The Mother: And it is not quite certain that life will not be made still more impossible because one feels incapable of emerging from the chaos — the chaos of complications — in which humanity has put itself. It is like the shadow — but unfortunately a very active shadow — of the new hope which has sprung up in the human consciousness, a hope and a need for something more harmonious; and the need becomes so much more acute as life, as it is at present organised, becomes more and more contrary to it. The two opposites are facing each other with such intensity that one can expect something like an explosion....  ()  This is the condition of the earth, and it is not very bright. But for us one possibility remains — I have spoken about it to you several times already — even if, outside, things are deteriorating completely and the catastrophe cannot possibly be avoided, there remains for us, I mean those for whom the supramental life is not a vain dream, those who have faith in its reality and the aspiration to realise it — I don’t necessarily mean those who have gathered here in Pondicherry, in the Ashram, but those who have as a link between them the knowledge Sri Aurobindo has given and the will to live according to that knowledge — there remains for them the possibility of intensifying their aspiration, their will, their effort, to gather their energies together and shorten the time for the realisation.


The Mother: There remains for them the possibility of working this miracle — individually and to a small extent collectively — of conquering space, duration, the time needed for this realisation; of replacing time by intensity of effort and going fast enough and far enough in the realisation to liberate themselves from the consequences of the present condition of the world; of making such a concentration of force, strength, light, truth, that by this very realisation they can be above these consequences and secure against them, enjoy the protection bestowed by the Light and Truth, by Purity — the divine Purity through the inner transformation — and that the storm may pass over the world without being able to destroy this great hope of the near future; that the tempest may not sweep away this beginning of realisation.  Instead of falling asleep in an easy quietude and letting things happen according to their own rhythm, if one strains to the utmost one’s will, ardour, aspiration and springs up into the light, then one can hold one’s head higher; one can have, in a higher region of consciousness, enough room to live, to breathe, to grow and develop above the passing cyclone.  This is possible. In a very small way, this was already done  during the last war, when Sri Aurobindo was here. It can be done again.


The Mother: But one must want it and each one must do his own work as sincerely and completely as he can.   This evening, instead of answering questions, I would like us to meditate on the remembrance of Sri Aurobindo, on the way to keep it alive in us and on the gratitude we owe him for all that he has done and is still doing in his ever luminous, living and active consciousness for this great realisation which he came not only to announce to the Earth but also to realise, and which he continues to realise.  Tomorrow is the anniversary of his birth, an eternal birth in the history of the universe.   Are you referring to all the activities of the Ashram or only to sports?... All the activities of the Ashram?


The Mother: ( ) It is something rather complicated. I shall try to explain it.


The Mother: For a very long time the Ashram was only a gathering of individuals, each one representing something, but as an individual and without any collective organisation. They were like separate pawns on a chess-board — united only in appearance — or rather by the purely superﬁcial fact of living together in the same place and having a few habits in common — not even very many, only a few. Each one progressed — or didn’t progress — according to his own capacity and with a minimum of relations with others. So, in accordance with the value of the individuals constituting this odd assemblage, one could say that there was a general value, but a very nebulous one, with no collective reality.  This lasted a very long time — very long.


The Mother: And it is only quite recently that the need for a collective reality began to appear — which is not necessarily limited to the Ashram but embraces all who have declared themselves — I don’t mean materially but in their consciousness — to be disciples of Sri Aurobindo and have tried to live his teaching. Among all of them, and more strongly since the manifestation of the supramental Consciousness and Force, there has awakened the necessity for a true communal life,  which would not be based only on purely material circumstances but would represent a deeper truth, and be the beginning of what Sri Aurobindo calls a supramental or gnostic community.... He has said, of course, that, for this, the individuals constituting this collectivity should themselves have this supramental consciousness; but even without attaining an individual perfection — even while very far from it — there was at the same time an inner effort to create this “collective individuality”, so to speak.  The need for a real union, a deeper bond has been felt and the effort has been directed towards that realisation.  This has caused some... disturbance, for the tendency was formerly so individualistic that certain habits have been upset, I don’t mean materially, for things are not very different from what they were, but in a somewhat deeper consciousness.


The Mother: that is the point I want to emphasise — this has created a certain inner interdependence which has naturally lowered the individual level — a little — except for those who had already attained an inner realisation strong enough to be able to resist this movement of what I might call “levelling”. And this is what gives the impression that the general level has fallen, which is not correct. The general level is on a higher plane than it formerly was, but the individual level has dropped in many cases, and individuals who were capable of one realisation or another have felt, without understanding why, weighed down by a load they did not have to carry before, which is the result of this interdependence. It is just a temporary effect which, on the other hand, will lead to an improvement, a very tangible general progress.  Of course, if each individual was conscious, if instead of yielding to this kind of levelling effect, he resisted it in order to transform, transmute, uplift the elements, inﬂuences, currents he receives from the group, then the would rise up into a higher consciousness far ahead of where it was before.


The Mother: This is what I was aiming at — without explaining the thing to you in detail — when I spoke to you of a more and more  urgent need to make an effort, and I intended, in fact, to explain to you one day that the effort you could make individually, instead of being for only an individual progress, will spread, so to say, or have very important collective results. But I said nothing because for months I wanted to prepare the individual consciousness to admit, I might say, even perhaps to recognise, this necessity for a collective individuality. This is what must be explained now. There is no other reason for this kind of apparent fall which, in fact, is not one. It is the spiral movement of progress which makes it necessary to move away from a certain realisation in order to make it not only vaster but also higher.


The Mother: If every one collaborates consciously and with goodwill, it will go much faster.  It was an imperative necessity if one wanted this Ashram life to be viable. Everything that does not progress necessarily declines and perishes, and for the Ashram to last it had to make progress in its consciousness and become a living entity. There.  We are rather far away in the spiral from the line of realisation we had some years ago, but we shall come back to it on a higher level.


The Mother: So that is the answer.  There may appear to be movements which seem to contradict what I have just told you, but that... it is always like that, for every time one wants to realise something, the ﬁrst difﬁculty one meets is the opposition of all that was inactive before and now rises up to resist. All that does not want to accept this change naturally wakes up and revolts. But that is of no importance.


The Mother: It is the same thing as in the individual being: when you want to progress, the difﬁculty you want to conquer immediately increases tenfold in importance and intensity in your consciousness. There is but to persevere, that’s all. It will pass.    [  ] It is the same thing.


The Mother: But when you look at an object on a certain plane, you see it horizontally, and when you look at the same object from another plane, you see it vertically. ( ) So, if one looks from above, one says “intended”; if one looks from below, one says “possible”.... But it is absolutely the same thing, only the point of view is different.  We have already said this many a time.


The Mother: If you remain in a consciousness which functions mentally, even if it is the highest mind, you have the notion of an absolute determinism of cause and effect and feel that things are what they are because they are what they are and cannot be otherwise.  It is only when you come out of the mental consciousness completely and enter a higher perception of things — which you may call spiritual or divine — that you suddenly ﬁnd yourself in  a state of freedom where is possible.  ( ) Those who have contacted that state or lived in it, even if only for a moment, try to describe it as a feeling of an absolute Will in action, which immediately gives to the human mentality the feeling of being arbitrary. And because of that distortion there arises the idea — which I might call traditional — of a supreme and arbitrary God, which is something most to every enlightened mind.


The Mother: I suppose that this experience badly expressed is at the origin of this notion. And in fact it is incorrect to express it as an absolute Will: it is very, very, very different. It is something else altogether. For, what man understands by “Will” is a decision that is taken and carried out. We are obliged to use the word “will”, but in its truth the Will acting in the universe is neither a choice nor a decision that is taken.


The Mother: What seems to me the closest expression is “vision”. Things are because they are   But of course “seen”, not seen as we see with these eyes.  (...) All the same, it is the nearest thing.  It is a vision — a vision unfolding itself.


The Mother: The universe becomes objective as it is progressively seen.  And that is why Sri Aurobindo has said “intended or possible”. It is neither one nor the other. All that can be said is a distortion.  (


The Mother: )  Objectivisation — universal objectivisation — is something like a projection in space and time, like a living image of what from all eternity. And as the image is gradually projected on the screen of time and space, it becomes objective: The Supreme contemplating His own Image.   Today I received a question about a phrase I used on the fourteenth of August, the eve of Sri Aurobindo’s birthday. And this question seemed interesting to me because it was about one of those rather cryptic phrases, that are almost ambiguous through simpliﬁcation, and which was intended to be like that, so that each one might understand it according to his own plane of consciousness.


The Mother: I have already spoken to you several times of this possibility of understanding the same words on different planes; and these words were intentionally expressed with a simpliﬁcation, a deliberate vagueness, precisely so that they would serve as a vehicle for the complexity of meaning they had to express.  This meaning is a little different on the different planes, but it is complementary, and it is only really complete when one is able to understand it on all these planes at once. True understanding is a simultaneous understanding in which all the meanings are perceived, grasped, understood at the same time; but to express them, as we have a very poor language at our disposal, we are obliged to say them one after another, with many words and many explanations.... That’s what I am going to do now.  The question is about the phrase in which I spoke of the birth of Sri Aurobindo — it was on the eve of his birthday — and I called it an “eternal birth”.


