The Mother: The freedom of which I speak is an austere truth which tends to surmount all the weaknesses and desires of the lower, ignorant being.  The freedom of which I speak is the freedom to consecrate oneself entirely and without reserve to one’s highest, noblest and most divine aspiration.  Who amongst you follows sincerely that path? It is easy to judge, but it is more difﬁcult to understand and still much more difﬁcult to realise.  Why not?


The Mother: One has hundreds of proofs to the contrary.   By studying much, by reﬂecting much, by doing intellectual exercises. For instance, enunciate a general idea clearly and then enunciate the opposite idea, and seek the synthesis of both these ideas, that is to say, ﬁnd a third idea which harmonises the other two.   Why do you read novels?


The Mother: It is a stupid occupation and a waste of time. It is certainly one of the reasons why your brain lacks clarity and is still in a muddle.  It is atavistic and comes from the subconscient.  This instinct is based both on masculine pride, the foolish idea of superiority, and the still more foolish fear caused by the idea that a woman is a dangerous being who entices you into sin. In children, all this is still subconscious, but it inﬂuences their actions.


The Mother: One cannot make a general rule, everything depends on the case and the circumstances. Both methods contain good and bad elements, advantages and disadvantages. 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.  You say this, but you are one of those who revolt (at least in thought) against the minimum discipline demanded when it is absolutely indispensable, as in the physical education, for example.  It is a pity he did not explain his thought, because I do not know what he is referring to — probably he wanted to caution you against your frivolity, your thoughtlessness, your negligence and your carelessness.


The Mother: All 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 amused yourselves as much as you could, without creating too much scandal, and so your vigilance has been lulled.  Doubtless X spoke like that in order to re-awaken it.   When one has decided and accepted to do something, it must be done as well as one can.  Everything can be an occasion to progress in consciousness and self-mastery. And this striving to progress immediately renders the thing, no matter what it is, interesting.


The Mother: My child, it 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 each day — it need not have been long, but it ought to have been — alas!   Up to now, I have never succeeded — your sentences are often long and ambiguous, others are short — but all contain mistakes and often, very often, the of gender, agreement and conjugation that I have corrected numerous times.  One would think that even if you re-read your notebook when I send it back to you, you do not study it and do not try to proﬁt by it to make progress.


The Mother: 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 must at least try to discipline activity, and persist until one succeeds.   First of all, what has been reported is not correct. Secondly, the advice is adapted to each case and cannot be generalised.  Shake off your “tamas” a little, otherwise you will become a blockhead!


The Mother: The body is afraid of anything new because its very base is inertia,; it is the vital which brings the dominance of (activity). That is why, generally, the intrusion of the vital in the form of ambition, emulation and egotism, obliges the body to shake off tamas and make the necessary effort to progress.  Naturally, those in whom the mind predominates can lecture their body and provide it with all the necessary reasons to enable it to overcome its fear.   The best way for everybody is self-giving to the Divine and conﬁdence in His inﬁnite Grace.  To develop your intelligence read regularly and very attentively the teachings of Sri Aurobindo.


The Mother: To develop and master your vital, observe attentively your movements and reactions with the will to overcome desires, and aspire to ﬁnd your psychic being and unite yourself with it. Physically, continue to do as you are doing, develop and control your body methodically, make yourself useful by working in the Playground and in the place you work, and try to do it in as selﬂess a way as possible.  If you are sincere and scrupulously honest, my help is certainly with you and one day you will become conscious of it.  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.


The Mother: But when one desires to progress in the integrality of the being, this simpliﬁcation is not at all advisable.    par excellence  Who can understand Sri Aurobindo? He is as vast as the universe and his teaching is inﬁnite...  The only way to come a little close to him is to love him sincerely and give oneself unreservedly to his work.


The Mother: Thus, each one does his best and contributes as much as he can to that transformation of the world which Sri Aurobindo has predicted.  If you want to know what Sri Aurobindo has said on a given subject, you must at least read all that he has written on that subject. You will then see that he has apparently said the most contradictory things. But when one has read everything, and understood a little, one perceives that all the contradictions complement each other and are organised and uniﬁed into an integral synthesis.  Here is another quotation from Sri Aurobindo which will show you that your question is based on ignorance.


The Mother: There are many others which you can read with interest 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.”  Through regular, persevering, obstinate, unﬂagging exercise — I mean exercise of concentration and will.  Usually they are due to mental inertia, unless one has obtained calm and indifference through a very intense sadhana resulting in a perfect equality for which the good and bad, the pleasant and unpleasant no longer exist.


The Mother: But in that case, mental activity is replaced by an intuitive activity of a much higher kind.  By wanting to, with persistence and obstinacy. By doing daily a mental exercise of reading, organisation and development.  This must alternate in the course of the day with exercises of mental silence in concentration.     ()


The Mother: It is an answer to a question. Do you know what I told the teachers of the school? I have been asked another question. Here is the beginning of my reply: “The division between ‘ordinary life’ and ‘spiritual life’ is an outdated antiquity.”  Did you read his question?


The Mother: Read it again to me.  “Spiritual things” — what does he mean by spiritual things?  Spiritual things... They are taught history spiritual things, they are taught science spiritual things. That is the stupidity.


The Mother: In history, the Spirit is there; in science, the Spirit is there — the Truth is everywhere. And what is needed is not to teach it in a false way, but to teach it in a true way. They cannot get that into their heads.    you I shall give him this reply: There is no “spiritual life”! It is still the old idea, still the old idea of the sage, the sannyasin, the... who represents spiritual life, while all the others represent ordinary life — and it is not true, it is not true, it is not true at all.


The Mother: If they still need an opposition between two things — for the poor mind doesn’t work if you don’t give it an opposition — if they need an opposition, let them take the opposition between Truth and Falsehood, it is a little better; I don’t say it is perfect, but it is a little better. So, in all things, Falsehood and Truth are mixed everywhere: in the so-called “spiritual life”, in sannyasins, in swamis, in those who think they represent the life divine on earth, all that — there also, there is a mixture of Falsehood and Truth.  It would be better not to make any division.   (


The Mother: )  For the children, precisely because they are children, it would be best to instil in them the will to conquer the future, the will to always look ahead and to want to move on as swiftly as they can towards... what will be — but they should not drag with them the burden, the millstone of the whole oppressive weight of the past. It is only when we are very high in consciousness and knowledge that it is good to look behind to ﬁnd the points where this future begins to show itself. When we can look at the whole picture, when we have a very global vision, it becomes interesting to know that what will be realised later on has already been announced beforehand, in the same way that  Sri Aurobindo said that the divine life will manifest on earth, because it is involved in the depths of Matter; from this standpoint it is interesting to look back or to look down below — not to know what happened, or to know what men have known: that is quite useless.


The Mother: The children should be told: There are wonderful things to be manifested, prepare yourself to receive them. Then if they want something a little more concrete and easier to understand, you can tell them: Sri Aurobindo came to announce these things; when you are able to read him, you will understand. So this awakens the interest, the desire to learn.  Yes, that is why they should do as I have said.


The Mother: Ah! But not so long ago, most of the teachers were saying, “Oh! But we must do this, because it is done everywhere.”  ( )


The Mother: They have already come a little distance. But there is much more to be covered.  But above all, what is most important is to eliminate these divisions. And every one of them, all of them have it in their minds: the division between leading a spiritual life and leading an ordinary life, having a spiritual consciousness and having an ordinary consciousness — there is only one consciousness.  In most people it is three-quarters asleep and distorted; in many it is still completely distorted.


The Mother: But what is needed, very simply, is not to leap from one consciousness into another, but to open one’s consciousness () and to ﬁll it with vibrations of Truth, to bring it in harmony with what must be here — there it exists from all eternity — but here, what must be here: the “tomorrow” of the earth. If you weigh yourself down  with a whole burden that you have to drag behind you, if you drag behind you everything that you must abandon, you will not be able to advance very fast.  Mind you, to know things from the earth’s past can be very interesting and very useful, but it must not be something that binds you or ties you to the past. If it is used as a spring-board, it is all right. But really, it is quite secondary.


The Mother: ( )  It would be interesting to formulate or to elaborate a new method of teaching for children, to take them very young. It is easy when they are very young. We need people — oh! we would need remarkable teachers — who have, ﬁrst, an ample enough documentation of what is known so as to be able to answer every question, and at the same time, at least the knowledge, if not the experience — the experience would be better — of the true intuitive intellectual attitude, and — naturally the capacity would be still more preferable — at least the knowledge that the true way of knowing is mental silence, an attentive silence turned towards the truer Consciousness, and the capacity to receive what comes from there.


The Mother: The best would be to have this capacity; at least, it should be explained that it is the true thing — a sort of demonstration — and that it works not only from the point of view of what must be learned, of the whole domain of knowledge, but also of the whole domain of what should be done: the capacity to receive the exact indication of to do it; and as you go on, it changes into a very clear perception of what must be done, and a precise indication of when it must be done.  At least the children, as soon as they have the capacity to think — it starts at the age of seven, but at about fourteen or ﬁfteen it is very clear — the children should be given little indications at the age of seven, a complete explanation at fourteen, of how to do it, and that it is the only way to be in relation with the deeper truth of things, and that all the rest is a more or less clumsy  mental approximation to something that can be known directly.  The conclusion is that the teachers themselves should at least have a sincere beginning of discipline and experience, that it is not a question of accumulating books and retelling them like this. One can’t be a teacher in this way; let the outside world be like that if it likes. We are not propagandists, we simply want to show what can be done and try to prove that it be done.


The Mother: When you take the children very young, it is wonderful.  There is so little to do: it is enough to.  Never make a mistake.  Never lose your temper.


