The Mother: A sincerity which must become total and absolute, for sincerity is your protection on the spiritual path. If you are not sincere, at the very next step you are sure to fall and break your head. All kinds of forces, wills, inﬂuences, entities are there, on the look-out for the least little rift in this sincerity and they immediately rush in through that rift and begin to throw you into confusion.  Therefore, before doing anything, beginning anything, trying anything, be sure that you are not only as sincere as you can be, but have the intention of becoming still more so.  For that is your only protection.


The Mother: Certainly it can. And this is what used to be attempted long ago in the schools of initiation. Even now, in more or less secret societies or very small groups, the collectivity seeks to be sufﬁciently united and to make a collective effort sufﬁciently complete for the result to be a group result instead of an individual one.  But naturally, that complicates the problem terribly.... Each time they meet, they try to create a collective entity; but for a virtue to be collectively realised, a tremendous effort is required.


The Mother: However, it is not impossible.  ( )  I have been asked another question which is a little more subtle, but it seems to me it has quite a special interest....


The Mother: Somebody asks what is the true intensity for wanting the Divine, in the will to unite with the Divine. And then this person says that he has found within himself two different modes of aspiration, especially in the intensity of aspiration for the Divine: in one of these movements there is a sort of anguish, like a poignant pain, in the other, there is an anxiety, but at the same time a great joy.   This observation is quite correct.  And the question is this: I don’t know if several or many of you have a similar experience, but it is very real, this experience, very spontaneous. And the answer is very simple.


The Mother: As soon as the presence of the psychic consciousness is united with the aspiration, the intensity takes on quite a different character, as if it were ﬁlled with the very essence of an inexpressible joy. This joy is something that seems contained in everything else. Whatever may be the outer form of the aspiration, whatever difﬁculties and obstacles it may meet, this joy is there as though it ﬁlled up everything, and it carries you in spite of everything.  That is the sure sign of the psychic presence. That is to say, you have established a contact with your psychic consciousness, a more or less complete, more or less constant contact, but at that moment it is the psychic being, the psychic consciousness which ﬁlls your aspiration, gives it its true contents.


The Mother: And that’s what is translated into joy.   When that is not there, the aspiration may come from different parts of the being; it may come mainly from the mind or mainly from the vital or even from the physical, or it may come from all the three together — it may come from all kinds of combinations. But in general, for the intensity to be there, the vital must be present. It is the vital which gives the intensity; and as the vital is at the same time the seat of most of the difﬁculties, obstacles, contradictions, it is the friction between the intensity of the aspiration and the intensity of the difﬁculty which creates this anguish.


The Mother: This is no reason to stop one’s aspiration.  You must know, you must understand the reason for this anguish. And then, if you can introduce just one more element  in your aspiration, that is, your trust in the divine Grace, trust in the divine Response, it counterbalances all possible anguish and you can aspire without any disturbance or fear.  This brings us to something else, which is not positively a question, but a request for an explanation, a comment or a development of the subject. It is about Grace.


The Mother: I have said somewhere, or maybe written, that no matter how great your faith and trust in the divine Grace, no matter how great your capacity to see it at work in all circumstances, at every moment, at every point in life, you will never succeed in understanding the marvellous immensity of Its Action, and the precision, the exactitude with which this Action is accomplished; you will never be able to grasp to what extent the Grace does everything, is behind everything, organises everything, conducts everything, so that the march forward to the divine realisation may be as swift, as complete, as total and harmonious as possible, considering the circumstances of the world.   As soon as you are in contact with It, there is not a second in time, not a point in space, which does not show you this perpetual work of the Grace, this constant intervention of the Grace.  And once you have seen this, you feel you are never equal to it, for you should never forget it, never have any fears, any anguish, any regrets, any recoils... or even suffering. If one were in union with this Grace, if one saw It everywhere, one would begin living a life of exultation, of all-power, of inﬁnite happiness.


The Mother: And that would be the best possible collaboration in the divine Work.   It is not always lit.   By aspiration.


The Mother: By the will for progress, by the urge towards perfection.  Above all, it is the will for progress and self-puriﬁcation which lights the ﬁre. The will for progress. Those who have a strong will, when they turn it towards spiritual progress and puriﬁcation, automatically light the ﬁre within themselves.  And each defect one wants to cure or each progress one wants to make — if all that is thrown into the ﬁre, it burns with a new intensity.


The Mother: And this is not an image, it is a fact in the subtle physical. One can feel the warmth of the ﬂame, one can see in the subtle physical the light of the ﬂame. And when there is something in the nature which prevents one from advancing and one throws it into this ﬁre, it begins to burn and the ﬂame becomes more intense.   Exactly, when the difﬁculty is egoistic or personal, if one makes an offering of it and throws it into the ﬁre of puriﬁcation, one immediately feels the joy of progress. If one does it sincerely, at once there is a welling up of joy.


The Mother: That is obviously what ought to be done instead of despairing and lamenting. If one offers it up and aspires sincerely for transformation and puriﬁcation, one immediately feels joy springing up in the depths of the heart. Even when the difﬁculty is a great sorrow, one may do this with much success. One realises that behind the sorrow, no matter how intense it may be, there is a divine joy.  (


The Mother: )  Is that all?  (.) My portfolio is getting fatter! More questions come to me than I can answer....


The Mother: One, of a very practical kind, I shall answer ﬁrst because it will be quickly over. Besides, it is a question which I have been asked very often, and perhaps I have already answered it several times. But still, it is always worth repeating.   Then a sub-question: We are not going to speak of occult processes at all; although, to tell the truth, everything that happens in the invisible world is occult, by deﬁnition. But still, practically, there are two processes which do not exclude but complete each other, but which may be used separately according to one’s preference.


The Mother: It is obvious that thought forms a part of one of the methods, quite an important part. I have already told you several times that if one thinks clearly and powerfully, one makes a mental formation, and that every mental formation is an entity independent of its fashioner, having its own life and tending to realise itself in the mental world — I don’t mean that you see your formation with your physical eyes, but it exists in the mental world, it has its own particular independent existence.  If you have made a formation with a deﬁnite aim, its whole life will tend to the realisation of this aim. Therefore, if you want to help someone at a distance, you have only to formulate very clearly, very precisely and strongly the kind of help you want to give and the result you wish to obtain. That will have its effect.


The Mother: I cannot say that it will be all-powerful, for the mental world is full of innumerable formations of this kind and naturally they clash and contradict one another; hence the strongest and the most persistent will have the best of it.  Now, what is it that gives strength and persistence to mental formations? — It is emotion and will. If you know how to add to your mental formation an emotion, affection, tenderness, love, and an intensity of will, a dynamism, it will have a much greater chance of success. That is the ﬁrst method.


The Mother: It is within the scope of all those who know how to think, and even more of those who know how to love. But as I said, the power is limited and there is great competition in that world.  Therefore, even if one has no knowledge at all but has trust  in the divine Grace, if one has the faith that there is something in the world like the divine Grace, and that this something can answer a prayer, an aspiration, an invocation, then, after making one’s mental formation, if one offers it to the Grace and puts one’s trust in it, asks it to intervene and has the faith that it will intervene, then indeed one has a chance of success.   Try, and you will surely see the result.


The Mother: Excuse me, that depends on the tenor of the prayer. If one simply invokes the Grace or the Divine, and puts oneself in His hands, one does not expect a particular result. To expect a particular result one must formulate one’s prayer, must ask for something.  If you have only a great aspiration for the divine Grace and evoke it, implore it, without asking it for anything precise, it is the Grace which will choose what it will do for you, not you.


The Mother: Ah! that’s quite another question.  Why, it is higher in its quality, perhaps. But still, if one wants something precise, it is better to formulate it. If one has a special reason for invoking the Grace, it is better to formulate it precisely and clearly.


The Mother: Of course, if one is in a state of complete surrender and gives oneself entirely, if one simply offers oneself to the Grace and lets it do what it likes, that is very good. But after that one must not question what it does! One must not say to it, “Oh! I did that with the idea of having this”, for if one really has the idea of obtaining something, it is better to formulate it in all sincerity, simply, just as one sees it. Afterwards, it is for the Grace to choose if it will do it or not; but in any case, one will  have formulated clearly what one wanted. And there is no harm in that.


The Mother: Where it becomes bad is when the request is not granted and one revolts. Then naturally it becomes bad. It is at that moment one must understand that the desire one has, or the aspiration, may not have been very enlightened and that perhaps one has asked for something which was not exactly what was good for one. Then at that moment one must be wise and say simply, “Well, let Thy Will be done.” But so long as one has an inner perception and an inner preference, there is no harm in formulating it.


The Mother: It is a very natural movement.  For example, if one has been foolish or has made a mistake and one truly, sincerely wishes never to do it again, well, I don’t see any harm in asking for it. And in fact, if one asks for it with sincerity, a true inner sincerity, there is a great chance that it will be granted.  You must not think that the Divine likes to contradict you.  He is not at all keen on doing it!


The Mother: He can see better than you what is really good for you; but it is only when it is absolutely indispensable that He opposes your aspiration. Otherwise He is always ready to give what you ask.   Is that all?  (


The Mother: )  There are three texts here which I have been asked to comment on or explain. The last one is a sort of continuation of what we have just said; I am going to begin with that:   The ﬁrst condition is not very easy to realise. It is the result of a conscious growth, a constant observation and perpetual experience in life.


