The Mother:   But why torment yourself so much? Be calm, don’t get disturbed, remember that the conditions of our life are not quite ordinary conditions, and keep your trust in the Divine Power to organise all and do all through the human instruments which are open to His inﬂuence.    One must have no fear, victory is for him who is without fear; I am always with you to guide and protect you.   One must have no fear — fear is a bad counsellor; it acts like a magnet and attracts what we fear.


The Mother: One must, on the contrary, keep a calm certitude that sooner or later all will be well.   To be pessimistic has never been of any use except to attract towards oneself just the things one fears. One must, on the contrary, drive off all pessimistic thoughts and compel oneself to think only of what one wants to happen.  VIII 1st sign: One feels far away from Sri Aurobindo and me.  2nd: One loses conﬁdence, begins to criticise, is not satisﬁed.


The Mother: 3rd: One revolts and sinks into falsehood.    Do not grieve. Always the same battle must be won several times, especially when it is waged against the hostile forces.  That is why one must be armed with patience and keep faith in the ﬁnal victory.


The Mother:    It is not impossible, but it is easier for them to ﬁnd a human instrument.    It is good to be conﬁdent and to have a living and steady faith.  But in the matter of the adverse forces, it is good to be always vigilant and sincere.


The Mother:   This is childish; it is always the same trap of the adverse forces;  if, instead of expressing their advice under cleverly perverted forms, they were to speak of things as they are, it would come to something like this: “Continue to drink in order to stop being a drunkard” or better: “Continue to kill to stop being a murderer!”   One must never be afraid, and if the adverse forces try to lodge themselves in your lower nature, you have only to dislodge them, calling me to your help.


The Mother:   One must never be afraid. Even in your sleep you must be able to remember me and call me to your help if there is some danger.  You will see that the nightmares will vanish.


The Mother: If you start feeding the adverse forces, they will exact more and more and will never be satisﬁed.     Much of this is; if he thought less of these so-called vital beings, most of them would be immediately dissolved.


The Mother: Yes, on condition that the “peace” is not that of a but of a conscious force.     I am speaking of the peace experienced by those who are utterly insensible and indifferent to the misfortunes of the world and  the suffering of others, those who have turned their hearts to stones and are incapable of compassion.  IX


The Mother: This is not at all correct; the experience of all recluses, all ascetics, proves indisputably the contrary. The difﬁculty comes from oneself, from one’s own nature, and one takes it along wherever one goes, whatever the conditions one may be in. There is but one way of getting out of it — it is to conquer the difﬁculty, overcome one’s lower nature. And is this not easier here, with a concrete and tangible help, than all alone, without anyone to shed light on the path and guide the uncertain footsteps?


The Mother: This does not depend so much on outer conditions, but above all on the inner state.  A pure being is always pure, in all circumstances.     No, this is wrong!


The Mother: It is true of the ordinary life but not of a yogi.    It would be much better to dissociate yourself from the tendency to fall into your ordinary consciousness.     Probably a disastrous result; that is, a passive opening to all sorts of inﬂuences, most of which are hardly commendable.


The Mother:   Why? I don’t see that this is necessary. The effort which would be needed to become immune from the effects of dirt can be utilized much more proﬁtably elsewhere.


The Mother: Of course, this shows very good feelings. But a certain amount of knowledge must be added to these sentiments. For, to communicate peace and joy to others is not so easy, and unless one has within oneself, there is a great risk of losing what one has rather than passing it on to others.    One cannot help others to overcome their sorrows and sufferings unless one has overcome all this in oneself and is master of one’s feelings and reactions.


The Mother:   It is to purify your own heart that you must work, instead of passing your time in judging what others do or don’t do.     Yes, one must distrust superﬁcial and baseless judgments.


The Mother:    It is just when one is innocent that one ought to be most indifferent to ill-treatment, because there is nothing to blame oneself for and one has the approbation of one’s conscience to console oneself.


The Mother:    It would be much better for you not to busy yourself with what others say.


The Mother: Surely those who have courage must have some for those who have none.    It is very good to control one’s anger. Even if it were only to learn to do so, these contacts with others are useful.


The Mother: I do not know of anything more foolish than these quarrels in which everybody is in the wrong. And is there anything more ridiculous than rufﬂed?     In keeping quiet one never risks doing anything wrong, while one has nine chances out of ten of saying something stupid when one speaks.


The Mother:   It is never good to tell a lie, but here its results cannot but be disastrous, for falsehood is the very symbol of that which wants to oppose the divine work of Truth.  X  Health is the outer expression of a deep harmony, one must be proud of it and not despise it.


The Mother:   Why imagine always that one is ill or is going to be ill and thus open oneself to all kinds of bad suggestions? There is no reason to be ill and I don’t see why you should be so.    Do as you like, this is not of much importance; but what is important is to cast off fear.


The Mother: It is fear which makes one fall ill and it is fear which makes healing so difﬁcult. All fear must be overcome and replaced by a complete trust in the divine Grace.   One must have an unshakable faith to be able to do without medicines.   One must never lose hope or faith — there is nothing incurable, and no limit can be set to the power of the Divine.


The Mother:   One must ﬁnd the inner peace and keep it constantly. In the force this peace brings, all these little miseries will disappear.    It must become aware of the immortality of the elements constituting it (which is a scientiﬁcally recognised fact), then it must submit itself to the inﬂuence and the will of the psychic being which is immortal in its very nature.


The Mother:   For food to be no longer necessary, the body would have to be completely transformed and no longer subject to any of the laws governing it at present.     I don’t see why people should feel guilty because they are hungry.  If food is prepared, it is for eating.


The Mother:   Evidently, this creates an atmosphere in which food predominates; this is not very conducive to spiritual life.  XI


The Mother: The vital is at once the place of desires and energies, impulses and passions, of cowardice, but also of heroism — to bridle it is to turn all this towards the divine Will and submit it to this Will.    This also is false. The higher part of the vital being, like the higher part of the mental being, aspires for the Divine and suffers when far from Him.    No, it only shows that in your consciousness the mind takes a bigger place than the vital.


The Mother: What I call the domination of the mind over the vital is when the latter takes no initiative, accepts no impulse which has not been ﬁrst sanctioned by the mind, when no desire, no passion arises unless the mind thinks it good; and if an impulse of desire, passion or violence comes from outside, it is enough that the mind intervenes for it to be immediately controlled.    Certainly not; quite on the contrary, to be able to conquer the desires of the vital one must have an excellent physical equilibrium and sound health.    In the vital world attraction and repulsion are the right and wrong sides of the same thing and always indicate an attachment.


The Mother: One must persistently turn away one’s thought from its object.     It is always better to avoid the temptation.    One has only to persist with a calm conﬁdence and the vital will stop going on strike.


The Mother:  Depression is always unreasonable and leads nowhere. It is the most subtle enemy of yoga.  XII    Conversations


The Mother: Intellectual culture is indispensable for preparing a good mental instrument, large, supple and rich, but its action stops there.  In rising above the mind, it is more often a hindrance than a help, for, in general, a reﬁned and educated mind ﬁnds its satisfaction in itself and rarely seeks to silence itself so as to be surpassed.    So long as you need to form yourself, to build your brain, you will feel this strong urge to study; but when the brain is well formed, the taste for studies will gradually die away.


The Mother:  The Life Divine   If you read metaphysics and ethics, you must do it just as  to give a little exercise to your brain, but never lose sight of the fact that  and that it is not in this way that one can draw close to knowledge. Naturally, this does not hold good for ...    In silence lies the source of the highest inspirations.


The Mother:   It is not the work that is of importance but the spirit in which one does it. It is difﬁcult to keep one’s mind perfectly quiet; it is better to engage it in studies than in silly ideas or unhealthy dreamings.    It is difﬁcult to keep one’s mind always ﬁxed on the same thing, and if it is not given enough work to occupy it, it begins to become restless.


The Mother: So I think it is better to choose one’s books carefully rather than stop reading altogether.     If you don’t want to learn a thing thoroughly, conscientiously and in all its details, it is better not to take it up at all. It is a great mistake to think that a little superﬁcial and incomplete  knowledge of things can be of any use whatsoever; it is good for nothing except making people conceited, for they imagine they know and in fact know nothing.


The Mother:   It is very difﬁcult to choose games which are useful and beneﬁcial for a child. It asks for much consideration and reﬂection, and all that one does unthinkingly may have unhappy consequences.


The Mother:   Not as much as they seem to be. There is a deep and very wise observation in the comedies of Moli`ere.     Salammbˆo


The Mother: It is not a book of ideas; it is only for the beauty of its form and style that it is remarkable.     In the mind also there are perversions.


The Mother: It is a rather poor and unreﬁned vital which can take pleasure in such things!    XIII   It is not with severity but with that children are controlled.


The Mother:   I must tell you that if a teacher wants to be respected, he must . X is not the only one to say that you use violence to make yourself obeyed; nothing is less respectable. You must ﬁrst control yourself and never use brute force to impose your will.


The Mother:   I have always thought that something in the teacher’s character was responsible for the indiscipline of his students.     The most important is to master yourself and never lose your temper.


The Mother: If you don’t have control over yourself, how can you expect to control others, above all, children, who feel it immediately when someone is not master of himself?     One must have a lot of patience with young children, and repeat the same thing to them several times, explaining it to them in various ways. It is only gradually that it enters their mind.


The Mother: Nothing special to you. It is the same difﬁculty that exists for all human beings: the pride and blindness of the physical mind.     Many things have been said on the subject but, as far as my own experience goes, I do not attach much importance to that belief.