The Mother: Always understand.  And to know and see clearly why there has been this movement, why there has been this impulse, what is the inner constitution of the child, what is the thing to be strengthened and brought forward — this is the only thing to do; and to leave them, to leave them free to blossom; simply to give them the opportunity to see many things, to touch many things, to do as many things as possible. It is great fun. And above all, not to try to impose on them what you think you know.  Never scold them.


The Mother: Always understand, and if the child is ready, explain; if he is not ready for an explanation — if you are ready yourself — replace the false vibration by a true one. But this... this is to demand from the teachers a perfection which they rarely have.  But it would be very interesting to make a programme for the teachers and the true programme of study, from the very bottom — which is so plastic and which receives impressions so deeply. If they were given a few drops of truth when they are very young, they would blossom quite naturally as the being grows.


The Mother: It would be beautiful work.   So?  First of all, before I reply, I would like to know exactly, in a very, very practical and material way, what the difference is.  This is what I think: in the free-progress system, there are no classes with all the students sitting down, with the teacher on his dais lecturing the whole time; there are students sitting down here and there, at their tables. They do the work they want to do and the teacher is simply there, anywhere, either in a room or in a special place; they go to him and ask him questions.


The Mother: This is how I understand it, quite...    So now, in order to continue the old system, all the students would have to go on sitting in a row, with the teacher sitting on his dais, that is, a completely ridiculous situation. I remember very well when I used to go to the Playground, I was glad when I could sit with everyone around me and we were free.... But a table, a dais, the students tied to...


The Mother: I am speaking very materially, not at all from the psychological point of view; so if that changes, it will already be a great improvement.  Not all the students coming in, like that, almost in a line, and then sitting down, each one in his place, and then the teacher coming and sitting down.... Then, if they are well-mannered, all the students stand up (), the teacher sits down and begins his lecture. The students think about anything whatever, all their thoughts wander off in every direction and they pay attention if they feel like it. Well, that is a waste of time, that’s all.


The Mother: That is very, very, very material and practical; it can change at once. The teacher can choose either a corner or a place or a little room — I don’t know what, it’s all the same to me — any place where the students can come and ask for his guidance, either in the room or in a room nearby. He can busy himself in an interesting way, preparing the answers he will give to his students, not thinking about something else.  That can be done at once, eh?


The Mother: Now, it is not necessary that they should all call themselves by the same name. That is where... There is, in man, a kind of spirit of — ah! we can give it a polite name — well, a sheep-like spirit.... All the time they need...


The Mother: they need someone to lead them.   The student should come to school not like someone going to his daily grind because he cannot avoid it, but because it would be possible for him to do something interesting. The teacher should not be in school, come to school with the idea that for half an hour or three-quarters of an hour he is going to recite something which he has more or less well prepared and  which is boring even for him, and that therefore he cannot amuse the students, but instead to try to come into contact mentally — and if possible more deeply — with a number of little developing individualities who, we hope, have some curiosity about things, and in order to be able to satisfy this curiosity. So he himself must be aware, very modestly, that he does not know enough and that he has a lot to learn; but not to learn from books — by trying to understand life.


The Mother: So there you have another framework for your work. I don’t know... You distribute things to the students....  Good, good. So now, go on.


The Mother: Your question.    All right. That will do. It is good.


The Mother: That is the principle, isn’t it?   That is the principle and now, to come down to practice, you have a certain number of rooms and all that... How are you going to...  All right.


The Mother: That is good, that is good. So then what do you want?... It is good. But this can be made general, surely!


The Mother: ( ) But you, for example, what do you suggest to replace what you used to do?   Yes.  At a ﬁxed time?


The Mother: The students come to school at a ﬁxed time, don’t they?  Three periods?  Three periods? Let me see...  The school opens at a ﬁxed time, doesn’t it?


The Mother: The students must be there at that time. They can’t come at just any time.  Because “free progress” does not mean indiscipline....  The student should not arrive half an hour late just because he is free, because this kind of freedom is not freedom, it is simply disorderliness. Each one must have a very strict discipline for himself.


The Mother: But a child is not capable of self-discipline, he must be  taught the habit of discipline. So he should get up at the same time, get ready at the same time and go to school at the same time. That is indispensable, otherwise it becomes an impossible muddle.   All right.


The Mother: So the school ofﬁcially opens at 8 o’clock.  No. The school, the building opens at 7.45.   Ah!


The Mother: They begin at 7.45. And they ﬁnish?  11.30. ( )


The Mother: So you say that in the afternoon you want...  1.50. And when do they leave?  4 o’clock. At what time do they have to be at the Playground?


The Mother: When they go there, they eat, they are given something to eat.  That’s at 4.30. Well, that’s possible...   It is possible, if they are very regular. But I would like to understand.


The Mother: “Three periods” means... the same teacher takes three different groups of students, or do the same students go to three different teachers and the teacher teaches each one separately?   Make yourself clear. How many students do you have in your class?


The Mother: One hundred and ﬁfty! All right. So your one hundred and ﬁfty come. Then what happens?


The Mother: One hundred and ﬁfty? One hundred and ﬁfty students in one class! Impossible!   Ah!


The Mother: They are not all at the same standard.  Oh, oh, oh! And so how many teachers does that make for those one hundred and ﬁfty students?   Thirty teachers. All right.


The Mother: So what is going to happen? How many classes, how many classrooms do you have?  And so what do you teach in the afternoon? Look here, do you teach ﬁxed things or is it still the same kind of work?  Fixed classes?


The Mother: Ah! And so it is the teacher’s method of teaching that will change, but he will teach a particular subject to particular students...   Yes, yes. That is good.


The Mother: That can do. Only this means that you have to... But what do you teach at that time? Languages?


The Mother: Ah! It is only for languages.  I understand. And so how many languages will there be for those one hundred and ﬁfty students?


The Mother: Ah! But that makes a lot! There is Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, and then Tamil, Telugu. That makes ﬁve already .


The Mother: That is not... Everyone should learn that. Especially everyone who works here should learn that... not the Sanskrit of the scholars... all, all of them, wherever they may have been born.   Yes.


The Mother: Not Sanskrit from the point of view of scholarship, but Sanskrit, a Sanskrit — how to put it? — that opens the door to all the languages of India. I think that is indispensable. The ideal would be, in a few years, to have a rejuvenated Sanskrit as the representative language of India, that is, a Sanskrit spoken in such a way that — Sanskrit is behind all the languages of India and it should be that. This was Sri Aurobindo’s idea, when we spoke about it. Because now English is the language of the whole country, but that is abnormal.


The Mother: It is very helpful for relations with the rest of the world, but just as each country has its own language, there should... And so here, as soon as one begins to want a national language, everyone starts quarrelling. Each one wants it to be his own, and that is foolish. But no one could object to Sanskrit. It is a more ancient language than the others and it contains the sounds, the root-sounds of many words.


The Mother: This is something I studied with Sri Aurobindo and it is obviously very interesting. Some of these roots can even be found in all the languages of the world — sounds, root-sounds which are found in all those languages. Well, this, this thing, this is  what ought to be learnt and this is what the national language should be. Every child born in India should know it, just as every child born in France has to know French. He does not speak properly, he does not know it thoroughly, but he has to know French a little; and in all the countries of the world it is the same thing.


The Mother: He has to know the national language. And then, when he learns, he learns as many languages as he likes. At the moment, we are still embroiled in quarrels, and this is a very bad atmosphere in which to build anything. But I hope that a day will come when it will be possible.  So I would like to have a simple Sanskrit taught here, as simple as possible, but not “simpliﬁed” — simple by going back to its origin...


The Mother: all these sounds, the sounds that are the roots of the words which were formed afterwards. I don’t know whether you have anyone here who could do that. In fact, I don’t know whether there is anyone in India who could do it. Sri Aurobindo knew. But someone who knows Sanskrit can....


The Mother: I don’t know.  Who do you have to teach Sanskrit? V?  W? But he is never here.


The Mother: A long time ago there was also X.  No, we would need someone who knows it rather well. Once I spoke to V. He told me that he was preparing a simpliﬁed grammar — I don’t know what he has done — for a language that could be universal throughout the country.


The Mother: I don’t know.  Perhaps, after all, V is the best.   So, in the afternoon, which teachers do you have? You say about thirty.  For the whole school?


The Mother: Below that, it is not your concern?  Yes, of course. And you have thirty teachers for approximately one hundred and ﬁfty students in the secondary stage. And so what do they know when they come? Nothing?


The Mother: In the kindergarten they are supposed to teach them French, eh?  They speak to them in French. But I don’t know whether it is strict.  Not very, eh?  When children are very small, very young, they tend to amuse themselves, they have...


The Mother: there is nothing crystallised inside and they ﬁnd it very amusing to learn the various names that various languages give to the same thing. They still have... or they do not yet have any mental rigidity. They still have this ﬂexibility which makes one aware that a thing exists in itself and that the name that is given to it is simply a convention.  And so for them, I think that it is like this, that the name  which is given is a convention. And so, many children ﬁnd it amusing to say such and such a thing, for example “yes” or “no”.


The Mother: Take these words, “yes” or “no”, the sense of afﬁrmation and negation. In French they say it like this, in German they say it like this, in English they say it like this, in Italian they say it like this, in Hindi they say it like this, in Sanskrit they say... This is a very amusing game. If you knew how to make him play, take an object and then say, “There, you see, this is...” Like that. Or a small living dog, or a small living bird, or a small living tree, and then you tell them, “You see, there are all these languages and...”


The Mother: It is quite blank in there, they can learn this very well, and very easily. It is a very amusing game. () But that is not your concern, you are already...  All right.