The Mother: I am asked what I meant by “eternal”.  Of course, if the words are taken literally, an “eternal birth” doesn’t signify much. But I am going to explain to you how there can be — and in fact is — a physical explanation or understanding, a mental understanding, a psychic understanding and a spiritual understanding.   Physically, it means that the consequences of this birth will last as long as the Earth.


The Mother: The consequences of Sri Aurobindo’s  birth will be felt throughout the entire existence of the Earth.  And so I called it “eternal”, a little poetically.  Mentally, it is a birth the memory of which will last eternally.  Through the ages Sri Aurobindo’s birth will be remembered, with all the consequences it has had.  Psychically, it is a birth which will recur eternally, from age to age, in the history of the universe.


The Mother: This birth is a manifestation which takes place periodically, from age to age, in the history of the Earth. That is, the birth itself is renewed, repeated, reproduced, bringing every time perhaps something more — something more complete and more perfect — but it is the same movement of descent, of manifestation, of birth in an earthly body.  And ﬁnally, from the purely spiritual point of view, it could be said that it is the birth of the Eternal on Earth. For each time the Avatar takes a physical form it is the birth of the Eternal himself on Earth.


The Mother: All that, contained in two words: “eternal birth”.  So, to conclude, I advise you, in future, before telling yourself: “Why! What does this mean? I don’t understand it at all; perhaps it is not expressed properly,” you could say to yourself: “Perhaps I am not on the plane where I would be able to understand”, and try to ﬁnd behind the words something more than mere words. There.


The Mother: I think this will be a good subject for our meditation.  ()   Usually this is based on vital afﬁnities, nothing else. There are vital vibrations which harmonise and vital vibrations which don’t.  It is usually this, nothing else.


The Mother: It is vital chemistry.  One would have to be in a much deeper and more clearsighted consciousness for it to be otherwise. There is an inner perception based on a psychic consciousness, which makes you feel which people have the same aspiration, the same aim, and can be your companions on the way; and this perception also makes you clear-sighted about those who follow a very different way or carry in them forces which are hostile to you and may harm you in your development. But to attain such a perception one must oneself be exclusively occupied with one’s own spiritual progress and integral realisation. Now, that is not often the case.


The Mother: And usually too, when one has attained this inner clearsightedness, it is not expressed by attraction and repulsion, but by a very “objective” knowledge, it might be said, and a kind of inner certainty which makes you act calmly and reasonably, and without attractions and repulsions.  Therefore, it may be said in a general and almost absolute way that those who have very deﬁnite and impulsive likes and dislikes live in a vital consciousness. Mixed with this, there may be mental afﬁnities; that is, some minds like to have relationships in common activities, but here too, these are people on a much higher level intellectually, and this is also expressed even more by a comparative ease in relationships and by something much more calm and detached. One takes pleasure in speaking with certain people, for others there is no attraction, one gains nothing from it. It is a little more distant and quiet; it belongs more to the  ﬁeld of reason.


The Mother: But likes and dislikes clearly belong to the vital world. Well, there is a vital chemistry just as there is physical chemistry: there are bodies which repel each other and others which attract; there are substances which combine and others which explode, and it is like that. There are some vital vibrations which harmonise, and harmonise to such an extent that ninetynine times out of a hundred these sympathies are taken for what men call love, and suddenly people feel, “Oh! He is the one I was waiting for”, “Oh! She is the one I was seeking!” (), and they rush towards each other, till they ﬁnd out that it was something very superﬁcial and that these things can’t last. There.


The Mother: So the ﬁrst advice given to those who want to do yoga: “Rise above likes and dislikes.” This is something without any deeper reality and it can at the very least lead you into difﬁculties which are at times quite hard to overcome. You can ruin your life with these things. And the best thing is not to take any notice of them — to draw back a little into yourself and ask yourself why — it’s nothing very mysterious — you like to meet this person, don’t like to meet that one.  But, as I say, there comes a moment when one is exclusively occupied with one’s sadhana, when one can feel — but both more subtly and much more quietly — that a particular contact is favourable to sadhana and another harmful.


The Mother: But that always takes a much more “detached” form, so to say, and often it even contradicts the so-called attractions and repulsions of the vital; very often it has nothing to do with them.  So, the best thing is to look at all that from a little distance and to lecture yourself a little on the futility of these things.  Obviously there are some natures which are almost fundamentally bad, beings who are born wicked and love to do harm; and logically, if one is quite natural, not perverted, natural as animals are — for from this point of view they are far superior to men; perversion begins with humanity — then one keeps out of the way, as one would stand aside from something fundamentally harmful. But happily these cases are not very  frequent; what one meets in life are usually very mixed natures where there is a kind of balance, so to say, between the good and the bad, and one may expect to have both good and bad relations. There is no reason to feel any deep dislike, for, as one is quite mixed oneself (), like meets like!


The Mother: It is also said that some people are like vampires, and when they come near a person they spontaneously suck up his vitality and energy, and that one should beware of them as of a very serious danger. But that also... Not that it doesn’t exist, but it is not very frequent, and certainly not so total that one need run away when one meets such a person.  So, essentially, if one wants to develop spiritually, the ﬁrst thing to do is to overcome one’s dislikes... and one’s likes. Look at all that with a smile.


The Mother: ()   Do you know it? Do you?  You know this because you have read Sri Aurobindo’s books!  But take any man in the street and ask him what the intention of the universe and the evolution is; you will see what reply he gives you!


The Mother: That he knows nothing about it. Naturally, those who have read and studied Sri Aurobindo’s books at least think they know something about it. When Sri Aurobindo wrote this, he wrote it quite obviously for people who were not interested in yoga and had not read his books. He wrote it for people who were concerned with physical education, so he put himself in their place, expressed their ideas and tried to lead them a little farther. He took the standpoint of those who had never read his books.


The Mother: But you said “it is self-evident.” There are many people here — several hundred — if you ask them individually, not to repeat to you what they have read, but what they themselves feel and think about the intention of universal evolution and whether there is any intention in the universal evolution... I don’t think there would be many who could tell you in all sincerity: “It is like this, it is like that, it is this.... It is obviously that.” Some of them could quote passages from Sri Aurobindo, but otherwise...


The Mother: If you yourself stop thinking, if you stop thinking with the help of what you have read, and try to express your personal experience, have you any certainty?  I am not speaking, you see, of the result of what you have read or learnt or all that; I am speaking of the result of your personal experience, your own, something that’s evident to you  because it is your own life, it is your own experience — are you capable of describing it?    Yes!


The Mother: Well, I congratulate you.  Well, very good. I hope there are many more like you, that’s all.  Yes, that’s good, that’s good — it is very good.  So I can tell you that you have not wasted your time since you have been here!


The Mother: ( )  Well, we are going to look at this within ourselves.   (


The Mother: )   Why particularly occultism?  Why occultism? There is a place for everything in the supramental life.  Does this interest you specially?


The Mother: What do you understand by occultism?  And so — I don’t quite understand. In the supermind one will no longer have any knowledge, or what?  Already.... But then it will be an occult knowledge!


The Mother: I don’t quite understand. Occultism is a special way of dealing with things. In  Sri Aurobindo has explained this in great detail.  It is a special approach to knowledge and action, and there is no reason why it should disappear or why....   Oh, you think one learns occultism as one learns to play the piano!


The Mother: ( ) But it is not quite like that, anyway, that things happen. In fact, those who have no special aptitude could read all the books on occultism in the world and never know how to practise it. It needs a special capacity.


The Mother: It is true that you may also read all the books in the world on how to play the piano — if you do not play, you will never know how to play. But there are born musicians, born artists, and there are people who may work at it all their lives and never come to anything at all. It is the same thing with occultism. If you mean that when one becomes a supramental being, one will have the gift of doing everything, very well, but that doesn’t imply that the gift is spontaneous. It is possible that you might have to concentrate on the subject and then learn your work.


The Mother: And it is also possible that one may be potentially capable of doing everything but it is not necessary that one has to do everything! There will be differences and classiﬁcations all the same, and special functions according to people and their individual tastes. I don’t see why you should deprive the supramental world particularly of occult activity more than of any other.  How do you conceive of the supramental life? As a paradise in which everyone will do the same thing in the same way?...


The Mother: The old conception of paradise where everybody became an angel playing the harp? It is not quite like that! All the differences will be there, all differentiations and different activities, but instead of acting in the ordinary human ignorance, one will act with knowledge, that’s all; that is what will make the difference.  Capacities?... You take occultism in the sense of the power to  act on life and things, as a process; but that is not occultism, that is magic.


The Mother: Occultism is a special use of the consciousness, that’s all.  That is, at the moment, as it is practised by human beings, it is a direct and conscious perception of the forces behind appearances and the play of these forces, and because one has the direct perception of them, one has the power to act on them, and one makes some higher will intervene in the play of these forces in order to obtain a required result.  Spontaneously!... But everybody practises occultism without knowing that he does.


The Mother: Everybody has this power spontaneously but doesn’t know he has it. It may be a very slight one, like a pin-head; it may be as vast as the Earth or even the universe. But you cannot live without practising occultism, only you don’t know it. So the only difference you can make is that when one has the supramental consciousness one will know it. That is all.


