withdrawn to be emanated again. On this Sri Aurobindo based the fact that in this creation, in this universe, the perfection of a divine world — what Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind — will be able to manifest. Equilibrium is the essential law of this creation and this is why perfection can be realised in the manifestation.


The Mother: Drive out? But will it “drive out” anything? If we accept Sri Aurobindo’s idea, it will put each thing in its place, that’s all.  One thing must necessarily cease, and that is the distortion, that is to say, the veil of falsehood upon Truth, because that is what is responsible for everything we see here. If this is removed,  things will be completely different, completely.


The Mother: They will be what we feel them to be when we come out of this consciousness.  When one comes out of this consciousness and enters into the Truth-consciousness; the difference is such that one wonders how there can be anything like suffering and misery and death and all that. There is a kind of astonishment in the sense that one does not understand how it can happen — when one has really tipped over to the other side. But this experience is usually associated with the experience of the unreality of the world as we know it, whereas Sri Aurobindo says that this perception of the unreality of the world is not necessary to live in the supramental consciousness — it is only the unreality of Falsehood, not the unreality of the world. That is to say, the world has a reality of its own, independent of Falsehood.


The Mother: I suppose that is the ﬁrst effect of the Supermind — the ﬁrst effect in the individual, because it will begin with the individual.  When egoism will no longer be necessary to make man a conscious individuality.      I have already spoken a little about that in connection with  the story of the stag going through the forest. There was an indication there.


The Mother: Then I put myself in contact again with this experience of the supramental boat. My vision of things has not changed since.  And I realised that the experience had had a decisive effect on the situation; it established the required conditions very clearly, very precisely, very deﬁnitively.  Once and for all it swept away not only all the ordinary notions of morality, but everything that is considered here in India as necessary for the spiritual life. From this point of view it was very instructive.


The Mother: First of all this kind of so-called ascetic purity. Ascetic purity is simply the rejection of all vital movements; instead of taking up these movements and turning them towards the Divine, that is to say, instead of seeing the supreme Presence in them and letting the Supreme act freely on them, you tell Him, “No, that is not your concern.” He is not allowed to interfere with them.  As for the physical, it is an old story, everyone knows: the ascetics have always rejected it, but then they added the vital.  Only the things that were classically recognised as sacred or permitted by religious tradition, as for example, the sanctity of marriage and things like that, were accepted, but to live freely — oh!


The Mother: that was incompatible with any religious life.  So all that was completely swept away once and for all.  Which is not to say, however, that what is required is any easier. It is probably much more difﬁcult.  First of all, from the psychological point of view, there must be the condition I spoke about in the story of the stag: perfect equality.


The Mother: It is an absolute condition. I have observed since 1956, for years, that no supramental vibration can be transmitted except in this perfect equality. If there is the least opposition to this equality — in fact the least movement of ego, any preference of  the ego, it does not come through, it is not transmitted. This is already difﬁcult enough.  Added to this, there are two conditions for the realisation to become total and they are not easily fulﬁlled.


The Mother: It is not very difﬁcult on the intellectual plane — I am not speaking here of just anyone at all but of people who have already practised yoga and followed a discipline — it is relatively easy; on the psychological plane too, if you bring in this equality, it is not very difﬁcult. But as soon as you come to the material plane, that is, the physical and then the body, it is not easy. The two conditions are: ﬁrst, a power of expansion, of widening, that is unlimited, so to say, so that you can widen yourself to the dimension of the supramental consciousness, which is total. The supramental consciousness is the consciousness of the Supreme in His totality — when I say “His totality”, I mean the Supreme in His aspect of Manifestation. Naturally, from the higher point of view, the point of view of the essence — the essence of what becomes the Supermind in the Manifestation — there must be a capacity for total identiﬁcation with the Supreme, not only in His aspect of Manifestation, but also in his static or nirvanic aspect, beyond the Manifestation — Non-Being.


The Mother: But in addition to this, one must be able to identify oneself with the Supreme in the Becoming. This implies two things: ﬁrst a widening that is at least unlimited, as I have said, and at the same time a total plasticity in order to be able to follow the Supreme in His Becoming. It is not at one particular moment that one must be as wide as the universe, but indeﬁnitely, in the Becoming. These are the two conditions; they must be there potentially.  So long as there is no question of physical transformation, the psychological and, in a large measure, subjective point of view is sufﬁcient.


The Mother: And that is relatively easy. But when it comes to including Matter in the work, Matter as it is in this world, where the very starting-point itself is wrong — we start from Inconscience and Ignorance — then it is very difﬁcult. Because, in fact, so that this Matter could reach the individualisation  needed to recover the lost Consciousness, it was made with a certain ﬁxity indispensable to make forms last and precisely to maintain this possibility of individuality. And that is the chief obstacle to the widening, the plasticity, the suppleness needed to be able to receive the supermind. I am constantly faced with this problem, which is a very concrete, absolutely material one, when one is dealing with these cells which must remain cells and not evaporate into a reality which is no longer physical.


The Mother: And at the same time, they must have this suppleness, this lack of ﬁxity which enables them to widen indeﬁnitely.  ( ) The experience of the boat took place in the subtle physical. And the people who had dark patches and who had to be taken back were always the ones who lacked the suppleness needed for these two movements, but especially the movement of widening, more than the movement of progression to follow the Becoming; this seemed to be a preoccupation later, for those who had landed, after the landing. But the preparation on the boat was for this capacity for widening.


The Mother: There was also something else which I did not mention when I described my experience: the boat had no machines. Everything, everything was set in motion by the will — individuals and things — even people’s dress was a result of their will. And this gave a great suppleness to all these things and to the forms of individuals; because one was conscious of this will, which is not a mental will but a will of the Self, or a spiritual will, one might say, a will of the soul, if one gives that meaning to the word soul. But this is something which can be experienced here when one acts with an absolute spontaneity, that is to say, when an action, such as speech or movement, is not determined by the mind — I am not speaking of thought and intellect — not even by the mind which usually makes us act. Usually, when we do something, we perceive within us the will to do this thing —  when we are conscious and observe ourselves doing it, we can see that; there is always — it may be very ﬂeeting — the will to do it.


The Mother: It is the intervention of the mind, the habitual intervention, the order in which things happen. Whereas the supramental action is decided by overleaping the mind. It is not necessary to pass through the mind, it is direct. Something enters into direct contact with the vital centres and makes them act — without passing through the thought, but with full consciousness. The consciousness does not work in the usual order, it goes directly from the centre of spiritual will to Matter.


The Mother: As long as one can keep this absolute immobility of the mind , the inspiration is absolutely pure, it comes pure. If one can catch it and keep it while speaking, what comes through is also unmixed, it remains pure.  It is an extremely delicate working, probably because it is unfamiliar — the least movement, the smallest mental vibration disturbs everything. But as long as it lasts it is perfectly pure.


The Mother: And that must be the state of a supramentalised life.  The mentalised spiritual will should no longer intervene; because one may very well have a spiritual will, one can live constantly expressing the spiritual will — that is what happens to all those who feel that they are guided by the Divine within — but that comes through a mental transcription. And so long as it is like that, it is not the supramental life. The supramental life passes through the mind. The mind is an immobile zone of transmission.


The Mother: The slightest twitch is enough to disturb it.  ( ) One could say that the constant state that is needed for the Supermind to be able to express itself through a terrestrial consciousness is the perfect equality that comes from spiritual identiﬁcation with the Supreme. Everything becomes the Supreme in a perfect equality. And it is automatic — not the equality achieved by the conscious will, by intellectual effort or  an understanding prior to the state; it is not that.


The Mother: It must be spontaneous and automatic; one should no longer respond to everything that comes from outside as if one were responding to something coming from outside. This kind of reﬂection and response should be replaced by a state of constant perception — which I cannot call identical because each thing necessarily calls for a special response — but free from any rebound, if one may say so. It is the difference that exists between something coming from outside, that strikes you and that you respond to, and something which is circulating and which quite naturally brings with it the vibrations needed for the general action. I do not know whether I am making myself clearly understood.... It is the difference between a vibratory movement circulating in a ﬁeld of action and a movement coming from something outside, striking from outside and obtaining a response — that is the usual state of human consciousness.


The Mother: On the other hand, when the consciousness is identiﬁed with the Supreme, the movements are internal, so to say, in the sense that nothing comes from outside; there are only things that circulate and naturally bring about certain vibrations in the course of their circulation, by similarity and necessity — or that change the vibrations in the medium of circulation.   It is something very familiar to me, because it is my constant state at present — I never have the impression of things coming from outside and striking, but of inner, multiple and sometimes contradictory movements, and of a constant circulation bringing about the inner changes needed for the movement.  That is the indispensable basis.  The widening follows almost automatically, demanding adjustments in the body itself which are difﬁcult to resolve.


