The Mother: For example, in a vital battle (there are people who have a vital ﬁghting power), the experience is always the same: if you ﬁght in the vital world with a vital being, you can crush it, kill it, but it will be reborn always — always they form themselves again. I think herein lies the origin of the legends of hydras or monsters with many heads.  There is only one force in the world which can destroy them categorically, that is, without any chance of return, and it is a force which belongs to the supreme creative Power. It is a force that comes from beyond the supramental world — it is not at the disposal of everybody. It is a luminous force, of a dazzling whiteness, so brilliant that if ordinary eyes looked at it, they would turn blind.


The Mother: A being of the vital world has just to be touched by this light to get dissolved immediately — it is liqueﬁed, like those slugs which melt in water if a little salt is put on them.   I have heard the most contradictory things about him — some looked upon him as an incarnate godhead, others as an incarnate devil. I can say nothing, I have had no contact with him.  It is not altogether like that that things happen, but it is something similar. This being did not wait for Hitler’s death, it is there you make a mistake.


The Mother: These beings are not at all tied to a single physical presence. The being in question could very well possess Hitler and at the same time inﬂuence many others. Hitler was got rid of because he had behind him a whole nation and a physical power, and if he had succeeded it would have been a disaster for humanity, but there was no deluding oneself about it; it was not sufﬁcient to get rid of him in order to get rid of the force that was behind him — that is not so easy. I must tell you that the origin of these beings is prior to that of the gods; they are the ﬁrst emanations, the ﬁrst individual beings of the universe; so they cannot be got rid of so easily, by winning one war.  As long as they are necessary for the universal evolution they will exist.


The Mother: The day they lose their utility, they will be converted or will disappear.  Besides, they know that they are nearing their last hour and that is why they are doing as much damage as they can.   There were four of them. The ﬁrst one has been converted, another is dissolved into its origin.


The Mother: Two are still living and these two are more ferocious than the others. One is known in occultism as the “Lord of Falsehood”(I have told you this) the other is the “Lord of Death”. And as long as these two beings exist, there will be difﬁculties.   Yes, but it is not a physical serpent, it is a vital serpent. The key to the treasures is in the vital world and it is guarded by an immense black serpent — a tremendous serpent, ten times, ﬁfty times larger than an ordinary one.


The Mother: It keeps the gates of the treasure. It is magniﬁcent, black, always erect and awake. I happened once to be standing before it (usually these beings obey me when I give them an order), and I said to it, “Let me pass.” It replied, “I would willingly let you pass, but if I do, they will kill me; so I cannot let you pass.” I asked, “What must I bring you in order to gain entrance?”


The Mother: It said, “Oh, only one thing would oblige me to give way to you: if you could become master of the sex impulse in man, if you succeeded in conquering that in humanity, I could no longer resist, I would allow you to pass.”   It has not yet allowed me to pass. I must admit that I have not fulﬁlled the condition, I have not been able to obtain such a mastery of it as to conquer it in all men.  That is quite difﬁcult.  Evidently it is difﬁcult to know, unless one has direct vision of the vital, that is to say, unless one is able to see directly into the vital world.


The Mother: I have seen many, many times... that two things may happen, and generally do happen. When, for some reason or other, you do not agree with someone — if there is a conﬂict of interests, if there has been a quarrel — there is a tendency to say of him, “He is a vital being.” One ought to mistrust oneself ﬁrst, and afterwards what the other says. There is another case, still more interesting: I knew two persons at least who were not only under the vital inﬂuence but incarnations of beings of the vital world. Well, it was these very persons who constantly denounced others as possessed by beings of the vital world!


The Mother: So then, it is better not to jump to conclusions. There are instances where ignorance is better than half-knowledge, for if you do not know that you are dealing with a being of the vital world, you can act as you do with an ordinary human being, that is, protect yourself sufﬁciently, not give yourself up if it is an enemy, be on your guard, have great patience. And afterwards you don’t pay any attention to what this man does or does not do to you. Only those who possess a perfected vital being and are completely disinterested can tell you, “This person or that one is a dangerous being.”   It is dissolved.


The Mother: Rarely does it happen otherwise. But if you have had a very strong passion, if you were divided by ﬁxed impulses, the vital being would break up into small pieces. Instead of going off like a vapour or a liquid, it goes off by little bits. Each of these pieces of vital substance is gathered around the central impulse, the central desire, the central passion of that piece, thus creating little entities which don’t have a human form but take at times an indeﬁnite form; at times they resemble the body to which the pieces belonged, at other times they take a form expressing the desire they represent. And naturally their sole concern is to satisfy their desire or passion and they search everywhere for the means of self-satisfaction.


The Mother: Take, for instance, the passion of a miser for his fortune.  He dies. His vital being is dissolved, but his passion for his money remains alive. It gathers around itself a certain number of elements to form a living and conscious entity in the vital world.


The Mother: If this man has in his lifetime hidden a treasure somewhere, that entity goes and installs itself just above the place where the treasure is, as if to guard it and stop people from coming near it. But there are sensitive people who, when they know that a treasure is hidden somewhere, feel the presence and say, “The treasure is there.” That is the ﬁrst effect. The other  effect is that the entity, not wanting the treasure to be touched, always brings about some catastrophe to guard its property. It makes those who approach it ill or it causes an accident, even an assassination; any means is good for it; or if the person is very sensitive, it gives him such a fright that he goes mad.


The Mother: There are also lots of little entities, quite repugnant, in very large numbers, which originate from that wretched sexual desire.  If this desire (with its corresponding entities) is not dissolved at the time of death, these entities continue to exist and they come and settle in the atmosphere of sensitive persons to goad them, spur them on. These entities feed upon the vital force emanated at the time of the act and naturally their only desire is to get as much nourishment as they can. I have seen people enringed by dozens of these beings.


The Mother: It is a very concrete thing.... I don’t know if you have heard of Maurice Magre, the writer who had come here. He has said in one of his books that people who have a very strong sexual instinct are surrounded by a swarm of these small beings, who plague them to satisfy themselves, to feed upon the vital force. He knew the thing quite well, he had observed it. To those who are ever so little sensitive, it is very perceptible.


The Mother: Even the people who are tormented very often feel that the impulse comes from outside — it arouses something inside them, but they feel that the excitation comes from outside.  And there are hundreds of thousands of them, for unfortunately it is one of the greatest difﬁculties of mankind, it is a terrible slavery.  Your vital — not the whole of it for that would produce a cataleptic state, but a portion of the vital goes out for a stroll.  Some always go to the nastiest places and so have very bad nights — the possibilities in these nightly rambles are innumerable. It may be a very small thing, just a little portion of your being,  but if it is conscious, that is enough to give you a ﬁne little nightmare!


The Mother: You know, when you sleep, the inner beings are not concentrated upon the body, they go out and become more or less independent — a limited independence, but independence all the same — and they go to live in their own domains. The mind more so, for it is hardly held within the body, it is only concentrated but not contained in the body. The vital also goes beyond the body, but it is more concentrated upon the body. The mind however is such a supple substance that it is sufﬁcient to think about a person in order to be with that person, at least partially, mentally. If you think strongly of a place, a part of your mind is there; distance, so to say, does not exist.


The Mother: Of course, to have a mind centralised around the body requires good training. Few people have a mind with a well-deﬁned form: it is like clouds which roll, come and go. Even to have a vital with a form similar to that of your physical body, an analogous form, it must be very much individualised, very much centralised. The mind still more; it must be completely individualised, centralised, organised around the psychic centre in order to have a deﬁnite form.  There are people who spend their life organising their mind.


The Mother: I have known some who had made of their mind a kind of fortress, a huge construction (I am speaking of people who had uncommon mental capacities). They had made of their mind quite a big ediﬁce, very powerful and of such a ﬁxity, with such solid walls that they had lost all contact with the outer mental world: they lived completely within their own construction and all the phenomena of their consciousness were of their own making — they had no longer any contact with the outside mental world. They retained contact with their own vital and their body, in a way, but all the phenomena of their consciousness were lodged within their mental construction — they could no longer get out of it. Well, this happens very strongly to people who seek for a spiritual life through the classical methods of  a renunciation of the material consciousness, a concentration on their inner being and identiﬁcation with it. If I gave you the names of some, you would be quite astonished.


The Mother: They construct for themselves a conception in which one ﬁnds all the gradations of the mind, a construction so solid and so ﬁxed that they become imprisoned within it and when they believe they have reached the supreme Truth, they have only reached the centre of their own mental construction.  And they have all the experiences they used to foresee: the experience of liberation, the experience of going out of the body, the experience of identiﬁcation with the Supreme, all, all, but all of their own making; this has no contact with the universal reality. Then if someone touches it, if for some reason or other someone has the power to touch it or simply to make a breach in one of the walls, at ﬁrst they are completely upset, then they come to regard the force that could do this as a force of terrible destruction, a manifestation of a hostile force of the worst kind!  When there is a chaos in the brain or a local fever, a particular turmoil in the brain, an overstrain, or if there is a want of control, you let yourself be possessed by mental formations, this is what happens most often — mental formations which, most often, you yourself have made, besides. And as the control of the rational, waking consciousness has gone, all this begins to dance a saraband in the head, with a kind of raging madness; ideas get entangled, collide, ﬁght, it is truly hallucinating.