The Mother: So, your question automatically vanishes.  When you think — I have explained this to you I don’t know how many times — when you think, you are practising occultism. Only, you don’t know it. When you are thinking of someone, some part of you is automatically in contact with this person, and if to your thought is added a will that this person may be like this or like that or do this or that or understand this or that — whatever it may be — well, you are practising occultism, only you don’t know it....


The Mother: There are people who do this with power, and when they have a strong thought it manifests and is realised. There are people in whom it is very feeble and they do not obtain many results. It depends on the power of your thought and also on your power of concentration.  But this kind of occultism everybody practises without even knowing it. So the difference from someone who really practises  occultism is that he knows he is doing it and perhaps how he does it.


The Mother: But why this in particular? That is what I don’t understand!  Why particularly occultism?  Yes.  No, this is all very well, but do you believe that in the supramental life there will no longer be any classiﬁcation of activities, or what?


The Mother: That everything will be mixed up in a general spontaneous capacity?  There will always be different ways of dealing with things.   Perhaps the occult will be more common, but if you imagine a world where everyone has equally the same occult power, there will no longer be any difference. You understand?


The Mother: There are people who have the occult power and act on those who haven’t, but if everyone has it equally it will no longer be occultism!... Is that what you meant?    Ah!... Well, I am convinced that even in the most perfect supramental realisation there will be a differentiation between the capacities and functions of each one; but instead of being or not being in one’s right place, of doing or not doing what one ought to do, unconsciously, one will be in one’s right place — I hope always in one’s place — and will always do what one ought to do, consciously.


The Mother: That is, instead of always trying to know and groping in the dark, one will know what one ought to do and do it well. But that is the whole difference. Differentiations will be there, each one will have his own role, his own place, each one will have his own activity. Don’t think that everybody will begin to look alike and do the same thing in the same way! That would be a terrible world.


The Mother: We could say that the difference between the supramental world and our present world will be this: what you don’t know, you will know, what you can’t do, you will be able to do, and what you don’t understand, you will understand, and of what you are unconscious, you will become conscious. But fundamentally this is the basis of the new creation: to replace ignorance by knowledge and unconsciousness by consciousness, and weakness by strength. But this does not necessarily mean that everything is going to be so mixed up that it is scarcely recognisable!  ( )


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo has told us that in the Supermind itself there are different planes of realisation and that these planes will manifest successively, with the same progressive movement that has always presided over the universal development. And simply because, till today, it is a world that is closed to the greater part of mankind or hardly half-open to some, it is difﬁcult to conceive of this progress in the supramental life, but it will exist;  and the moment there is progress, there is ascension, and there is a perfection which develops according to a law of its own, which is gradually unveiled to the consciousness — to a fully illumined consciousness — and works in the truth instead of working in ignorance.... This something which is not there completely, totally, all at once — it could almost be said massively — in the Manifestation but is progressive, will follow the same law of development as that of the world we live in now, but instead of not knowing where we are going, well, we shall know the way and follow it consciously. Instead of standing there imagining or guessing or speculating about what ought to be, we shall see where we are going and know how to go there.  That will be the essential difference.


The Mother: Certainly it will not be a dull existence in which everything goes on indeﬁnitely without changing.  I believe there is always a tendency in the human consciousness to want to get somewhere, to sit down and feel it is at last all over: “We have arrived, we settle down and don’t move any more!” That would be a poor type of Supermind.  But this ascending, progressive movement towards a growing perfection will be still more prominent, certainly, and instead of unfolding itself in the darkness where everybody is blind and gropes along, it will unfold in the light and one will have the joy of knowing where one is going and what one is doing. That’s all.


The Mother: So one must not come and ask, “Will this be there?” or “Won’t that be there?” There will be many more things still than we have now. Every possible thing will be there.   This was certainly what he expected of us, what he conceived of as the superman who must be the intermediate being between humanity as it is and the supramental being in the supramental way, that is, no longer belonging to animality at all and delivered from all animal needs.  As we are, we have been created in the ordinary animal way, and therefore, even if we transform ourselves, there will remain something of this animal origin.


The Mother: The supramental being as he conceived of it, is not formed in the ordinary animal way but directly, through a process that for the moment still seems occult to us, but is a direct handling of forces and substance in  such a way that the body can be a “materialisation” and not a formation according to the ordinary animal principle.  It is quite obvious that intermediate beings are necessary, that it is these intermediate beings who must ﬁnd the means of creating beings of the supermind, and, undoubtedly, when Sri Aurobindo wrote this he was convinced that this is what we must do.  I think — I know — that it is now certain that we shall realise what he expects of us. It has become no longer a hope but a certainty. Only the time necessary for this realisation will be longer or shorter according to our individual effort, our concentration, our goodwill... and the we give to this fact.


The Mother: For the inattentive observer things may appear very much what they were before, but for one who knows how to see and is not deceived by appearances things are going well.  Let each one do his best and perhaps not many years will have to elapse before the ﬁrst visible results become apparent to all.  It is for you to know whether this interests you more than everything else in the world.... There comes a moment when the body itself ﬁnds that there is which is so worth living for as this transformation; that there is nothing which can have as great an interest as this passionate interest of transformation. It is as though all the cells of the body were athirst for that Light which wants to manifest; they cry out for it, they ﬁnd an intense joy in it and are of the Victory.


The Mother: This is the aspiration that I am trying to communicate to you, and you will understand that everything else in life is dull, insipid, futile, worthless in comparison with that: the transformation in the Light.     And so? What is it you don’t understand?  This is an image.


The Mother: It is somewhat like this. In the supramental vision one has a direct and total and immediate knowledge of things, in the sense that one sees everything at the same time, complete in itself, total. The truth of a thing in all its aspects at the same time and... simultaneous, complete. And as soon as one wants to explain that or to describe it, one is obliged to come down, so to say, to a plane which he calls here “the Mind of Light”, where things have to be said or even thought or expressed one after another, in a certain order and a certain relation with one another; the simultaneity disappears, for in the present state of our mode of expression, to say everything at the same time, all at once, is impossible, and we are compelled to veil one part of what we see or know in order to bring it out one thing after another; and this is what he calls the “veil”, which is transparent, for one sees everything, knows everything at the same time; one has the total knowledge of a thing, but one cannot express it fully all at once. There are no words or any possibility of expression, so long as we are what we are.


The Mother: We must necessarily make use of an inferior process to express ourselves, and yet, at the same time we have the full knowledge; it is only the necessity of transmitting his knowledge in words which compels us to veil, so to say, a part of what we know and to let it come out only successively. But it is a transparent veil, for we know the thing — we know it, see it, understand it in its totality — but we cannot express it all at the same time. We have to say it, one thing after another, successively.  It is the veil of the expression adapted to our needs both of utterance and understanding. The knowledge is there, it is there in reality — not that one is searching for it and expressing it as one goes on ﬁnding it — it is there in its totality but the  expression demands that one says it one thing after another; and so this naturally diminishes the omnipotence of which he speaks, for omnipotence is the total vision of the thing expressed in its totality.


The Mother: Omniscience is there in principle, it is there, perceptible, but the total power of this omniscience cannot act since it needs to come down one plane to be able to express itself.  Do you catch what I mean? Yes?  To be able to live fully in the supramental knowledge requires other means of expression than the ones we have now.  New means of expression must be worked out to make it possible to express the supramental knowledge in a supramental way....


The Mother: Now, we are obliged to raise our mental capacity to its utmost so that there is only, so to say, a sort of hardly perceptible borderline, but one that still exists, for all our means of expression still belong to this mental world, do not have the supramental capacity. We do not have the necessary organs for that. We would have to become beings of the supermind, with a supramental substance, a supramental inner organisation, in order to be able to express the supramental knowledge in a supramental way. So far we are... half way; we can, somewhere in our consciousness, rise entirely into the supramental vision and knowledge, but we cannot express it.  We have to come down again one plane in order to express ourselves.


The Mother: So, this veil which is transparent even when it seems to cover, is transparent for the consciousness, you see, for the consciousness sees and knows things in a supramental way, but one part is veiled and it only comes out progressively, for there is no other way of doing it. But for the consciousness it is transparent, though apparently it seems to hide. That’s it.  ( )


The Mother: I have been asked some questions about the ﬁlm we saw  yesterday.... The ﬁrst one is to say the least bizarre! I am giving it to you exactly as it is here. I am asked: Prayers and Meditations  Statues...


The Mother: there are thousands of statues of the Buddha. There is the Buddha as he is known in India, the Buddha known in Ceylon, the Buddha known in Tibet, the Buddha known in China, in Cambodia, Thailand, Japan and elsewhere. If you are speaking of the historical fact, I think they would all tell you that it is to the Gautama Buddha of India they pray, but in fact, each one of these branches of Buddhism, and many more, has its own conception of the Buddha, and it is the conception of a godhead which is worshipped in statues, much more than a divine being, so... If you show me a statue and ask me, “In this statue is there the inﬂuence or the presence of the Buddha as you know him?”, I could reply yes or no to you; but when you say “whose statues are worshipped”, I cannot answer you, for that depends on what they have drawn into the statue they worship. Historically, it is always the same name but in fact I don’t know if it is always the same spiritual person!