The Mother:   A prayer: “O Lord, awaken my entire being that it may be for Thee the needed instrument, the perfect servant.”     Yes, he spoke to me about it. But you must know that yoga frees us from subjection to the horoscope; the horoscope expresses the position one has in relation with the material world, but by the sadhana we get free from the slavery to that world.


The Mother:   Yes, I like to receive the book from you. It helps to keep the contact materially.


The Mother:  From your mother you can always take, it is quite natural, especially when things are given to you full-heartedly — and am I not your mother who loves you?...       Will


The Mother: you say to your cousin that I know only one way out of all troubles and difﬁculties; it is entire self-giving and consecration to the Divine.     No, I always mean what I say.  Love and blessings to my dear child.


The Mother:   Yet I feel you much closer to me and I see in you an opening that was never there before. It seems to me that soon you will  discover, behind the apparent dryness of the surface, the always burning ﬂame of a conscious Love.  Blessings.


The Mother:   I know that it is only the weak who complain. The strong never do because they can’t be hurt. So I never attach much importance to complaints.


The Mother: Love and blessings to my dear child.    Nothing to excuse, all is in the spirit of the offering....  Love and blessings to my dear child.


The Mother:   Yes, these are two names for the same thing.  Love and blessings to my dear child.    The way is opened, my dear child, and I am waiting for you with my arms wide to receive and enfold you affectionately — with my love and blessings.


The Mother:  Let me carry you in my arms and the climbing will become easy.   Love and blessings to my dear child.


The Mother: My very dear child, live in my love, feel it, be ﬁlled with it and be happy — nothing can please me more than that.  Most affectionately.    Yes, you are my child and it is true that of all things it is the most important.... Dear child, I am always with you and my love and blessings never leave you.


The Mother:  Faith in the Divine’s Grace and its power to transform you.  Love and blessings to my dear child.     The only mystery, the only spell is my love — my love which is spread over my children and calls down upon them the Divine’s Grace to help and to protect.


The Mother:   Nothing can resist the steady action of love. It melts all resistances and triumphs over all difﬁculties...   Love and blessings to my dear child.


The Mother:    It is not as a Guru that I love and bless, it is as the Mother who asks nothing in return for what she gives.


The Mother: I do not see anybody in the world more qualiﬁed than Sri Aurobindo to lead you to the feet of the Mahashakti.   With my love and blessings.    My dear child, Your good and kind letter has made me happy.  Last night, in silence, I told you, “To arrive at that to which you aspire, the way is Love and the goal too is Love” — is it not the best answer to your letter?...


The Mother: With my love and blessings.


The Mother: But what a joy and love it is when both mother and son are good!  My love and blessings to my dear (good) child.    My child’s heart is ﬁlled with love and light from the Divine; let them shine throughout your whole being and the clouds, if any, will soon disappear.


The Mother: Love and blessings to my dear child.     There is a great joy in giving; there is a still greater joy in pleasing those we love... and when you will eat the pickles you may remember me and think, Mother loves me...


The Mother: Love and blessings to my dear child.    My dear loving child, Your heart is quite a sweet place because of your love — let me remain always there so that I may ﬁll your whole being with light and love and joy.   My love and blessings.


The Mother:  My dear, dear child, let the Light of a conscious certitude and the joy of an everlasting Presence be always with you — concretely — in the sweetness of love divine.    My dear child, Well — the best thing you could do is not to listen to what people say; it would save you from many falls of consciousness.  This afternoon when I looked at you in silence I told you, ” I suppose this is a sufﬁcient answer and you do not expect me to justify my love in front of the foolish ignorance of such interpretations.


The Mother: Whether you believe or doubt, my love and blessings are with you.     My dear child, I knew that it was a passing mood and that you would soon come out of it — but let this love and this truth be your shield and protect you against the intrusion of any force of falsehood.  My love and blessings will lead you to the goal.


The Mother:   My very dear child, If only you could keep always your inner happiness, it would please me immensely and help you very much on the way.  My love and blessings to you, dear child.


The Mother: My very dear child, Whatever is the nature of the offering, when it is made with sincerity it always contains a spark of divine light which can grow into a full sun and illuminate the whole being. You can be sure of my love, you can be sure of my help, and our blessings are always with you.     Love, love, love


The Mother: to my very dear child; all the joy, all the light, all the peace of the divine love and also my loving blessings.    Indeed, that day I had heard you distinctly calling me and I wanted to answer very concretely to your call... My love and blessings to my very dear child.


The Mother: There is no contradiction that cannot be solved and harmonised in a synthesis if you rise high enough in the intuitive mind and yours is not at all irreducible. I am sure that one day you will ﬁnd this out.  My love and blessings.


The Mother: My very dear child, I truly hope you will soon be out of all your troubles. Just one good jump to the higher consciousness where all problems  are solved and you will get rid of your difﬁculties. I never feel that I am forgiving. Love does not forgive, it understands and cures.  My love and blessings always.


The Mother:   Let divine love be your goal.   Let pure love be your way.


The Mother: Be always true to your love and all difﬁculties will be conquered.   Love and blessings to my dear child.


The Mother:   The higher Consciousness is a state of pure love but it is also a state of pure openness to divine knowledge. There is no opposition there between these two kindred things; it is the mind that makes them separate.  The best way to get to it is to refuse all mental agitation when it comes, also all vital desires and turmoils, and to keep the mind  and heart turned as constantly as possible towards the Divine.  The love for the Divine is the strongest force for doing this.


The Mother: My love and blessings.     My dear child, So, the best thing to do is to abdicate at once and to get rest, peace and joy. When you have to get rid of an obstinate resistance, you must not make more delay than when you have to pull out a bad tooth.


The Mother: Inside, outside and everywhere is the help of the Mother...  with her love and blessings.    My dear child, My love wants to lead you to the goal and it is bound to succeed.


The Mother: With my blessings.     That which the Divine has destined for each of us —. My love and blessings to my dear child.


The Mother: My dear child, It does not displease me in the least. If I did not answer to what you wrote about it the other day, it is because I did not attach much importance to it. My sentence meant simply that my love is capable of understanding and that my blessings do not depend on such surface movements.  I can add today that I am not at all tired of the “problem called me” and that I remain convinced that it will be solved successfully....


The Mother: With my love and blessings.     My dear child, Whenever you require spiritual help I am always there to give you that help under whatever form it can take.


The Mother: With my love and blessings.    My dear child, Let this year bring you the power to smile in all circumstances. For, a smile acts upon difﬁculties as the sun upon the clouds — it disperses them.


The Mother: With my love and blessings.     My dear child, here is the programme for this year: Unify your whole being around your highest consciousness and do not let your mind work at random. Doubt is not a sport to indulge in  with impunity: it is a poison which drop by drop corrodes the soul.


The Mother: With my love and blessings.     The Divine’s Grace is there — open your door and welcome it.


The Mother: With my love and blessings.      The psychic change is the change that puts you in contact with the immanent Divine, the Divine who is at the centre of each being and of whom the psychic being is the sheath and the expression. By the psychic change one passes from the individual Divine to the universal Divine and ﬁnally to the Transcendent.  The spiritual change puts you directly in contact with the Supreme.


The Mother:   It is through all the experiences of life that the psychic personality forms, grows, develops and ﬁnally becomes a complete, conscious and free being.  This process of development goes on tirelessly through innumerable lives, and if one is not conscious of it, it is because one is not conscious of one’s psychic being — for that is the indispensable starting-point. Through interiorisation and concentration one has to enter into conscious contact with one’s psychic being. This psychic being always has an inﬂuence on the  outer being, but that inﬂuence is almost always occult, neither seen nor perceived nor felt, save on truly exceptional occasions.


The Mother: In order to strengthen the contact and aid, if possible, the development of the conscious psychic personality, one should, while concentrating, turn towards it, aspire to know it and feel it, open oneself to receive its inﬂuence, and take great care, each time that one receives an indication from it, to follow it very scrupulously and sincerely. To live in a great aspiration, to take care to become inwardly calm and remain so always as far as possible, to cultivate a perfect sincerity in all the activities of one’s being — these are the essential conditions for the growth of the psychic being.     That depends on the kind of energy one wants to absorb, for each region of the being has a corresponding kind of energy.


The Mother: If it is physical energy, we absorb it principally through respiration, and all that facilitates and improves respiration increases at the same time the absorption of physical energy.  But there are many other kinds of energies, or rather many other forms of Energy, which is and universal.  And it is through the various yogic exercises of breathing, meditation, and concentration that one puts oneself in contact with these various forms of Energy.    Each region of the being and each activity has its energies.


The Mother: We  may classify them generally into vital energies, mental energies, spiritual energies. Modern science tells us that Matter is ultimately nothing but energy condensed.  Our yoga being integral, all these various forms or kinds of energy are indispensable to our realisation.   It means that the ghost one sees and wrongly takes for the departed being itself, is only an of it, an imprint (like a photographic imprint) left in the subtle physical by the superﬁcial mental form, an image that can become visible under certain conditions. These images can move about (like cinema images), but they have no substantial reality.


The Mother: It is the fear or emotion of those who see these images that sometimes gives them the appearance of a power or an action they do not possess in themselves. Hence the necessity of never being afraid and of recognising them for what they are — a deceptive appearance.    No; aspiration, as well as widening and intensity, comes from the heart, the emotional centre, the door of the psychic or rather the door leading to the psychic.   The mind by its nature is curious and interested; it sees, it observes, it tries to understand and explain; and with all this activity, it disturbs the experience and diminishes its intensity and force.


