The Mother: So, this is something perhaps which has its good side and may be useful for you as a check on your activity, but it is not at all necessarily something from the Divine. To judge that a thing comes from the Divine because you ﬁnd it good may lead you into terrible mistakes.   This is not how one should sense things. It is not by a perception of this kind of consciousness, not in this way. It comes when one has a sufﬁciently delicate and reﬁned sensitivity to perceive clearly the value of a vibration; all vibrations that come from external activities, whether mental, vital or physical, or even psychic, have a particular quality, but what comes from the divine inﬂuence is of an absolutely different nature and quality.


The Mother: In order to be able to distinguish this, one must ﬁrst of all have felt both; and even when one has felt both, one must be very calm, very attentive, indeed very still within, to be able to distinguish between them and not make a mistake. If your active thought comes in the way, it is ﬁnished , you cannot distinguish clearly any longer; you begin to question. And then you make use of your notions of good and evil to judge whether this comes from the Divine or doesn’t come from the Divine. That’s absurd.


The Mother: It is impossible.  Even when one has had this double experience and can make the distinction, there are still precautions to be taken and a check to be kept in order to be sure of not being mistaken. Only when one has opened wide the door of the psychic being, has entered consciously, and had the absolute, total, complete contact with the Divine, when one has the feeling of being born to a new life, when one is another being, does not see anything in the same way any longer, does not feel anything in the same way any more — then one knows intimately, profoundly, completely what the divine life is. And even afterwards, if the door closes again, one can keep a precise memory. And it is in this way that it is seen.


The Mother: It is impossible to make a mistake. It is something quite different, there is no comparison, none: one can compare nothing with this. It is unique and absolute. That is why I asked you, “Can you make the distinction?” For surely if one among you has had the experience, he knows in this way what comes from the Divine, and necessarily if he knows absolutely what comes from the Divine, he knows perforce all that does not.


The Mother: So there I asked you the question. For I should have been very happy  that one among you could tell me with sincerity, “I have had the experience and I know.” But it is only after this experience that one knows, not before. That is why, if one sincerely wants to progress, one must at each step inquire, be sure from where the inﬂuence comes: “Who has given me this suggestion? Is it a part of myself?


The Mother: Is it something external? Does this come from the Divine?”  But before having had that experience, one is not capable of judging by oneself. Naturally, if one’s surrender is truly sincere and there is this constant attitude in the being, this total selfgiving to the Divine, “Thy Will be done”, in this way, one can, without knowing, without understanding, instinctively, choose the thing that should be done and reject the one that should not, but this becomes an instinct, a sort of automatic thing, if your surrender is perfect. And that is the very advantage of surrender, for you can do the right thing in the right way automatically,  having the knowledge.


The Mother: But as Sri Aurobindo says there, you understand, one must be in a state of perfect obedience which does not question, does not discuss and obeys spontaneously, acts rightly as one is guided. Nothing in the thought or the vital must revolt or contradict or question or try to justify, to prove to oneself (and sometimes even to the Divine) that one is right, that what one has done is the right thing. All that must be done with.  Fundamentally, whatever be the path one follows — whether the path of surrender, consecration, knowledge — if one wants it to be perfect, it is always equally difﬁcult, and there is but one way, one only, I know of only one: that is perfect sincerity, but sincerity!  Do you know what perfect sincerity is?


The Mother: ...  Never to try to deceive oneself, never let any part of the being try to ﬁnd out a way of convincing the others, never to explain favourably what one does in order to have an excuse for what one wants to do, never to close one’s eyes when something  is unpleasant, never to let anything pass, telling oneself, “That is not important, next time it will be better.”   Oh! It is very difﬁcult.


The Mother: Just try for one hour and you will see how very difﬁcult it is. Only one hour, to be sincere. To let nothing pass. That is, all one does, all one feels, all one thinks, all one wants, is the Divine.  “I want nothing but the Divine, I think of nothing but the Divine, I do nothing but what will lead me to the Divine, I love nothing but the Divine.”


The Mother: Try — try, just to see, try for half an hour, you will see how difﬁcult it is! And during that time take great care that there isn’t a part of the vital or a part of the mind or a part of the physical being nicely hidden there, at the back, so that you don’t see it () and don’t notice that it is not collaborating — sitting quietly there so that you don’t unearth it... it says nothing, but it does not change, it hides itself.   How many such parts!


The Mother: How many parts hide themselves! You put them in your pocket because you don’t want to see them or else they get behind your back and sit there well-hidden, right in the middle of your back, so as not to be seen. When you go there with your torch — your torch of sincerity — you ferret out all the corners, everywhere, all the small corners which do not consent, the things which say “No” or those which do not move: “I am not going to budge. I am glued to this place of mine and nothing will make me move.”... You have a torch there with you, and you ﬂash it upon the thing, upon everything.


The Mother: You will see there are many of them there, behind your back, well stuck.  Try, just for an hour, try!   No more questions?  Nobody has anything to say?


The Mother: Then,, my children!    That depends upon the meaning you give to your words. It depends upon what you call affection. I don’t know, but generally affection means something personal and external and a little superﬁcial; it depends altogether on the meaning you give to your words.