The Mother: So, naturally, with your thirty teachers and your one hundred and ﬁfty students, you should... They go to the various classes, according to the language they want to learn.  That is quite natural, that even seems unavoidable, because it is no use having all the teachers together — they will start chattering... and then the students will come and all that will make a... No!


The Mother: That is good.  When one wants to learn French, one goes to this class, when one wants to learn English, one goes there, when...  Then?  And so you, what do you teach?  That has nothing to do with languages!


The Mother: Do you teach mathematics in French? Yes, but then, there the problem becomes more complicated.... What (), what is the matter? () What do you have to tell me?


The Mother: (To B who is turning towards him)  Languages?  Science?  Yes, it’s a whole world. Then why?


The Mother: ... What is left? Literature?   And what else?


The Mother: Besides your science which covers everything, there is literature, and then? Arts? Naturally, this...     (To B) (To Mother)


The Mother: Here, I am curious. How is a language taught? Because a teacher who starts telling everyone the same thing... They come out of there and they have understood nothing! A language is precisely the thing that should have the most life, the most life!


The Mother: And in order for it to have some life, the students have to participate. They should not be ears listening and sitting on a bench! Otherwise, they come out of there and they have learnt nothing.  Possibilities?


The Mother: Yes, because these children already know the language. ( )  And you?


The Mother: ( ) Yes, like that, it is all right.   (


The Mother: ) But then your afternoon class... How are you going to go about it? Like that? The children sitting on the bench and the teacher giving a lecture?


The Mother: My God, how boring it is! The teacher feels bored, he is the ﬁrst one to feel bored, so naturally he passes on his boredom to his students.  There could be an organisation like this: you take a subject and the teacher asks questions here and there, to this one, “There, what do you have to say about this? What do you know about this?” And so on, like that.


The Mother: And then, naturally, if the others are listening, they can beneﬁt. A kind of organisation like that, with some life in it — not a boring lecture where everyone falls asleep after ﬁve minutes.   You ask questions, or else, if there is a blackboard, on the blackboard you write a large question in large letters so that everyone can read, and you say, “Who can answer?”


The Mother: You do that and then you ask questions, here and there, you question those who have asked.... And so when one of them answers, then you say, “Is there anyone who can add to what this one has said?” The teacher must have some life in him.  I understand that — one class for each language, separate groups — that is understood, in the afternoon. But for heaven’s sake, none of that... sitting on a bench and, “When is it going to end?”


The Mother: They look at their watches.... Not one teacher out of a hundred is amusing enough to amuse everyone. And to begin with, he is the ﬁrst one to feel bored. For him, it is... not here, but outside, it is his livelihood, so...  You should have twenty, thirty students, forty students there....


The Mother: How many at a time? Twenty? About twenty?   Just: “Ah! We are going to have some fun.


The Mother: Let’s see what we can do to have some fun. What game can we play?” And so, naturally, in this way you ﬁnd, you invent. And he [the teacher] remains living himself, because he has to ﬁnd something. And the students are there, like that....


The Mother: When they have a little selfrespect, they want to be able to say something, and that creates a living atmosphere. Wouldn’t that be more amusing for you than doing... learning at home? If you are honest, you work in the evening for the class you are going to take the next day, you learn very carefully, you take notes and you write, and... You can prepare a subject, prepare, see, so that you are ready to answer every question. It is not always easy.


The Mother: But to prepare your subject well, that is good; to try to receive a little light and inspiration during the night, and then, on the next day to ﬁnd a living way of living what you know. And not the students and the teacher... no! A group of living beings, some of whom know a little more than the others, that’s all.  ( )


The Mother: You see, in this system of classes where everyone is sitting down, the teacher is there and they have a limited time in which to do the work, it is not possible. It is only if you have absolute freedom that you can establish the silence when you need to be silent. But when all the students are in class and the teacher is  in class... when the teacher is establishing the silence in himself, all the students... then it is not possible.  He can establish the silence at home, at night, the day before, to prepare himself for the next day, but you can not...


The Mother: It cannot be an immediate rule. Naturally, when you are at the very top of the scale and you are used to keeping your mind absolutely silent, you cannot help it; but you have not reached that point, none of you. So it is better not to speak about it. So I think that during the... Especially with this system, classes with a ﬁxed time, with a ﬁxed number of students, with a ﬁxed teacher, and a ﬁxed subject...


The Mother: you must be active while you are there.  It must be... If the students want to practise meditation, concentration, to try to come into... it is to come into contact with the intuitive plane, it is — instead of receiving a purely mental reply which is like that — to receive a reply from above which is a little luminous and living. But that habit should be acquired at home.  Naturally, someone who has this habit, in the class — when the teacher asks the question, writes this question on the blackboard, “Who can answer?” — he can do this ( ), receive, oh! and then say...


The Mother: But when we reach that point, it will be a great progress.  Otherwise, they bring out of the storeroom everything they have learnt. It is not very interesting, but at least it gives them some mental gymnastics. And the class system is a democratic system, eh? This is because... you must be able in a limited time, in a limited space...


The Mother: you have to teach the greatest possible number of people, so that everyone can beneﬁt. This is the democratic spirit, absolutely. So this requires, this requires a kind of... equalisation. Well... you put them all on the same level and that is deplorable.


The Mother: But in the present state of the world, we can say, “This is still something necessary.” Only the children of the rich would be able to afford... obviously, it is not pleasant to think of. No, there will be a primary class problem for the whole population... for Auroville. And that will be an interesting  problem: how can we prepare the children, children taken from anywhere, who have no way of learning at home, whose parents are ignorant, who have no possibility of having any means to learn, nothing, nothing, nothing but the raw material, like that — how can we teach them to live? That will be an interesting problem.


The Mother: Yes, there, the morning work, like the work they do there, “Vers la Perfection”... They can very well do that: remain silent, concentrated for a moment, silence all that, everything that is noisy inside, like that, and wait. In the morning, they can do that. No, I mean, when you have an hour’s class, or three-quarters of an hour’s class with... all together with the teacher... you have to keep yourselves busy.


The Mother: It would be amusing if for three-quarters of an hour everyone could stay... ().  One thing could be done once, at least once: you set a subject, like that, from the course of subjects, you set it and tell them, “For a quarter of an hour we shall remain silent, silent; no noise, no one should make any noise. We shall remain silent for a quarter of an hour. For a quarter of an hour try to remain completely silent, still and attentive, and then we shall see in a quarter of an hour what comes out of it.” You can reduce it to ﬁve minutes to begin with, three minutes, two minutes, it doesn’t matter.


The Mother: A quarter of an hour  is a lot, but you should do... try that... see. Some of them will start to ﬁdget. Very few children, perhaps, know how to keep still; or else they fall asleep — but it doesn’t matter if they fall asleep. You could try that at least once, see what happens: “Let’s see! Who will answer my question after ten minutes’ silence?


The Mother: And not ten minutes which you will spend trying to get hold of everything you may know mentally about the subject, no, no — ten minutes during which you will be just like this, blank, still, silent, attentive... attentive and silent.”  Now, if the teacher is a true teacher, during these ten minutes, he brings down from the domain of intuition the knowledge which he spreads over his class. And so you do some interesting work, and you will see the results. Then the teacher himself will begin to progress a little. You can try.


The Mother: Try, you will see!  You see, for those who are sincere, sincere and very — how to put it? — very straight in their aspiration, there is a marvellous help, there is an absolutely living, active consciousness which is ready to... to respond to any attentive silence. You could do six years’ work in six months, but there should... there should not be any pretension, there should not be anything which tries to imitate, there should be no wanting to put on airs.


The Mother: There should... you should be truly, absolutely honest, pure, sincere, conscious that... you exist only by what comes from above. Then... then... then you could advance with giant strides.  But don’t do it daily, regularly, at a ﬁxed time, because it becomes a habit and a bore.


The Mother: It should be... unexpected! Suddenly you say, “Ah! Supposing we did this”... when you feel a little like that yourself, a little ready. That would be very interesting.  You ask a question, a question that is as intelligent as you  can make it, not a dogmatic question, an academic question, no — a question that has a little life in it. That would be interesting.


The Mother: ( )  You will see, the more you strive to realise, you will discover in the nature — the lower nature, that is, the lower mind, the lower vital, the physical — how much pretension, sham and ambition there is.... One can use any... The desire to put on airs: all that must be eliminated, absolutely, radically, and replaced by a sincere ﬂame of aspiration, of aspiration for the purity which makes us live only for what the Supreme Consciousness demands of us, which makes us able to do only what it wants, which makes us do only what it wants, when it wants.


The Mother: Then we can be entirely different.... It is a little far along the path, but we try to do that, always, this puriﬁcation of the whole being which...  Then there is no more school, teachers, students, boredom; there is... life trying to transform itself. There: that is the ideal, this is where we have to go.  Do you have any more questions to ask me?


The Mother: If it comes, I shall give it.  E, give me the ﬂowers. There is a vase with red ﬂowers.   There.


The Mother: These are for these two. There.   ( )


The Mother: Here, this is for you.   ( ) And this is for you.


The Mother: You — you have a whole future before you. You must break the... You know, you are still bound up in old habits of thought. You have not taken sufﬁcient advantage of the fact that you have lived here all the time, you are still too much like that....  So now, you must take that, break everything, break everything, break everything.


The Mother: Live only by the light that comes from  above. Liberate, liberate your consciousness. This is important.  It is good that you came. You are still very closed, like that, bound up in all the old habits and...


The Mother: and still, there is still something more, there is still the weight of atavism and all that.... It is the same for everyone, but, well, for the moment it is only... I am still liberating you. You are still like that... like that... like that... like that... your old habits of thought, your old habits of learning, your old habits — not very old — old habits of teaching.