The Mother: Then, unless you have the power to bring a great peace into your head, a great tranquillity, a very strong and pure light, well, it is ten times worse than a vital nightmare. The worst of a vital nightmare consists generally in ﬁghting with an enemy who wants to kill you, and you strike him terrible blows, and the blows never hit; you exert all your force, all your energy, and you do not  succeed in touching your adversary. He is there in front of you, he threatens you, he is going to strangle you and you gather all your strength, you try to strike, but nothing touches him. When the struggle is like that, hand to hand, with a being who throws himself upon you, it is particularly painful. That is why you are advised not to go out of the body unless you have the necessary power or the purity.


The Mother: You see, in this kind of nightmare the force you want to use is the “memory” of a physical force; but one may have great physical strength, be a ﬁrst-class boxer, and yet be completely powerless in the vital world because one does not have the necessary vital power. As for the mental nightmares, that kind of frightful saraband in the head, one has altogether the impression of going mad.  But the vital does not go to rest nor does the mental being.  Generally they are dissolved. It is only if one has followed a yoga throughout his whole life, if one has taken great care to individualise, to centralise the vital and the mental around the psychic being that they remain — that happens once in ten million cases, it is very exceptional.


The Mother: Take the case of a philosopher or a writer who has worked considerably in his brain, tried to organise it; that then persists, but as a, nothing else. There are these capacities of thinking which persist after death and they try naturally to ﬁnd another physical brain in which to manifest. It is in this way that the mind of a great thinker may identify itself with another mind and be able to express itself.  From the vital point of view, take the case of a great musician who has worked all his life to make his external being a good instrument for music; he has organised this vital power in his body for playing music; well then, his hands, for instance, are so  individualised in their ability to play, that they can persist subtly even after death, with their form, a form analogous to the old physical form. They ﬂoat in the vital world and are attracted by people who have similar capacities; they try to become identiﬁed with them.


The Mother: A person who is sensitive enough, receptive enou


The Mother: gh, can become identiﬁed with these hands and execute wonderful things, proﬁt by all the individualisation of the past life of these hands.  Yes, in the case of Pierre and Marie Curie, for example, it is certain that the power of work of Pierre Curie passed into his wife at his death.  They deserve it! When they violate the tombs, you see... There are countless stories of this kind.


The Mother: But that is another phenomenon.  Let me explain: in the physical form is found the “spirit of the form” and this spirit of the form persists for a certain time even when outwardly the person is pronounced dead. And as long as the spirit of the form persists, the body is not destroyed.  In ancient Egypt they had this knowledge; they knew that if they prepared the body in a certain way, the spirit of the form would not leave it and the body would not disintegrate. In some cases they have succeeded wonderfully; and if one violates the repose of beings who have remained thus for thousands of years, it is understandable that they may not be very pleased, especially when their repose is violated out of an unhealthy curiosity, legitimised in the “cause of science”.


The Mother: In the Mus´ee Guimet in Paris, there are two mummies. Of one practically nothing is left, but in the other the spirit of the form has remained very conscious, conscious to such an extent that one can make contact with the consciousness. Evidently when a bunch of idiots come to stare at you with their blank, saucer-eyes which understand nothing, and say, “Oh, it is like this, it is like that”, it cannot give much pleasure.  You see, they begin by committing an outrage: these mummies are enclosed in a box of a particular form according to the person, with all that is necessary to preserve them; now, the box is opened, more or less violently, some wrappings are stripped away here and there to provide a better view.... And considering that it was never ordinary people who were mummiﬁed, these were beings who had attained an appreciable inner power or who were of royal birth, people more or less initiated.


The Mother: There is a mummy which has been the cause of a large number of catastrophes; she was a princess, daughter of a Pharaoh, and secretly at the head of a college of initiation at Thebes.  Well, men are like that....   Yes, there is a concrete mental world and there are mental forms which do not resemble vital forces but have their own law. There are many, innumerable mental forms. They are almost indestructible; one can only say that they change forms and relations, it is something very ﬂuid, and moving all the time.


The Mother: That is due to many things — to the formation of the brain, to atavism, to the early years of education, particularly to atavism.  But there is a very interesting phenomenon here: each new idea forms a kind of small convolution in the brain, and that takes time. You see, you are told something which you have never heard before; you listen, but it is incomprehensible, it does not penetrate into your head. But if you hear the same thing a second time, a little later, it makes sense. It is because the shock of the new idea has done a little work in the brain and prepared just what was necessary for understanding.


The Mother: And not only does it build itself up, but it perfects itself. That is why if you read a difﬁcult book, at the end of six months or a year you  will understand it inﬁnitely better than at the ﬁrst reading and, at times, in a very different way. This work in the brain is done without the participation of your active consciousness. The way the human being is at present constituted, the time factor must always be taken into account.  No, it is the consciousness.


The Mother: Most people are not aware of it, but it works all the time in everyone.  It is a matter of attention. If you concentrate your attention on what is being said, with the will to understand it correctly, the silence is created spontaneously — it is attention that creates the silence.  But there are people who do get out of the fortress! One can even send an army out of the fortress!


The Mother: No, it is not the chief of the place who goes out, he clings to his fort: he orders out the soldiers. He values his fortress, for it is that which gives him the impression of existing and of being an individual.  Oh, but you must take care! You had better not get rid of it unless you are able to live without a fortress — something which is inﬁnitely more difﬁcult to do. What men generally do, with much effort and a good deal of suffering which gives them the impression that they are heroes, is to knock down their fortress... only to enter immediately into another!


The Mother: That does not make much difference from the standpoint of the Truth, but it gives them the impression of having made a great progress, because the old fortress is razed and they have built up another.  To live without a fortress is extremely difﬁcult — people have the feeling that they are not living, that they are not individualised, that they are ﬂoating about. It is extremely difﬁcult to live in something inﬁnitely vast, moving, constantly changing, perpetually in progress, not to be held by anything to which one can cling, saying “I am this; this is my way of thinking.” It is very difﬁcult, one must not try it too soon; there are those whose mind gets deranged by it.  It is the mental ego which makes the construction and it clings to it desperately.


The Mother: Generally they are.   Yes, that often happens. They think one thing and when they begin talking they say just the contrary. If thought controlled the tongue, many stupidities would be avoided. You lose control and speak on impulse any kind of nonsense; it is like a machine which begins talking for the pleasure of talking.


The Mother: That seems like an absurdity, but it is happening all the time; there are very few people who escape this. They say all kinds of things and they ask, “Why did I say all that?” They do not even know why. I know some who always say what the other wants to hear. The person with whom they are speaking says to himself, “He is going to tell me this or that,” or he fears, “I hope he will not tell me that,” and the other one, like a little puppet, begins to say it, very calmly without knowing why!


The Mother: No, it is a mental deformation. There is not much will in this. If the will intervened, it would become less absurd, perhaps.  No, they are mental movements, the formation of the mind, the mental force which moves all the time, which comes and goes, like a squirrel in a cage which runs round and round and does not know why.


The Mother: No, not very universal; it exists in humanity, it is very human.   How many human beings have a thought of their own? I am pretty sure there are none in ordinary humanity with its ordinary mental make-up. How many people have a thought as a result of reﬂection?


The Mother: Very few, and if they have it, they are considered terribly hard or remarkably intelligent or despotic or authoritative — they are covered with all sorts of compliments!  And that, simply because they have a precise fashion of thinking.  Take any general idea; for example: “Is the world’s duration indeﬁnite?” or “Has it a beginning and an end?” Who has a precise thought on this subject? Or again: “How did the earth begin and how did humanity commence on earth?” The mind is incapable of resolving this question; it will ﬁnd itself before an indeﬁnite number of possibilities and will not know how to choose.


The Mother: Then, what does it do, how does it choose? —  by personal preference, the thought that gives it an agreeable, comfortable feeling; it says, “Yes, that must be it.” But if you are quite honest and scrupulous and do not allow your preferences to come into play, how will you decide? It is a subject close enough to humanity for it to take an interest in it, isn’t it?


The Mother: Earth is, after all, its domain. Well, if you read one book, it will tell you one thing; if you read another, it will tell you another. Then the religions with their theories take a hand in the matter and, moreover, they will tell you that such and such an idea is the “absolute Truth” and you believe it, otherwise you will be damned! You read the scientists — they will tell you scientiﬁc things. You read the philosophers — they will tell you philosophical things.


The Mother: You read the spiritualists, they will dish up spirituality for you and... you will be exactly at the same point from which you started. But there are people who like to have a kind of stability in their mind (precisely those who build “fortresses” — they like to be in a fortress very much, it gives them a comfortable sensation), so they make a choice, and if they have sufﬁcient mental strength, they make a choice out of a considerable number of ideas; then they trim it up for you, set up a ﬁne wall by putting each thing in what they consider to be its proper place (that is, there must not be too many contradictions close together lest they clash! It must make a proper organisation) and they tell you, “Now, I know!” — They know nothing at all!   It is quite interesting, for the more mental activity one has, the more does one indulge in this little game.


The Mother: And there are  ideas to which one clings! One hangs on to them as though all life depended upon it! I have known people who had ﬁxed upon one central idea in their formation and said, “All the rest may go to pieces, I don’t care, but this idea will stand: this is the truth.” And when they come to yoga, amusingly enough it is this idea which is constantly battered, all the time! All events, all circumstances come and strike at it until it begins to totter, and then one ﬁne day they say in despair, “Ah, my idea has gone.”


The Mother: Someone has said rather poetically, “One must know how to lose all to win all.” And it is true, especially for the mind, for if you do not know how to lose everything, you can gain nothing.  Ask the scientists, they will tell you!  But it is as with gymnastics. You make all kinds of movements to form your body and make it strong, but that does not mean that you are going to spend all your life lifting weights and exercising on parallel bars!


