The Mother: We send them into the atmosphere without even knowing that we are doing so — they go roaming about, pass from one person to another, meet companions, sometimes join together and get on happily, sometimes create conﬂicts, and there are battles; for often, very often, in these mental imaginations there is a small element of will which tries to realise itself, and then everyone tries to send out his formation so that it can act, so that things can happen as he wants and, as everyone does this, it creates a general confusion. If our eyes were open to the vision of all these forms in the atmosphere, we would see very amazing things: battleﬁelds, waves, onsets, retreats of a of small mental entities which are constantly thrown out into the air and always try to realise themselves. All these formations have a common tendency to want to materialise and realise themselves physically, and as they are countless — they are far too many for there to be room enough on earth to manifest them — they jostle and elbow one another, they try to push back those which do not agree with them or even form armies marching in good order, always to take up the available room both in time and space — it is only a very small space compared with the countless number of creations.  So, individually, this is what happens. Some people do all that without knowing it — perhaps everybody — and they are constantly tossed from one thing to another, and hope, wish, desire, are disappointed, sometimes happy, sometimes in despair,  for they don’t have any control or mastery over these things.


The Mother: But the beginning of wisdom is to look at ourselves thinking and to see this phenomenon, become aware of this constant projection into the atmosphere of small entities which are trying to manifest. All this comes out of the mental atmosphere which we carry within ourselves. Once we see and observe, we can begin to sort them out, that is, to push back what is not in conformity with our highest will or aspiration and allow to move towards manifestation only the formations which can help us to progress and develop normally.  This is the control of active thought, and that was what I meant the other day.  How many times you sit and become aware that the thought is beginning to form images for itself, to tell itself a story; and so, when you have become a little expert at it, not only do you see unfolding before you the history of what you would like to happen in life, in your own life, but you can take something away, add a detail, perfect your work, make a really story in which everything conforms with your highest aspiration.


The Mother: And once you have made a complete harmonious construction, as perfect as you can make it, then you open your hands and let the bird ﬂy away.  If it is well made, it always realises itself in the end. And that is what one doesn’t know.  But the thing is realised in the course of time, sometimes long afterwards, when you have forgotten your story, can no longer remember having told it to yourself — you have changed much, are thinking about other things, making other stories, and the ﬁrst one no longer interests you; and if you are not very attentive, when the result of the ﬁrst story comes, you are already very far away from it and no longer remember at all that this is the result of your own story.... And that is why it is so important to control yourself, for if within you there are multiple and contradictory wills — not only wills but tendencies, orientations, levels of life — all this causes battles in your life.


The Mother: For example, at your highest  level you have fashioned a beautiful story which you send out into the world, but then, perhaps the next day, perhaps on the very same day, perhaps a little later, you have come down to a much more material level, and these things from above seem to you a little... fairylike, unreal; and you begin to make very concrete, very utilitarian formations which are not always very pretty... and these too go out.  I have known people with such opposite sides in their nature, so contradictory, that one day they could make a magniﬁcent, luminous, powerful formation for realisation, and then the next day a defeatist, dark, black formation — a formation of despair — and so both would go out. And I was able to follow in the course of circumstances the beautiful one being realised, and while it was being realised, the dark one demolishing what the ﬁrst one had done. And that is how it is in the larger lines of life as in its smaller details.


The Mother: And all that because one does not watch oneself thinking, because one believes one is the slave of these contradictory movements, because one says, “Oh! Today I am not feeling well. Oh! Today things seem sad to me”, and one says this as if it were an ineluctable fate against which one could do nothing. But if one stands back or ascends a step, one can look at all these things, put them in their place, keep some, destroy or get rid of those one does not want and put all one’s imaginative power — what is called imaginative — only in those one wants and which conform with one’s highest aspiration. That is what I call controlling one’s imagination.


The Mother: It is very interesting. When one learns to do it and does it regularly one no longer has time to feel bored.  And instead of being a cork aﬂoat on the waves of the sea and tossed here and there by each wave, defencelessly, one becomes a bird which opens its wings, ﬂies above the waves and goes wherever it wants. That’s all.     What we call “white magic” is a beneﬁcial magic and “black magic” is a harmful magic.


The Mother: But in fact these are mere words, they have no meaning.  Magic?... It is a knowledge that has been reduced to purely material formulas. They are some kind of words or numbers or combinations of words and numbers, which, if they are simply pronounced or written, even by someone who has no inner power, must act. In occultism, this is what corresponds to chemical formulas in science.


The Mother: You see, in science you have chemical formulas for combining certain elements and producing others from them; even if you do not have any mental or vital or even physical power, if you just follow to the letter the formula you have, you obtain the required result — it is enough simply to have a memory. Well, the same thing has been tried in occultism, making combinations of sounds, letters, numbers, words, which,  by their inherent qualities, have the power to obtain a certain result. In this way, any fool, if he learns this and does exactly what he is told, obtains — or believes he will obtain — the result he wants. While... let us take the mantra, for instance, which is a form of occultism; unless the mantra is given by a guru and the guru transmits his occult or spiritual power to you with the mantra, you may repeat your mantra thousands of times, it will have no effect.  That is to say, in true occultism, one must have the quality, the ability, the inner gift in order to use it, and that is the safeguard.


The Mother: True occultism cannot be practised by any fool. And this is no longer magic — neither white magic nor black nor golden — it is not magic at all, it is a spiritual power which must be acquired by long discipline; and ﬁnally, it is given to you only by a divine grace.  This means that as soon as one draws near the Truth, one is safe from all charlatanism, all pretension and falsehood. Of this I have had numerous and extremely conclusive proofs. And so someone who has the true occult power possesses at the same time, by the strength of this inner truth, the power to undo any magic, white or black or whatever colour it may be, simply by applying a drop of that truth, one might say.


The Mother: There is nothing that can resist that power. And this is very well known to those who practise magic, for they always take very great care, in all countries but especially in India, never to try out any of their formulas against yogis and saints, because they know that these formulas which they send out with their little mechanical, very superﬁcial power, will go and strike, like a ball on a wall, the true power that protects one who leads a spiritual life, and quite naturally their formula will rebound and fall back on them.   The yogi or saint doesn’t need to do anything, he doesn’t even have to want to protect himself: it is something automatic.  He is in a state of consciousness and inner power which automatically protects him from everything that is inferior.


The Mother: Naturally, he can also use his power deliberately to protect others.   This rebounding of the bad formation from his atmosphere automatically protects him, but if this bad formation is made against someone he is protecting or simply someone who asks for his help, then he can, by a movement of his own atmosphere, his own aura, surround the person who is exposed to the evil magic spells, and the rebounding process acts in the same way and causes the bad formation to fall back quite naturally on the one who made it. But in this case the conscious will of the yogi or saint or sage is needed.


The Mother: He has to be informed about what has happened and he must decide to intervene.   That is the difference between true knowledge and magic.   Anything else?...


The Mother: Is that all?  It does not call it “occultism”, that’s all. It is only a question of words.... They are making sensational discoveries which people with occult knowledge already knew thousands of years ago!  They have made a long circuit and come to the same thing.


The Mother: With the most recent discoveries in medicine, in the applied sciences, for instance, they are contacting in this way, with a wonder-struck interest, things which were known to certain sages a very, very long time ago. And then they present all this before you as new marvels — but indeed they are rather old, their marvels!  They will end up by practising occultism without knowing that they are doing so! For, in fact, as soon as one draws close, however slightly, to the truth of things and when one is sincere in one’s search, not satisﬁed by mere appearances, when one really wants to ﬁnd something and goes deep, penetrates behind appearances, then one begins to advance towards the truth of things; and as one comes closer to it, well, one ﬁnds again the same knowledge that others who began by going within have brought back from their inner discoveries.   Only the method and the path are different but the thing discovered will be the same, because there are not two things to be found, there is only one.


The Mother: It will necessarily be the same.  It all depends on the path one follows; some go fast, others slowly, some go straight, others, as I said, go a long way round — and what labour! How they have laboured!... Besides, it is very respectable.  (


The Mother: )  Now they are ﬁnding out that they can replace anaesthetics by hypnotism with inﬁnitely better results. Well, hypnotism is a form — a form modernised in its expression — of occultism; a very limited, very small form of a very tiny power compared with occult power, but still it is a form of occultism which has been put in modern terms to make the thing modern. And I don’t know if you have heard about these things, but they are very interesting from a certain point of view: for instance, this process of hypnotism has been tried on someone who had to have a skingraft on a wound. I don’t remember all the details now, but the arm had to remain attached to the leg for a fortnight....


The Mother: If the person were immobilised by plaster and bandages and all sorts of things, at the end of the fortnight he wouldn’t be able to move — everything would become stiff and he would need weeks of treatment to recover the free use of his arm. In this case, nothing was tied up, nothing was physically immobilised — no plaster, no bandages, nothing — the person was just hypnotised and told to keep his arm in that position. He kept it for a fortnight, without any effort, any difﬁculty, without any intervention from his will: it was the will of the hypnotiser which intervened. It was perfectly successful, the arm remained in the required position, and when the fortnight was over and the hypnotism removed, and the person was told, “Now you may move”, he began to move! Well, that’s a step forward.


The Mother: They are soon going to meet — it will be nothing more than  a question of words — then, if they are not too rigid, they can agree on the value given to the words!   No, no! If somebody practises hypnotism to impose his will on another, it can obviously do much harm to the other person, but we are speaking of a hypnotism which is practised in a humanitarian way, it might be said, and for precise reasons.


