The Mother: That may happen. So, it is again a purely personal question, it depends on each one, on his stage of development.  But if it is someone who has taken care to unify his being,  to identify all its parts with the central truth, then naturally he will act with a total absence of egoism, with an understanding of others, an understanding which comes to him from his identiﬁcation with others — and so he will act like a sage. But that depends on the care he has taken to unify his whole being around the central consciousness.  For example, to take the most positively material things like food and sleep: it is quite possible that, if he has not taken care to infuse, as it were, his new consciousness into his body, his need for food and sleep will remain almost the same and that he won’t have much control over them.


The Mother: On the other hand, if he has taken care to unify his being and has infused his consciousness into the elements constituting his body, well, his sleep will be a conscious sleep and of a universal kind; he will be able to know at will what goes on here or anywhere, in this person or that other, in this corner of the world or any other; and his consciousness, being universal, will naturally put him in contact with all the things he wants to know. Instead of having a sleep that’s unconscious and useless, except from a purely material point of view, he will have a productive and altogether conscious sleep.  For food it will be the same thing. Instead of being a slave to his needs, usually in almost entire ignorance of what he needs, well, he will be perfectly conscious, at once of the needs of his body and the means of governing them. He will be able to control his needs and rule them, transform them according to the necessity of what he wants to do.


The Mother: But this requires a great self-mastery and the realisation of what Sri Aurobindo says in this last paragraph, that is, instead of remaining below, subject to the laws of Nature, dominated by these laws and compelled to submit to them, failing which one is completely unbalanced, one becomes the master, one looks at these things from above, knows the truth of these things and imposes it upon the body which should normally accept it without any difﬁculty.    Anything else on the same subject?  Ordered intuition.... For at the beginning, when one enters into contact with the realm of intuition, it is a sort of spasmodic contact; that is, from time to time, for more or less explicable or conscious reasons, one suddenly has an intuition or is possessed by the spirit of intuition; but it is not methodical, not a phenomenon which occurs at will, organised and obeying a central will.


The Mother: But Sri Aurobindo says that if the entire reason is transformed — he speaks of transformation, you know — if the reason is transformed into the very essence, the substance of intuition, then the whole inner movement of the inner mind becomes a movement of intuition, organised as the reason is organised, that is, it becomes active at will, answers all needs and comes into the being in accordance with a methodical system.  It is not something which appears and disappears one doesn’t know how or why; it is the result of the transformation of the reason, which is the higher part of the human mind, into a light higher than the mental light, a light of intuition. So it becomes ordered, organised, instead of being spasmodic and uncoordinated.   Straight away we are leaping into the greatest difﬁculty! I believe this one paragraph alone will be enough for this evening: Do you know why this seems paradoxical to you?


The Mother: It is simply because Sri Aurobindo has not put in the guide marks of the thought, hasn’t led you step by step from one thought to another.  It is nothing else. It is almost elementary in its simplicity.  And I am simply going to ask you a question — but in fact I expect no answer — to tell you something very simple: When does something seem impossible to you? — It is when you try to do it. If you had never tried to do it, it would never have seemed impossible to you.


The Mother: And how is it that you tried to do it? — Because it was somewhere in your consciousness. If it had not been in your consciousness, you would not have tried to do it; and the moment it is in your consciousness, it is quite obvious that it is something you will realise. That alone which is not in your consciousness you cannot realise. It’s as simple as that!


The Mother: Only, instead of telling you the thing in this way, Sri Aurobindo puts it in a way that stimulates your thought. That is the virtue of paradoxes, they compel you to think.  There is nothing impossible in the world except what is outside  your consciousness. And as your consciousness can grow, as what is not in your consciousness today may be in your consciousness after some time, for the consciousness can become wider, so in the eternity of time nothing is impossible.  At the present moment — I have explained this to you once — at the present moment, at a given moment, in certain circumstances, there are impossibilities.


The Mother: But from the eternal point of view in the inﬁnity of time, nothing, nothing is impossible.  And the proof is that everything will be. All things, not only those which are conceivable at present, but all those which at present are inconceivable, all things are not only possible, but will be realised. For what we call the Eternal, the Inﬁnite, the Supreme, the Absolute — we give him many names, but in fact He is eternal, inﬁnite, absolute — contains in himself not only all that is, but also all that will be, eternally, inﬁnitely; and therefore nothing is impossible. Only, for the consciousness of the temporal and objective being, all things are not possible at the same time; it is necessary to conceive of space and time to make them possible.


The Mother: But outside the manifestation, is, simultaneously, eternally, potentially, in its possibility. And it is this All, inconceivable, for He is not manifest, who manifests in order to become conceivable.  And this is what Sri Aurobindo tells us. This temporal universe, that is, a universe which is unfolding, a universe which does not exist all at the same time at the same place outside time and space, a universe which becomes temporal and spatial, which is successive — for That which is beyond the manifestation it is truly an absurdity, don’t you think so, and a paradox; it is its very contradiction.


The Mother: For the temporal consciousness, it is That which is unthinkable and incomprehensible, and for That, which is incomprehensible to the temporal consciousness, this temporal consciousness is incomprehensible! ... cannot conceive of something which is not in time and space, for we ourselves are in time and space; we attempt an approximation to attain some small understanding of a “Something” which is  not expressible and is simultaneously everything, eternally and beyond time. We may try, yes, and we use all sorts of words, but we are not able to understand it unless we go outside time and space. Well, to reverse the problem, for That which is beyond time and space, time and space are something paradoxical and incomprehensible: they don’t exist, they are not there. And Sri Aurobindo says: “Because this temporal universe was a paradox and an impossibility, therefore the Eternal created it out of His being”, that is, He changed his non-existence into existence — if you like to put it humorously, in order to know what it is!


The Mother: For so long as He had not become time and space, He could not know it!  But if we go back to the beginning, then it becomes extremely practical, concrete and very encouraging.... For we say this: in order to have the idea of the impossible, that something is “impossible”, you must attempt it. For example, if at this moment you feel that what I am telling you is impossible to understand (), this means that you are trying to understand it; and if you try to understand it, this means it is within your consciousness, otherwise you could not try to understand it — just as I am in your consciousness, just as my words are in your consciousness, just as what Sri Aurobindo has written is also in your consciousness, otherwise you would have no contact with it. But for the moment it is impossible to understand, for want of a few small cells in the brain, nothing else, it is very simple.


The Mother: And as these cells develop through attention, concentration and effort, when you have listened attentively and made an effort to understand, well, after a few hours or a few days or a few months, new convolutions will be formed in your brain, and all this will become quite natural. You will wonder how there could have been a time when you did not understand: “It is so simple!” But so long as these convolutions are not there, you may make an effort, you may even give yourself a headache, but you will not understand.  It is very encouraging because, fundamentally, the only thing  necessary is to want it and to have the necessary patience.


The Mother: What is incomprehensible for you today will be quite clear in a short time. And note that it is not necessary that you should give yourself a headache every day and at every minute by trying to understand! One very simple thing is enough: to listen as well as you can, to have a sort of will or aspiration or, you might even say, desire to understand, and then that’s all. You make a little opening in your consciousness to let the thing enter; and your aspiration makes this opening, like a tiny notch inside, a little hole somewhere in what is shut up, and then you let the thing enter. It will work.


The Mother: And it will build up in your brain the elements necessary to express itself. You no longer need to think about it.  You try to understand something else, you work, study, reﬂect, think about all sorts of things; and then after a few months — or perhaps a year, perhaps less, perhaps more — you open the book once again and read the same sentence, and it seems as clear as crystal to you! Simply because what was necessary for understanding has been built up in your brain.  So, never come to me saying, “I am no good at this subject, I shall never understand philosophy” or “I shall never be able to do mathematics” or...


The Mother: It is ignorance, it is sheer ignorance.  There is nothing you cannot understand if you give your brain the time to widen and perfect itself. And you can pass from one mental construction to another: this corresponds to studies; from one subject to another: and each subject of study means a language; from one language to another, and build up one thing after another within you, and contain all that and many more things yet, very harmoniously, if you do this with care and take your time over it. For each one of these branches of knowledge corresponds to an inner formation, and you can multiply these formations if you give the necessary time and care.  I do not believe at all in limits which cannot be crossed.


The Mother: But I see very clearly people’s mental formations and also a sort of laziness in face of the necessary effort. And this laziness and these limits are like diseases. But they are curable  diseases — unless you have a really defective cerebral structure and lack something; if something was “forgotten” when you were formed, then it is more difﬁcult. It is much more difﬁcult, but it is not impossible. There are people like that, really incomplete, who are like an ill-made object — logically it would be better if they didn’t continue to exist; but still () it is not the custom, it is not the ordinary human way of thinking.


The Mother: But if you are a normal person, well, provided you take the trouble and know the method, your capacity for growth is almost unlimited.  There is the idea that everyone belongs to a certain type, that, for example, the pine will never become the oak and the palm never become wheat. This is obvious. But that is something else: it means that the truth of your being is not the truth of your neighbour’s. But in the truth of your being, according to your own formation, your progress is almost unlimited.