The Mother: You may continue to do that as a pastime, as a profession, but surely it is not the supreme goal.  For the mind it is the same thing. To have a mind capable of progressing, of adapting itself to a new life, of opening itself to higher forces, it must be put through all kinds of gymnastics.  That is why children are sent to school, it is not in order that they may remember all that they learn — who remembers what he has learnt? When they are obliged to teach others, later on, they have to relearn it all, they have forgotten everything.


The Mother: It comes back quickly, but they have forgotten it. But if they had never gone to school, if they had never learned and had to begin  everything... well, when you begin to do parallel bars at fortyﬁve, it hurts, doesn’t it? It is the same thing for the brain, it lacks plasticity. Do you know what the best gymnastics is?


The Mother: It is to have a daily conversation with a metaphysician because there is nothing concrete there, you cannot concentrate on something that has a form, an objective reality; indeed, everything is carried on exclusively with words in a ﬁeld of abstraction, it is purely mental gymnastics. And if you can enter into the mental formation of a metaphysician and are able to understand and answer him, it is perfect gymnastics!  (A mathematician disciple:)   Yes.


The Mother: Yes, it is for this reason that in all countries and in all religions, it is recommended that for a period of at least seven days after someone’s death, people should gather and think of him. Because when you think of him with affection (without any inner disorder, without weeping, without any of those distraught passions), if you can be calm, your atmosphere becomes a kind of beacon for him, and when he is attacked by hostile forces (I am speaking of the vital being of course, not the psychic being which goes to take rest), he may feel altogether lost, not know what to do and ﬁnd himself in great distress; then he sees through afﬁnity the light of those who are thinking of him with affection and he rushes there. It happens almost constantly that a vital formation, a part of the vital being of the dead person (or at times the whole vital if it is well organised) takes shelter in the aura, the atmosphere of the people or the person who loved him. There  are people who always carry with them a part of the vital of the person who is gone. That is the real utility of these so-called ceremonies, which otherwise have no sense.


The Mother: It is preferable to do this without ceremonies. Ceremonies are, if anything, rather harmful, for a very simple reason: When you are busy with a ceremony, you think more about that than about the person. When you are busy with gestures, movements, with the following of a ritual, you think much more of all that than of the person who is dead. Moreover, people perform these ceremonies most of the time for that very reason, for they are almost always in the habit of trying to forget. The fact is that one of the two principal occupations of man is to try to forget what is painful to him, and the other is to try to seek amusement in order to escape boredom.


The Mother: These are the two principal occupations of humanity, that is, humanity spends half of its time in doing nothing true.  And when people get bored (some do not absolutely need to keep busy, or they have the misfortune of being rich) they do silly things! The origin of all excesses, all human stupidity is “ennui”, what is called dullness, the state in which you are like a damp rag: you do not react to anything and are compelled to whip yourself (ﬁguratively) just to make yourself move and get along.   In Nature’s economy, moments of respite are given to men to rediscover themselves but they do not know how to make use of them.


The Mother: I would say many things now...  For instance, when the Lord draws closest to men, to establish a conscious contact with them, it is then that in their folly they commit the grossest stupidities.  This is true, altogether true, it is at the moment when all is silenced in order that man may become conscious of his origin  that he, in his folly, in order to distract himself, conceives or carries out the worst stupidities.   Yes.


The Mother: Yes, there are those who are afraid, they are panic-stricken. They cannot bear it so they turn to anything at all to get out of it.   That which can easily change its form is “plastic”. Figuratively, it is suppleness, a capacity of adaptation to circumstances and necessities. When I ask you to be plastic in relation to the Divine, I mean not to resist the Divine with the rigidity of preconceived ideas and ﬁxed principles.


The Mother: I knew a man who declared: “I am wholly consecrated to the Divine, I am ready to do whatever He tells me to do; but I am not at all worried, for I know that He would never tell me to kill anybody!” I answered, “How do you know that?” He was indignant. This is a lack of plasticity.  But you are not asked to be plastic to the will of others!


The Mother: Nobody asked you to be plastic in relation to others. You are asked to be plastic to the divine Will — which is not quite the same thing!  And that requires a great strength because the very ﬁrst thing that will happen to you is to be exposed to the will of almost everyone around you. If you have a family, you will see the attitude of the family! The more plastic you are to the divine Will, the more opposition you will meet from the will of others who are not accustomed to be in contact with that Will.


The Mother: If everybody expressed the divine Will, there would be no conﬂict any longer, anywhere, all would be in harmony. That is what one tries to do, but it is not very easy.  We have already studied the subject at length. Don’t you remember what we said? There are four conditions for knowing the divine Will: The ﬁrst essential condition: an absolute sincerity.


The Mother: Second: to overcome desires and preferences.  Third: to silence the mind and listen.  Fourth: to obey immediately when you receive the order.  If you persist you will perceive the divine Will more and more clearly. But even before you know what it is, you can make an offering of your own will and you will see that all circumstances will be so arranged as to make you do the right thing.


The Mother: But you must not be like that person I knew who used to say, “I always see the divine Will in others.” That can lead you anywhere, there is nothing more dangerous, for if you think you see the divine Will in others, you are sure to do their will, not the divine Will. There too we can say that not one among many, many human beings acts in accord with the divine Will.  You know the story of the irritable elephant, his mahout, and the man who would not make way for the elephant. Standing in the middle of the road, the man said to the mahout, “The divine Will is in me and the divine Will wants me not to move.”


The Mother: The driver, a man of some wit, answered, “But the divine Will in the elephant wants you to move!”   One thing that is now beginning to be recognised by everyone, even by the medical corps, is that hygienic measures, for example, are effective only to the extent that one has conﬁdence in them. Take the case of an epidemic. Many years ago we had a cholera epidemic here — it was bad — but the chief medical ofﬁcer of the hospital was an energetic man: he decided to vaccinate everybody. When he discharged the vaccinated men, he would tell them, “Now you are vaccinated and nothing will happen to you, but if you were not vaccinated you would be sure to die!”


The Mother: He told them this with great authority. Generally such an epidemic lasts a long time and it is difﬁcult to check it, but in some ﬁfteen days, I think, this doctor succeeded in checking it; in any case, it was done miraculously fast. But he knew very well that the best effect of his vaccination was the conﬁdence it gave to people.   Now, quite recently, they have found something else and I consider it wonderful. They have discovered that for every disease there is a microbe that cures it (call it a microbe if you like, anyway, some sort of germ).


The Mother: But what is so extraordinary is that this “microbe” is extremely contagious, even more contagious than the microbe of the disease. And it generally develops under two conditions: in those who have a sort of natural good humour and energy and in those who have a strong will to get well! Suddenly they catch the “microbe” and are cured. And what is wonderful is that if there is one who is cured in an epidemic, three more recover immediately. And this “microbe” is found in all who are cured.


The Mother: But I am going to tell you something: what people take to be a microbe is simply the materialisation of a vibration or a will from another world. When I learned of these medical discoveries, I said to myself, “Truly, science is making progress.” One might almost say with greater reason, “Matter is progressing,” it is becoming more and more receptive to a higher will. And what is translated in their science as “microbes” will be perceived, if one goes to the root of things, as simply a vibratory mode; and this vibratory mode is the material translation of a higher will.  If you can bring this force or this will, this power, this vibration (call it what you will) into certain given circumstances, not only will it act in you, but also through contagion around you.


The Mother: Because in the large majority of men, the body receives its inspirations from the subconscient, it is under the inﬂuence of the subconscient. All the fears driven out from the active consciousness go and take refuge there and then, naturally, they have to be chased out from the subconscient and uprooted from there.  I suppose it is because one is egoistic.  There are three reasons. First, an excessive concern about one’s security.


The Mother: Next, what one does not know always gives an uneasy feeling which is translated in the consciousness by fear.  And above all, one doesn’t have the habit of a spontaneous trust in the Divine. If you look into things sufﬁciently deeply, this is the true reason. There are people who do not even know that That exists, but one could tell them in other words, “You have no faith in your destiny” or “You know nothing about Grace” — anything whatever, you may put it as you like, but the root of the matter is a lack of trust. If one always had the feeling that it is the best that happens in all circumstances, one would not be afraid.


The Mother: The ﬁrst movement of fear comes automatically. There was a  great scientist who was also a great psychologist (I don’t remember his name now); he had developed his inner consciousness but wanted to test it. So he undertook an experiment. He wanted to know if, by means of consciousness, one could control the reﬂex actions of the body (probably he didn’t go far enough to be able to do it, for it can be done; but in any case, for him it was still impossible). Well, he went to the zoological garden, to the place where snakes were kept in a glass cage.


The Mother: There was a particularly aggressive cobra there; when it was not asleep, it was almost always in a fury, for through the glass it could see people and that irritated it terribly. Our scientist went and stood in front of the cage. He knew very well that it was made in such a way that the snake could never break the glass and that he ran no risk of being attacked. So from there he began to excite the snake by shouts and gestures. The cobra, furious, hurled itself against the glass, and every time it did so the scientist closed his eyes!


The Mother: Our psychologist told himself, “But look here, I know that this snake cannot pass through, why do I close my eyes?” Well, one must recognise that it is difﬁcult to conquer the reaction. It is a sense of protection, and if one feels that one cannot protect oneself, one is afraid. But the movement of fear which is expressed by the eyes ﬂuttering is not a mental or a vital fear: it is a fear in the cells of the body; for it has not been impressed upon them that there is no danger and they do not know how to resist. It is because one has not done yoga, you see.


