The Mother: I have met at least two of them. One I met in France and the other in Japan, and they were very different; which leads one to believe that probably in accordance with the mental culture, the education, the country and beliefs there should be different spirits. But there are spirits of all the manifestations of Nature: there are spirits of ﬁre, spirits of air, of water, of rain, of wind; and there are spirits of death.  Each spirit of death, whatever it may be, has a claim to a certain number of deaths per day. Indeed it is a fantastic organisation; it is a kind of alliance between the vital forces and the forces of Nature.


The Mother: For example, if the spirit of death has decided: “That is the number of people to which I am entitled”,  let us say four or ﬁve or six, or one or two persons, it depends on the day; it has decided that certain persons would die, it goes straight and settles down beside the person about to die. But if you happen to be conscious (not the person), if you see the spirit going to a person and you do not want him to die, then you can, if you possess a certain occult power, tell it: “No, I forbid you to take him.” It is a thing that has happened, not once but several times, in Japan and here. It was not the same spirit. That is what makes me say that there must be many.


The Mother: — I don’t want him to die.  — But I have a right to one death!  — Go and ﬁnd someone who is ready to die.  So I have seen several cases: sometimes it is just a neighbour who dies suddenly in place of the other, sometimes it is an acquaintance and sometimes it is an enemy. Naturally, there is a relation, good or bad, of neighbourhood (or anything else) which externally looks like chance.


The Mother: But it is the spirit who has taken dead. The spirit has a claim to one death, it will have one death. You can tell it: “I forbid you to take this one”, and have the power of sending it away, and the spirit can do nothing but go away; but it does not give up its due and goes elsewhere.  There is another death.  It is the same thing with ﬁre.


The Mother: I saw the spirit of ﬁre, particularly in Japan because ﬁre is an extraordinary thing in that country. When a ﬁre starts, some eighty houses burn: a whole quarter. It is something fantastic. The houses are of wood and they burn like match-boxes; you see a ﬁre kindling and then all of a sudden, puff!... You have never seen a match-box catching ﬁre?


The Mother: a ﬂash! like that, a ﬂash! one, two, three, ten, twenty houses burnt down before my eyes!... So there are spirits of ﬁre. One day, I was in my bed. I was concentrating, looking at people.


The Mother: Suddenly I saw something like a cloud of ﬂames drawing close to the house. I looked and I saw it was a conscious being.  — Eh! what are you here for?


The Mother: — I have the right to burn the house, start a ﬁre.   — That’s possible, I told it, but not here.  And it could not resist.


The Mother: It is a question of who proves the stronger. I said: “No, here you can’t burn, that’s all!” Five minutes later I heard cries: “Ah! Ah!” Two or three houses farther away, a house had caught ﬁre.  It had gone there as I had forbidden it to come to my house.


The Mother: It had a claim to one house. There we are!   Ah! well, that depends upon the people.


The Mother: Two things are necessary. First of all, nothing in your being, no part of your being should want to die. That does not happen often. You have always a defeatist in you somewhere: something that is tired, something that is disgusted, something that has had enough of it, something that is lazy, something that does not want to struggle and says: “Well! Ah!


The Mother: Let it be ﬁnished, so much the better. ” That is sufﬁcient, you are dead.  But it is a fact: if nothing, absolutely nothing in you consents to die, you will not die. For someone to die, there is always a second, perhaps the hundredth part of a second when he gives his consent.


The Mother: If there is not this second of consent, he does not die.  I knew people who should have really died according to all physical and vital laws; and they refused. They said: “No, I will not die”, and they lived. There are others who do not need at all to die, but they are of that kind and say: “Ah! Well!


The Mother: Yes, so much the better, it will be ﬁnished”, and it is ﬁnished. Even that much, even nothing more than that: you need not have a persistent wish, you have only to say: “Well, yes, I have had enough!” and it is ﬁnished. So it is truly like that. As you say, you may have death standing by your bedside and tell him: “I do not want you, go away”, and it will be obliged to go away.


The Mother: But usually one gives way, for one must struggle, one must be strong, one must be very courageous and enduring, must have a great faith in the importance of life; like someone, for example, who feels very strongly that he has still something to do and he must absolutely do it. But who is sure he has not within him the least bit of a defeatist, somewhere, who just yields and says: “It is all right”?... It is here, the necessity of unifying oneself.  Whatever the way we follow, the subject we study, we always arrive at the same result. The most important thing for an individual is to unify himself around his divine centre; in that way he becomes a true individual, master of himself and his destiny.


The Mother: Otherwise, he is a plaything of forces that toss him about like a piece of cork on a river. He goes where he does not want to go, he is made to do things he does not want to do, and ﬁnally he falls into a hole without having the strength to hold on. But if you are consciously organised, uniﬁed around the divine centre, ruled and directed by it, you are master of your destiny. That is worth the trouble of attempting.... In any case, I ﬁnd it preferable to be the master rather than the slave.


The Mother: It is a rather unpleasant sensation to feel yourself pulled by the strings and made to do things whether you want to or not — it makes no difference — but to be compelled to act because something pulls you by the strings, something which you do not even see — that is exasperating. However, I do not know, but I found it very annoying, even when I was a little child. At ﬁve, it began to seem to me quite intolerable and I sought for a way so that it might be otherwise — without people getting a chance to scold me. For I knew nobody who could help me and I did not have the chance that you have, someone who can tell you: “This is what you have to do!” There was nobody to tell me that.


The Mother: I had to ﬁnd it out all by myself . And I found it. I started at ﬁve.


The Mother: And you, you were ﬁve long ago.....   Yes. At times they take even the form of the person who has the aspiration or makes the prayer — often. That depends. Aspirations sometimes take the form of that to which one aspires, but most often, and specially prayers, clearly take the form of the one who prays.


The Mother: I have written this somewhere. There are several kinds of prayers.  There is the purely mechanical, material prayer, with words which have been learnt and are mechanically repeated. That does not signify anything much. And that has usually only one single result, that of quietening the person who prays, for if a prayer is repeated several times, the words end up by making you calm.


The Mother: There is a prayer which is a spontaneous formula for expressing something precise which one wants to ask for: one prays for this thing or that, one prays for one thing or another; one can pray for somebody, for a circumstance, for oneself.  There is a point where aspiration and prayer meet, for there are prayers which are the spontaneous formulation of a lived experience: these spring up all ready from within the being, like something that’s the expression of a profound experience, and which offers thanksgiving for that experience or asks its continuation or asks for its explanation also; and that indeed is quite close to aspiration. But aspiration is not necessarily formulated in words; or if it is formulated in words, it is almost a movement of invocation. You aspire for a certain state; for instance, you have found something in yourself that is not in keeping with your ideal, a movement of darkness and ignorance, perhaps even of ill-will, something that’s not in harmony with what you want to realise; then that is not going to be formulated in words; that will be like a springing ﬂame and like an offering made of a living experience, asking to grow larger, be magniﬁed and ever more and more clear and precise.


The Mother: All that may be put into words , if one tries to remember and note down one’s experience.  But aspiration always springs up like a ﬂame that rises high and carries in itself the thing one desires to be or what one desires to do or desires to have. I use the word “desire”, but truly it is here that the word “aspire” should be used, for that does not have either the quality or the form of a desire.  It is truly like a great purifying ﬂame of will, and it carries in its core the thing that asks to be realised.  For instance, if you have done something you regret having done, if that has unhappy consequences which disturb things, and several people are implicated, you do not know the reactions of the others, but you yourself wish that what has been done may take a turn for the best, and that if there is a mistake, it may be understood, and that no matter what the mistake, this may be for you an opportunity for a greater progress, a greater  discipline, a new ascent towards the Divine, a door open on a future that you want to be more clear and true and intense; so all this is gathered here () like a force, and


The Mother: then it surges up and rises in a great movement of ascent, and at times without the shadow of a formulation, without words, without expression, but like a springing ﬂame.  That indeed is true aspiration. That may happen a hundred, a thousand times daily if one is in that state in which one constantly wants to progress and be more true and more fully in harmony with what the Divine Will wants of us.  Prayer is a much more external thing, generally about a precise fact, and always formulated for it is the formula that makes the prayer. One may have an aspiration and transcribe it as a prayer, but aspiration goes beyond prayer in every way.


The Mother: It is much closer and much more as it were self-forgetful, living only in the thing one wants to be or do, and the offering of all that one wants to do to the Divine. You may pray in order to ask for something, you may also pray to thank the Divine for what He has given you, and that prayer is much greater: it may be called an act of thanksgiving. You may pray in gratitude for the aspect of kindness the Divine has shown to you, for what He has done for you, for what you see in Him, and the praise you want to offer Him. And all this may take the form of a prayer. It is decidedly the highest prayer, for it is not exclusively preoccupied with oneself, it is not an egoistic prayer.


The Mother: Certainly, one may have an aspiration in all the domains, but the very centre of aspiration is in the psychic being, whilst one may pray in all the domains, and the prayer belongs to the domain in which one prays. One may make purely material, physical prayers, vital prayers, mental prayers, psychic prayers, spiritual prayers, and each one has its special character, its special value.  There is a kind of prayer at once spontaneous and unselﬁsh which is like a great call, usually not for one’s own self personally, but like something that may be called an intercession  with the Divine. It is extremely powerful. I have had countless instances of things which have been realised almost instantaneously due to prayers of this kind.