The Mother: It is limited only by your own conviction that it is limited and by your ignorance of the true process, otherwise...  There is nothing one cannot do, if one knows how to do it.   ( )


The Mother: I have a question here which is more childish. Someone has asked: It is as though you asked why everybody was not the same!  Then it would mean that there would only be one single thing, one single thing indeﬁnitely repeated which would constitute the whole universe.... I don’t know, but it seems to me that it wouldn’t be worth the trouble having a universe for that, it would be enough to have just one thing!  But the moment one admits the principle of multiplicity and  that no two things are alike in the universe, how can you ask why they are not the same!


The Mother: It is just because they are not, because no two things are alike.  Behind that there is something else which one is not conscious of, but which is very simple and very childish. It is this: “Since there is an inﬁnite diversity, since some people are of one kind and others of a lesser kind, well” — here of course one doesn’t say this to oneself but it is there, hidden in the depths of the being, in the depths of the ego — “why am not of the best kind?” There we are. In fact it amounts to complaining that perhaps one is not of the best kind!


The Mother: If you look attentively at questions like this: “Why do some have much and others little?”  “Why are some wise and not others? Why are some intelligent and not others?” etc., behind that there is “Why don’t I have all that can be had and why am I not all that one can be?...”  Naturally, one doesn’t say this to oneself, because one would feel ridiculous, but it is there.  There then.


The Mother: Now has anyone anything to add to what we have just said?... Have you all understood quite well? Everything I have said? Nobody wants to say...  (A teacher)


The Mother: Well, wait a century or two and it will become possible! ( )  You are told that today’s impossibility is the possibility of tomorrow — but these are very great tomorrows!  ()  I have another question about what I told you the other day, when we discussed the distinction between will and willings.


The Mother: I told you that willings — what Sri Aurobindo calls willings — are movements arising not from a higher consciousness coming  down into the being and expressing itself in action, but from impulses or inﬂuences from outside. We reserved the word will to express what in the individual consciousness is the expression of an order or impulse coming from the truth of the being, from the truth of the individual — his true being, his true self, you understand. That we call will. And all the impulses, actions, movements arising in the being which are not that, we said were willings. And I told you in fact that without knowing it or at times even knowing it, you are moved by inﬂuences coming from outside which enter in without your even being aware of them and arouse in you what you call the will that a certain thing may happen or another may not, etc.


The Mother: So I am asked: Naturally these inﬂuences are of very diverse kinds. They may be studied from a psychological point of view or from an almost mechanical standpoint, the one usually translating the other, that is, the mechanical phenomenon occurs as a sort of result of the psychological one.   In very few people, and even in the very best at very rare moments in life, does the will of the being express that deep inner, higher truth.


The Mother: (:) The individual consciousness extends far beyond the body; we have seen that even the subtle physical which is yet material compared with the vital being and in certain conditions almost visible, extends at times considerably beyond the visible limits of the physical body. This subtle physical is constituted of active vibrations which enter into contact or mingle with the vibrations of the subtle physical of others, and this reciprocal contact gives rise to inﬂuences — naturally the most powerful vibrations get the better of the others. For example, as I have already told  you several times, if you have a thought, this thought clothes itself in subtle vibrations and becomes an entity which travels and moves about in the earth-atmosphere in order to realise itself as best it can, and because it is one among millions, naturally there is a multiple and involved interaction as a result of which things don’t take place in such a simple and schematic fashion.


The Mother: What you call yourself, the individual being enclosed within the limits of your present consciousness, is constantly penetrated by vibrations of this kind, coming from outside and very often presenting themselves in the form of suggestions, in the sense that, apart from a few exceptions, the action takes place ﬁrst in the mental ﬁeld, then becomes vital, then physical. I want to make it clear that it is not a question of the pure mind here, but of the physical mind; for in the physical consciousness itself there is a mental activity, a vital activity and a purely material activity, and all that takes place in your physical consciousness, in your body consciousness and bodily activity, penetrates ﬁrst in the form of vibrations of a mental nature, and so in the form of suggestions. Most of the time these suggestions enter you without your being in the least conscious of them; they go in, awaken some sort of response in you, then spring up in your consciousness as though they were your own thought, your own will, your own impulse; but it is only because you are unconscious of the process of their penetration.  These suggestions are very numerous, manifold, varied, with natures which are very, very different from each other, but they may be classiﬁed into three principal orders. First — and they are hardly perceptible to the ordinary consciousness; they become perceptible only to those who have already reﬂected much, observed much, deeply studied their own being — they are what could be called collective suggestions.


The Mother: When a being is born upon earth, he is inevitably born in a certain country and a certain environment. Due to his physical parents he is born in a set of social, cultural, national,  sometimes religious circumstances, a set of habits of thinking, of understanding, of feeling, conceiving, all sorts of constructions which are at ﬁrst mental, then become vital habits and ﬁnally material modes of being. To put things more clearly, you are born in a certain society or religion, in a particular country, and this society has a collective conception of its own and this nation has a collective conception of its own, this religion has a collective “construction” of its own which is usually very ﬁxed.  You are born into it. Naturally, when you are very young, you are altogether unaware of it, but it acts on your formation — that formation, that slow formation through hours and hours, through days and days, experiences added to experiences, which gradually builds up a consciousness.


The Mother: You are underneath it as beneath a bell-glass. It is a kind of construction which covers and in a way protects you, but in other ways limits you considerably.  All this you absorb without even being aware of it and this forms the subconscious basis of your own construction. This subconscious basis will act on you throughout your life, if you do not take care to free yourself from it. And to free yourself from it, you must ﬁrst of all become aware of it; and the ﬁrst step is the most difﬁcult, for this formation was so subtle, it was made when you were not yet a conscious being, when you had just fallen altogether dazed from another world into this one () and it all happened without your participating in the least in it.


The Mother: Therefore, it does not even occur to you that there could be something to know there, and still less something you must get rid of. And it is quite remarkable that when for some reason or other you do become aware of the hold of this collective suggestion, you realise at the same time that a very assiduous and prolonged labour is necessary in order to get rid of it. But the problem does not end there.  You live surrounded by people. These people themselves have desires, stray wishes, impulses which are expressed through them and have all kinds of causes, but take in their consciousness an individual form.


The Mother: For example, to put it in very practical  terms: you have a father, a mother, brothers, sisters, friends, comrades; each one has his own way of feeling, willing, and all those with whom you are in relation expect something from you, even as you expect something from them. That something they do not always express to you, but it is more or less conscious in their being, and it makes formations. These formations, according to each one’s capacity of thought and the strength of his vitality, are more or less powerful, but they have their own little strength which is usually much the same as yours; and so what those around you want, desire, hope or expect from you enters in this way in the form of suggestions very rarely expressed, but which you absorb without resistance and which suddenly awaken within you a similar desire, a similar will, a similar impulse.... This happens from morning to night, and again from night to morning, for these things don’t stop while you are sleeping, but on the contrary are very often intensiﬁed because your consciousness is no longer awake, watching and protecting you to some extent.  And this is quite common, so common that it is quite natural and so natural that you need special circumstances and most unusual occasions to become aware of it.


The Mother: Naturally, it goes without saying that your own responses, your own impulses, your own wishes have a similar inﬂuence on others, and that all this becomes a marvellous mixture in which might is always right!  If that were the end of the problem, one could yet come out of the mess; but there is a complication. This terrestrial world, this human world is constantly invaded by the forces of the neighbouring world, that is, of the vital world, the subtler region beyond the fourfold earth-atmosphere; and this vital world which is not under the inﬂuence of the psychic forces or the psychic consciousness is essentially a world of ill-will, of disorder, disequilibrium, indeed of all the most anti-divine things  one could imagine. This vital world is constantly penetrating the physical world, and being much more subtle than the physical, it is very often quite imperceptible except to a few rare individuals.  There are entities, beings, wills, various kinds of individualities in that world, who have all kinds of intentions and make use of every opportunity either to amuse themselves if they are small beings or to do harm and create disorder if they are beings with a greater capacity.


The Mother: And the latter have a very considerable power of penetration and suggestion, and wherever there is the least opening, the least afﬁnity, they rush in, for it is a game which delights them.  Besides, they are very thirsty or hungry for certain human vital vibrations which for them are a rare dish they love to feed upon; and so their game lies in exciting pernicious movements in man so that man may emanate these forces and they be able to feed on them just as they please. All movements of anger, violence, passion, desire, all these things which make you abruptly throw off certain energies from yourself, project them from yourself, are exactly what these entities of the vital world like best, for, as I said, they enjoy them like a sumptuous dish.  Now, their tactics are simple: they send you a little suggestion, a little impulse, a small vibration which enters deep into you and through contagion or sympathy awakens in you the vibration necessary to make you throw off the force they want to absorb.  There it is a little easier to recognise the inﬂuence, for, if you are the least bit attentive, you become aware of something that has suddenly awakened within you.


The Mother: For example, those who are in the habit of losing their temper, if they have attempted ever so little to control their anger, they will ﬁnd something coming from outside or rising from below which actually takes hold of their consciousness and arouses anger in them. I don’t mean that everybody is capable of this discernment; I am speaking of those who have tried to understand their being and control it. These adverse suggestions are easier to distinguish than, for instance, your response to the will or desire of a being who is of the same  nature as yourself, another human being, who consequently acts on you without this giving you a clear impression of something coming from outside: the vibrations are too alike, too similar in their nature, and you have to be much more attentive and have a much sharper discernment to realise that these movements which seem to come out from you are not really yours but come from outside. But with the adverse forces, if you are in the least sincere and observe yourself attentively, you become aware that it is something in the being which is responding to an inﬂuence, an impulse, a suggestion, even something at times very concrete, which enters and produces similar vibrations in the being.