The Mother: With yoga one can watch with open eyes, one would not close them; but one would not close them because one calls upon something else, and that “something else” is the sense of the divine Presence in oneself which is stronger than everything.  This is the only thing that can cure you of your fear.   It is the best, given the state of the world — it is not an absolute best.   There are two things: in a total and absolute way, at each moment, it is the best possible for the divine Goal of the whole; and for one who is consciously connected with the divine Will, it is the most favourable for his own divine realisation.


The Mother: I believe this is the correct explanation.  For the whole, it is always, at every moment, what is most favourable for the divine evolution. And for the elements consciously linked with the Divine, it is the best for the perfection of their union.  Only you must not forget that it is constantly changing, that it is not a static best; it is a best which if preserved would not be the best a moment later. And it is because the human consciousness always has the tendency to preserve statically what it ﬁnds good or considers good, that it realises that it is unseizable.


The Mother: It is this effort to preserve which falsiﬁes things.   ( )  I saw this when I wanted to understand the position of the Buddha who blamed the Manifestation for its impermanence; for him perfection and permanence were one and the same thing.


The Mother: In his contact with the manifested universe he had observed a perpetual change, therefore he concluded that the manifested world was imperfect and had to disappear. And change (impermanence) does not exist in the Unmanifest, hence the Unmanifest is the true Divine. It was by considering and concentrating on this point, that in fact I saw that his ﬁnding was right: the Manifestation is absolutely impermanent, it is a perpetual transformation.   But in the Manifestation, perfection consists in having a movement of transformation or an unfolding identical with the divine Movement, the essential Movement; whereas all that belongs to the inconscient or tamasic creation seeks to preserve exactly the very same existence instead of trying to last through constant transformation.  That is why some thinkers have postulated that the creation was the result of an error.


The Mother: But one ﬁnds all possible concepts: perfect creation, then a “fault” which introduced error; the creation itself as a lower movement which must have an end since it had a beginning; then the Vedic concept, as Sri Aurobindo has explained it, of an unfolding or a progressive and inﬁnite discovery — indeﬁnite and inﬁnite — of the All by Himself.... Naturally, all these are human interpretations. For the moment, as long as you express yourself in human terms, it is a human translation. But according to the initial position of the human translator (that is to say, whether it is the position which admits “original sin” or an “accident” in the creation or a supreme conscious Will from the beginning in a progressive unfolding), in the yogic attitude, the conclusions or “descents” are different.... There are Nihilists, Nirvanists, Illusionists; there are all the religions which admit the devil’s intervention under one form or another; then there is the pure Vedism which is the eternal unfolding of the Supreme in a progressive objectiﬁcation.


The Mother: And according to taste, one places oneself here, another there or elsewhere, with all the nuances between. But according to what Sri Aurobindo has felt to be the most total truth, according to this conception of a progressive universe, one is led to say that at every minute what happens is the best possible for the unfolding of the whole. It is absolutely logical. And I believe that all contradictions can arise only from a more or less pronounced tendency towards this or that, for one position or another. All who admit the intrusion of a “sin” or an “error” and the conﬂict resulting from it between forces which pull back and those which pull forward, may naturally contest the possibility.


The Mother: But one has to say that for him who is  spiritually linked with the supreme Will or the supreme Truth, for him it is necessarily, at every instant, the best that happens for his personal realisation. In all instances it is like that. An unconditional best can be admitted only by one who sees the universe as an unfolding, as the Supreme’s self-awareness of Himself.   (


The Mother: )  To tell you the truth, all these things are of no importance; for that which, goes in every way entirely and absolutely beyond everything that human consciousness can think about it. It is only when you are no longer human that you; but as soon as this knowledge is expressed, human limits reimpose themselves and then you cease to know.  This is incontestable.  And because of this incapacity, there is a kind of futility also in wanting to reduce the problem altogether to something which human reason can understand.


The Mother: In this case it is very wise to say like someone I knew: “We are here, we have a work to do, and what is needed is to do it as well as we can, without worrying about the why and how.” Why is the world as it is?... When we are capable of understanding, we shall understand.   From the practical point of view, this is evident.


The Mother: Only, each one takes a position.... I have all the examples here. I have a sample collection of all attitudes and see very clearly their reactions. I see the same Force — the same, one Force — acting in this sample collection and producing naturally different effects; but these “different” effects, to a deeper vision, are very superﬁcial: it is only “It pleases them to think in this way, that’s all, it just pleases them to think thus.” But as a matter of fact, the inner journey, the inner development, the essential vibration is not affected — not at all.


The Mother: One aspires with all his heart for Nirvana, another aspires with all his will for the supramental manifestation, and in both of them the vibratory  result is almost the same. And it is a whole mass of vibrations which is prepared more and more to... to receive what must be.   There is a state, a state essentially pragmatic, spiritually pragmatic, in which of all human futilities, the most futile is metaphysics.   The universe is in perpetual movement and it is the unfolding of the supreme Consciousness.


The Mother: So all that happens is conditioned by all that preceded it. The universe continues to be what it is because of what it has been, and what it has been was the result of what it was before. And what it will be... will be the consequence of what it is!  Where does the decision to begin come from?... (


The Mother: ) From the Supreme probably, I do not know! It may be that one day He decided to have a universe of the type we have and He began to objectify himself in order to have a universe.  Each element of this universe is eternal because the universe  the Eternal. Now, in the Eternal it is difﬁcult to speak of a “beginning”.


The Mother: Evidently It has always been and It will always be. Only, take for example (this is an image, remember, do not make me say things I do not say), take a sphere which is full of inﬁnitesimal things in an incalculable number. If you change the relation of all these elements, well, the number is so great, the possibilities of relations so many that you may easily speak of an inﬁnite, although from a philosophical point of view it is not an inﬁnite; yet from a descriptive point of view one may say  that it is inﬁnite. Each element is eternal. All the combinations are inﬁnite, but the same combination never repeats itself twice.


The Mother: Thus the universe is eternally new and yet it is eternally the same.  Yes, yes, but it is not a question of tradition. There are people who speak of Pralaya, I know, but that simply means (excuse me, but one must speak a little lightly, otherwise this becomes insufferable) that one day perhaps the Supreme may feel tired, dissatisﬁed with the kind of universe He has made and may want to create another! Then, as it is He Himself, He takes everything back into Himself and puts it out again! That is what people call “pralaya”, but it changes nothing: all the elements of the universe are eternal and eternally will the combinations be different.


The Mother: A universal respiration.  Light seems to me to be too material for this consciousness of simultaneity.  Evidently when one emerges from form and enters the “frontier” state between form and the Formless, everything is simultaneous, but this is very far from the density of light.  I wonder (it is possible, it is to be seen), but I doubt whether something physical could be capable of giving this simultaneous consciousness of the universe.  But that would not be a simultaneous integral knowledge of the universe, not even of the earth.


The Mother: For one who remembers the extra-terrestrial light, remembers the movements of the higher light, terrestrial light is slow, as it is dark. But this would already be an expression of something higher.... I don’t know.  Light is a very good symbol, but I do not think it to be a total one.


The Mother: Is light faster than thought?... You cannot make a concrete experiment with thought. Sound is something very, very slow, but thought is already something quicker than light... perhaps  not. Thought gives the sensation of the instantaneous.


The Mother: Do you perceive thought in the physical body, for example? Do you perceive thought apart from a material quality? It remains to be seen, doesn’t it? Let me explain: if you go out of your body, if you go out of the vital world and enter the mental world, all relations are different from what they are for thought when in the body. Compared with the body, thought seems an immediate thing like light, for example, even more than light.


The Mother: But when you have nothing to do with the physical any longer and you enter the mind itself, there are relations which may be rendered by a certain time and certain space which do not exist for the physical consciousness but which exist for the mental consciousness. That then would be, if you like, the explanation of what you were saying, that Time changes; for it is evident that in the universal formation there is an infusion of progressive consciousness which is psychologically translated by a relation with new worlds or new “dimensions”.  For example, it is said that for a certain period the terrestrial world was ruled by “overmental” forces and that this rule is going to be transcended, that the world will be governed by supramental forces; well, each time new forces descend upon earth, a change is produced and a change of consciousness must have a corresponding change of movement. You say that the movement of expansion becomes more and more swift; this means that the world is ﬁlled with a consciousness which makes the movements of the world more and more rapid. This would be altogether the material transcription of the spiritual phenomenon.


The Mother: The earth is being charged more and more with forces coming from ever higher regions (for our consciousness), which means that they come faster and faster, giving more and more the sense of the instantaneous. What has been discovered is a kind of physical symbolism of this phenomenon which would tend to prove scientiﬁcally that the universe is in progress.  The other possibility is that it is a matter of a vibratory movement of inhaling and exhaling — this is quite possible; but  the phenomenon of concentration would not necessarily mean a retrogression; it is simply a passage from one movement to another.   These are images, aren’t they?


The Mother: You can conceive of a universe becoming bigger and bigger, but then what is it that will contain this universe? What would there be beyond this universe?... Immediately our small human mind conceives of something quite empty and a universe occupying more and more place in this void, which means that there would be a space in this void, which is an absurdity. In fact, one should say, “It is as though”, because that is not really what happens, it is only a way of expressing it. To catch hold of a notion even a little bit accurate, one must pass from the material to the psychological explanation, and even if you arrive at the psychological, you are still very far from the truth, which is neither psychological nor spatial, but something else which evidently ﬁnds it difﬁcult to express itself in our terms.