The Mother: All the bad effects can be avoided if the one who does it has no bad intentions.  If you use chemical formulas in an ignorant way, you can cause an explosion (), and that is very dangerous! Well, if you use occult formulas ignorantly — or egoistically, which is even worse than ignorantly — you can also have harmful results.  But that doesn’t mean that occultism is bad or hypnotism is bad or chemistry is bad. You are not going to ban chemistry because there are people who cause explosions! ()


The Mother: But for everything one must have special qualities!  Listen, if you are not an artist, you may work for years with paint-brushes, colours, canvases, and spend much money and much effort, and yet produce horrible things. If you are not a musician, you may labour hard for hours at playing the piano and you will never do anything worthwhile. Special qualities are always needed.... Why, even for an athlete — if you are not born an athlete, you may try as hard as you like, you will only succeed in doing something quite mediocre and ordinary.


The Mother: It will  be better than someone who does not try at all, but that does not mean that you are automatically going to succeed. Besides, if we go a step further, everyone has countless possibilities within him of which he is unaware and which develop only if he does what is to be done in the way it should be done.... But there are two types of progress, not only one; there is the progress that consists in perfecting more and more the capacities, possibilities, faculties and qualities you have — this is what is normally obtained by education; but if you go in for a little more thorough development by approaching a deeper truth, you can add, to the qualities you already have, other new ones which seem to be asleep in your being.  You can multiply your possibilities, enlarge and increase them; you can suddenly bring up something you did not think you had. I have already explained this to you several times.


The Mother: When one discovers one’s psychic being within, at the same time there develop and manifest, quite unexpectedly, things one could not do at all before and which one didn’t think were in one’s nature. Of this too I have had numerous examples. I have given you this one, but I am repeating it to you once more to make myself understood.  I used to know a young girl who was born in a very ordinary environment, who had not received much education and wrote rather clumsy French, who had not developed her imagination and had absolutely no literary sense : that seemed to be among the possibilities she did not have.


The Mother: Well, when she had the inner experience of contact with her psychic being, and as long as the contact was living and very present, she wrote admirable things.  When she fell back from that state into an ordinary one, she could not even put two sentences together correctly! And I saw examples of both kinds of her writing.  There is a genius within everyone of us — we don’t know it. We must ﬁnd the way to make it come out — but it is there


The Mother: sleeping, it asks for nothing better than to manifest; we must open the door to it.     Everything that happens to us in the spiritual world we always have a tendency to translate mentally; we want to explain it to ourselves, draw conclusions from it, change the experience into a rule of action, proﬁt mentally by what has happened in order to transform the experience into something practically useful. That is what Sri Aurobindo calls “the mind’s possession of it”. This is done automatically, so to say.


The Mother: Unfortunately, the best part of the experience always escapes; and besides, if one wants to keep it intact, one would have to remain in a state in which the experience is not mentalised, and if one lives in the outer world this is practically impossible. That is why those who wished to enjoy their spiritual experience without intervention from the mind used to remain in states of trance and to carefully avoid coming down to the level of action. But if one wants to transform life, if one wants the spiritual experience to have an effect on the mind, the vital and the body, on the daily activities, it is indispensable to try to express it mentally and accept the inevitable diminution, until the mind itself is transformed and capable of participating in the experience without deforming it.  What we want to do is still more difﬁcult, for we want the vital also to be transformed and capable of participating in the experience without deforming it, and ﬁnally the physical itself, the body, to be transformed by the spiritual action and no longer be an obstacle to the experience.  This transformation is precisely the point that ordinary thought ﬁnds most difﬁcult to accept, for it is almost the faculty of thought itself which must be changed.


The Mother: Its whole functioning has to be changed for this transformation to be possible, and we  are so used to identifying the faculty with its functioning that we wonder if it is possible to think otherwise than in the way we ordinarily do.  It is possible only when one has had the experience of complete silence in the mental region and when the spiritual force with its light and power descends through the mind and makes it act directly without its following its usual method of analysis, deduction, reasoning. All these faculties which are usually considered the normal activities of the mind, must be stopped, and yet the spiritual Light, Knowledge and Power must be able to transform them into a channel of direct expression, without using these means to express themselves.  The mind, in its outermost form, is a means of action, an instrument for organisation and execution. It puts concepts in order, relates them to one another, draws conclusions for action from them and gives impulse to this action.


The Mother: This power of organisation and impulse to action can be produced directly by the spiritual force which takes hold of the mental consciousness without these processes of analysis, deduction, reasoning being necessary. In intuition things already happen somewhat in this way; but spiritual intervention is, as it were, a super-intuition, a direct expression of the vision, of the experience, of knowledge by identity.   ( )


The Mother: There are many stages in this transformation and the ﬁrst are like a kind of mental imitation of the movement. The whole process of analysis, reasoning, deduction and formulation of conclusions occurs almost spontaneously in a mental background and gives us the result which seems to us an intuition but which is still the result of all that work which was carried out very swiftly and, as I said, in a sort of background of which we are not fully conscious, so that we see the starting-point and the result without following the whole process in detail, the whole development  of the mental activity. People who have a very quick mind and can grasp things very fast, people whose mental activity is extremely swift, immediate, can give the impression that they have intuition but this is only an outer form and almost an imitation of true intuition. Intuition is already a direct vision, something that dispenses with reasoning and deduction. Through intuition there is already an expression of direct knowledge.


The Mother: But before reaching this stage, all the experiences one has must pass through the ordinary mental method of observation, analysis and deduction in order to reach the outer consciousness.  The very essence of the experience fades away and there remains only a sort of very dry husk which has lost all its power of realisation — almost, almost lost it.  But those whose intellectual activity is very dominant ﬁnd it almost absolutely necessary to catch hold of everything, all inner experiences, and to begin to formulate them. If, in addition, they have a power of expression, they try to formulate them in words and sentences; and when one has lived these experiences and becomes aware of the descending curve, one sees at each stage the deep reality of the experience withdrawing, fading into the background, instead of being in the forefront and commanding the whole being; it retreats slowly like this (), and outside there remains only something... which is a kind of dry and cold imitation. It may be expressed in very enthusiastic words, but in comparison with what the thing itself was, in itself, in its deep truth, it is so shrivelled up, diminished....


The Mother: All the true joy, the true beauty, the inner enthusiasm, that wonderful warmth of the experience — all this retreats far behind. You try to keep a hold on it, but it eludes you. And you pay dearly for this power of formulation.  I believe I have already explained this to you once. I think I have  even explained it in detail in the articles on education.


The Mother: It is quite similar to the results of physical education for the body.  We have limbs and muscles and nerves, indeed everything that constitutes the body; if we don’t give them a special development, a special education, all these things do what they can to express the Power in the body, but it is a very clumsy and very incomplete expression. It is beyond question that a physical body which has been trained according to the most complete and rational methods of physical culture is capable of things it could never do otherwise. I think no one can deny that. Well, for the mind it is the same thing.


The Mother: You have a mental instrument with many possibilities, faculties, but they are latent and need a special education, a special training so that they can express the Light. It is certain that in ordinary life the brain is the seat of the outer expression of the mental consciousness; well, if this brain is not developed, if it is crude, there are innumerable things which cannot be expressed, because they do not have the instrument required to express themselves. It would be like a musical instrument with most of its notes missing, and that produces a rough approximation but not something precise.   Mental culture, intellectual education changes the constitution of your brain, enlarges it considerably, and as a result the expression becomes more complete and more precise.


The Mother: It is not necessary if you want to escape from life and go into inexpressible heights, but it is indispensable if you want to express your experience in outer life.  If they are not controlled, mastered, yes. But not necessarily.   Not necessarily.


The Mother: It might make the control a little more difﬁcult, for naturally it is more difﬁcult to master an individualised being than a crude one — with a completer individualisation the  ego becomes more crystallised and also self-satisﬁed, doesn’t it?... But granting that this difﬁculty has been overcome, well, in a highly developed individuality the result is inﬁnitely superior to the one obtained in a crude and uneducated nature. I am not saying that the process of transformation or rather of consecration is not more difﬁcult but once it is achieved the result is far superior.  This may very well be compared with musical instruments, one of which has a certain number of notes and the other ten times as many. Well, it is perhaps easier to play an instrument of four or ﬁve notes but the music that could be played on a complete keyboard is obviously far superior!


The Mother: One could even compare this to an orchestra much more than to a simple instrument. A human being, a fully developed human individuality is very much like one of those stupendous orchestras which has hundreds and hundreds of players. It is obviously very difﬁcult to control and conduct them but the result can be marvellous.      There’s enough matter here to ask me at least a dozen questions!


The Mother: ( ) So, the ﬁrst of the twelve?  ( )


The Mother: I have a question here, but it is a verbal question, which means that it is not very interesting. It is a phrase from the beginning of the passage: What is the meaning of “the mental consequences of the spiritual theorem of existence”?  It is probably from someone who doesn’t know what “theorem” means!  A theorem is the statement of a truth which has been arrived at through reasoning. The word is used quite concretely in mathematics and all the external sciences.


The Mother: From the philosophical point of view it is the same thing. In the present instance, the spiritual theorem of existence may be stated in this way: the Absolute in the relativities or Oneness in multiplicity. But to explain “the mental consequences”, we must go into philosophy  and I believe you are rather unprepared for that. And to really understand what it means, one feels that philosophy is always skirting the truth, like a tangent that draws closer and closer but never touches — that there is something that escapes.