The Mother: Usually, when someone says, “Oh! I have much affection for him”, this means that one has good feelings, a sort of friendliness but it is nothing very deep; but one may also use the word in a deeper sense. It is very difﬁcult to distinguish between words unless one has already deﬁned one’s whole vocabulary quite precisely. It is at the moment of speaking, when one wants to say something, if one puts a kind of intensity of thought, perception, knowledge into the words used, then it can carry that state — that soul-state — with the words. But if words are used altogether intellectually and, so to say, arbitrarily, before using them one should say, “When I say this...” and give a long explanation, a deﬁnition.  Vision?


The Mother: You know what physical vision is, don’t you? — , do you know it? Well, the same thing happens in the psychic.  That is to say, instead of seeing with physical organs, you see with psychic organs. You have these eyes, here, don’t you?


The Mother: Well, there are eyes in the psychic which see psychically. It does not depend upon the quality of the vision, it depends upon the state  of being which sees, the organs which see. A psychic sight sees what goes on in the psychic, either in the psychic state or the psychic domains or the psychic being. A mental sight sees what goes on in the mind: it sees. It is a seeing like a physical sight, truly physical.


The Mother: With your physical eyes you cannot have a psychic vision; only your psychic being can have psychic sight. You may have a sufﬁciently close relation with your psychic being to remember what it has seen, to be conscious of what it saw, but it is not your physical being which sees, it is your psychic being. It is not your physical being seeing in a different way, it is your psychic which sees.   Yes.


The Mother: In the body? Why should divine Love create a disturbance in the body?  That is perhaps not divine Love, then; I don’t understand. When it is divine Love, one automatically receives only what one can bear.


The Mother: Divine Love is there always in all its intensity, a formidable power. But most people — ninety-nine per cent — do not feel anything at all! What they feel of it is exclusively in proportion to what they are, to their capacity of receiving. Imagine, for instance, that you are bathing in an atmosphere all vibrant with divine Love — you are not at all aware of it. Sometimes, very  rarely, for a few seconds there is suddenly the feeling of “something”.


The Mother: Then you say, “Oh, divine Love came to me!” What a joke! It is just that you were simply, for some reason or other, just a little open, so you felt it. But it is there, always, like the divine Consciousness. It is the same thing, it is there, all the time, in its full intensity; but one is not even aware of it; or else in this way, spasmodically: suddenly one is in a good state, so one feels something and says, “Oh, the divine Consciousness, divine Love have turned to me, have come to me!”


The Mother: It is not at all like that.  One has just a tiny little opening, very tiny, at times like a pinhead, and naturally that force rushes in. For it is like an active atmosphere; as soon as there is a possibility of being received, it is received. But this is so for all divine things. They are there, only one does not receive them, for one is closed up, blocked, one is busy with other things most of the time.


The Mother: Most of the time one is full of oneself. So, as one is full of oneself, there is no place for anything else. One is very actively () busy with other things. One is ﬁlled with things, there is no place for the Divine.  But He is there.


The Mother: It is like all the wonders that are there around you; you do not see them. Do you see them?... No. Sometimes, one moment when you are just a tiny bit more receptive, or else when in sleep you are less exclusively busy with your small affairs, you have a gleam of something and see, feel something. But usually, as soon as you are awake again, all this is obliterated — ﬁrst, as you know, by the formidable ego which is all full of itself, and the whole universe moves in accordance with this ego


The Mother: : you are at the centre, and the universe turns round you. If you look at yourself attentively, you will see it is like that. Your vision of the universe — that’s you at the centre and the universe all around.  So there is no place for anything else. It is not the universe you see: it is yourself you see in the universe.


The Mother: So, at ﬁrst, to begin with, one must be able to get out of the ego. Afterwards, it has to be, you understand, in a certain state of inexistence. Then you begin to perceive things as they are,  from a little higher up. But if you want to know things as they really are, you must be like a mirror: silent, peaceful, immobile, impartial, without preferences and in a state of total receptivity. And if you are like that, you will begin to see that there are many things you are not aware of, but which are there, and which will start becoming active in you.


The Mother: Then you will be able to be these things instead of being exclusively enclosed within the little point you are in the universe.  There are all kinds of ways of getting out of yourself. But it is indispensable if you want to begin to know things as they are and not in terms of yourself.  Attitude? It is rather a will, isn’t it?


The Mother: You must will it.... What should one do, are you asking that?  The surest means is to give oneself to the Divine; not to try to draw the Divine to oneself but try to give oneself to the Divine. Then you are compelled at least to come out a little from yourself to begin with. Usually, you know, when people think of the Divine, the ﬁrst thing they do is to “pull” as much as they can into themselves.


The Mother: And then, generally, they receive nothing at all. They tell you, “Ah! I called, I prayed and I did not have the answer. I had no answer, nothing came.” But then, if you ask, “Did you offer yourself?” — “No, I pulled.”