The Mother: There, now. That is the problem.  The remedy? ... It is always the same: goodwill, sincerity, insight, patience — oh! an untiring patience and a perseverance which assures you that what you have not succeeded in doing today, you will succeed in doing another time, and makes you go on trying until you do succeed.


The Mother: And this brings us back to Sri Aurobindo’s sentence: if this control seems to you quite impossible today, well, that means that not only will it be possible, but that it will be realised later.   No, Sri Aurobindo says at the beginning of the sentence: “Thought awakes...” What he says is that in order to progress one must break up old constructions, buffet, demolish all preconceived ideas. Preconceived ideas are the habitual mental constructions in which one lives, and which  are ﬁxed, which become rigid fortresses and cannot progress because they are ﬁxed. Nothing that is ﬁxed


The Mother: can progress. So the advice is to break down, that is, destroy all preconceived ideas, all ﬁxed mental constructions. And this is the true way to give birth to new ideas or to thought — active thought — thought which is creative.  And a little further on Sri Aurobindo says that you must ﬁrst be conscious of yourself, think, and act. The vision of the inner truth of the being must precede all action; ﬁrst the vision of the truth, then this truth formulating itself into thought, then the thought creating the action.


The Mother: That is the normal process.  And this is what Sri Aurobindo gives as the process of creation. In the Unmanifest a thought began to play, that is to say, it awoke and became active; and because thought became active, the world was created.  And in conclusion Sri Aurobindo declares that thought is not essential to existence, it is not the cause of existence, but is just the process, the instrument of becoming, for thought is a principle of precise formulation which has the power of creating forms. And as an illustration Sri Aurobindo says that all that one thinks one is, one can, by the very fact of that thinking, become.


The Mother: This knowledge of the fact that that one thinks one can be, is a very important key for the development of the being, and not only from the point of view of the possibilities of the being, but also from that of the control and choice of what one will be, of what one wants to be.   This makes us understand the necessity of not admitting into ourselves any thought which destroys aspiration or the creation of the truth of our being. It reveals the considerable importance of not allowing what one doesn’t want to be or doesn’t want to do to formulate itself into thought within the being. Because to think these things is already a beginning of their realisation.


The Mother: From every point of view it is bad to concentrate on what one doesn’t want, on what one has to reject, what one refuses to be,  for the very fact that the thought is there gives to things one wants to reject a sort of right of existence within oneself. This explains the considerable importance of not letting destructive suggestions, thoughts of ill-will, hatred, destruction enter; for merely to think of them is already to give them a power of realisation. Sri Aurobindo says that thought is not the cause of existence but an intermediary, the instrument which gives form to life, to creation, and the control of this instrument is of foremost importance if one wants disorder and all that is anti-divine to disappear from creation.  One must not admit bad thoughts into oneself under the pretext that they are merely thoughts. They are tools of execution.


The Mother: And one should not allow them to exist in oneself if one doesn’t want them to do their work of destruction.  ( )  No one has any questions? I have brought one.


The Mother: In fact I have brought two. (:)  And this question continues: Naturally, the principle of sincerity is the same everywhere, but its working is different according to the states of being. As for the ﬁrst question, one could simply answer: No, not if man remains what he is. But he has the possibility of transforming himself sufﬁciently to become perfectly sincere.


The Mother: To begin with, it must be said that sincerity is progressive,   and as the being progresses and develops, as the universe unfolds in the becoming, sincerity too must go on perfecting itself endlessly. Every halt in that development necessarily changes the sincerity of yesterday into the insincerity of tomorrow.  To be perfectly sincere it is indispensable not to have any preference, any desire, any attraction, any dislike, any sympathy or antipathy, any attachment, any repulsion. One must have a total, integral vision of things, in which everything is in its place


The Mother: and one has the same attitude towards all things: the attitude of true vision. This programme is obviously very difﬁcult for a human being to realise. Unless he has decided to divinise himself, it seems almost impossible that he could be free from all these contraries within him. And yet, so long as one carries them in himself, one cannot be perfectly sincere. Automatically the mental, the vital and even the physical working is falsiﬁed.


The Mother: I am emphasising the physical, for even the working of the senses is warped: one does not see, hear, taste, feel things as they are in reality as long as one has a preference. So long as there are things which please you and others which don’t, so long as you are attracted by certain things, and repulsed by others, you cannot see things in their reality; you see them through your reaction, your preference or your repulsion. The senses are instruments which get out of order, in the same way as sensations, feelings and thoughts. Therefore, to be sure of what you see, what you feel, what you experience and think, you must have a complete detachment; and this is obviously not an easy task. But until then your perception cannot be wholly true, and so it is not sincere.


The Mother: Naturally, this is the maximum. There are crass insincerities which everybody understands and which, I believe, it is not necessary to dwell upon, as for example, saying one thing and thinking another, pretending that you are doing one thing and doing another, expressing a wish which is not your real wish. I am not even speaking of the absolutely glaring lie which consists in saying something different from the fact, but even  that diplomatic way of acting which consists in doing things with the idea of obtaining a certain result, in saying something and expecting it to have a certain effect; every combination of this kind which naturally makes you contradict yourself, is a kind of insincerity gross enough for everybody to easily recognise.  But there are others more subtle which are difﬁcult to discern. For instance, so long as you have sympathies and antipathies, quite naturally and as it were spontaneously you will have a favourable perception of what is sympathetic to you and an unfavourable perception of what — or whom — you dislike.


The Mother: And there too the lack of sincerity will be ﬂagrant. However, you may deceive yourself and not perceive that you are being insincere. Then in that case, you have, as it were, the collaboration of mental insincerity. For it is true that there are insincerities of slightly different types according to the state of being or the parts of the being. Only, the origin of these insincerities is always a similar movement arising from desire and the seeking of personal ends — from egoism, from the combination of all the limitations arising from egoism and all the deformations arising from desire.


The Mother: In fact, as long as the ego is there, one cannot say that a being is perfectly sincere, even though he is striving to become sincere. One must pass beyond the ego, give oneself up totally to the divine Will, surrender without reserve and without calculation... then one can be perfectly sincere, but not before.  That does not mean that one should not make an effort to be more sincere than one is, saying to oneself, “All right, I shall wait for my ego to disappear in order to be sincere”, because one may reverse the terms and say that if you do not try sincerely your ego will never disappear. Therefore, sincerity is the basis of all true realisation, it is the means, the path — and it is also the goal.


The Mother: Without it you are sure to make innumerable blunders and you have constantly to redress the harm you have done to yourself and to others.   There is, besides, a marvellous joy in being sincere. Every act of sincerity carries in itself its own reward: the feeling of puriﬁcation, of soaring upwards, of liberation one gets when one has rejected even one tiny particle of falsehood.  Sincerity is the safeguard, the protection, the guide, and ﬁnally the transforming power.   Until now all the victories which have been won have reactions that are ﬁnally defeats.


The Mother: There is never anything deﬁnitive and complete. Every time one has the feeling of having gained a victory, one ﬁnds out that this victory was incomplete, partial, fugitive. This is a fact one can always observe if one looks carefully at oneself. Not that things are necessarily what they were before, no, something has changed, but everything has not changed and not changed completely.   This is very apparent, very noticeable in physical conquests over the body.


The Mother: Through a very assiduous labour one succeeds in overcoming a weakness, a limitation, a bad habit, and one believes this is a deﬁnitive victory; but after some time or at times immediately one realises that nothing is completely done, nothing is deﬁnitive, that what one thought to have accomplished has to be done again. For only a total change of consciousness and the intervention of a new force, a reversal of consciousness can make the victory complete.  In the old Chaldean tradition, very often the young novices were given an image when they were invested with the white robe; they were told: “Do not try to remove the stains one by one, the whole robe must be puriﬁed.” Do not try to correct your faults one by one, to overcome your weaknesses one by one, it does not take you very far. The entire consciousness must be changed, a reversal of consciousness must be achieved, a springing up out of the state in which one is towards a higher state from which one dominates all the weaknesses one wants to heal, and from which one has a full vision of the work to be accomplished.


The Mother: I believe Sri Aurobindo has said this: things are such that it may be said that nothing is done until everything is done. One step ahead is not enough, a total conversion is necessary.  How many times have I heard people who were making an effort say, “I try, but what’s the use of my trying? Every time I think I have gained something, I ﬁnd that I must begin all over again.” This happens because they are trying to go forward while standing still, they are trying to progress without changing their consciousness.


The Mother: It is the entire point of view which must be shifted, the whole consciousness must get out of the rut in which it lies so as to rise up and see things from above. It is only thus that victories will not be changed into defeats.   Anything else? No, nothing more?


The Mother: Naturally, there are many ways, but each person must do it by the means accessible to him; and the indication of the way usually comes spontaneously, through something like an unexpected experience. And for each one, it appears a little differently.  For instance, one may have the perception of the ordinary consciousness which is extended on the surface, horizontally, and works on a plane which is simultaneously the surface of things and has a contact with the superﬁcial outer side of things, people, circumstances; and then, suddenly, for some reason or other — as I say for each one it is different — there is a shifting upwards, and instead of seeing things horizontally, of being at the same level as they are, you suddenly dominate them and see them from above, in their totality, instead of seeing a small number of things immediately next to yourself ; it is as though something were drawing you above and making you see as from a mountain-top or an aeroplane. And instead of seeing each detail and seeing it on its own level, you see the whole as one unity, and from far above.