The Mother: I have already told you this several times. When you are in a particular set of circumstances and certain events take place, these events often oppose your desire or what seems best to you, and often you happen to regret this and say to yourself, “Ah! how good it would have been if it were otherwise, if it had been like this or like that”, for little things and big things.... Then years pass by, events are unfolded; you progress, become more conscious, understand better, and when you look back, you notice — ﬁrst with astonishment, then later with a smile — that those very circumstances which seemed to you quite disastrous or unfavourable, were exactly the best thing that could have happened to you to make you progress as you should have. And if you are the least bit wise you tell yourself, “Truly, the divine Grace is inﬁnite.”  So, when this sort of thing has happened to you a number of times, you begin to understand that in spite of the blindness of man and deceptive appearances, the Grace is at work everywhere, so that at every moment it is the best possible thing that happens in the state the world is in at that moment.


The Mother: It is because our vision is limited or even because we are blinded by our own preferences that we cannot discern that things are like this.  But when one begins to see it, one enters upon a state of wonder which nothing can describe. For behind the appearances one perceives this Grace — inﬁnite, wonderful, allpowerful — which knows all, organises all, arranges all, and leads us, whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, towards the supreme goal, that is, union with the Divine, the awareness of the Godhead and union with Him.  Then one lives in the Action and Presence of the Grace a life full of joy, of wonder, with the feeling of a marvellous strength, and at the same time with a trust so calm, so complete, that nothing can shake it any longer.   And when one is in this state of perfect receptivity and perfect adherence, one diminishes to that extent the resistance of the world to the divine Action; consequently, this is the best collaboration one can bring to the Action of the Divine.


The Mother: One understands what He wants and, with all one’s consciousness, adheres to His Will.      This is the most powerful, the most complete and true answer to all the questions which so many people have in their heads but do not dare to ask.  So many people doubt the effectiveness of the Protection, the safety of the Path, because others go astray. And in their egoism they tremble with fear instead of telling themselves what I have just been reading to you this evening, what is the cause of all catastrophes, small or great, which threaten those who follow the path of yoga without having taken the necessary care to be sufﬁciently pure and sincere.


The Mother: No protection, no Grace can save those who refuse the indispensable puriﬁcation.  And I would add this: that fear is an impurity, one of the greatest impurities, one of those which come most directly from the anti-divine forces which want to destroy the divine action on earth; and the ﬁrst duty of those who really want to do yoga is to eliminate from their consciousness, with all the might, all the sincerity, all the endurance of which they are capable, even the shadow of a fear. To walk on the path, one must be dauntless, and never indulge in that petty, small, feeble, nasty shrinking back upon oneself, which is fear.   An indomitable courage, a perfect sincerity and a sincere self-giving, so that one does not calculate or bargain, does not give with the idea of receiving, does not trust with the idea of being protected, does not have a faith which asks for proofs — it is this that is indispensable in order to walk on the path, and  it is this alone which can truly shelter you from all danger.


The Mother: ( )  You have a question, yes?  Different? You ask this question!...


The Mother: There is an invasion of more or less dark and foreign elements, who may come with goodwill, possibly, but who come with an almost total ignorance and throw it all out in the atmosphere; and so, naturally, if one is the least bit open to what is happening, one feels crushed under the weight of this increased ignorance.  I don’t mean that there is no ignorance here! But still, the dose is different. Here, for all that, there is a sort of manipulation of the consciousness going on constantly, night and day, visibly, invisibly; and whether one wants it or not, in spite of everything one takes it in, and after some time it acts.  When a few people come, something changes, but it is not so much as to give a painful feeling; but when it is a rush like this, dashing in all at once, then the whole level comes down immediately, and unless one is able to withdraw into oneself and keep one’s head above these submerging waters, this swamping ﬂood of ignorance, if one can’t raise one’s head above it, well, one feels very uneasy.


The Mother: You ﬁnd it an atmosphere of joy!   Then it is personal, my child. It is something purely personal.  And you ought to be able to keep it.  It comes because at this time there are memories awakening in you, a certain concentration.


The Mother: Or perhaps what you call joy is a vital pleasure, no? Isn’t it a sort of excitement? When do you feel this joy?  I think it is the same thing that happens to people who are more receptive on their birthdays or who need to remember an event to awaken their receptivity.  In the days when Sri Aurobindo used to give Darshan, before he gave it there was always a concentration of certain forces or of a certain realisation which he wanted to give to people.


The Mother: And so each Darshan marked a stage forward; each time something was added. But that was at a time when the number of visitors was very limited. It was organised in another way, and it was part of the necessary preparation.  But this special concentration, now, occurs at other times, not particularly on Darshan days. And it occurs much more often, on other kinds of occasions, in other circumstances.


The Mother: The movement is much accelerated, the march forward, the stages succeed each other much more rapidly. And perhaps it is more difﬁcult to follow; or in any case, if one doesn’t take care to keep up, one is much more quickly out-distanced than before; one gets the feeling of being late or of being abandoned. Things change quickly.  And I ought to say that these Darshan times with all this rush of people serve not so much for an inner progress — that is to say, inside the Ashram — as for a diffusion outside. The use we make of these days is a little different; above all, it is to go farther, have a vaster ﬁeld, reach more distant points.


The Mother: But the  concentration is less and there is this inconvenience of a large crowd, which was always there but which has been much greater during these last years than at the beginning. At the beginning there was not such a crowd; and perhaps the quality of the crowd was also a little different.  So the joy you were speaking about would rather be a kind of excitement or the feeling of a more intense or more active life; but it is not actually a greater Presence. One puts oneself, perhaps, into a more receptive state in which one receives more, but there is no intensiﬁcation of the Presence — not to my knowledge.  So it must be within you that you have to ﬁnd the reason, and the remedy for keeping this joy.


The Mother: Yes, as I have just told you, this is spread in thousands of copies all over the world. It is an externalisation of the thing, it is a way of spreading the inﬂuence, spreading the message, reaching farther. Everything that is said in a Darshan message has been studied, proved, tested, And on Darshan day it is given. First the experiment is made, then it is declared publicly.


The Mother: The ﬁrst movement is the individual development; at the Darshan time it is spread abroad.  Sri Aurobindo always spoke of two movements: the formation of the individual in order to be able to reach the goal individually, and the preparation of the world.... For the progress of the individual is, so to say, not exactly delayed or helped by the condition of the whole, but this brings about a certain balance between the two. The individual movement is always  much more rapid and more penetrating; it goes farther, more deeply and more quickly. The collective movement forms a sort of basis which both restrains and supports at the same time.


The Mother: And it is the balance between these two movements which is necessary. So, the more rapidly one goes individually, the more necessary it is to try to extend and strengthen the collective basis.   What exactly do you mean? The ﬁfteenth of August is Sri Aurobindo’s birthday.


The Mother: Therefore, it is a date which has a capital importance in the life of the earth, from the physical point of view. So?  What, the liberation of India? Is it because the liberation of India came about on the ﬁfteenth of August? And so, it is necessary to tell you why it happened, you can’t ﬁnd it out by yourself, can you?


The Mother: It needs to be said, does it? I think Sri Aurobindo has written it also, hasn’t he, in the message he gave? Hasn’t he said it?  ( )


The Mother: Yes, it is exactly that....  Today, there came into my hands one of those greeting cards which people send on puja days or for the new year or other such festivals; and on this card was written something like this — I don’t recall the exact words — but anyway they were,   “Greetings on the occasion of this memorable day of the birth of our nation.” It is sent by someone who, I think, proclaimed himself a disciple of Sri Aurobindo quite a long time ago.... That seemed to me one of those enormities which human stupidity alone can commit.


The Mother: If he had said: “On this memorable day of the birth of Sri Aurobindo its natural consequence, the birth of the nation”, it would have been quite all right. But still, the important point was left out and the other mentioned, which is quite simply a consequence, a natural result: it to be like that, it could not be otherwise.  But people always think like that, the wrong way up. Always. They take the effect for the cause, they glorify the effect and forget the cause.


The Mother: And that is why the world walks on its head with its feet in the air. Quite simply, there is no other reason.  ( )  I have a huge collection of questions here.


The Mother: I received yet one more today. This question raises perhaps the most difﬁcult problem for the world; so I don’t quite know if, precisely, in this Darshan atmosphere, it is very appropriate to touch upon such a problem.  However, it is something inﬁnitely interesting. One would like to ﬁnd a fully satisfactory solution, for then at the same time one would have the key which opens the last door.  Man has always been faced with two possible attitudes when he has wanted to ﬁnd a solution to the problem of the existence of the universe.


The Mother: It could be said from the practical point of view, that since the universe exists and exists as it does, the wisest thing is to take it as it is, and if one is not satisﬁed with it, well, to try to make it better. But even if one takes this very practical attitude, the problem remains: How to make it better? And once again one is facing the same fact which it seems impossible to resolve. Here you are, then:  The divine Will — and the Grace which manifests it — is  all-powerful and nothing can exist which is not the expression of this divine Will and this Grace which manifests it....