The Mother: On the other hand, the more quiet and silent the mind is, the more can aspiration rise up from the depths of the heart in the fullness of its ardour.    This amounts to asking how one can eliminate the ego. It is only by yoga that one can do it. There have been, throughout the spiritual history of humanity, many methods of yoga — which Sri Aurobindo has described and explained for us in .


The Mother: But before the will of the ego, which takes a very long time, one can begin by surrendering the will of the ego to the Divine Will at every opportunity and ﬁnally in a constant way.  For this, the ﬁrst step is to understand that the Divine knows better than we what is good for us and what we truly need, not only for our spiritual progress but also for our material wellbeing, the health of our body and the proper functioning of all the activities of our being.  Naturally, this is not the opinion of the ego, which thinks it knows better than anyone else what it needs, and claims for itself independence of judgment and decision. But it thinks and feels this way because it is ignorant, and gradually one has to convince it that its perception and understanding are too limited for it truly to be able to know and that it judges only according to its desires, which are blind, and not according to truth.   For the desires are not the expression of needs but of preferences.


The Mother:   First of all, one should know that the intellect, the mind, can understand nothing of the Divine, neither what He does nor He does it and still less He does it. To know something of the Divine, one has to rise above thought and enter into the psychic consciousness, the consciousness of the soul, or into the spiritual consciousness.  Those who have had the experience have always said that the difﬁculties and sufferings of the path are not real, but a creation of human ignorance, and that as soon as one gets out of this ignorance one also gets out of the difﬁculties, to say nothing of the inalienable state of bliss in which one dwells as soon as one is in conscious contact with the Divine.  So according to them, the question has no real basis and cannot be posed.


The Mother:  This too is a way which is certainly as good as the other.   There are many ways to attain self-realisation, and each one must choose the way that comes to him most naturally.  But each way has its demands in order to be truly effective.  In thinking of me, you must think not only of the outer person.


The Mother: but of what she represents, what stands behind her.  For you must never forget that the outer person is only the form and symbol of an eternal Reality, and through the physical appearance, it is to this higher Reality that you must turn. The physical being cannot become truly expressive of the eternal Reality until it is completely transformed by the supramental manifestation. And until then, it is it that you must ﬁnd the Truth.


The Mother:   Control during sleep is entirely possible and it is progressive if you persist in the effort. You begin by remembering your dreams, then gradually you remain more and more conscious during your sleep, and not only can you control your dreams but you can guide and organise your activities during sleep.  If you persist in your will and your effort, you are sure to learn how to come and ﬁnd me at night during your sleep and afterwards to remember what has happened.  For this, two things are necessary, which you must develop by aspiration and by calm and persistent effort.


The Mother: (1) Concentrate your thought on the will to come and ﬁnd me; then pursue this thought, ﬁrst by an effort of imagination, afterwards in a tangible and increasingly real way, until you are in my presence.   (2) Establish a sort of bridge between the waking and the sleeping consciousness, so that when you wake up you remember what has happened.  It may be that you succeed immediately, but more often it takes a certain time and you must persist in the effort.


The Mother: But without the soul we wouldn’t exist!  The soul is that which comes from the Divine without ever leaving Him, and returns to the Divine without ceasing to be manifest.  The soul is the Divine made individual without ceasing to be divine.  In the soul the individual and the Divine are eternally one; therefore, to ﬁnd one’s soul is to ﬁnd God; to identify with one’s soul is to unite with the Divine.  Thus it may be said that the role of the soul is to make a true being of man.


The Mother:  There is nothing that can truly be called. What men call luck are the of they do not know.  Nor is there anything that in itself is good or bad luck; each one characterises circumstances as good or bad depending on whether they are more or less favourable to him; and this estimation itself is very superﬁcial and ignorant, for one must  already be a great sage to know what is truly favourable or unfavourable to oneself.  Moreover, the same event may be very good for one person and at the same time very bad for another. These estimations are purely subjective and depend on each one’s reaction to contacts coming from outside.


The Mother: Finally, the circumstances of our life, the surroundings in which we live and the way in which people regard us are the expression, the objective projection of what we ourselves are, within and without. So we may say with certainty that what we carry in ourselves in all our states of being, mentally, vitally and physically, is that which constitutes our life objectiﬁed in what surrounds us.  And this is easily veriﬁable, for in proportion as we improve ourselves and advance towards perfection, our circumstances also improve.  Likewise, in the case of those who degenerate and fall back, the circumstances of their lives also worsen.


The Mother: Every morning at the balcony, after establishing a conscious contact with each of those who are present, I identify myself with the Supreme Lord and dissolve myself completely in Him.  Then my body, completely passive, is nothing but a channel through which the Lord passes His forces freely and pours upon all His Light, His Consciousness and His Joy, according to each one’s receptivity.   The best way to receive what He gives is to come to the balcony with trust and aspiration and to keep oneself as  as one can in a . If one has something precise to ask, it is better to ask it , not while I am there, because any activity lessens the receptivity.


The Mother: The physical consciousness is not only the consciousness of our body, but of all that surrounds us as well — all that we perceive with our senses. It is a sort of apparatus for recording and transmission which is open to all the contacts and shocks coming from outside and responds to them by reactions of pleasure and pain which welcome or repel. This makes in our outer being a constant activity and noise that we are only partially aware of, because we are so accustomed to them.  But if through meditation or concentration we turn inward or upward, we can bring down into ourselves or raise up from the depths calm, quiet, peace and ﬁnally silence. It is a concrete, positive silence (not the negative silence of the absence of noise), immutable so long as it remains, a silence one can experience even in the outer tumult of a hurricane or battleﬁeld.


The Mother: This silence is synonymous with peace and it is all-powerful; it is the perfectly effective remedy for the fatigue, tension and exhaustion arising from that internal over-activity and noise which generally escape our control and cease neither by day nor night.   This is why the ﬁrst thing required when one wants to do Yoga is to bring down and establish in oneself the calm, the peace, the silence.    In the same way that one can share the emotions of another person — by sympathy, spontaneously, by an afﬁnity more or less deep, or else by an effort of concentration which ends in identiﬁcation. It is this latter process that we adopt when we listen to music with an intense and concentrated attention, to the point of stopping all other noise in the head and obtaining a complete silence into which fall, drop by drop, the notes of the music whose sound alone remains; and with the sound all the feelings, all the movements of emotion can be captured, experienced, re-felt as if they were produced in ourselves.


The Mother:  In principle, to judge the activities of sleep one needs the same capacity of discrimination as to judge the waking activities.  But since we usually give the name “dream” to a considerable number of activities that differ completely from one another, the ﬁrst point is to learn to distinguish between these various activities — that is, to recognise what part of the being it is that “dreams”, what domain it is that one “dreams” in, and what the nature of that activity is. In his letters, Sri Aurobindo has given  very complete and detailed descriptions and explanations of all the activities of sleep. Reading these letters is a good introduction to the study of this subject and to its practical application .


The Mother:   To read my books is not difﬁcult because they are written in the simplest language, almost the spoken language. To get help from them, it is enough to read with attention and concentration and an attitude of inner good-will, with a desire to receive and live what is taught.  To read what Sri Aurobindo writes is more difﬁcult because the expression is highly intellectual and the language far more literary and philosophic.


The Mother: The brain needs a preparation to really be able to understand and generally this preparation takes time, unless one is specially gifted with an innate intuitive faculty.  In any case, I always advise reading at a time, keeping the mind as quiet as one can, without making an effort to understand, but keeping the head as silent as possible and letting  contained in what one reads. This force, received in calm and silence, will do its work of illumining and will create in the brain, if necessary, the cells required for understanding. Thus, when one re-reads the same thing some months later, one ﬁnds that the thought expressed has become much clearer and closer and even at times quite familiar.  It is preferable to read regularly, a little every day and at a ﬁxed hour if possible; this facilitates the brain’s receptivity.


The Mother:    It is because each photo represents a different aspect, sometimes even a different personality of my being; and by concentrating on the photo, one enters into relation with that special aspect or different personality which the photo has captured and whose image it conveys.   The photo is a real and concrete presence, but fragmentary and limited.


The Mother: Because the photo catches only the image of a moment, an instant of a person’s appearance and of what that appearance can reveal of a passing psychological condition and fragmentary soul-state. Even if the photograph is taken under the best possible conditions at an exceptional and particularly expressive moment, it cannot in any way reproduce the whole personality.    The inconscient is that part of Nature which is so obscure and asleep that it seems to be wholly devoid of consciousness; at any rate, as in the stone, the mineral kingdom, the consciousness there is entirely inactive and hidden. The history of the earth begins with this inconscience.


The Mother: We too carry it in ourselves, in the substance of our body, since the substance of our body is the same as that of the earth.  But by evolution, this sleeping and hidden consciousness gradually awakens through the vegetal and animal kingdoms, and in them subconscience begins; this subconscience, with the appearance of mind in man, culminates in consciousness. This consciousness likewise is progressive, and in proportion as man evolves, it will change into superconscience.  We too, then, carry in ourselves the subconscience which links us to the animal, and the superconscience which is our hope and assurance of future realisation.   This music aims at awakening certain profound feelings.


The Mother: In listening to it, one should make oneself as silent and passive as possible. And if, in the mental silence, a part of the being can take the attitude of the witness who observes without reacting or participating, then one can notice the effect that the music produces on the feelings and emotions; and if it produces a state of deep calm and semi-trance, that is very good.    The overmind is the region of the gods, the beings of divine origin who have been charged with supervising, directing and  organising the evolution of the universe; and more speciﬁcally, since the formation of the earth they have served as messengers and intermediaries to bring to the earth the aid of the higher regions and to preside over the formation of the mind and its progressive ascension. It is usually to the gods of the overmind that the prayers of the various religions are addressed.