The Mother: This is a problem in which I am still completely immersed.  And then the suppleness needed to follow the movement of Becoming; suppleness, that is, the capacity for decrystallisation — the whole period of life spent in individualisation is a period of conscious and deliberate crystallisation, which later has to be  undone. Becoming a conscious and individual being is a constant crystallisation — constant and deliberate — of all things; and afterwards one must make the opposite movement, constantly, and also, even more so, deliberately. At the same time, one must not lose the beneﬁt, in the consciousness, of what one has acquired by individualisation.  I must say that it is difﬁcult.


The Mother: From the point of view of thought it is elementary, very easy.  And even from the point of view of feelings, it is not difﬁcult; for the heart, that is, the emotional being, to widen itself to the dimension of the Supreme is relatively easy. But the body!  It is very difﬁcult, very difﬁcult without the body losing — how to put it? — its centre of coagulation; without it dissolving into the surrounding mass. And even then, if one were in the midst of Nature with mountains, forests and rivers, and great natural beauty, plenty of space, it would be rather pleasant!


The Mother: But one cannot take a single step materially, out of one’s body, without coming across things that are painful. It occasionally happens that one comes in contact with a substance that is pleasing, harmonious, warm, that vibrates with a higher light. But this is rare. Yes, ﬂowers, sometimes ﬂowers — sometimes, not always.  But this material world, oh!...


The Mother: You get knocked everywhere — scratched, scratched, scraped, knocked by all kinds of things that . Oh, how difﬁcult it is! How little human life has blossomed! It is shrivelled up, hardened, without light, without warmth — to say nothing of joy.  But sometimes, when one sees ﬂowing water or a ray of sunlight in the trees — oh, everything sings, the cells sing, they are happy.


The Mother: The idea is that ﬁrst of all some beings must reach a certain  realisation here in the physical world that would give them the power to materialise a supramental being.  I told you that once I endowed a vital being with a body, but I would never have been able to... it would have been impossible to make this body material: something is missing, something is missing. Even if it could be made visible, it probably could not be made permanent — at the very ﬁrst opportunity it would dematerialise. It is this permanence that we cannot obtain.  I had discussed this with Sri Aurobindo — “discussed” is a manner of speaking — we had talked about it and he saw it the same way as I did, that is, there is a power we do not have, the power to ﬁx the form here on earth.


The Mother: Even for those who have the capacity to materialise things, they do not remain, they cannot remain, they do not have the quality of physical things.  So the continuity of creation could not be assured without something which possessed that quality.   I knew the whole occult process in detail, but I could never have made the thing more material, even if I had tried — visible, yes, but impermanent, incapable of progressing.


The Mother: Very good!  It is very good, very good for everybody, particularly for people who think themselves very superior.  But this really corresponds to something very profound.  In fact, this is an experience which I have been having for some time. It is almost like a reversal of attitude.


The Mother: Indeed, men have always considered themselves victims harassed by adverse forces; those who are courageous ﬁght, the others complain. But I have an increasingly concrete vision of the role that the adverse forces play in the creation, of the almost  absolute necessity for them, so that there can be progress and for the creation to become its Origin once again — and such a clear vision that instead of asking for the conversion or abolition of the adverse forces one must realise one’s own transformation, pray for it and carry it out. This is from the terrestrial point of view, I am not taking the individual standpoint. We know the individual standpoint; this is from the terrestrial point of view. It was the sudden vision of all the error, all the misunderstanding, all the ignorance and obscurity, and even worse, all the bad will in the terrestrial consciousness which felt responsible for the perpetuation of these adverse beings and forces and which offered them in a great aspiration — more than an aspiration, a kind of holocaust — so that the adverse forces might disappear and have no further reason to exist, so that they might no longer be there to point out everything that has to be changed.


The Mother: Their presence was made unavoidable by all these things that were negations of the divine life. And this movement of offering of the earth consciousness to the Supreme, in an extraordinary intensity, was like a redemption so that the adverse forces might disappear.  It was a very intense experience which expressed itself like this: “Take all the faults I have committed, take them all, accept them, efface them so that these forces may disappear.”  This aphorism is the same thing from the other end, it is the same thing in essence. As long as it is possible for a human consciousness to feel, act, think or be contrary to the great divine Becoming, it is impossible to blame anyone else for it; it is impossible to blame the adverse forces which are maintained in creation as the means of making you see and feel all the progress that has yet to be made.


The Mother: ( )  The state I found myself in was like a memory — a memory that is eternally present — of that Consciousness of supreme  Love which the Lord emanated upon earth, in the earth — the earth — to bring it back to Him. For that was truly a descent into the most total negation of the Divine, the negation of the very essence of the divine Nature, and therefore a renunciation of the divine state in order to accept earth’s obscurity and bring earth back to the divine state. And unless this supreme Love becomes all-powerfully conscious here on earth, the return can never be ﬁnal.


The Mother: This experience came after the vision of the great divine Becoming, and I asked myself, “Since this world is progressive, since it is becoming more and more the Divine, will there not always be this intensely painful feeling of the thing which is undivine, of the state which is undivine compared to the one which is to come? Will there not always be what we call ‘adverse forces’, that is, something which is not following the movement harmoniously?” Then the answer came, the vision came: no, indeed the time for this possibility is near, the time for the manifestation of that essence of perfect Love which can transform this unconsciousness, this ignorance and the bad will which results from it into a progression that is luminous, joyful, eager for perfection and all-inclusive.  It was very concrete.  And this corresponds to a state in which one is so identiﬁed with all that is, that one becomes all that is anti-divine in a concrete way, and that one can offer it — one can offer it and truly transform it by offering it.


The Mother: Basically, this kind of will for purity, for good, in men — which expresses itself in the ordinary mentality as the need to be virtuous — is the to true self-giving. This is the origin of Falsehood and even more the very source of hypocrisy — the refusal to accept to take upon oneself one’s own share of the burden of difﬁculties. And in this aphorism Sri Aurobindo has gone straight to this point in a very simple way.   Do not try to appear virtuous. See how much you are united, one with everything that is anti-divine.


The Mother: Take your share of the burden, accept yourselves to be impure and false and in that way you will be able to take up the Shadow and offer it. And in so far as you are capable of taking it and offering it, then things will change.   Do not try to be among the pure. Accept to be with those who are in darkness and give it all with total love.


The Mother: But it is obvious! It is so obvious for us.   Stop being an archer!  It is a ﬁne image.


The Mother: This is good for people who are in a state where they imagine they have discovered the Truth.  It is a good thing to say to those who think they have found the Truth because they have touched one point.  But so often, we have said something else.  You know the story of the philosopher who lived in the south of France — I do not remember his name, a very well-known  man who was a professor at the University of Montpellier and who lived on the outskirts of the city? There were several roads leading to his house.


The Mother: Every day this man would leave his university and arrive at the crossroads where all the roads leading to his house branched out — this way, that way, another way. And every day he would stop and ask himself, “Which one shall I take?” Each one had its advantages and disadvantages. And all this went on in his head, the advantages and disadvantages, and this and that, and he would waste half an hour choosing his way home.  He used to give that as an example of the thought’s incapacity for action: if one begins to think, one can no longer act.


The Mother: It is all right down here, on this plane, as long as one is the archer and hits only one point. But above it is not true — quite the contrary! All intelligence below is like that; it sees all kinds of things, and as it sees all kinds of things, it cannot choose in order to act. But in order to see the whole target, to see the Truth in its entirety, you must cross over to the other side. And when you cross over to the other side, you do not see a sum of multiple truths nor a countless number of truths added one to another, which you see one after another so that you cannot grasp the whole all at once.


The Mother: When you rise above, it is the whole that you see ﬁrst; the whole presents itself all at once, in its entirety, in its wholeness, without division. And then you no longer have to make a choice, you have a vision: is what has to be done. It is not a choice between this and that, or this or that, because it is no longer like that. You no longer see things successively, one after another; you have the simultaneous vision of a whole that exists as a unity. Then the choice is simply a vision.


The Mother: But as long as you are in the state of the archer, you cannot see the whole — you cannot see the whole successively, you cannot see the whole by adding one truth to another. That is precisely the incapacity of the mind. The mind cannot do it. It will always see successively, it will always see a sum of things  and it is not that — something will escape, the very meaning of the truth will elude it.  It is only when one has a global, simultaneous perception of the whole in its oneness that one can possess the truth in its entirety.