The Mother: It implies a great faith, a great ardour, a great sincerity, and a great simplicity of heart also, something that does not calculate, does not plan, does not bargain, does not give with the idea of receiving in exchange. For, the majority of men give with one hand and hold out the other to get something in exchange; the largest number of prayers are of that sort. But there are others of the kind I have described, acts of thanksgiving, a kind of canticle, and these are very good.  There you are. I don’t know if I have made myself clear, but this is how it is.


The Mother: To be clearer, we may say that prayer is always formulated in words; but the words may have different values according to the state in which they are formulated. Prayer is a formulated thing and one may aspire. But it is difﬁcult to pray without praying to someone. For instance, those who have a conception of the universe from which they have more or less driven out the idea of the Divine (there are many people of this kind; this idea troubles them — the idea that there is someone who knows all, can do everything and who is so formidably greater than they that there can be no comparison; that’s a bit troublesome for their ; so they try to make a world without the Divine), these people evidently cannot pray, for to whom would they pray?  Unless they pray to themselves, which is not the custom!


The Mother: But one can aspire for something without having any faith in the Divine. There are people who do not believe in the existence of a God, but who believe in progress. They have the idea that the world is in constant progress and that this progress will go on indeﬁnitely without stopping, towards an ever greater good.  Well, these people can have a very great aspiration for progress, and they don’t even need any idea of a divine existence for that.  Aspiration necessarily implies a faith but not necessarily faith in a divine being; whilst prayer cannot exist if it is not addressed to a divine being.


The Mother: And pray to what? One does not pray to  something that has no personality! One prays to someone who can hear us. If there is nobody to hear us, how could one pray?  Hence, if one prays, this means that, even when one doesn’t acknowledge it, one has faith in somebody inﬁnitely higher than us, inﬁnitely more powerful, who can change our destiny and change us also, if one prays so as to be heard.


The Mother: That is the essential difference.   So the more intellectual people admit aspiration and say that prayer is something inferior. The mystics tell you that aspiration is all very well but if you want to be really heard and want the Divine to listen to you, you must pray, and pray with the simplicity of a child, a perfect candour, that is, a perfect trust:  “I need this or that (whether it be a moral need or a physical or material need), well, I ask You for it, give it to me.”


The Mother: Or else:  “You have given me what I asked of You, You have made me realise concretely those experiences which were unknown to me and are now marvels I can attain at will; yes, I am inﬁnitely grateful to You and I offer a prayer of thanksgiving to sing Your praise and thank You for Your intervention.” It is like that. To aspire it is not necessary to direct the aspiration to someone, towards someone. One has an aspiration for a certain state of being, for knowledge, for a realisation, a state of consciousness; one aspires for something, but it is not necessarily a prayer; prayer is something additional.


The Mother: Prayer is a personal thing, addressed to a personal being, that is, to something — a force or a being — who can hear you and answer you. Otherwise you can’t ask for anything. Do you understand?  It is the same thing. Through a formation, a mental formation.


The Mother: When somebody is very ill-willed and wants to harm you, his will is expressed more or less; at times he does not dare to  acknowledge this to himself for he would feel ashamed, but that may come spontaneously. Or else, it may be as with malicious people, something shut up very deep in the consciousness, all the time there, like that, stirring up their spite; and then there are violent people who wish that a calamity may befall those who have caused them some so-called harm or have displeased them for some reason or other.... Anyway, that is it, it belongs to the ﬁeld of formation; and it is so strong that if you just pass by someone who has a manifest ill-will, you may suddenly feel very uneasy.  Now, if you have a little knowledge and consciousness, you can become aware of the reason, and then, when one realises the reason, there is only one thing to do, just this (), as one brushes off a ﬂy. Flies are very troublesome and come back again and again; and evil formations — take care! — have the same habit as ﬂies.


The Mother: You brush ﬂies away, they return, you brush them away again, again they return. They think it is a game.  Have you never noticed, ﬂies take this as a game? truly, even as they are sent away, they return. Only, if at a particular moment you become angry, you get into a temper and do this (), even if you do not touch it, the ﬂy will not come back.


The Mother: It feels it. Try, you will see.  But a bad thought is a bad deed. There are people who do not know it, but truly a bad thought is a bad deed and if one thinks and wishes harm to someone, well, one is responsible for the misfortunes that come upon him just as much as though one had acted. But the unfortunate thing is that this is not recognised and that never does one intervene in the bad thoughts of people....


The Mother: There are even people who take great pleasure in inciting the bad thoughts of others. I have known such people (unfortunately far too many), when they have something unpleasant to say to somebody, they never miss the opportunity of telling him: “You know, somebody said that about you”, and also: “You know, that other person said this about you.” And thus they create as much harm as they think of. And this they  do at times simply through stupidity, most often through vanity, in order to show off that they know something. But at bottom, in the consciousness, there is what is called mischief-making — something that enjoys creating disorder, misunderstandings, disputes among people, unpleasant situations, and feels at ease amidst these.


The Mother: There are many people with a very sharp tongue.  It is called in French “une langue de vip`ere”, a viperish tongue.  This is their great amusement. And they do much, much, much harm. But even without speaking, if one has a strong thought and thinks ill of people, one does a bad deed.


The Mother: My child, it is as though you asked me why there is inconscience, ignorance, darkness in the nature! It is the why of the world you are asking me! Why is the world like this and not otherwise?... There are people who have written volumes on the subject. And each one explains it in his own way and that changes nothing, in fact.


The Mother: You may ask me: Why is there ill-will?  Why is there ignorance? Why is there stupidity? Why is there wickedness? Why is there all the evil?


The Mother: Why is the world not a very charming place?... All the philosophers explain it to you, each in his own way. The materialists explain it in their way, the scientists explain it in their way, but nobody in all that can ﬁnd  the means of getting out of it! and after all, the one thing that’s truly important is...


The Mother: it would be precisely (you ask me: Why is there ill-will?) to ﬁnd the way so that there may no longer be any ill-will. That would be worth the trouble. If you tell me: Why is there suffering, why is there misery?... What can that do to you, this why, unless it be a means of ﬁnding a remedy?  But I don’t believe it would, for (we have said that here) if you seek for the why, you will ﬁnd within yourself simply all sorts of explanations which will be more or less useless and will lead you nowhere.


The Mother: The fact is that it so, isn’t it? and the second fact is that  one doesn’t want it thus, and the third is to ﬁnd the means that it may no longer exist. That is our problem. The world is not as we think it ought to be.


The Mother: There are lots of things in the world which we do not approve of. Well, there are people who like what they call “knowledge” very much and begin to inquire why it is like that. In a way this is very well, but as I said, it would be much more important to ﬁnd out what to do so that it may be otherwise. This is exactly the problem the Buddha put to himself.  He sat under a tree, it is said, until he found the solution.


The Mother: But his solution is not very good, for when you tell me: “The world is bad”, well, his solution is: “Do away with the world.” — “For whose beneﬁt?” as Sri Aurobindo has written somewhere . Then the world will no longer be bad, for it will not exist! But what is the use of its no longer being bad, since it will not exist?


The Mother: It is very simple logic. It is like those who want the whole world to return to its Origin; and so Sri Aurobindo answers: “You will be the all-powerful master of something that no longer exists, an emperor without an empire or a king without a kingdom”, that’s all.... It is one solution. But there are other better ones. I believe we have found better ones.


The Mother: Some say that ill-will comes from ignorance (that was exactly what the Buddha claimed) and that if ignorance disappeared there would no longer be any ill-will. There are others who say that ill-will comes from division, separation, that if the universe were not cut off from its Origin there would be no ill-will. Others still say that it is ill-will which is the cause of everything, of separation and ignorance; and so there arises the problem: Whence does it come, this ill-will? If it were at the origin of everything, it was then the origin of everything. And there we are altogether at a loss, my children!


The Mother: We could speculate upon this for years, we shall never get out of it. And so those who push it so far ﬁnish by telling you: Ill-will doesn’t exist, it is an illusion. And that’s simply because they stop midway in their reasoning, for if they went a little farther they might say: Perhaps it is a human invention, this ill-will.... That is possible!   I do not think so.


The Mother: I can’t say for sure since I don’t know all the animal species, but I have heard things which to us seem monstrosities, yet are not at all instances of ill-will. For example, take the world of insects; of all the animal species it is this which most contains the sense of what we call wickedness — and what may be called ill-will, but it could very well be that this is our consciousness applied to their movements which sees a movement of wickedness or ill-will.... There are insects whose larvae can live only on a living being. They can feed only on a living being; dead ﬂesh does not nourish these. So the parent insect that is going to lay its eggs (which will change into larvae) begins by stinging a nervous centre of another insect or small lower animal which it paralyses, and after that gently lays its eggs inside in such a way that when the eggs are hatched the larvae feed on that paralysed but not dead animal.


The Mother: It is Machiavellian, isn’t it?  Evidently it is not the result of reasoning, it is an instinct. Can this be called ill-will? Is this ill-will?... It is simply the instinct of procreation.


The Mother: Perhaps, if we say that these insects are moved by the spirit of the species which in itself is conscious and has a conscious will, we can then say that all these imaginations (I give you this one instance, but there are any number of them as terrible, as monstrous for our human consciousness), all these beings, fashioners, who have created these insects must be frightful beings (don’t you think so?) and have a perverse and diabolical imagination. It is quite possible, for indeed it is said that the origin of the insect species is a vital origin, that the fashioners are those of a vital type, that is, beings who not only symbolise but represent and live upon the ill-will in the world. These are very conscious of their ill-will, and it is deliberate. The ill-will of men is usually only a kind of reﬂection — an imitation or a reﬂection — of the will of the beings of the vital, a will clearly hostile to creation, a will to make things as painful, as ugly, as  sorrowful, as monstrous as possible. It is said that it is these who have created insects, and so the insect species would perhaps be...