The Mother: These religions most often choose, for various reasons, one of these gods and transform him for their personal use into the supreme God.  In the individual evolution, one must develop in oneself a zone corresponding to the overmind and an overmind consciousness, before one can rise above it, to the Supermind, or open oneself to it.  Almost all the occult systems and disciplines aim at the development and mastery of the overmind.    The individual being is made up of states of being corresponding to cosmic zones or planes, and it is as these inner states of being are developed that one becomes conscious of those domains.


The Mother: This consciousness is double, at ﬁrst psychological and subjective, within oneself, expressing itself through thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations; then objective and concrete when one is able to go beyond the limits of the body in order to move about in the various cosmic regions, grow conscious of them and act freely in them — it is this that is called “mastery”; it is this that I spoke of when I mentioned the mastery of the overmind.  It goes without saying that all this is not done in a day, nor even in a year. This mastery, in whatever domain it may be, vital, mental, overmental, demands assiduous effort and a great  concentration. These masteries are no easier than the mastery of the physical world; and everyone knows how much time and effort are needed merely to learn the things indispensable for leading one’s life properly, not to speak of “mastery”, which is truly something exceptional on earth.


The Mother:   Supernature is the Nature superior to material or physical Nature — what we usually call “Nature”. But this Nature that we see, feel and study, this Nature that has been our familiar environment since our birth upon earth, is not the only one. There is a vital nature, a mental nature, and so on. It is this that, for the ordinary consciousness, is Supernature.


The Mother: Very often the word “Nature” is used as a synonym for Prakriti, the executive force of Purusha. But to answer your question more precisely, the context would be needed in order to know on what occasion Sri Aurobindo spoke about Supernature.    The Life Divine   What Sri Aurobindo means is that only a few exceptional beings who do not belong to the ordinary humanity, have a conscious and organised overmind being and overmind life, and still fewer are those who have an organised supramental being and supramental life, even admitting that there are any at all. Certainly the very recent descent of the ﬁrst elements of the Supermind into the earth’s atmosphere (not yet quite four years ago) cannot have changed this state of things.


The Mother: We are still only in a period of preparation.    The yoga of knowledge is the path that leads to the Divine through the exclusive pursuit of the pure and absolute Truth.  The yoga of devotion is the path that leads to union with the Divine through perfect, total and eternal love.  In the integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo, the two combine with the yoga of works and the yoga of self-perfection to make a homogeneous whole, culminating in the yoga of supramental realisation.


The Mother:   It is difﬁcult to reply without having the context. Which “supreme faculties” are being referred to here? Those of man on the way to becoming superman, or those that the supramental being will possess when he appears on earth?


The Mother: In the ﬁrst case, they are the faculties that develop in man as he opens to the higher mind and overmind, and through those  regions he receives the light of the Truth. These faculties are not a direct expression of the supreme Truth, but a transcription, an indirect reﬂection of it. They include intuition, foreknowledge, knowledge by identity and certain powers such as that of healing and, to an extent, of acting upon circumstances.  If it refers to the supreme faculties of the supramental being, we cannot say much about them, for all we can say at the moment belongs more to the realm of imagination than to the realm of knowledge, since this supramental being has not yet manifested on earth


The Mother: .    These divisions are merely arbitrary. They have been established in order to facilitate the study of human nature and especially to constitute a deﬁnite basis for the various methods of selfdevelopment and self-discipline. That is why each philosophic, educational or Yogic system has, as it were, its own division based on the experience of its founder.


The Mother: Nevertheless, despite these divergences, there is a sort of tradition which, behind the different terms, makes for an essential analogy. This analogy can be expressed by a quaternary: the physical, the vital, the mental and the psychic or soul.  Sri Aurobindo has written on this subject in great detail in some of his letters, in and in .     No conception of the Divine can be correct; for conceptions are mental activities, and no mental activity is ﬁt to manifest the Divine.


The Mother: It is only by experience that one can know Him, and the experience cannot be translated into words.   The Mother    Savitri, The Life Divine  Read a little at a time, read again and again until you have understood.


The Mother: Because you know nothing about psychology. Study psychology and you will understand what he means.


The Mother: It means that all we offer, we necessarily offer to the Supreme, because He is the sole Reality behind everything.    In truth the Divine has chosen everyone and everything, and everyone and everything will return to Him. But for some it will take thousands of lives, while for others it will happen in this very lifetime. This is what makes the difference.


The Mother:  You must read with much attention and concentration, not novels or dramas, but books that make you think. You must meditate on what you have read, reﬂect on a thought until you have understood it. Talk little, remain quiet and concentrated, and speak only when it is indispensable.    Our house has a very high tower; at the very top of this tower there is a bright and bare room, the last before we emerge into the open air, into the full light.


The Mother: Sometimes, when we are free to do so, we climb up to this bright room, and there, if we remain very quiet, one or more visitors come to call on us; some are tall, others small, some single, others in groups; all are bright and graceful.  Usually, in our joy at their arrival and our haste to welcome them, we lose our tranquillity and come galloping down to rush into the great hall that forms the base of the tower and is the storeroom of words. Here, more or less excited, we select, reject, assemble, combine, disarrange, rearrange all the words in our reach, in an attempt to portray this or that visitor who has come to us. But most often, the picture we succeed in making of our visitor is more like a caricature than a portrait.  And yet if we were wiser, we would remain up above, at the summit of the tower, quite calm, in joyful contemplation.


The Mother: Then, after a certain length of time, we would see the visitors themselves slowly, gracefully, calmly descend, without losing anything of their elegance or beauty and, as they cross the storeroom of words, clothe themselves effortlessly, automatically, with the words needed to make themselves perceptible even in the material house.  This is what I call thinking with ideas.  When this process is no longer mysterious to you, I shall explain what is meant by thinking with experiences.   My dear child, I have just read your good letter. Fear nothing: those who are sincere in their aspiration will remain here and receive all the help needed to be able to change in themselves what needs to be changed.


The Mother: You can be sure that my force will always be with you so that you can make all the progress you want to make.  Have conﬁdence, my child; everything will be all right.    The central knot of desires is the sense of separate personality; it is the ego. With the disappearance of the ego, the desires disappear.


The Mother: One keeps one’s defects because one hangs on to them as if they were something precious; one clings to one’s vices as one clings to a part of one’s body, and pulling out a bad habit hurts as much as pulling out a tooth. That is why one does not progress.  Whereas if one generously makes an offering of one’s defect, vice or bad habit, then one has the joy of making an offering and one receives in exchange the force to replace what has been given, by a better and truer vibration.     The two are equally true and they ought to be felt simultaneously.


The Mother: But human egoism always has the tendency to take rather than to give. This is where that impression comes from.     You yourself have answered your own question.


The Mother: I am for you a mother who is very close to you, who loves and understands you; that is why it is easy for you to approach me with a loving conﬁdence, without fear and without hesitation. Sri Aurobindo is always there to help you and guide you; but it is natural that you should approach Him with the reverence due to the Master of Yoga.    The soul and the psychic being are not exactly the same thing, although their essence is the same.  The soul is the divine spark that dwells at the centre of each being; it is identical with its Divine Origin; it is the divine in man.


The Mother: The psychic being is formed progressively around this divine centre, the soul, in the course of its innumerable lives in the  terrestrial evolution, until the time comes when the psychic being, fully formed and wholly awakened, becomes the conscious sheath of the soul around which it is formed.  And thus identiﬁed with the Divine, it becomes His perfect instrument in the world.     When you have established contact with your psychic being, it is, in effect, deﬁnitive.


The Mother: But before this contact is established, you can, in certain circumstances, consciously receive the psychic which always produces an illumination in the being and has more or less lasting effects.     It would be more correct to say that the soul puts on a progressive individual form which becomes the psychic being. For since the soul is itself a portion of the Supreme, it is immutable and eternal.


The Mother: The psychic being is progressive and immortal.  All the methods of self-knowledge, self-control and selfmastery are good. You have to choose the one that comes to you spontaneously and best corresponds to your nature. And once  having chosen the method, you must use your intelligent will to apply it with an unfailing perseverance that does not shrink from any obstacle, any difﬁculty. It is a long and minute work which must be undertaken with sincerity and continued with an increasing sincerity ever more scrupulous and integral.


The Mother: The easy paths generally lead nowhere.     A base and evil life can only have the effect of separating the outer being more and more completely from the psychic being, which retires into the depths of the higher consciousness and sometimes even cuts off all relation with the body, which is then usually possessed by an asuric or rakshasic being.


The Mother: The psychic being itself is above all possibility of degradation.    The soul’s inﬂuence is a kind of radiance that penetrates through the most opaque substances and acts even in the unconsciousness.  But then its action is slow and takes a very long time to obtain a perceptible result.


The Mother: The voice of the ordinary conscience is an ethical voice, a moral voice which distinguishes between good and evil, encourages us to do good and forbids us to do evil. This voice is very useful in ordinary life, until one is able to become conscious of one’s psychic being and allow oneself to be entirely guided by it — in other words, to rise above ordinary humanity, free oneself from all egoism and become a conscious instrument of the Divine Will. The soul itself, being a portion of the Divine, is above all moral and ethical notions; it bathes in the Divine Light and manifests it, but it can truly govern the whole being only when the ego has been dissolved.   To do something for the Lord is to give Him something of what one has or of what one does or of what one is. In other words, to offer Him a part of our belongings or all our possessions, to consecrate to Him a part of our work or all our activities, or to give ourselves to Him totally and unreservedly so that He can take possession of our nature in order to transform and divinise it.