The Mother: The logical attitude — precisely the one described in the little book I read to you on Fridays now, — a perfect peace, a total surrender, putting aside all effort and all personal will, giving oneself up to the divine Will and letting it act through oneself.  Mind you, this is not at all easy, it is not as simple as it looks. But still, if one sincerely takes up this attitude, it is certain that immediately there comes a perfect inner peace, an unmixed bliss, and whatever may be the events of your life, they leave you totally indifferent. This has always been recommended for individual salvation; and I may remark in passing that in this little book, which is also very beautiful and very well written, the sage compares the state of surrender of which he speaks to a sea which is calm, blue, peaceful, vast, moved by a deep force, swelling up at the right moment, subsiding at the right moment — indeed, it is an ideal description.


The Mother: But a practical and somewhat objective mind immediately tells you, “Well, yes, but there are also tempests at sea, there are also terrible storms, tidal waves, engulfed islands. And so that is perhaps another aspect of the Divine, but it does not bring peace, at least not in the way described by the sage. One would have to be in another state of consciousness to be at peace in such circumstances, one must not compare oneself with the sea!” So the problem presents itself again.  Sri Aurobindo has made a study of all this in , and he tells us that there are sure signs of a progressive evolution.


The Mother: An evolution naturally tends towards a goal, and if it is a progressive evolution one may continue to think that all is the expression of the divine Grace and Will, but that at the same time all is not as it ought to be. Everything is in accordance with the divine Will, but everything is not as it ought to be, otherwise things would not move.   And there we are faced with the problem once more.  The question I have been asked is this: The divine Grace has always been all-powerful.  And yet, if we compare the world as it is with the more or less ideal world we can imagine when we come out of our ignorant consciousness and enter a consciousness which we call more divine, how is it that it is not always so good, if the Grace is all-powerful?


The Mother: It would seem that the vision of what ought to be comes long before the execution — and this is what gives rise to the whole problem.... One sees ahead — or up above — the realisation, perhaps not of the next step, but still what will happen one day; and then as one sees it, one tells oneself, “But this conception is more divine than what is realised at present; therefore, if the Grace is all-powerful, it ought to be realised immediately.” I am now looking at the problem as the human mind, it seems to me, would put it or approximately so, in order to try and make myself understood.  But what does one call an all-powerful Grace? I don’t want to speak of the conceptions of an ordinary mind for which the all-powerful Grace is that which would instantaneously realise what it wants or believes to be the right thing; I am not speaking of that, we may eliminate this case, which is childish.


The Mother: But granting that somebody has a deeper, higher vision, a sort of inner perception of an ideal world where all the things which for us are very shocking would disappear; then one is truly faced with a problem which seems insoluble.   This translates itself in very ordinary minds into an oversimple and very childish form: either the divine Will is something unthinkable for us — which would not be surprising! —  unthinkable and almost monstrous if It allows things to be as they are, if It wants things as they are, or else... the Grace is powerless.  That — I warn you to put you on your guard against the trap — that is the great argument of the Adversary.


The Mother: He uses it to cloud the mind and raise up revolt; but still, it is well thought out as a trap.  Then come those who say, “It is because you are in the Ignorance that you see like that; change your consciousness, enter into contact with the divine Consciousness and you will see differently. ” This is perfectly correct. I was just telling you, and I repeat, that if you can manage to get out of the Ignorance and enter ever so little into union with the divine Reality, you live an ecstatic life in which everything is marvellous, sublime, and where the Grace manifests in all things. Therefore, you have solved the problem for yourself, on condition that you can remain in that state perpetually, which is not very easy.


The Mother: But still it is possible. But it draws you out of the world, prevents you from participating in the life of the world, and above all, if everything had to be changed in that way, I think an eternity would not sufﬁce for all the elements of the world to be so transformed.  And the problem presents itself again. In whatever manner, by whatever way you approach it, it will always present itself again.  There is a solution.


The Mother: Think about it, we shall speak about it again another time.  There, I would like you to make an effort. For it is beneﬁcial, because this is a sort of conﬂict in the human consciousness which comes up constantly; because it is a conﬂict which forms the basis of all oppositions to a concrete work; because this conﬂict makes people — I am speaking even of those who are the most enlightened in this ﬁeld — always confuse spiritual life with an annihilation of the physical, material creation, as for them this is the sole means of escape: “Let us escape from the material reality and we escape the problem”, for, to be in the  state where the problem doesn’t present itself any longer, one must get out of life —.  There is a solution.  That will be for another time.


The Mother: Yes. And he has also said it himself. The Assumption of the Virgin Mary is the divinisation of Matter. And this is the aim of the last Avatar.


The Mother: August 15th, 1947 is the birthday of free India. It marks for her the end of an old era, the beginning of a new age. But we can also make it by our life and acts as a free nation an important date in a new age opening for the whole world, for the political, social, cultural and spiritual future of humanity.  August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast signiﬁcance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps on the work with which I began life, the beginning of its full fruition.


The Mother: Indeed, on this day I can watch almost all the world-movements which I hoped to see fulﬁlled in my lifetime, though then they looked like impracticable dreams, arriving at fruition or on their way to achievement. In all these movements free India may well play a large part and take a leading position.  The ﬁrst of these dreams was a revolutionary movement which would create a free and united India. India today is free but she has not achieved unity. At one moment it almost seemed as if in the very act of liberation she would fall back into the chaos of separate States which preceded the British conquest.


The Mother: But fortunately it now seems probable that this danger will be averted and a large and powerful, though not yet a complete union will be established. Also, the wisely drastic policy of the Constituent Assembly has made it probable that the problem of the depressed classes will be solved without schism or ﬁssure.  But the old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of  the country. It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest.


The Mother: India’s internal development and prosperity may be impeded, her position among the nations weakened, her destiny impaired or even frustrated. This must not be; the partition must go. Let us hope that that may come about naturally, by an increasing recognition of the necessity not only of peace and concord but of common action, by the practice of common action and the creation of means for that purpose. In this way unity may ﬁnally come about under whatever form — the exact form may have a pragmatic but not a fundamental importance. But by whatever means, in whatever way, the division must go; unity must and will be achieved, for it is necessary for the greatness of India’s future.


The Mother: Another dream was for the resurgence and liberation of the peoples of Asia and her return to her great role in the progress of human civilisation. Asia has arisen; large parts are now quite free or are at this moment being liberated: its other still subject or partly subject parts are moving through whatever struggles towards freedom. Only a little has to be done and that will be done today or tomorrow. There India has her part to play and has begun to play it with an energy and ability which already indicate the measure of her possibilities and the place she can take in the council of the nations.  The third dream was a world-union forming the outer basis of a fairer, brighter and nobler life for all mankind.


The Mother: That uniﬁcation of the human world is under way; there is an imperfect initiation organised but struggling against tremendous difﬁculties. But the momentum is there and it must inevitably increase and conquer. Here too India has begun to play a prominent part and, if she can develop that larger statesmanship which is not limited by the present facts and immediate possibilities but looks into the future and brings it nearer, her presence may  make all the difference between a slow and timid and a bold and swift development. A catastrophe may intervene and interrupt or destroy what is being done, but even then the ﬁnal result is sure. For uniﬁcation is a necessity of Nature, an inevitable movement.


The Mother: Its necessity for the nations is also clear, for without it the freedom of the small nations may be at any moment in peril and the life even of the large and powerful nations insecure. The uniﬁcation is therefore to the interests of all, and only human imbecility and stupid selﬁshness can prevent it; but these cannot stand for ever against the necessity of Nature and the Divine Will. But an outward basis is not enough; there must grow up an international spirit and outlook, international forms and institutions must appear, perhaps such developments as dual or multilateral citizenship, willed interchange or voluntary fusion of cultures. Nationalism will have fulﬁlled itself and lost its militancy and would no longer ﬁnd these things incompatible with self-preservation and the integrality of its outlook.


The Mother: A new spirit of oneness will take hold of the human race.  Another dream, the spiritual gift of India to the world has already begun. India’s spirituality is entering Europe and America in an ever increasing measure. That movement will grow; amid the disasters of the time more and more eyes are turning towards her with hope and there is even an increasing resort not only to her teachings, but to her psychic and spiritual practice.  The ﬁnal dream was a step in evolution which would raise man to a higher and larger consciousness and begin the solution of the problems which have perplexed and vexed him since he ﬁrst began to think and to dream of individual perfection and a perfect society.


The Mother: This is still a personal hope and an idea, an ideal which has begun to take hold both in India and in the West on forward-looking minds. The difﬁculties in the way are more formidable than in any other ﬁeld of endeavour, but difﬁculties were made to be overcome and if the Supreme Will is there, they will be overcome. Here too, if this evolution is to take place, since it must proceed through a growth of the spirit and  the inner consciousness, the initiative can come from India and, although the scope must be universal, the central movement may be hers.  Such is the content which I put into this date of India’s liberation; whether or how far this hope will be justiﬁed depends upon the new and free India.


The Mother: The heaven of the liberated mind? It is a metaphorical phrase.  When the mind is liberated, it rises to celestial heights. These higher regions of the mind Sri Aurobindo compares with the sky above the earth; they are celestial compared with the ordinary mind.  Is that all?


The Mother: ( )  Somebody has asked me a question about trance — what in India is called Samadhi, that is to say, when one passes or enters into a state of which no conscious memory remains when one wakes up:  In ancient times it was considered a very high condition. It was even thought to be the sign of a great realisation, and people who wanted to do yoga or sadhana always tried to enter into a state of this kind.


The Mother: All sorts of marvellous things have been said about this state — you may say all you like about it, since, precisely, you don’t remember anything! And those who have entered it are unable to say what happened to them. So, one can say anything one likes.  I could incidentally tell you that in all kinds of so-called spiritual literature I had always read marvellous things about this state of trance or Samadhi, and it so happened that I had never experienced it.