The Mother: So I cannot answer you.  If you ask me about the statues we saw yesterday... You saw how many there were and some of them were very, very different, it was a very different Buddha. There was one which was shown to us very often, and which is quite authentic, but there were many others which represented at the very least other personalities of the Buddha. It depends on what you mean; if you mean historically, yes, they always say it is the Buddha; but each statue is different.


The Mother: So, that’s one question. Now we come to something quite different:  Everything that helps humanity to make progress is a help, and all that prevents it from making progress is an obstacle!  In fact, you are asking this because we study and meditate on the Dhammapada.... Naturally, I took this text because I consider that at a particular stage of development it can be very useful. It is a discipline which has been crystallised in certain formulas and if one uses these formulas proﬁtably, it can be very helpful, otherwise I wouldn’t have taken it.


The Mother: How helpful depends on each one. It depends on whether one knows how to proﬁt from it or not.  And then, the last question: We have said this several times already.  And then, here it becomes very mysterious:  () Why do you make this distinction?


The Mother: In the relics! Well, then that means the two things go together. I  don’t see why you separate them. There is something of his inﬂuence in his teaching, naturally!


The Mother: It is the teaching that transmits his inﬂuence in the mental ﬁeld.  His direct action, apart from his teaching, is limited to a very few people who are very fervent believers and have the power of evocation. Otherwise, the most important part of his action, almost the whole of his action, is associated, united, fused with his teaching. It seems difﬁcult to make a distinction.  (


The Mother: ) The forms of Divine Power which have incarnated in different beings, have incarnated with a speciﬁc aim, for a speciﬁc action, at a speciﬁc moment of universal development, but essentially they are only differentiated aspects of the One Being; therefore, it is in the particular purpose of the action that the difference lies. Otherwise it is always the same Truth, the same Power, the same eternal Life which manifests in these forms and creates these forms at a given moment for a speciﬁc reason and a speciﬁc aim; this is preserved in history, but eternally they are new forms which are used for new progress. Old forms can endure as a vibration lasts, but their purpose historically, it could be said, was momentary, and one form is replaced by another in order that a new step forward may be taken. The mistake humanity makes is that it always hangs on to what is behind it and wants to perpetuate the past indeﬁnitely.


The Mother: These things must be used at the time when they are useful. For there is a history of individual development; you may pass through stages in which these disciplines have their momentary utility, but when you have gone beyond that moment you ought to enter into something else and see that historically it was useful but now is so no longer. Certainly, to those who have reached, for instance, a certain state of development and mental control, I won’t say, “Read the Dhammapada and meditate on it”; it would be a waste of time.  I give it to those who have not gone beyond the stage where it is necessary. But always man takes upon his shoulders an interminable burden.


The Mother: He does not want to drop anything of the  past and he stoops more and more under the weight of a useless accumulation.  You have a guide for a part of the way but when you have travelled this part leave the road and the guide and go farther!  This is something men ﬁnd difﬁcult to do. When they get hold of something which helps them, they cling to it, they do not want to move any more. Those who have progressed with the help of Christianity do not want to give it up and they carry it on their shoulders; those who have progressed with the help of Buddhism do not want to leave it and they carry it on their shoulders, and so this hampers the advance and you are indeﬁnitely delayed.


The Mother: Once you have passed the stage, let it drop, let it go! Go farther.  What? Oh! I don’t take part in politics.


The Mother: It is altogether useless.  People use things just for political ends, but that is not at all interesting.    In fact this was not ﬁnished. It stopped short there. There were others to come....


The Mother: ( )  So, we are going to ﬁnish without questions?  Because it is hidden! (


The Mother: )  Sri Aurobindo explains that if the supramental truth had not been there behind things, the world could never have been organised, even as it is organised now. We have the feeling of a  consciousness with a very enlightened will which has organised everything in accordance with a very precise plan, which cannot be the result either of ignorance or of unconsciousness. In fact, your difﬁculty in perceiving the Supermind or the TruthConsciousness behind things indicates the measure of your personal ignorance and unconsciousness; for those who have come out of this ignorance and unconsciousness see it very clearly. The difﬁculty depends on the state of unconsciousness one is in.


The Mother: But for one who has gone beyond this state of unconsciousness it is not at all difﬁcult to ﬁnd the Supermind; it is very perceptible.   ( )  If one enters into a somewhat philosophical, psychological and subjective consciousness, one can very easily become aware of a sort of “objective unreality” of things; and the one thing which is real, tangible, concrete, measurable, so to speak, for the ordinary consciousness becomes so ﬂuid, almost unsubstantial, and has a reality only in the consciousness that perceives it — an absolutely variable reality and at times quite contradictory according to the perception of the consciousness.


The Mother: If we put before us the different explanations that have been given about the world, the different ways in which it has been expressed, we shall have a series of notions that are sometimes absolutely contradictory, which are nevertheless perceptions of one identical thing by different consciousnesses. In fact, with this last paragraph, we have an extreme point which is the afﬁrmation that all that is, is the total and complete expression of the Divine Will — there is what could be called a certain school of thinkers who, on the basis of their personal experience, have asserted that everything is the expression of the Divine Will in a perfect way — and then, at the other extreme, the afﬁrmation that the world is a sort of chaos without rhyme or reason, which has come into being one doesn’t know how or why, which is going one doesn’t know  where, which has no logic, no reason, no coordination — it is just chance. It happens to be like this, one doesn’t know why.  Well, if you take these two extremes and put before you all that has been said, written, taught, thought about the world from one end to the other, and if you can see all that together, you will realise that, since it is all about the same world and yet the explanations are so totally different, this world exists, so to say, only in the consciousness of the one who sees it.... There must indeed be “something” there, but that something must be beyond what men think about it — far beyond, very different.


The Mother: And so the whole feeling is of an elusive unreality.  And in fact, the reality of the world is entirely subjective for each person’s consciousness. The world has no objective reality, for in one case it can be said that it is the result of the supremely conscious, supreme Will and that all is ruled by that, and in the other case, it may be said that it is something without any reason for existence except an elusive chance — and yet, these two notions apply to one and the same thing.  Have you never thought about that?


The Mother: Everyone has his own idea which is more or less clear, more or less organised, more or less precise, and this idea he calls the world. Everyone has his own way of seeing, his own way of feeling and his particular relationship with everything else, and this he calls the world. He naturally puts himself at the centre, and then everybody is organised around him, according to the way in which he sees it, feels it, understands and desires it, according to his own reaction, but since for each consciousness, individually, it is different, this means that what we call the world — the thing in itself — escapes our perception completely. It must be something else. And we must come out of our individual consciousness to be able to understand what it is; and this is what Sri Aurobindo calls the passage from the lower to the higher hemisphere.


The Mother: In the lower hemisphere there are as many universes as individuals, and in the higher hemisphere there is “something” — which is what it is — in which all consciousnesses must meet.   This is what he calls the “Truth-Consciousness”.  As the human consciousness progresses, it has a greater and greater sense of this relativity, and at the same time a sort of feeling, it could be said, a vague impression that there is a Truth, which is not perceptible by ordinary means but must be perceptible in some way or other.  That is all. So I hope that with our next book, , we shall ﬁnd the key to the problem.


The Mother: I have received four questions. Naturally they are not about what I have just read, and they are on three different subjects. And each one needs a very lengthy answer. But still, I am going to take the ﬁrst two which go together. They are about the involution of the Spirit.


The Mother: The ﬁrst question:  Logically speaking, “yes”, for essentially, there is an identity between Matter and the Supreme. But — and this brings in the second question: It could almost be said that the answer to this question depends on the mental attitude of the person who asks it.... Scholars will tell you that there are different schools which have spoken about these things in ways that are also very different. There are the metaphysicians who deny any history, minds that are essentially speculative, philosophical and, as I said, metaphysical, abstract, who consider that histories are only for children.


The Mother: There are the psychologists who translate everything into movements  of consciousness, and ﬁnally there are those who love images and for whom universal history is a great development which might be described as “cinematographic”, and this development in pictures is for them something much more living and tangible, for even if it is only symbolic, it makes them understand things in a more intimate and real way.  It goes without saying that the three explanations are equally true, and that the important thing is to be able to synthesise and harmonise them in one’s thought. But we shall put aside the aridities of metaphysics, for it is better to read about them in the books of scholars who tell you things in a very precise, very exact and very dry fashion! The psychological point of view... it is better to live it than speak about it.


The Mother: So we are left with the story for children. It is good to be always a child. And although we must take care not to believe in it as a dogma in which nothing should be changed if one doesn’t want to be sacrilegious, we can at least take these stories as a means to make living to our childlike consciousness something which would otherwise be too remote from us.  There we can choose from many stories that have been told, stories more or less true, more or less complete, more or less expressive. But if by interiorising or exteriorising oneself — which, from a certain point of view, is essentially the same thing — if one can relive this story, at least partially and in its broad outlines, it helps one to understand and hence to master the how and why of things.


The Mother: Some people have done that, they are the ones usually considered as initiates, occultists and prophets at the same time — and very beautiful stories have been told.  I am going to tell you one, very succinctly. Don’t take it as a gospel! Take it rather... as a story.  When the Supreme decided to exteriorise Himself in order to be able to see Himself, the ﬁrst thing in Himself which He exteriorised was the Knowledge of the world and the Power to create it.