The Mother: And this something is in truth everything.  To understand these things... there is only experience —  this truth, not to feel it in the way the ordinary senses do but to realise within oneself the truth, the concrete existence of both states, simultaneously, existing together even while they are opposite conditions. All words can lead only to confusion; only experience gives the tangible reality of the: the simultaneous existence of the Absolute and the relativities, of Oneness and multiplicity, not as two states following each other and one  resulting from the other, but as a state which can be perceived in two opposite ways depending on... the position one takes in relation to the Reality.  Words in themselves falsify the experience. To speak in words one must take not a step backwards but a step downwards, and the essential truth escapes.


The Mother: One must use them simply as a more or less accessible path to reach the itself which cannot be formulated. And from this point of view no formulation is better than any other; the best of all is the one that helps each one to remember, that is, the way in which the intervention of the Grace has crystallised in the thought.  Probably no two ways are identical, everyone must ﬁnd his own. But one must not be mistaken, it is not “ﬁnding” by reasoning, it is “ﬁnding” by aspiration; it is not by study and analysis, but by the intensity of the aspiration and the sincerity of the inner opening.  When one is truly and exclusively turned to the spiritual Truth, whatever name may be given to it, when all the rest becomes secondary, when that alone is imperative and inevitable, then, of intense, absolute, total concentration is enough to receive the answer.


The Mother: The experience comes ﬁrst, in this case, and it is only later, as a consequence and a memory that the formulation becomes clear.  In this way one is sure not to make a mistake. The formulation may be more or less exact, that is of no importance, so long as one doesn’t make a dogma out of it.  It is good for you, that is all that is needed. If you want to impose it on others, whatever it may be, even if it is perfect in itself, it becomes false.


The Mother: That is why religions are always mistaken — always — because they want to standardise the expression of an experience and impose it on everyone as an irrefutable truth. The experience was true, complete in itself, convincing — for the one who had it. The formulation he made of it was excellent — for himself.  But to want to impose it on others is a fundamental error which  has altogether disastrous consequences, always, which always leads far, very far from the Truth.


The Mother: That is why all the religions, however beautiful they may be, have always led man to the worst excesses. All the crimes, the horrors perpetrated in the name of religion are among the darkest stains on human history, and simply because of this little initial error: wanting what is true for one individual to be true for the mass or collectivity.  ()  The path must be shown and the doors opened but everyone must the path, pass through the doors and go towards his personal realisation.  The only help one can and should receive is that of the Grace which formulates itself in everyone according to his own need.


The Mother: There are thousands of moral perfections. Everyone has his own ideal of moral perfection.  What is usually called moral perfection is to have all the qualities that are considered moral: to have no defects, never to make a mistake, never to err, to be always what one conceives to be the best, to have all the virtues — that is, to realise the highest mental conception: to take all the qualities — there are many, aren’t there? — all the virtues, all that man has conceived to be the most beautiful, most noble, most true, and to live that integrally, to let all one’s actions be guided by that, all the movements, all the reactions, all the feelings, all... That is living a moral ideal of perfection. It is the summit of man’s mental evolution.


The Mother: Not many people do it... but still... there have been some and there still are. This is what men usually take for the spiritual life.


The Mother: When they meet a man of this type, they say, “Oh! He is a great spiritual being.” He may be a great saint, he may be a great sage but he is a spiritual being.  And yet it is already very good and very difﬁcult to realise this. And there comes a time in the inner evolution when it is very necessary to try to realise it.


The Mother: It is obviously inﬁnitely higher than to be still guided by all one’s impulses and ignorant outer reactions. It is to be already in a way the master of one’s nature.  It is even a stage through which one has to pass, for it is the stage when one begins to be the master of one’s ego, when one is ready to let it fall away — it is still there but sufﬁciently weakened to be nearing its end. This is the last stage before crossing over to the other side, and certainly, if anyone imagines that he can go over to the other side without passing through this stage, he  would risk making a great mistake, and of taking for perfect freedom a perfect weakness with regard to his lower nature.  It is almost impossible to pass from the mental being — even the most perfect and most remarkable — to the true spiritual life without having realised this ideal of moral perfection for a certain period of time, however brief it may be.


The Mother: Many people try to take a short-cut and want to assert their inner freedom before having overcome all the weaknesses of the outer nature; they are in great danger of deluding themselves. The true spiritual life, complete freedom, is something much higher than the highest moral realisations, but one must take care that this socalled freedom is not an indulgence and a contempt for all rules.  One must go higher, always higher, higher; nothing less than what the highest of humanity has achieved.  One must be capable of being spontaneously all that humanity has conceived to be the highest, the most beautiful, the most perfect, the most disinterested, the most comprehensive, the best, before opening one’s spiritual wings and looking at all that from above as something which still belongs to the individual self, in order to enter into true spirituality, that which has no limits, which lives in an integral way Inﬁnity and Eternity.   There will probably be many.


The Mother: Man and superman? You are not speaking of the new supramental race, are you? Are you really speaking of what call the superman, that is, man born in the human way and trying to transform the physical being he has received by his ordinary human birth? Are there any stages? — There will certainly be countless realisations.


The Mother: According to each one’s capacity, the degree of transformation will differ, and it is certain that there will be a considerable number of attempts, more or less fruitful or unfruitful, before we come to something like the superman, and even those will be more or less successful attempts.   All those who strive to overcome their ordinary nature, all those who try to realise materially the deeper experience which has brought them into contact with the divine Truth, all those who, instead of turning to the Beyond or the Highest, try to realise physically, externally, the change of consciousness they have realised within themselves — all are apprentice-supermen.  And there, there are countless differences in the success of their efforts. Each time we try not to be an ordinary man, not to live the ordinary life, to express in our movements, our actions and reactions the divine Truth, when we are governed by that Truth instead of being governed by the general ignorance, we are apprentice-supermen, and according to the success of our efforts, well, we are more or less able apprentices, more or less advanced on the way.


The Mother: All these are stages, so... In reality, in this race to the Transformation, the question is to know which of the two will arrive  ﬁrst: the one who wants to transform his body in the image of the divine Truth, or the old habit of the body to go on disintegrating until it is so deformed that it can no longer continue to live in its outer integrality. It is a race between transformation and decay. For there are only two stopping-places, two things which can indicate to what extent one has succeeded: either success, that is to say, becoming a superman — then of course one can say, “Now I have reached the goal”... or else death. Till then, normally, one is “on the way”.


The Mother: It is one of these two things — either attaining the goal or a sudden rupture of life — which temporarily puts an end to the advance. And on the road each one has gone more or less far, but until one reaches the end one cannot say what stage one is at. It is the ﬁnal step that will count. So only the one who comes a few hundred or thousand years later and looks back, will be able to say, “There was this stage and that stage, this realisation and that realisation....” That is history, it will be a historical perception of the event.


The Mother: Till then all of us are in the movement and the work.  How far have we gone and how far shall we go? It is better not to think too much about that, for it cripples you and you can’t run well. It is better to think only about running and nothing else. That is the only way to run well.


The Mother: You look at where you want to go and put all your effort in the movement to go forward. How far you have gone is not your concern. I say, “This is history”, it will come later. The historians of our effort will tell us — because perhaps we shall still be there — will tell us what we did, how we did it. For the moment what is necessary is to do it; this is the only thing that matters.


The Mother: I don’t know whether one can say that anyone has much or little spiritual capacity. It is not like that.  To live the spiritual life, a reversal of consciousness is needed. This cannot be compared in any way with the different faculties or possibilities one has in the mental ﬁeld. It may be said of someone that he hasn’t much mental, vital or physical capacity, that his possibilities are very limited; in that case it may be asked how these capacities may be developed, that is, how new ones may be acquired, which is something rather difﬁcult.


The Mother: But to live the spiritual life is to open to another world  within oneself. It is to reverse one’s consciousness, as it were.  The ordinary human consciousness, even in the most developed, even in men of great talent and great realisation, is a movement turned outwards — all the energies are directed outwards, the whole consciousness is spread outwards; and if anything is turned inwards, it is very little, very rare, very fragmentary, it happens only under the pressure of very special circumstances, violent shocks, the shocks life gives precisely with the intention of slightly reversing this movement of exteriorisation of the consciousness.  But all who have lived a spiritual life have had the same experience: all of a sudden something in their being has been reversed, so to speak, has been turned suddenly and sometimes completely inwards, and also at the same time upwards, from within upwards — but it is not an external “above”, it is within, deep, something other than the heights as they are physically conceived. Something has literally been turned over.


The Mother: There has been a decisive experience and the standpoint in life, the way of looking at life, the attitude one takes in relation to it, has suddenly changed, and in some cases quite deﬁnitively, irrevocably.  And as soon as one is turned towards the spiritual life and reality, one touches the Inﬁnite, the Eternal, and there can no longer be any question of a greater or smaller number of capacities or possibilities. It is the conception of spiritual life which may say that one has more or less capacity to live spiritually, but this is not at all an adequate statement. What may be said is that one is more or less ready for the decisive and total reversal. In reality, it is the mental capacity to withdraw from ordinary activities and to set out in search of the spiritual life which can be measured.