The Mother: There are many ways of having this experience, but it usually comes to you as if by chance, one ﬁne day.  Or else, one may have an experience which is almost its very opposite but which comes to the same thing. Suddenly one plunges into a depth, one moves away from the thing one perceived, it seems distant, superﬁcial, unimportant; one enters an inner silence or an inner calm or an inward vision of things, a profound feeling, a more intimate perception of circumstances and things, in which all values change. And one becomes aware of a sort of unity, a deep identity which is one in spite of the diverse appearances.  Or else, suddenly also, the sense of limitation disappears


The Mother: and one enters the perception of a kind of indeﬁnite duration beginningless and endless, of something which has always been and always will be.  These experiences come to you suddenly in a ﬂash, for a second, a moment in your life, you don’t know why or how.... There  are other ways, other experiences — they are innumerable, they vary according to people; but with this, with one minute, one second of such an existence, one catches the tail of the thing.  So one must remember that, try to relive it, go to the depths of the experience, recall it, aspire, concentrate. This is the startingpoint, the end of the guiding thread, the clue.


The Mother: For all those who are destined to ﬁnd their inner being, the truth of their being, there is always at least one moment in life when they were no longer the same, perhaps just like a lightning-ﬂash — but that is enough. It indicates the road one should take, it is the door that opens on this path. And so you must pass through the door, and with perseverance and an unfailing steadfastness seek to renew the state which will lead you to something more real and more total.  Many ways have always been given, but a way you have been taught, a way you have read about in books or heard from a teacher, does not have the effective value of a spontaneous experience which has come without any apparent reason, and which is simply the blossoming of the soul’s awakening, one second of contact with your psychic being which shows you the best way for you, the one most within your reach, which you will then have to follow with perseverance to reach the goal — one second which shows you how to start, the beginning.... Some have this in dreams at night; some have it at any odd time: something one sees which awakens in one this new consciousness, something one hears, a beautiful landscape, beautiful music, or else simply a few words one reads, or else the intensity of concentration in some effort — anything at all, there are a thousand reasons and thousands of ways of having it.


The Mother: But, I repeat, all those who are destined to realise have had this at least once in their life. It may be very ﬂeeting, it may have come when they were very young, but always at least once in one’s life one has the experience of what true consciousness is. Well, that is the best indication of the path to be followed.  One may seek within oneself, one may remember, may  observe; one must notice what is going on, one must pay attention, that’s all. Sometimes, when one sees a generous act, hears of something exceptional, when one witnesses heroism or generosity or greatness of soul, meets someone who shows a special talent or acts in an exceptional and beautiful way, there is a kind of enthusiasm or admiration or gratitude which suddenly awakens in the being and opens the door to a state, a new state of consciousness, a light, a warmth, a joy one did not know before.


The Mother: That too is a way of catching the guiding thread.  There are a thousand ways, one has only to be awake and to watch.  First of all, you must feel the necessity for this change of consciousness, accept the idea that it is this, the path which must lead to the goal; and once you admit the principle, you must be watchful. And you will ﬁnd, you do ﬁnd it. And once you have found it, you must start walking without any hesitation.


The Mother: Indeed, the starting-point is to observe oneself, not to live in a perpetual nonchalance, a perpetual apathy; one must be attentive.  Is that all?  ( )  Here is a question I have been asked — it seems many people are asking themselves the same thing!


The Mother: I am going to read to you what is written, then I shall speak to you afterwards. It looks so convincing, this question!  Now, here is my answer: this is playing on words! What you call preference, I call choice. You must be in a perpetual state  of choice; at every minute of your life you must make a choice between what drags you down and what draws you up, between what makes you progress and what makes you go backwards; but I do not call this having preferences, I call this making a choice — making a choice, choosing.


The Mother: At every minute one has to choose, this is indispensable, and inﬁnitely more so than choosing once for all between cleanliness and dirt, whether moral or physical. The choice: at every second the choice is before you, and you may take a step downward or a step upward, take a step backward or a step forward; and this state of choice must be constant, perpetual, you must never fall asleep. But this is not what I call having preferences. Preferences — this means precisely not choosing. There is something for which you feel sympathy or antipathy, repulsion or attraction, and blindly, without any reason, you become attached to this thing; or else, when you have a problem to solve, you prefer the solution of this problem or this difﬁculty to be of one particular kind or another.


The Mother: But that is not at all choosing — don’t you see, what the truest thing is doesn’t come into question, it is a matter of having a preference. For me the meaning of the word is very clear: a preference is something blind, an impulse, an attachment, an unconscious movement which is usually terribly obstinate.  You are placed in certain circumstances; one thing or another may happen, and you yourself have an aspiration, you ask to be guided, but within you there is something which prefers the answer to be of a certain kind, the indication to be a particular one, or the event to come about in one way rather than another; but all this is not a question of choice, it is a preference. And when the answer to your aspiration or prayer is not in accord with your desire, this preference makes you feel unhappy, you ﬁnd it difﬁcult to accept the answer, you must ﬁght to accept it; whereas if you had no preferences, whatever the answer to your aspiration, when it comes, you cling to it joyfully, spontaneously with a sincere. Otherwise you are compelled to make an effort to accept what comes, the decision which comes in answer  to your aspiration; you wish, desire, prefer things to be like this and not like that.


The Mother: But that, indeed, is not a choice. The choice is there at every minute; every minute you are faced with a choice: the choice to climb up or go down, the choice to progress or go backwards. But this choice does not imply that you prefer things to be like this or like that; it is a fact of every moment, an  you take.  Choice means a decision and an action. Preference is a desire.


The Mother: A choice is made and to be made, and if it is truly a choice, it is made without care for the consequences, without expecting any result. You choose; you choose according to your inner truth, your highest consciousness; whatever happens does not touch you, you have made your choice, the true choice, and what comes about is not your concern. While, on the contrary, if you have preferences, you will choose through preference in one way or another, your preference will distort your choice: it will be calculation, bargaining, you will act with the idea that a particular thing must happen because this is what you prefer and not because that is the truth, the right thing to do. Preference is attached to the result, acts with a view to the result, wishes things to be in a particular way and acts to bring about its wish; and so this opens the door to all kinds of things. Choice is independent of the result.


The Mother: And certainly, at every minute you can choose, you are faced with the necessity of choosing at every second. And you do not choose really well, in all sincerity, unless it is the truth of the choice which interests you, and not the result of your choice. If you choose with the result in view, that falsiﬁes your choice.  So I say it is playing on words, it is mixing up two different things; and so you ask questions which seem insoluble, for it is a mixture. There is a confusion in the question.


The Mother: As for treating everybody in the same way, it is a worse confusion still! It is the kind of confusion one makes when one says that the Divine must treat everybody in the same way. So it would not be worth the trouble to have diversity in the world,  not worth the trouble of not having two identical individuals; for this contradicts the very principle of diversity.  You may — or you ought to if you can’t — aspire to have the same deep attitude of understanding, unity, love, perfect compassion for all that is in the universe; but this very attitude will be applied to each case in a different way, according to the truth of that case and its necessity. What could be called the motive or rather the origin of the action is the same, but the action may even be totally and diametrically opposite in accordance with the case and the deeper truth of each case.


The Mother: But for that, precisely, one must have the highest attitude, the most profound, the most essentially true, that which is free from all outer contingencies.   Then one can see at every minute not only the essential truth but also the truth of the action; and in each case it is different.   And yet, what we may call “feeling” — though this is an inadequate word — or the state of consciousness in which one acts, is essentially the same.


The Mother: But this cannot be understood unless one enters the essential depth of things and sees them from the highest summits. And then it is like a centre of light and consciousness high enough or deep enough to be able to see all things at the same time, not only in their essence but in their manifestation; and although the centre of consciousness is one, the action will be as diverse as the manifestation is diverse: it is the realisation of the divine Truth in its manifestation. Otherwise it would be doing away with all the diversity of the world and bringing it back to the essential unmanifest Oneness, for it is only in the non-manifestation that the One is manifested as the One. But as soon as one enters the manifestation, the One manifests as the multiplicity, and multiplicity implies a multitude of actions and ways.  So, to sum up: the choice must be made without care for the consequences, and the action must be performed in accordance with the truth of the multiplicity in the manifestation.


The Mother: There we are.


The Mother: If one goes out of the manifestation .  It is the fact of objectivisation, of manifestation which has created time and space. To go out of it one must return to the origin, that is, go out of the manifestation. Otherwise from the very ﬁrst objectivisation time and space were created.


The Mother: There is a feeling or a perception or an experience of eternity and inﬁnity in which one has the impression of going out of time and space.... It is only an impression.  One must pass beyond all forms, even the most subtle forms of consciousness, far beyond the forms of thought, the forms of consciousness, to be able to have this impression of being outside space and time. This is what generally happens to people who enter into samadhi — the true samadhi — and when they come back to their normal consciousness, they don’t remember anything, for, in fact, there was nothing they could remember.  This is what Sri Aurobindo says here: If Brahman were only an impersonal abstraction, the one reasonable end would be annihilation.