The Mother: But they do not wilfully represent evil, you understand, they are moved by an unconscious instinct. They do not do evil intentionally. They do it because it is in their nature. What I call ill-will is truly the will to do evil for the sake of doing evil, destroying for the sake of destroying, harming for harming’s sake and taking pleasure in the fact of doing evil. That really is ill-will.


The Mother: Egoism, I do believe, begins with the birth of mind. I can’t tell for certain, for always new things are being found. But what I have seen of the animal species, specially of the higher animals, may be the instinct of preservation, may be violence, obscure and brutal reactions, but is that truly what is called illwill?... It is possible. If someone were to tell me a story he has witnessed which proves the opposite, I am ready to admit it but for the time being — I haven’t seen it.


The Mother: All that I know of animals is their instinct which pushes them into action, but they don’t have that perversity that’s in the human mind. I believe it is with this kind of mental functioning and under the direct inﬂuence of the vital that man has become an ill-willed being. The Titans are ill-willed beings but the Titans are beings of the vital world manifested in the forces of Nature: they want to do evil for the pleasure of doing it, to destroy for the pleasure of destroying.  People always speak about the wickedness of cats, for instance, playing with the mouse before eating it. That’s an example given to children; but I have seen cats.


The Mother: I know what they do. It is not at all true. They don’t do this at all through malice. Usually it happens like this: the mother-cat hunts for the little ones and catches a mouse. If it were to give the mouse immediately to the kittens to eat, they wouldn’t be able to eat it, for it is hard, tough, and they don’t have the capacity to eat such hard, tough ﬂesh.


The Mother: Besides, it is also bad when it is like that. So they play with it (they seem to be playing with it), they toss it about, roll it, catch it, let it run, run after it, until it is very nicely softened.  And then, when it is well softened, ready for eating, and the  meat already worked upon, then they give it to the little ones who can now eat it. But certainly they don’t go and play with the mouse for the pleasure of playing! They hunt ﬁrst, you see, and then prepare the dinner.


The Mother: They have neither furnace nor ﬁre to cook and soften the thing. They must prepare it and make it ready for eating.  But it is also said that the ﬁrst expression of love in living beings is the desire to devour. One wants to absorb, desires to devour. There is one instance which would seem to prove that this is not altogether false — that is when the tiger catches its prey or the snake its victim, it happens that both the tiger’s and the snake’s victims give themselves up in a kind of delight of being eaten.


The Mother: An experience is narrated of a man who was in the bush with his friends and had lagged behind and was caught by a tiger, a man-eater. The others came back when they saw that he was missing. They saw the tracks. They ran after him, just in time to prevent the tiger’s eating him. When he came to himself a little, they told him he must have had a frightful experience.


The Mother: He said: “No, just imagine, I don’t know what happened to me, as soon as that tiger caught me and while it was dragging me along, I felt an intense love for it and a great desire to be eaten by it!”  This is quite true, it is not an invention. It is a true story.  Well, I have seen with my own eyes.... I believe I have already narrated this to you — the story of the little rabbit which had been put in a python’s cage.


The Mother: It was in the cage in the  in Paris. It was the breakfast day. I happened to be there.   The cage was opened, the little white rabbit put inside.


The Mother: It was a pretty little white rabbit and it immediately ﬂed to the other end of the cage and trembled like anything. It was horrible to see this, for it knew very well what was happening, it had felt the snake, it knew very well. The serpent was simply coiled up on its mat. It seemed to be asleep, and very quietly it stretched out its neck and head, and then began looking at the rabbit. It looked at it without stirring — just looked at it.


The Mother: I saw the rabbit  which at ﬁrst stopped trembling; it no longer was afraid. It was quite doubled up and it began to recover. And then I saw it lift its head, open its eyes wide, and look at the snake, and slowly, very slowly it went forward towards it till it was just at the right distance. Then the snake with a single leap — without any disturbance, without even uncoiling itself, just remaining where it was, you understand — hop! it took it.


The Mother: And then it began rolling it, preparing it for its dinner. It was not in order to play with it. It prepared the thing. It crushed all its bones nicely, made them crack; then it smeared it with a kind of gluey substance to make it quite slippy. And when it was all quite ready, it began swallowing it slowly, comfortably....


The Mother: But it didn’t have to disturb itself, it didn’t have to make the least movement, except the last swift one just to catch it when it was right in front. It was the other creature that had come to it.  There you are. Indeed there are many things in Nature.  There is this, there is perhaps ill-will also.


The Mother: But I am not quite sure that it is not one of those presents that mental activity has given to man... as soon as he was separated from his instinct and wanted to act independently....   It is the consciousness of Nature. Nature is conscious of its action, but this is not an individual consciousness. There is an instinct of the species.


The Mother: Some have said that there were even “spirits of the species”, conscious beings for each species. Instinct depends on the way Nature works, and Nature is a conscious force which knows what it wants, does it in its own way, knowing where it is going and its roads: it chooses them itself. For man this appears incoherent, for his own consciousness is too narrow (he can’t see the whole well enough; when one sees only the small details of things or little fragments, one can’t understand at all), but Nature has a plan, it has a conscious will, it is altogether a conscious entity — it can’t be called a being, for it is not in the  same proportion. When we speak of a being with our human consciousness, we immediately imagine a human being, perhaps a little larger or much larger, but still functioning always in the same way. That is why I don’t call it a being, but it is a conscious entity, a conscious will doing things consciously, deliberately, and having formidable forces at its disposal.


The Mother: It is also said that the forces of Nature are blind and violent.  But it is not at all that! It is man in his relative proportion with Nature who judges like that. Wait a little, let us take this example. When there is an earthquake, many islands are engulfed and millions of people killed.


The Mother: People say: “This Nature is monstrous.” From the human point of view this Nature is monstrous. What has it done? It has wrought a cataclysm. But just think how in jumping or running or doing something or other, you get a good knock and turn black and blue.


The Mother: It is the same thing for our cells as an earthquake; you destroy a huge number of cells! It is a question of proportion. For us, our little consciousness, ever so little, this appears something formidable but after all it is quite simply a contusion somewhere upon earth (not even in the universe). We are speaking only of the earth.  What is it?


The Mother: Nothing at all, just a tiny little plaything in the universe. If we speak of this universe, then the disappearance of the worlds — these are just contusions. It is nothing.  One must, if one can, widen one’s consciousness.  I knew somebody who wanted to widen his consciousness; he said he had found a way, it was to lie ﬂat on his back at night, out-of-doors, and look at the stars and try to identify himself with them, and go away deep into an immense world, and so lose completely all sense of proportion, of the order of the earth and all its little things, and become vast as the sky — you couldn’t say as vast as the universe, for we see only a tiny bit of it, but vast as the sky with all the stars.


The Mother: And so, you know, the little impurities fall off for the time being, and one understands things on a very vast scale. It is a good exercise.  Both are good exercises. Try to compare them, you’ll see:  you are walking on a street, there is an army of ants going from one nest to another (you do not look down, you are talking with someone); very negligently you put one foot and then the other, and you crush hundreds of ants without even being aware of it.  If you were an ant, you would say: “What a wicked and beastly force!”


The Mother: You are just walking. You have not paid attention. But suppose there are beings of this kind for whom we are just tiny little ants. They put one foot and then the other and millions of people are killed. They are not even aware of it! They have not done it on purpose.


The Mother: They were just walking along, that’s all. The only difference you could make (and yet I am not quite sure), the only difference between the ant and man is that man is able to think of what happens to him, and perhaps the ant is not conscious of it? I don’t know at all. I don’t guarantee it..   No, not rules but mental formations.


The Mother: Generally a superstition originates in an experience. For instance, there is a certain superstition in Europe, and you are told: “Never walk under a ladder, it will bring you ill-luck.” It is probable that someone walked under a ladder and the ladder slipped and fell upon him, and the story starts off like that. It can happen that this is a repeated experience, for, in fact, if a ladder is badly placed and you pass underneath it could fall at that very moment, and that would bring ill-luck! There are innumerable superstitions of this kind.


The Mother: They depend upon the countries, besides; these things are quite local and one may even ﬁnd contradictory superstitions in different countries. In certain countries if you see a black cat, it is a sign that a catastrophe will come. In others if you see a black cat, it means that something very ﬁne will happen! If you put things together you will come to the conclusion that nothing at all will happen to you! It is like that.


The Mother: Almost all superstitions are the result of an experience that is quite local, occasional, exceptional, which has been raised into a mental principle. It is a mental formation, it is not a rule.  Now, there are other instances, as for example a large  number of religious rules which are founded solely on hygienic principles, on medical knowledge, and have been raised into religious principles, for that was the only way to make people observe them. If you are not told that “God wants” that you should do this or that, you would not do it, the majority of men ordinarily do not do it. For instance, that very simple thing — washing your hands before eating; in countries where the civilisation is not quite scientiﬁc, some people discovered that in truth it was probably more hygienic to wash the hands ﬁrst!


The Mother: If they had not made a religious rule, if they hadn’t said that “God wanted” that a man wash his hands before eating, otherwise it would be an offence against Him, people would have said: “Oh, why? No, not today, tomorrow. I have no time, I am in a hurry!” But in this way there is that constant fear at the back of their minds that something bad will happen to them due to God’s anger. This too is a superstition, a big superstition.