The Mother: But so long as one is in the mental ﬁeld, in this state, as it were, on this plane of consciousness, one can’t do much for others, either for life in general or for particular individuals, because one doesn’t have the certitude oneself, one doesn’t have the deﬁnitive experience, the consciousness has not been  established in the spiritual world; and all that can be said is that they are mental activities which have their good and bad sides, but not much power and, in any case, not this power of spiritual contagion which is the only truly effective power.  The only thing that is truly effective is the possibility of transferring to others the state of consciousness in which one lives oneself. But this power cannot be invented. One cannot imitate it, cannot seem to have it; it only comes spontaneously when one is established in that state oneself, when one within it and not when one is trying to live within it — when one there. And that is why all those who truly have a spiritual life cannot be deceived.


The Mother: An imitation of spiritual life may delude people who still live in the mind, but those who have realised this reversal of consciousness in themselves, whose relation with the outer being is completely different, cannot be deceived and cannot make a mistake.  It is these people the mental being does not understand. So long as one is in the mental consciousness, even the highest, and sees the spiritual life from outside, one judges with one’s mental faculties, with the habit of seeking, erring, correcting, progressing, and seeking once again; and one thinks that those who are in the spiritual life suffer from the same incapacity, but that is a very gross mistake!  When the reversal of the being has taken place, all that is ﬁnished.


The Mother: One no longer seeks, one sees. One no longer deduces, one knows. One no longer gropes, one walks straight to the goal. And when one has gone farther — only a little farther — one knows, feels, lives the supreme truth that the Supreme Truth acts, the Supreme Lord wills, knows and does through human beings. How could there be any possibility of error there?


The Mother: What He does, He does because He wills to do it.  For our mistaken vision these are perhaps incomprehensible actions, but they have a meaning and an aim and lead where they ought to lead.   ()  If one sincerely wants to help others and the world, the best thing one can do is to be oneself what one wants others to be — not only as an example, but because one becomes a centre of radiating power which, by the very fact that it exists, compels the rest of the world to transform itself.    As long as the mind is convinced that it is the summit of human consciousness, that there is nothing beyond and above it, it takes its own functioning to be a perfect one and is fully satisﬁed with the progress it can make within the limits of this functioning, and with an increase of clarity, precision, complexity, suppleness, plasticity in its movements.


The Mother: It always has a spontaneous tendency to feel very satisﬁed with itself and with what it can do, and if there were no greater force than its own, a higher power which irrefutably shows it its own limitations, its poverty, it would never make any effort to ﬁnd its way out of all that by the right door: liberation into a higher and truer mode of being.   When the spiritual force is able to act, when it begins to have an inﬂuence, it jolts the mind’s self-satisfaction and, by continuous pressure, begins to make it feel that beyond it there is something higher and truer; then a little of its characteristic vanity gives way under this inﬂuence and as soon as it realises that it is limited, ignorant, incapable of reaching the true truth, liberation begins with the possibility of opening to something beyond. But it must the power, the beauty, the force of this beyond to be able to surrender. It must be able to perceive its incapacity and its limitations in the presence of something higher than itself, otherwise how could it ever feel its own weakness!  Sometimes one single contact is enough, something that makes a little rent in that self-satisfaction; then the yearning to go beyond, the need for a purer light awaken, and with this awakening comes the aspiration to win them, and with the aspiration liberation begins, and one day, breaking all limits, one blossoms in the inﬁnite Light.


The Mother: If there were not this constant Pressure, simultaneously from within and without, from above and from the profoundest depths, nothing would ever change.  Even with that, how much time is required for things to change! What obstinate resistance in this lower nature, what blind and stupid attachment to the animal ways of the being, what a refusal to liberate oneself!  ( )


The Mother: In the whole manifestation there is an inﬁnite Grace constantly at work to bring the world out of the misery, the obscurity and the stupidity in which it lies. From all time this Grace has been at work, unremitting in its effort, and how many thousands of years were necessary for this world to awaken to the need for something greater, more true, more beautiful.  Everyone can gauge, from the resistance he meets in his own  being, the tremendous resistance which the world opposes to the work of the Grace.  And it is only when one understands that external things, all mental constructions, all material efforts are vain, futile, if they are not entirely consecrated to this Light and Force from above, to this Truth which is trying to express itself, that one is ready to make decisive progress. So the only truly effective attitude is a perfect, total, fervent giving of our being to That which is above us and which alone has the power to change everything.


The Mother: When you open to the Spirit within you it brings you a ﬁrst foretaste of that higher life which alone is worth living, then comes the will to rise to that, the hope of reaching it, the certitude that this is possible, and ﬁnally the strength to make the necessary effort and the resolution to go to the very end.  First one must wake up, then one can conquer.     From the point of view of individual development and for those who are still at the beginning of the path, to know how to remain silent before what one does not understand is one of the things which would help most in the progress — to know how to remain silent, not only externally, without uttering a word, but also to know how to be silent within, so that the mind does not assert its ignorance with its usual presumptuousness, does not try to understand with an instrument that is incapable of understanding, that it may know its own weakness and open simply, quietly, waiting until the time has come for it to receive the light, because only the Light, the true Light, can give it understanding. It is not all that it has learnt nor all that it has observed nor all its so-called experience of life, it is something else which is completely beyond it.


The Mother: And until this something else — which is the expression of the Grace — manifests within it, if, very quietly, very modestly the mind remains silent and does not try to understand and, above all, to judge, things would go  faster.  The noise made by all the words, all the ideas in your head is so deafening that it prevents you from hearing the truth when it wants to manifest.  To learn to be quiet and silent... When you have a problem to solve, instead of turning over in your head all the possibilities, all the consequences, all the possible things one should or should not do, if you remain quiet with an aspiration for goodwill, if possible a need for goodwill, the solution comes very quickly.


The Mother: And as you are silent you are able to hear it.   When you are caught in a difﬁculty, try this method: instead of becoming agitated, turning over all the ideas and actively seeking solutions, of worrying, fretting, running here and there  inside your head — I don’t mean externally, for externally you probably have enough common sense not to do that! but inside, in your head — And according to your nature, with ardour or peace, with intensity or widening or with all these together, implore the Light and wait for it to come.


The Mother: In this way the path would be considerably shortened.    bh¯uri aspas.t.a kartvam    How can you ﬁnd it!... You must look for it.


The Mother: You must want it persistently. It must be important thing for you.   ( )


The Mother: What happens most often when one makes the inner effort that’s needed to discover one’s soul, to unite with it and allow it to govern one’s life, is a kind of marvellous enchantment with this discovery, as a result of which the ﬁrst instinct is to tell oneself, “Now I have what I need, I have found inﬁnite delight!” and no longer to be concerned with anything else.  In fact this is what has happened to almost all those who have made this discovery, and some of them have even set up this experience as a principle of realisation and said, “When you have done that, everything is done, there is nothing more to do; you have reached the goal and the end of the road.”  Indeed, a great courage is necessary to go farther; this soul one discovers must be an intrepid warrior soul which does not at all rest satisﬁed with its own inner joy while comforting itself for the unhappiness of others with the idea that sooner or later everybody will reach that state and that it is good for others to make the same effort that one has made or, at best, that from  this state of inner wisdom one can, with “great benevolence” and “deep compassion” help others to reach it, and that when everybody has attained it, well, that will be the end of the world  and that’s so much the better for those who don’t like suffering!  But... there is a “but”.


The Mother: Are you sure that this was the aim and intention of the Supreme when he manifested?  ()  The whole creation, the whole universal manifestation appears at best like a very bad joke if it only comes to this. Why begin at all if it is only to get out of it! What is the use of having struggled so much, suffered so much, of having created something which, at least in its external appearance, is so tragic and dramatic, if it is simply to teach you how to get out of it — it would have been better not to begin at all.


The Mother: But if one goes to the very depth of things, if, stripped not only of all egoism but also of the ego, one gives oneself totally, without reserve, so completely and disinterestedly that one becomes capable of understanding the plan of the Lord, then one knows that it is a bad joke, a tortuous path by which you return, a little battered, to the starting-point; on the contrary, it is to teach the entire creation the delight of being, the beauty of being, the greatness of being, the majesty of a sublime life, and the perpetual growth, perpetually progressive, of that delight, that beauty, that greatness. Then everything has a meaning, then one no longer regrets having struggled and suffered, one has only the enthusiasm to realise the divine goal, and one plunges headlong into the realisation with the of the goal and victory.  But to know that, one must stop being egoistic, being a separate person turned in on oneself and cut off from the supreme origin. That is what must be done: to cast off one’s ego. Then one can know the true goal — and this is the only way!


The Mother: To cast off one’s ego, to let it fall off like a useless garment.   The result is worth the efforts that must be made. And then, one is not all alone on the way. One is helped, if one has trust.  If you have had even a second’s contact with the Grace — that marvellous Grace which carries you along, speeds you on the path, even makes you forget that you have to hurry — if you have had only a second’s contact with that, then you can strive not to forget.


The Mother: And with the candour of a child, the simplicity of a child for whom there are no complications, give yourself to that Grace and let it do everything.  What is necessary is not to listen to what resists, not to believe what contradicts — to have trust, a real trust, a conﬁdence which makes you give yourself fully without calculating, without bargaining. Trust! The trust that says, “Do this, do this for me, I leave it to You.”  That is the best way.