The Mother: For it is obvious that if one goes out of time and space, all separate existence automatically ceases.   There, now. So one, without much result!  Is that all?


The Mother: Have you tried to go out of time and space?   ()  I am going to tell you something, you will understand.  One day, I don’t know when exactly, I suddenly remembered that I had to give a message for the year. Usually these messages reveal what is going to happen during the year, and as I had nothing to say, for certain reasons, I asked myself, or rather I asked whether I might receive a clear indication of what was to be said.


The Mother: I asked exactly this: what was the best state in the world, and the thing which could help these people or this state of consciousness to draw a little closer to the truth?  What was the best state?   A few hours later I had a booklet in my hands which had come from America and had been published as a kind of account of a photographic exhibition entitled “The Family of Man”.  There were quotations in this booklet and the reproduction of a number of photographs, classiﬁed according to the subject, and all for the purpose of trying to awaken the true sense of fraternity in men.


The Mother: The whole thing represented a sort of effort — immense, pathetic — to prevent a possible war. The quotations had been chosen by a woman-reporter who had come here and whom I had seen. And so, all this came expressing in a really touching way, the best human will which can manifest on earth at present, from the collective point of view. I am not saying that some individuals have not risen much higher and understand much better, but they are individual cases and not a collective attempt to do something for humanity. I was moved.


The Mother: And then I came to the end of their booklet and to the remedy they in their ignorant goodwill suggested to prevent men  from killing one another.... It was so poor, so weak, so ignorant, so ineffective, that I was truly moved and — I had a dream, that this exhibition would come here, to Pondicherry, that we could show it and add a concluding fascicule to their booklet in which the true remedy would be revealed to them. And all that took shape very concretely, with the kind of photographs which would be necessary, the quotations that should be put, and then, quite decisively, like something welling up from the depths of consciousness, came this sentence. I wrote it down, and as soon as it was written I said to myself: “Why, this is my message.” And it was decided it would be this.


The Mother: So there it is.  This means that it is just the thing which can make the goodwill of mankind, the best being expressed on earth today, progress. It has taken a rather special form because this goodwill came from a Christian country and naturally there was quite a special Christian inﬂuence, but this is an attitude which is found everywhere in the world, differently expressed according to the country and the religion, and it was as a reaction against the ignorance of this attitude that I wrote this. Naturally, there is the same idea in India, this idea of the complete renunciation of all physical reality, the profound contempt for the material world which is considered an illusion and a falsehood, that leaves, as Sri Aurobindo used to say, the ﬁeld free to the sovereign sway of the adverse forces. If you escape from the concrete reality to seek a distant and abstract one, you leave the whole ﬁeld of concrete realisation at the full disposal of the adverse forces — which have taken hold of it and more or less govern it now — in order to go away yourself to realise what Sri Aurobindo calls here a zero or a void unit — to become the sovereign of a nought.


The Mother: It is the return into Nirvana. This idea is everywhere in the world but expresses itself in different forms.  Because until now evil has been opposed by weakness, by a spiritual force without any power for transformation in the material world, this tremendous effort of goodwill has ended only in deplorable failure and left the world in the same state  of misery and corruption and falsehood. It is on the plane as the one where the adverse forces are ruling that one must have a greater power than theirs, a power which can conquer them totally To put it otherwise, a spiritual force which would be capable of transforming both the consciousness and the material world. This force is the supramental force.


The Mother: What is necessary is to be receptive to its action on the physical plane, and not to run away into a distant Nirvana leaving the enemy with full power over what one abandons.  It is neither sacriﬁce nor renunciation nor weakness which can bring the victory. It is only Delight, a delight which is strength, endurance, supreme courage. The delight brought by the supramental force. It is much more difﬁcult than giving everything up and running away, it demands an inﬁnitely greater heroism — but that is the only way to conquer.


The Mother: Nothing else? I have some questions here, but now it is rather late.  Why this opposition? It acts independently of all individual effort, as if automatically in the world, but it individual effort and of it.


The Mother: Individual effort is one of its means of action, and perhaps the most powerful. If one thinks that individual effort is due to the individual, it is an illusion, but if the individual under the pretext that there is a universal action independent of himself refuses to make an individual effort, he refuses to give his collaboration. The Force wants to use, and does in fact use individual effort as one of the most powerful means at its disposal. It is the Force itself, it is this Power which  your individual effort.  And so, you see, the ﬁrst movement of vital self-conceit when it is told, “You don’t exist in yourself”, naturally it says,  “All right, I won’t do anything any more!


The Mother: I am not the one who works, so I won’t work any longer” and “Very good, the Divine can do everything, it is his business, I won’t stir any more. If the credit does not go to me” — it comes to that — “I won’t do anything any more.” Well! But indeed there’s no word for such things. This is something I constantly hear, it is simply a way of venting one’s offended self-conceit, that’s all.


The Mother: But the true reaction, the pure reaction is an enthusiastic impulse of collaboration, to play the game with all the energy, the willpower at the disposal of one’s consciousness, in the state one is in, with the feeling of being supported, carried by something inﬁnitely greater than oneself, which makes no mistakes, something which protects you and at the same time gives you all the necessary strength and uses you as the best instrument. And one feels that, and one feels one is working in security, that one can no longer make any mistakes, that what one does is done with the utmost result and — in delight. That is the true movement; to feel that one’s will is intensiﬁed to the utmost because it is no longer a tiny little microscopic person in inﬁnity but an inﬁnite universal Power which makes you act: the Force of Truth. This is the only true reaction.  The other one — miserable.


The Mother: “Ah! I am not the one who is doing things, ah! it is not my will being expressed, ah! it is not my power that is working... so I lie down ﬂat, stretch myself out in inert passivity and I won’t move.” “Very well, then,” one tells the Divine, “do whatever you like, I don’t exist any longer.”


The Mother: That is poor indeed! There.   According to what Sri Aurobindo says here, the reality of the universe is what is called God or godhead, but essentially it is Delight. The universe is created in Delight and for Delight. But this Delight can exist only in the perfect oneness of the creation with its creator, and Sri Aurobindo describes this oneness as the Possessor — that is, the Creator — the Possessor being possessed by his creation, a sort of reciprocal possession which is the very essence of the Oneness and the source of all delight.


The Mother: And it is because of division — because the Possessor no longer possesses and because the possessed no longer possesses the Possessor, division is created and the essential Delight is changed into ignorance, and this ignorance is the cause of all suffering. “Ignorance”, not in the sense in which it is usually  understood, for that is what Sri Aurobindo calls Nescience: that ignorance is a consequence of the other. True ignorance is ignorance of the oneness, the union, the identity. And that is the cause of all suffering.  Ever since division began and creation lost its direct contact with the Creator, ignorance has reigned, and all suffering is its result.


The Mother: All those who have had the inner experience have had this experience, that the moment one re-establishes the union with the divine source, all suffering disappears. But there has been a very persistent movement, about which I spoke to you last week, which put at the source of creation not this essential divine Delight but desire. This delight of creation, self-manifestation, self-expression — there is an entire line of seekers and sages who have considered it not as a delight but as a desire; the whole line of Buddhism is of this kind. And instead of seeing the solution in a Oneness which restores to us the essential Delight of the manifestation and the becoming, they consider that the goal and also the way are a total rejection of all desire to be and a return to annihilation.  This conception amounts to an essential misunderstanding.


The Mother: The methods recommended for self-liberation are methods of development which can be very useful, but this conception of a world that’s essentially bad, for it is the result of desire, and from which one must escape at all costs and as quickly as possible, has been the greatest and most serious distortion of all spiritual life in the history of mankind.  It might have been useful, perhaps, at a particular time, for everything is useful in the world’s history, but this utility has passed, it is outworn, and it is time for this conception to be superseded and for us to return to a more essential and higher Truth, to go back to the Delight of existence, the Joy of union and manifestation of the Divine.  This new orientation — I mean new in its terrestrial realisation — must replace all the former spiritual orientations and  open the way to the new realisation which will be a supramental realisation. That is why I told you last week that only Delight, the true divine Delight can bring about the Victory.  Naturally, there must be no confusion about what this Delight is, and that is why from the beginning Sri Aurobindo puts us on our guard, telling us that it is only when one has passed beyond enjoyings that one can enter into Bliss.


The Mother: Bliss is precisely that state which comes from the manifestation of this Delight.  But it is quite the opposite of all that is usually called joy and pleasure, and these must be completely given up in order to have the other.   ( )


The Mother: Do you have a question?  What is it?  So ?  In order to play. He says so: “They are at play.”


The Mother: It is in play.  (A young disciple)  I think Nature knows it too, it is only man who does not know!   (Another child)  Where can she hide?


The Mother: She hides in the inconscience, my child.  That is the greatest hiding-place, the inconscience. Besides, God also hides in the inconscience.  Perhaps, when one knows it is a game and plays it for fun, it is amusing. But when one doesn’t know it is a game, it is not amusing.


The Mother: You see, it is only when one is on the other side, on the divine side, that one can see it like that; that is, as long as we are in the ignorance, well, inevitably we suffer from what should amuse and please us. Fundamentally, it comes to this: when one does something deliberately, knowing what one is doing, it is very interesting and may even be very amusing. But when it is something you don’t do deliberately and don’t understand, when it is something imposed on you and endured, it is not pleasant.  So the solution, the one which is always given: you must learn, know, do it deliberately. But to tell you my true feeling, I think it would be much better to change the game....