The Mother: It is a well-known experience: each time one goes into a consciousness beyond our consciousness (I cannot say spatial), our terrestrial consciousness (not even positively terrestrial, but rather individual), each time one has an experience which transcends the individual consciousness, that is to say, transcends the consciousness of the part to enter a consciousness of the Whole, when one wants to translate this experience , one ﬁnds all words empty of sense, because language has been formed to translate human experience for the human mind. We have all the necessary words, even with many shades and subtleties, to express human experience, since language has been made for that, but what language will you use to explain what is outside all language? It is extremely difﬁcult.  So you say, “It is like this, it is like that”, and while you are speaking you realise that the experience is being so completely  distorted that at times you are understood to mean entirely the opposite.


The Mother: Yes, and all spiritual books which speak of the experiences of another world are always full of paradoxes. They say, “It is like this, it is like that”, in an attempt to give you a suppleness which will allow you to understand — but even so you do not understand.   The truth is that these experiences can be communicated only in silence.  And yet, it has been said (and it is a true fact) that these worlds, like the supramental world, are going to express themselves physically.


The Mother: Then what is going to happen? Will they ﬁnd new words? New words must be found for them.... It is difﬁcult, for if new words are found, they have to be explained!  After all, the ancient initiatory systems were good in a way, in the sense that they revealed the Knowledge only to those who had reached a stage where they could receive it directly without the help of words.


The Mother: And I’m afraid it may come to the same thing now — perhaps even one who has this supramental knowledge will never be able to make himself understood by people, unless they themselves become capable of entering into this knowledge.  And so the logical result is that people will say, as I have heard it said: “Oh! It is just as in ordinary life.” Precisely because all that is not of the ordinary life completely escapes our perception, it cannot be transmitted by words.  Take a place like this, which is surcharged with certain forces, certain vibrations; these vibrations do not show themselves in visible and tangible things — they can produce changes, but as these changes occur according to a method (as all physical things do), you pass almost logically from one state to another


The Mother: and this logic prevents you from perceiving that there is something here which does not belong to normal life. Well, those who  have no other perception than that of the ordinary mind, who see things working out as they habitually do or seem to do in ordinary life, will tell you, “Oh that, that is quite natural.” If they have no other perception than the purely physical perception, if they are not capable of feeling the quality of a vibration (some feel it vaguely, but those who are not even capable of feeling that, who have nothing in them corresponding to that or, if they have something, it is not awakened), they will look at the life here and tell you, “It is like the physical life — you have perhaps some ideas of your own, but there are many who have their own ideas; perhaps you do things in a special way, but there are lots of people who also do things in a special way. After all, it is a life like the one I live.” ... And so, it may very well happen that at a given moment the supramental Force manifests, that it is conscious here, that it acts on Matter, but those who do not consciously participate in its vibration are incapable of perceiving it.


The Mother: People say, “When the supramental force manifests, we shall know it quite well. It will be seen” — not necessarily. They will not feel it any more than those people of little sensitivity who may pass through this place, even live here, without feeling that the atmosphere is different from elsewhere — who among you feels it in such a precise way as to be able to afﬁrm it?... You may feel in your heart, in your thought that it is not the same, but it is rather vague, isn’t it? But to have this precise perception...


The Mother: Listen, as I had when I came from Japan: I was on the boat, at sea, not expecting anything (I was of course busy with the inner life, but I was living physically on the boat), when all of a sudden, abruptly, about two nautical miles from Pondicherry, the quality, I may even say the physical quality of the atmosphere, of the air, changed so much that I knew we were entering the aura of Sri Aurobindo. It was a experience and I guarantee that whoever has a sufﬁciently awakened consciousness can feel the same thing.  I had the contrary experience also, the ﬁrst time that I went out in a car after many, many years here. When I reached a  little beyond the lake, I felt all of a sudden that the atmosphere was changing; where there had been plenitude, energy, light and force, all that diminished, diminished... and then... nothing. I was not in a mental or vital consciousness, I was in an absolutely physical consciousness.


The Mother: Well, those who are sensitive in their physical consciousness ought to feel that quite concretely.  And I can assure you that the area we call “the Ashram” has a condensation of force which is not at all the same as that of the town, and still less that of the countryside.  So, I ask you: this kind of condensation of force (which gives you quite a special vibration of consciousness), who is there that is really conscious of it?... Many among you feel it vaguely, I know, even people from outside feel it vaguely; they get an impression, they speak of it, but the precise consciousness, the scientiﬁc consciousness which could give you the exact measure of it, who has that? I’m not alluding to anyone in particular, each one can look into himself.


The Mother: And this, this condensation here is only a far-off reﬂection of the supramental force. So when this supramental force will be installed here deﬁnitively, how long will it take for people to perceive that it is there?... And that it changes everything, do you understand? And when I say that the mind cannot judge, it is on facts like these that I base myself — the mind is not an instrument of knowledge, it cannot know. A scientist can tell you the proportion of the different components in any particular atmosphere, he analyses it.


The Mother: But as for this proportion here, who can give it? Who can say: There is such a vibration, such a proportion of this, such a proportion of that, such a proportion of the supramental?... I put the question to you so that you may ponder over it.    Of the physical mind.


The Mother: Certainly not of the higher mind, for there are no adverse forces there. The reference is to the mind that deals with material things.  Yes, many. They are completely independent; they have their own life, their own relations among themselves, as in other worlds. But for a physical consciousness, time and space are not the same in the vital or the mental worlds as in the physical world.


The Mother: For example, those who are in the physical consciousness have the impression that movements in the mind are instantaneous — compared with the higher consciousness they are not instantaneous, but compared with the physical consciousness, they are instantaneous, of an extreme rapidity.  The beings of the mental world also have an individuality of their own, even a form that can be permanent if they choose to keep one. Their form is the expression of their thought and is sufﬁciently plastic to be able to change with their thought, yet  has a sufﬁcient continuity to enable one to recognise them. If you go out of your body and enter the mental world, you can meet these beings, speak to them, even make an appointment with them for the next time!  Many mental formations try to realise themselves upon earth, but these are generally created by human beings; they then continue to work in the mental world with the intention of inﬂuencing the mind of human beings.


The Mother: But the beings of the mental plane proper are generally creators, and because they are creators of form, they are not much concerned with inﬂuencing other forms — they are satisﬁed with expressing themselves through the forms they have made.  This subject has given rise to great confusion in human thought.  I believe philosophical, yogic and other systems use the word “spiritual” in a very vague and loose way. Whatever is not physical is spiritual! In comparison with the physical world all other worlds are spiritual!


The Mother: All thought, all effort which does not tend towards the material life is a spiritual effort. Every tendency which is not strictly human and egoistic is a spiritual tendency. This is a word used to ﬁt every case.   Illustration  It is a cheap spirituality!


The Mother: It is only in the silence that one can understand. It often happens that two persons speak about a certain subject and all of a sudden, for some reason, both fall silent for a time; then, abruptly, one says a word which corresponds exactly to what the other was thinking. These are people who understand each other in silence. They have followed the same curve, they have come to the same result and one completes the thought of the other. This happens often to those who have lived together a long time and have developed a sort of mental afﬁnity which enables them to truly understand each other behind the words.


The Mother: I have known people who belong to different countries — and you know the mode of thinking is very different according to the country, the manner of relating the sequence of ideas is different, even contrary to that of another country — but I have had experiences with persons of very far-removed races who succeeded so well  in harmonising mentally with each other that there was this understanding without words.  It is possible. Perhaps the one who is silent will understand the other who is not!... But when there is this full accord, even if it is not permanent, when you are with someone and follow a thought far enough to come out of the external agitation, if the other too has followed the same thought, you may ﬁnd yourselves suddenly agreeing without having spoken or made any effort towards that. Generally the silence comes to both at the same time or almost the same time — it is as though you slid into the silence.


The Mother: Of course, it may happen also that one continues to make a noise in his head, while the other has stopped, but the one who has stopped has a much greater chance of understanding what is happening to the other!  You may say, “Well, I tried my best, but I am not sure if I have understood, and if I report what she said, I am almost certain to distort her words.” In this way you are on the safe side, at ease.  The substance of the psychic world is a substance proper to it, with its own psychic characteristics: a sense of immortality, a complete receptivity to the divine inﬂuence, an entire submission to this inﬂuence by which it is wholly impregnated. It is this exactly which distinguishes the psychic from the other parts of  the being.


The Mother: When, for instance, I speak of organising the mind and the vital around the psychic centre, I do not mean that they become psychic; they remain the mind and the vital, but they are organised around the psychic as an army is organised around its leader — it does not become the leader, it obeys him, doesn’t it? Well, it is the same thing here; the vital and the mind are organised around the psychic, they receive orders from the psychic and carry them out as well as they can. But their substance does not become psychic substance as a consequence. They can be under the inﬂuence of the psychic and assume its nature more or less but not its substance.  If it were the result of a thought or a will, it would not be an experience and it would have no value.


The Mother: You understand, I afﬁrm absolutely that any experience that is the result of a thought or preconceived will has no value from the spiritual point of view.  There are people who live constantly in a higher consciousness, while others have to make an effort to enter there. But here it is an altogether different thing; in the experience I was speaking about, what gave it all its value was that I was not expecting it at all, not at all. I knew very well, I had been for a very long  time and continuously in “spiritual” contact, if I may say so, with the atmosphere of Sri Aurobindo, but I had never thought of the possibility of a modiﬁcation in the physical air and I was not expecting it in the least, and it was this that gave the whole value to the experience, which came like that, quite suddenly, just as when one enters a place with another temperature or another altitude.... I do not know if you have noticed that the air you breathe is not always the same, that there are different vibrations in the air of one country and in the air of another, in the air of one place and in the air of another.