The Mother: And then action is no longer a choice subject to error, rectiﬁcation and discussion, but the clear vision of what is to be done — which is infallible.  But it is a whole world in itself! It is not one question, but twenty!  There are all kinds of premonitory dreams. There are premonitory dreams that are fulﬁlled immediately, that is to say, you dream in the night what will happen on the next day, and there are premonitory dreams that are fulﬁlled over varying lengths of time.


The Mother: And according to their position in time, these dreams are seen on various planes.  The higher we rise towards absolute certainty, the greater  the distance is, because these visions belong to a region which is very close to the Origin and the length of time between the revelation of what is going to be and its realisation may be very great. But the revelation is certain, because it is very close to the Origin. There is a place — when one is identiﬁed with the Supreme — where one knows everything absolutely, in the past, the present, the future and everywhere. But usually people who go there forget what they have seen when they return.


The Mother: An extremely strict discipline is needed to remember. And that is the only place where one cannot make a mistake.   But the links of the chain of communication are not always all there and one very rarely remembers.  To come back to what I was saying, according to the plane on which one has seen, one can more or less judge the time that the vision will take to be fulﬁlled.


The Mother: And the immediate things are already realised, they already exist in the subtle physical and they can be seen there — they simply are, they exist there. They are only the reﬂection — not even a transcription — the reﬂection or projection of the image in the material world which will appear on the next day or in a few hours. There you see the exact thing in all its details, because it already exists; so everything depends on the accuracy of the vision and the power of vision. If you have a power of vision that is objective and sincere, you see the thing accurately; if you add your own feelings and impressions to it, it is coloured by them. So accuracy in the subtle physical depends exclusively on the instrument, that is to say, on the one who sees.


The Mother: But as soon as you enter a more subtle region, such as the vital — and even more so in the mental, but already in the vital there is a small margin of possibility — then there you can see roughly what is going to happen, but in detail it may be like this or like that; there are wills and inﬂuences that may possibly intervene and create a difference.  And this is because the original Will is reﬂected, so to say, in the various regions, and each region alters the organisation  and the relation of the images. The world we live in is a world of images. It is not the thing itself in its essence, it is the reﬂection of the thing. One could say that we are, in our material existence, only a reﬂection, an image of what we are in our essential reality.


The Mother: And the modalities of these reﬂections bring in every error and falsiﬁcation — what you see in the essence is perfectly true and pure and exists from all eternity; the images  are essentially variable. And according to the degree of falsehood that enters into the vibrations, the degree of distortion and alteration increases. One could say that every circumstance, every event, every thing has a pure existence, which is the true existence, and a considerable number of impure or distorted existences, which are the existence of the same thing in the various domains of being. For example, in the intellectual domain, there is already a good deal of distortion; in the mental domain there is a considerable amount of distortion, and as all the emotional and sensorial domains come in, the distortions increase.


The Mother: And once you reach the material plane, it is most often unrecognisable. It is completely distorted — so much so that it is sometimes very difﬁcult to know that this is the material expression of that — they are no longer very much alike.  It is a rather novel way of approaching the problem and it may be the key to many things.  Thus when you know someone well and you often see him physically, if you see him in the subtle physical, already there are things which become more marked, more visible, more outstanding, which you had not seen physically, because in the greyness of the material world they had merged with many other things on the same plane. There are characteristics or expressions of character which become outstanding enough to be quite visible, although they had not been physically apparent.


The Mother: When you look at a person physically, there is the complexion, the features, the expression; at the same moment, if you see this face in the subtle physical, you suddenly notice that one part of the face is one  colour, another part another colour; that in the eyes there is an expression and a kind of light which were not at all visible; and that the whole has quite a different appearance and, above all, gives a very different feeling, which to our physical eyes would seem rather extravagant, but which to the subtle vision is very expressive and revealing of the character, or even of the inﬂuences acting on this person. What I say here is the record of an experience that I had again a few days ago.  So according to the degree to which you are conscious and the extent to which you see, you perceive images, see events that are more or less near, and you see them more or less accurately.  The only vision that is true and sure is the vision of the divine Consciousness. So the problem is to become aware of the divine Consciousness and to keep this consciousness in all details all the time.


The Mother: Until then, there are all sorts of ways of receiving indications. The precise, accurate, familiar vision that certain people have may come from several sources. It may be a vision by identity with circumstances and things, when you are used to extending your consciousness all around you. It may be an indication given by a talkative being from the invisible world who amuses himself by informing you of what is going to happen; this happens very often. Then everything depends on the moral character of your “informant”; if he is amusing himself at your expense, he tells you all kinds of tales — and this is what happens most of the time to people who get information from entities.


The Mother: To lure people on, they may very often tell them things as they really will be, since they have a universal vision in some domain of the vital or of the mind; and then when they are quite sure that you will trust them, they may start telling you tales and you make a fool of yourself. This happens very often. You yourself should be in a higher state of consciousness than these individuals or entities or these little gods, as some people call them, and be able to verify from above what their statements are worth.  If you have a universal mental vision, you can see all mental  formations. Then you see — and it is very interesting — how the mental world is organised to realise itself on the physical plane.


The Mother: You see the various formations, the way in which they approach and ﬁght each other, combine together and organise themselves, the ones that prevail and gain inﬂuence and achieve a more complete realisation. Now if you really want to have a higher vision, you must rise above the mental world and see the original wills as they descend to express themselves. In this case, you may not possess all the details, but the central, the fact in its central truth, is indisputable, undeniable, absolutely correct.  Some people also have the power to predict things which already exist on earth, but at a distance, at a great distance, very far from the physical eyes. These are usually people who are capable of widening and extending their consciousness.


The Mother: They have a physical, but slightly more subtle vision, which depends on an organ that is more subtle than the purely material one — what might be called the life of this organ — and so, by projecting their consciousness with a will to see, they can see very well, they can see things: these things already exist, only they are not within the ﬁeld of our ordinary vision. People who have this capacity and who tell what they see, who are sincere and who are not bluffers, see in a way that is absolutely precise and exact.  In fact, an important factor for those who predict or see, is their absolute sincerity. Unfortunately, because of people’s curiosity, their insistence, the pressure they apply — which very few can resist — what happens, when there is something they do not see exactly and precisely, is that there is an almost involuntary faculty of inner imagination, which adds the little missing element. This is what causes the ﬂaws in their predictions.


The Mother: Very few have the courage to say, “Oh no, I do not know about that, it eludes me.” They do not even have the courage to say it to themselves. And then, just a touch of imagination, acting almost subconsciously, and they ﬁll in the vision, the information — anything can happen. Very few people can resist that. I have known many, many clairvoyants, I have known many people  who had a marvellous gift; very few of them would stop when they come to the end of their knowledge.


The Mother: Or else they would add some little detail. This is what always gives these faculties a rather doubtful quality. One must truly be a saint — a great saint, a great sage — and completely free, not at all inﬂuenced by other people. Naturally, I am not speaking of those who seek fame, because there they fall into the crudest traps; but even goodwill, the wish to make people happy, to please them, to help them, is enough to create a distortion.  I know of a very interesting example.


The Mother: There was a time when in the newspaper — it was a long time ago, you must have been very young — every day there was a little cartoon of a boy pointing to something — a kind of page-boy dressed like that — and always showing the date or something — a little cartoon. Now the gentleman in this story was travelling and he was staying in a big hotel, I do not remember in which town, and one night or early in the morning, very early, he had a dream. He saw this page-boy pointing to his funeral carriage — you know, when they take people to the cemetery, in Europe — and inviting him to step into it! He saw that and then in the morning when he was ready, he left his room which was on the top ﬂoor, and there, on the landing, the same boy, dressed in the same way, was pointing out the lift for him to go down. That gave him a shock.


The Mother: He refused and said, “No thank you.” The lift fell and crashed, killing the people inside.  He told me that after that he believed in dreams.   It was a vision.


The Mother: He saw the boy, but instead of the lift, the boy was showing him his hearse. So when he saw the same gesture, the same boy — like the cartoon, you see — he said, “No thank you, I’ll walk down”, and the machine — it was one of those  hydraulic lifts — broke and fell. It was right at the top. It was crushed to a pulp.  My explanation is that an entity had forewarned him.


The Mother: The image of the page-boy seems to indicate that an intelligence, a consciousness had intervened; it does not seem to have been his own subconscient. Or it might be that his subconscient was aware and had seen in the subtle physical that this was going to happen. But why did his subconscient give him an image like that? I do not know. Perhaps something in the subconscient knew, because it was already there, it was already in the subtle physical.