The Mother: When one is in that state, one can smile, understand and even be amused, but when one sees, when one is conscious of all those who, far from knowing that they are playing, take the game very seriously and ﬁnd it rather unpleasant, well... I don’t know, one would prefer it to change. That is a purely personal opinion.  I know very well: the moment one crosses over to the other side... instead of being underneath and enduring, when one is above and not only observes but acts oneself, it is so total a reversal that it is difﬁcult to recall the state one was in when carrying all the weight of this inconscience, this ignorance on one’s back, when one was enduring things without knowing why or how or where one was going or why it was like that.  One forgets all that.


The Mother: And then one can say: it is an “eternal game in an eternal garden”. But for it to be an amusing game, everybody should be able to play the game knowing the rules of the game; as long as one does not know the rules of the game, it is not pleasant. So the solution you are given is: “But learn the  rules of the game!”... That is not within everybody’s reach.  I have the impression, a very powerful impression, that a practical joker came and spoilt the game and made it into something dramatic, and this practical joker is obviously the cause of the division and the ignorance which is the result of this division, and of the suffering which is the result of ignorance.


The Mother: Indeed, in spite of all the spiritual traditions, it is difﬁcult to conceive that this state of division, ignorance and suffering was foreseen at the beginning of creation. In spite of everything, one doesn’t like to think that it could have been foreseen. Indeed, I refuse to believe it. I call it an accident — a rather terrible accident, but still, you see, it is especially terrible to the human consciousness; for the universal consciousness, it may only be quite a reparable accident. And after all, when it has been set right, we shall even be able to recall it and say, “Ah! it has given us something we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”


The Mother: But we must ﬁrst wait for it to be put right.  Anyway, I don’t know if there are people who say that it was foreseen and willed, but I tell you it was neither foreseen nor willed, and this is precisely why when it happened, quite unexpectedly, immediately something else sprang forth from the Source, which probably would not have manifested if this accident had not taken place. If Delight had remained Delight, conceived as Delight, and everything had come about in Delight and Union instead of in division, there would never have been any need for the divine Consciousness to plunge into the inconscience as Love. So, when one sees this from very far and from high above, one says, “After all, something has perhaps been gained from it.” But one must see it from a great distance and a great height to be able to say that.


The Mother: Or rather, when it is left far behind, when one has gone beyond this state, entered into Union and Delight, when division and inconscience and suffering have disappeared, then one may very wisely say, “Ah, yes, we have gained an experience we would never have had otherwise.” But the experience must be behind, we must not be right in the midst  of it. For, even for someone who — this is something I know — even for someone who has come out of this state, who lives in the consciousness of Oneness, for whom ignorance is something external, no longer something intimate and painful, even for that person it is impossible to look on the suffering of all those who have not come out of it with a smile of indifference. That seems impossible to me. Therefore, it is really necessary that things in the world should change and the acute state of sickness should disappear, so that we can say, “Ah! yes, we have beneﬁted by it.”


The Mother: It is true that something has been gained, but it is a very costly gain.  That is why, I believe, because of that, so many initiates and sages have been attracted by the solution of the void, of Nirvana, for this is obviously a very radical way of escaping from the consequences of an ignorant manifestation.  Only, the solution of changing this manifestation into a true, truly divine reality is a far superior solution. And this is what we want to attempt now, with a certitude of succeeding one day or another, for, in spite of everything, despite everything, what is true is eternally true, and what is true in essence must necessarily become true in the realisation, one day or another.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo told us that we had taken the ﬁrst step on the path and that the time had come to accomplish the work, therefore one has only to set out. That’s all.  So, your question? ( ) Was this what you wanted to know?  Actually what you were asking was: Why this image?


The Mother: One could reverse the thing. Instead of saying that the universe is like this, that is, the Divine and man are like this, look like this, one should say that this is perhaps an outer, superﬁcial expression of what the essential relation between the Divine and man is at the present moment.   In fact, this would amount to saying that when one plays one is much more divine than when one is serious! ( )


The Mother: But it’s not always good to say this. Perhaps there is more divinity in the spontaneous play of children than in the erudition of the scholar or the asceticism of the saint. That’s what I have always thought. Only () it is a divinity which is quite unconscious of itself.  As for me, I must confess to you that I feel much more essentially myself when I am joyful and when I play — in my own way — than when I am very grave and very serious — much more.


The Mother: Grave and serious — that always gives me the impression that I am dragging the weight of all this creation, so heavy and so obscure, whereas when I play — when I play, when I can laugh, can enjoy myself — it gives me the feeling of a ﬁne powder of delight falling from above and tinting this creation, this world with a very special colour and bringing it much closer to what it should essentially be.   Oh! well, you have seen me sometimes, haven’t you? Perhaps when I come down a rung, I don’t know — when someone is drowning or in difﬁculty, then one must come down from the bank into the water to pull him out.


The Mother: Perhaps that is the reason.  When the creation is in a special difﬁculty, one comes down a little, one pulls, so one becomes serious. But when all is going well, one can laugh and enjoy oneself.  In fact, it could be said that all preaching, all exhortations, even all prayers and invocations come from what Sri Aurobindo calls the lower hemisphere, that is to say, one is still down below.  It may be the summit, may be the frontier, it may be just the edge of this lower hemisphere, but one is still in the lower hemisphere.


The Mother: And as soon as one passes to the other side, all this seems, to say the least, useless and almost childish in the bad sense of the word — ignorant, still ignorant. And it is very interesting to be still in  this state where one is at times on one side, at times just on the border of the other. Well, this border of the other, which for the human consciousness is an almost inaccessible summit, for one who can live consciously and freely in the higher hemisphere, is in spite of everything a descent.  Later I would like us to take up and read here the last chapters of. I think you are becoming old enough, mature enough, to be able to follow it.


The Mother: And then there are all kinds of things you will be able to understand and subjects we shall be able to take up, based on this text, which will help us to go one step further, a serious step towards realisation. He describes so precisely and marvellously the difference between these two states of consciousness, how all that seems to man almost the ultimate of perfection, at least of realisation, how all that still belongs to the lower hemisphere, including all the relations with the gods as men have known them and still know them — how all these things are still far below — and what is the true state, the one which he describes as the supramental state, when one passes beyond.  And in fact, as long as one has not consciously passed beyond, there is a whole world of things one cannot understand.  So I would like us now to open the way and pass beyond, all together, a little.  There we are.


The Mother: There are so many things you think, feel, want, even do, without knowing it. Are you fully conscious of yourself and of all that goes on in you? — Not at all! If, for example, suddenly, without your expecting it, at a certain moment I ask you: “What are you thinking about?” your reply, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, will be: “I don’t know.” And if in the same way I ask another question like this: “What do you want?” you will also say: “I don’t know.”


The Mother: And “What do you feel?” — “I don’t know.” It is only to those who are used to observing themselves, watching how they live, who are concentrated upon this need to know what is going on in them, that one can ask a precise question like this, and only they can immediately reply. In some instances in life, yes, one is absorbed in what one feels, thinks, wants, and then one can say, “Yes, I want that, I am thinking of that, I experience that”, but these are only moments of existence, not the whole time.  Haven’t you noticed that? No?


The Mother: Well, to ﬁnd out what one truly is, to ﬁnd out why one is on earth, what is the purpose of physical existence, of this presence  on earth, of this formation, this existence... the vast majority of people live without asking themselves this even once! Only a small ask themselves this question with interest, and fewer still start working to get the answer. For, unless one is fortunate enough to come across someone who knows it, it is not such an easy thing to ﬁnd. Suppose, for instance, that there had never come to your hands a book of Sri Aurobindo’s or of any of the writers or philosophers or sages who have dedicated their lives to this quest; if you were in the ordinary world, as millions of people are in the ordinary world, who have never heard of anything, except at times — and not always nowadays, even quite rarely — of some gods and a certain form of religion which is more a habit than a faith and, which, besides, rarely tells you why you are on earth....


The Mother: Then, one doesn’t even think of thinking about it. One lives from day to day the events of each day. When one is very young, one thinks of playing, eating, and a little later of learning, and after that one thinks of all the circumstances of life. But to put this problem to oneself, to confront this problem and ask oneself: “But after all, am I here?” How many do that?


The Mother: There are people to whom this idea comes only when they are facing a catastrophe. When they see someone whom they love die or when they ﬁnd themselves in particularly painful and difﬁcult circumstances, they turn back upon themselves, if they are sufﬁciently intelligent, and ask themselves: “But really, what is this tragedy we are living, and what’s the use of it and what is its purpose?”  And only at that moment does one begin the search to know.  And it is only when one has found, you see, found what he says, found that one has a divine Self and that consequently one must seek to know this divine Self.... This comes much later, and yet, in spite of everything, from the very moment of birth in a physical body, there is in the being, in its depths, this psychic presence which pushes the whole being towards this fulﬁlment.


The Mother: But who knows it and recognises it, this psychic being? That too comes only in special circumstances, and unfortunately, most of  the time these have to be painful circumstances, otherwise one goes on living unthinkingly. And in the depths of one’s being is this psychic being which seeks, seeks, seeks to awaken the consciousness and re-establish the union. One knows nothing about it.  When you were ten years old, did you know this?