The Mother: This Knowledge-Consciousness and Force began its work; and in the supreme Will there was a plan, and the ﬁrst  principle of this plan was the expression of both the essential Joy and the essential Freedom, which seemed to be the most interesting feature of this creation.  So intermediaries were needed to express this Joy and Freedom in forms. And at ﬁrst four Beings were emanated to start this universal development which was to be the progressive objectivisation of all that is potentially contained in the Supreme. These Beings were, in the principle of their existence: Consciousness and Light, Life, Bliss and Love, and Truth.  You can easily imagine that they had a sense of great power, great strength, of something tremendous, for they were essentially the very principle of these things.


The Mother: Besides, they had full freedom of choice, for this creation was to be Freedom itself.... As soon as they set to work — they had their own conception of how it had to be done — being totally free, they chose to do it independently. Instead of taking the attitude of servant and instrument of which Sri Aurobindo speaks in what I have just read to you, they naturally took the attitude of the master, and this mistake — as I may call it — was the ﬁrst cause, the essential cause of all the disorder in the universe. As soon as there was separation — for that is the essential cause, separation —  as soon as there was separation between the Supreme and what had been emanated, Consciousness changed into inconscience, Light into darkness, Love into hatred, Bliss into suffering, Life into death and Truth into falsehood.


The Mother: And they proceeded with their creations independently, in separation and disorder.  The result is the world as we see it. It was made progressively, stage by stage, and it would truly take a little too long to tell you all that, but ﬁnally, the consummation is Matter — obscure, inconscient, miserable.... The creative Force which  had emanated these four Beings, essentially for the creation of the world, witnessed what was happening, and turning to the Supreme she prayed for the remedy and the cure of the evil that had been done.  Then she was given the command to precipitate her Consciousness into this inconscience, her Love into this suffering, and her Truth into this falsehood.


The Mother: And a greater consciousness, a more total love, a more perfect truth than what had been emanated at ﬁrst , plunged, so to say, into the horror of Matter in order to awaken in it consciousness, love and truth, and to begin the movement of Redemption which was to bring the material universe back to its supreme origin.  So, there have been what might be called “successive involutions” in Matter, and a history of these involutions. The present result of these involutions is the appearance of the Supermind emerging from the inconscience; but there is nothing to indicate that after this appearance there will be no others... for the Supreme is inexhaustible and will always create new worlds.


The Mother: That is my story.   The ﬁrst thing to understand is precisely this ﬁrst sentence which states the fact, the and the very principle of universal existence. You see, we are beginning here at the end of the volume, these are the last six chapters. Throughout the beginning of the book Sri Aurobindo has taken one after another all the theories explaining the how and why of the universe and of existence; he has carried them to their extreme limits in order to explain fully what they mean, and at the end he has shown how far they were incomplete or imperfect and given the true solution. All that is, as it were, ﬁnished with; it lies behind our reading.


The Mother: It would have taken us something like ten years to  go through all that! And you would have required all kinds of knowledge and a great intellectual development to be able to follow it with any proﬁt. But for our part, we are beginning from where he has shown, from the purely intellectual point of view, what the purpose of existence is, and he formulates it like this: “the central signiﬁcant motive of the terrestrial existence.”  For he is not concerned with the entire universe, he has taken terrestrial life, that is, our life here on Earth, as a symbolic and concentrated representation of the purpose of the entire universe. In fact, according to very old traditions, the Earth, from the deeper spiritual point of view, has been created as a symbolic concentration of universal life so that the work of transformation may be done more easily, in a limited, concentrated “space” — so to say — where all the elements of the problem are gathered together so that, in the concentration, the action may be more total and effective.


The Mother: So here he speaks only of terrestrial existence, but we can understand that it is a symbolic existence, that is, that it a universal action. It is a symbolic, concentrated representation. And he says that “the central motive”, that is, the purpose of terrestrial existence is to awaken, to develop and ﬁnally to reveal in a total manifestation the Spirit which is hidden at the centre of Matter and impels this Matter  outwards towards a progressive development which will liberate the Spirit working from within.  So, in the outer appearances as you see them, at ﬁrst you ﬁnd the mineral kingdom with stones, earth, minerals which to us, in our outer consciousness, appear absolutely unconscious.  Yet, behind this unconsciousness there is the life of the Spirit, the consciousness of the Spirit, which is completely hidden, which is as if asleep — though that is only an appearance — and which works from within in order gradually to transform this Matter that is completely inert in appearance, so that its organisation may lend itself more and more to the manifestation of consciousness.


The Mother: And he says here that at ﬁrst this veil of inert Matter is so total that, to a superﬁcial glance, it is something  that has neither life nor consciousness. When you pick up a stone and look at it with your ordinary eyes and consciousness, you say, “It has no life, no consciousness.” For one who knows how to see behind appearances, there is, hidden at the centre of this Matter — at the centre of of this Matter — there is, hidden, the Supreme Divine Reality working from within, gradually, through the millennia, to change this inert Matter into something that is expressive enough to be able to reveal the Spirit within. Then you have the progression of the history of Life: how, from the stone there suddenly appeared a rudimentary life and through successive species a sort of organisation, that is, an organic substance capable of revealing life. But between the mineral and vegetable kingdoms there are transitional elements; one doesn’t know whether they belong to the mineral or already to the vegetable kingdom — when one studies this in detail one sees some strange species which belong neither here nor there, which are not quite this and yet not quite that.


The Mother: Then comes the development of the vegetable kingdom where naturally life appears, for there is growth, transformation — a plant sprouts up, develops, grows — and with the ﬁrst phenomenon of life comes also the phenomenon of decomposition and disintegration which is relatively much more rapid than in the stone: a stone, if protected from the impact of other forces, can last apparently indeﬁnitely, whereas the plant already follows a curve of growth, ascent and decline and decomposition — but this with an extremely restricted consciousness. Those who have studied the vegetable kingdom in detail are well aware that there is a consciousness there. For instance, plants need sunlight to live — the sun represents the active energy which makes them grow —


The Mother: so, if you put a plant in a place where there is no sunlight, you see it always growing up and up and up, trying, making an  to reach the sunlight. In a virgin forest, for instance, where man does not interfere, there is this kind of struggle among all the plants which are always growing straight upwards in one way or another in their to catch the sunlight. It is very  interesting. But even if you put a ﬂower-pot in a fairly small courtyard surrounded by walls, where the sun doesn’t come, a plant which normally is as high as this (), becomes as tall as that: it stretches up and makes an to ﬁnd the light. Therefore there is a consciousness, a will to live which is already manifesting.


The Mother: And little by little, with species that are more and more developed, you again reach another transitional passage between what is no longer entirely a plant and still not yet an animal. There are several species like that, which are very interesting. There are those plants which are carnivorous, plants like an open mouth: you throw a ﬂy inside, snap! they swallow it. It is no longer quite a plant, it is not yet an animal.


The Mother: There are many plants of this kind.  Then you come to the animal. The ﬁrst animals, yes, it is difﬁcult to distinguish them from plants, there is almost no consciousness. But there you see all the animal species, you know them, don’t you, right up to the higher animals which, indeed, are conscious. They have their own completely independent will.


The Mother: They are very conscious and marvellously intelligent, like the elephant, for instance; you know all the stories about elephants and their wonderful intelligence. Therefore, it is already a very perceptible appearance of mind. And through this progressive development, we suddenly pass on to a species which has probably disappeared — traces of which have been found — an intermediate animal like a monkey or of the same line as the monkey — something close to it, similar, if not the monkey as we know it — but already an animal that walks on two legs.  And from there we come to man. There is an entire beginning of the evolution of man; we can’t say, can we, that he shows a brilliant intelligence, but there is already an action of the mind, a beginning of independence, of independent reaction to the environment and the forces of Nature.


The Mother: And so, in man there is the whole range, right up to the higher being capable of spiritual life.  That is what Sri Aurobindo tells us on this page.  That is all. Now, if you have a question to ask?...   Yes, that is what I have just told you: at his highest stage, man begins to be altogether independent of Nature — “altogether” is an exaggeration: he become altogether independent.


The Mother: A man who has realised the spiritual consciousness in himself, who has a direct relation with the divine Origin is literally independent of Nature, of the force of Nature.   () Ah! That is to cool down our minds!


The Mother: ( )  And that is what he calls “exceeding itself”, that is, that the Being, the inner divine Consciousness, the supreme spiritual Reality in its effort to develop... ( )


The Mother: Oh, oh! We shall have to stop talking... in its effort to develop a conscious means of manifesting itself has arrived at a being capable of having a direct contact with It without going through the whole process of Nature.  Now, I think we are going to stop.