The Mother: But there are many persons who, without giving anything,  always want to take and to receive. These people are selﬁsh and they are not worthy of meditating in Sri Aurobindo’s room.   The messages are usually chosen according to the occasion or the need of the moment, so that each person may be able to ﬁnd in them either the force or the knowledge that will help him to make progress.  In each one the will to progress is the needed thing — that is what opens us to the divine inﬂuence and makes us capable of receiving what it brings us.


The Mother:  Sri Aurobindo means that one should not mistake a mental ambition or a vital caprice for the spiritual call — for that alone is a sure sign that one should take up Yoga. The spiritual call is  heard only when the time has come, and then the soul responds and sets out on the path; it does not allow itself to be deceived by any ambition, pride or desire, and so long as it does not receive the Divine command to take up the path, it waits patiently,  knowing that to start out too soon is useless, to say the least, and may be harmful.    The Grace is always there, eternally present and active, but Sri Aurobindo says that it is extremely difﬁcult for us to be in a condition to receive it, keep it and make use of what it gives us.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo even says that it is more difﬁcult than to drink from the cup of the gods who are immortal.  To receive the divine grace, not only must one have a great aspiration, but also a sincere humility and an absolute trust.     It is because an individual is not made up all of one piece, but of many different entities which are sometimes even contrary to one another: some want the spiritual life, others are attached to the things of this world.


The Mother: To make all these parts agree and to unify them is a long and difﬁcult task.   The force and the light received by the more developed parts spread gradually into the rest of the being by a process of assimilation, and during this period of assimilation the progress of the more developed parts seems to be interrupted. This is what Sri Aurobindo has spoken of.


The Mother: It is utterly certain that if you were in contact with “your personal divine”, you would know perfectly well “how to approach the Transcendent Divine”. For the two are identical; it is only the mode of approach that differs: one is through the heart, the other through the mind.    My reply contained the answer to your question, for I understood very well that you were not claiming anything, but had expressed yourself poorly.  To discover the Transcendent Divine one has to follow the intellectual discipline, the way of knowledge, and by successive eliminations arrive at the one sole Truth, the Absolute beyond form and time and space. It is a long and difﬁcult path, a very arduous path.


The Mother: Whereas with one’s heart, one can set out to discover the Immanent Divine. And if one knows truly how to love, without desire or egoism , one ﬁnds Him very soon, for always He comes to meet you in order to help you.


The Mother: It should be understood clearly that there is no question here of any physical embracing, as practical jokers with the tastes and habits of street-urchins might like to suggest and who seek in what Sri Aurobindo has written an excuse for their excesses.  The divine embraces are embraces of soul and of consciousness, and they can be reproduced among human beings only by a widening of the consciousness, understanding and feelings — a widening that enables you to understand everything and love everything, without preference or exclusiveness.    Before the children came, only those who wanted to do sadhana were admitted to the Ashram, and the only habits and activities tolerated were those that were useful for the practice of sadhana.  But as it would be unreasonable to demand that children should do sadhana, this rigidity had to disappear the moment the children were introduced into the Ashram.


The Mother:   In terrestrial man, it is only the psychic being that knows true love. As for love, it exists only in the Divine.    It is not the world of delight that has come down, but only the supramental Light, Consciousness and Force.


The Mother:   An absolute sincerity in the aspiration.   A generalised goodwill and harmony.


The Mother: The Lord is everywhere, in everything, in what we throw away as in what we keep preciously, in what we trample on as in what we adore. We must learn to live with respect and never forget His constant and immutable Presence.      If you are speaking of calendars with photographs, it is preferable to cut out the photos, and if you do not want to keep them, give them to X who makes good use of them.


The Mother: And if you are telling me that the photos are, this will make you understand how necessary it is to take care of the things we use. That is what I mean when I speak of living with .     The only way that can be rapid is to think only of and to want only.


The Mother: It is effective, but not very practical for the work!       The dream is indeed very interesting. Snakes usually signify bad thoughts or bad will from people around you — or an adverse attack that can manifest as an illness. But, as you clearly experienced in your dream, if you are not frightened and go on your way unperturbed, nothing bad will happen to you.


The Mother: With my blessings.    You must continue to ﬁght against the bad thoughts until you gain a total victory. My help is always with you as well as my blessings.


The Mother:  The cause of mediocre work is neither the variety nor the number of activities, but the lack of power of concentration.  One must learn to concentrate and do all that one does with full concentration.    The interest of the students is proportionate to the of the teacher.    The Lost Footsteps  There are people here who see him and are constantly in contact with him.


The Mother: They are those who love him sincerely and sufﬁciently to live according to his ideal.    This is even more impossible than to change and become an elite. So the best thing to do is to set to work immediately. The rest is simply an excuse that our laziness gives to itself.


The Mother:   This is not good; the collective work should not suffer because of personal work.   There must still be some insincerity in your being, hidden in a dark corner, something that does not want to change and is afraid of the Light.   Come with the aspiration to give yourself, to offer your whole being, without reserve, to the Divine Grace, and you will feel the felicity for which you aspire.    It would be more proper to write (and above all, to think): “Would it be possible to have an electric lamp in the corridor?”  The would do well to become a little more modest.


The Mother:  If you can really allow them to be effaced and cease to exist, even in your memory, it is better.     The ﬁrst point is not to place oneself in thought, feeling or action so that it exists only in terms of oneself — one is part of the universe.


The Mother: One can unite with it, but the Supreme Lord alone is its centre because He surpasses and contains it.     Elsewhere he says explicitly that it is useless to try to satisfy desire, for desire is insatiable and can never be satisﬁed.  What he writes ought not to be taken separately; it is always part of a whole which is a synthesis of all opposites.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo has written a lot on this subject (in his letters) and I too have explained everything in the book. One has to read, study and,.     On the contrary, there is a very concrete relation. When you concentrate before sleeping, then in your sleep you remain in contact with the Divine force; but when you fall heavily to sleep without any preliminary concentration, you sink into the inconscient and the sleep is more tiring than restful, and it is difﬁcult to come out of this sluggishness.


The Mother:  I would like you to look attentively into yourself and try to explain to me what exactly it is that you enjoy in detective stories.     It is not useless.


The Mother: You probably had a great deal of tamas in your mind, and the mental acrobatics of the author shakes up this tamas a little and awakens the mind. But this cannot last for long and soon you must turn to higher things.     Persist in your aspiration and the dream will be realised.


The Mother:    Each one acts according to his nature and if he (or she) courageously and sincerely follows the law of that nature, he or she  acts according to truth. Thus, it is impossible to judge and decide for others.


The Mother: One can know only for oneself, and even then one has to be very so as not to deceive oneself.    What Sri Aurobindo writes here is a paradox to awaken sleepy minds. But we must understand all the irony in these sayings, and especially the intention behind his words. Moreover, cowards or not, I see no need for us to worship the gods, great or small. Our adoration ought to go only to the Supreme Lord, who is one in all things and all beings.


The Mother:    Behind all that and this famous inferiority complex, there is the ego and its vanity which wants to cut a good ﬁgure and be appreciated by others. But if all your activity were an offering to the Divine, you would not care at all about the appreciation of others.


The Mother:  It means that what you do should not be done with a personal, egoistic aim, for success, for glory, for gain, for material proﬁt or out of pride, but as a service and an offering, in order to become  more conscious of the divine will and to give yourself more entirely to it, until you have made enough progress to know and that it is the Divine who acts in you, His force that impels you and His will that supports you — not just a mental knowledge, but the sincerity of a state of consciousness and the power of a living experience.  For that to be possible, all egoistic motives and all egoistic reactions must disappear.    What I saw on the 26th was satisfactory (of course it can always be better) and I have heard about the 2nd December performance. You should not listen to people who only know how to criticise.


The Mother: Exaggerated criticism is not an aid to progress.    All the psychological qualities can be cultivated as the muscles  are — by regular, daily exercise. Above all, turn towards the Divine Force in a sincere aspiration and implore It to deliver you from your limitations. If you are in your will to progress, you are sure to advance.


The Mother:   The ceremony in itself is only of secondary importance. It is merely a form and more a matter of custom than anything else.  What is important is to infuse into whatever ceremony one adopts the sincere fervour and ardent aspiration which give life to any ceremony, whatever it may be, and yet do not depend on it.    Those who accomplish the work are not in the habit of boasting.


The Mother: They keep their energy for the task and leave the glory of the results to the Eternal Lord.     Yes, you must persevere with courage and sincerity. You are sure to succeed one day.


The Mother:   It is impossible. Each one has his own taste and his own temperament. Nothing can be done without — the whole of life is a discipline.


The Mother: For those who want to do yoga, it is Moreover, I have already said this a considerable number of times, and if you do not know it, it is because you ﬁnd it more convenient to forget it.    If each one were more concerned with correcting his own faults than with criticising those of others, the work would go more quickly.    A little sincere and regular practice is worth more than a lot of short-lived resolutions.


The Mother:   One can speak only of what one has seen with one’s own eyes — and even then... What knowledge do you possess that gives you the right to judge? Only the Lord sees and knows — He alone is the Truth.  You ought to study Sri Aurobindo’s aphorisms a little more carefully.


The Mother: It would cure you of passing judgments.     I read your letter and I was not at all angry. But Z was not at all ready for a darshan.


The Mother:   This kind of comment is quite out of place at the moment. One should never criticise someone unless one has proved beyond dispute that in the same circumstances one can do better than he.  Do you feel capable of being an unequalled Prime Minister of India? I reply: “Certainly not”, and I advise you to keep silent and remain calm.