The Mother: So I did not know whether this was a sign  of inferiority. And when I came here, one of my ﬁrst questions to Sri Aurobindo was: “What do you think of Samadhi, that state of trance one does not remember? One enters into a condition which seems blissful, but when one comes out of it, one does not know at all what has happened.” Then he looked at me, saw what I meant and told me, “It is unconsciousness.” I asked him for an explanation, I said, “What?”


The Mother: He told me, “Yes, you enter into what is called Samadhi when you go out of your conscious being and enter a part of your being which is completely unconscious, or rather a domain where you have no corresponding consciousness — you go beyond the ﬁeld of your consciousness and enter a region where you are no longer conscious. You are in the impersonal state, that is to say, a state in which you are unconscious; and that is why, naturally, you remember nothing, because you were not conscious of anything.” So this reassured me and I said, “Well, this has never happened to me.” He replied, “Nor to me!” ()  And since then, when people speak to me about Samadhi, I tell them, “Well, try to develop your inner individuality and you will be able to enter these regions in full consciousness and have the joy of communion with the highest regions, but without losing all consciousness and returning with a zero instead of an experience.”


The Mother: So that is my reply to the person who has asked if Samadhi or trance is a sign of progress. The sign of progress is when there is no longer any unconsciousness, when one can go up into the same regions without entering into trance.  But there is a confusion in the words.   When you leave a of your being — for example, when you enter quite consciously the vital world — your body can enter into a trance, but this is not samadhi. It is rather what might be called a lethargic or cataleptic state.


The Mother: When extreme, it is a cataleptic state because the part of the being which animates the body has gone out of it, so the body is half dead; that is, its life is so far diminished and its functions almost suspended: the heart slows down and can hardly be felt and the breathing is hardly perceptible. This is the real trance. But you, during all this time, you are fully conscious in the vital world. And even, with a certain discipline which, moreover, is neither easy nor without danger, you may so contrive that the minimum of force you leave in your body allows it to be conscious. With training — as I said, it is not easy — quite a methodical training, one can manage to make the body keep its autonomy of movement, even when one is almost totally exteriorised.


The Mother: And this is how in an almost complete state of trance, one can speak and relate what the exteriorised part of the being is seeing and doing.... For that, one must be fairly advanced on the path.  There are spontaneous and involuntary instances of a state which is not quite the same as this, but very similar: they are states of somnambulism, that is to say, when you are fast asleep and the vital has gone out of your body, the body automatically obeys the will and action of the part which has gone out, the vital part. Only, as this is not the effect of a willed action and a regulated, progressive education, this state is not desirable, for it may produce disorders in the being. But it is an illustration of what I have just said, of a body which while threequarters asleep can obey the part of the being which has gone out and is itself fully awake and quite conscious.


The Mother: This is the real trance.  I have already told you several times, I think, that when one undergoes this occult discipline, one is able to leave one’s physical body, go out in the vital and move about quite consciously,  acting quite consciously in this vital world; then to leave one’s vital being asleep and go out mentally, acting and living in the mental world quite consciously and with similar relations — for the mental world is in relation with the mental being, as the physical world is in relation with the physical being — and so on, progressively and by a regular discipline. I knew a woman who had been trained in this way, who had quite remarkable personal faculties, who was conscious in all her states of being, and she used to be able to go out twelve times from her body, that is to say, from twelve consecutive bodies, until she reached the summit of the individual consciousness, which could be called the threshold of the Formless. She remembered everything and recounted everything in detail. She was an Englishwoman; I even translated from English a book in which there was a description of all she saw and did in these domains.


The Mother: It is obviously the sign of a great mastery of one’s being, and the sign of having reached a high degree of conscious development. But it is almost the opposite of the other experience of going out of one’s consciousness to enter a state in which one is no longer conscious; it is, so to say, the opposite.   ( )


The Mother: That brings me to something which is both a recommendation and an advice.  We have read in, and also recently translated from, some passages in which Sri Aurobindo gives details, explanations and advice to those who do sadhana and try to have experiences that at times are too strong for their state of consciousness — which brings rather unfortunate results. On this subject I made a remark, and I have been asked to explain my remark. I said:  What I meant is this: Whatever may be the nature, the strength and wonder of an experience, you must not be dominated by it to such an extent that it governs your entire being and you lose your balance and your contact with a reasonable and calm attitude. That is to say, when you enter in some way into contact with a force or consciousness which surpasses yours, instead of being entirely dominated by this consciousness or force, you must always be able to remind yourself that it is only experience among thousands and thousands of others, and that, consequently, its nature is not absolute, it is relative.


The Mother: No matter how beautiful it may be, you can and ought to have better ones: however exceptional it may be, there are others still more marvellous; and however high it may be, you can always rise still higher in future. So, instead of losing one’s head one places the experience in the chain of development and keeps a healthy physical balance so as not to lose the sense of relativity with ordinary life. In this way, there is no risk.  The means? ...


The Mother: One who knows how to do this will always ﬁnd it very easy, but for one who doesn’t know it is perhaps a little... a little troublesome.  There is a means.  It is never to lose the idea of the total self-giving to the Grace which is the expression of the Supreme. When one gives oneself, when one surrenders, entrusts oneself entirely to That which is above, beyond all creation, and when, instead of seeking any personal advantage from the experience, one makes an offering of it to the divine Grace and knows that it is from This that the experience comes and that it is to This that the result of the experience must be given back , then one is quite safe.


The Mother: In other words: no ambition, no vanity, no pride. A sincere self-giving, a sincere humility, and one is sheltered from all danger. There you are, this is what I call being greater than one’s experience.   Now, does anyone have a question?


The Mother: ( )  (.) That brings us down from the heights! ()


The Mother: I think it would be very wise to put out the light and get rid of the insects.... You won’t go to sleep, will you?   There is something I was asked some time ago to which I have not yet replied. It is this.


The Mother: I have written somewhere: This is what is called here in India the truth of the being or the law of the being, the of the being: the centre and the cause of the individuality.  Everyone carries his truth within himself, a truth which is unique, which is altogether his own and which he must express in his life. Now what is this truth? This is the question I have been asked: It is expressed in this way: each individual being has a direct and unique relation with the Supreme, the Origin, That which is beyond all creation. It is this unique relation which must be expressed in one’s life, through a unique mode of being in relation with the Divine.


The Mother: Therefore, each one is directly and exclusively in relation with the Divine — the relation one has with the Divine is unique and exclusive; so that you receive from the Divine, when you are in a receptive state, the of the relation it is for you to have, and this is neither a sharing nor a part nor a repetition, but exclusively and uniquely  relation which each one can have with the Divine. So, from  the psychological point of view, one is in having this direct relation with the Divine.  One is all alone with the Supreme.  The relation one has with Him will never have an equal, will never be exactly the same as another’s. No two are the same and therefore can be taken away from you to be given to another, can be withdrawn from you to be given to another.


The Mother: And if this relation disappeared from the creation, it would really disappear — which is impossible.  And this means that if one lives in the truth of one’s being, one is an indispensable part of the creation. Naturally, I don’t mean if one lives what one one should be, I am saying if one lives the truth of one’s being; if, by a development, one is able to enter into contact with the truth of one’s being, one is immediately in a unique and exclusive relation with the Divine, which hasn’t its equal.   There, now.


The Mother: And naturally, because it is the truth of your being, that is what you should express in your life.   I suppose most of you come on Fridays to listen to the reading of. If you have listened, you will remember that something’s said there about being “spontaneous”, and that the true way of living the true life is to live spontaneously.  What Lao Tse calls spontaneous is this: instead of being moved by a personal will — mental, vital or physical — one ought to stop all outer effort and let oneself be guided and moved by what the Chinese call, which they identify with the Godhead — or God or the Supreme Principle or the Origin of all things or the creative Truth, indeed all possible human notions of the Divine and the goal to be attained.  To be spontaneous means not to think out, organise, decide and make an effort to realise with the personal will.


The Mother: I am going to give you two examples to make you understand what true spontaneity is. One — you all know about it undoubtedly — is of the time Sri Aurobindo began writing the , in 1914. It was neither a mental knowledge nor even a mental creation which he transcribed: he silenced his mind and sat at the typewriter, and from above, from the higher planes, all that had to be written came down, all ready, and he had only to move his ﬁngers on the typewriter and it was transcribed. It was in this state of mental silence which allows the knowledge — and even the expression — from above to pass through that he wrote the whole, with its sixty-four printed pages a month.  This is why, besides, he could do it, for if it had been a mental work of construction it would have been quite impossible.


The Mother: That is true mental spontaneity.  And if one carries this a little further, one should never think and plan beforehand what one ought to say or write. One should simply be able to silence one’s mind, to turn it like a receptacle towards the higher Consciousness and express as it receives it, in mental silence, what comes from above. That would be true spontaneity.  Naturally, this is not very easy, it asks for preparation.