The Mother: No meditation, because...   Ah!...  If you take terrestrial history, all the forms of life have appeared one after another in a general plan, a general programme, with the addition, always, of a new perfection and a greater  consciousness. Take just animal forms — for that is easier to understand, they are the last before man — each animal that appeared had an additional perfection in its general nature — I don’t mean in all the details — a greater perfection than the preceding ones, and the crowning point of the ascending march was the human form which, for the moment, from the point of view of consciousness, is the form most capable of manifesting consciousness; that is, the human form at its height, at the height of its possibilities, is capable of more consciousness than all preceding animal forms.  This is of Nature’s ways of evolution.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo told us last week that this Nature was following an ascending progression in order to manifest more and more the divine consciousness contained in all forms. So, with each new form that it produces, Nature makes a form capable of expressing more completely the spirit which this form contains.  But if it were like this, a form comes, develops, reaches its highest point and is followed by another form; the others do not disappear, but the individual does not progress. The individual dog or monkey, for instance, belongs to a species which has its own peculiar characteristics; when the monkey or the man arrives at the height of its possibilities, that is, when a human individual becomes the best type of humanity, it will be ﬁnished; the individual will not be able to progress any farther. He belongs to the human species, he will continue to belong to it.


The Mother: So, from the point of view of terrestrial history there is a progress, for each species represents a progress compared with the preceding species; but from the point of view of the individual, there is no progress: he is born, he follows his development, dies and disappears. Therefore, to ensure the progress of the individual, it was necessary to ﬁnd another means; this one was not adequate. But within the individual, contained in each form, there is an organisation of consciousness which is closer to and more directly under the inﬂuence of the inner divine Presence, and the form which is under this inﬂuence — this kind of inner concentration of energy  — has a life independent of the physical form — this is what we generally call the “soul” or the “psychic being” — and since it is organised around the divine centre it partakes of the divine nature which is immortal, eternal. The outer body falls away, and this remains throughout every experience that it has in each life, and there is a progress from life to life, and it is the progress of the individual. And this movement complements the other, in the sense that instead of a species which progresses relative to other species, it is an individual who passes through all the stages of progress of these species and can continue to progress even when the species have reached the limit of their possibilities and... stay there or disappear — it depends on the case — but they cannot go any farther, whereas the individual, having a life independent of the purely material form, can pass from one form to another and continue his progress


The Mother: That makes a double movement which completes itself. And that is why each individual has the possibility of reaching the utmost realisation, independent of the form to which he momentarily belongs.  There are people — there used to be and there still are, I believe — who say they remember their past lives and recount what happened when they were dogs or elephants or monkeys, and tell you stories in great detail about what happened to them.  I am not going to argue with them, but anyway this illustrates the fact that before being a man, one could have been a monkey — perhaps one doesn’t have the power to remember it, that’s another matter — but certainly, this inner divine spark has passed through successive forms in order to become more and more conscious of itself. And if it is proved that one can remember the form one had before becoming a psychic being as it is found in the human form, well, one might very well recollect climbing trees and eating coconuts and even playing all sorts of tricks on the traveller passing beneath!


The Mother: In any case, the fact is there. Perhaps later we shall see that a certain state of inner organisation is necessary for this psychic  being to be able to have memories in the way the mental being has them — we shall speak about it later, when we come to it in the book — but in any case the fact is established: it is this double movement of evolution intersecting and complementing itself which gives the utmost possibilities of realisation to the divine light within each being. This is what Sri Aurobindo has explained. ( )


The Mother: This means that in your outer body you belong to the animal species in the course of becoming a supramental species — you are not that yet! but within you there’s a psychic being which has already lived in many, many, countless species before and carries an experience of thousands of years within you, and which will continue while your human body remains human and ﬁnally decomposes.  We shall see later whether this psychic being has the possibility of transforming its body and itself creating an intermediate species between the animal man and superman — we shall study this later — but still, for the moment, it is an immortal soul which becomes more and more conscious of itself in the body of man. There. Now have you understood?


The Mother: (Another child)  Probably Nature thought that it was not a success!... You see, she throws herself into action with abundance and a total lack of sense of economy. We can see this. She tries everything she can, in every way she can, with all sorts of inventions which are obviously very remarkable, but at times...


The Mother: it’s like a blind alley.  Pushing forward in that direction, instead of progressing, one would reach things that are absolutely unacceptable. She throws out her creative spirit in an abundance without any calculation, and when the combination is not very successful, well, she just does this () then rejects it; she doesn’t mind. For Nature, you see, there is a limitless abundance. I believe she doesn’t shrink from any kind of experiment.


The Mother: Only if something has a  chance of leading to a successful issue does it continue. Certainly there have been intermediaries or parallel forms between the ape and man; traces of them have been found — perhaps with some wishful thinking! but anyway, traces have been found — well, those species have disappeared. So, if we like to speculate, we may wonder whether the species which is now to come and which is an intermediary between animal man and superman will remain or whether it will be considered uninteresting and rejected.... That we shall see later.


The Mother: The next time we meet we shall speak about it again!  It is quite simply the activity of a limitless abundance. Nature has enough knowledge and consciousness to act like someone with innumerable and countless elements which can be mixed, separated again, reshaped, taken to pieces once more and... It is a huge cauldron: you stir it, and something comes out; it’s no good, you throw it back in and take something else.


The Mother: Imagine the dimension... just take the earth: you understand, one or two forms or a hundred, for her this is of no importance at all, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of them; and then a few years, a hundred, a thousand, millions of years, it is of no importance at all, you have eternity before you!   Simply, when we look at things on the human scale, in space and time, oh! it seems enormous, but for Nature it is nothing. It is just a pastime.


The Mother: One may like it or not, this pastime, but still it is a pastime.   It is quite obvious that Nature enjoys it and is in no hurry. If she is told to press on without stopping and to ﬁnish one part of her work or another quickly, the reply is always the same: “But what for, why? Doesn’t it amuse you?”


The Mother: I think this is quite easy to ﬁnd.  Sri Aurobindo speaks of the form that is capable of manifesting the Spirit. The very nature of the manifestation of the Spirit is consciousness, understanding and ﬁnally mastery. It is obvious that from the point of view of aesthetics and purely physical appearance, one may ﬁnd certain animal forms beautiful and perhaps even more beautiful than the human form in its present state of... degeneration, I believe. There were periods when the human race seems to have been more beautiful and harmonious; but as a means of expression of the Spirit, its superiority is beyond the shadow of a doubt.


The Mother: For the mere fact that man stands upright is symbolic of the capacity to look at things from above. He dominates what he sees instead of always having his nose to the ground. Of course, it may be said that birds ﬂy, but with wings it is difﬁcult to have a means of intellectual selfexpression!  This upright position is very symbolic. If you try to walk on all fours, you will see that this position with the eyes and nose necessarily turned to the ground does not give you the feeling that you are looking at things from another plane or  even from above.


The Mother: The whole structure of the human body is made to express a mental life. The proportions of the brain, for instance, the structure of the human head, the structure of the arms and hands, all that, from the point of view of the expression of the Spirit, is unquestionably altogether superior and it seems to have been conceived and built exclusively expressing intelligence.  Certainly from the point of view of strength, of suppleness, of agility, man is not the most gifted of animals, but for expressing the Spirit no other animal can be compared with him. Everything is made with this in view. We may wish to add to this possibility other things which seem to have been sacriﬁced just for the sake of the mental life — but also precisely because of this capacity of expressing a mental life man is able to develop in himself faculties which are only latent.


The Mother: Man has a power to educate: his body can be developed, educated. He can increase certain faculties. You cannot imagine any animal, even among those we most admire, which is capable, for instance, of physical education, purely physical — I am not speaking of going to school or learning things, but purely physical education, a systematic development of the muscles. The animal is born and makes good use of what it has and it grows according to its own law, but it does not educate itself or does it in a very rudimentary way, in an extremely limited ﬁeld; whereas by a normal and systematic development man can remedy his defects and shortcomings. Man is certainly, in an organised way, the ﬁrst progressive animal who can augment his capacities, his possibilities, increase his faculties and acquire things that he did not have spontaneously.


The Mother: There is not one animal which can do that.  Yes, under man’s inﬂuence some animals have learnt movements they did not make spontaneously, but that is still under man’s inﬂuence. Certainly without men dogs or horses would never have learnt to do what they have learnt through contact with man. So, it is obvious that the human physical form is  the most appropriate one for expressing the Spirit. It may seem inadequate to us, but precisely we feel we are capable of drawing out from our bodies more than they would have given spontaneously without an educating will.


The Mother: And with this possibility of expressing intelligence, observation, comprehension, deduction — all the mental qualities — man has gradually learnt to understand the laws of Nature and tried not only to understand them but master them.  If we compare what he is with the higher being living in the Truth which we want to become, we may obviously speak about man as he is at present in a very derogatory fashion and complain of his imperfection. But if we put ourselves in the place of the animals which immediately precede him in the evolution, we see that he is endowed with possibilities and powers which the others are quite incapable of expressing. The mere fact of having the ambition, the desire, the will to know the laws of Nature and to master them sufﬁciently to be able to adapt them to his needs and change them to a certain extent, is something impossible, unthinkable for any animal.  You may tell me that I don’t usually speak very kindly about man (), but that’s because he usually thinks too kindly of himself!


The Mother: If we compare him with the other products of Nature, unquestionably he is at the top of the ladder.  There would be no universe without the descent of consciousness. Where would your universe begin, and with what?    Oh!


The Mother: You mean: Is it something in the intermediary being or in the higher ape which by its aspiration called down the mind?  But the aspiration itself is the result of a previous descent.  It is quite obvious that nothing can be manifested which is not previously contained in what exists. One can’t bring something out of nothing. One can make what is there emerge, manifest, express itself, develop; but if nothing had been there, nothing would ever have come out.