The Mother: ()  It is all right, my children, but it is not enough to pray; you must also make a persevering effort.     Do not forget — all of you who are here — that we want to realise something which does not yet exist upon earth; so it is absurd to seek elsewhere for an example of what we want to do.


The Mother:    The freedom I speak of is the freedom to follow the will of the soul, not all the whims of the mind and vital.  The freedom I speak of is an austere truth which strives to surmount all the weaknesses and desires of the lower, ignorant being.  The freedom I speak of is the freedom to consecrate oneself wholly and without reserve to one’s highest, noblest, divinest aspiration.  Who among you sincerely follows this path?


The Mother: It is easy to judge, but more difﬁcult to understand, and far more difﬁcult still to realise.   () Remember that all these individual virtues and faults are only the deceptive appearance of a great play of universal forces which one does not understand.    () Find your happiness and your joy in the very fact of loving, and it will help you in your inner progress; because if you are, you will one day realise that it is the Divine in her that you love and that the outer person is merely a pretext.


The Mother:     Meditate where you meditate best — that is to say, wherever you are most silent and calm.


The Mother: ( )  I call that mental fermentation. As soon as your waking consciousness falls asleep or leaves your body, the brain-cells you have not taken the trouble to quiet down begin to ﬁdget restlessly and produce what is called a dream, but it is nothing more than disorderly activity.


The Mother: It has no meaning and can serve only one purpose: to make you aware of what goes on in your head.     Do as you feel — and you may be sure that whatever you do, people will always have something to say.   Besides, who is perfectly disinterested?


The Mother: One should not pretend to be what one is not. It is better to be frank than hypocritical.     It all depends on one’s point of view.


The Mother: It is quite possible that one will obtain the thing one has prayed for. But for spiritual progress, it is harmful.    It has hardly any signiﬁcance — it is a social custom for the perpetuation of the species.


The Mother: When one has the true attitude, everything can be an opportunity to learn.  In any case, this abundance should make you understand that the desire to see ﬁlms, which is so imperious in some people, is just as pernicious as any other desire.


The Mother: Not only is it right, good and healthy to think like this, but it is an absolutely indispensable attitude if one wants to advance on the spiritual path. As a matter of fact, it is the ﬁrst step without which one cannot advance at all. That is why I always say: “Whatever you do, do the you can, and leave the result to the Lord; then your heart will be at peace.”


The Mother: Yes, certainly, for someone who knows how to see, and X is very gifted.    Because you are more conscious, or rather less unconscious.


The Mother:   Why not?  There are hundreds of proofs to the contrary.     All the relationships are good and each one expresses a mode of the Eternal.


The Mother: But each can be perverted and become bad due to the selﬁsh falsehood of human nature which prevents the vibrations of love from manifesting in their purity.     Reach for the Sky  That is exactly the kind of determination one must have to practise the yoga of integral perfection.    It all depends on the quality of the silence — if it is a luminous silence, full of force and conscious concentration, it is good.


The Mother: If it is a tamasic and unconscious silence, it is harmful.     It is not a dream, but the result of the preceding meditation and of your aspiration.


The Mother: By studying much, by reﬂecting much, by doing intellectual exercises. For instance, state a general idea clearly, then state the opposite idea, then look for the synthesis of both — that is, ﬁnd a third idea which harmonises the other two.


The Mother: ( )  Why do you read novels? It is a stupid occupation and a waste of time. It is certainly one of the reasons why your brain is still in a muddle and lacks clarity.


The Mother:   That happens when he has not taken care to organise his conscious being around the psychic centre, which is the Truth of his being.     Before criticising others, it is better to be sure that one is perfectly sincere oneself.


The Mother:   It is atavistic and comes from the subconscient.  This instinct is based both on masculine pride, the foolish idea of superiority, and on the still more foolish fear due to the idea that woman is a dangerous being who entices you into sin.  In children, all this is still subconscious, but it inﬂuences their actions.    How frivolous and superﬁcial people must be to attach importance to such things!


The Mother: ! Even so, if you wore those clothes in your capacity as a captain, you did wrong, for the captains have a uniform which they should wear when they are acting as captains.    Or, it is because one is awaking to the need of knowing one’s soul and uniting with the Divine.   Become.


The Mother:     Who said that? And what “mission” are you referring to? The creation is a advancing as a totality towards its single goal — the Divine — through a collective evolution which is continuous and endless.


The Mother:   I have never made this statement.  Things are not so cut and dried as the mind thinks and even desires in order to simplify the problem.  There is an almost inﬁnite variety of shades and combinations of character, and although there are categories of very similar types, no two cases are identical.  One is aware of one’s difﬁculties only insofar as one can change them and at the moment when one can make the change.


The Mother:   Because you are looking for the cause outside, around you, whereas it is.     One cannot make a general rule; everything depends on the case and the occasion. Both methods have their good and bad points, their advantages and drawbacks.


The Mother: For the captains, the main thing is to have tact and sufﬁcient inner perception to intervene when necessary or to close one’s eyes when it is preferable not to see.    (1) Goodwill means wanting to do good always. The only true “good” is the will of the Supreme Lord. Do you know what the Lord’s will is, always, at every moment and in all circumstances?


The Mother: No, so you are ignorant of what “good” is — therefore: ignorant goodwill.   (2) The very nature of energy is to be inexhaustible, unfailing, tireless. Are you never tired? Yes, very often — therefore: indolent energy.


The Mother:   You say this, but you are one of those who revolt (at least in thought) against the very little discipline that is demanded when it is utterly indispensable, as in physical education, for example.


The Mother: It is probably a kind of inner discretion; it is rather a good sign, because this kind of discretion comes from the psychic consciousness which would rather give than.    It is not bolder you should be, but persistent and persevering.    The question is admirable — and if the sculptor had been witty, he would have replied: “Because I saw it inside.”


The Mother:   You would do better to make an effort to understand them, for behind the words there is always something profound to be understood.    That is an easy answer which one gives when one will not or cannot take the trouble to understand.  But if one rises above the individual mentality and enters into the consciousness of Unity, then one can understand.


The Mother:  Why do you ask me this question? All those who are here should  know what yoga means — as for practising it, that is another matter!...


The Mother: To ask from me is not begging and you may do so whenever you really need something. But at the same time, you must be prepared not to receive it and not to get upset if I fail to give it.  In this case, I said that you should be given some incense, but I am not sure if it has been done. It is X who keeps it and you should ask him for it.    It is a pity he did not explain his thought, because I don’t know what he wanted to say — probably he wanted to caution you against your light-heartedness, your air of indifference, your carelessness and laxity.


The Mother: All of you young people here have had a very easy life, and instead of taking advantage of it to concentrate your efforts on spiritual progress, you have enjoyed yourselves as much as you could without creating too much scandal, and your vigilance has been lulled to sleep.  Y probably spoke as he did in order to reawaken it.    ( )  Everything people say is of little importance, because human judgments are always partial and therefore ignorant.


The Mother: To know oneself, one must look at oneself with a higher and deeper consciousness which can discern the true causes of reactions and feelings.  A superﬁcial observation cannot help. And so long as one is not in contact with one’s psychic being, it would be better to strive always to do as well as possible and be as good as one can, instead of passing one’s time in useless analysis.    It is X who is spiritually right and you who are wrong with a superﬁcial and ignorant so-called “reason”.  When something goes wrong, one must always ﬁnd the reason in oneself, not superﬁcially but deep inside oneself, and not in order to uselessly bewail the fault, but to cure it by calling to one’s aid the all-powerful force of the Divine.


The Mother: To be sure of making myself clearly understood, I will add that it is not due to any fault of hers that he is inconstant and ﬁckle — it is his nature to be like that and he acts according to his nature — but if she suffers and is unhappy because of what he does, then it is her own fault, for it means that her own feeling is tainted with egoism. It is this egoism that she must conquer, and as soon as she does she will no longer suffer.     No, unless there are serious reasons for doing so.


The Mother: I am not speaking of the outward act — whether one eats here or there comes to the same thing — I am speaking of the inner attitude, of the excessive importance one gives to food, and of greediness.    True happiness does not depend on the external circumstances of life. One can obtain true happiness and keep it constantly only by discovering one’s psychic being and uniting with it.


The Mother: Yes, that is what Sri Aurobindo has written many times; man clings to his misery, his pettiness, his weakness, his ignorance and his limits — that is why he does not change.     From the moment one has decided and accepted to do something, it must be done as well as one can.  One can ﬁnd in everything a chance to progress in consciousness and self-mastery.


The Mother: And this effort for progress immediately makes the thing interesting, no matter what it is.     I regret to have to tell you that you have understood absolutely nothing of what Sri Aurobindo has written — for you have tried to understand with your superﬁcial mind, while what Sri Aurobindo has said comes from the highest intellectual light, far above the mind. All I can tell you, which perhaps will put you on the right track, is that behind law there is a spirit of order and organisation. But law itself is something ﬁxed and therefore contrary to the highest truth.


The Mother: If the same spirit of order and organisation is put at the service of freedom, it can become a means of attaining liberation, that is to say, union with the Truth.    My child, that is exactly what I have been trying to do for quite  a long time, especially since I have been receiving your notebook and correcting it.  It is with that disciplinary aim that I asked you to write one single sentence a day — it did not have to be long, but it ought to have been — alas!