The Mother: And if one comes down to the sphere of action, it is still more difﬁcult; for normally, if one wants to act with some kind of logic, one usually has to think out beforehand what one wants to do and plan it before doing it, otherwise one may be tossed about by all sorts of desires and impulses which would be very far from the inspiration spoken about in; it would simply be movements of the lower nature driving you to act. Therefore, unless one has reached the state of wisdom and detachment of the Chinese sage mentioned in this story, it is better not to be spontaneous in one’s daily actions, for one would risk being the plaything of all the most disorderly impulses and inﬂuences.  But once one enters the yoga and wants to do yoga, it is very necessary not to be the toy of one’s own mental formations. If one wants to rely on one’s experiences, one must take great care not to construct within oneself the notion of the experiences one wants to have, the idea one has about them, the form one expects or hopes to see. For, the mental formation, as I already have told you very often, is a real formation, a real creation, and with your idea you create forms which are to a certain extent independent of you and return to you as though from outside and give you the impression of being experiences.


The Mother: But these experiences which are either willed or sought after or expected are not spontaneous experiences and risk being illusions — at times even dangerous illusions.  Therefore, when you follow a mental discipline, you must be particularly careful not to imagine or want to have certain  experiences, for in this way you can create for yourself the illusion of these experiences. In the domain of yoga, this very strict and severe spontaneity is indispensable.  For that, naturally, one must not have any ambition or desire or excessive imagination or what I call “spiritual romanticism”, the taste for the miraculous — all this ought to be very carefully eliminated so as to be sure of advancing fearlessly.  Now, after this preliminary explanation, I am going to read to you what I had written and have been asked to comment upon.


The Mother: These aphorisms perhaps call for explanation. I wrote this, inspired perhaps by the reading I was just speaking to you about, but it was more than anything the expression of a personal experience: This is what I have just explained to you. Then the question arises: how to be spontaneous?  And how to be perfectly simple?  And now, what does it mean to be absolutely sincere?


The Mother: If you are made of pieces which are not only different but often quite contradictory, these pieces necessarily create a division in your being. For example, you have one part in yourself which  aspires for the divine life, to know the Divine, to unite with Him, to live Him integrally, and then you have another part which has attachments, desires — which it calls “needs” — and which not only seeks these things but is quite upset when it does not have them. There are other contradictions, but this one is the most ﬂagrant. There are others, for instance, like wanting to surrender completely to the Divine, to give oneself up totally to His Will and His Guidance, and at the same time, when the experience comes — a common experience on the path when one sincerely tries to give oneself up to the Divine — the feeling that one is nothing, that one can do nothing, that one doesn’t even exist outside the Divine ; that is to say, if He were not there, one would not exist and could not do anything, one would not be anything at all....


The Mother: This experience naturally comes as a help on the path of total self-giving, but there is a part of the being which, when the experience comes, rises up in a terrible revolt and says, “But, excuse me! I insist on existing, I insist on being something, I insist on doing things myself, I want to have a personality.” And naturally, the second one undoes all that the ﬁrst had done.  These are not exceptional cases, this happens very frequently. I could give you innumerable examples of such contradictions in the being: when one part tries to take a step forward, the other one comes and demolishes everything.


The Mother: So you have to begin again all the time, and every time it is demolished. That is why you must do this work of sincerity which, when you perceive in your being a part that pulls the other way, makes you take it up carefully, educate it as one educates a child and put it in harmony with the central part. That is the work of sincerity and it is indispensable.  And naturally, when there is a unity, an agreement, a harmony among all the wills of the being, your being can become simple, candid and uniform in its action and tendencies. It is only when the whole being is grouped around a single central movement that you can be spontaneous.


The Mother: For if, within you, there  is something which is turned towards the Divine and awaits the inspiration and impulse, and at the same time there is another part of the being which seeks its own ends and works to realise its own desires, you no longer know where you stand, and you can no longer be sure of what may happen, for one part can not only undo but totally contradict what the other wants to do.  And surely, to be in harmony with what is said in, after having seen very clearly what is necessary and what ought to be done, it is recommended not to put either violence or too much zest into the realisation of this programme, for an excess of zest is detrimental to the peace and tranquillity and calm necessary for the divine Consciousness to express itself through the individual. And it comes to this: Balance is indispensable, the path that carefully avoids opposite extremes is indispensable, too much haste is dangerous, impatience prevents you from advancing; and at the same time, inertia puts a drag on your feet.  So for all things, the middle path as the Buddha called it, is the best.  (


The Mother: )  There are two other questions here which are corollaries. The ﬁrst one is this: I am speaking, of course, of difﬁculties on the path of yoga, incomprehension, limitations, things like obstacles, which prevent you from advancing. And when I say “widen yourself”, I mean widen your consciousness.  Difﬁculties always arise from the ego, that is, from your more or less egoistic personal reaction to circumstances, events and people around you, to the conditions of your life.


The Mother: They also  come from that feeling of being closed up in a sort of shell, which prevents your consciousness from uniting with higher and vaster realities.  One may very well that one wants to be vast, wants to be universal, that all is the expression of the Divine, that one must have no egoism — one may think all sorts of things — but that is not necessarily a cure, for very often one knows what one ought to do, and yet one doesn’t do it, for one reason or another.   But if, when you have to face anguish, suffering, revolt, pain or a feeling of helplessness — whatever it may be, all the things that come to you on the path and which precisely are your difﬁculties — if physically, that is to say, in your bodyconsciousness, you can have the feeling of widening yourself, one could say of unfolding yourself — you feel as it were all folded up, one fold on another like a piece of cloth which is folded and refolded and folded again — so if you have this feeling that what is holding and strangling you and making you suffer or paralysing your movement, is like a too closely, too tightly folded piece of cloth or like a parcel that is too well-tied, too well-packed, and that slowly, gradually, you undo all the folds and stretch yourself out exactly as one unfolds a piece of cloth or a sheet of paper and spreads it out ﬂat, and you lie ﬂat and make yourself very wide, as wide as possible, spreading yourself out as far as you can, opening yourself and stretching out in an attitude of complete passivity with what I could call “the face to the light”: not curling back upon your difﬁculty, doubling up on it, shutting it in, so to say, into yourself, but, on the contrary, unfurling yourself as much as you can, as perfectly as you can, putting the difﬁculty before the Light — the Light which comes from above — if you do that in all the domains, and even if mentally you don’t succeed in doing it — for it is sometimes difﬁcult — if you can imagine yourself doing this, almost materially, well, when you have ﬁnished unfolding yourself and stretching yourself out, you will ﬁnd that more than three-quarters of the difﬁculty is gone. And then just  a little work of receptivity to the Light and the last quarter will disappear.


The Mother: This is much easier than struggling against a difﬁculty with one’s thought, for if you begin to discuss with yourself, you will ﬁnd that there are arguments for and against which are so convincing that it is quite impossible to get out of it without a higher light. Here, you do not struggle against the difﬁculty, you do not try to convince yourself; ah! you simply stretch out in the Light as though you lay stretched on the sands in the sun. And you let the Light do its work. That’s all.  (


The Mother: )  And here is the other question:  Naturally that depends on each one; everyone has his special way of forgetting himself, which is the best for him. But obviously there is a fairly general method which may be applied in various forms: to occupy oneself with something else. Instead of being occupied with oneself, one may be busy with someone else or with others or some work or an interesting activity requiring concentration.


The Mother: And it is still the same thing: instead of doubling up on oneself and brooding over oneself or coddling oneself as it were, like the most precious thing in the world, if one can unfold oneself and get busy with something else, something which is not quite one’s own self, then that is the simplest and quickest way of forgetting oneself.  There are many others but this one is within everyone’s reach. So there we are, my children.  Now, if you have nothing to say about this subject or any other, we can remain silent.    ()


The Mother: It seems to me that when you begin to see things in this way, when they appear to you as they are described here, you are already close, very close to the solution.  The worst of it is that generally the whole material reality seems to be the only reality, and everything which is not that seems altogether secondary. And the “right” of that material consciousness to rule, guide, organise life, to dominate all the rest, is justiﬁed to such an extent that if someone tries to challenge this sacrosanct authority, he is considered half-mad or extremely dangerous.... It seems to me one must still go a very long way to consider material life in the way Sri Aurobindo has described it here. And I am quite convinced that if one feels it  like that, sees it like that, as he has described it, one is very, very close to the remedy.


The Mother: It is only natures, those who have already had a contact with a higher reality, with something of the divine Consciousness, who feel earthly existence in that way. And when one can become so fully conscious of all these weaknesses and stupidities of the outer consciousness, all these falsehoods of so-called material knowledge and so-called physical laws, the so-called necessities of the body, the “reality” of one’s needs; if one begins to see how very false, stupid, illusory, obscure, foolish all this is, one is truly very close to the solution.  That is the impression I had while reading this. In comparison with the ordinary atmosphere of people around me, I had the feeling that to see things in this way, one must have already climbed to a very high peak, and that one is at the gates of liberation. It is because I felt it so strongly that I wanted to tell you this.


The Mother: If you can read this passage again and be convinced of its reality and its absolute truth, well, that is already a great step.   ( )


The Mother: Hasn’t anyone any questions to ask? ... I have some here ( ), but they seem to belong almost to another world.  Somebody asked me some time ago this question: Probably one of the ﬁrst effects will be exactly to reveal things on earth in this way, as in what I have just read to you.


The Mother: And then another question, which I thought I had already answered, for I told you immediately that before the effects of the supramental manifestation become visible and tangible, perceptible to everybody, perhaps thousands of years may go  by; but still I suppose these ideas are disturbing for the human consciousness with its sense of its short duration and the kind of impatience this brings. So I have been asked: That depends on the state of consciousness from which one answers, for... For the human consciousness, obviously, I think it will take quite a long time. For another consciousness it will be relatively very fast, and for yet another consciousness, it is already accomplished.