The Mother: So all that: break it! Like that... when you go to class, every day, before you go to class, you should say a kind of prayer, make an invocation to the Supreme Consciousness, and ask it to help you to bring all this mass, this mass of living matter under its inﬂuence. Then it will become interesting, living. There you see.


The Mother: Good-bye.  And now, for D, a rose.  () Here.


The Mother: Now this, you see, this is more dynamic. You won’t be able to see it, but it is more dynamic.  But women, women are in principle the executive power.  You must never forget that. And in order to receive the inspiration, you can take support from a masculine consciousness if you feel the need for it.


The Mother: There is the Supreme Consciousness which is more certain, but still, if you need an intermediary... But for the execution, it is you who have the power to carry it out in all the details, with all the power of organisation. I am instilling this into our women Members of Parliament — you know, there are women in Parliament, and I am teaching them that: do not be submissive to men. It is you who have the power of execution.  This will have its effect.


The Mother: ( ) Oh! This is not to belittle...


The Mother: () The inspiration comes... the execution is... There.  So I have given to you, I have given to you...


The Mother: () You — I haven’t given to you. Over there!   Here.


The Mother: And this is for C.   There, my children. Good-bye.


The Mother: ( ) And when you need something, you can always write.  I don’t say that I shall reply immediately, but like that ( ), I reply immediately. You must learn that, eh?


The Mother: Like that (), it takes time. But, well, all the same, it is better to keep me informed.   Good-bye.


The Mother: Naturally, it is to widen and illumine your consciousness — but how to do it? Your own consciousness... to widen and illumine it. And if you could ﬁnd, each one of you, your psychic and unite with it, all the problems would be solved.   The psychic being is the representative of the Divine in the human being.


The Mother: That’s it, you see — the Divine is not something remote and inaccessible. The Divine is in you but you are not fully conscious of it. Rather you have... it acts now as an inﬂuence rather than as a Presence. It should be a conscious Presence, you should be able at each moment to ask yourself what is... how... how the Divine sees.


The Mother: It is like that: ﬁrst how the Divine sees, and then how the Divine wills, and then how the Divine acts. And it is not to go away into inaccessible regions, it is right here. Only, for the moment, all the old habits and the general unconsciousness put a kind of covering which prevents us from seeing and feeling. You must... you must lift, you must lift that up.


The Mother: In fact, you must become conscious instruments... conscious... conscious of the Divine.  Usually this takes a whole lifetime, or sometimes, for some people it is several lifetimes. Here, in the present conditions, you can do it in a few months. For those who are... who have an ardent aspiration, in a few they can do it.


The Mother: ()  Did you feel anything?   Be completely sincere. Say whether you felt anything, or whether there was no difference for you.


The Mother: Completely sincere.  Well? Nobody is answering. ( .)  There is no descent.


The Mother: That is another wrong idea: there is no descent. It is something that is always there but which you do not feel. There is no descent: it is a completely wrong idea.   Do you know what the fourth dimension is?


The Mother: Do you know what it is?  Do you have the experience?   Ah! But in fact that is the best approach of modern science: the fourth dimension.


The Mother: The Divine, for us, is the fourth dimension... within the fourth dimension. It is everywhere, you see, everywhere, always. It does not come and go, it is there, always, everywhere. It is we, our stupidity which prevents us from feeling. There is no need to go away, not at all, not at all, not at all.


The Mother: To be conscious of your psychic being, you must once be capable of feeling the fourth dimension, otherwise you cannot know what it is.  My God! For seventy years I have known what the fourth dimension is... more than seventy years!  ()


The Mother: Indispensable, indispensable! Life begins with that. Otherwise  one is in falsehood, in a muddle and in confusion and in darkness. The mind, mind, mind, mind! Otherwise, to be conscious of your own consciousness, you have to mentalise it.


The Mother: It is dreadful, dreadful! There.   Yes, yes...  There is, there is, but you are not conscious of it.


The Mother: But you must, you must... It is the mind which prevents you from feeling it.  You must be... You mentalise everything, everything.... What you call consciousness is the thinking of things, that is what you call consciousness: the thinking of things.


The Mother: But it is not that at all, that is not consciousness. The consciousness must be capable of being totally lucid and.  ()  There, everything becomes luminous and warm...! And peace, the true peace, which is not inertia and which is not immobility.


The Mother: All... no. They are not all of the same age, even when they are of the same age physically. There are children who... who are at an elementary stage. You should...


The Mother: If you were fully conscious of your psychic, you would know the children who have a developed psychic. There are children in whom the psychic is only embryonic. The age of the psychic is not the same, far from it.   Normally the psychic takes several lives to form itself completely, and it is that which passes from one body to another and that is why we are not conscious of our past lives : it is because we are not conscious of our psychic.


The Mother: But sometimes, there is a moment when the psychic has participated in an event; it has become conscious, and that makes a memory. One sometimes has... one sometimes has a fragmentary recollection, the memory of a circumstance or an event, or of a thought or even an act, like that: this is because the psychic was conscious.  You see how it is, now I am nearing a hundred, it’s only ﬁve years away now. I started making an effort to become conscious at ﬁve years old, my child.


The Mother: This is to let you know.... And I go on, and it goes on. Only... Of course, I have come to the point where I am doing the work for the cells of the body, but still, the work began a long time ago.  This is not to discourage you, but...


The Mother: it is to let you know that it does not happen just like that!  The body... the body is made of a substance which is still very heavy, and it is the substance itself which has to change for the Supermind to be able to manifest.  There you are.   But there is one thing, one thing which is the main difﬁculty: it is the parents.


The Mother: When the children live with their parents I consider that it is hopeless, because the parents want their child to be educated as they were themselves, and they want them to get good jobs, to earn money — all the things that are contrary to our aspiration.  The children who are with their parents... really, I don’t know what to do. The parents have such a great inﬂuence on them that in the end they ask to go away to a school somewhere else.  And that, of all the difﬁculties — of them — that is the greatest: the inﬂuence of the parents. And if we try to counteract that inﬂuence the parents will begin to detest us and it will be even worse than before, because they will say unpleasant things about us.


The Mother: There.  That is my experience. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the children have taken a bad turn because of the parents.   This seems indispensable to me.


The Mother: We should write a circular letter saying: “Parents who want their children to be educated in the ordinary way and learn in order to get a good job, to earn their living and have brilliant careers, should not send them here.” There.  We should... And that is very important.


The Mother: You see, there are many, many parents who send their children here because it is less expensive than anywhere else.  And that is worse than anything, worse than anything. We should... we should... we must absolutely tell them: “If you  want your children to be educated in order to have a brilliant career, to earn money, do not send them here.” There.


The Mother: There were some children who were doing very well and were very happy. They went to their parents for the holidays and came back completely changed and spoiled. And then if we tell them that, it will be even worse because their parents will tell them, “Oh, these people are bad, they are turning you against us.” So it must be... the parents must know that before they send them.


The Mother: This has been my experience for so many, so many, so many years, so many years! The danger is not the children, it is not laziness, it is not even that the children are rebellious: the danger, the great danger is the parents.  Those who send their children here should do it knowingly, they should do it because it is unlike anywhere else. And there are many who won’t come... And those who come only because it is less expensive, well, they will stop sending them.


The Mother: I would like... I would like the attitude of our school to be made known to people before they send their children, because it is a pity when the children are happy and the parents are not; and that creates situations that are ridiculous and sometimes dangerous. This is very important, very important!    Oh!


The Mother: Oh!   (continuing to read the letter)  Do you have something to write with?  Violence is necessary so long as men are dominated by their ego and its desires.... Is that all right?


The Mother: But violence should be used only as a means of self-defence if one is attacked. The ideal towards which humanity is moving and which we want to realise, is a state of luminous understanding in which the needs of each one and of the overall harmony are taken into account.  The future will have no need of violence, for it will be ruled by the divine Consciousness in which everything harmonises with and completes everything else .  Is that enough?


The Mother: (A reads out the note.)   Is that all right?  You should... you should question the children and ask them in an off-hand way, “Oh, you have enemies?


The Mother: Who are these enemies?”... That is what you should say.... You should make them talk a little.... It is because they see that... There is a strength and a beauty in the army which children feel strongly.


The Mother: But that should be preserved. Only, armies should be used not to attack and capture but to defend and...  ... and protect. That’s it.   First she must understand properly: for the moment, we are in a condition where weapons are still necessary.


The Mother: We have to understand that this is a passing condition, not ﬁnal, but that we must move towards that.  Peace — peace, harmony — should be the natural result of a change of consciousness.  That depends so much on the case, and the child!   You see, there is this idea of non-violence about India, which has replaced material violence by moral violence — but that is far worse!


The Mother: You should make them understand this.... You can say this, explain to the children that to replace physical violence, material violence, by moral violence, is no better.  Lying down in front of a train to prevent it from passing is a moral violence which can create more disturbances than physical violence. You... can you hear me?


The Mother: But it depends on the child, it depends on the case. You must not give any names, say what this or that person has said. We must make them understand ideas and reactions.   You should...


The Mother: That is a good example: you should make them understand that lying down in front of a train to prevent it from passing is as great a violence... even greater than attacking it with weapons. You understand, there are many, many things that could be said. It depends on the case.    I myself encouraged fencing a great deal because it gives a skill, a control of one’s movements and a discipline in violence.


The Mother: At one time I encouraged fencing a great deal, and then too, I learned to shoot. I used to shoot with a pistol, I used to shoot with a riﬂe because that gives you a steadiness and skill and a sure-sightedness that is excellent, and it obliges you to stay calm in the midst of danger. I don’t see why all these things... One must not be hopelessly non-violent — that makes characters that are... soft!