The Mother: The accident already existed before it happened — the law of the accident.  Obviously, there is always, in every case, some difference, sometimes a few hours — but that is the maximum — sometimes a few seconds. And very often, things tell you that they are there, and it takes them sometimes a few minutes, sometimes a few seconds to come into contact with your consciousness.  Constantly, constantly I know what is going to happen, and for things that are of absolutely no interest — there is no advantage in knowing it beforehand, it changes nothing; but it exists, it is all around you. If your consciousness is wide enough, you know all that, for example, that a certain person is going to bring you a parcel, things like that.


The Mother: And it is like that every day. Or that a certain person is about to arrive. It is because the consciousness is extended, so it contacts things.  But in that case we cannot say that it is a premonition, for it already exists, only the contact with our senses takes a few seconds to be realised, because there is a door or a wall or something that prevents us from seeing.  But several times I have had experiences like this.


The Mother: For example, once when I was walking in the mountains, I was on a path where there was only room for one — on one side the precipice, on the other sheer rock. There were three children behind me and a fourth person bringing up the rear. I was leading. The path ran along the edge of the rock; we could  not see where we were going — and besides, it was very dangerous; if anyone had slipped, he would have been over the edge. I was walking in front when suddenly I saw, with other eyes than these — although I was watching my steps carefully — I saw a snake, there, on the rock, waiting on the other side.


The Mother: Then I took one step, gently, and indeed on the other side there was a snake. That spared me the shock of surprise, because I had seen and I was advancing cautiously; and as there was no shock of surprise, I was able to tell the children without giving them a shock, “Stop, keep quiet, don’t stir.” If there had been a shock, something might have happened. The snake had heard a noise, it was already coiled and on the defensive in front of its hole, with its head swaying — it was a viper.  This was in France.


The Mother: Nothing happened, whereas if there had been any confusion or commotion, anything could have happened.  This kind of thing has happened to me very, very often — with snakes it happened to me four times. Once, it was completely dark, here, near the ﬁshing village of Ariankuppam.  There was a river and it happened just at the place where it ﬂows into the sea. It was dark — the night had fallen very quickly.


The Mother: We were walking along the road and just as I was about to put my foot down — I had already lifted my foot and I was going to put it down — I distinctly heard a voice in my ear: “Be careful!” And yet nobody had spoken. So I looked and saw, just as my foot was about to touch the ground, an enormous black cobra, which I would have comfortably stepped on — those people don’t like that. He streaked away and across the water — what a beauty, my child! His hood open, head erect above the water, he went across like a king.


The Mother: Obviously, I would have been punished for my impertinence.  I have had hundreds and hundreds of experiences like that; at the very last moment, not a second too soon, I was informed.   And in the most varied circumstances. Once, in Paris, I was crossing the Boulevard Saint Michel.


The Mother: It was during the last  weeks; I had decided that within a certain number of months I would achieve union with the psychic Presence, the inner Divine, and I no longer had any other thought, any other concern. I lived near the Luxembourg Gardens and every evening I used to walk there — but always deeply absorbed within. There is a kind of intersection there, and it is not a place to cross when one is deeply absorbed within; it was not very sensible. And so I was like that, I was walking, when I suddenly received a shock, as if I had received a blow, as if something had hit me, and I jumped back instinctively. And as soon as I had jumped back, a tram went past — it was the tram that I had felt at a little more than arm’s length.


The Mother: It had touched the aura, the aura of protection — it was very strong at that time, I was deeply immersed in occultism and I knew how to keep it — the aura of protection had been hit and that had literally thrown me backwards, as if I had received a physical shock. And what insults from the driver! I jumped back just in time and the tram went by.  I could tell scores of such stories, if I could remember them.  The protection may come from many different sources.


The Mother: Very often it was someone who informed me: a little entity, or some kind of being; sometimes it was the aura that protected me. And it was for all kinds of things. That is to say, life was seldom limited to the physical body — this is convenient, this is good.  It is necessary, it increases your capacities. This is what the person who taught me occultism told me straightaway: “You are depriving yourself of senses which are most useful .”


The Mother: And this is true, quite true. We can know inﬁnitely more things than we usually do, simply by using our own senses. And not only from the mental point of view, but also from the vital and even the physical point of view.  Oh, the method is very easy. There are disciplines.


The Mother: It depends on what you want to do.   It depends. For each thing there is a method. And the ﬁrst method is to want it, to begin with, that is, to take a decision.  Then you are given a description of all these senses and how they work — that takes some time.


The Mother: You take one sense or several, or the one which is easiest for you to start with, and you decide.  Then you follow the discipline. It is the equivalent of exercises for developing the muscles. You can even succeed in creating a will in yourself.  But for more subtle things, the method is to make for yourself an exact image of what you want, to come into contact with the corresponding vibration, and then to concentrate and do exercises — such as to practise seeing through an object or hearing through a sound, or seeing at a distance.


The Mother: For example, once, for a long time, for several months, I was conﬁned to bed and I found it rather boring — I wanted to see. I was in a room and at one end there was another little room and at the end of the little room there was a kind of bridge; in the middle of the garden the bridge became a staircase leading down into a very big and very beautiful studio, standing in the middle of the garden. I wanted to go and see what was happening in the studio, for I was feeling bored in my room. So I would remain very quiet, close my eyes and send out my consciousness, little by little, little by little, little by little. And day after day — I chose a ﬁxed time and did the exercise regularly.


The Mother: At ﬁrst you make use of your imagination and then it becomes a fact. After some time I really had the physical sensation that my vision was moving; I followed it and then I could see things downstairs which I knew nothing about. I would check afterwards. In the evening I would ask, “Was this like that? And was that like this?”


The Mother: But for each one of these things you must practise for months with patience, with a kind of obstinacy. You take the senses one by one, hearing, sight, and you can even arrive at subtle realities of taste, smell and touch.  From the mental point of view it is easier, for there you are accustomed to concentration. When you want to think and ﬁnd a solution, instead of following the deductions of thought, you stop everything and try to concentrate and concentrate, intensify the point of the problem. You stop everything and wait until, by the intensity of the concentration, you obtain an answer.


The Mother: This also requires some time. But if you used to be a good student, you must be quite used to doing that and it is not very difﬁcult.  There is a kind of extension of the physical senses. Red Indians, for example, possess a sense of hearing and smell with a far greater range than our own — and dogs! I knew an Indian — he was my friend when I was eight or ten years old.


The Mother: He had come with Buffalo Bill, at the time of the Hippodrome — it was a long time ago, I was eight years old — and he would put his ear to the ground and was so clever that he knew how far away... according to the intensity of the vibration, he knew how far away someone’s footsteps were. After that, the children would immediately say, “I wish I knew how to do that!”  And then you try. That is how you prepare yourself.


The Mother: You think you are playing but you are preparing yourself for later on.  This is very good.  There is no need for any questions.   I have looked at this very, very often. There was even a time when I thought that if one could have a total, complete and perfect knowledge of the entire working of physical Nature as we perceive it in the world of Ignorance, that might be a way to rediscover or to re-attain the truth of things.


The Mother: After my latest experience I cannot think this any more.  I do not know if I am making myself clear. There was a time — for a very long period — when I thought that if science were to realise its full potential, but in an absolute way, if that were possible, it would reach true Knowledge. For example, in its study of the composition of Matter, by pushing and pushing its investigations further and further, a time would come when the two would meet. Well, when I had the experience of passing from the eternal Truth-consciousness to the consciousness of the individualised world, it became clear to me that this was impossible.


The Mother: And if you ask me now, I think that both these things, the possibility of a meeting by carrying science to its extreme and the impossibility of any true conscious connection with the material world, are equally incorrect. There is something else.   And these last few days, more and more, I ﬁnd myself faced with the total problem, as if I had never seen it before.  Perhaps they are two paths leading to a third point, and at the moment perhaps it is this third point that I am not exactly  studying, but searching for, where the two would meet in a third one which would be the True Thing.


The Mother: But certainly, objective, scientiﬁc knowledge carried to its extreme, if it is possible for it to become absolutely total, leads at least to the threshold. That is what Sri Aurobindo says. Only he says that it is fatal, because all those who have devoted themselves to that knowledge, have believed in it as an absolute truth, and for them this has closed the door to the other approach. In that way it is fatal.  But according to my personal experience, I could say that for all those who believe in the spiritual approach, the approach through inner experience, at least if it is exclusive, is also fatal — because it shows them aspect, truth of the Whole, not the Whole.


The Mother: The other aspect seems equally indispensable to me, in the sense that while I was so totally immersed in the supreme Realisation, it was absolutely indisputable that the other realisation, the outer, the illusory one, was only a distortion, probably accidental, of something that was true as that one.  It is this “something” that we are searching for — perhaps not only searching for it, but it.  We are being used so that we can participate in the manifestation of “that”, of “that” which is still inconceivable to everyone, because it is not yet there. It is an expression that is yet to come.  This is all I can say.