The Mother: They do things because they are told to do them. There is an entire class of religion — for instance the Chaldean religion — which forbids the eating of pork. They say it is altogether impure and that you will become impure if you eat it. The truth is that in these countries (for they are hot countries), pig’s ﬂesh is full of little worms which one takes in with the meat, even if it is cooked. It has to be cooked over an extremely long time to kill the worms.


The Mother: And so the little worms resist ordinary cooking and settle in your stomach or intestines, and then there they ﬂourish and at times even end up by killing you or, in any case, by making you ill. These worms breed specially in this kind of meat. Now, if all this is explained to people, they do not understand; they haven’t any medical, scientiﬁc or hygienic ideas and this does not at all interest them: “Ah, but this meat is not expensive, it is sold cheap! We’ll see what happens.” What will happen is that after a while they will have terrible pains in their intestines, and then they will grow thinner and thinner and eat more and more, quite uselessly; they will not know what has happened; they will be simply eaten up by the worms.


The Mother: But if they are told: “Don’t do  this, God will be furious and will punish you”, that is enough.  They won’t do it.  Another question?   Everybody, without exception.


The Mother: Sometimes, yes. Sometimes these are the most dangerous.   Ah!


The Mother: The easiest way, when you have a Guru, is to go and ask him. It is within the reach of everyone. It is enough to have faith in one’s Guru, to go and ﬁnd him and ask him; he will tell you, for he indeed knows.   If you do not have a Guru, then it is a little more difﬁcult, because these forces are very clever; they do not put on a look of catastrophe and misery and wickedness, for you will immediately ﬁnd it out and will not let yourself be taken in; generally they come in the garb of a friend. If you are very sincere, soon you notice some little indications, like small suggestions that satisfy your vanity or awaken in you doubts or make you a bit unconscious of what exactly is to be done — very tiny things.


The Mother: If you are very sincere, you see through them; particularly if you are alert enough not to allow yourself to be deceived by compliments or attempts that encourage you in these satisfactions of. Things that give just a little encouragement to your vanity — that is the surest sign; something that makes you think: “After all, I am not so bad. All that I do, I do well. My attempt is very praiseworthy. My sincerity is above all reproach, etc.”


The Mother: You become more and more selfsatisﬁed and then there you may be sure. But even there, it does not always take these forms. There are other things, depending upon the persons. For some it is this; for others, they awaken ideas of grandeur: “If I continue in this way I shall become a great Yogi. I shall have great powers.


The Mother: I shall do much ﬁne work.  How nicely I am going to serve the Divine, how happy he will be with me!” It is very dangerous. The very opposite thing may happen: “After all, perhaps I am good for nothing. Is it worth while my making any effort?


The Mother: Nothing will come out of this effort. Am I capable of the spiritual life? Probably I shall never do anything, I am giving up tangible things for the sake of an unrealisable dream. And what am I after all? A grain of dust.


The Mother: Is it worth my making an effort to ﬁnd the Divine? Probably I shall ﬁnd nothing at all and all my efforts are futile.” That is even much more dangerous. I could cite hundreds of examples like that.  There is only one thing that can truly save you, it is to have a contact, even the slightest, with your psychic being — to have felt the of that contact.


The Mother: Then whatever comes to you  from this person or that circumstance you place in front of that and see whether it is all right or not. Even if you are satisﬁed — in every way — even if you say to yourself: “At last I have found the friend I wanted to have. I am in the best circumstances of my life, etc.” , then put that before this little contact with your psychic being, you will see whether it keeps its bright colour or suddenly there comes a little uneasiness, not much, nothing making a great noise, but just a little uneasiness. You are no longer so sure that it was as you thought!


The Mother: Then you know: yes, it is that small voice which one must listen to always. It is that which is the truth and the other can’t trouble you any longer.  If you come to the spiritual life with a sincere aspiration, sometimes an avalanche of unpleasant things falls upon you: you quarrel with your best friends, your family kicks you out of the house, you lose what you thought you had gained.... I knew someone who had come to India with a great aspiration and after a very long effort towards knowledge and even towards Yoga. That was long long ago.


The Mother: At that time, people used to put on watch-chains and trinkets. This gentleman had a golden pencil which his grandmother had given him to which he was attached as the most precious thing in the world. It was ﬁxed to his chain. When he landed at one of these ports — at Pondicherry or perhaps elsewhere in India or at Colombo, I believe it was at Colombo — they used to get into small boats and the boats took you ashore. And so this gentleman had to jump from the gangway of the ship into the boat.


The Mother: He missed his step, somehow got back his balance, but he made a sudden movement and the little gold pencil dropped into the sea and went straight down into the depths. He was at ﬁrst very much aggrieved, but he told himself: “Why, that is the effect of India: I am freed from my attachments....” It is for very sincere people that the thing takes such a form. Fundamentally, the avalanche of troubles is always for sincere people. Those who are not sincere receive things with the most beautiful bright colours just to deceive them, and then in the end to enable them to ﬁnd out that they are mistaken!


The Mother: But  when someone has big troubles, it proves that he has reached a certain degree of sincerity.   Yes, everyone. All the while, constantly. If the Divine is not as you understand him, well, that is not the Divine.


The Mother: If he does not do what you want, if he does not act as you think he should, if he has not the character you lend him, it is not the Divine: “I recognise you as the Divine if you do exactly what I want you to do!” Naturally, people are not sincere enough to admit that, but it is so. I could give you millions of examples — not hundreds, but millions. And there is not a single one among you who does not do this unconsciously. It is a rule, you know; one says: “Yes, I am quite ready to surrender to the Divine and do his will, to accept his presence and his action, but that it is like this or like that, that he thinks like that, feels like that, acts like that, etc.”


The Mother: At the ﬁrst opportunity I shall show you a little example dangling before your eyes. That will not fail. It will come one of these days. Quite soon..   Yes, it continues.


The Mother: It continues, it is no better. Besides, the conditions to be fulﬁlled are not fulﬁlled. So you can’t expect that it would be better. Even this very morning, I was complaining (but “I was complaining” is just a way of speaking, it is to make myself understood), I was telling myself: to do what we want to do we need a great deal of money — a great deal, you understand, not just a little — and then I said to myself: still, it is not that money is lacking; there is a lot of money in the world. There are even people who have so much that they do not know what to do with it.


The Mother: But it will never come to their mind to give it for the divine Work.... They can’t say that they do not know, for one has always the means to know if one wants to know. When the idea comes to you: “I want to make the best use of my money” (and the best use, not only from the viewpoint that this gentleman or lady conceives as being useful), well, one can always ﬁnd out. Generally (there are exceptions), generally these people who have a lot of money put one condition: it must bring them at least some satisfaction. There must be some merit — they give, but they must get something.


The Mother: If they are not business people and do not give their money to gain more, if they are, for example, philanthropists who wish to give money to help humanity make progress, they always wish, more or less consciously (but generally very consciously) they always wish, that it should bring them fame, a kind of satisfaction of  their. They give money for founding a school: the school will bear their name. They build a monument somewhere: it must be mentioned that Mr. So-and-so has donated the money and so on.... There was a time when I was building Golconde, there were people who approached me or sent others to me to say: “I am quite willing to give you so much or so much, but you must place in one of the rooms a marble tablet on which is written: “This room has been built by the gift of Mr. So-andso.” Then, I said: “I am sorry.


The Mother: I can make marble tablets for you but I’ll pave the basement with them!” It is like that.  There are exceptions, as there are exceptions to all rules; however I cannot say that money goes spontaneously, freely, without effort there where useful things will be done most. No.  The maximum of goodwill is to give money for something which one understands well (which is also easy to understand), to build a hospital, for example, or to open a cr`eche for little children.


The Mother: These are all works of goodwill that men understand. But if they are told that we want to change the human consciousness, we want to create a new world, oh! the ﬁrst thing they say is: “Pardon me! Do not speak of God, for if it is God who is doing the work, well, it is God who will give you the means for it and you have no need of our help.” I have heard people saying: “If you represent the Divine upon earth you can do whatever you like; there is no need for us to give you anything.”


The Mother: And how many among you are free from that idea (an aftertaste of that idea): the Divine is all-powerful, therefore, the Divine can do whatever he likes?  That is the ﬁrst argument, that is the theory. The Divine is all-powerful, he can do whatever he likes; therefore he does not need anybody’s help. And if you push your idea sufﬁciently far, you will see that if the Divine is truly all-powerful in this world and does always whatever he wants, well, I tell you, he  is the greatest monster in the universe! Because One who is allpowerful and makes the world such as it is, looking with a smile at people suffering and miserable, and ﬁnding that all right, I would call a monster.


The Mother: It was the kind of thing I used to think about when I was ﬁve. I used to tell myself: “It is not possible, what is taught there is not true!” Now, as you have a little more philosophical mind, I shall teach you how to come out of the difﬁculty. But, ﬁrst of all, you must understand that that idea is a childish idea. I simply call on your common sense.


The Mother: You make of your Divine a person, because that way you understand him better. You make of him a person. And then this person has organised something (the earth, it is too big, it is difﬁcult to understand — take anything else) and then this thing the Divine has organised with the full power to do exactly as he likes. And in this thing — that he has made with the full power to do as he likes — there is ignorance, stupidity, bad will, fear, jealousy, pride, wickedness, and also suffering, illness, grief, all the pains; and a set of people who cannot say that they have perhaps more than a few minutes of happiness in the whole day and the rest of it is a neutral condition, passing by like a thing that’s dead — and you call that a creation!... I call it something like a hell!