The Mother: If she sees children... What was it? They were making swords?  She should have taken the opportunity to tell them, “Oh, you should learn fencing!”  And a pistol too?


The Mother: And tell them... teach them to shoot... make it into an, into an art and into a training of calm and self-controlled skill. One should never... never raise a hue and cry.... That will not do at all, at all, at all. I am not at all in favour of that.


The Mother: The methods of self-defence should be mastered, and for that they must be  practised.  They will start killing birds....   They would start damaging things. I am not very...


The Mother: Of course if there is... But when they have thoroughly grasped that it should be a means of self-defence, not anything else....  No, we would have accidents. I don’t think that it is prudent.  You can teach them fencing and shooting if they show that they are interested, that is, like that, like what I am writing to X....


The Mother: If she sees a child doing that, she must not... ( ). She should tell him, she must know how to explain to him, “It gives you control over your muscles, it obliges you to be strong and calm and self-controlled.” On the contrary, it is an opportunity to give them a very good lesson. But you must be able to understand yourself, and above all, above all, make them understand... make them understand that moral violence is just as bad as physical violence.


The Mother: It can even be worse; that is, at least physical violence obliges you to become strong, self-controlled, whereas moral violence... You can be like this () and yet have a terrible moral violence.   Marches what?  Not on the edge?  That’s very good.


The Mother: Yes, yes.   I think that you should not give any importance to these little movements in the children — that only encourages them. You must not take any notice, don’t look as if you attach any importance to them. That is a much better way of getting rid of them than by giving them importance.


The Mother: You must not... you must not pay any attention to all these little movements of self-importance. Don’t look as if you have even noticed — that removes all their psychological support. If a child sulks, you don’t take any notice. That robs his sulking of all effect.


The Mother: You understand?   You must not give any importance to these little movements in the children... above all, no importance.  But of course!  Children instinctively want to attract attention to themselves.


The Mother: Like the boy who pretends to be a soldier on the terrace... and things like that. You must not give it any importance, you must let them be. Don’t scold them, above all, don’t scold them... and don’t take any notice.  Children are weak creatures, and so they think that by making themselves awkward they will attract attention to themselves. They must see that it doesn’t work.


The Mother: Oh, especially not that! Above all, don’t scold them, don’t scold them. The teacher becomes just as bad as the student. When he  scolds he gives the impression that... he loses his temper. That means that he is on the same level as the student.


The Mother: One must know how to keep smiling... always.  Very, very, very important.   It is very, very, very important. Very important.  All the people who pretend to manifest the Supramental will be quieted down.


The Mother: ( )  That is good. Where is it going to be published?


The Mother: Ah! It is so good... and so important.  In Auroville there are people who believe that they are already manifesting the Supramental. And when you tell them that it is not so, they don’t believe you. They ought to read that.


The Mother: It should be read by everyone.  Oh, very good, very good, very good. You must read it slowly, so that they have time to hear it properly.   The most important thing is the parents and their   We could very well not tell them, “You are going to school...


The Mother: You are coming... Today we shall play such and such a game... today we shall play such and such a game....” And so on, like that. But the parents?


The Mother: Those who are here without their parents are...  Oh, highly privileged!  My head is blank.   As for me, I don’t understand anything about all these matters.  For me they are...


The Mother: What does A have to say about this?  Just tell me: what impression do you have? I have the feeling that a spirit of confusion has entered into the school and is making a... They mean the same thing and they use different terms, and so the terms clash. I know that they have a very similar aspiration, but each one speaks his own language and so the languages are not in harmony and they argue about nothing.


The Mother: There, I think that the best thing to do would be for each one to remain quiet for a while. Tell me your solution.  I too, with the people who are... who are with me, I never used to have any difﬁculty, and now it is as if we were speaking in a different language.  Yes, they lay stress on that. But for me, it has a strange effect: it makes me feel as if I am ill.


The Mother: There is nothing wrong with me. I am well and that gives me the feeling of being ill, all the time.  Yes, in truth it is the transition from the ordinary mental  consciousness to the supramental consciousness. The mental consciousness is panic-stricken in the presence of the supramental consciousness. I have the feeling — I shall tell you, this is how it comes to me — that at every moment one could die, the vibration is so different.


The Mother: And so it is only when I am very still... the being, the consciousness... the old consciousness — which is not the mental consciousness at all, but still — the old consciousness goes on repeating its mantra. There is a mantra... it goes on repeating its mantra. And so that is like a background, like a point of contact....


The Mother: It is strange.... And then beyond that, there is something which is full of light and force, but which is so new that it causes almost a panic. So, you understand, if the same thing... I who am... I have a long experience, eh?


The Mother: So if it causes that in me, if something like that occurs in the others, I have the feeling that we shall all go mad!  There, that will do.   Does this correspond to something?  So I think that we should keep very quiet so as not to lose the...


The Mother: Yes, yes, but our language... I was about to tell you, “It’s a good idea,” but I caught hold of myself by the ear just as I was saying  it to myself. It is not an idea, you understand, it is our language which has the... it is like a bell-jar covering it up, a mental belljar which it does not want to get rid of.


The Mother: Really, it is . I think that we ought to be quiet, quiet, quiet. I am going to tell you my old mantra; it keeps the outer being very quiet: OM NAMO BHAGAVATE.  These three words. For me they meant: OM — I implore the Supreme Lord.


The Mother: NAMO — Obeisance to Him.  BHAGAVATE — Make me divine.  This is a translation of it, I mean... Did you hear?  For me that has the power to calm everything.


The Mother: A one-act play in prose that can be staged in any country, with small changes in the details of the presentation which local custom may require.  P D S T P T C T P T S   S   How nice of you to come and see me after such a long time...


The Mother: I thought you had forgotten me.  S Certainly not. But I had lost trace of you and did not know where to ﬁnd you. And now that I have found you, what a surprise! You, married...


The Mother: how strange! I can’t believe it.   S


The Mother: I too ﬁnd it hard to believe.  S  I understand... I remember how ironically you used to refer to marriage as “a co-operative venture in consumption and production”, and how distasteful you used to ﬁnd everything that displayed human animality, the beast in man. And how you used to say, “Let us not be mammals...”


The Mother: S   Yes, I have always enjoyed making fun of current ideas and social conventions. But in all fairness you must admit that I have never said anything against true love, the love that comes from a deep afﬁnity and is marked by an identity of views and aspirations.


The Mother: I always dreamt of a great love that would be shared, free from all animal activity, something that could physically represent the great love which is at the origin of the worlds. This dream accounts for my marriage. But the experience has not been a very happy one. I have loved deeply, with great sincerity and  intensity, but my love has not met with the response it hoped for...  S


The Mother: My poor friend!  S  Oh, I am not telling you this to arouse your pity. I am not to be pitied. My dream is practically unrealisable in the world as it is.


The Mother: Human nature would have to change so much for this to become possible. Besides, my husband and I are very good friends, although that does not prevent us both from feeling very isolated. Esteem and mutual concessions create a harmony that makes life more than merely bearable. But is that happiness?  S


The Mother: For many people that might be happiness.  S   True, but sometimes I feel such an emptiness in my life!


The Mother: It may have been to ﬁll this emptiness that I gave myself entirely and in all sincerity to that marvellous cause which is so dear to me: to relieve suffering humanity, to awaken it to its capacities and its true goal and ultimate transformation.  S  I can see that something great, something out of the ordinary rules your life. But as I do not know what it is, it seems rather mysterious to me.  S


The Mother: Of course, I owe you an explanation. I must tell you about it in detail, but that will take some time. Would you like me to come and visit you?   S  What an excellent idea!


The Mother: Nothing could please me more. When will you come? Would you like to come today?  S  Yes, I would be very glad to do so.


The Mother: I always ﬁnd a deep joy in speaking of the marvellous teaching that guides our life and directs our wills. Just now, I have a few things to arrange so that when my husband returns from his walk he will ﬁnd everything ready. And as soon as he has started his work, I can go out and I shall come and see you.  S  Very well, then.


The Mother: It came while I was walking. A little activity in the open air really does help the inspiration. Yes, I think this will be good: I end with a song of triumph, a hymn of victory in praise of the evolved man who has discovered, together with the consciousness of his origin, the knowledge of all that he is capable of doing and the power to realise it. I describe him advancing in the happy  splendour of union towards the conquest of earthly immortality. It will be beautiful and truly universal, don’t you think?


The Mother: It is high time that art should stop being a justiﬁcation for ugliness and defeat... What a happy day it will be when poetry, painting and music express only beauty, victory and joy, leading the way towards the realisation of the future, towards the advent of a world in which falsehood and suffering, ugliness and death will be no more... But meanwhile, how much misery still for man, how much pain and anguish and bitter solitude... It is terrible! Each one has his burden to bear, come what may, whether he wants it or not.


The Mother: ( .)  S ( )  Come, set to work, you know that is the best cure for sadness. I am going to leave you to your inspiration. I promised my friend that I would go and spend the afternoon with her and tell her something about the marvellous teaching that guides our life.


The Mother: We shall probably read together some of those pages that are so full of profound truth. To meditate on these things is a great joy to both of us. That would upset the ideas of many men, wouldn’t it? They are convinced that women cannot do anything except talk about clothes. On the whole, they are not entirely wrong.


The Mother: Most women are terribly frivolous, or at least they seem to be.  For very often this lightness on the surface hides a heavy heart and veils an unfulﬁlled life. Poor creatures! I know so many of them who deserve to be pitied.