The Mother: ( )  That is really the state of consciousness I am living in at present.  It is as if I were confronted with this eternal problem, but .  These standpoints, the spiritual and the “materialist”, if one may say so, that think they are exclusive — exclusive and unique, so that one denies the value of the other, from the point  of view of Truth — are insufﬁcient, not only because they do not accept one another, but also because to accept both and to unite both is not enough to solve the problem.


The Mother: It is something else — a third thing which is not the result of these two, but something that is yet to be discovered, which will probably open the door to the total Knowledge.   This is the point I have reached.  I cannot say more because that is where I am.  This discovery?


The Mother: Well!... Basically, it is always the same thing. It is always the same thing: to realise one’s own being, to enter into conscious relation with the supreme Truth of one’s own being, in form, by path — it does not matter at all — but this is the only way.  We carry, each individual carries within him a truth, and this is the truth he must unite with, this is the truth he must live; and so the path he must follow to reach and realise this truth is the path that will lead him to Knowledge.


The Mother: That is to say, the two are absolutely one: the personal realisation and the Knowledge.  Who knows, perhaps this very multiplicity of approach will yield the secret — the secret that will open the door.  I do not think that a single individual on the earth as it is now, a single individual, however great, however eternal his consciousness and origin, can on his own change and realise — change the world, change the creation as it is and realise this higher Truth which will be a new world, a world more true, if not absolutely true. It would seem that a certain number of individuals — until now it seems to have been more in time, as a succession, but it could also be in space, a collectivity — are indispensable so that this Truth can become concrete and realise itself.  Practically, I am sure of it.


The Mother: That is to say, however great, however conscious, however  powerful he may be, Avatar cannot by himself realise the supramental life on earth. It is either a group in time, extending over a period of time, or a group spread out in space — perhaps both — that are indispensable for this Realisation. I am convinced of it.  The individual can give the impulsion, indicate the path,  on the path himself — that is to say, show the path by realising it himself — but he cannot fulﬁl. The fulﬁlment obeys certain group laws which are the expression of some aspect of Eternity and Inﬁnity — naturally, it is all the same Being!


The Mother: They are not different individuals or different personalities, it is all the same Being. And it is all the same Being expressing Himself in a way which for us becomes a body, a group, a collectivity.   There. Do you have another question on the same subject?


The Mother: I repeat. For a very long time it seemed to me that if a perfect union could be achieved between the scientiﬁc approach carried to its extreme and the spiritual approach carried to its extreme — its extreme realisation — if both could be joined, we would ﬁnd, we would naturally obtain the Truth we are seeking, the total Truth. But with the two experiences I have had — the experience of external life, with universalisation, impersonalisation, in short, all the yogic experiences one can have in the physical body, and on the other hand the experience of total and perfect union with the Origin — now that I have had these two experiences and that something has happened, which I cannot describe yet, I know that the knowledge of the two and the union of the two is not enough; that they lead to a third thing and it is this third thing which is in the making, in course of elaboration. It is this third thing that can lead to the Realisation, to the Truth we seek.


The Mother: Is it clear this time?   One can only give an approximation of that consciousness.  Through yoga, I had achieved a kind of relationship with the material world, based on the notion of the fourth dimension — inner dimensions, which become innumerable in yoga — and the use of this attitude and this state of consciousness. I studied the relationship between the material world and the spiritual world with a sense of the inner dimensions, and by perfecting the consciousness of these inner dimensions — that was my experience until the latest one.


The Mother: Naturally, for a long time, there has no longer been any question of three dimensions — this belongs to the world of illusion and falsehood. But now the whole use of the sense of the fourth dimension with all that it entails seems superﬁcial to me! This is so strong that I have lost it. The other one, the three-dimensional world is absolutely unreal; and this one seems to be — how to put it? — conventional. As if it were a conventional interpretation that allows you to make a certain kind of approach.


The Mother: And as for saying what the other one is, the true poise... it is so far beyond any intellectual state that I am unable to formulate it.  Yet the formula will come, I know. But it will come through a series of experiences that must be lived and which I have not yet had.


The Mother: ( )  This approach, which was very convenient, very helpful to me, which I used in my yoga, which gave me a hold on Matter, appeared to me as a method, a means, a process, but it is not.  This is my present state.  More


The Mother: I cannot say.    Bulletin  Where did Sri Aurobindo write that?    Aphorisms


The Mother: Yes, but he did not write a special book; these texts were collected from here and there.  ( )  “A child”... What did he put in English at the beginning?


The Mother: Prides herself...  I would put it in.   I don’t know.   Of course, only the power can be destroyed, because one cannot destroy the earth.


The Mother: Yes.   Yes... but which child?  I have the impression that it came as something absolutely true, an absolutely true prediction —


The Mother: but I don’t know.  But now, on the contrary, I feel that it be said.  But I do not think that the time has come yet, I mean “come” for the realisation; the time has come to say it, but not for the realisation.  Yes, it is possible — it is possible.


The Mother: ( )  There is a terrifying power in it... something tremendous. You cannot imagine the power that is in it; it is really as if the Divine himself were speaking: “I am waiting... I am waiting...”


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo is speaking here of knowledge by inspiration or revelation, when something suddenly descends and illumines the understanding. You suddenly have the impression that you know something for the ﬁrst time, because it comes directly from the domain of Light, of true Knowledge, and it comes with all its innate power of truth — it illumines you. And when you have just received it, it seems indeed that nothing can resist that Light. And if you take care to allow it to act within you, it accomplishes all the transformation it can achieve in its own domain.  This is an experience one may often have.


The Mother: When it comes, for some time — not very long — everything seems to organise itself quite naturally around that Light. And then, little by little, it mingles with the rest; the intellectual knowledge remains — it is formulated in one way or another — it remains, but it is just as if it were empty. It no longer has that driving power which transforms all the movements of the being into the image of this Light. That is what Sri Aurobindo means: the world moves quickly, the Lord is always moving onward and all this is the trail  He leaves behind Him, but it no longer has the same immediate and almighty power as when He projected it into the world.


The Mother: It feels like a rain of truth falling; everyone who can catch even a drop of it receives a revelation. But unless they themselves are moving forward at a fantastic speed, the Lord with His rain of truth is already very far ahead and they must run very fast to catch up with it! This is what he means.   Yes, it is the higher Knowledge, the Truth expressing itself, what Sri Aurobindo calls the true Knowledge, and it is this Knowledge that transforms all creation. But it is as if He were pouring it down all the time and you have to make great haste so as not to be too late!


The Mother: But haven’t you ever had the feeling of a dazzling light in your head? And then it is translated by, “Oh, but of course!”  Sometimes it is something you knew intellectually, but it was dull, lifeless, and it suddenly comes like a tremendous power that arranges everything within the consciousness around that Light. It does not last very long. Sometimes it lasts only a few hours, sometimes a few days, but never more than that, unless you are very slow in your movement.


The Mother: And in the meanwhile the source of the truth is moving, moving, moving....  For the moment, I can’t say anything about that, my child, because I do not know.  No, I do not think so.  ( )


The Mother: It may be another kind of action, but it is not another kind of knowledge.   ( )  In truth, we shall only be able to speak of what transforms Matter when Matter is at least a little transformed, when there is a beginning of transformation. Then we shall be able to speak of the process.


The Mother: But for the moment...  ( )  But any transformation in the being, on any plane, always has some repercussion on the lower planes. There is always an effect; even things which seem to be purely intellectual certainly have some repercussion on the structure of the brain.


The Mother: This kind of revelation can only occur in a silent mind — at least in a mind that is at rest, completely quiet and still, otherwise they do not come. Or if they come, you do not notice them, because of all the noise you are making. And of course, they help this quiet, this silence, this receptivity to become better and better established. This feeling of something so still — but not closed, still but open, still but receptive — is something which becomes established through repeated experiences. There is a great difference between a silence that is dead, dull, unresponsive and the receptive silence of a quietened mind.


The Mother: That makes a great difference. But that is the result of these experiences. All the progress we make always results, quite naturally, from truths coming from above.  They have an effect, all these things have an effect on the functioning of the body — the functioning of the organs, of the brain, of the nerves, etc. That will surely happen before — long before — there is any effect on the external form.


The Mother: In reality, when people speak of transformation they are thinking mainly of a glamorous transformation, no? A beautiful appearance! luminous, supple, plastic, changing at will. But this rather unaesthetic business of transforming the organs — they don’t give it much thought! And yet that will certainly be  the ﬁrst thing to happen, long before the transformation of the appearance.