The Mother: It is an accomplished fact. But in order to become aware of this, one must be able to enter into another state of consciousness than the ordinary physical consciousness.  Sri Aurobindo has spoken — I believe I have read it to you, I think it’s in — of the true mind, the true vital and the true physical or subtle physical, and he has said that they co-exist with the ordinary mind, vital and physical, and that in certain conditions one may enter into contact with them, and then one becomes aware of the difference between what really is and the appearances of things.  Well, for a developed consciousness, the Supermind is already realised somewhere in a domain of the subtle physical, it already exists there visible, concrete, and expresses itself in forms and activities. And when one is in tune with this domain, when one lives there, one has a very strong feeling that this world would only have to be condensed, so to say, for it to become visible to all.


The Mother: What would then be interesting would be to develop this inner perception which would put you into contact with the supramental truth which is already manifested, and is veiled for you only for want of appropriate organs to enter into relation with it.  It is possible that those who are conscious of their dreams may have dreams of a new kind which put them into contact  with that world, for it is accessible to the subtle physical of all those who have the corresponding organs in themselves. And there is necessarily a subtle inﬂuence of this physical on outer matter, if one is ready to receive impressions from it and admit them into one’s consciousness. That’s all.  Now, if nobody has any questions to ask, well, we shall remain silent.


The Mother: Something to say, over there? (.)   Oh! he is burning to speak!  After having understood, one falls back into the same old mistaken ways?...


The Mother: What a pity!  Every day! Why, more’s the pity! And so, what remedy do you propose?


The Mother: Oh! you are asking me! Why, to me it seems that when one has  things in this way, well, if one has enough sensibility, one can no longer accept them as they are. One must truly be very insensitive if, realising to what an extent all this is degrading, one continues to accept it.  Yes, this is one more thing I have noticed and one that has always astonished me.


The Mother: It has always seemed to me quite normal, easy, almost elementary to eliminate from one’s consciousness and nature things one considers to be unacceptable. The moment one knows, the moment one sees them as they are and doesn’t want them any longer, it seems to me to be quite... indeed almost childishly simple. But I have noticed that in most cases — almost  in all cases — when I tell somebody how things really are, when I give him a true picture of the condition he is in or of the nature of a movement, of what it represents, and when I express that forcefully, so that, according to me, he would immediately have the reaction which seems normal to me, and say: “Oh, if it is like that, I don’t want it any more!” and almost every time I ﬁnd myself before something which breaks down and tells me, “Oh, you are not very encouraging!” I must confess that this leaves me quite helpless. So, to see is not enough?


The Mother: To know that certain things ought not to be there, that’s not sufﬁcient? It should give you that kind of inner stimulus, a dynamic force which makes you reject the error in such a way that it can’t come back again!  But to fall back into an error which one to be an error, to make a mistake once again which one to be a mistake, this seems to me fantastic! It is a long time — well, at least relatively, by human reckoning — it is a long time I have been on earth, and I have yet not been able to understand that.


The Mother: It seems to me — it seems to me impossible. Wrong thoughts, wrong impulses, inner and outer falsehood, things which are ugly, base, so long as one does them or has them through ignorance — ignorance is there in the world — one understands, one is in the habit of doing them; it is ignorance, one does not know that it ought to be otherwise. But the moment the knowledge is there, the light is there, the moment one has seen the thing as it is, how can one do it again? That I do not understand!  Then what is one made of?


The Mother: One is made of shreds? One is made of goodness knows what, of jelly?... It can’t be explained.  But is there no incentive, no will, nothing? Is there no inner dynamism?


The Mother: Ayo, like a jellyﬁsh!  But the Grace is there, It is always there, It only asks to be allowed to help — one doesn’t let It work.    And nothing but this feeling: “Oh, I can’t!” — that’s enough to prevent It from working.


The Mother: How can you accept the idea that you can’t? You don’t know — that, yes, you may not know — but once you know, it’s ﬁnished!   Still...   You always have the right to do anything!


The Mother: ( ) You may ask all the questions you like. Practise? Fundamentally, it is up to each one to choose, isn’t it?


The Mother: — whether he wants to practise or not, whether he considers it useful or not. That is something which cannot be imposed; it must be done freely. But one may always ask questions.  Well, I am going to ask a question: “Why don’t people practise?” Do you know why they don’t practise?


The Mother: ( ) And you? And you?... Bah! Do know?


The Mother: That is one of the main reasons. And so one conceals one’s laziness behind ﬁne reasons, the ﬁrst of which says, “I can’t, I don’t know” or else, “I have tried and not succeeded” or “I don’t know where to begin!” Any reason whatever, isn’t that true? The ﬁrst that comes to you. Or else, one doesn’t practise because one doesn’t ﬁnd it worthwhile to make the effort — that is part of the laziness also, it asks for too much effort!


The Mother: But one can’t live without effort! If one were to refuse to make any effort, one would not even be able to stand on one’s legs or walk or even eat.  I believe that one doesn’t practise ﬁrst of all because this doesn’t have a sufﬁciently reality to dominate other things in life, because the effort seems out of proportion to the result. But this kind of effort is only a beginning: once one gets into it, it is no longer the same thing.  () So then, ask your question, even if you don’t practise!


The Mother: Oh, your question was only this! You wanted to say, “Is it honest to ask questions and then not do anything of what you are told?”   Is that it?  Yes.


The Mother: (A disciple)  Forced? Oh, so one doesn’t do anything when not forced to! But something done through compulsion has no value.  Is that all?


The Mother: Don’t you have a question?... I have many but they are either too speciﬁc or too general! Or else, precisely, they are only interesting for those who are eager to practise.  What would you like to hear?... ()


The Mother: Nothing, you see, you say nothing. All right, that is very good, I shall say nothing!  (A child)   (


The Mother: )   What have you not understood?   Sri Aurobindo says that the vital part, the vital being is the greatest obstacle because it is unregenerate, and that there would be a possibility of transforming it if it surrendered entirely to Love and Knowledge; but as its predominant quality is force, energy, power, it does not like to submit to other parts of the being, and this justiﬁes its refusal to submit itself, for those virtues in their essence are as high as the others. That is why it has neither the same power nor the same capacities, for it is not developed, it has not surrendered, and this is what causes the dilemma: it does not submit because it has this power, and this power cannot be utilised because it is not surrendered.


The Mother: So, how to get out of that? The vital, if it were surrendered, would be a very powerful help, extremely useful, it would make the whole process go much more rapidly. But because it feels its own power, it refuses to submit to the others; and because it does not submit, its power cannot be utilised. So, what is to be done? Sri Aurobindo states the problem — he is going to solve it afterwards; if we continue reading, after a while he will tell us  how to solve this problem — but he states it ﬁrst so that we may fully understand the situation.


The Mother: If the vital were a mediocre being without deﬁnite qualities, there would be no difﬁculty in its surrendering, but it would be altogether useless. But, on the contrary, the vital is a sort of stronghold of energy and power — of all powers. Yet generally this power is diverted; it is no longer at the service of the Divine, it is at the service of the vital itself for its own satisfaction. So, as long as it is like that, it cannot be used.  It should come to understand that this energy and power which it feels within itself cannot become useful unless it enters into perfect harmony with the divine plan of realisation on earth.


The Mother: If it understands that, it becomes quiet and allows itself to be enlisted, so to say, in the totality of the being, and then it takes on its full strength and full importance. But otherwise, it cannot be used. And usually, all its activities are activities which always complicate things and take away their simplicity, their purity, often their beauty, and their effectiveness, for its action is blind, ignorant and very egoistic.  It is a higher plane than that of the psychic being. The psychic being is, so to say, the vehicle of the Divine, it contains the Divine, is the habitation of the Divine, but the Divine is higher than it.


The Mother: For the psychic being is only an aspect of the divine manifestation.  The Supermind is far higher than the psychic being also.   What Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind is the element or the divine Principle which is now going to come into play in the universe. He calls it the Supermind because it comes after  the mind, that is to say, it is a new manifestation of the supreme divine Principle.


The Mother: And it is related to the psychic as the Divine was related to the psychic, that is to say, the psychic is the home, the temple, the vehicle, everything that must outwardly manifest the Divine. But it is divine only in its essence not in its integrality. It is a mode of outer manifestation of the Divine, outer compared with the Divine, that is, terrestrial.   Is that all?


The Mother: Nothing else?  There is a considerable number of ways.  There are intellectual ways, ways which may be called sentimental, artistic ways and spiritual ways. And generally, it is preferable for each one to take the way that is easiest for him, for if one wants to begin straight away with the most difﬁcult, one comes to nothing at all. And here we always come back to the same thing, to what Sri Aurobindo describes in : it is the way of knowledge or the way of devotion or the way of works.


The Mother: But the way of works is precisely the one which keeps you in physical life and makes you ﬁnd your liberation in it; and perhaps this is the most effective way of all but also the most difﬁcult.  For most aspirants the way of meditation, concentration, withdrawal from physical life, rejection of physical activities is certainly easier than the way of action. But they leave the physical consciousness just as it is, without ever changing it, and unless one becomes like a sadhu or an ascetic who leaves behind all active life and remains in constant concentration or meditation, one achieves nothing at all. That is to say, an entire part of the being is never transformed. And for them the solution is not at all to transform it, it is simply to reject it, to get out of their body as quickly as possible.