The Mother: And one who would make that deliberately and not only make it but look at it and say: “Ah! it is very good”, as it is narrated in some religious books, that after having made the world such as it is, the seventh day he looked at it and was extremely satisﬁed with his work and he rested.... Well, that never! I do not call that God. Or otherwise, follow Anatole France and say that God is a demiurge and the most frightful of all beings.


The Mother: But there is a way out of the difﬁculty. ( ) Do you know it, you? Yes, yes, you know it!


The Mother: You will see all these conceptions and this idea that you have are based upon one thing, an entity that you call God and a world that you call his creation, and you believe these are two different things, one having made the other and the other being under the ﬁrst, being the expression of what the ﬁrst has made. Well, that is the initial  error. If you could feel deeply that there is no division between that something you call God and this something you call his creation, if you said: “It is exactly the same thing” and if you could feel that what you call God (perhaps it is only a word), what you call God suffers when you suffer, he does not know when you do not know; and that it is through this creation, little by little, step by step, that he ﬁnds himself again, unites with himself, is realising himself, expressing himself, and it is not at all something he wanted in an arbitrary way or made like an autocrat, but that it is the growing expression, developing more and more, of a consciousness that is objectifying itself to itself.... Then there is no other thing but the sense of a collective advancing towards a more total realisation, a self-awareness of knowledge-consciousness — no other thing but that, a progressive self-awareness of knowledge-consciousness in a total unity which will reproduce integrally the Original Consciousness.


The Mother: That changes the problem.  Only, it is a little difﬁcult to understand and one must make a little more progress. Instead of being like a little child that kneels down, joins its hands and says: “My God, I pray to Thee, make me a good child so that I may never hurt my mother....”  That of course is very easy and indeed I cannot say that it is bad.  It is very good.


The Mother: Only there are children with whom these things do not work, because they say: “Why should I ask You to make me good? You should make me good without there being any need of my asking You for it. Otherwise You are not nice!” It is very good when one has a simple heart and does not think much, but when one begins to think, it becomes more difﬁcult. But if you had by your side someone to tell you: instead of that, instead of lighting a candle and kneeling down before it with your hands folded, light a ﬂame in your heart and then have a great aspiration towards “something more beautiful, more true, more noble, better than all that I know.


The Mother: I ask that from tomorrow I begin to know all these things, all that I cannot do I begin to do and every day a little more.” And then, if you throw yourself out a little,  if, for one reason or another, you were put in the presence of much misery in the world, if you have friends who are unhappy or relatives who suffer or you meet any kind of difﬁculties, then you ask that the whole consciousness might be raised towards that perfection which must manifest and that all this ignorance that has made the world so unhappy might be changed into an enlightened knowledge and all this bad will be illumined and transformed into benevolence. And then as far as one can, as far as one understands, one wishes it with all one’s heart; and indeed that can take the form of a prayer and one can ask — ask of what? — ask of that which knows, ask of that which can, ask of all that is greater and stronger than oneself, to help so that it may be thus. And how beautiful those prayers would be!


The Mother: My children, in ﬁve years I shall take with you a study course of spiritual life. I give you ﬁve years to prepare yourselves; what I am telling you now is just a little of the kind, as one would light a small candle to give you an idea of what light is. But I want you all to see that we do not repeat and say over and over again indeﬁnitely all that nonsense which is uttered every time one turns towards something other than the ordinary life. Even as I have spoken here, in this book, of the confusion that is made between asceticism and the spiritual life, well, one day I shall  speak to you of the confusion made between what one calls God and what I call the Divine. This will be later on.


The Mother: It is 9.20 — time to wind up.  Next time we shall speak of health and illness and I shall confound all those who are attached by iron chains to their illness and who do not want to let it go! I shall give them scissors to cut their chains.   I have already explained it to you. What is it that you do not understand?


The Mother: Because I said “some part of the being”? You understand very well, don’t you, what “being under protection” means? You understand also “going out of the protection”? If you do something contrary, for example, if you are under the protection of the Divine and for a moment you have a thought of doubt or ill-will or revolt, immediately you go out of the protection. So the protection acts around you to prevent adverse forces from coming upon you or an accident from happening, that is to say, even if you lose consciousness, because of the protection  even your lack of consciousness will not produce a bad result immediately.


The Mother: But if you go out of the protection and are not all the time vigilant, then either you will be attacked by the adverse forces or an accident will happen.   Those who are not conscious? But there, too, I have said that I was not speaking of ordinary people. I am not speaking of ordinary people, they are not under a special protection.


The Mother: Ordinary people are under ordinary conditions. They have no special protection watching over them. I am not saying all this for them.   They follow all the ordinary laws of life and you cannot explain things to them in the same way....


The Mother: You were thinking of everybody, that it was so for everybody? It is only for people who do yoga, it is not for everybody.   Yes. I knew someone who was so full of fear that he got cholera!


The Mother: There was cholera in the next house and he got so frightened that he caught the illness and without any other reason, there was no other reason for his catching it: it was through sheer fright. And it is a very common thing; in an epidemic, it is so in the majority of cases. It is through fear that the door is opened and you catch the illness. Those who have no fear can go about freely and generally they catch nothing. But still as I have said there, you may have no fear in the mind, you may have no fear even in the vital, but who has no fear in the body?...


The Mother: Very few.   A strict discipline is needed to cure the body of fear. The cells themselves tremble. It is only by discipline, by yoga that one can overcome this fear.


The Mother: But it is a fact that one can catch anything through fear, even invite an accident. And, you see,  from a certain point of view everything is contagious. I knew a person who got a wound through the kind of fear that he felt seeing someone else’s wound. He really got it.  If you are conscious of the movement of your mind, the movement of your vital and the movement of your physical, you know it.


The Mother: As for the mental, it is very simple: thoughts come. You begin thinking, for example, there is this illness and this illness is very contagious, perhaps you are going to catch it, and if you catch it, it is going to be a terrible affair and what is to be done so as not to catch it?... So the mind begins to tremble: what is going to happen tomorrow? etc.


The Mother: As for the vital, you feel it. You feel it in your sensations. All at once you feel hot, you feel cold, you perspire or all kinds of unpleasant things happen. And then you feel your heart beating fast and suddenly you have fever and then the circulation stops and you become cold.


The Mother: Physically, well... When you do not any longer have the other two fears, you can become aware of the physical fear.  Generally, the other two are much more conscious. They hide the physical fear from you. But when you have no longer any mental or vital fear, then you become aware of it.


The Mother: It is a curious little vibration that gets into your cells and they begin shivering that way. But the cells are not like a heart beating very fast. It is in the very cells: they tremble with just a slight quivering. And it is very difﬁcult to control this. Yet it can be controlled.


The Mother: I am sure that most of you have felt this as, for example, when one does an exercise which is not done often or does it for the ﬁrst time; these are tiny little vibrations which seize you in all the cells. And then naturally, you lose your full control over the movement. The body does not answer to the Force any  more. When you want to put your will to do something, that brings about a kind of resistance and incapacity in the body.  Only, you are not aware of it usually because your attention is drawn more to the mental apprehension or to the kind of vital recoil which is very apparent in the consciousness, whereas you are not so very conscious of the resistance produced in the body.


The Mother: Generally in all sports (athletics and all competitions), a certain incident occurs: you must have noticed with your friends that some do much better than usual, while others who usually do well are almost incapacitated at that moment. They do much worse. Well, this depends on those small vibrations. Because you lose your full control. Your will has no longer the full control over the body, for it vibrates and answers to forces other than yours....


The Mother: Naturally I am not speaking of those whose head is in a whirl or whose vital is altogether upset. Nothing can be done with them, it is better that they don’t try. But I mean those who have some control over themselves, who undergo the training, you see, but at the time of the competition, cannot do as well as usual; it depends on a lack of receptivity in the body which gets this little tremor in the cells of which you are not conscious but which acts as an obstruction. That prevents it from receiving the Force fully.  Tests?


The Mother: Not at all.  You are given an illness purposely to make you progress?  Surely it is not like that. Actually, you may turn the thing round and say that there are people whose aspiration is so constant, whose goodwill so total that whatever happens to them they take as a trial on the path to make progress. I knew people who, whenever they fell ill, took that as a proof of the Divine Grace to help them to progress.


The Mother: They told themselves: it is a good sign, I am going to ﬁnd out the cause of my illness and I shall make the necessary progress. I knew a few of this kind and they moved on  magniﬁcently. There are others, on the contrary, who, far from making use of the thing, let themselves fall ﬂat on the ground. So much the worse for them. But the true attitude when one is ill, is to say: “There is something that is not all right; I am going to see what it is.”


The Mother: You must never think that the Divine has purposely sent an illness, for that would truly be a very wicked Divine!  These people are in such a physical, mental, and vital condition that they are liable to catch an illness, even without drinking water, I assure you! Their whole being is a constant disharmony, their whole physical being. I do not mean inwardly, they are perhaps all right there — but those who are all right resist everything.  And I have seen just the contrary.


The Mother: I have seen in this country, here, village people who had only such water as was no longer water to drink, it was mere mud, I have seen it with my own eyes.  It was yellowish mud in which cows had bathed and done all the rest and people had waded through it after walking on the roads.  They threw their rubbish and everything was in it. And then I saw these people. They entered it, it was, as I said, yellowish mud and there at the end there was a little bit of water — it was not water, it was yellowish, you know — they bent over, collected this water in their palms and drank it.


The Mother: And there were some who did not even allow it to settle. Some knew what to put in it, the herbs needed to make it settle, and if one leaves it sufﬁciently long it becomes a little clearer. But there were some who knew nothing at all and drank it as it was. And I came to learn that there was just then an epidemic of cholera all round and I said: “There are still people living in that village with that kind of water?” I was told: “We do not have a single case of cholera....”