The Mother: If indeed you are accustomed to have this perception of the subtle physical, you can say immediately, “Ah! This air is as in France” or “This is the air of Japan.” It is something indeﬁnable like taste or smell.  But in this instance it is not that, it is a perception of another sense. It is a physical sense, it is not a vital or mental sense; it is a sense of the physical world, but there are other senses than the ﬁve that we usually have at our disposal — there are many others.  Actually, for the physical being — note that I say the physical being — to be fully developed, it must have twelve senses.


The Mother: It is one of these senses which gives you the kind of perception I was speaking of. You cannot say that it is taste, smell, hearing, etc., but it is something which gives you a very precise impression of the difference of quality. And it is very precise, as distinct as seeing black and white, it is truly a sense perception.  Generally, when you want to study occultism, the ﬁrst thing that the Master does is never to speak to you about it, never to explain it to you, precisely because of this ridiculous phenomenon of the mind which begins to “think” about it and brings you “experiences” which have no value : they are mental formations which make a plaything of you, that is all.


The Mother: They have no reality.   You must distrust the mind altogether when you want to enter the world of experiences. It is enough for the mind to be just slightly roused for it to say, “Ah, what is going on?”... Then  it may be that things do happen but it is no longer thing, it is a fabrication.


The Mother: First condition, know how to keep silent. And not only keep your tongue quiet, but silence your mind, keep the head silent.  If you wish to have a true, sincere experience upon which you can build, you must know how to be silent, otherwise you have nothing but what you fabricate yourself, which is equivalent to zero. All that one can say is, “Heavens, what a fashioner my mind is!”


The Mother: The sense of the length of time depends upon your consciousness. If you are in the ordinary human consciousness, time is measured by the number of years you expect to live. So, what requires, let us say, ﬁfty years to be realised, seems terribly long, for you think, “Fifty years... where will I be in ﬁfty years?”  Even without your being clearly aware of it, it is there in your consciousness. But if simply you look from the point of view of a mental consciousness, of something which lasts like a written work, for instance — a work of truly ﬁne quality can last for hundreds and even thousands of years; so, if you are told, “For your ideas to spread it will take a hundred years”, this will not seem to you so very long.


The Mother: And if you succeed in uniting your consciousness with the psychic consciousness, a life is only one moment among so many similar moments which have gone before; and so one life more or less is not of much importance.  And if, still further, you unite with the consciousness of eternity, time no longer has any reality.  All is relative.  It is probably not always the same. Usually the work of becoming aware ought to be done by the psychic, but it is rarely the psychic.


The Mother: More often it is a part of the mind, more or less enlightened, which has acquired the capacity to stand back a little and look at the rest. But you know it well: if you are conscious in your mind, one part of the mind says one thing and the other replies, and there is an endless discussion between the two parts. Many people have these dialogues in their mind.   It is difﬁcult to say generally what is conscious; but naturally, if something observes, it is always the “witness” element in this part — in each part of the being there is something which is a “witness”, which looks on. There is even a physical witness which can get very much in the way; for instance, if it watches you playing, this can paralyse you considerably.


The Mother: There is also a vital witness which looks at you, sees your desires and enjoys highly all that happens; it acts also as a brake. There is the mental witness which judges ideas, which says, “This idea contradicts this other”, and which arranges everything. Then there is the great psychic Witness, who is the inner divinity.  Sometimes there is no relation among these different witnesses — there ought to be, but it is not always there. But if there is in the being a will to become perfect, the relation is established quite quickly; one can refer to another and ﬁnally, if there is a sufﬁcient sincerity, sufﬁcient concentration, you come to the supreme inner Witness who can judge all things.


The Mother: But generally it may be said that it is always a part of the mind, more or less enlightened, in a little closer contact with the inner being, which observes and judges.  () I am trying to choose among several explanations! One, which is a joke, is that consciousness is the opposite of unconsciousness! Another... it is the creative essence of the universe — without consciousness, no universe; for consciousness means objectiﬁcation.


The Mother: I could also say that consciousness is what “is”, because without consciousness nothing is — this is the best reason. Without consciousness no life, no light, no objectiﬁcation, no creation, no universe.  Perhaps there is in the unmanifest Supreme a consciousness (but when one speaks of these questions one begins to say impossible things); it is said that, to begin with, the Supreme became aware of himself (which would mean that he was not conscious  of himself before! that he was in a state we cannot call “conscious”), that his ﬁrst movement was to become aware of himself and once having become conscious of himself, he projected this consciousness, which formed the creation. At least, this is what old tradition says. Grant that there never was a beginning, for it is a human way of putting it: the “beginning” is the Supreme — the unmanifest Supreme becoming aware of himself.


The Mother: Perhaps he found that this consciousness was not altogether satisfactory (!) and he projected it, not outside himself for nothing is outside him, but he changed it into an active consciousness so that it would become an objectiﬁcation of himself. Consequently, it can be said with certitude that Consciousness is the origin of all creation; there you are as exact as you can ever be with words. Consciousness is the origin of all creation — without consciousness, no creation. And what we call “consciousness” is just a far-off contact, without precision and exactness, with the supreme Consciousness. Or if you like, it is the reﬂection, in a not very exact or pure mirror, of the original Consciousness.


The Mother: What we call our consciousness is this original Consciousness reﬂected in a somewhat foggy mirror (sometimes very foggy, sometimes very deformed), a reﬂection in the individual mirror.  Then through this reﬂection, if we go back slowly to the origin of what is reﬂected, we can enter into contact with the Consciousness — the True Consciousness. And once we come into contact with the True Consciousness, we become aware that it is the same everywhere, that it is only deformation which divides it; without deformation everything is contained in one and the same Consciousness. That is, it is only distortion, the reﬂection in a distorting mirror, which brings about difference and division in the Consciousness, otherwise it is one single Consciousness.


The Mother: But it is only by experience that one can understand these things.   We are granted ﬁve, aren’t we? In any case, there is another one which, precisely, has a relation with consciousness. I don’t know if you have ever been told this, but a person who is blind, for instance, who does not see, can become aware of an object at some distance through a kind of perception which is not touch for he does not feel it, which is not vision for he does not see, but which is a contact — something that enables him to make a contact without hearing, seeing or touching. This is one of the most developed senses apart from those we habitually use.


The Mother: There is another sense, a sort of sense of proximity: when one comes close to a thing, one feels it as if one had contacted it. Another sense, which is also physical, puts you in touch with events at a great distance; it is a physical sense for it belongs to the physical world, it is not purely mental: there is a sensation. Some people have a sort of sensation of contact with what is happening at a very great distance. You must not forget that in the physical consciousness there are several levels; there is a physical vital and a physical mind which are not solely corporeal. Foresight on the material plane is also one of the physical senses....


The Mother: We have, then, something that sees at a short distance, something that sees at a long distance and something that sees ahead; this already makes three. These are a sort of improvement of the senses we have; as for instance, hearing at a great distance — there are people who can hear noises at a great distance, who can smell at a great distance. It is a kind of perfecting of these senses.  The perception is different with each individual. For some, it is as though they saw the water; for others, as though they got the smell of water; and for others yet, it is a kind of intuition from the mental ﬁeld; but then it is not a physical perception, it is a sort of direct knowledge.


The Mother: There was a man here who used to say he smelt water; he had an instrument, but it was only  a pretext.... It is like a rod which bends, you know; try as you may to be as passive as possible, you will always make a slight movement when you have the feeling that something is there.  I have tried this experiment many times: you give the rod to someone, you ask him to walk; you are silent, the man is silent, quite concentrated; then, suddenly, you think powerfully: “Here there is water” and hop! The rod makes a little movement — it is quite evident that it is your suggestion. I had thought thus, without having the least idea that there was water there, simply to make an experiment; and in the hand of the dowser the rod came down; he had received the suggestion in his subconscient.


The Mother: But there was no water! It was I who had there was water (there may have been water there, I don’t know, I did not tell them to dig and see). But the experiment proves that it was simply my thought which had worked on the ﬁngers holding the rod, and the rod had come down.... You could also tell me that I had thought of water because it was there!


The Mother: Ah! Yes, there are animals which are much more advanced than we are.  Animals have much more perfect senses than those of men. I challenge you to track a man as a dog does, for instance!  This means that in the curve or rather the spiral of evolution, animals (and more so those we call “higher” animals, because  they resemble us more closely) are governed by the spirit of the species which is a highly conscious consciousness.


The Mother: Bees, ants, obey this spirit of the species which is of quite a special quality.  And what is called “instinct” in animals is simply obedience to the spirit of the species which always knows what ought and ought not to be done. There are so many examples, you know. You put a cow in a meadow; it roams around, sniffs, and suddenly puts out its tongue and snatches a tuft of grass. Then it wanders about again, sniffs and gets another tuft of grass, and so it goes on.


The Mother: Has anyone ever known a cow under these conditions to eat poisonous grass? But shut this poor animal up in a cow-shed, gather and put some grass before it, and the poor creature which has lost its instinct because it now obeys man (excuse me), eats the poisonous grass along with the rest of it.  We have already had three such cases here, three cows which died from having eaten poisonous grass. And these unfortunate animals, like all animals, have a kind of respect (which I could call unjustiﬁable) for the superiority of man — if he puts poisonous grass before the cow and tells it to eat, it eats it! But left to itself, that is, without anything interfering between it and the spirit of the species, it would never do so.