The Mother: Yes, yes. He said three hundred years! (.)  ()


The Mother: Because if you think it over, you will understand quite easily.  If it were only a matter of stopping one thing and starting something else, it could be done quite rapidly. But to keep a body alive, so that it goes on functioning, and to bring in a new functioning, sufﬁcient for it to stay alive, and a transformation — that makes a kind of combination which is very difﬁcult to realise. I am very much aware of this, very much so... the immense amount of time required to do this without catastrophe.  Especially when we come to the heart: the heart replaced by the centre of power, a tremendous dynamic power!


The Mother: ( .) Precisely when are we going to cut off the circulation and release the Force?  It is difﬁcult.  ()  In ordinary life, you think things over and then you do them — it is just the opposite!


The Mother: In this life, ﬁrst you must do the thing and then, afterwards, you understand, long afterwards. First you must do it — without thinking. If you think, you do nothing worthwhile; that is, you fall back into the old way.   Yes, he means that what is true at one time is no longer true at another. And this is why “Error is justiﬁed of her children.”


The Mother: Yes, it is the same thing, another way of saying the same thing.  That is to say, what we call Error was Truth at a certain time.  Error is a concept in time.   For a moment.


The Mother: The impression is this: all our judgments are momentary.  They are... one moment, it is like this; the next moment, it is no longer like this. And for us they are errors, because we see things one after another.


The Mother: But to the Divine they cannot appear like this, because everything is within Him.  Now just try to imagine that you are the Divine, for a moment! Everything is within you; you simply amuse yourself by bringing it out in a certain order. But for you, in your consciousness, everything is there at the same time; there is no time — neither past nor future nor present — everything is together. And every possible combination.


The Mother: He amuses Himself by bringing out ﬁrst one thing and then another, like that. So the poor fellows down below who can see only a tiny part — they can see only so much of it — say, “Oh, that is an error!” In what way is it an error? Simply because they can only see a tiny part.   This is clear, isn’t it?


The Mother: It is easy to understand. This concept of error is a concept that belongs to time and space.  It is like the feeling that something cannot and at the same time. And yet this is true, it is and it is not. It is the concept of time which introduces the concept of error — of time and space.


The Mother: It is, and at the same time there is its opposite. So, for us, it cannot be yes and no at the same time. But for the Lord it is  yes and no at the same time.  It is like our concept of space; we say, “I am here, therefore you are not here.” But I am here, you are here and everything is here!


The Mother: (.) Only you must be able to leave the concept of space and time behind in order to understand.  This is something that can be felt very concretely, but not with our way of seeing.  Certainly, many of these aphorisms were written at the point where the higher mind suddenly emerges into the Supermind. It has not yet forgotten how it is in the ordinary way, but it also sees how it is in the supramental way.


The Mother: And so the result is this kind of thing, this paradoxical form. Because the one is not forgotten and the other is already perceived.  ( )  And yet if one looks attentively, one has to think that the Lord is staging a fantastic play for Himself!


The Mother: That the Manifestation is a play which He is acting for Himself and with Himself.  He has taken the stand of the spectator and He looks at Himself. And so in order to look at Himself , He must accept the  concept of time and space, otherwise He cannot! And immediately the whole comedy begins.


The Mother: But it is a comedy, nothing more.  But we take it seriously, because we are puppets! But as soon as we stop being puppets, we can see quite clearly that it is a comedy.  Yes, we are the ones who make it tragic. who make it tragic.


The Mother: Recently, I have been looking at this carefully. I looked at the difference between similar incidents when they happen to men and when they happen to animals. If you identify yourself with the animals you see quite clearly that they do not take it tragically at all — except the ones which have come into contact with man; but then it is not their natural state, it is a transitional state. They become transitional beings between animal and man....


The Mother: And the ﬁrst things they naturally learn from man are his defects — they are always the easiest things to learn! And so they make themselves unhappy — for nothing.   So many things... So many things...


The Mother: Man has made a terrible tragedy out of death. These last few days, I have seen this, because last night or the night before I spent at least two hours in a world which is subtle physical, where the living and the dead intermingle without feeling any difference — it doesn’t make any difference. There, there is no difference. The living were there — those whom we call the “living” and those whom we call the “dead”. They were there together, they ate together, they moved together, they played together; and all this was in a pretty light, quiet and very pleasant, it was very pleasant.


The Mother: I said to myself, “There, men have made a break, like this, and then they say, ‘Now, dead.’ ” And “dead” — the best part of it is that they treat them as they would treat something unconscious — yet the body is still conscious.   ()  Where, where is Error? Where is Error?


The Mother: That is to say, there is no error. Things only seem to be impossible, because we do not know that the Lord is all possibility and that He can do whatever He likes, as He likes. We cannot get that into our heads, we always say, “This is possible and that is not possible.” But it is not true! For our imbecility, it is not possible; but everything is possible.


The Mother: ()  You see, only the one who is watching the play is not worried, because he knows everything that is going to happen and he has an absolute knowledge of everything — everything that happens, everything that has happened and everything that is going to happen — and it is all there, as presence for him. And so it is the others, the poor actors who do not even know, they do not even know their parts! And they worry a great deal, because they are being made to act something and they do not know what it is. This is something I have just been feeling very strongly: we are all acting a play, but we do not know what the play is, nor where it is going, nor where it comes from, nor what it is as a whole; we barely know — imperfectly — what we are supposed to do from moment to moment.


The Mother: Our knowledge is imperfect. And so we worry! But when one knows everything, one can no longer worry, one smiles — He must be having great fun, but we... And yet we are given the to amuse ourselves like Him.


The Mother: We simply do not take the trouble.  Oh, if it were easy... if it were easy, we would get tired of it!   One also sometimes wonders why, why is this life so tragic?  But if it were like a perpetual enchantment, ﬁrst of all we would  not even appreciate it, because it would be quite natural — mainly that, we would not appreciate it because it would be absolutely natural —


The Mother: and then, who is to say that we would not enjoy a little confusion just for a change? One cannot be sure.  Perhaps this is the story of the earthly paradise.... In paradise they had a spontaneous knowledge, that is to say, they lived, they had the same consciousness as the animals, just enough to be able to enjoy life a little, like that, to have the joy of living. But they started wanting to know why, how, where they were going, what they should do, etc., and then all the worries began — they got tired of being quietly happy.


The Mother: ( )  I think that Sri Aurobindo meant that error is an illusion like all the rest — that there is no error, that all possibilities are there, that they are often — and — contradictory if they are all there. They appear contradictory. But one only has to look at oneself and say, “What do I call error?”


The Mother: If you look it in the face you see immediately that it is a stupidity — there is no error, it slips through your ﬁngers.  ( )  I have a feeling that Sri Aurobindo was in his ascension; the intuitive mind was piercing a hole and coming into contact with the Supermind, and so it would come like that, pop! like an explosion in the thought, and he would write these things. And if you follow the movement you see the Origin.


The Mother: Obviously what he meant is that Error is one of the innumerable, inﬁnite possibilities. “Inﬁnite” means that absolutely nothing is beyond possibility. So where does error ﬁt into it? We call it error, but it is completely arbitrary.  We say, “This is an error” — in relation to what?


The Mother: In relation to our judgment that “this is true”, but certainly not  in relation to the judgment of the Lord, since it is a part of Himself!  Very few people can bear this widening of the understanding.  Now, when I start looking like this ( ), two things are there at the same time: this smile, this joy, this laughter are there, and such peace! Such, luminous, total peace, in which there are no more conﬂicts, no more contradictions. There are no more conﬂicts.


The Mother: It is luminous harmony — and yet everything we call error, suffering, misery, everything is there.. It is another way of seeing.  ()  There can be no doubt that if you sincerely want to get out of it, it is not so difﬁcult after all: you have nothing to do, you only have to allow the Lord to do everything. And He does everything.


The Mother: He does everything. It is so wonderful, so wonderful!  He takes anything, even what we call a very ordinary intelligence and he simply teaches you to put this intelligence aside, to rest: “There, be quiet, don’t stir, don’t bother me, I don’t need you.” Then a door opens — you don’t even feel that you have to open it; it is wide open, you are taken over to the other side. All that is done by Someone else, not you.


The Mother: And then the other way becomes impossible.  All this... oh, this tremendous labour of the mind striving to understand, toiling and giving itself headaches!... It is absolutely useless, absolutely useless, no use at all, it merely increases the confusion.   You are faced with a so-called problem: what should you say, what should you do, how should you act?