The Mother: They had become immune, they were habituated. But if there had been a single person who had caught it by chance, probably all would have been dead; for then fear would enter and with  fear in them there would be no more resistance, for they were poor miserable things. But it is the moral conditions of these people that are terrible, more than the physical conditions — the moral conditions.  There are sadhus, you know, who accept the conditions of a dirty life through saintliness. They never wash themselves, they have nothing about them that hygiene demands.


The Mother: They live in a truly dirty condition — and they are free from all illness.  Probably because they have faith and they do so purposely.  Their spirit is magniﬁcent.... I am speaking of sincere people and not those who pretend. They have faith.


The Mother: They do not think of their body, they think of the life of their soul. They have no illness. There are some who come to a state in which an arm or a leg or any part of the body has become completely stiff due to their ascetic posture. They cannot move any more; anybody else would die under such conditions; they continue to live because they have faith and they do it purposely, because it is a thing they have imposed on themselves.  Therefore, the moral condition is much more important than the physical.


The Mother: If you were in surroundings where everyone was tidy and then you remained three days without taking a bath, you would fall ill. This is not to say that you should not take a bath! Because we do not want to be sadhus, we want to be yogis. It is not the same thing. And we want the body to take part in the yoga.


The Mother: So we must do whatever is necessary to keep it ﬁt. However, this is only to tell you that the moral condition is much more important than the physical.  Besides, these people, by their asceticism, wilfully spoil their body, torture themselves, yet if it was someone else who did the same thing, people would shout, protest, declare he is a monster.  But one does it by one’s own choice. And one bears it very well because it is imposed on one’s own self and one feels a kind of glory in having done something very “remarkable”, through one’s aspiration for the divine life!


The Mother: No other questions?   Well, now, I told you the other day that I would speak to you of illness; I thought of it today and have made notes.... For you may tell me there are microbes, and that there are people who have no thought of illness and catch it all the same; but thinking is not the only factor, not by any means. Still, I shall try to explain to you now the notes I have made. ( .)


The Mother: I have told you ﬁrst of all that all illness without any exception — without exception — is the expression of a break in equilibrium. But there are many kinds of breaks in equilibrium.... First, I am speaking only of the body, I am not speaking of the nervous illnesses of the vital or of mental illnesses. We shall see that later on. We are speaking only of this poor little body.


The Mother: And I say that all illnesses, all, whatever they may be (I would add even accidents) come from a break in equilibrium.  That is, if all your organs, all the members and parts of your body are in harmony with one another, you are in perfect health.  But if there is the slightest imbalance anywhere, immediately you get either just a little ill or quite ill, even very badly ill, or else an accident occurs. That always happens whenever there is an inner imbalance.  But then, to the equilibrium of the body, you must add the equilibrium of the vital and the mind.


The Mother: For you to be able to do all kinds of things with immunity, without any accident happening to you, you must have a triple equilibrium — mental, vital, physical — and not only in each of the parts, but also in the three parts in their mutual relations.... If you have done a little mathematics, you should have been taught how many combinations that makes and what a difﬁcult thing it means! There lies the key to the problem. For the combinations are innumerable, and consequently the causes of illness too are innumerable, the causes of accidents also are innumerable. Still, we are going to try to classify them so that we may understand.


The Mother: First of all, from the point of view of the body — just the body — there are two kinds of disequilibrium: functional and  organic. I do not know if you are aware of the difference between the two; but you have organs and then you have all the parts of your body: nerves, muscles, bones and all the rest. Now, if an organ by itself is in disequilibrium, it is an organic disequilibrium, and you are told: that organ is ill or perhaps it is badly formed or it is not normal or an accident has occurred to it. But it is the organ that is ill. But the organ may be in a very good condition, all your organs may be in a very good condition, but there is still an illness as they do not function properly: there is a lack of balance in the functioning.


The Mother: You may have a very good stomach, but suddenly something happens to it and it does not function properly; or the body may also be excellent, but something happens to it and it does not work properly any more. Then you have an illness due to functional imbalance not organic imbalance.  Generally, illnesses due to functional imbalance are cured much more quickly and easily than the others. The others become a little more serious. Sometimes they become very grave.


The Mother: So there are already two domains to see and know, but if you have a little knowledge of your body and the habit of observing its working, you can know what kind of imbalance yours is.  Most often when you are young and leading a normal life, the imbalance is purely functional. There are only a few poor people who for one reason or other have had an accident or imbalance before their birth, these carry with them something that is much more difﬁcult to cure (not that it is incurable; in theory, there is nothing incurable), but it becomes more difﬁcult.   Good.


The Mother: Now what are the causes of this imbalance, whatever it may be? As I told you just now, the causes are innumerable; because, ﬁrst of all, there are all the inner causes, that is, those personal to you, and then all the external causes, those that come to you from outside. That makes two major categories.  The internal causes:  We said: you have a brain, lungs, a heart, a stomach, a liver, etc.


The Mother: If each one does its duty and works normally and if  all move together in harmony at a given moment and in the right way (note that it would be very complicated if you were obliged to think of all that, and I am afraid things would not go right all the time! Fortunately, it does not need our conscious thinking), admitting however they are in good harmony with one another, good friends, in perfect agreement, and each one fulﬁlling its task, its movement at the right time, in tune with the rest, neither too soon nor too late, neither too fast nor too slow, indeed, every one going all right, then you are marvellously well! Suppose now that one of them, for some reason or other, happens to be in a bad mood: it does not work with the necessary energy, at the required moment it goes awhile on strike. Do not believe that it alone will fall ill: the whole system will go wrong and you will feel altogether unwell. And if, unfortunately, there is a vital imbalance, that is, a disappointment or too violent an emotion or too strong a passion or something else upsetting your vital, that comes in addition.


The Mother: And if furthermore your thoughts roam about and you begin to have dark ideas and formulate frightful things and make catastrophic formations, then after that you are sure to fall ill altogether.... You see the complication, don’t you, just a tiny thing can go the wrong way and thus through an inner contagion can lead to something very serious. So what is important is to control things immediately. One must be conscious, conscious of the working of one’s organs, aware of the one that does not behave very well, telling it immediately what is to be done to set itself right.  What is needed (I shall explain it to you later on) is to give them a lesson as one does to little children.


The Mother: When they begin indulging in unhealthy fancies (indeed it is then the occasion to say it) you must tell them: no, it is not like that the work is to be done, it is the other way! Suppose for example, your heart begins to throb madly; then you must make it calm, you tell it that this is not the way to behave, and at the same time (solely to help it) you take in long, very regular rhythmic breaths, that is, the lung becomes the mentor of the heart and teaches  it how to work properly. And so on. I could give you countless examples.


The Mother: Good. We say then that there is an imbalance between the different parts of the being, disharmony in their working. That is what I have just told you. And then there are internal conﬂicts.  These are quarrels.


The Mother: There are internal quarrels among the different parts of yourself. Supposing there is an organ (it happens very often) that needs rest and there is another that wants action, and both at the same time. How are you going to manage it?  They begin to quarrel. If you do what one wants, the other


The Mother: protests! And so you have to ﬁnd a middle term to put them in harmony. And then, at times, if you add to the physical the vital and mental (I do not speak of the speculative mind or the independent vital, I am speaking of the mental and vital parts of the, because there is a physical vital and a physical mind; there is a physical mind and this physical mind is the worst of all, it is that which goes on all the time and you have the utmost difﬁculty in stopping it: it goes on and on and on); well, if there is a dispute between them, between the mind, the vital and the physical, you have a battleﬁeld, and this battleﬁeld can become the cause of all possible illnesses. They ﬁght violently. One wants something, the other does not, they quarrel and you are in a kind of internal whirlwind.


The Mother: That can give you fever — you do get it usually — or else you are seized by an inner shivering and you have no longer any control. For the most important of all causes for bodily illness is that the body begins to get restless; it trembles and the trembling increases more and more, more and more and you feel that you will never be able to reestablish the balance, it eludes you. Then in that case you must know what the dispute is about, the reason of the dispute and ﬁnd out how to reconcile the people within you.  All these are functional imbalances.  There are other kinds of imbalance and they are more or less a part of what you were saying just now.


The Mother: There is an aspiration within you (I am now speaking of people who do yoga or at any  rate know what the spiritual life is and try to walk on the path), within you there is a part of the being — either mental or vital or sometimes even physical — that has understood well, has much aspiration, its special aptitudes, that receives the forces well and is making good progress. And then there are others that cannot, others still that don’t want to (that of course is very bad), but there are yet others that want to very much but cannot, do not have the capacity, are not ready. So there is something that rises upward and something that does not move. That causes a terrible imbalance. And usually this translates itself into some illness or other, for you are in such a state of inner tension between something that cannot or something that clings, that does not want to move and something else that wants to: that


The Mother: produces a frightful unease and the result usually is an illness.  Now there is the opposite, almost the opposite, that is, the whole being goes ahead, progresses, advances in an increasing equilibrium and achieves remarkable progress; you have the feeling you are in a wonderfully favourable state, everything is going on well, you are sure; and you see yourself already gloriously well on the way.... Crack! an illness. Then you say: “How is it?


The Mother: I was in such a good condition and now I have fallen ill! It is not fair.” But this happens because you are not completely conscious. There was a small part in the being that did not want to move. Usually it is something in the vital; sometimes it is a tiny mental formation that does not agree to follow; sometimes it is simply something in the body which is quite inert or has not the slightest intention of moving, that wants things to remain always as they are.