The Mother: One might say that it is both the conscious intermediary between the Supreme and the manifestation, and the meeting-place of the manifestation with the Supreme.   Spirit is capable of understanding and communicating with the highest Godhead and at the same time it is the purest, one might say the least distorted intermediary of the highest Godhead in the outermost manifestation. It is spirit which, with the help of the soul, turns the consciousness towards the Highest, the Divine, and it is in the spirit that the consciousness can begin to understand the Divine.  It might be said that what is called “spirit” is the atmosphere brought into the material world by the Grace so that it may awaken to the consciousness of its origin and aspire to return to it. It is indeed a kind of atmosphere which liberates, opens the doors, sets the consciousness free.


The Mother: This is what enables the realisation of the truth and gives aspiration its full power of accomplishment.  From a higher standpoint, this could be put in another way: it is this action, this luminous and liberating inﬂuence that is known as “spirit”. All that opens to us the road to the supreme realities, pulls us out from the mud of the Ignorance in which we are stuck, opens the doors to us, shows us the path, leads us to where we have to go — this is what man has called “spirit”. It is the atmosphere created by the Divine Grace in the universe to save it from the darkness into which it has fallen.  The soul is a kind of individual concentration of this Grace, its individual representative in the human being.


The Mother: The soul is something particular to humanity, it exists only in man. It is like a particular expression of the spirit in the human being. The beings of the other worlds do not have a soul, but they can live in the spirit. One might say that the soul is a delegation of the spirit in mankind, a special help to lead it faster. It is the soul that makes individual progress possible.


The Mother: The spirit, in its original form, has a more general, more collective action.  For the moment the spirit plays the part of a helper and guide, but it is not the all-powerful master of the material manifestation; when the Supermind is organised into a new world,  the spirit will become the master and govern Nature in a clear and visible way.  What is called “new birth” is the birth into the spiritual life, the spiritual consciousness; it is to carry in oneself something of the spirit which, individually, through the soul, can begin to rule the life and be the master of existence. But in the supramental world, the spirit will be the master of this entire world and all its manifestations, all its expressions, consciously, spontaneously, naturally.  In the individual existence, that is what makes all the difference; so long as one just speaks of the spirit and it is something one has read about, whose existence one vaguely knows about, but not a very concrete reality for the consciousness, this means that one is not born into the spirit.


The Mother: And when one is born into the spirit, it becomes something much more concrete, much more living, much more real, much more tangible than the whole material world. And this is what makes the essential difference between beings. When becomes spontaneously real — the true, concrete existence, the atmosphere one can freely breathe — then one knows one has crossed over to the other side. But so long as it is something rather vague and hazy — you have heard about it, you know that it exists, but... it has no concrete reality — well, this means that the new birth has not yet taken place.  As long as you tell yourself, “Yes, this I can see, this I can touch, the pain I suffer from, the hunger that torments me, the sleep that makes me feel heavy, this is real, this is concrete...”


The Mother: ( ), that means that you have not yet crossed over to the other side, you are not born into the spirit.  ( )  In fact, the vast majority of men are like prisoners with all the doors and windows closed, so they suffocate, which is quite natural. But they have with them the key that opens the doors and windows, and they do not use it....


The Mother: Certainly there is a time  when they don’t know they have the key, but long after they have come to know it, long after they have been told about it, they hesitate to use it and doubt whether it has the power to open the doors and windows or even that it is a good thing to open them!  And even when they feel that “after all, it might be good”, there remains some fear: “What will happen when these doors and windows are opened?...” and they are afraid. They are afraid of being lost in that light and freedom. They want to remain what they call “themselves”.


The Mother: They like their falsehood and their bondage. Something in them likes it and goes on clinging to it. They still have the impression that without their limits they would no longer exist.  That is why the journey is so long, that is why it is difﬁcult.  For if one truly consented to cease to exist, everything would become so easy, so swift, so luminous, so joyful — but perhaps not in the way men understand joy and ease.


The Mother: In truth, there are very few people who do not enjoy ﬁghting. There are very few who could accept the absence of night, few can conceive of light except as the opposite of darkness: “Without shadows there would be no picture. Without struggle, there would be no victory. Without suffering there would be no joy.” That is what they think, and so long as one thinks in this way, one is not yet born into the spirit.


The Mother: Our community is growing more and more; we are nearly thirty (not counting those who are scattered all over India); and I have become responsible for all this; I am at the centre of the organisation, on the material as well as the spiritual side, and you can easily imagine what it means. We already occupy ﬁve houses, one of which is our property; others will follow. New recruits are coming from all parts of the world. With this expansion, new activities are being created, new needs are arising which require new skills.


The Mother: I think I told you about our ﬁve houses; four of them are joined in a single square block which is surrounded on all sides by streets and contains several buildings with courtyards and gardens. We have just bought, repaired and comfortably furnished one of these houses and then, just recently, we have settled there, Sri Aurobindo and myself, as well as ﬁve of the closest disciples.  We have joined the houses together with openings in some of the outer walls and outbuildings, so that I may walk freely in our little realm without having to go out into the street — this is rather nice. But I am busier than ever now, and I can say that at the moment I am writing to you in a hurry.


The Mother: It is true that for a long time I have not slept in the usual sense of the word. That is to say, at no time do I fall into  the inconscience which is the sign of ordinary sleep. But I do give my body the rest it needs, that is, two or three hours of lying down in a condition of absolute immobility in which the whole being, mental, psychic, vital and physical, enters into a complete state of rest made of perfect peace, absolute silence and total immobility, while the consciousness remains perfectly awake; or else I enter into an internal activity of one or more states of being, an activity which constitutes the occult work and which, needless to say, is also perfectly conscious. So I can say, in all truth, that I never lose consciousness throughout the twenty-four hours, which thus form an unbroken sequence, and that I no longer experience ordinary sleep, while still giving my body the rest that it needs.   In this letter I am sending you a few photographs of the Ashram which will no doubt interest you since they will give you an idea, however incomplete and imprecise, of the surroundings in which I live


The Mother: ; in any case they will give a very limited impression, for the Ashram at present consists of seventeen houses inhabited by eighty-ﬁve or ninety people (the number varies as people come and go).  I am also sending you conversations 14 and 15. I hope that you have received, in several instalments, the complete series of the ﬁrst thirteen; I had them mailed to you as they were published.    I shall not endeavour to reply to your opinion on the “conversations” although there are certain points which you do not seem to have fully grasped; but I suppose that a second reading later  on, at your leisure, will enable you to understand those parts which eluded you at ﬁrst glance.


The Mother: Moreover, these “conversations” make no claim to exhaust their subjects or even to deal with them thoroughly. Rather they are hints whose purpose is more pragmatic than didactic; they are a kind of moral stimulus meant to goad and spur on those who are on the way. It is true that in my answers many aspects of the question have been neglected which could have been examined with interest — that will be for another time.   The Ashram is becoming a more and more interesting institution. We have now acquired our twenty-ﬁrst house; the number of paid workers of the Ashram (labourers and servants) has reached sixty or sixty-ﬁve, and the number of Ashram members (Sri Aurobindo’s disciples living in Pondicherry) varies between eighty-ﬁve and a hundred.


The Mother: Five cars, twelve bicycles, four sewing machines, a dozen typewriters, many garages, an automobile repair workshop, an electrical service, a building service, sewing departments (European and Indian tailors, embroideresses, etc.), a library and reading-room containing several thousand volumes, a photographic service, general stores containing a wide variety of goods, nearly all imported from France, large gardens for ﬂowers, vegetables and fruits, a dairy, a bakery, etc., etc.! — you can see that it is no small affair. And as I am taking care of all this, I can truly say that I am busy.    I have also received the and I read the article you mention. I found it rather dull, but apart from that not too bad.


The Mother: But the Mukerjee quoted there must have lived for many years  outside India (in America, I believe) and has become completely westernised; otherwise he would not give Gandhi and Tagore as the two most popular ﬁgures. On the contrary it is outside India that they are most popular; and for foreigners these two men seem to be the only ones who represent Indian genius. This is very far from the truth, and if they are so well known in Western countries, it is probably because their stature does not go beyond the understanding of the Western mind.  India has far greater geniuses than these and in the most varied ﬁelds, scientiﬁc, literary, philosophic, spiritual. It is true that the young people from Shantiniketan come out reﬁned, but without any force or energy for realisation.


The Mother: As for Gandhi’s young people, they may have more energy and power of action, but they are imprisoned within the four walls of a few narrow ideas and a limited mind.  I repeat, there is better, far better in India, but this India does not care for international glory.     Just a word about your remark that having children is the only way to perpetuate the human race.


The Mother: I have never denied this, but I wish to add that there is nothing to fear in this respect; if it is Nature’s plan to perpetuate the human race, she will always ﬁnd as many people as she needs to carry out her plan. The earth will surely never suffer from a dearth of men.     The things that are awaited...


The Mother: they alone can remedy the sorry state of affairs you mention in your letter of October 9th; and it is certainly not conﬁned to the small states of central Europe.  What you have described is pretty much the state of the whole world: disorder, confusion, wastage and misery.   It is no use lamenting, however, saying: Where are you headed! The ﬁnal collapse, the general bankruptcy seems obvious enough... unless... There is always an “unless” in the history of the earth; and always, when confusion and destruction seem to have reached their climax, something happens and a new balance is established which extends, for a few centuries more, the life of declining civilisations and human societies in delirium.


The Mother: Do not start thinking I am a pessimist. I certainly do not like things as they are. I do not believe, however, that they are worse than they have been many times before. But I want them to be different, I want them to be more harmonious and more . Oh, the horror of falsehood spread everywhere on earth, ruling the world with its law of darkness!