The Mother: That is how yoga was  conceived of formerly, for, obviously, it is much easier. But this is not what we want.  What we want is the transformation of the physical consciousness, not its rejection.  And so, in this case, what Sri Aurobindo has recommended as the most direct and most total way is surrender to the Divine — a surrender made more and more integral, progressively, comprising the physical consciousness and physical activities. And if one succeeds in this, then the physical, instead of being an obstacle, becomes a help.


The Mother: That is precisely the opposite of the method which consists in rejecting the whole of the physical consciousness and all physical events. “Look life in the face”, this means: don’t turn your back on it! It means: face life as it is instead of running away from it and call to your aid the inner psychic force — this is what Sri Aurobindo says: “the soul’s inner strength”, the inner psychic force — and with the help of this psychic consciousness rise above circumstances and master them. That is to say, instead of submitting to all that comes and suffering all its consequences, one rises above circumstances and lets them pass like things that do not touch you and do not impair your consciousness. That is what it means.


The Mother: (laughter)  To go through it. Ah!  To go through, to see what is behind it, not to stop at the  appearance, not to be satisﬁed with the outer form, to look for the principle which is behind this love, and not be content until one has found the of the feeling in oneself. Then the outer form will crumble of itself and you will be in contact with the divine Love which is behind all things.  That is the best way.


The Mother: To want to get rid of the one in order to ﬁnd the other is very difﬁcult. It is almost impossible. For human nature is so limited, so full of contradictions and so exclusive in its movements that if one wants to reject love in its lower form, that is to say, human love as human beings experience it, if one makes an inner effort to reject it, one usually rejects the entire capacity of feeling love and becomes like a stone. And then sometimes one has to wait for years or centuries before there is a reawakening in oneself of the capacity to receive and manifest love.  Therefore, the best way when love comes, in whatever form it may be, is to try and pierce through its outer appearance and ﬁnd the divine principle which is behind and which gives it existence.


The Mother: Naturally, it is full of snares and difﬁculties, but it is more effective. That is to say, instead of ceasing to love because one loves wrongly, one must cease to love wrongly and want to love well.  For instance, love between human beings, in all its forms, the love of parents for children, of children for parents, of brothers and sisters, of friends and lovers, is all tainted with ignorance, selﬁshness and all the other defects which are man’s ordinary drawbacks; so instead of completely ceasing to love — which, besides, is very difﬁcult as Sri Aurobindo says, which would simply dry up the heart and serve no end — one must learn how to love better: to love with devotion, with self-giving, selfabnegation, and to struggle, not against love itself, but against its distorted forms: against all forms of monopolising, of attachment, possessiveness, jealousy, and all the feelings which accompany these main movements. Not to want to possess, to dominate; and not to want to impose one’s will, one’s whims,  one’s desires; not to want to take, to receive, but to give; not to insist on the other’s response, but be content with one’s own love; not to seek one’s personal interest and joy and the fulﬁlment of one’s personal desire, but to be satisﬁed with the giving of one’s love and affection; and not to ask for any response. Simply to be happy to love, nothing more.  If you do that, you have taken a great stride forward and can, through this attitude, gradually advance farther in the feeling itself, and realise one day that love is not something personal, that love is a universal divine feeling which manifests through you more or less ﬁnely, but which in its essence is something divine.


The Mother: The ﬁrst step is to stop being selﬁsh. For everyone it is the same thing, not only for those who want to do yoga but also in ordinary life: if one wants to know how to love, one must not love oneself ﬁrst and above all selﬁshly; one must give oneself to the object of love without exacting anything in return. This discipline is elementary in order to surmount oneself and lead a life which is not altogether gross.  As for yoga we may add something else: it is as I said in the beginning, the will to pierce through this limited and human form of love and discover the principle of divine Love which is behind it. Then one is sure to get a result.


The Mother: This is better than drying up one’s heart. It is perhaps a little more difﬁcult but it is better in every way, for like this, instead of egoistically making others suffer, well, one may leave them quiet in their own movement and only make an effort to transform oneself without imposing one’s will on others, which even in ordinary life is a step towards something higher and a little more harmonious.   It is what makes you live, act, move.  Soul, the word for soul in French, “” comes from a word which means “to animate”. It is what gives life to the body.


The Mother: If you didn’t have it you would be inert matter, something like stones or plants, not altogether inert, but vegetative.  Some people say that without desires, that is, without this soul of desire, there would never have been any progress.... In ordinary life it is something very useful but when one decides to do yoga, to ﬁnd the Divine, it becomes a little cumbersome.  ( )


The Mother: Is that all?   When one is joyful, it means that one is open and receives the Force; when one feels nothing, it means that one is shut up.  But what makes you open or shuts you up? For each one it is different. It depends on a number of things.


The Mother: Haven’t you noticed the difference in yourself, whether it depends on outside circumstances or on something within you? No?  Yes. Ah, good!  There are many different reasons which make one feel at times more alive, more full of force and joy....


The Mother: Usually, in ordinary life, there are people who, due to their very constitution, the way they are made, are in a certain harmony with Nature, as though they breathed with the same rhythm, and these people are usually always joyful, happy; they succeed in all they do, they avoid many troubles and catastrophes, indeed they are in harmony with the rhythm of life and Nature.  And, moreover, there are days when one is in contact with the divine Consciousness which is at work, with the Grace, and then everything is tinged, coloured with this Presence, and  things which usually seem to you dull and uninteresting become charming, pleasant, attractive, instructive — everything lives and vibrates, and is full of promise and force. So, when one opens to that, one feels stronger, freer, happier, full of energy, and has a meaning. One understands why things are as they are and one participates in the general movement.


The Mother: There are other times when, for some reason or other, one is clouded or closed or down in a hole, and so one no longer feels anything and all things lose their taste, their interest, their value; one goes about like a walking block of wood.   Now, if one is able to consciously unite with one’s psychic being, one can be in this state of receptivity, inner joy, energy, progress, communion with the divine Presence. And when one is in communion with That, one sees it everywhere, in everything, and all things take on their true meaning.  On what does that depend?... On an inner rhythm.


The Mother: Perhaps a grace. In any case on a receptivity to something that is beyond you.  That means?...  One can’t say.  In principle it is like that, but in fact, the more the individuality is formed, the stronger is this false soul of desire.


The Mother: Those who have a well-formed, well-coordinated individuality, which has an existence of its own, with a minimum of dependence on the environment, have much more difﬁculty in coming into contact with the divine Presence than others, because they have a very coordinated, very organised separate existence, which is usually self-sufﬁcient. One always ﬁnds it much more difﬁcult to convert, we might say, a very living, fully realised personality than someone, for instance, who is full of goodwill but still open to all sorts of inﬂuences. When an individual is very strongly made and has the sense of his own personality, his own existence, it is much more difﬁcult for him to think that he is nothing but an instrument of the divine Force, than for somebody who feels a little nebulous, like this () not very precise, who has no exact limits, no well-built individuality; he understands more easily that in himself he is nothing and that it is a force other than his own which makes him act. So you cannot say that a  well-developed soul has less difﬁculties. It depends on the case.


The Mother: What you mean, I think, is that if you are in contact with your soul — the true one — it is relatively easy to get rid of the soul of desire. But that is a different situation. You must ﬁrst have found your psychic being and identiﬁed yourself with it; and then, later, you may turn to the soul of desire and convince it of its stupidity.   (


The Mother: )  () Do you have anything to ask?  What is meant by a personal contact? To see me, speak to me, what? Individually, collectively, how?


The Mother: Oh! () to have interviews?  You may answer that it depends on the use one makes of them.  It is very difﬁcult to answer, for it is a purely personal question. It depends on the moment, depends on the state one is in, and above all, as I say, it depends on whether one knows how to use this contact properly.  Don’t you see, if one is inwardly open, if one is receptive, one receives right down into the subtle physical all that is necessary for one’s integral progress.


The Mother: And in the order of things, the outer contact should come only as a crowning and an aid so that the body — the material physical consciousness and the body — may be able to follow the movement of the inner being.   But if you believe that this contact is going to replace the inner receptivity, you are mistaken, it is not much use. For example, people who are quite closed up, who receive nothing within, who have no opening to the forces and who imagine that because they are going to spend half an hour or an hour sitting in front of me and chatting, this is going to help them to transform themselves, they make a gross mistake. But if they are inwardly open, if they are in contact with the Force and make an effort to transform themselves, then, at a particular moment, perhaps a conversation or a material contact, a presence, may help them to make a more integral progress.  One may very easily live in close proximity, in one’s daily life be apparently very near, and get nothing at all out of it, at least in the active consciousness.


The Mother: Perhaps there is a very slow and deep action which goes on... but it seems to me that it would go on in any case. And if, while by my side for some reason or other the thought is elsewhere, the desires elsewhere, the preoccupations elsewhere, it is absolutely useless, it leads to nothing.  The important point is to establish the inner contact; this is really the important point. Then in certain cases — perhaps not very often, it depends on each one — but in certain cases, the presence adds something, gives a more concrete, more precise realisation.


The Mother: But if there is nothing within, it is altogether useless.  So one cannot make a general rule, it depends on each one, on the state he is in.  ( )  You see, the general mistake is to believe that one must begin from outside and reach within.