The Mother: Up till now, I have hardly succeeded — your sentences are often long and unclear, others are short, but contain mistakes and often, very often, the of gender, agreement and conjugation which I have corrected many times.  One would think that even if you read your notebook when I return it to you, you do not study it and try to use it as a means to make progress.  To discipline one’s life is not easy, even for those who are strong, severe with themselves, courageous and enduring.  But before trying to discipline one’s whole life, one should at least try to discipline activity, and persist until one succeeds.


The Mother:   There is no habit that cannot be changed.    First of all, what has been reported is not correct. Secondly, the advice is adapted to each case and cannot be made a general rule.


The Mother:   (  Savitri)   Some extracts from, that marvellous prophetic poem which will be humanity’s guide towards its future realisation.


The Mother:   Shake off your “tamas” a little — otherwise you will become a blockhead!    That proves that life is too easy here and that for the most part you are all too tamasic to make an effort unless goaded by the difﬁculties of ordinary life. Only a very ardent aspiration can remedy this deadly condition.


The Mother: But the aspiration is absent and your soul is asleep!     Bonne Ann´ee I hope that this new year will see the reawakening of your soul and the awakening in your consciousness of a will to progress.   I have kept your notebook in the hope of ﬁnding time to read and correct it. But the weeks go by and I see that it is impossible. I am therefore returning it to you without having read it, and I ask you not to send it again until it is possible for me to start looking at it once more.


The Mother: Continue your translation of the Aphorisms; I shall send you more at a time for correction.  My blessings are always with you.     The ﬁrst condition is to decide not to live for oneself any more, but to live exclusively for the Divine.


The Mother: Naturally, this decision should be renewed every day and manifested in a constant and effective will.     To live for the Divine means to offer all that one does to the Divine without desiring a personal result from what one does.  Certainly at the beginning, when the Divine is only a word or at most an idea and not, the whole thing remains purely mental.


The Mother: But if one makes a sincere and repeated effort, one day the experience comes and one feels that the offering made is made to something real, tangible, concrete and beneﬁcent. The more sincere and assiduous one is, the sooner the experience comes and the longer it remains.  For each person the way differs in its details, but sincerity and perseverance are equally indispensable for all.   You may have one if there is one or if you can ﬁnd one. But do you think it will help you to ﬁnd the Divine?


The Mother:   What is an obstacle to the spiritual life is to attach importance to material comfort and to take one’s desires for needs — in other words, self-deception. Now, and wish to use  it, you may do so, knowing that it will not help you in any way to make progress — that it will only give your body the illusion of being more comfortable.  These things ought to have no importance in life.


The Mother:  The body is afraid of anything new because its very base is inertia, tamas; it is the vital which brings in a dominant note of rajas, activity. That is why, as a general rule, the intrusion of the vital in the form of ambition, emulation and vanity, compels the body to shake off the tamas and make the necessary effort to progress.  Naturally, those in whom the mind is dominant can lecture their body and provide it with all the reasons needed to overcome its fear.  The best way for everyone is self-giving to the Divine and trust in His inﬁnite Grace.


The Mother: It is a long, slow task which can only be accomplished by a perfect sincerity. One must be very attentive, always on guard,  watch all one’s emotional movements and vital reactions, never close one’s eyes with indulgence to one’s own weaknesses, and catch oneself each time one makes a mistake, even a small one.  If one continues with persistence, this becomes very interesting and gets easier and easier.


The Mother: Ananda belongs to the Supreme Lord.  Ecstasy belongs to the perfected yogi.  Joy belongs to the desireless man.  Pleasure is within the reach of all living beings, but with its inevitable accompaniment of suffering.


The Mother:   My answers are given in order to open your mind and to make you exceed, little by little, your present mental limits.  The Supreme Lord can give his Ananda to whomever He wants and as He wants.  A sadhak is one who has chosen a yogic discipline and practises it. There are desireless men who are not pursuing any yoga.


The Mother: Widen your thought — it is very necessary!    There is only one true love — it is the Divine Love; all other loves are diminutions, limitations and deformations of that Love. Even the love of the bhakta for his God is a diminution and often is tainted by egoism. But as one tends quite naturally to become like what one loves, the bhakta, if he is sincere, begins to become like the Divine whom he adores, and thus his love becomes purer and purer. To adore the Divine in the one whom one loves has often been suggested as a solution, but unless one’s heart and thought are, it can lead to deplorable abasements.


The Mother: It would seem that in your situation, the best solution would be to use your mutual attachment to unite your efforts in a common and combined aspiration to attain the Divine, and in perfect sincerity to let each bring to the other, as far as possible, what the other needs to attain that goal.    I was not speaking of external things and mental faculties! True love is in the soul (all the rest is vital attraction or mental and physical attachment, nothing else) and the soul (the psychic being) knows instinctively what the other needs to receive and is always ready to give it to him.    Yes, in a general way it is the defects you have in yourselves which seem to you most shocking in others.


The Mother: Later on, you come to understand that others are a mirror reﬂecting the image of what you are.     Since the most ancient times, each system of yoga has developed its own discipline in all its details. All that can be studied, learned and practised.


The Mother: But according to Sri Aurobindo’s teaching, each of these practices has its limitations and gives only a partial result. That is why he advised those who want to follow the integral yoga to ﬁnd their discipline, based on the ancient knowledge but adapted to the needs and the condition of each individual.     An epidemic is a illness and comes from a impurity.


The Mother: The Ashram as a whole is evidently very far from what it should be to be equal to its task and give to the world the example of a total consecration to the Divine Work and the  preparation of the future. The forms of illness vary according to the condition of each person and his link with the whole.   This means that you are not yet ready for a spiritual discipline and that you must wait until life has moulded you a little more and your psychic consciousness awakens from the slumber in which it lies.   To develop your intelligence, read the teachings of Sri Aurobindo regularly and very attentively. To develop and master your vital, carefully observe your movements and reactions with a will to overcome desires, and aspire to ﬁnd your psychic being and unite with it.


The Mother: Physically, continue with what you are doing, develop and control your body methodically, make yourself useful by working at the Playground and your place of work, and try to do it as selﬂessly as possible.  If you are sincere and scrupulously honest, my help is certainly with you and one day you will become aware of it.     The Ashram is the cradle of a new world, of the creation of tomorrow.  And if other questions are put to you, the only reply to be made is: you must read the books and study the teaching.


The Mother:  They are tragedies for those who take them tragically — the immense majority of human beings.  One must live in the consciousness of the Divine Unity to see the Grace behind everything.    For those whose consciousness is centred, who live for the body, its desires and satisfactions, those for whom the  begins and ends, it is evident that food is of capital importance since they.   The doctors are always anxious to throw the responsibility for their incompetence to cure on the external conditions of life.


The Mother: If one wants to see the truth of the problem, it is this: only an enlightened body, balanced and free from all vital desire and mental preconception, is capable of knowing what it needs in regard to quantity and kind of food — and it is so exceptional to ﬁnd such a body that we need not speak of it.   Apart from that, one must act for the best and not attach too much importance to it.   Let those who have conﬁdence in doctors do as they advise and see if it helps them to suffer less!


The Mother:   In this case your logic is right. In the outer nature there is often a tamasic tendency to simplify the conditions of life in order to avoid the effort of organising more complicated circumstances.  But when one wants to progress in the integrality of the being, this simpliﬁcation is hardly advisable.


The Mother:   Both these ways are equally ineffective. The normal result of both these methods is that you deceive yourself, you delude yourself that you have overcome your desires, whereas at best you are merely sitting on them — they remain repressed in the subconscient until they explode there and cause an upheaval in the whole being.  It is from that you must become master of your lower nature by establishing your consciousness ﬁrmly in a domain that is free of all desire and attachment because it is under the inﬂuence of the divine Light and Force. It is a long and exacting labour which must be undertaken with an unfailing sincerity and a tireless perseverance.  In any case, you should never pretend to be more perfect than you are, and still less should you be satisﬁed with false appearances.


The Mother:   Why do you say that sensitivity is the sign of a strong ego? It does not seem to be evident at all. Moreover, there are many different kinds of sensitivity: some stem from weakness, others — the best — are the result of reﬁnement. The ego generally governs the development of the individual, but the most developed individualities are not necessarily those in whom the ego is strongest — on the contrary.


The Mother: As the individuality perfects itself, the power of the ego diminishes, and indeed it is by perfecting himself that the individual arrives at that state of divinisation which liberates him from the ego.    It is always preferable not to try to assess the progress one is making because it does not help one to make it — on the contrary.  Aspiration for progress, if it is, is sure to have an effect.


The Mother: But whatever the progress made, individually or collectively, the progress still remaining to be made is so considerable that there is no reason to stop on the way to assess the ground one has covered.  The perception that some progress has been made should come spontaneously, by the sudden and unexpected awareness of what one is in comparison with what one was some time before. That is all — but that in itself requires a fairly high degree of development of the consciousness.   The advance is rarely in a straight and continuous line because a human being is made up of many different parts, and generally one part or another progresses in its turn while the other parts remain quiescent until their turn comes. It is only when the consciousness grows enough to have an overall view that one can see exactly what is happening.


The Mother: But in order to be sure of advancing progressively and regularly, one must always keep alive the ﬂame of one’s aspiration.     A mere repetition of words cannot have much effect.  There are classical or traditional Japas which are intended to subdue the lower mind and establish a connection with higher forces or with deities. These Japas must be given by the Guru, who at the same time infuses them with the power of realisation.


The Mother: They are useful only for those who want to do an intensive yoga and spend ﬁve or six hours a day in yogic practices.  Japa such as you describe it cannot have much effect except to create a tamasic dullness, which should not be mistaken for mental silence.   People say many things — especially astrologers!  We have only to wait; we shall surely see what happens.