The Mother: I believe that its reign has lasted long enough; this is the master we must now refuse to serve. This is the great, the only remedy.    After a very long time I was happy to receive your letter of January 5th, especially since you think of Pondicherry as an ideal resting place. True, I think that it could provide a perfect place of cure for the restless — even if one seeks diversions there are none; on the other hand the sea is beautiful, the countryside is vast and the town is very small: a ﬁve minute drive and you are out of it; and, at the centre of it all, the Ashram is a condensation of dynamic and active peace, so much so that all those who come from outside feel as if they were in another world.


The Mother: It is indeed something of another world, a world in which the inner life governs the outer, a world where things get done, where work is carried out not for a personal end but in a selﬂess way for the realisation of an ideal. The life we lead here is as far from ascetic abstinence as from an enervating comfort; simplicity is the rule here, but a simplicity full of variety — a variety of occupations, of activities, of tastes, tendencies, natures ; each one is free to organise his life as he pleases, the discipline is reduced  to the minimum that is indispensable to organise the existence of 110 to 120 people and to avoid movements that would be detrimental to the achievement of our yogic aim.  What do you say to this? Isn’t it tempting?


The Mother: Will you ever have the time or the possibility to come here? Once you did let me hope for a visit.  I would like to show you our “establishment”. It has just acquired four houses which I bought in my name to simplify the legal technicalities; but it goes without saying that . I think I have already explained the situation to you and I want to take advantage of this opportunity to remind you of it.


The Mother: The Ashram with all its real estate and moveable property belongs to Sri Aurobindo, it is his money that enables me to meet the almost formidable expenses that it entails (our annual budget averages one “lakh” of rupees, which at the present rate of exchange corresponds approximately to 650,000 francs); and if my name sometimes appears (on bank accounts, purchase of houses, of automobiles, etc.), it is, as I already told you, a matter of convenience for the papers and signatures, since it is I who “manage” everything, but not because I really own them. You will readily understand why I am telling you all this; it is so you can bear it in mind just in case.   Your last letter refers to current events and betrays some anxiety which is certainly not unfounded. In their ignorant unconsciousness men set moving forces they are not even aware of and soon these forces get more and more out of their control and bring about disastrous results. The earth seems to be shaken almost entirely by a terrible ﬁt of political and social epilepsy through which the most dangerous forces of destruction do their work.


The Mother: Even here, in this poor little nook, we have not escaped the general malady. For three or four days the forces at work were ugly and could justiﬁably cause anxiety, and a great confusion  was beginning to set in. I must say that under the circumstances the Governor (Solmiac) showed great kindness and resolve at the same time. His goodwill is beyond all praise. Finally, it all ended quite well, considering the difﬁcult circumstances.


The Mother: But now more than 14,000 workers are out of work. The largest factory is closed, no one knows for how long, and the other one was burned down.  The sign of the times seems to be a complete lack of common sense. But perhaps we see it this way simply because nearness makes us see all the details. From a distance the details fade and only the principal lines appear, giving a slightly more logical aspect to circumstances.


The Mother: It may be that life on earth has always been a chaos — whatever the Bible may say, the Light has not yet made its appearance.   Let us hope that it will not be long in coming.    A small booklet is being published in Geneva, containing a talk I gave in 1912, I think.


The Mother: It is a bit out-of-date, but I did not want to dampen their enthusiasm. I had entitled it “The Central Thought”, but they found this a little too philosophical, so it has been changed to “The Supreme Discovery”. Rather pompous for my taste, but...    Speaking of recent events, you ask me “whether it was a dangerous bluff” or whether we “narrowly escaped disaster”.


The Mother: To assume both at the same time would be nearer to the truth.  Hitler was certainly blufﬁng, if that is what you call shouting and making threats with the intention of intimidating those to whom one is talking and obtaining as much as one can . Tactics  and diplomacy were used, but on the other hand, behind every human will there are forces at work whose origin is not human and which move consciously towards certain ends.


The Mother: The play of these forces is very complex and generally eludes the human consciousness; but for ease of explanation and understanding, they may be divided into two main opposing tendencies: those that work for the fulﬁlment of the Divine work upon earth, and those that are opposed to this fulﬁlment. The former have few conscious instruments at their disposal. It is true that in this matter quality compensates by far for quantity. As for the anti-divine forces they have only too many to choose from, and always they ﬁnd wills which they enslave and individuals whom they turn into docile but nearly always unconscious puppets.  Hitler is a choice instrument for these anti-divine forces which want violence, upheaval and war, for they know that these things retard and hamper the action of the divine forces.


The Mother: That is why disaster was very close even though no human government consciously wanted it. But at any cost there was to be no war and that is why war has been avoided — for the time being.     Sin belongs to the world and not to yoga.   By his way of thinking, feeling, acting, each one emanates vibrations which constitute his own atmosphere and quite naturally attract vibrations of similar nature and quality.   So long as you are capable of beating somebody, you open the door to the possibility of being beaten yourself.


The Mother:  You are expecting those who are working with you to be . It is not quite fair.    I have seen your chit for washing soap. You got the last one on the of March.


The Mother: This makes only, while a soap must last. It is quite evident that your coolie is stealing the soap, and I have no intention of providing him with washing soap. Some device must be found to check him; words are of no use.  (This time I have sanctioned the soap.)    X has started a new notebook; but it seems to me that he had not ﬁnished the previous one.


The Mother: I do not see at all the need of changing the notebook every month. Will you see if indeed the previous book is ﬁnished or not, and act accordingly.  In future I will be obliged to ask for the ﬁnished notebook before I can sanction a new one. That is to say, each time that a notebook is to be renewed the must be sent up to me at the same time as the chit for the new one.  I do not see the need of leaving a blank page at the beginning.


The Mother:  Y is complaining that cement dust falls in the cattle-feed when it is prepared on the verandah.  Perhaps this is what makes the bullocks ill. One of these poor creatures has grown terribly thin. I saw it this morning.  Please see whether some better arrangement can be made.


The Mother:   ()  It seems to me quite sufﬁciently big. They have no intention of using their bathroom as a ballroom, I suppose.


The Mother: How is it that you have not spoken to me about the bakery kneading table for two days? If it is not repaired at once, we shall have no bread to eat. The work must be done immediately.    I am not feeling comfortable about the dining room.


The Mother: It is not by merely saying: “nothing will happen” that an accident can be avoided. Your mental formation may be strong, but the contrary formation is at least as strong as yours — and we must never tempt the adverse forces.   I ask you to discard all obstinacy and to be.   Go and see with no preconceived idea.


The Mother: Go and see honestly, carefully, all round the place; consider that thirty people or so are taking their meals there and if anything happened what a horrible thing it would be — and, with the sense of your full responsibility, come tomorrow morning, with a ﬁnal and deﬁnite answer — I shall trust your word.   P.S. Naturally I am not expecting you to go tonight but tomorrow morning.


The Mother:   It is always better to remember such superstitions. It is the  that acts in these cases — most often a suggestion in the subconscient mind; but it is made stronger by becoming conscious.


The Mother: What a pity! The bats eat the white ants!     Precaution, should be taken so that such a thing may.


The Mother: Do you realise our responsibility and  if something serious happens?  The lack of precaution is a part of the movement of hurry and impatience.    Not exact in all cases and especially not with everybody.


The Mother:    It is not quite that. In each case there is, probably, a special reason.


The Mother: What is constant is a difference of appreciation in the urgency of the needs and the importance attached to their fulﬁlment. I attach also some value to the power of imagination, adaptability, utilisation or invention developed by the necessity of overcoming some material difﬁculty.


The Mother: Yes, so long as there are desires, no true intimacy can be established.      But who is responsible for Was not the fact that the “gris entretien” must be kept for the doors and windows in Sri Aurobindo’s room only, told to those in charge?


The Mother: (!)  Why was my stool at all painted with gris entretien? I did not ask for the grey paint as far as I remember.


The Mother: A rule is a rule and I do not see why stool escaped the rule, unless a chit could be produced.     I still wonder why and I can ﬁnd no answer except that stupidity rules the world.


The Mother:   It is good sometimes to look backwards for a conﬁrmation of the progress made, but only if it is used as a lever to encourage one in the efforts towards the progress still to be made.     Do you believe it is so easy to strike at the root of a stupidity?


The Mother: Stupidities are always rooted deep down in the subconscient.   Be plastic and vigilant, attentive and alert — receptive.     By the way, I have seen the painter sand-papering the salon table and was horriﬁed!


The Mother: He was rubbing violently and in any direction with one or the other hand, while he was looking at anything and everything; poor table, what a treatment!! I prefer not to think of what will come out of so much unconsciousness and carelessness.    I could give many explanations; the how and the why can easily he described — but is it really necessary? This is not what heals.  Healing comes not from the head but from the heart.


The Mother: To is good, but to is better.  Self-love is the great obstacle.  Divine love is the great remedy.


The Mother: Weep if you like, but do not worry. After the rain the sun shines more bright.     Peace, peace, my child; do not torment yourself.


The Mother:   The exact symptoms of an attack from adverse forces.     The usual nonsense.  By the way, I don’t ﬁnd that the Hostile Forces have much imagination; they are always repeating the same old tricks!


The Mother: They ought to be worn out by this time.     Sleep, child, sleep, with sweet Mother in your heart!  Awake, child, awake, with sweet Mother in your heart!