The Mother: No, you didn’t. Well, still in the depths of your being your psychic being already wanted it and was seeking for it. It was probably your psychic which brought you here.  There are so many things which happen and you don’t even ask yourself why. You take them...


The Mother: it is like that because it is like that. It would be very interesting to know how many of you, till I spoke to you about it, had asked yourselves how it happened that you were here?  Naturally, most of the time, the reply is perhaps very simple: “My parents are here, so I am here. ” However, you were not born here.


The Mother: Nobody was born here. Not even you, were you? You were born in Bangalore. No one was born here.... And yet, you are all here.


The Mother: You have not asked yourselves why — it was like that because it was like that! And so, between even asking oneself and giving an external reply satisfactory enough to be accepted as ﬁnal, and then telling oneself, “Perhaps it is an indication of a destiny, of the purpose of my life...” What a long way one must travel to come to that!   And for everybody there are more or less external reasons, which, besides, are not worth much and explain everything in the dullest possible way, but there is a deeper reason which as yet you do not know.


The Mother: And are there many of you who would be very much interested in knowing why they are here? How many of you have asked yourselves this question: “What is the true reason for my being here?”  Have asked yourself the question?    Oh!


The Mother: that’s true. And you?... And you?  You don’t remember. And you?


The Mother: Not before. Now it begins to come! and you?   No....


The Mother: And I could ask many others still. I know very well. Only those who have come after having had some experience of life and came because they wanted to come, and had a conscious reason for coming, they can of course tell me, “I came because of that”, and that would be at least a partial explanation. The truest, deepest reason may still elude them, that is, what they specially have to realise in the Work. That already requires having passed through many stages on the path.


The Mother: Essentially, it is only when one has become aware of one’s soul, has been identiﬁed with one’s psychic being that one can see in a single ﬂash the picture of one’s individual development through the ages. Then indeed one begins to know... but not  before . Then, indeed, I assure you it becomes very interesting.


The Mother: It changes one’s position in life.  There is such a great difference between feeling vaguely, having a hesitant impression of something, of a force, a movement, an impulse, an attraction, of something which drives you in life — but it is still so vague, so uncertain, it is hazy — there is such a difference between this and having a clear vision, an exact perception, a total understanding of the meaning of one’s life. And only then does one begin to see things as they are, not before. Only then can one follow the thread of one’s destiny and clearly see the goal and the way to reach it. But that happens  only through successive inner awakenings, like doors opening suddenly on new horizons — truly, a new birth into a truer, deeper, more lasting consciousness.


The Mother: Until then you live in a cloud, gropingly, under the weight of a destiny which at times crushes you, gives you the feeling of having been made in a certain way and being unable to do anything about it. You are under the burden of an existence which weighs you down, makes you crawl on the ground instead of rising above and seeing all the threads, the guiding threads, the threads which bind different things into a single movement of progression towards a realisation that grows clear.  One must spring up out of this half-consciousness which is usually considered quite natural — this is your “normal” way of being and you do not even draw back from it sufﬁciently to be able to see and wonder at this incertitude, this lack of precision; while, on the contrary, to know that one is seeking and to seek consciously, deliberately, and methodically, this indeed is the exceptional, almost “abnormal” condition. And yet only in this way does one begin to truly live.    First of all, to begin with, one must through an attentive observation grow aware that desires and the satisfaction of desires give only a vague, uncertain pleasure, mixed, fugitive and altogether unsatisfactory.


The Mother: That is usually the starting-point.  Then, if one is a reasonable being, one must learn to discern what is desire and refrain from doing anything that may satisfy one’s desires. One must reject them without trying to satisfy them. And so the ﬁrst result is exactly one of the ﬁrst observations stated by the Buddha in his teaching: there is an inﬁnitely greater delight in conquering and eliminating a desire than in satisfying it. Every sincere and steadfast seeker will realise after some time, sooner or later, at times very soon, that this is an absolute truth, and that the delight felt in overcoming a desire is incomparably higher than the small pleasure, so ﬂeeting and mixed, which may be found in the satisfaction of his desires.


The Mother: That is the second step.  Naturally, with this continuous discipline, in a very short time the desires will keep their distance and will no longer bother you. So you will be free to enter a little more deeply into your being and open yourself in an aspiration to... the Giver of Delight, the divine Element, the divine Grace. And if this is done with a sincere self-giving — something that gives itself, offers itself and expects nothing in exchange for its offering — one will feel that kind of sweet warmth, comfortable, intimate, radiant, which ﬁlls the heart and is the herald of Delight.  After this, the path is easy.


The Mother: That very one of which I am speaking!   The delight of existing.  There comes a time when one begins to be almost ready, when one can feel in everything, every object, in every movement, in every vibration, in all the things around — not only people and conscious beings, but things, objects; not only trees and plants and living things, but simply any object one uses, the things around one — this delight, this delight of being, of being just as one is, simply being. And one sees that all this vibrates like that. One touches a thing and feels this delight.


The Mother: But naturally, I say, one must have followed the discipline I spoke about at the beginning; otherwise, so long as one has a desire, a preference, an attachment or afﬁnities and repulsions and all that, one cannot — one cannot.  And so long as one ﬁnds pleasures — pleasure, well, yes, vital or physical pleasure in a thing — one cannot feel this delight.  For this delight is everywhere. This delight is something very subtle. One moves in the midst of things and it is as though they were all singing to you their delight.


The Mother: There comes a time when it becomes very familiar in the life around you. Of course, I must admit that it is a little more difﬁcult to feel it in human beings, because there are all their mental and vital formations which come into the ﬁeld of perception and disturb it. There is too much of this kind of egoistic asperity which gets mixed with things, so it is more difﬁcult to contact the Delight there. But even in animals one feels it; it is already a little more difﬁcult than in plants. But in plants, in ﬂowers, it is so wonderful!


The Mother: They speak all their joy, they express it. And as I said, in all familiar objects, the things around you, which you use, there is a state of consciousness in which each one is happy to be, just as it is. So at that moment one knows one has touched true Delight.  And it is not conditioned. I mean it does not depend upon...


The Mother: it depends on nothing. It does not depend on outer circumstances,  does not depend on a more or less favourable state, it does not depend on anything: it is a communion with the of the universe.  And when this comes it ﬁlls all the cells of the body. It is not even a thing which is thought out — one does not reason, does not analyse, it is not that: it is a in which one lives.  And when the body shares in it, it is so fresh — so fresh, so spontaneous, so...


The Mother: it no longer turns back upon itself, there is no longer any sense of self-observation, of self-analysis or of analysing things. All that is like a canticle of joyous vibrations, but very, very quiet, without violence, without passion, nothing of all that. It is very subtle and very intense at the same time, and when it comes, it seems that the whole universe is a marvellous harmony. Even what is to the ordinary human consciousness ugly, unpleasant, appears marvellous.  Unfortunately, as I said, people, circumstances, all that, with all those mental and vital formations — that disturbs it all the time.


The Mother: Then one is obliged to return to this ignorant, blind perception of things. But otherwise, as soon as all this stops and one can get out of it... everything changes. As he says there, at the end: everything changes. A marvellous harmony. And it is all Delight, true Delight, real Delight.


The Mother: This demands a little work.  And this discipline I spoke about, which one must undergo, if it is practised with the aim of ﬁnding Delight, the result is delayed, for an egoistic element is introduced into it, it is done with an aim and is no longer an offering, it is a demand, and then.... It comes, it will come, even if it takes much longer — when one asks nothing, expects nothing, hopes for nothing, when it is simply that, it is self-giving and aspiration, and the spontaneous need without any bargaining — the need to be divine, that’s all.  Oh! the honey....


The Mother: But that is an image, my child.   He says: “If one could imagine....” It is simply to give a more concrete approach than intellectual abstractions. He says: If you can imagine, for example, a honeycomb, well... a honeycomb which would have the capacity to taste itself and at the same time each drop of honey; not only to taste itself as honey, but to taste itself in each drop, being each drop of the honeycomb, and if each one of these drops could taste all the others, itself and all the others, and at the same time if each drop could taste, could have the taste of the whole honeycomb as if it were itself.  So, it would be a honeycomb capable of tasting itself and tasting in detail all the drops in the honeycomb, and each drop capable of tasting itself and all the others individually and the honeycomb as a whole, as itself....


The Mother: It is a very precise image.  Only you must have some power of imagination!  Honey is something delicious, isn’t it? So, these are the sweetnesses of divine Delight.  And just now, when I was evoking this joy which is in things, spontaneous, simple, this joy which is at the heart of everything, well, for the physical body it has something truly...


The Mother: oh! naturally, the taste of honey is very crude and gross in comparison — but something like that, something extremely delicious. And very simple, very simple and very integral in its simplicity; very complete in its simplicity and yet very simple.  You see, this is not something to be thought out, one must have the power to evoke it, one must have some imagination.  So, if one has this capacity, one can do that simply by reading, then one can understand....


The Mother: It is an analogy, it is only an analogy, but it is an analogy which truly has a power of evocation.   Obviously. But that doesn’t matter! It will be good for him.


The Mother: ( )  Is that all?  I had brought some questions I have been asked, but I think it is already rather late. (.)


The Mother: There is one which is terribly intellectual which we shall leave for another day. There is another... which is only a semblance, and then there is a third which is interesting but needs a detailed reply, and this evening it is already a little late.  However here is a question which can be answered very easily, it is from one of my own writings where it is said: And then in Sri Aurobindo’s: And something else, from my:  And so, I am asked how to reconcile these contradictions. But I don’t see any contradiction.