The Mother: There is nothing to do, nothing, you only have to say to the Lord, “There, You see, it is like that” — that’s all. And then you stay very quiet. And then quite spontaneously, without thinking about it, without  reﬂection, without calculation, nothing, nothing, without the slightest effort — you do what has to be done. That is to say, the Lord does it, it is no longer you. He does it, He arranges the circumstances, He arranges the people, He puts the words into your mouth or your pen — He does everything, everything, everything, everything; you have nothing more to do but to allow yourself to live blissfully.


The Mother: I am more and more convinced that people do not really want it.  But you don’t even need to do it! He does it for you.  Yes, they try to come in again, by habit.


The Mother: You only have to say, “Lord, You see, You see, You see, it is like that” — that’s all.  “Lord, You see, You see this, You see that, You see this fool” — and it is all over immediately. And it changes automatically, my child, without the slightest effort. Simply to be sincere, that is to say, to want everything to be right. You are perfectly conscious that you can do nothing about it, that you have no capacity.


The Mother: I feel more and more that this amalgam of matter, like this, of cells, all that, is pitiful. It is pitiful! I do not know whether there are certain states in which people feel powerful, wonderful, luminous, capable; but for me it is because they do not really know what they are like! When you really see how you are made — it is really nothing, nothing. But it is capable of everything, provided... provided that you allow the Lord to act.


The Mother: But there is always something that wants to do it by itself; that’s the trouble, otherwise...  No, you may be full of an excellent goodwill and then   to do it. That’s what complicates everything. Or else you don’t have faith, you believe that the Lord will not be able to do it and that you must do it yourself, because He does not know!  (.)


The Mother: This, this kind of stupidity is very common.  “How can He see things? We live in a world of Falsehood, how can He see Falsehood and see...” But He sees the thing as it is!  Exactly!


The Mother: I am not speaking of people of no intelligence, I am speaking of people who are intelligent and who try — there is a kind of conviction, like that, somewhere, even in people who know that we live in a world of Ignorance and Falsehood and that there is a Lord who is All-Truth. They say, “Precisely because He is AllTruth, He does not understand. (.) He does not understand our falsehood, I must deal with it myself.” That is very strong, very common.


The Mother: Ah! we make complications for nothing.  That depends on us!  Now I can feel Him everywhere, all the time, all the time... even a physical contact — it is subtle physical, but physical — in things, in the air, in people, in... like this.


The Mother: ( .) And then, it is not far to go, all I have to do is this (), one second of concentration — He is there! He is there, He is everywhere. He is far away only when we think He is far away.  Naturally, when we begin to think of all the zones, all the planes of universal consciousness and that it is at the very end, at the very end, right at the very end, then it becomes very far away,  very, very far!


The Mother: (.) But when we think that He is everywhere, that He is everything and that it is only our perception that prevents us from seeing Him and feeling Him and that we only have to do this (); it is a movement like this and like that ( ), it becomes very concrete: you do this (), everything becomes artiﬁcial, hard, dry, false, untrue, artiﬁcial; you do this ( ), everything becomes wide, tranquil, luminous, peaceful, vast, joyful. And it is simply this, that ( ). How? Where?


The Mother: It cannot be described, it is only, a movement of consciousness, nothing else. A movement of consciousness. And the difference between the true consciousness and the false consciousness becomes more and more precise, and at the same time, — you don’t have to do “great things” to come out of it. Before that, one has the impression that one is living inside something and that a great interiorisation, concentration, absorption, is needed to get out of it; but now the impression is of something one accepts ( ), something like a thin little peel that is very hard — very hard but malleable, very, very dry, very thin, very thin, something like putting on a mask; and then one  does this (), and it disappears.


The Mother: One can foresee the time when it will not be necessary to be aware of the mask; it will be so thin that one will be able to see, to feel, to act through it with no need to put the mask on again.  That is what has just begun.  But this Presence in all things.... It is a vibration, but it is a vibration that contains everything — a vibration which contains a kind of inﬁnite power, inﬁnite delight and inﬁnite peace, of vastness, vastness, vastness; there are no limits.... But it is only a vibration, it does not...


The Mother: Oh, Lord! it cannot be thought, so it cannot be said. If you think, as soon as you think, the whole muddle begins again. That is why one cannot speak.  No, He is very far away because you think He is very far  away.


The Mother: Even, you know, if you think He is there, like this ( ) touching you... if you could feel — it is not like the touch of a person, it is not like that. It is not something alien, external, which comes in from outside. It is not that.... It is everywhere.


The Mother: Then you feel — everywhere, everywhere, everywhere: inside, outside, everywhere, everywhere — Him, nothing but Him — Him, His vibration.  No, you must stop that (), until you stop that, you cannot see the True Thing — you look for comparisons, you say, “It is like this, it is like that.” Oh!  ( )


The Mother: And how often, how often the impression... there is no form — there is a form and there is no form, it cannot be put into words.  And the impression of a look and there are no eyes — there are no eyes, but there is a look — a look and a smile, and there is no mouth, there is no face! And yet there is a smile, there is a look and () one cannot help saying, “Yes, O Lord, I am stupid!” But He laughs, one laughs, one is happy.  One cannot!


The Mother: It cannot be explained. It cannot be put into words. One cannot say anything. Whatever one says is nothing, nothing.


The Mother: Virtue has always spent its time eliminating whatever it found bad in life, and if all the virtues of the various countries of the world had been put together, very few things would remain in existence.  Virtue claims to seek perfection, but perfection is a totality. So the two movements contradict each other. A virtue that eliminates, reduces, ﬁxes limits, and a perfection that accepts everything, rejects nothing but puts each thing in its place, obviously cannot agree.  Taking life seriously generally consists of two movements: the ﬁrst one is to give importance to things that probably have none, and the second is to want life to be reduced to a certain number of qualities that are considered pure and worthy of existence.


The Mother: In some people — for example, those Sri Aurobindo speaks about here, the “polite” or the puritans — this virtue becomes dry, arid, grey, aggressive and it ﬁnds fault everywhere, in everything that is joyful and free and happy.  The only way to make life perfect — I mean here, life on earth, of course — is to look at it from high enough to see it as a whole, not only in its present totality, but in the whole of the past, present and future: what it has been, what it is and what it will be — one must be able to see everything at once. Because that is the only way to put everything in its place. Nothing can be eliminated, nothing be eliminated, but each thing must be in its place in total harmony with all the rest. And then all these things that seem so “bad”, so “reprehensible”, so “unacceptable” to the puritan mind, would become movements of delight and freedom in a totally divine life.


The Mother: And then nothing  would prevent us from knowing, understanding, feeling and living this wonderful laughter of the Supreme who takes inﬁnite delight in watching Himself live inﬁnitely.  This delight, this wonderful laughter that dissolves every shadow, every pain, every suffering! You only have to go deep enough within yourself to ﬁnd the inner Sun, to let yourself be ﬂooded by it; and then there is nothing but a cascade of harmonious, luminous, sunlit laughter, which leaves no room for any shadow or pain.  In fact, even the greatest difﬁculties, even the greatest sorrows, even the greatest physical pain — if you can look at them from that standpoint, from there, you see the unreality of the difﬁculty, the unreality of the sorrow, the unreality of the pain — and there is nothing but a joyful and luminous vibration.  In fact, this is the most powerful way of dissolving difﬁculties, overcoming sorrows and removing pain.


The Mother: The ﬁrst two are relatively easy — I say relatively — the last one is more difﬁcult because we are in the habit of considering the body and its feelings to be extremely concrete, positive; but it is the same thing, it is simply because we have not learnt, we are not in the habit of regarding our body as something ﬂuid, plastic, uncertain, malleable. We have not learnt to bring into it this luminous laughter that dissolves all darkness, all difﬁculty, all discord, all disharmony, everything that jars, that weeps and wails.  And this Sun, this Sun of divine laughter is at the centre of all things, the truth of all things: we must learn to see it, to feel it, to live it.  And for that, let us avoid people who take life seriously; they are very boring people.


The Mother: As soon as the atmosphere becomes grave you can be sure that something is wrong, that there is a troubling inﬂuence, an old habit trying to reassert itself, which should not be accepted.  All this regret, all this remorse, the feeling of being unworthy, of being at fault — and then one step further and you have the  sense of sin. Oh! To me it all seems to belong to another age, an age of darkness.  But everything that persists, that tries to cling and endure, all these prohibitions and this habit of cutting life in two — into small things and big things, the sacred and the profane....


The Mother: “What!” say the people who profess to follow a spiritual life, “how can you make such little things, such insigniﬁcant things the object of spiritual experience?” And yet this is an experience that becomes more and more concrete and real, even materially; it’s not that there are “some things” where the Lord is and “some things” where He is not. The Lord is there. He takes nothing seriously, everything amuses Him and He plays with you, if you know how to play. You do not know how to play, people do not know how to play.