The Mother:   I open myself to Thee and I would obey Thee with an absolute faithfulness.     True, true lies in.


The Mother: I trust that X is not truly provoking.    It is always better not to show too much what I have written, as I am not dealing with everybody in the same way, and what I can say to one I would not say to another.  Guard against all individual decision (which can be arbitrary).


The Mother:   It is adoration expressing itself in work — all the more precious.    This thirst shall be quenched when this (“O Sweet Mother, I become one with Thee”) is psychologically realised.    The wrong attitude can be in the itself (lack of faith or of receptivity) and then it is very difﬁcult to detect as it does not correspond to any wrong or, the  being most often and in almost everybody .


The Mother:   No general rule can be made for this, each case is different. The important point is the attitude behind the talk. It is only what is said as a pure and sincere offering on the altar of Divine Truth that can have a real value.


The Mother:   This was to remove all possibility of a feeling of scolding or reproach in what I was saying, because there was nothing of the kind in my intention. I was giving expression to an amused observation about the ways of the world and how it cannot but misunderstand our own ways, . It is this seeking which gives the impression of hesitation, uncertainty, unsuccessful attempts, etc.


The Mother:   It is by the concentration of our will and the intensity of our aspiration that we can hasten the day of victory.     I ﬁnd your answer quite good. But X is quite free to expect more help from an invisible and silent Mother (who never contradicts you openly) if he likes.


The Mother:  The movement comes from a subconscient layer which is not allowed to express itself in the daytime.    No true and constant control is established in that part as yet.


The Mother: The physical being is always fatigued when it is asked to keep a lasting concentration.  The concentration can be kept constantly but not by mental decision.  It must be a divine decision.   The one that is done in the most perfect spirit of consecration.    It is good, it is indispensable that you should that the work will take only 30 days; otherwise it would extend over more than two months!


The Mother: But I want it to be good rather than quick.     I hope so also — but I have seen that the work takes longer than your estimate and we are pushed on and on week after week. I like better to count largely and not to be disappointed.


The Mother:   There is no contradiction in stating what you. I am not expecting you to be a and that your thought should be always right.


The Mother:   Nothing to be uneasy about. The spontaneous answers of the external consciousness are always vague and somewhat incorrect.   It needs a great vigilance to correct that — and a very ﬁrm resolution too. This incident may be meant to raise in you the resolution.


The Mother:   I am not astonished. You have reached a point of inner progress when you can no more get into ﬁts of anger without feeling the results of it. You must, once for all, take the resolution — and keep it:.  I told you already that far from diminishing, your hold upon the workmen can but increase by it.


The Mother:    It is better simply to be sincere than to be clever.   To love the Divine is to be loved by Him.


The Mother:   Because of the sudden rain we wanted to close the windows and found, with some discomfort, that . Unless you are a Hercules and a wrestler you have no hope of closing them at all. They keep closed through goodwill, I suppose, but this goodwill would certainly not stand any strong gust of wind!


The Mother: Repairs are urgently needed. Tomorrow morning I shall show you the state of affairs.    I told you already that if someone refuses to be conscientious in his work, what can I do? It is true that the work suffers, but he suffers still more, for no amount of meditation can replace sincerity in the service of the Divine.


The Mother:   It simply means to rise (soar into the air) above the ordinary consciousness, into a higher consciousness from which one can see things from above, and thus see them more profoundly.


The Mother: If you try to hide something from the Divine, you are sure to fall ﬂat on your nose, plop! like that...


The Mother: Joy lies in having in the Divine.     Why, when you get into trouble, do you no longer ask for the help of the Divine Grace? Yet you know from experience that the result is unfailing and marvellous!


The Mother:   Then the desire gets exacerbated and the request is made with a kind of sour rage.


The Mother: There is still another method, far more interesting than these two: ask for nothing at all and see what happens.     I don’t have one.    I am afraid that in trying too hard to stick to the “letter”, you have lost the “spirit”.


The Mother: I was not referring to the things given at the “stores”, and I was most surprised to see that you did not ask for anything on the ﬁrst. You would do well to ask strictly for.


The Mother: Because others are mean is no reason to be mean yourself.


The Mother: It is impossible to put a child of under eight to work. It would be criminal.     We want to be faithful workers for the Great Victory.


The Mother:    What can we do? He is a good and regular worker, isn’t he? I hope this new marriage will not make him irregular.  Should we give him the money?


The Mother: If you think it is necessary, I shall not say No.    It is a prompted by a desire of the vital, which protests and rebels because it cannot be fulﬁlled. These formations are. That is why, once they are made, the conscious will loses nearly all control over them unless .


The Mother: Something like this, for example: “.  I earnestly hope that Mother will not disgrace me by giving me one, for it would cover me with shame and embarrassment.  Such ignorant and obstinate desires are unworthy of a child of the Mother.”     These movements spring from desire and ignorance (X’s desire for a frame without any exact knowledge of the frame has to be made) and they develop without harmony, in disorder and confusion, sometimes producing the most unfortunate results as in this case.


The Mother: I will explain: the of a big frame is excellent but difﬁcult to execute. If the had not been there , the project could have been examined carefully before being carried out and its execution would have been more harmonious.    ( )  Do you know what a swing is?


The Mother: It is a plaything I enjoyed very much when I was small.  It is made of wood, and the plank you swing on is suspended by strong ropes from rings ﬁxed to a bar above. The supporting posts are securely set in the ground. I was thinking that something similar could be made for the sieve.


The Mother: Simply welcome the fact that you have become aware of a lack of thoroughness, since this awareness allows you . Indeed,  — these are the things that make one.     It may be that physical appearance has something to do with it, but truly speaking it does not count for much.


The Mother: I believe rather in the inﬂuence of atmospheres. Each one has around him an atmosphere made of the vibrations that come from his character, his mood, his way of thinking, feeling, acting. These atmospheres act and react on each other by contagion; the vibrations are contagious; that is to say, we readily pick up the vibration of someone we meet, especially if that vibration is at all strong. So it is easy to understand that someone who carries in and around himself peace and goodwill, will in a way impose on others at least something of his peace and goodwill, whereas scorn, irritability and anger will arouse similar movements in others.  The explanation of many events may be found along this line — although, of course, it is not the only explanation!


The Mother:   Now that is indeed an imprudent prayer! It is as if you were deliberately attracting an unpleasant experience to yourself.    The conclusion is therefore obvious: it would be better not to open your mouth. In certain cases, as in this one, it is wiser to  than to.


The Mother:  Yes, here everyone thinks only of spending, spending, spending as much as he can; no one thinks of saving and avoiding waste.  It is the triumph of egoism. You may show this to them and add that it is I who gave the order to make all possible use of the old pieces of wood.     — Aroum´e (the Kitchen)


The Mother: I forgot to enquire about an important point. Since the vessels used for cooking are very, the top of the ﬁreplaces should not be much higher than ground level. This must be checked while the kitchen is being repaired. The top of the ﬁre-places should not be more than ﬁfty centimetres above ground, so that the vessels can be raised and lowered without danger.   You must be calm and concentrated,  and have faith in the divine help.


The Mother:  It is quite all right.  All my compliments for this appreciable progress.    Attila was compelled to spare Lutetia because of the occult action of Saint Genevieve who, by the ardour of her prayers, obtained the intervention of the Divine Grace. This prompted Attila to alter the route of his troops, and so he gave the city a wide berth.   It was not at all clever to have said nothing about it.


The Mother: If you had told me immediately, you would already have been cured.   ( )   It would have been better not to say the things I have marked in red pencil. This falls under the “powers” that it would be better not to mention. Either the person you are speaking to does not understand at all and takes you for a fool suffering from hallucinations, or else he understands and then, which is always dangerous.


The Mother: If someone asks you about Sri Aurobindo’s, it is always better to say: “I don’t know. He doesn’t tell us about these things.”  And don’t speak about me unless it is. I am putting a copy of the in the tray for Mr. Z.


The Mother: Does this imply that the report of your conversation with Mr. Z is inaccurate? This is very serious — you should not put words into his mouth which he didn’t say. You must report things  exactly as you heard them, and when you are not sure you must say so.


The Mother: Why do you want an outward sign of my love? Are you not satisﬁed with knowing it is there?    I appreciate this attitude and this effort. It proves the sincerity of your aspiration.


The Mother: But I did not have that particular point in mind — I was speaking in a much more general way. of you, in your relationships with one another, have much to change and much to learn.    It seems that the notice about the holidays has been circulated only in French. I don’t think you should do this, for it would amount to imposing the study of French on all those who work in the Building Department, which is impossible.


The Mother: For instance, Y once asked me whether it was indispensable to learn French and I told him No. Others too are in the same position. In my opinion you should add an English version to the French and circulate both together.     Z has asked whether we could give double pay for the extra working hour from six to seven in the evening.


The Mother: I have said Yes.  For surely you must know that in France all the extra hours in the evening are paid double, and this seems reasonable.   These things need to be considered carefully, not lightly as one discusses a play or the pronunciation of French.  As soon as the project is completely ready, when you have worked everything out and can answer my questions, I shall call you one morning alone with X into my little room, and we shall discuss the matter quietly.   at the slightest setback, when things are not,, exactly as you had planned?


The Mother: I think it is high time you learned this and I ﬁnd that you give me very little credit, less perhaps than you would give an ordinary building contractor who, in your eyes, seems to know his job and have some common sense.    ( ) All that you say is quite true and there are still many other things you have not said, but which I know. The trouble might be summed up thus:  1) Too many workers.  2) Too many different projects undertaken at the same time.