The Mother: It is not like that. One must begin within and reach outside afterwards, when one is ready within.   That is perhaps so that you can get rid of them.  If they come, one can offer them and ask to be rid of them.  That perhaps is the reason, it is because the Consciousness acts for puriﬁcation.


The Mother: It is no use at all hiding things and pushing them behind, like this, and imagining they are not there because one has put a veil in front. It is much better to see oneself as one is — provided one is ready to give up this way of being. If you come allowing all the bad movements to rise to the surface, to show themselves; if you offer them, if you say, “Well, this is how I am”, and if at the same time you have the aspiration to be different, then this second of presence is extremely useful; you can, yes, in a few seconds receive the help you need to get rid of them; while if you come like a little saint and go away content, without having received anything, it is not very useful.  Automatically the Consciousness acts like that, it is like the ray that brings light where there wasn’t any. Only, what is needed is to be in a state where one to give up the thing, to get rid of it — not to cling to it and keep it.


The Mother: If one sincerely wants to pull it out of oneself, make it disappear, then it is very useful.  ( )  Indeed, I could ask a question myself: Why — I don’t know if it is common, but still — why, when you come to me, do you want to have good thoughts and be at your best? For what reason?


The Mother: (Laughter)  If you want to keep them, yes, it is very ugly, but if you want to get rid of them!... It is perhaps a chance to get rid of them. It is surely even an opportunity to get rid of them, because before  me they appear exactly as they are; while far from me they are coloured with all sorts of brilliant and false lights, so that you take them for what they are not.


The Mother: If the movement is nasty and you see it in my atmosphere, it appears as it is. Then that is the time to get rid of it.  ( )  To give the best one has is very ﬁne and is much appreciated; but to give the worst one has is much more useful; and perhaps this offering is even more appreciated — on condition that it is given in order to get rid of it, not to take it back afterwards!


The Mother: I have a whole ﬂood of questions here! But before beginning to answer them, I am going to explain something to you.  You must have noticed on several occasions that my way of talking to you is not always the same. I don’t know if you are very sensitive to the difference, but for me it is quite considerable.... Sometimes, either because of something I have read or for quite another reason — following a question sometimes, but pretty rarely — it so happens that I have what is usually called an experience, but in fact it is simply entering into a certain state of consciousness and, once in that state of consciousness, describing it.


The Mother: In that case what is said passes through the mind, making use of it only as a “storehouse of words”, it could be said; the Force, the Consciousness which is expressing itself passes through the individual mind and attracts by a kind of afﬁnity the words needed for its expression. That is the true teaching, something one rarely ﬁnds in books — it may be in books, but one must be in that state of consciousness oneself to be able to discover it. But with the spoken word, the vibration of the sound transmits something at least of the experience, which, for all those who are sensitive, can become contagious.  In the second case, the question asked or the subject chosen is conveyed by the mind to the higher Consciousness, then the mind receives a reply and transmits it again through the word.  This is what usually happens in all teachings, provided that the person who teaches has the ability to pass on the question to the higher Consciousness, which is not always the case.


The Mother: I must say the second method does not interest me very much, and that very often when the question or the subject dealt with does not give me the possibility of entering into an interesting state of consciousness, I would inﬁnitely prefer to keep silent than to speak; it is a sort of duty to be fulﬁlled which  makes me speak. I am just telling you beforehand, for it has often happened that I have cut short our conversation — if it could be called a conversation — and abruptly passed on to meditation; it was in cases like this. But still, someone has happened to ask me to explain this difference and so I am speaking to you about it this evening.  ( )


The Mother: Apart from that, I have yet some other questions of a practical nature, and in connection with these questions I saw something I am going to tell you about — oh! it was not a vision with images, don’t expect something very entertaining. No, it is not that.... I was asked — I am rewording it, this is not the exact text of the question: I have been asked to give practical examples; I don’t quite know what that may mean, but anyway, here is what I saw in a sort of mathematical mood — though the language of mathematics is rather foreign to me — but I may call this a mathematical vein, that is to say, a mathematical way of looking at the problem.  I think all of you have studied enough mathematics to know the complexity of the combinations which may be produced by taking certain select elements of a set as a basis.


The Mother: I shall give you an example to make myself clear, for I can’t use the terms which are employed in teaching you. For instance, the letters of the alphabet. There is a certain number of letters in the alphabet; well, if you want to calculate or know the number of combinations possible by taking all these letters together — how they may be organised, in how many ways they can be organised —  you have learnt how very fantastic the ﬁgure becomes.... Good.  But


The Mother: if you take the material world and go down to the most minute element — you know, don’t you, that they have come to absolutely invisible things, innumerable things — if you take this element as the basis and the material world as the whole, and if you imagine a Consciousness or a Will playing with all these elements at making all the possible combinations without ever repeating a single one.... Obviously... In mathematics you are told that the number of elements is ﬁnite and that therefore the number of combinations is ﬁnite; but that is purely theoretical, for if you come down to practice and all these combinations had to follow each other, even if they went at so great a speed that the change would be almost imperceptible, it is quite obvious that the time needed to make all these combinations would be, apparently at least, inﬁnite; that is to say, the number of combinations would be so immense that no limit could be assigned to it — at least no practical limit; the theory is not interesting for us, but practically it would be like that.  So suppose that what I tell you is true, in this sense that there really is a Consciousness and a Will manifesting these combinations, successively, indeﬁnitely, without ever repeating a single one twice; we come to the conclusion that the universe is new at each moment of eternity. And if the universe is new at each moment of eternity, we have to acknowledge that absolutely nothing is impossible; not only that, but that what we call logic is not necessarily true, and that the logic, one could almost say the fantasy of the Creator, is unlimited.


The Mother: Therefore, if for one reason or other — which might perhaps be difﬁcult to express — if for some reason a combination were not followed by the one nearest to it but by another freely chosen by the Supreme Freedom, all our external certitudes and all our external logic would instantly break down.  For the problem is much more complicated than you think: it is not only on one plane, in one ﬁeld, that is to say, what may be called a surface of things, that there is this practically inﬁnite  number of elements permitting of eternally new combinations, there is besides what may be called a depth, that is to say, other dimensions. And the Creation is the result not only of surface combinations but of combinations of depths below this surface — what in other terms are called “psychological factors”. But I am at the moment taking a purely mathematical stand, although I don’t speak the language of mathematics, but still it is a mathematical conception. And so here we come to the problem: Every time a new element is introduced into the total set of possible combinations, it causes what may be called a tearing of its limits: the introduction of something which makes all past limits disappear and new possibilities come in and multiply inﬁnitely the possibilities of old.


The Mother: So, you had a world which, according to the ancient knowledge, had twelve depths or twelve — how to put it? — successive dimensions; and into this world of twelve dimensions, suddenly new dimensions are precipitated; then all the old formulas are instantly transformed and the whole possibility of the old unfolding becomes... one can’t say increased but supplemented by an almost inﬁnite number of new possibilities, and all this in such a way that all the previous logic becomes illogical in the presence of the new logic.  I am not speaking at all of what the human mind has made of the universe, for that is to reduce it to its own dimension; I am speaking of the fact just as it is, of a total set of combinations which are realised successively, in accordance with an order and a choice which, obviously, completely elude the human consciousness, but to which man has to some extent adapted himself and which, with a great effort of study such as humanity has pursued down the centuries, he has succeeded in formulating well enough to be able to hook himself on to something tangible.... It is obvious that modern scientiﬁc perception is much nearer to something corresponding to the universal reality than were the perceptions of the Stone Age, for instance — this without the shadow of a doubt. But even this is going to be suddenly completely overpassed, exceeded, and probably  turned quite topsy-turvy by the intrusion of something which was not in the universe which was studied.  Well, it is from this change, this sudden transformation of the universal element which quite certainly is going to bring about a kind of chaos in the perceptions, that a new knowledge will emerge.


The Mother: This, in the most general way, is the result of the new manifestation.  From an altogether restricted, external and limited point of view, I shall now speak to you of certain things which don’t belong to my own experience but which I have heard about; for instance, that there is a greater number of what are called “child prodigies”. I haven’t met any, so I can’t tell you what is truly prodigious about these children, but still, according to the stories that are related, there are obviously some kind of new types which seem astonishing to the ordinary human consciousness. It is examples of this kind, I believe, that we would like to know in order to understand what is happening.... But it is possible, in fact, that things are happening now which we are not used to watching.


The Mother: But it is a question of interpretation. The only thing I am sure of is what I have just told you, that the quality, the number and the nature of the possible combinations in the universe are suddenly going to change so considerably that it will probably be quite bewildering for all those who do research.  Now, we shall see.   (


The Mother: )   I could perhaps add a practical word to what I have just told you; it is only an illustration of a detail, but it will be an indirect answer to other questions which were asked some time ago about the so-called laws of Nature, causes and effects, “inevitable” consequences in the material ﬁeld, and more particularly from the point of view of health; for example, that if one doesn’t take certain precautions, if one doesn’t eat as one should, doesn’t follow certain rules, necessarily there are consequences.   It is true. But if this is seen in the light of what I have just said, that no two universal combinations are alike


The Mother: , how can laws be established and what is the absolute truth of these laws?... It does not exist.   For, if you are logical, of course with a little higher logic, since no two things, two combinations, two universal manifestations are ever the same, how can anything repeat itself? It can only be an appearance but is not a fact.