The Mother: But how well He knows how to play! How well He plays! With everything, with the smallest things: you have some things to put on the table? Don’t feel that you have to think and arrange, no, let’s play: let’s put this one here and that one there, and this one like that. And then another time it’s different again....


The Mother: What a good game and such fun!  So, it is agreed, we shall try to learn how to laugh with the Lord.    As for Sri Aurobindo, I only know what he told me several times.  People give the name of “miracle” only to interventions in the material or the vital world.


The Mother: And these interventions are always mixed with ignorant and arbitrary movements.  But the number of miracles that Sri Aurobindo performed in the mind is incalculable; but naturally you could only see it if you had a very straight, very sincere, very pure vision — a few people did see it. But he refused — this I know — he refused to perform any vital or material miracles, because of this mixture.  My experience is that in the present state of the world, a direct miracle, material or vital, must necessarily take into account a great many elements of falsehood that are unacceptable — they are necessarily miracles of falsehood. And they are unacceptable.


The Mother: I have seen what people call miracles; I saw many of them at one period, but this gave a right of existence to many things which to me are not acceptable.  What men call “miracles” nowadays are almost always performed by vital beings or by men who are in contact with vital beings, and this is a mixture — it accepts the reality of certain things, the truth of certain things that are not true. And this is the basis on which it works. So that is unacceptable.   I mean that he used to introduce the supramental force into the mental consciousness.


The Mother: Into the mental consciousness, the mental consciousness that governs all material movements, he would introduce a supramental formation or power or force which immediately changed the organisation. This produces immediate effects which seem illogical because they do not follow the normal course of movements according to mental logic.  He himself used to say that when he was in possession of the supramental power, when he could use it at will and focus it on a speciﬁc point with a deﬁnite purpose, it was irrevocable, inevitable: the effect was absolute. That can be called a miracle.


The Mother: For example, take someone who was sick or in pain; when Sri Aurobindo was in possession of this supramental power — there was a time when he said that it was completely under his control, that is, he could do what he wanted with it, he could apply it where he liked — then he would apply this Will, for example, to some disorder, either physical or vital or, of course, mental — he would apply this force of greater harmony, of greater order, this supramental force, and focus it there, and it would act immediately. And it was an order: it created an order, a harmony greater than the natural harmony. That is, if it was a case of healing, for example, the healing would be more perfect and more complete than any obtained by ordinary physical and mental methods.   There were a great many of them.


The Mother: But people are so blind, so embedded in their ordinary consciousness that they always give “explanations”, they can always give an explanation. Only those who have faith and aspiration and something very pure in themselves, that is, who truly want to know, they were able to perceive it.  When the Power was there, he even used to say that it was effortless; all he had to do was to apply this supramental  power of order and harmony and instantly the desired result was achieved.   Savitri


The Mother: That depends on how you look at it, from this side or that.  You give the name of miracle only to things which cannot be clearly explained or for which you have no mental explanation.  From this point of view you can say that countless things that happen are miracles, because you cannot explain the how or the why of them.  I can’t see what a true miracle can be because, after all, what is a miracle? A true miracle...


The Mother: Only the mind has the notion of miracles; because the mind decides, by its own logic, that given this and that, another thing can or cannot be. But this represents all the limitations of the mind. Because, from the point of view of the Lord, how can there be a miracle? Everything is Himself which He objectiﬁes.  So here we come to the great problem of the way which is being followed, the eternal way, as Sri Aurobindo explains it in .


The Mother: Of course, one can conceive that what was objectiﬁed ﬁrst was something which had an inclination for objectivisation. The ﬁrst thing to recognise, which seems consistent with the principle of evolution, is that the objectivisation is progressive, it is not total for all eternity.... ( ) It is very difﬁcult to tell, because we cannot get out of our habit of conceiving that there is a deﬁnite quantity unfolding indeﬁnitely and that  there can only be a beginning if there is a deﬁnite quantity.


The Mother: We always have, at least in our way of speaking, the idea of a  () when the Lord decides to objectify Himself.  Like this, the explanation becomes easy: He objectiﬁes Himself gradually, progressively, and this results in a progressive evolution. But that is only a manner of speaking; because there is no beginning, there is no end, and yet there is a progression.  The sense of succession, the sense of evolution, the sense of progress only exists with the manifestation. It is only when one speaks of the earth that one can give an explanation that is both very rational and in accord with the facts, because the earth has a beginning, not in its soul but in its material reality.


The Mother: It is also likely that a material universe has a beginning.  ( )  If you look at it this way, for a universe a miracle would be the sudden intrusion of something from another universe. And for the earth, this reduces the problem to something very understandable — a miracle is the sudden intrusion of something which did not belong to the earth: it produces a radical and immediate change by introducing a principle which did not belong to this physical world of earth.


The Mother: But there again, it is said that at the very centre of each element in principle; so even that miracle is not possible.  One could say that the sense of miracle belongs only to a ﬁnite world, a ﬁnite consciousness, a ﬁnite conception. It is the sudden entry — the intrusion, the intervention, the penetration — without preparation, of something which did not exist in this physical world. So obviously, any manifestation of a will or a consciousness which belongs to a domain that is more inﬁnite and more eternal than earth, is necessarily a miracle on earth.  But if you leave the ﬁnite world, the understanding of the ﬁnite  world, miracles do not exist.


The Mother: The Lord can play at miracles if it so amuses Him, but there are no miracles — He plays every possible game.  You can begin to understand Him only when you in this way, that He plays every possible game, and “possible” does not mean possible according to the human conception, but possible according to His own conception!  And there, there is no room for miracles — except that it looks like a miracle.  ( )


The Mother: If, instead of a slow evolution, something belonging to the supramental world appeared suddenly, man, the mental being, could call that a miracle, because it would be the intervention of something which he does not consciously carry within himself and which intervenes in his conscious life. And in fact, if you consider this taste for miracles, which is very strong — much stronger in children and in hearts that have remained childlike than in highly mentalised individuals — it is a faith in the realisation of the aspiration for the marvellous, of something higher than anything one can expect from normal life.  Indeed, in education, both tendencies should be encouraged side by side: the tendency to thirst for the marvellous, for what seems unrealisable, for something which ﬁlls you with the feeling of divinity; while at the same time encouraging exact, correct, sincere observation in the perception of the world as it is, the suppression of all imagination, a constant control, a highly practical and meticulous sense for exact details. Both should go side by side. Usually, you kill the one with the idea that this is necessary in order to foster the other — this is completely wrong.


The Mother: Both can be simultaneous and there comes a time when one has enough knowledge to know that they are the two aspects of the same thing: insight, a higher discernment.  But instead of a narrow, limited insight and discernment, the  discernment becomes entirely sincere, correct, exact, but it is vast, it includes a whole domain that does not yet belong to the concrete manifestation.  From the point of view of education, this would be very important: to see the world as it is, exactly, unadorned, in the most down-to-earth and concrete manner; and to see the world as it can be, with the freest, highest vision, the one most full of hope and aspiration and marvellous certitude — as the two poles of discernment.  The most splendid, most marvellous, most powerful, most expressive, most total things we can imagine are nothing compared to what they can be; and at the same time our meticulous exactitude in the tiniest detail is never exact enough. And both must go together.


The Mother: When one knows this () and when one knows that (), one is able to put the two together.  And this is the best possible use of the need for miracles. The need for miracles is a gesture of ignorance: “Oh, I would like things to be like this!” It is a gesture of ignorance and impotence.  And those who say, “You live in a miracle”, know only the lower end — and even then they know it only imperfectly — and they have no contact with anything else.


The Mother: This need for miracles must be changed into a conscious aspiration for something — which is already there, which exists — which will be manifested of all these aspirations; all these aspirations are necessary or, if one looks at it in a truer way, they are an accompaniment — an agreeable accompaniment — in the eternal unfolding.   Of course, people with a very strict logic tell you, “Why pray? Why aspire? Why ask?


The Mother: The Lord does what He wants and He will do what He wants.” It is quite obvious, there is no need to say it, but this impulse: “O Lord, manifest!” gives a more intense vibration to His manifestation.  Otherwise, He would never have made the world as it is.   There is a special power, a special delight, a special vibration  in the intensity of the world’s aspiration to become once more what it is.


The Mother: And that is why — partly, fragmentarily — there is an evolution.  An eternally perfect universe, eternally manifesting the eternal perfection, would lack the joy of progress.   It is the same idea, that is, opposition and contraries are a stimulus to progress. Because to say that without cruelty Love would be tepid... The principle of Love as it exists beyond the Manifested and the Non-Manifested has nothing to do with either tepidness or cruelty.