The Mother: All animals which live close to man lose their instinct because they have a kind of admiration full of devotion for this being who can give them shelter and food without the least difﬁculty — and a little fear too, for they know that if they don’t do what man wants they will be beaten!  It is quite strange, they lose their ability. Dogs, for instance the sheep-dog which lives far away from men with the ﬂocks and has a very independent nature (it comes home from time to time and knows its master well, but often does not see him), if it is bitten by a snake, it will remain in a corner, lick itself and do all that is necessary till it gets cured. The same dog, if it stays with you and is bitten by a snake, dies quietly like man.


The Mother: I had a very sweet little cat, absolutely civilised, a marvellous cat. It was born in the house and it had the habit all cats have,  that is to say, if something moved, it played with that. Just then there was in the house a huge scorpion; as was its habit, the cat started playing with the scorpion. And the scorpion stung it. But it was an exceptional cat; it came to me, it was almost dying, but it showed me its paw where it was bitten — it was already swollen and in a terrible state.


The Mother: I took my little cat — it was really sweet — and put it on a table and called Sri Aurobindo. I told him, “Kiki has been stung by a scorpion, it must be cured.”  The cat stretched its neck and looked at Sri Aurobindo, its eyes already a little glassy. Sri Aurobindo sat before it and looked at it also. Then we saw this little cat gradually beginning to recover, to come around, and an hour later it jumped to its feet and went away completely healed....


The Mother: In those days, I had the habit of holding a meditation in the room where Sri Aurobindo slept (the room A uses now) and it was regularly the same people who came; everything was arranged. But there was an armchair in which this very cat always settled beforehand — it did not wait for anyone to get into the chair, it got in ﬁrst itself!  And regularly it went into a trance! It was not sleeping, it was not in the pose cats take when sleeping: it was in a trance, it used to start up, it certainly had visions. And it let out little sounds.


The Mother: It was in a profound trance. It remained thus for hours together. And when it came out from that state, it refused to eat. It was awakened and given food, but it refused: it went back to its chair and fell again into a trance! This was becoming very dangerous for a little cat....


The Mother: But this was not an ordinary cat.  To ﬁnish my story, if you leave an animal in its normal state, far from man, it obeys the spirit of the species, it has a very sure instinct and it will never commit any stupidities. But if you take it and keep it with you, it loses its instinct, and it is then you who must look after it, for it no longer knows what should or should not be done. I was interested in cats to make an experiment, a sort of inverse metempsychosis, if one can call it that, that is, to see if this could be their last incarnation as  animals, if they were ready to enter a human body in the next life.  The experiment succeeded fully, I had three absolutely ﬂagrant instances; they left with a psychic being sufﬁciently conscious to enter a human body.


The Mother: But this is not what men ordinarily do; what they usually do is to spoil the consciousness or rather the instinct of animals.   Perhaps the different elements constituting the stone are coordinated by the spark of love. I am sure that when the Divine Love descended into Matter, this Matter was quite unconscious, it had absolutely no form; it may even be said that forms in general are the result of the effort of Love to bring consciousness into Matter. If one of you (I have my doubts, but still) went down into the Inconscient, what is called the pure Inconscient, you would realise what it is. A stone will seem to you a marvellously conscious object in comparison.


The Mother: You speak disdainfully of a stone because you have just a wee bit more consciousness than it has, but the difference between the consciousness of the stone and the total Inconscient is perhaps greater than that between the stone and you. And the coming out of the Inconscient is due exclusively to the sacriﬁce of the Divine, to this descent of divine Love into the Inconscient. Consequently, when I said “perhaps in the stone”, I could have removed the “perhaps” — I can assert that in the stone it is there. There would be nothing, neither stone nor metal nor any organisation of atoms without this presence of Divine Love.  Most people say there is “consciousness” when they begin to think — when one doesn’t think one is not conscious.


The Mother: But plants are perfectly conscious and yet they do not think. They have very precise sensations which are the expression of a consciousness, but they do not think. Animals begin to think and their reactions are much more complex. But both plants and animals are  conscious. One can be conscious of a sensation without having the least thought.


The Mother: I don’t think it could be said that there was a material substance.  The Inconscient... is the Inconscient. I don’t know how to explain this to you. If there is a negation of something, it is truly the Inconscient, it is the negation of everything. It has not even the capacity of emptiness.


The Mother: One needs to have descended there to know what it is and explain it. Words cannot describe it.  It is the negation of all things because everything begins with consciousness. Without consciousness there is nothing.  There were no terrestrial beings.


The Mother: The terrestrial world, the earth came into existence after the descent into the Inconscient, not before.  The gradual formation of the different stages of being, from the Supreme to the most material region, is subsequent to the Inconscient. When, precisely, the Consciousness “began” its creation (don’t take what I say quite literally as though it were a little history of another country, for it is not that, I am trying to make you understand, that’s all), the ﬁrst manifestation of the creative Consciousness was just an emanation of consciousness — of conscious light — and when this emanation separated itself from its origin, the Inconscient was born, through opposition (how to put it?) yes, really through opposition. Consequently, the birth of the Inconscient is prior to the formation of the world, and it was only when the perception came that the whole universe was going to be created uselessly that there was a call and Divine Love plunged into the Inconscient to change it into  consciousness. Therefore, it can be said that the formation of the material worlds as we know them is the result of the descent of the supreme Consciousness into the Inconscient.


The Mother: It cannot be said that there was something prior to that, things as we know them in the material world (I apologise for the ambiguity of my words, but you understand one cannot express these things in our usual words).   The formation of the earth as we know it, this inﬁnitesimal point in the immense universe, was made precisely in order to concentrate the effort of transformation upon one point; it is like a symbolic point created in the universe to make it possible, while working directly upon one point, to radiate it over the entire universe.  If we want to make the problem a little more comprehensible, it is enough to limit ourselves to the creation and the history of the earth, for it is a good symbol of universal history.


The Mother: From the astronomical point of view the earth is nothing, it is a very small accident. From the spiritual point of view, it is a symbolic willed formation. And as I have already said, it is only upon earth that this Presence is found, this direct contact with the supreme Origin, this presence of the divine Consciousness hidden in all things.  The other worlds have been organised more or less hierarchically, if one may say so, but the earth has a special formation due to the direct intervention, without any intermediary, of the supreme Consciousness in the Inconscient.  I have taken care to tell you that this radiation was a symbolic creation, and that all action on this special point had its radiation in the whole universe; remember this, instead of beginning to say that the formation of the earth comes from an element projected from the sun or that a nebula must have been scattered giving birth to the sun and all its satellites, etc.


The Mother: Necessarily, everything was formed at the same time, the creation was simultaneous, with a special concentration of the Consciousness upon the earth.  No, it is a purely terrestrial phenomenon. Only, there is nothing against the idea that psychic beings may go to the other worlds if it so pleases them. There is no reason to think that one cannot, if one went to another planet, meet psychic beings; it is not impossible; but these would be psychic beings formed upon earth who have become free in their movement, going here and there at will for some reason or other. All knowledge in all traditions, from every part of the earth, says that the psychic formation is a terrestrial formation and that the growth of the psychic being is something that takes place upon earth.


The Mother: But once they are formed and free in their movement, they can go anywhere in the universe, they are not limited in their movement; but their formation and growth belong to the terrestrial life, for reasons of concentration.  Essentially, all things are the same. In its essence everything is the same, it is a phenomenon of consciousness; but Love can exist without Grace and Grace can exist without Love. But for the human consciousness all manifestation of Grace is a manifestation of the supreme Love, inevitably. Only it goes beyond human consciousness.


The Mother: First, to become conscious of anything whatever, you must will it. And when I say “will it”, I don’t mean saying one day, “Oh! I would like it very much”, then two days later completely forgetting it.  To will it is a constant, sustained, concentrated aspiration, an almost exclusive occupation of the consciousness. This is the ﬁrst step. There are many others: a very attentive observation, a very persistent analysis, a very keen discernment of what is pure in the movement and what is not.


The Mother: If you have an imaginative faculty, you may try to imagine and see if your imagination tallies with reality. There are people who believe that it is enough to wake up one day in a particular mood and say, “Ah! How I wish to be conscious of divine Love, how I wish to manifest divine Love....” Note, I don’t know how many millions of times one feels within a little stirring up of human instinct and imagines that if one had at one’s disposal divine Love, great things could be accomplished, and one says, “I am going to try and ﬁnd divine Love and we shall see the result.” This is the worst possible way. Because, before having even touched the very beginning of realisation you have spoilt the result.


The Mother: You must take up your search with a purity of aspiration and surrender which in themselves are already difﬁcult to acquire. You must have worked much on yourself only to be to aspire to this Love. If you look at yourself very sincerely, very straight, you will see that as soon as you begin to think of Love it is always your little inner tumult which starts whirling. All that aspires in you wants certain vibrations. It is almost impossible, without being far advanced on the yogic path, to separate the vital essence, the vital vibration from your conception of Love.