The Mother: P   You are right. Women really deserve to be pitied. Almost all of them lack the protection they need and are like frail craft with no harbour to shelter them from the storm.


The Mother: For most of them do not receive the education that would teach them to protect themselves.   S  That is true. Besides, even in the strongest of women, there is a deep need for affection and protection, for an all-powerful strength that leans over her and enfolds her in comforting sweetness. This is what she seeks in love, and when she has the good fortune to ﬁnd it, it gives her conﬁdence in life and opens up for her the door to every hope.


The Mother: Without that, life for her is like a barren desert that burns and shrivels up the heart.  P  Oh, how well you say these things! You say them like one who has experienced them very deeply. I shall make a note of them for my next book, which will deal with the education of women.


The Mother: Well then, I shall start my work.   S  That’s right; I am going. Goodbye, work well.


The Mother: ( .)  P (  )  Always the same kind and affectionate attentions.


The Mother: She never fails in her care and her sweetness. When I look at her, it is like seeing a light: her intelligence and kindness shine so brightly around her, spreading to all who are near her, whom she guides towards nobler horizons. I admire her, I feel a deep respect for her... But all that is not love... Love!


The Mother: What a dream! Will it ever become a reality? ( ) What a wonderful voice! ( ) Hello, who’s there?


The Mother: ( )   P   It’s you!


The Mother: Hello, old friend, what good wind brings you here?   P I had something to tell you. I met your wife and she told me you were in your “sanctum”. So I am here.


The Mother: P  You did the right thing... So come into the “sanctum” as you call it, and speak. Don’t keep me in suspense. Is it about painting?


The Mother: P  No, my painting is going well. But I shall tell you about that another time. It is about music.


The Mother: ( ) Yesterday evening, when visiting some friends, I heard a true singer who, I am told, is your neighbour. ( ) Do you know her?


The Mother: P  No, but I often hear her singing from here. She has a superb voice, a voice that stirs all the ﬁbres of my being. The very ﬁrst time it struck my ears, it sounded familiar to me, like an echo from very ancient times. For nearly six months I have been hearing this voice, which forms a kind of pleasant accompaniment to my work.


The Mother: I have very often wished to become acquainted with the owner of such a beautiful voice.   P   What a wonderful coincidence!


The Mother: Yesterday evening I was introduced to this young lady and she seems to be very charming indeed. We had a long chat together and in the course of the conversation she expressed her admiration for your poetry, which she seems to read with enthusiasm. She also told me that she is all alone in life, that she has to fend for herself and that sometimes she ﬁnds it difﬁcult to pull through, and so on. She dreams of becoming a concert-singer. I immediately thought of you and all your connections.


The Mother: Everyone knows how obliging you are. So I volunteered to speak to you about her and to ask  you if you could introduce her to a few well-known musicians or composers. That is why I have come.   P


The Mother: You did just the right thing. It will be a great pleasure for me to do something for her. So what did the two of you decide?   P


The Mother: It was arranged that, if you agreed, I would go and fetch her immediately — it is not very far — and bring her to you so that you may get to know each other.  P  Perfect. Go and fetch her.


The Mother: I shall wait for you. ( )  P ()  How strange, how strange... There is no such thing as chance; everything is the effect of causes that are simply beyond our control.


The Mother: The power of afﬁnity — who knows? I am curious to know whether the singer is as beautiful as her voice. Here they are. ( ) Oh, how pretty she is!


The Mother: ( .)   P  Mademoiselle, may I introduce my friend, the well-known poet whom you admire so much.


The Mother: P  I am very happy to meet you, mademoiselle, and to be able to tell you how much I admire your beautiful voice, which you use with such artistry.  C  You are very kind, monsieur, and I thank you. You will excuse me, won’t you, for coming with so little ceremony.


The Mother: But we are  such near neighbours. I knew you even before I was introduced to you. I noticed that you often came to your window to listen to me singing and even, at ﬁrst, I was not very pleased when you applauded me. I thought you were making fun of me.


The Mother: P  How wrong you were! I simply wanted to express my admiration and to thank you for all the aesthetic pleasure you give me.   P


The Mother: Now that I have done my duty, I shall leave you. I have an appointment with my art-dealer. Ah, the blackguard! He wants to make me paint absurdities because, he says, it is the current taste. But I am resisting...


The Mother: P  Yes, resist, resist valiantly. Do not encourage this degeneracy of modern taste, this lapse into falsehood which seems to have seeped into the consciousness of all our contemporaries, in every ﬁeld of human creativity.


The Mother: P  Very well, my friend, I go, ﬁred with a new courage, to do battle for the truth. Goodbye.  P C


The Mother: Goodbye.  P ()  Please sit down, mademoiselle.  C ()  So you are willing to introduce me to a few people and let them hear me?


The Mother: P  Certainly. One of our foremost conductors is a friend of mine and with a talent like yours all doors will easily open to you.  C


The Mother: It will be a great help to me. Thank you so much.   P


The Mother: No, no, do not thank me. ( ) If you knew all the joy you have given me... If you knew what a pleasant accompaniment the harmony of your rich voice has been to my daily work.


The Mother: I owe you many good and happy hours; yes, it is I who should be grateful to you.  C   It is very kind of you to tell me all this. ( )


The Mother: It is strange how familiar everything seems to me here, perhaps not so much the objects themselves as the air, the atmosphere which envelops them. Excuse my boldness, but I feel as if I were at home, I feel as if I had been coming here always. And I have the feeling that all sorts of wonderful things are going to happen to me now.  P  I shall be the ﬁrst person to be glad of it.


The Mother: C ()  I must tell you a strange thing. When I came to settle in this town about six months ago, after my mother’s death, in the hope of earning my living, I had a choice of several small apartments, each one with its advantages and inconveniences. The one that I rented here in this house is no better than any other, but I was impelled to take it by a kind of intuition that I would be happy here, that good things were in store for me here... It is strange, isn’t it?


The Mother: P ( )  Strange, yes, very strange... (


The Mother: ) Is this afﬁnity? Who knows?   (


The Mother: ) You know, this is strange too, I have felt much calmer and more contented since I have been hearing your voice each day, and I had a very great desire to know you.  C  And I knew you only as a writer whose talent I greatly admired and whom I hardly dared to hope to meet one day. There are such extraordinary and mysterious things in life... mysterious perhaps only because we do not know their causes, otherwise everything would be very simple and natural.


The Mother: And look, at this moment, I too feel a sensation of calm and well-being, and it gives me great strength. If only you knew how much I need strength and encouragement... Life is hard for a helpless and unprotected orphan who is forced to earn her living all alone and who knows nobody to support her in her struggle. But now that I have met you, I feel that all my difﬁculties will melt away.


The Mother: P   Rest assured that I shall do everything in my power to help you.  It is a duty and a very great pleasure to be of use to an artist and a woman like you.  C ( ) Thank you.


The Mother: I feel as if we have always been sitting like this, side by side, and that we are friends, old friends... We are friends, aren’t we?  P ()   Yes, from the depths of our hearts.


The Mother: C  I feel so much at ease here, that I am forgetting all conventions.  And now to crown my impoliteness, I am overcome by an  imperative need to sleep. I have been sleeping so badly at home for such a long time. I feel uneasy, spied on by invisible enemies who wish me harm.


The Mother: I am unable to achieve the calm which would give me a much-needed rest. Whereas here, I have the feeling that something warm and strong enfolds me like a living cloak and little by little I am being overwhelmed by sleep.  P ()   Lie down here, on these cushions.


The Mother: Make yourself comfortable; don’t let anything bother you. And above all do not think even for a moment of customs and conventions; they are fetters of no real value which seem to have been forged by man for his own misery.  C  I am in great need of sleep. I have a persistent pain in my head which makes me suffer a great deal.


The Mother: I have worked so hard to achieve a result as quickly as possible and my brain is terribly tired.  P ()  Will you allow me?... I think I can easily give you some relief.  ( )


The Mother: C ()  It is all right now, there is no more pain... And I feel so happy.  P


The Mother: ( )  Poor child, so pretty and yet so lonely.   C ()


The Mother: Oh, how beautiful!    P ()  What is beautiful?  C ()


The Mother: There, all around you, that violet light... It is like a living and luminous amethyst. It is all around me too, it is giving me strength.  It is a protection, a sure protection... Nothing harmful can come near me now.


The Mother: ( ) How beautiful is the violet light around you!   P


The Mother: Since you are comfortable, sleep quietly now, without seeing anything.  C ()  I am falling asleep, falling asleep. Oh, what calm, what ease.  P ()


The Mother: Yes, sleep, child — a healing sleep. Life has been hard for you and you have great need of rest. ( )  What is the use of trying to deceive myself?


The Mother: I have to admit it: just as her voice thrilled my whole being, so too her presence ﬁlls me with a calm and profound happiness. And now she has fallen asleep, under my protection, her ﬁrst conscious sleep. Her very trust gives me a responsibility, a responsibility which would be very sweet to me. But my wife! I know that she is strong and brave, I know that long ago she realised that what I feel for her is nothing more than friendly affection.


The Mother: She herself cannot be satisﬁed with that; the depths of her love remain untouched. Yet I have responsibilities towards her too. How can I tell her that my whole being is concentrated upon another? And yet I cannot conceal my feelings; falsehood is the only evil. Besides, it would be quite useless: a woman like her cannot be deceived.


The Mother: Oh, life is often so cruel!   C ( ) I am happy... happy... ( )


The Mother: P   Dear child! What can I do? ( )


The Mother: C ()  I have slept... How well I have slept, never in my life have I slept so well.  P  I am so glad.