The Mother: It pulls backward, separates itself wilfully, and naturally, even if it is quite small, it brings about such an imbalance in the being that you fall ill. And then you say to yourself: “It is truly a pity, I was going on so well, it is not fair!  Truly God is not kind!... When I was making so much progress, He ought to have prevented me from becoming ill!”... It is like that.


The Mother: Now, there is still another thing. You do the yoga according  to your capacity. You have been told: “Open yourself, you will receive the Force.” You have been told: “Have faith, be of goodwill and you will be protected.” And indeed you are bathed in t


The Mother: he Consciousness, bathed in the Force, bathed in the Protection and to the extent you have faith and open yourself, you receive all that, and it helps you in keeping ﬁt and in rejecting the little inner disturbances and re-establishing order when these come, in protecting yourself against small attacks or accidents which might have happened. But if somewhere in your being — either in your body or even in your vital or mind, either in several parts or even in a single one — there is an incapacity to receive the descending Force, this acts like a grain of sand in a machine. You know, a ﬁne machine working quite well with everything going all right, and you put into it just a little sand (nothing much, only a grain of sand), suddenly everything is damaged and the machine stops. Well, just a little lack of receptivity somewhere, something that is unable to receive the Force, that is completely shut up (when one looks at it, it becomes as it were a little dark spot somewhere, a tiny thing hard as a stone: the Force cannot enter into it, it refuses to receive it — either it cannot or it will not) and immediately that produces a great imbalance; and this thing that was moving upward, that was blooming so wonderfully, ﬁnds itself sick, and sometimes just when you were in the normal equilibrium; you were in good health, everything was going on well, you had nothing to complain about. One day when you grasped a new idea, received a new impulse, when you had a great aspiration and received a great force and had a marvellous experience, a beautiful experience opening to you inner doors, giving you a knowledge you did not have before; then you were sure that everything was going to be all right....


The Mother: The next day, you are taken ill. So you say: “Still that? It is impossible! That should not happen.” But it was quite simply what I have just said: a grain of sand.


The Mother: There was something that could not receive; immediately it brings about a disequilibrium.  Even though very small it is enough, and you fall ill.   You see there are reasons! — many reasons, numberless reasons. For all these things combine in an extraordinarily complex way, and in order to know, in order to be able to cure an illness, one must ﬁnd out its cause, not its microbe. For it happens that (excuse me, I hope there are no doctors here!), it happens that when microbes are there, they ﬁnd out magniﬁcent remedies to kill the microbes, but these remedies cure some and make others much more ill!


The Mother: Nobody knows why.... Perhaps I know why.  Because the illness had another cause than the purely physical one; there was another. The ﬁrst was only an outer expression of a different disorder, and unless you touched that, discovered that disorder, never would you be able to prevent the illness from coming. And to discover the disorder, you must have an extensive occult knowledge and also a deep knowledge of all the inner workings of each one.


The Mother: Thus we have seen in brief, very rapidly all the internal causes. Now there are external causes that come and bring complications.  If you were in a perfectly harmonious environment where everything was full of a total and perfect goodwill, then evidently you could lay the blame only on yourself. But the difﬁculties that are within are also without. You can, to a certain extent, establish an inner equilibrium, but you live in surroundings full of imbalance.


The Mother: Unless you shut yourself up in an ivory tower (which is not only difﬁcult but not always recommendable), you are obliged to receive what comes from outside. You give and you receive; you breathe in and absorb. So there is a mixture and that is why one can say that all is contagious, for you live in a state of ceaseless vibrations. You give out your vibrations and receive also the vibrations of others, and these vibrations are of a very complex kind. There are still (we shall say for simplifying the language) mental vibrations, vital vibrations, physical vibrations and many others.


The Mother: You give, you receive; you give, you receive. It is a perpetual play. Even granting that there is no bad will, there is necessarily contagion. And as I was saying just  now, all is contagious, everything. You are looking at the effect of an accident: you absorb a certain vibration.


The Mother: And if you are over-sensitive and, over and above that, you have fear or disgust (which is the same thing, disgust is only a moral expression of a physical fear), the accident can be translated physically in your body. Naturally you will be told that those who have such reactions are in a state of nervous imbalance. It is not quite true.  They are persons with an ultra-supersensitive vital, that is all.  And it is not always a proof of inferiority, on the contrary!


The Mother: For as you progress spiritually, a certain hypersensitivity of the nerves occurs and if your self-control does not increase along with your sensibility, all kinds of untoward things may happen to you.   But that is not the only thing.  Unhappily there is much bad will in the world, and among the different kinds of bad will there is the small type that comes from ignorance and stupidity, there is the big type that comes from wickedness and there is the formidable one that is the result of anti-divine forces. So, all that is in the atmosphere (I am not telling you this to frighten you, for it is well understood that one should fear nothing — but it is there all the same) and these things attack you, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally.


The Mother: Unintentionally, through other people: others are attacked, they don’t know, they pass it on without even being aware of it. They are the ﬁrst victims. They pass the illness to others. But there are wilful attacks. We were speaking the other day of mental formations and of wicked people who make mental formations to harm you, make them wilfully to do harm.


The Mother: And then there are others who go still a step further.  There is a misguided, perverted occultism which is called black magic, it is a thing one must never touch. But unfortunately, there are people who touch it through pure wickedness.  You must not believe it is an illusion, a superstition; it is real.  There are people who know how to do magic and do it, and with their magic they obtain altogether detestable results....


The Mother: It is understood of course that when you have no fear and remain  under protection, you are sheltered. But there is a “when”, there is a condition, and then if the condition is not always fulﬁlled, very unpleasant things may happen. So long as you are in a state full of strength, full of purity — that is, in a state of invincibility, if anybody does anything against you, that falls back upon him automatically, as when you throw a tennis-ball against the wall, it comes back to you; the thing comes back to them exactly in the same way, sometimes with a greater force, and they are punished by their own wickedness. But naturally it all depends on the person against whom the magic is done, on his inner force and purity.... I have come across such things, many cases like this.


The Mother: And in such cases, in order to resist, one must be, as I said, a warrior in the vital, that is, a spiritual ﬁghter in the vital. All who do yoga sincerely must become that, and when they do become that, they are altogether sheltered. But one of the conditions for becoming it is never to have bad will or a bad thought towards others. For if you have a bad feeling or bad will or a bad thought, you come down to their level and when you are on the same level with them, well, you may receive blows from them.  Now, without going to that extreme, there are in the physical atmosphere, the earth-atmosphere, numerous small entities which you do not see, for your sight is too limited, but which move about in your atmosphere.


The Mother: Some of them are quite nice, others very wicked. Generally these little entities are produced by the disintegration of vital beings — they pullulate — and these form quite an unpleasant mass. There are some which do very ﬁne things. I believe I narrated to you the story of the little beings who tugged at my sari to tell me that the milk was about to boil and that I had to go and see that it did not boil over. But all of them are not so good.


The Mother: Some of them like to play ugly little tricks, wicked little pranks. And so most often it is they who are behind an accident. They like little accidents, they like the whole whirl of forces that gather round an accident: a mass of people, you know, it is very amusing! And then that gives them their food,  because, in reality, they feed upon human vitality thrown out of the body by emotions and excitements. So they say: just a small accident, it is quite nice, many accidents!...


The Mother: And then if there is a group of such small entities, they may clash with one another, because among themselves they do not have a very peaceful life: clashing with one another, ﬁghting, destroying, demolishing each other. And that is the origin of microbes. They are forces of disintegration. But they continue to be alive even in their divided forms and this is the origin of germs and microbes. Therefore most microbes have behind them a bad will and that is what makes them so dangerous.


The Mother: And unless one knows the quality and kind of bad will and is capable of acting upon it, there is a ninety-nine per cent chance of not ﬁnding the true and complete remedy. The microbe is a very material expression of something living in a subtle physical world and that is why these very microbes (as I have said there) that are always around you, within you, for years together do not make you ill and then suddenly they make you fall ill.  There is another reason. The origin of the microbes and their support lie in a disharmony, in the being’s receptivity to the adverse force. I will tell you a story.


The Mother: I do not know whether I have already told it to you, but I am going to tell you now for it will give you an illustration.  I was in Japan. It was at the beginning of January 1919.  Anyway, it was the time when a terrible ﬂu raged there in the whole of Japan, which killed hundreds of thousands of people.  It was one of those epidemics the like of which is rarely seen.


The Mother: In Tokyo, every day there were hundreds and hundreds of new cases. The disease appeared to take this turn: it lasted three days and on the third day the patient died. And people died in such large numbers that they could not even be cremated, you understand, it was impossible, there were too many of them.  Or otherwise, if one did not die on the third day, at the end of  seven days one was altogether cured; a little exhausted but all the same completely cured. There was a panic in the town, for epidemics are very rare in Japan.


The Mother: They are a very clean people, very careful and with a ﬁne morale. Illnesses are very rare. But still this came, it came as a catastrophe. There was a terrible fear.  For example, people were seen walking about in the streets with a mask on the nose, a mask to purify the air they were breathing, so that it might not be full of the microbes of the illness.


The Mother: It was a common fear.... Now, it so happened I was living with someone who never ceased troubling me: “But what is this disease? What is there behind this disease?” What I was doing, you know, was simply to cover myself with my force, my protection so as not to catch it and I did not think of it any more and continued doing my work. Nothing happened and I was not thinking of it.