The Mother: For in the ﬁrst sentence it is said: “It is a great mistake to suppose that the Divine Will always acts openly in the world....” I should say: it is for it to act openly. It always acts, but not openly. And when it acts  openly, that is what men call “miracles”. And it is something extremely rare.


The Mother: Most of the time it does not act openly, but that doesn’t mean it does not act. It doesn’t act openly, that’s all. So there’s no contradiction. That was all I meant. It is an altogether superﬁcial contradiction arising from a misunderstanding of the words.


The Mother: The Divine Will acts, but not openly. When it acts openly, well, men call that miracles. That’s all. But that does not prevent it from acting.    What most men call “artistry” is just contrast.


The Mother: Artists say and feel that it is the shadows which make the light, that if there were no contrasts, they would not be able to make a picture. It is the same thing with music: the contrast between “forte” and “piano” is one of the greatest charms of music.  I knew some poets who used to say, “It is my enemies’ hatred which makes me value the affection of my friends....” And it is the almost inevitable likelihood of misfortune which gives all its savour to happiness, and so on. And they value repose only in contrast with the daily agitation, silence only because of the usual noise, and some of them even tell you, “Oh!


The Mother: it is because there are illnesses that good health is cherished.” It goes so far that a thing is valued only when it is lost. And as Sri Aurobindo says here: When this fever of action, of movement, this agitation of creative thought is not there, one feels one is falling into inertia. Most people fear silence, calm, quietude. They no longer feel alive when they are not agitated.


The Mother: I have seen many cases in which Sri Aurobindo had given silence to somebody, had made his mind silent, and that person came back to him in a kind of despair, saying: “But I have become stupid!” For his thought was no longer excited.  What he says here is terribly true. Men want freedom but they are in love with their chains, and when one wants to take them away, when one wants to show them the path of true liberation, they are afraid, and often they even protest.  Almost all man’s works of art — literary, poetic, artistic — are based on the violence of contrasts in life.


The Mother: When one tries to pull them out of their daily dramas, they really feel that it is not artistic. If they wanted to write a book or compose a play where there would be no contrasts, where there would be no shadows in the picture, it would probably be something seemingly very dull, very monotonous, lifeless, for what man calls “life” is the drama of life, the anxiety of life, the violence of contrasts. And  perhaps if there were no death, they would be terribly tired of living.  ( )


The Mother: I have been asked a question about what I said in one of the former classes: I believe this is only an apparent contradiction.  If one wants to follow a discipline of yoga, naturally, before undertaking anything one must try to discern and know if the inspiration received is a real one, coming from the Divine, or whether it is simply a reaction to outer circumstances and an impulse, either vital or mental. It is quite important, even very important, to try to discern and act in full knowledge of the cause. But there are very many things one does and about which one is not in the habit of thinking beforehand. When the circumstance comes, one obeys it, so to say.


The Mother: And, indeed, these things, like almost everything one does in life, are not important in themselves. The only thing that matters is the with which they are done. The fact that you do something because that action is present there before you for one reason or another  and that you are, so to say, always obliged to act as long as you are in the outer life — all this has a certain importance from the point of view of the management of life if these acts are liable to have far-reaching consequences in life, as for example, getting married or going to live in one place or another or taking up one occupation or another; these things are generally considered important, and they are so to a certain extent; but even for them, from the point of view of yoga, everything depends much more on the attitude one takes than on the thing itself. And so, above all, for all the very small actions of daily life, the importance is reduced to a minimum.  There are some scrupulous people who set problems to themselves and ﬁnd it very difﬁcult to solve them, because they state the problem wrongly.


The Mother: I knew a young woman who was a theosophist and was trying to practise; she told me, “We are taught that the divine Will must prevail in all that we do, but in the morning when I have my breakfast, how can I know whether God wants me to put two lumps of sugar in my coffee or only one?”... And it was quite touching, you know, and I had some trouble explaining to her that the spirit in which she drank her coffee, the attitude she had towards her food, was much more important than the number of lumps of sugar she put into it.  It is the same with all the little things one does at every moment. The divine Consciousness does not work in the human way, It does not decide how many lumps of sugar you will put in your coffee. It gradually puts you in the right attitude towards actions, things — an attitude of consecration, suppleness, assent, aspiration, goodwill, plasticity, effort for progress — and this is what counts, much more than the small decision you take at every second.


The Mother: One may try to ﬁnd out what is the truest thing to do, but it is not by a mental discussion or a mental problem that these things can be resolved. It is in fact by an inner  attitude which an atmosphere of harmony — progressive harmony — in which all one does will necessarily be the best thing that could be done in those particular circumstances. And the ideal would be an attitude complete enough for the action to be spontaneous, dictated by something other than an outer reason. But that is an ideal — for which one must aspire and which one can realise after some time. Till then, to take care always to keep the true attitude, the true aspiration, is much more important than to decide whether one will do gymnasticmarching or not and whether one will go to a certain class or not.


The Mother: Because these things have no real importance in themselves, they have only an altogether relative importance, the only important thing is just to keep the true orientation in one’s aspiration and a living will for progress.  As a general rule, and so that the experience may have its full beneﬁt, when one has undertaken something one must do it with persistence, without caring for obstacles and difﬁculties, until an absolutely irrefutable event indicates that one no longer has to do it. This happens very rarely. Usually, things follow their own curve and when they reach an issue — either they have come to an end or have produced the desired result — one becomes aware of the reason for doing them. But the obstacles, oppositions — or encouragements — should not be considered as irrefutable signs to be followed, for these things may have very different meanings according to the case, and it is not at all on the basis of these outer events that one must judge the validity of one’s undertaking.


The Mother: When one is very attentive and very sincere, one can have an indication, an inner but perceptible indication, of the value of what one has undertaken or the action one is doing. Truly, for someone who has an entire goodwill, that is, who in all sincerity, with the whole conscious part of his being, wants to do the right thing in the right way, there is always an indication; if for some reason or other one launches upon a more or less fatal action, one feels an uneasiness in the region of the solar  plexus; an uneasiness which is not violent, which doesn’t compel recognition dramatically, but is very perceptible to someone who is attentive — something like a sort of regret, like a lack of assent.  It may go as far as a kind of refusal to collaborate. But I must stress it, without violence, without brutal self-assertion: it makes no noise, does not hurt, it is at the most a slight uneasiness. And if you disregard it, if you pay no attention, attach no importance to it, after a little while it will completely disappear and there will be nothing any longer.


The Mother: It is not that it increases with the growing error, on the contrary, it disappears and the consciousness becomes veiled.  Therefore, one cannot give this as a sure sign, for if you have disobeyed this little indication several times, well, it will no longer come. But I tell you that if in all sincerity you are very attentive to it, then it will be a very sure and precious guide.  But if there is an uneasiness, it comes at the beginning, almost immediately, and when it doesn’t show itself, well, no matter what one has started, it is preferable to do it to the very end so that the experience may be complete, unless one receives, as I said, an absolutely precise and categorical indication that it should not be done.   There seems to be matter enough here for us not to need to go any further.


The Mother: This is a question which every person whose consciousness is awakened a little has asked himself at least once in his life. There is in the depths of the being such a need to perpetuate, to prolong, to develop life, that the moment one has a ﬁrst contact with death, which, although it may be quite an accidental contact, is yet inevitable, there is a sort of recoil in the being.  In persons who are sensitive, it produces horror; in others, indignation. There is a tendency to ask oneself: “What is this monstrous farce in which one takes part without wanting to, without understanding it? Why are we born, if it is only to die?


The Mother: Why all this effort for development, progress, the ﬂowering of the faculties, if it is to come to a diminution ending in decline and disintegration?...” Some feel a revolt in them, others less strong feel despair and always this question arises: “If there is a conscious Will behind all that, this Will seems to be monstrous.”  But here Sri Aurobindo tells us that this was an indispensable means of awakening in the consciousness of matter the need for perfection, the necessity of progress, that without this catastrophe, all beings would have been satisﬁed with the condition they were in — perhaps.... This is not certain.   But then, we have to take things as they are and tell ourselves that we must ﬁnd the way out of it all.


The Mother: The fact is that everything is in a state of perpetual progressive development, that is, the whole creation, the whole universe is advancing towards a perfection which seems to recede as one goes forward towards it, for what seemed a perfection at a certain moment is no longer perfect after a time.  The most subtle states of being in the consciousness follow this progression even as it is going on, and the higher up the scale one goes, the more closely does the rhythm of the advance resemble the rhythm of the universal development, and approach the rhythm of the divine development; but the material world is rigid by nature, transformation is slow, very slow, there, almost imperceptible for the measurement of time as human consciousness perceives it... and so there is a constant disequilibrium between the inner and outer movement, and this lack of balance, this incapacity of the outer forms to follow the movement of the inner progress brings about the necessity of decomposition and the change of forms. But if, into this matter, one could infuse enough consciousness to obtain the same rhythm, if matter could become plastic enough to follow the inner progression, this rupture of balance would not occur, and death would no longer be necessary.  So, according to what Sri Aurobindo tells us, Nature has found this rather radical means to awaken in the material consciousness the necessary aspiration and plasticity.