The Mother: C ()  You see, the light that encircled you and covered me too was at once a nourishment and a protection; it was so beautiful, so comforting. Even now that I am awake I can feel it around me.   P


The Mother: Yes, it is still around you. Is this the ﬁrst time you have seen coloured lights like this?  C  I remember having seen lights or a coloured mist around certain people. But I have never seen any as beautiful as yours or any to which I have felt so close.


The Mother: Often, around others, it is like a turbid, unwholesome fog. What is it?   P  It would take rather long to give a clear reply.


The Mother: But I shall try to explain it to you as best I can in a few words. Stop me if I bore you. We are made up of different states which can be compared to earth, water, air and ﬁre. Do you follow?


The Mother: C  Yes, it is most interesting.   P  A less dense state penetrates and ﬂows through a denser one, as water evaporates through a porous vessel, with the difference that no loss follows.


The Mother: In the same way, what is more subtle in us forms a kind of sheath around our bodies and we call this subtle sheath the aura.   C  I understand, it is very clear. So then it can be very useful to see auras in this way?


The Mother: P  You are right, it is most useful. You can easily understand that the aura is the exact reﬂection of what is within us, of our feelings and our thoughts. If the thoughts and feelings are calm and harmonious, the aura too will be calm and harmonious; if the feelings are tumultuous and the thoughts disturbed, the aura will express this tumult and disturbance.


The Mother: It will be like the mist which you say you have seen around certain people.   C  Yes, I understand. So these auras are very revealing.


The Mother: P  Yes, for those who see auras, deception can no longer exist. For example, however much a man of bad will may try to look like an angel of light, it will be in vain. His aura will reveal that his thoughts and motives are dark.


The Mother: C ()  Magniﬁcent! What effects this knowledge might have in the world! But where did you learn such beautiful things? For I do not think that many people are aware of them.


The Mother: P   No, especially in modern times, in an age like ours in which success and the material satisfactions it brings are the only things that matter. And yet an ever-growing number of dissatisﬁed people are trying to ﬁnd the purpose and goal of life.


The Mother: On the other hand, there are those who know and strive to help suffering humanity; they are guardians of the supreme knowledge which has been handed down from generation to generation and which serves as the basis of a method of self-development whose aim is to awaken man to the consciousness of what he truly is and what he can do.  C  How beautiful this teaching must be! You will reveal it to me little by little, won’t you? For we are going to see each other often, aren’t we?


The Mother: I wish we never had to part again.... While I was asleep I felt that you were everything for me and that I belong to you for ever. And I felt that from now on your protection will always enfold me. And I who was so full of fear, who felt exposed to so many enemies, I am now quiet, calm, conﬁdent, for I can tell all who want to harm me: “I fear you no longer, I am effectively protected, by a protection that will never fail me.” I am right, am I not?


The Mother: P  Yes, yes, you are right.   C


The Mother: I am so happy to have met you at last. I have waited for you so long! And you, are you happy?   P


The Mother: Yes... Just now, while you were asleep, I felt a calm and a quiet happiness which I had never experienced before. ()  Yes, this is the true love, which is a force; it is the union that enables new possibilities to be realised...


The Mother: But...    C  But what? Since we are so happy together, what could prevent us...?


The Mother: P ()  Oh, you do not know! ( ) Oh!  (


The Mother: )  C ()  I did not know that you were married!   S ()


The Mother: Do not be upset. () Nor you. Yes, I heard the end of your conversation. I returned just as Mademoiselle was waking up.


The Mother: I did not want to disturb you and was about to withdraw, but I thought it would be more useful for all of us if I heard. So I stayed. For I was sure, my dear, that you would ﬁnd yourself in a cruel predicament. I know your straightforwardness, your loyalty, and I knew that you would be painfully divided between two opposite paths. You know what is said in the teaching which for us is the truth: love is the only legitimate bond of union.


The Mother: The absence of love is enough to invalidate any union. Certainly, there are unions without love, based on esteem and mutual concessions, which can be quite tolerable, but I consider that when love comes, everything else should give way to it. My friend, you remember our pact: we promised each other full freedom the moment love would awaken in either of us. That is why I listened, and now I have come to tell you: you are free, be happy.  P ()


The Mother: But you, you? I know you always live at the summit of your consciousness, in a pure and serene light. But solitude  is sometimes hard and the hours can be monotonous and sad.  S  Oh, I shall not be alone, for I shall go and join those through whom we have found the path, those who possess the eternal wisdom and who have, from a distance, guided our steps until now.


The Mother: Surely they will shelter me. ( ) Come, do not be upset.  Women who are sensitive and sincere have the right to freely choose the person who will be their protector and guide in life.  You have acted according to the natural law and all is well.  Our way of looking at things and our behaviour may surprise you; they are new to you and you do not know the reasons for them.


The Mother: ( ) He will explain them to you.  I am going away, but before I go let me join your hands. ( )


The Mother: No blessing can ever be equal to the blessing of love. And yet I shall give you mine, knowing that it will be dear to you. And if you permit, I shall add some advice which is almost a request. Do not allow your union to serve as an excuse for the satisfaction of animal appetites or sensual desires. On the contrary, make it a means of mutual support so that you may transcend yourselves in a constant aspiration and an effort for progress towards the growing perfection of your being.


The Mother: May your association be both noble and generous, noble in quality, generous in action. Be an example to the world and show all men of goodwill the true aim of human life.  C ()  You can be sure that we shall do our utmost to deserve the trust you have shown us and be worthy of your esteem. But I would like to hear from your own lips that my coming to this house and the event that has followed do not mean an irreparable misfortune to you.


The Mother: S   Have no fear. I now know for certain that only one love can satisfy my being: it is the love for the Divine, the divine love, for that alone never fails. Perhaps one day I shall ﬁnd the favourable conditions and the necessary help for the achievement of the supreme realisation, the transformation and divinisation of the physical being which will change the world into a blessed place full of harmony and light, peace and beauty.


The Mother: ( )  Six Monologues and a Conclusion by T M  in collaboration with N () P () A´ () P ()    My dear Andr´e, I know that you are a very busy man and that you do not have much time to spare. However, I am going to ask you to do something for me and I hope that it will be possible for you to do it.  The thing is this.


The Mother: For the ﬁrst of December I am preparing something which does not fall into any category of dramatic art and which certainly cannot be called a play, but, nevertheless, it will be put on the stage and I hope that it will not be without interest. I am putting words into the mouths of men who have had very different lives and careers, and it would be better, naturally, if they did not all speak the same language; I mean that their styles should differ. I have asked several people to put themselves in the shoes of one character or another, and to write down for me what, according to them, this character would say. If afterwards there is any touching up to do, I shall do it.  I am enclosing the introduction, which will be read out before the curtain rises; it will give you some idea of what I want to do and help you to understand what I mean.


The Mother: Among the characters, you will see that there is an industrialist, a big businessman. I am not very familiar with industrial terms and language and I thought that you could help me to write something true to life. The man tells the story of his life and I want it to be the life of a big magnate (American or other) on the lines of Ford, for example. I am making them speak one after another; they each have a maximum of ten minutes to relate their lives, their great triumphs which, at this critical hour, leave them unsatisﬁed and yearning for something which  they do not know or understand. At the same time I am sending you the conclusion of the industrialist’s speech as I conceive it, but of course you can make any changes you ﬁnd necessary.


The Mother: I have asked Pavitra to write the account of the scientist, Nolini is dealing with the man of letters, Pranab has already written what the sportsman will say (in English, but I shall put it into French), I have already outlined the statesman, I am taking care of the artist and of course the Unknown Man, since I shall be speaking through him.  Afterwards we shall still have to decide who the actors will be; Debou will play the Unknown Man, Hriday the sportsman, I am trying to persuade Pavitra to embody the scientist, Manoj will play either the artist or the writer. Naturally, the ideal would be for you to come and speak what you have written — but maybe you will regard that as an unrealisable folly... To tell the truth, this is only a feeler; we shall speak about it again later... I hope I have not left out anything important.


The Mother: But if you want any further details, I shall send them to you.    T S  Since you ask me, I will be the ﬁrst to tell you what my life has been.   Son of a politician, I was familiar from childhood with government affairs and political issues.


The Mother: All that was freely discussed at the dinners which my parents gave for their friends and which I used to attend from the age of twelve onwards. The opinions of the various political parties were no mystery to me and my enthusiastic young mind would ﬁnd a simple solution to every difﬁculty.  Naturally, my studies ran along these lines and I became a brilliant student of Political Science.  Later, when the time came to pass from theory to practice, I had to face the ﬁrst serious difﬁculties and I began to understand how virtually impossible it is to put one’s ideas into practice.  I had to resort to compromises and my great ideal gradually crumbled away.


The Mother: I also noticed that success does not really correspond to a person’s worth, but rather to his capacity to adapt himself to circumstances and to make himself agreeable. For that, one must ﬂatter people’s weaknesses rather than attempt to correct their imperfections.  No doubt, all of you know about my brilliant career, so I shall not dwell upon it. But I should like to tell you that as soon as I became Prime Minister and my position gave me some real power, I remembered the humanitarian ambitions of my youth and tried to be guided by them. I tried not to be a “party man”.


The Mother: I wanted to ﬁnd a solution to the great conﬂict between the various political and social trends that are tearing the world apart and all of which, nevertheless, in my opinion, have their advantages and disadvantages. None of them is perfectly good or wholly bad, and a way should be found to adopt what is good in each one in order to form a harmonious and practicable whole. But I was not able to discover the formula of the synthesis  that would reconcile these contraries, not to speak of being able to translate it into action.  Thus, I wished for peace, concord, understanding between nations, collaboration for the good of all, and I was compelled by a force greater than mine to wage war and to triumph by unscrupulous means and uncharitable decisions.