The Mother: All progress, all perfection is the result of an inner effort of “something” that is present and seeks to manifest. That is to say, absolutely, the principle comes ﬁrst and the expression afterwards. As we go on reading , Sri Aurobindo will prove this to you in every possible way. If there were not an eternal principle, if there were not — we give it all the names we like, can’t we? — a Supreme Reality, there would never have been a universe, because nothing comes out of nothing.  We shall see this as we read on; then you will have to do philosophical gymnastics.


The Mother: But anyway, even without philosophy and mental gymnastics, it is obvious that to make something, you need to have something to make it with.  There is or was a whole period in the development of the human mind in which men tried very seriously to prove that it was the perfecting of Matter which produced the Spirit. But that is nonsense! (). The least of your activities, all that you do, is a clear proof that ﬁrst you conceive and then you do, even on a very small scale. A life which is not the result of a conscious will would be a completely incoherent life.


The Mother: I mean that if Nature were not a conscious force and a conscious will with a conscious aim, nothing could ever have been organised. We have just to observe a little, even in the very small ﬁeld of observation we have in our individual life, to be completely convinced of it.   But anyway... It is precisely one of the subjects Sri Aurobindo deals with in great detail, so we shall speak about it again.


The Mother: ()   It could be said that the mastery of ﬁre is the symbolic sign of human superiority. Wherever there is man, a ﬁre is lit.   The two things that are clearly superior to animal activities are the faculty of writing and the possibility of articulate speech.


The Mother: And this is something so clearly superior that all sufﬁciently developed animals are extremely sensitive to articulate speech; it fascinates them. If you speak in a very clear, very modulated, very well articulated way to a wild animal, it is immediately attracted, truly fascinated — I am not speaking of those which have lived close to man, but precisely of animals which have never met man before. They listen immediately, they feel the superior power that is being expressed.    This is an argument Sri Aurobindo is presenting. As he has said, it is way of looking at the problem and solving it, but that does not mean that this is his own point of view.


The Mother: And this is exactly what he does throughout the book, all the time; he presents different arguments, different points of view, different conceptions, and once he has placed all these problems before us, then he comes and gives the solution. And that is why our method of reading has a drawback, for I read one paragraph to you and if we stop there, it seems as though he had proved his own point of view; and then, if by chance one doesn’t remember very well and the next time I read another paragraph in which he expounds another point of view — sometimes totally different, sometimes even opposite — and we stop there , the conclusion is: this too is his point of view. So there is a contradiction. And then if we continue, there are two or three contradictions!


The Mother: I am telling you this because I have heard people who read in a rather superﬁcial way and perhaps also don’t read continuously enough — people who consider themselves extremely intelligent and learned — who have told me, “But Sri Aurobindo repeats himself all the time in this book! He tells us the same thing again in almost every paragraph.” ( ) For he presents all other points of view, then gives his own, the conclusion; then once again he presents every point of view, gives all the problems, and ends up by proving the truth of what he wants to teach us — so he “repeats himself”!


The Mother: After all, of course, one has only to read attentively enough to avoid falling into this trap. One must be careful, not come to a conclusion in the middle of a subject, not say to oneself, “Ah, look! Sri Aurobindo says it is like that.” He does not say it is  “like that”, he tells you there are who say it is like that. And he shows you the problem as it is presented by many people, and then once again the same problem as presented by other people; and only when he has ﬁnished explaining to us all the points of view does he give his own conclusion.


The Mother: And what is exceedingly interesting is that his conclusion is always a synthesis: all the other points of view ﬁnd their place provided they are properly arranged. This excludes nothing, it combines everything and synthesises all points of view.  But as we have a lesson every three weeks, we have time () to forget all we have read before! I don’t know if you can remember the problem that was set?... No?...


The Mother: Is there or is there not an individual evolution?... There is a universal evolution — Sri Aurobindo has shown this — but within this universal evolution, is there or is there not an individual evolution?... Now, he has given us one theory — which holds together perfectly, which is quite logical, you see — but in which it is not at all necessary to postulate an individual evolution. The whole universal plan is logical, can be logically proved, without introducing the necessity of an individual evolution.


The Mother: But if we continue with patience, in a little while he will prove to us why and how this notion of individual evolution must be introduced into the system of explanation that will be chosen. But what I should like to know is whether this problem has any reality for you or not — whether it corresponds to something you understand or not. If you have followed that, it is possible to conceive of a progressive, evolving universe, in which the individual is not necessarily evolving individually...  I must ask you questions to ﬁnd out whether you understand ﬁrst of all the difference between universal and individual evolution, and how both can proceed.  How does Nature proceed in its universal evolution?


The Mother: I think, you have understood this, haven’t you?    Yes, I am speaking of the outer world, the physical world as we see it.  No, that is something else. What you say — dying and being born again, dying and being reborn — that is the process of individual evolution, provided that something of the individual persists through life and death, for if he died entirely and disintegrated entirely, what could be reborn?


The Mother: Necessarily something must persist — persist through the rebirths — otherwise it is no longer the same person. If nothing persists, it is not the individual who progresses, it is Nature. Nature makes use of matter; with this matter she produces forms — I am telling you this in an oversimpliﬁed way, but still — she has at her disposal a mass of matter and she makes combinations; she makes a form, then this form develops, but it disintegrates, it does not persist as an individual element. Why doesn’t it persist? Because Nature needs matter, substance to make other forms.


The Mother: So she unmakes what she has made, then out of this she makes something else, and she continues in this way, and this could go on indeﬁnitely without the individual progressing: the progresses.  Supposing you have some plasticine — you know plasticine for modelling, don’t you? Good. You make a form, then when you have ﬁnished, you don’t like it, so you break it up and make it into a paste again and try another form. You have made some progress, you try, you arrange; you say, “That didn’t work, I am going to try this”, and your form is a little better but it is still not what you want; so once again you break it, put some water, make a paste and then begin another form.


The Mother: And you can go on indeﬁnitely. It is always the same substance but not the same being, for each one of your forms has its own particular existence as a form, and the moment you break it, nothing is left.  You may try to perfect the same form or try other forms; you may try, for instance, to make a dog or a horse, and then if  you have not succeeded, you may begin again and make another horse or dog, but you may also begin something else. If you build a house and don’t like your house, you demolish it and build another on another model, but nothing is left of the ﬁrst house except the memory, if you want to keep it. In the same way, Nature begins with completely unconscious and amorphous matter, then tries one form and another; only, instead of doing as we would, one thing at a time, she makes millions of them all at once.


The Mother: But it is simply a matter of scale, it is because Nature has more means at her disposal, that is all. But that does not necessarily imply that there is something permanent — like a principle of life or a principle of consciousness — which enters into a form and persists when this form is broken to enter into another. It could simply be as you with your plasticine: you make something, unmake it, make it again, unmake it again, indeﬁnitely, and there is nothing left — as I said — except the memory of what was made before. But if we admit individual evolution, there is something permanent which passes from one form to another and, with each new form, makes a new progress and becomes capable of entering into a higher form, more and more, until this “something” becomes a perfectly conscious being at the end of the evolution. Then this being would have a personal evolution which would duplicate — it won’t be independent but simultaneous — and complement the evolution of Nature or rather the evolution of Nature as a ﬁeld for its own individual evolution....


The Mother: Do you catch it this time?   Good!  What Sri Aurobindo has presented here is the explanation of a world which would function quite logically and comprehensibly without any need of an individual being passing from one form into another, without anything permanent which would be free from all destruction, all death, which would persist through all its forms and would itself have a personal, individual progression to the evolution of Nature.... It is as though in the form you have made, at the centre there were a little precious  stone which you had placed there and wanted to cover with successive forms.


The Mother: You transfer your little precious stone from one form to another — and the comparison is still incomplete, for the precious stone becomes more and more precious as it passes from one object to another — and it would be as though, by passing from one form to another, it became more and more luminous and pure, and more and more clear-cut in form.  There. Do you understand or not?  A little. Ah!


The Mother: That’s already something.  So, to round it off, do you think there is an individual evolution or not?... Do you have any experience of it?... And how could you have the experience? That would become interesting.


The Mother: How can individual evolution be experienced apart from the collective evolution of Nature?   Can you give the answer?   Ah!


The Mother: Good, that’s good. That is all right, but then it amounts to asking you if you are conscious of this eternal principle which is in your being!   ( )


The Mother: Are you going to look and see if you can ﬁnd it within you?  Perhaps simply because one does not give it enough attention!  If one took the trouble to open the doors, perhaps one would ﬁnd it.... It is obviously a gentleman who does not like — a  gentleman or a lady or something, or anything — which does not like ostentation, does not force itself on your attention at the surface. But perhaps it is waiting for you to go in search of it?


The Mother: Perhaps it is sitting very quietly, at the very back of the house, and you must open the doors one after another.  I don’t ﬁnd that it is hidden. I ﬁnd it visible everywhere, all the time, at every moment, in all things.  Shall we look? Shall we go and look?