The Mother: 3) Lack of consciousness in some of the supervisors.  Naturally, No. 2 could be set right by increasing the number of supervisors, provided, of course, that they are sincere and honest, which would also be the remedy for No. 3. But perhaps of all the remedies, this one (I mean being honest, sincere and conscientious) is the most difﬁcult to achieve.  Several times we have spoken in a general way about reducing the number of workers. I have always said Yes, and I would be very happy to cut down expenses as much as possible.


The Mother: But when we came to the details of carrying this out, we always found ourselves confronted with the same difﬁculty: whom to dismiss? And according to your answers the difﬁculty seemed insurmountable.  Now I propose this — to put up a notice which X could draft along the following lines: “The ill-will of the local residents has obliged me to stop buying houses; consequently there is no longer enough work to keep all the workers busy. I am very sorry about this, but I am obliged to part with a certain number of them (you give the number), and since they have all been hardworking and faithful, I am at even more of a loss to make a selection. Therefore I am giving them three weeks’ advance notice: as of July 1st the number of workmen will be reduced by... (give the exact ﬁgure).


The Mother: That will give them time to look for work elsewhere. Those who have found work should let us know.”  Before displaying the notice you will speak to the workers (masons, carpenters, painters, coolies, etc.) whom you  and tell them that the notice which is going to be put up is not meant for them and that , so they do not have to look for work elsewhere. To avoid any possible misunderstanding, it would be best if X or Y speaks to them in your presence.  And from July 1st we shall also have to think about reducing  the number of projects undertaken at one time, in order to meet the difﬁculty of supervision.


The Mother: This is what I see most clearly at the moment.    I am going to begin by telling you a very little story. Then I shall answer you.  You must have seen the new clock which is supposed to run for six months.


The Mother: When it was ﬁrst set going, it ran very fast. Z tried to ﬁgure out how to adjust it and found a sort of screw which is used to lengthen or shorten the pendulum. I looked at the clock with my and told Z, “To make it go slower, you have to shorten the pendulum.” He looked at me in bewilderment and explained that in mechanics the longer the pendulum is, the slower the movement. (I knew that very well — but this is not an ordinary pendulum since it works by rotary movement.)


The Mother: I answered, as I always do, “Do as you think best.”  He lengthened the pendulum and the clock started going even faster. After observing it for a day, he agreed to shorten the pendulum and now the clock is working perfectly all right.  I believe in the superiority of the inner vision over the outer vision and this belief is based not merely on theoretical knowledge but on the thousands of examples I have come across in the course of a life which is already long. Unfortunately I am surrounded by people who, though they are here to practise yoga, are still convinced that “a cat is a cat”, as we commonly say in French, and that one can rely only on one’s physical eyes  for seeing and observing, on one’s physical-mental knowledge for judging and deciding, and that the laws of Nature are — in other words, any exception to them is a miracle.


The Mother: This is false.  This is what is at the root of all the misunderstandings and reservations. You already know, and I mention it only to remind you, that an experiment made in a spirit of reserve and doubt is not an experiment, and that outer circumstances will always conspire to justify these doubts, and this for a reason which is very easy to understand: doubt veils the consciousness and the subconscious sincerity, and into the action some small factors creep in which may seem unimportant, but which are just sufﬁcient to alter all the factors of the problem and to bring about the result that one had anticipated by doubting.  I have nothing else to add except this. When the question of distempering X’s rooms arose, I looked very carefully several times with the inner eye and I saw this: brush the walls with a metal brush so that whatever is loose falls off and cover the rest with a thick layer of distemper which by its very thickness will be enough to conceal any irregularities.


The Mother: The process was supposed to be simple, rapid and fully satisfactory. I put forth all the necessary force for it to become an effective formation charged with the power of realisation, and I said that the work could proceed, adding in a few words how it was to be done. (This was long ago — the ﬁrst time it was decided to distemper the walls of X’s apartment, perhaps more than a year ago.) My formation was so living, so real, so active, that I made the mistake of not reminding you about it before the work began. I have an unfortunate tendency to believe that the consciousness of those around me is, at least partially and in its limited working, similar to mine.


The Mother: I shall explain. I know that each of you has a very small and limited consciousness compared with mine, but within its limits, I have the illusion that its is similar to mine, and that is why there are many things I do not say, because to me they are that it would be utterly pointless to mention them.  It is here that on your side a freedom of movement and speech  arising from an affectionate conﬁdence must come in: if there is something you are unsure of, you must ask me about it; if you do not, you must enquire about it; if you do not grasp my formation in a very precise way, you must ask me to explain it to you. When I do not do so, it is because I think you are receptive enough for the formation to act and fulﬁl itself without my needing to speak about it, and in fact this often happens — it is only when the mind and vital get in the way, for one reason or another, that the working becomes defective.


The Mother: Read this carefully, study it, and when you come today I will ask you to read it from the place I have marked with a red cross, for I think it may be useful to everyone there. I shall probably ask you to translate it into English, to make sure that you have fully understood.  May Peace be with you — I bless you.   You have only to open your heart and your thirst will be quenched, for the waters of love never run dry.   Sleep well and rest yourself beneath the protective shade of my blessing.


The Mother:   That is not exactly what I said. I said that a feeling of danger should always be taken seriously when one is for  the state of things, and that one should not say, “” unless one is it is nothing.


The Mother: I think so. But more than anything, it is the lack of organisation and order which causes all this waste. Certainly, if there is not enough room to keep things in order and, the good things on one side and the bad on the other, it is better to get rid of the bad things. But this should be done with great care so as not to go to the other extreme and throw away things that may be useful.


The Mother:   One really cannot dismiss a man because he laughed. He should be given some other work and advised to be polite in the future.     In theory, it is true that , but in practice it is rather difﬁcult to apply.


The Mother: The whole process is based on the power of concentration. One has to concentrate on the object to be known (in this case the roof) until all the rest of the world disappears and the object alone exists; then, by a slight movement of will, one can succeed at identiﬁcation. But it is not very easy to do and there are other means of knowing besides reasoning — intuition, for example — which are also effective.    This statement is quite true.


The Mother:   Yes, I am always with you, but you must never forget to call me, for it is by calling me that the presence becomes effective.    Y’s will is strong and he knows how to impose it on others. The only solution is to have a will stronger than his and to use it with great calm, but also with great determination.


The Mother:   It is only by long experience, tested many times very carefully, that one can discriminate between various types of suggestions .


The Mother: Remorse is of no use; you have to feel the joy of the possibility of making further progress.    It may be the contradiction between these two movements which is the cause of the headache. No. 1 wants peace with . No. 2 wants to conquer the difﬁculty, not run away from it. I suggest that for the time being you avoid contact with X as far as possible.


The Mother: But if contact is established, beware of subconscious reactions and be very vigilant.    What you did was good, in principle at least, for really so much depends on one’s choice of words and tone of voice.     It was obviously an inner voice.


The Mother: One rarely hears the of the words, but rather the message is expressed as words in the mind or sometimes merely as a feeling in the heart.    No, it is not correct — and I see that you have not understood the implications of my remark the other day. If you see something that should be done in a certain way, you should simply say: “This is how I think it should be done.” If he contradicts you and gives a different opinion, you should simply answer: “All right.


The Mother: We shall both submit our views to Mother and ”  In this way there can be no clash of personalities between him and you. It is only a matter of obedience to me.    I am very happy about the way you have taken this matter.  When I speak to you so frankly, I am giving you a great proof of conﬁdence.


The Mother: My blessings are with you.     Yes, it is correct as an analysis, but a thing ought not to be done for any of these personal considerations. The thing to be done should be considered in itself, independent of all personal questions.


The Mother: If the thing is right and good, one should do it. If not, one should refrain from doing it.  It is precisely because your refusal had that it did not have the power to dominate the other man’s will.  So you should have the nails removed.


The Mother:  Yes, I hoped that his will could be made to yield on this point, because I thought it was that removing the nails would damage the wall. But it was only,  and so the formation did not have a power of truth sufﬁcient to dissolve X’s counter-formation. (This is true “occultism”.)


The Mother: I never said that. I agree to be the judge in all cases, because I recognise that it is very difﬁcult to know whether a thing is right and good, unless one can see the law of Truth behind things.     This is not right.


The Mother: When I ask a question, I ask it in order to get  and information. I have said this many times. I have no preconceived idea, no preference, no opinion about things.  If I could move about and see everything physically for myself, I would not need to get information from anyone. But this is not the case, and this is why I consult the people around me, because they are able to move about.


The Mother: I do not want them to answer me by echoing what they imagine — — to be what I think. I want them to use their powers of observation and their technical knowledge to give me as precise and exact information as they can. And on that information I base my decision.     no real cause


The Mother: It all depends on what you mean by. I had understood from what you told me that it would cause.  From what X wrote, I understood that the nails were loose and that a little scraping and pulling would be enough to ease them out. After averaging these two interpretations I saw that the argument I gave X to make him accept the nails was not true enough to have the power to overcome the hostility of his attitude.


The Mother:   Look into your heart, in all sincerity, and you will see that if someone you liked had asked you to remove the nails, you would not have found it so difﬁcult and you would not have put it in the same way.


The Mother: When we are in the presence of hostile forces, only the purity of an absolute truth can conquer them.