The Mother: And yet I am considered a great statesman, I am overwhelmed with honours and praise and people call me “a friend of humanity”.  But I feel my own weakness and I know that I have lacked the true knowledge and power which would have enabled me to fulﬁl the beautiful hopes of my childhood.  And now that the end is near, I feel that I have done very little and perhaps even very badly, and I shall cross the threshold of death sad and disillusioned.  T W


The Mother: With winged words I sought to capture the beauty and the truth that throb in our mortality. This panorama of creation that lies extended before our eyes — men and creatures, beings and things, scenes and happenings — and the other one equally extended in our feelings and perceptions, in our consciousness, they make a mysterious web, a Daedalus’ complex. They cast their spell upon me and I heard their voice calling me to know, understand and seize, a voice sweeter and more compelling than any Aegean siren could command. The ring of that voice I sought to give to my words.  I aimed at uttering the mystery of things, I aimed at making the Sphinx speak out.


The Mother: What lies hidden, what lies sealed, what moves from its secrecy suns and stars and hearts, that I endeavoured to unveil and present in the broad light of day. The labour of things, mundane or supra-mundane, is a dumb and even confused pantomime; I offered speech and consciousness to them. Words appeared to me a most marvellous instrument, the  instrument. It has just the consistency to embody and to express, neither so ﬂuid as to be vague, nor so concrete as to be opaque. The word pertains to two worlds at once.


The Mother: It is of the material world and therefore can give a form of matter: and it is sufﬁciently immaterial to be in contact with subtle things, forces and vibrations, principles and ideas. It can materialise the immaterial, embody the disembodied; and above all, it can give the meaning of things, the precise sense enclosed in a form.  In my lyrics I sought to uncover the yearnings of the heart, in man or in nature, what things cry for, what their tears are for.  On a larger canvas, through legends and parables, I portrayed the various facets of life’s moods and urges, its rare wisdoms and common foolishnesses, gave a pulsating accent and a meaningful concreteness to episodes that constitute history, the history of man’s and nature’s consciousness. The tragedies and comedies of life I cast in the dramatic form too, and it is not for me to say how pleased you were to see the ancient form serving magniﬁcently the needs and demands of the modern temperament.


The Mother: I moulded in unforgettable individualities ﬁgures and characters of living forces. A wider and still more explicit instrument is the novel which is perhaps more agreeable to the scientiﬁc and enquiring spirit of the age. For it is both illustrative and explanatory. I have given you the life history of individuals and social aggregates and I have attempted to give you too something of the life history of humanity taken as a whole, the massive aggregate in its circling, coiling, mounting movements. But I knew and I felt that it is not mere extension, largeness — the wide commonalty — that is enough for the human spirit.


The Mother: It needs uplift. It needs the grand style. So I gave you my epic. It was indeed a whole life’s labour. Well, many of you do not and did not understand, more were overawed, but all felt its magic vibration.


The Mother: Yes, it was my desperate attempt to tear open the veil.  I have varied the theme and I have varied the manner. Like a consummate scientist I juggled with my words, I knew how  to change their constitution and transmute them as it were, make them carry a new sense, a new tone, a new value. I could command something of the Ciceronian swell, something of the Miltonic amplitude, something of the Racinian suavity; I was not incapable of the simplicity of Wordsworth at his best, nor was even the Shakespearean magic quite unknown to me. The sublimity of Valmiki and the nobility of Vyasa were not peaks too high for me to compass.


The Mother: And yet I have not achieved. I am not satisﬁed. I am unhappy. For, after all, these are dreams that I have created, “dreams have I sown in the air”. I feel I have not touched the true truth of things nor their soul beauty.


The Mother: I have scratched the mere surface, I have caressed the outer robe that Nature puts on herself; but her very body, her own self has escaped me. I have woven a gossamer around creation’s limbs, however seemingly true, however apparently delightful. The means, the instrument itself which I once thought in its nature to be faultless and perfect in its capacity to penetrate and reveal and express and embody, I found in the end failing me. A great silence, a sheer dumbness, I thought at last to be nearer the heart of things.  T S


The Mother: Unlike some of you, I did not set out in life with any intention of improving the condition of my fellow-men. In my case, knowledge rather than action was the main attraction — knowledge in its modern guise: Science. I felt that nothing could be more wonderful than to lift a corner of the veil that screens from us the secrets of Nature, to understand a little more of her hidden springs. I assumed, perhaps unconsciously, the postulate that any increase of knowledge must necessarily result in an increase of power, and that any new mastery over Nature must sooner or later bring about an improvement in man’s condition, his moral as well as his material well-being.


The Mother: For me, as for all other thinkers who have their roots in the last century, the century of  the foundations of science, ignorance was the primary if not the only evil. It was this that held back mankind in its drive towards perfection. We admitted, without any discussion, the endless perfectibility of the human race. Progress might be rapid or slow, but it was nonetheless sure. Having come so far, we knew that we could go further.


The Mother: For us, to know more was automatically to understand more, to become wiser, more just — in short, to become better.   There is another postulate that we also accepted implicitly: that it is possible for us to know the Universe as it really is, to grasp its laws objectively. This seemed so obvious that it was never questioned. The Universe and I — we both exist, the function of the one being to understand the other.


The Mother: Undoubtedly, I am part of the Universe, but in the process of knowing it, I stand apart from it and view it objectively. I admit that what I call the laws of Nature exist independently of me, of my mind; they exist in themselves and they will be the same for any other mind capable of perceiving them.  I started my work inspired by this ideal of pure knowledge.  I chose the science of Physics and more particularly the study of the atom, of radioactivity, the ﬁeld in which Becquerel and the Curies had mapped out a royal road. It was the period when natural radioactivity was being superseded by artiﬁcial radioactivity, when the dreams of the alchemists were coming true.


The Mother: I worked with the great physicists who discovered uranium ﬁssion and I saw the birth of the atom bomb: years of hard, dogged and one-pointed labour. It was at this time that I conceived the idea which was to lead me to my ﬁrst discovery, the one which enables us today to obtain electric power directly from intra-atomic or nuclear energy. As you all know, this discovery resulted in a radical change in the economic condition of the whole world, because it brought energy at a low cost within the reach of all. If this discovery was so sensational, it was because it freed man from the curse of toil, from the need to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.   So I realised the dream of my youth — a great discovery — and at the same time I saw its importance for humanity — to which, without especially intending to do so, I had brought this great boon.


The Mother: I had reason enough to be fully satisﬁed, but if I was, it was not for long. For soon after — I can tell you this because we are now within an inch of death and my secret will probably be buried with me — soon after this, I say, I discovered the way to free atomic energy not only from uranium, thorium and some other rare metals, but from most of the common metals such as copper and aluminium. But then I was faced with a stupendous problem that strained me almost to breaking-point. Should I make known my discovery? To this day, no one knows this secret except me.


The Mother: All of you know the story of the atom bomb. You know that it has been succeeded by an inﬁnitely more destructive weapon, the hydrogen bomb. You also know as well as I do that humanity is staggering under the impact of these discoveries, which have placed in its hands an unequalled power of destruction. But if I now revealed my new discovery, if I unveiled my secret, I would place a diabolical power in the hands of just anybody.


The Mother: And without any control or restriction... Uranium and thorium were easily monopolised by the governments, ﬁrst on account of their relative scarcity, but mostly because of the difﬁculty of activating them in atomic piles. But you can well imagine what would happen if any criminal or crank or fanatic could in any make-shift laboratory put together a weapon capable of blowing up Paris, London or New York! Would that not be the ﬁnishing blow for humanity? I too have reeled under the weight of my discovery.


The Mother: I hesitated a long time and have not yet been able to come to any decision which satisﬁes both my reason and my heart.  Thus the very ﬁrst postulate with which I set out as a young scientist in quest of Nature’s secrets, has fallen to pieces. Even though an increase in knowledge may bring an added power,  it does not follow at all that humanity will be automatically bettered. Scientiﬁc progress does not necessarily imply moral progress. Scientiﬁc and intellectual knowledge is powerless to change human nature, and yet that has become the pressing need.


The Mother: If human greed and passion remain what they are today, almost the same as they were in the Stone Age, then humanity is doomed. We have reached a point where, unless there is a rapid and radical moral change, mankind will destroy itself with the power it has in its own hands.  Now what has happened to the second postulate of my youth? Can I at least have the joy of pure knowledge, can I be certain that I have grasped something of the hidden mechanism of Nature? Can I hope to enjoy the understanding of the true laws that govern Nature?


The Mother: Alas! I fear that here too my ideal has failed me. We men of science have long ago given up the idea that a theory must be either true or false. We now say only that it is convenient, that it ﬁts the facts and gives a working explanation of them. But as for knowing whether it is true, that is to say, whether it conforms to reality — that is quite another thing.


The Mother: And perhaps the question itself is meaningless. Undoubtedly there are, I should say, certainly there are other theories which explain the same facts just as well and are therefore just as valid. After all, what are these theories? They are nothing but symbols. They are certainly useful, since they enable us to predict; they tell us how things happen, but not the why or wherefore.


The Mother: They do not bring us into touch with reality. One always has the impression of circling around the truth, the reality, of approaching it from different angles, from different points of view, without ever being able to discover it or grasp it; nor does it spring forth and reveal itself.  Then again, on the other hand, we ourselves interfere with all the measurements that we take, expecting them to tell us something about the external universe. By the very fact of measuring we disturb, however slightly, the outer phenomena and thus alter the aspect of the world. And so the knowledge that these measurements give us is not at all sure.