The Mother: ( )    In fact, you should do a little preparatory work and note down the new idea in each new paragraph, adding it to the preceding ideas so that at the end of the chapter you have the complete picture; for if you ask me a question now about what I have just read, this question may require an answer that is sometimes almost contradictory to what we have seen in the previous paragraph. That comes from his way of going about the proof. It is


The Mother: as though Sri Aurobindo were putting himself at the centre of a kind of sphere, at the centre of a wheel the spokes of which end in a circumference. And he always goes back to his startingpoint and goes all the way out to the surface, and so on, which gives the impression that he repeats the same thing several times, but it is simply the exposition of the thought so that one can follow it. One must have a very clear memory for ideas to really understand what he says.  I am emphasising this because, unless you proceed systematically, you won’t derive much beneﬁt from this reading; it will appear to you like a maze where it is very difﬁcult to ﬁnd one’s way....


The Mother: All the ideas are joined at the centre, and at the circumference they go in altogether different directions.   Have you any questions this time?... No.  It is difﬁcult, isn’t it?


The Mother: I read and I see quite well that it is difﬁcult to ask a question, for until one has come to the end of the proof, one doesn’t know what he is leading up to or  what he wants to teach; and at the same time, if one were to read the whole exposition, it would be impossible — unless one has a specially faithful memory — to recall all the points. Before reaching the end one would have forgotten what is written at the beginning! It would be rather interesting to take notes, brief notes, to try to summarise each paragraph in one or two key-ideas so as to be able to compare them.  ()  Sri Aurobindo says here that each species is satisﬁed with the particular characteristics of that species, the principles of its structure, and does not try to transform or change itself into a new species.


The Mother: The dog remains satisﬁed with being a dog, the horse with being a horse and never tries, for instance, to become an elephant! Starting from this Sri Aurobindo asks the question: Will man remain satisﬁed with being man or will he awaken to the necessity of being something other than man, that is, a superman?  That is the summary of the paragraph.  But when one is used to such expositions, if one has a speculative mind, and one reads this, something in the being is not satisﬁed. That is to say, this concerns only the most external form, that kind of crust of the being, but within oneself one feels “something” which has, on the contrary, a sort of imperative tendency to go beyond that form.


The Mother: And this is what Sri Aurobindo wants to bring home to us.  I have seen pet animals which truly had a sort of inner to become something other than what they were. I knew dogs which were like that, cats, horses and even birds like that. The outer form was inevitably what it was, but there was something living and perceptible in the animal which was making an obvious effort to achieve another expression, another form.  And every man who has gone beyond the stage of the animal man and become the human man truly has what I might call an  “incorrigible” need to be something other than this thoroughly unsatisfactory semi-animal — unsatisfactory in its expression, its means of expression and its means of life.


The Mother: So the problem is this: Will this imperious need be effective enough in its aspiration for the form itself, the species, to develop and transform itself, or will it be only this thing, this imperishable consciousness in the being, which will leave this form when it perishes to enter into a higher form which, besides, as far as we can see now, does not yet exist?  And the problem before us is: How will this higher form be created? If we consider the problem, it becomes very interesting.  Is it by some process which we have to imagine, that this form will gradually transform itself in order to create a new one, or is it by some other means, a means still unknown to us, that this new form will appear in the world?  That is, will there be a continuity or will there be a sudden appearance of something new?


The Mother: Will there be a progressive transition between what we now are and what our inner spirit aspires to become, or will there be a break, that is, shall we be obliged to drop this present human form and wait for the appearance of a new form — an appearance the process of which we do not foresee and which will have no relation with what we are now? Can we hope that this body which is our present means of earthly manifestation, will have the possibility of transforming itself progressively into something which will be able to express a higher life, or will it be necessary to give up this form entirely to enter into another which does not yet exist on Earth?  That is the problem. It is a very interesting problem.  If you will reﬂect on it, it will lead you to a little more light.


The Mother: We can reﬂect on it just now.  ()   Why not both?  Both will be there at the same time; the one does not exclude the other.  One will be transformed and will be like a rough outline of the other.


The Mother: And the other, the perfect one, will appear when this one comes into being. For both have their beauty and their purpose, therefore they will both be there.   The mind always tries to choose — but it’s not like that.  Even all that we can imagine is much less than what will be.


The Mother: Truly speaking, everyone who has an intense aspiration and an inner certitude will be called upon to realise it.  Everywhere, in all the ﬁelds, always, eternally, everything will be possible. And everything that is possible, everything will exist at a given moment — a given moment that will be more or less delayed, but everything will exist.  Just as all sorts of possibilities have been found between the animals and man, possibilities which have not remained, so there will be all sorts of possibilities: each individual will try in his own way. And all this together will help to prepare the future realisation.


The Mother: The question might be asked: Will the human species be like some species which have disappeared from the earth?... Certain species have disappeared from the earth — but not species which have lasted as long as the human species. I don’t think so; and certainly not the species which had in them the seed of progress, this possibility of progress. Rather one has the impression that evolution will follow a curve which will draw closer and closer to a higher species and, maybe, everything that is still too close to the lower species will fall away, just as those species have.  We always forget that not only is everything possible — everything, even the most contradictory things — but all the possibilities have at least one moment of existence.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo says here, precisely, that if we take the scientiﬁc point of view, we see that theories follow one another with great instability, and seem more like a kind of series of imaginations than things which can be proved — if one takes the purely materialist point of view. People believe that because it is a materialist point of view, it is the easiest to prove, but quite obviously it is the most difﬁcult. If we take the occult standpoint, there have been traditions, based perhaps on certain memories, but as they are altogether beyond any material proof, this knowledge is considered to be even more problematic than scientiﬁc imaginations  and deductions. For any inner logic, it is easier to understand and admit, but one has no more proof than one has material proof that there was ﬁrst man or that there were several ﬁrst men or that there was something which was not yet a man but almost a man.


The Mother: These are speculations.  Traditions — which of course are only oral traditions and from the scientiﬁc point of view quite questionable, but which are based on individual memories — say that the ﬁrst man or the ﬁrst human pair or the ﬁrst human individuals were materialised in accordance with an occult method, something like the one Sri Aurobindo foretells for the future supramental process; that is, that beings belonging to higher worlds have, by a process of concentration and materialisation, built or formed for themselves bodies of physical matter. It probably wasn’t the lower species which progressively produced a body which became the ﬁrst human body.  According to spiritual and occult knowledge, consciousness precedes form; consciousness by self-concentration produces its form; whereas, according to the materialist idea, it is form which precedes consciousness and makes it possible for consciousness to manifest. For those who have some knowledge of the invisible worlds and a direct perception of the play of forces, there is no possible doubt: it is consciousness which produces a form in order to manifest.


The Mother: Now, the way things are arranged on earth, it is quite certainly a consciousness of a higher order which penetrates a form and helps to transform it, so that this form may become — either immediately or through successive generations — capable of manifesting that consciousness. For those who have the inner vision and knowledge, this is absolutely beyond doubt. It is impossible for it to be otherwise. But those who start from the other end, from below, will not admit it — but all the same it is not for ignorance to dictate knowledge to wisdom! And yet, this is what it does at present.


The Mother: As it is easier to doubt than to know, the human mind is accustomed to doubt everything; that is its ﬁrst movement, and of course that is why it knows nothing.   Conception precedes manifestation and expression, that is quite certain. And all those who have had a direct contact with the past have the memory of a kind of human prototype, far superior to mankind at present, who came on earth as an example and a promise of what humanity will be when it reaches its acme.   (


The Mother: )  There is in life a certain tendency to imitate, a sort of effort to copy “something”. One can ﬁnd very striking examples of this in animal life — it even begins already in plant life, but in animal life it is very striking. One could give numerous examples. And so, in that sense, one might very well conceive of a sort of effort of animal life to attempt to copy, to imitate, to create some resemblance to this ideal type which would be manifested on earth by occult means, and it was probably through successive attempts, by a more and more successful effort that the ﬁrst human types were produced.


The Mother: The only really important thing modern science has discovered is that from the purely outer and physical point of view things are not what they seem to be. When you look at a body, a human being, an object, a landscape, you perceive these things with the help of your eyes, your touch, hearing and, for the details, smell and taste; well, science tells you: “All that is illusory, you don’t see things at all as they are, you don’t touch them as they really are, you don’t smell them as they really are, you don’t taste them as they really are. It is the structure of your organs which puts you in contact with these things in a particular way which is entirely superﬁcial, external, illusory and unreal.”  From the point of view of science, you are a mass of — not even of atoms — of something inﬁnitely more imperceptible than an atom, which is in perpetual movement. There is absolutely nothing which is like a face, a nose, eyes, a mouth; it is only just an appearance.


The Mother: And scientists come to this conclusion — like the uncompromising spiritualists of the past — that the world is an illusion. That is a great discovery, very great.... One step more  and they will enter into the Truth. So, when somebody comes and says, “But I this, I it, I it, I am sure of it”, from the scientiﬁc point of view it’s nonsense.


The Mother: This could be said only by someone who has never made a scientiﬁc study of things as they are. So, by diametrically opposite roads they have come to the same result: the world as you see it is an illusion.  Now what is the truth behind this? People who have sought spiritual knowledge tell you, “We have experienced it”, but of course it is a purely subjective experience; there are as yet no grounds on which one can say absolutely that the experience is  beyond question for everybody. Everyone’s experience is beyond question for him.