The Mother: The very fact of being mistaken proves that one is not sincere in some part of the being. For the psychic being and is not mistaken; but more often than not, we do not listen to what it says because it speaks without violence or insistence — it is a murmur in the depths of our heart which is easy to ignore.  However, there are cases where one acts wrongly , and this error is effaced as soon as the ignorance is replaced by knowledge and the way of acting completely changed.   What man in his ignorance calls “pardon” is the effacement, the dissolution of errors committed.


The Mother:   By widening one’s consciousness and making it universal.  There is another way, but it is still more difﬁcult. It is by realising the supreme Unity.    To this rather silly kind of question, Sri Aurobindo always used to reply: “The greatest egoist is the Supreme Lord because He never bothers about anything but Himself!”


The Mother:   It is the natural and indispensable counterpart of the moments — so numerous and so frequent! — when you are attached to the physical life and you understand and appreciate only that.  The two extremes always alternate in experience until one has found the poise of the total and synthetic truth.  That alone can give the true Freedom which is experienced in all circumstances.


The Mother:   That is indeed an indication of complete inertia. Sri Aurobindo has written: “If you cannot love God, at least ﬁnd a way to ﬁght  with Him so that He may be your enemy” (implying that you are sure to be conquered by Him). It is a humorous remark, but it means that of all conditions, inertia is the worst.


The Mother: Aspiration is the only remedy — an aspiration that rises constantly like a clear ﬂame burning up all the impurities of the being.     This uncertainty and these departures are due to the lower nature, which resists the inﬂuence of the yogic power and tries to slow down the divine action, not out of ill-will but in order to be sure that nothing is forgotten or neglected in the haste to reach the goal. Few are ready for a total consecration.


The Mother: Many children who have studied here need to come to grips with life before they can be ready for the divine work, and that is why they leave to undergo the test of ordinary life.    All this comes from your ego which is very much occupied with itself and far prefers to blame and criticise itself than to think of something else... (the Divine for example) and forget itself.     Because of the rhythm of the universal forces, a person is supposed to have a special receptivity on his birthday each year.


The Mother: He can therefore take advantage of this receptivity by making good resolutions and fresh progress on the path of his integral development.     Who can understand Sri Aurobindo? He is as vast as the universe and his teaching is limitless...  The only way to come a little close to him is to love him sincerely and give oneself unreservedly to his work.


The Mother: In that way, each one does his best and contributes as much as he can to the transformation of the world which Sri Aurobindo has predicted.     It is not meditation that one must learn to be silent, because the very fact of trying makes a noise.  One must learn to concentrate one’s energies in the heart — then, when one succeeds in that, silence comes automatically.


The Mother:  If you want to know what Sri Aurobindo has said on a given subject, you must at least read all he has written on that subject.  You will then see that he seems to have said the most contradictory things. But when one has read everything and understood  a little, one sees that all the contradictions complement one another and are organised and uniﬁed in an integral synthesis.  Here is another quotation by Sri Aurobindo which will show you that your question is an ignorant one.


The Mother: There are many others which you could read to advantage and which will make your intelligence more supple:  “If there is not a complete surrender, then it is not possible to adopt the baby cat attitude, — it becomes mere tamasic passivity calling itself surrender. If a complete surrender is not possible in the beginning, it follows that personal effort is necessary.”


The Mother: So long as you are making an effort, it is not meditation and there is not much use in prolonging this state.  To obtain mental silence, one must learn to relax, to let oneself ﬂoat on the waves of the universal force as a plank ﬂoats on water, but.  Effort is never silent.    Never forget where you are.


The Mother: Never forget where you are living and the true aim of life.   Remember this at every moment and in all circumstances. In this way you will make the best use of your existence.  Happy New Year for 1965.


The Mother:   The relationship between Purusha and Prakriti.  You have only to read what Sri Aurobindo has written on this subject.   The best thing to do is to distinguish in oneself the origin of all one’s movements — those that come from the light of truth and those that come from the old inertia and falsehood — in order to accept the ﬁrst and to refuse or reject the others.


The Mother: With practice one learns to distinguish more and more clearly, but one can establish as a general rule that all that tends towards disharmony, disorder and inertia comes from the falsehood and all that favours union, harmony, order and consciousness comes from the Truth.  This is only a hint, nothing more, about how to take the ﬁrst steps on the path.     An age of truth is sure to come before the earth is transformed.   Very certainly such a thing has been made possible because the atmosphere of the Ashram is not pure enough to be invulnerable to falsehood.


The Mother:  Nobody comes here for his because Sri Aurobindo does not believe in; for us is a meaningless word. We are here to prepare the transformation of the earth and men so that the new creation may take place, and if we  make individual efforts to progress, it is because this progress is indispensable for the accomplishment of the work.  I am surprised that after having lived in the Ashram for so long, you can still think in this way and be open to this Sunday-school drivel.  I am sending you a quotation from Sri Aurobindo which will perhaps help to enlighten your thought.  “It is equally ignorant and one thousand miles away from my teaching to ﬁnd it in your relations with human beings or in the nobility of the human character or an idea that we are here to establish mental and moral and social Truth and justice on human and egoistic lines.


The Mother: I have never promised to do anything of the kind. Human nature is made up of imperfections, even its righteousness and virtue are pretensions, imperfections and prancings of self-approbatory egoism.... What is aimed at by us is a spiritual truth as the basis of life, the ﬁrst words of which are surrender and union with the Divine and the transcendence of ego. So long as that basis is not established, a sadhak is only an ignorant and imperfect human being struggling with the evils of the lower nature.... What is created by spiritual progress is an inner closeness and intimacy in the inner being, the sense of the Mother’s love and presence etc.”


The Mother:   Why do you put man and the Divine together?  It is true that man is essentially divine, but at present, apart from a few very rare exceptions, man is quite unconscious of the Divine he carries within him; and it is just this unconsciousness which constitutes the falsehood of the material world.   I have already written to you that our gratitude should go to the Divine and that as for men what is required is an attitude of goodwill, understanding and mutual help.  To feel deeply, intensely and constantly a total gratitude towards the Divine is the best way to be happy and peaceful.


The Mother: And the only true way of expressing one’s gratitude to the Divine is to identify with Him.   It is impossible to say, because for each person it is different.  It depends on the part of one’s being that awakens ﬁrst and responds to Sri Aurobindo’s inﬂuence.  And no one can tell about another person.


The Mother:   Generally, the starting-point must be an experience, however small, which serves as a compass on the way, an experience one refers to in order to be sure of not going astray, until one is ready for another more important and conclusive experience.  The real landmarks on the way are the spontaneous experiences, not those that come from a mental formation and are always unreliable.   The experience must come and the explanation afterwards. That is why Sri Aurobindo has said: Never distrust your experience; but you may distrust your explanation, which is a mental activity.


The Mother: It is very important to take note of one’s experiences and remember them. To construct a system of development is secondary and sometimes harmful.     In a general way, a dream leaves a confused and ﬂeeting impression, whereas an experience awakens a deep and lasting feeling.


The Mother: But the shades of difference are subtle and many, and it is by a very attentive and observation (that is to say, free from bias and preference) that one gradually learns to discern the one from the other.   The mechanical regularity of a ﬁxed programme is indispensable for physical, mental and vital development; but this mechanical  rigidity has little or no effect on spiritual development where the spontaneity of an absolute sincerity is indispensable.  Sri Aurobindo has written very clearly on this subject. And what he has written on it has appeared in.  However, as an initial help to set you on the path, I can tell you: (1) that on getting up, before starting the day, it is good to make an offering of this day to the Divine, an offering of all that one thinks, all that one is, all that one will do; (2) and at night, before going to sleep, it is good to review the day, taking note of all the times one has forgotten or neglected to make an offering of one’s self or one’s action, and to aspire or pray that these lapses do not recur.


The Mother: This is a minimum, a very small beginning — and it should increase with the sincerity of your consecration.     Through regular, persevering, obstinate, unﬂagging exercise — I mean exercise of concentration and will.


The Mother:  It is good for you to read a lot of French; it will teach you how to write.      habits are indispensable so long as one acts out of habit.  But to attain the supreme goal of yoga, one must abandon all ties, whatever they may be. And good habits are also a tie which must one day be abandoned when one wants to obey and to obey nothing but the one supreme impulse, the Will of the Supreme.


The Mother:   What I call “being on the path” is being in a state of consciousness in which only union with the Divine has any value — this union is the only thing worth living, the sole object of aspiration.  Everything else has lost all value and is not worth seeking, so there is no longer any question of renouncing it because it is no longer an object of desire.  As long as union with the Divine is not thing for which one lives, one is not yet on the path.


The Mother:   When she renounces falsehood and lives in the Truth.    The Divine informs, but it is rare indeed for men to listen to Him. Either they do not hear Him or do not believe Him.  Men always complain of not being helped, but the truth is that they refuse the help which is with them.


The Mother:    It is in the depths of the consciousness, beyond the mind, that one can in all sincerity have the experience that all is the Divine and that only the Divine exists. But the manifestation is progressive, and in order to have the strength to advance by rejecting what ought to disappear, one must strongly feel one’s unworthiness and incapacity to express the divine perfection.  The two states of consciousness should be simultaneous and complementary, not successive and contradictory, and this too is possible only when the seat of consciousness is beyond the mind and its limitations.


The Mother: Neither the one nor the other.  First and always, we must ask ourselves what our instrument of judgment is. One must ask, “What is my judgment based on?  Do I have perfect knowledge? What in me is judging?