The Mother: But constantly I heard: “What is this? Oh, I would like to know what is there behind this illness. But could you not tell me what this illness is, why it is there?” etc. One day I was called to the other end of the town by a young woman whom I knew and who wished to introduce me to some friends and show me certain things. I do not remember now what exactly was the matter, but anyway I had to cross the whole town in a tram-car.


The Mother: And I was in the tram and seeing these people with masks on their noses, and then there was in the atmosphere this constant fear, and so there came a suggestion to me; I began to ask myself: “Truly, what is this illness? What is there behind this illness? What are the forces that are in this illness?” I came to the house, I passed an hour there and I returned. And I returned with a terrible fever.


The Mother: I had caught it. It came to you thus, without preparation, instantaneously. Illnesses, generally illnesses from germs and microbes take a few days in the system: they come, there is a little battle inside; you win or you lose, if you lose you catch the illness, it is not complicated. But there, you just receive a letter, open the envelope, hop! puff! The next minute you have the fever.


The Mother: Well, that evening I had a terrible fever. The doctor was called (it was not I who called him), the doctor was called  and he told me: “I must absolutely give you this medicine.” It was one of the best medicines for the fever, he had just a little (all their stocks were exhausted, everyone was taking it); he said: “I have still a few packets, I shall give you some” — “I beg of you, do not give it to me, I won’t take it. Keep it for someone who has faith in it and will take it.” He was quite disgusted: “It was no use my coming here.”


The Mother: So I said: “Perhaps it was no use!” And I remained in my bed, with my fever, a violent fever. All the while I was asking myself: “What is this illness? Why is it there? What is there behind it?...”


The Mother: At the end of the second day, as I was lying all alone, I saw clearly a being, with a part of the head cut off, in a military uniform (or the remains of a military uniform) approaching me and suddenly ﬂinging himself upon my chest, with that half a head to suck my force. I took a good look, then realised that I was about to die. He was drawing all my life out  ( for I must tell you that people were dying of pneumonia in three days)


The Mother: . I was completely nailed to the bed, without movement, in a deep trance. I could no longer stir and he was pulling. I thought: now it is the end. Then I called on my occult power, I gave a big ﬁght and I succeeded in turning him back so that he could not stay there any longer.


The Mother: And I woke up.  But I had seen. And I had learnt, I had understood that the illness originated from beings who had been thrown out of their bodies. I had seen this during the First Great War, towards its end, when people used to live in trenches and were killed by bombardment. They were in perfect health, altogether healthy and in a second they were thrown out of their bodies, not conscious that they were dead.


The Mother: They did not know they hadn’t a body any more and they tried to ﬁnd in others the life they could not ﬁnd in themselves. That is, they were turned into so many countless vampires. And they vampirised upon men.  And then over and above that, there was a decomposition of the vital forces of people who fell ill and died. One lived in a kind of sticky and thick cloud made up of all that.


The Mother: And so those who took in this cloud fell ill and usually got cured, but those  who were attacked by a being of that kind invariably died, they could not resist. I know how much knowledge and force were necessary for me to resist. It was irresistible. That is, if they were attacked by a being who was a centre of this whirl of bad forces, they died. And there must have been many of these, a very great number.


The Mother: I saw all that and I understood.  When someone came to see me, I asked to be left alone, I lay quietly in my bed and I passed two or three days absolutely quiet, in concentration, with my consciousness. Subsequently, a friend of ours (a Japanese, a very good friend) came and told me: “Ah! you were ill? So what I thought was true.... Just imagine for the last two or three days, there hasn’t been a single new case of illness in the town and most of the people who were ill have been cured and the number of deaths has become almost negligible, and now it is all over.


The Mother: The illness is wholly under control.” Then I narrated what had happened to me and he went and narrated it to everybody. They even published articles about it in the papers.  Well, consciousness, to be sure, is more effective than doctors’ pills!... The condition was critical.


The Mother: Just imagine, there were entire villages where everyone had died. There was a village in Japan, not very big, but still with more than a hundred people, and it happened, by some extraordinary stroke of luck, that one of the villagers was to receive a letter (the postman went there only if there was a letter; naturally, it was a village far in the countryside); so he went to the countryside; there was a snowfall; the whole village was under snow... and there was not a living person. It was exactly so. It was that kind of epidemic.  And Tokyo was also like that; but Tokyo was a big town and things did not happen in the same fashion.


The Mother: And it was in this way the epidemic ended. That is my story.  Now this brings us naturally to the cure. All that is very well, we now have the knowledge; so, how to prevent illnesses from coming, ﬁrst of all, and when the illness does occur, how to cure it?   One may try ordinary means and sometimes that succeeds.


The Mother: It is usually when the body is convinced that it has been given the conditions under which it must be all right; it takes the resolution that it must be all right and it is cured. But if your body has not the will, the resolution to get cured, you may try whatever you like, it won’t be cured. This also I know by experience. For I knew people who could be cured in ﬁve minutes, even of a disease considered very serious, and I knew people who had no fatal illness, but cherished it with such persistence that it did become fatal. It was impossible to persuade their body to let go their illness.


The Mother: And it is here that one must be very careful and look at oneself with great discrimination to discover the small part in oneself that — how to put it? — takes pleasure in being ill. Oh!  there are many reasons. There are people who are ill out of spite, there are people who are ill out of hate, there are people who are ill through despair, there are people... And these are not formidable movements: it is quite a small movement in the being: one is vexed and says: “You will see what is going to happen, you will see the consequences of what he has done to me!


The Mother: Let it come! I am going to be ill.” One does not say it openly to oneself, for one would scold oneself, but there is something somewhere that thinks in that way.  So there are two things you have to do when you have discovered the disorder, big or small — the disharmony. Firstly, we said that this disharmony creates a kind of tremor and a lack of peace in the physical being, in the body.


The Mother: It is a kind of fever.  Even if it is not a fever in general, there is localised fever; there are people who get restless. So the ﬁrst thing to do is to quieten oneself, bring peace, calm, relaxation, with a total conﬁdence, in this little corner (not necessarily in the whole body). Afterwards you see what is the cause of the disorder. You look.


The Mother: Of course, there are many, but still you try to ﬁnd out approximately the cause of this disorder, and through the pressure of light and knowledge and spiritual force you re -establish the harmony, the  proper functioning. And if the ailing part is receptive, if it does not offer any obstinate resistance, you can be cured in a few seconds.  It is not always the case. Sometimes there is, as I have said, a bad will: you are more or less on strike, at least you want the illness to have its consequences.


The Mother: So, that takes a little more time.  However, if you do not happen to be particularly ill-willed, after some time the Force acts: after a few minutes or hours or at the most some days you are cured.  Now, in the case of special attacks of adverse forces, the thing gets complicated, because you have not only to deal with the will of the body (note that I do not admit the argument of those who say: “But as for myself I do not want to be ill!”, for your consciousness always says that it does not want to be ill, one must be half-crazy to say, “I want to be ill”; but it is not your consciousness that wants to be ill, it is some part of your body or at the most, a fragment of the vital that has gone wrong and wishes to be ill, and unless you observe with a good deal of attention you do not notice it). But I say that the situation gets complicated if behind this there is an attack, a pressure from adverse forces who really want to harm you.


The Mother: You may have opened the door through spiritual error, through a movement of vanity, of anger, of hatred or of violence; even if it is merely a movement that comes and goes, that can open the door. There are always germs watching and only waiting for an occasion. That is why one should be very careful. Anyhow, for some reason or other, the inﬂuence has pierced through the shell of protection and acts there encouraging the illness to become as bad as it can be. In that case the ﬁrst means is not quite sufﬁcient.


The Mother: Then you have to add something; you must add the Force of spiritual puriﬁcation which is such an absolutely perfectly constructive force that nothing that’s in the least destructive can survive there. If you have this Force at your disposal or if you can ask for it and get it, you direct it on the spot and the adverse force usually runs away immediately, for if it happens to be in  the midst of this Force it gets dissolved, it disappears; for no force of disintegration can survive within this Force; therefore disintegration disappears and with it that also disappears. It can be changed into a constructive force, that is possible, or it may be simply dissolved and reduced to nothing. And with that not only is the illness cured, but all possibility of its return is also  eliminated.


The Mother: You are cured of the illness once for all, it never comes back. There you are.   Now, this is the general picture; on the details could be written books and books. I have given you only general explanations.


The Mother: But in ordinary life, most of the time, people are almost always ill — except a few who escape for reasons of a different order that we shall explain one day. There are very few people who are not more or less ill all the while. But even in ordinary life, if within you there is trust, goodwill, a kind of certitude, this kind of inner conﬁdence, oh! as there is in most children perhaps (I do not know, for, after all, those we see here are fairly exceptional), however, there is a trust in life, they are young and they have the feeling that the whole life is before them. Very few things are behind, everything is in front. So that gives them a kind of self-conﬁdence, that pulls them out.


The Mother: Otherwise, I do not know, in the ordinary life I have known very few people who did not complain of having at least some physical ailment which they carried always with them.... You know perhaps that play of Jules Romains,, in which he says that a healthy man is a patient unaware of his sickness. It is usually true. When you are sufﬁciently busy not to be all the while occupied with yourself, you do not notice it, but it is there.   This is but a way of speaking.


The Mother: This happens because to express a thing I can’t be saying all the words at the same time, can I? I am obliged to say them one after another. Otherwise, if all the words were spoken at the same time, it would make a big noise and nobody would understand anything! Well, when you try to explain the universe, you do as you would when you speak. You say one thing after another, but to tell the truth, you must say everything at one go.