The Mother: What I say is founded on an assiduous experience of human beings. Well, for you, in the state in which you are, as you are, if you had a contact with pure divine Love, it would seem to you colder than  ice, or so far-off, so high that you would not be able to breathe; it would be like the mountain-top where you would feel frozen and ﬁnd it difﬁcult to breathe, so very far would it be from what you normally feel. Divine Love, if not clothed with a psychic or vital vibration, is difﬁcult for a human being to perceive. One can have an impression of grace, of a grace which is something so far, so high, so pure, so impersonal that... yes, one can have the feeling of grace, but it is with difﬁculty that one feels Love.  Each one of you should be able to get into touch with your own psychic being, it is not an inaccessible thing.


The Mother: Your psychic being is there precisely to put you in contact with the divine forces.  And if you are in contact with your psychic being, you begin to feel, to have a kind of perception of what divine Love can be. As I have just said, it is not enough that one morning you wake up saying, “Oh! I would like to be in contact with divine Love”, it is not like that. If, through a sustained effort, a deep concentration, a great forgetfulness of self, you succeed in coming into touch with your psychic being, you will never dream of thinking, “Oh! I would like to be in contact with divine Love” — you are in a state in which everything appears to you to be this divine Love and nothing else. And yet it is only a covering, but a covering of a beautiful texture.


The Mother: No, ﬁnd your psychic being and you will understand what divine Love is. Do not try to come into direct contact with divine Love because this will yet again be a vital desire pushing you; you will perhaps not be aware of it, but it will be a vital desire.  You must make an effort to come into touch with your  psychic being, to become aware and free in the consciousness of your psychic being, and then, quite naturally, spontaneously, you will know what divine Love is.   Surely.


The Mother: One has a big responsibility, it is to fulﬁl a special mission that one is born upon earth. Only, naturally, the psychic being must have reached a certain degree of development; otherwise it could be said that it is the whole earth which has the responsibility. The more conscious and individualised one becomes, the more should one have the sense of responsibility. But this is what happens at a given moment; one begins to think that one is here not without reason, without purpose. One realises suddenly that one is here because there is something to be done and this something is not anything egoistic.


The Mother: This seems to me the most logical way of entering upon the path — all of a sudden to realise, “Since I am here, it means that I have a mission to fulﬁl.  Since I have been endowed with a consciousness, it is that I have something to do with that consciousness — what is it?”  Generally, it seems to me that this is the ﬁrst question one should put to oneself: “Why am I here?”  I have seen this in children, even in children of ﬁve or six: “Why am I here, why do I live?” And then to search, with whatever consciousness is available, with a very little bit of consciousness: why am I here, for what reason?


The Mother: This seems to me the normal starting-point.   We have already spoken about this. When we enter upon the path of yoga, why do our dear ones leave us? One loses all worldly possessions, all one’s attachments; sometimes, even, one loses one’s position, and to gain what? — the most important thing, the only thing which is valuable: the divine Consciousness. And to gain this one must know how to lose all the goods of this world, to let go of all one’s possessions, all desires, all attachments, all satisfactions; one must know how to lose all this if one wants to get the divine Consciousness.


The Mother: It is a little paradoxical for the mind.  But the psychic being is not material, it is psychic! It is not bound to the material world; as soon as it stops living in a body, it goes away to the psychic world which is very far from being a material world.  The ﬁrst step: will. Secondly, sincerity and aspiration.


The Mother: But will and aspiration are almost the same thing, one follows the other.  Then, perseverance. Yes, perseverance is necessary in any process, and what is this process? ... First, there must be the ability to observe and discern, the ability to ﬁnd the vital in oneself, otherwise you will ﬁnd it hard to say: “This comes from the  vital, this comes from the mind, this from the body.”


The Mother: Everything will seem to you mixed and indistinct.  After a very sustained observation, you will be able to distinguish between the different parts and recognise the origin of a movement. Quite a long time is necessary for this, but one can go quite fast also, it depends upon people. But once you have found out the different parts ask yourself, “What is there of the vital in this? What does the vital bring into your consciousness?


The Mother: In what way does it change your movements; what does it add to them and what take away? What happens in your consciousness through the intervention of the vital?” Once you know this, what do you do?... Then you will need to watch this intervention, observe it, ﬁnd out in what way it works. For instance, you want to transform your vital.


The Mother: You have a great sincerity in your aspiration and the resolution to go to the very end. You have all that. You start observing and you see that two things can happen (many things can happen) but mainly two.  First, a sort of enthusiasm takes hold of you. You set to work earnestly.


The Mother: In this enthusiasm you think, “I am going to do this and that, I am going to reach my goal immediately, everything is going to be magniﬁcent! It will see, this vital, how I am going to treat it if it doesn’t obey!” And if you look carefully you will see that the vital is saying to itself, “Ah, at last, here’s an opportunity!” It accepts, it starts working with all its zeal, all its enthusiasm and... all its impatience.  The second thing may be the very opposite.


The Mother: A sort of uneasiness: “I am not well, how tedious life is, how wearisome everything. How am I going to do all that? Will I ever reach the goal? Is it worth while beginning? Is it at all possible?


The Mother: Isn’t it impossible?” It is the vital which is not very happy about what is going to be done for it, which does not want anyone to meddle in its affairs, which does not like all that very much. So it suggests depression, discouragement, a lack of faith, doubt — is it really worth the trouble?   These are the two extremes, and each has its difﬁculties, its obstacles.  Depression, unless one has a strong will, suggests, “This is not worth while, one may have to wait a lifetime.”


The Mother: As for enthusiasm, it expects to see the vital transformed overnight: “I am not going to have any difﬁculty henceforth, I am going to advance rapidly on the path of yoga, I am going to gain the divine consciousness without any difﬁculty.” There are some other difﬁculties.... One needs a little time, much perseverance.  So the vital, after a few hours — perhaps a few days, perhaps a few months — says to itself: “We haven’t gone very far with our enthusiasm, has anything been really done? Doesn’t this movement leave us just where we were, perhaps worse than we were, a little troubled, a little disturbed?


The Mother: Things are no longer what they were, they are not yet what they ought to be. It is very tiresome, what I am doing.” And then, if one pushes a little more, here’s this gentleman saying, “Ah, no! I have had enough of it, leave me alone. I don’t want to move, I shall stay in my corner, I won’t trouble you, but don’t bother me!”


The Mother: And so one has not gone very much farther than before.  This is one of the big obstacles which must be carefully avoided . As soon as there is the least sign of discontentment, of annoyance, the vital must be spoken to in this way, “My friend, you are going to keep calm, you are going to do what you are asked to do, otherwise you will have to deal with me.” And to the other, the enthusiast who says, “Everything must be done now, immediately”, your reply is, “Calm yourself a little, your energy is excellent, but it must not be spent in ﬁve minutes.


The Mother: We shall need it for a long time, keep it carefully and, as it is wanted, I shall call upon your goodwill. You will show that you are full of goodwill, you will obey, you won’t grumble, you will not protest, you will not revolt, you will say ‘yes, yes’, you will make a little sacriﬁce when asked, you will say ‘yes’ whole-heartedly.”  So we get started on the path. But the road is very long.  Many things happen on the way.


The Mother: Suddenly one thinks one has  overcome an obstacle; I say “thinks”, because though one has overcome it, it is not totally overcome. I am going to take a very obvious instance, of a very simple observation. Someone has found that his vital is uncontrollable and uncontrolled, that it gets furious for nothing and about nothing. He starts working to teach it not to get carried away, not to ﬂare up, to remain calm and bear the shocks of life without reacting violently. If one does this cheerfully, it goes quite quickly.


The Mother: (Note this well, it is very important: when you have to deal with your vital take care to remain cheerful, otherwise you will get into trouble.)  One remains cheerful, that is, when one sees the fury rise, one begins to laugh. Instead of being depressed and saying, “Ah! In spite of all my effort it is beginning all over again”, one begins to laugh and says, “Well, well! One hasn’t yet seen the end of it.  Look now, aren’t you ridiculous, you know quite well that you are being ridiculous!


The Mother: Is it worthwhile getting angry?” One gives it this lesson cheerfully. And really, after a while it doesn’t get angry again, it is quiet — and one relaxes one’s attention. One thinks the difﬁculty has been overcome, one thinks a result has at last been reached: “My vital does not trouble me any longer, it does not get angry now, everything is going ﬁne.” And the next day, one loses one’s temper.


The Mother: It is then one must be careful, it is then one must not say, “Here we are, it’s no use, I shall never achieve anything, all my efforts are futile; all this is an illusion, it is impossible.” On the contrary, one must say, “I wasn’t vigilant enough.” One must wait long, very long, before one can say, “Ah! It is done and ﬁnished.” Sometimes one must wait for years, many years....


The Mother: I am not saying this to discourage you, but to give you patience and perseverance — for there is a moment when you do arrive. And note that the vital is a small part of your being — a very important part, we have said that it is the dynamism, the realising energy, it is very important; but it is only a small part. And the mind!... which goes wandering, which must be pulled back by all the strings to be kept quiet! You think this can be done  overnight?


The Mother: And your body?... You have a weakness, a difﬁculty, sometimes a small chronic illness, nothing much, but still it is a nuisance, isn’t it? You want to get rid of it. You make efforts, you concentrate; you work upon it, establish harmony, and you think it is ﬁnished, and then.... Take, for instance, people who have the habit of coughing; they can’t control themselves or almost can’t.


The Mother: It is not serious but it is bothersome, and there seems to be no reason why it should ever stop. Well, one tells oneself, “I am going to control this.” One makes an effort — a yogic effort, not a material one — one brings down consciousness, force, and stops the cough. And one thinks, “The body has forgotten how to cough.” And it is a great thing when the body has forgotten, truly one can say, “I am cured.”