The Mother: — “Ah, yes, that is why it did not come!” It is not that it did not come, it is that when you pull you remain so shut up in your ego, as I told you just now, that it raises a wall between what is to be received and yourself. You put yourself in prison and then you are astonished that in your prison you feel nothing.  A prison, and worse: without any windows on the street.  Throw yourself out (), give yourself without holding back anything, simply for the joy of giving yourself.


The Mother: Then there’s a chance that you may feel something.   If one tries to feel? Is this not still an egoism, this trying to feel?... If one wants to get out of the ego while still remaining egoistic, it is very difﬁcult, isn’t it? The two are pretty contradictory.


The Mother: “Try to feel” — why? for your own satisfaction?  One does not exist? This — I don’t know if one can succeed in anything by trying mentally, because this is a kind of mental effort. So one makes mental constructions and does not achieve anything very much.


The Mother: No, what is necessary is something spontaneous, intense, a burning in the being, a of aspiration, something... I don’t know how to put it.  If the thing goes on in the head, nothing, nothing happens.   Eh?


The Mother: Yes, I heard you quite well. But why do you assert that all effort one makes can be only mental?  I believe there is a vast difference between an effort for transformation which, precisely, comes from the psychic centre of the being and a kind of mental construction to obtain something.   I don’t know, it is very difﬁcult to make oneself understood, but so long as the thing goes on in the head in this way ( ), it has no power. It has a very little force that is extremely limited.


The Mother: And all the time it belies itself. One feels that with great difﬁculty one has gathered up one’s will, artiﬁcial enough, besides, and one tries to catch something, and the very next minute it has all vanished. And one doesn’t even realise it; one asks oneself, “How did it happen?”  I don’t know, indeed it seems to me very difﬁcult to do yoga with the head — unless one is gripped.  The will is not in the head.


The Mother: The will — what I call the will — is something that’s here (), which has a power of action, a power of realisation.  What one does exclusively in the head is subject to countless ﬂuctuations; it is not possible to construct a theory, for instance, without there intervening immediately things which give all the opposite arguments. And so, there’s the great skill of the mind, you know: it can prove no matter what, argue about anything at all. Consequently one does not go a step farther. Even if momentarily one catches an idea that has a certain force, unless one can keep that state of intensity, as soon as there is a relaxation all the contrary things come along, and all, as you know, with the charm of their expression.


The Mother: So it is a ceaseless battle.  It has no solution.  You ask how it can be spontaneous? Even in the body, for instance, when there is something like an attack, an accident, an illness trying to come in — something — an attack on the body, a body that is left to its natural spontaneity has an urge, an aspiration, a spontaneous will to call for help. But as soon as it goes to the head, it takes the form of things to which one is accustomed: everything is spoilt.


The Mother: But if the body is seen in itself, just as it is, there is something which suddenly wakes up and calls for help, and with such a faith, such an intensity, just as the tiny little baby calls its mamma, you know — or whoever is  there, it says nothing if it cannot speak. But the body left to itself without this kind of constant action of the mind upon it... well, it has this: as soon as there is some disturbance, immediately it has an aspiration, a call, an effort to seek help, and this is very powerful. If nothing intervenes, it is very powerful. It is as though the cells themselves sprang up in an aspiration, a call.


The Mother: In the body there are invaluable and unknown treasures.  In all its cells, there is an intensity of life, of aspiration, of the will to progress which one does not usually even realise. The body-consciousness would have to be completely warped by the action of the mind and vital for it not to have an immediate will to reestablish the equilibrium. When this will is not there, it means that the entire body-consciousness has been spoilt by the intervention of the mind and vital. In people who cherish their malady more or less subconsciously with a sort of morbidity under the pretext that it makes them interesting, it is not their body at all — poor body! — it is something they have imposed upon it with a mental or vital perversion.


The Mother: The body, if left to itself, is remarkable, for, not only does it aspire for equilibrium and well-being but it is capable of restoring the balance. If one leaves one’s body alone without intervening with all those thoughts, all the vital reactions, all the depressions, and also all the so-called knowledge and mental constructions and fears — if one leaves the body to itself, spontaneously it will do what is necessary to set itself right again.  The body in its natural state likes equilibrium, likes harmony; it is the other parts of the being which spoil everything.   Ah!


The Mother: First you must will it, and then you must say, as to people who make a lot of noise, “Keep quiet, be quiet, be quiet!”; you must do this when the mind comes along with all its suggestions and all its movements. You must tranquillise it, pacify it, make it silent. The ﬁrst thing is not to listen to it. Most of the time,  as soon as all these come, all these thoughts, one looks, seeks to understand, one listens; then naturally that imbecile believes that you are very much interested: it increases its activity. You must not listen, must not pay attention.


The Mother: If it makes too much noise, you must tell it: “Be still! Now then, silence, keep quiet!”  without making a lot of noise yourself, you understand? You must not imitate those people who begin shouting: “Keep quiet”, and make such a noise themselves that they are even noisier than the others!


The Mother: ( ) Don’t put in another, it is ﬁnished. Fate!  , good night!    No, not necessarily.


The Mother: It can be a fact. This means that instead of seeing physically, one sees in the subtle physical or the vital or the mind. But one sees something of me: for instance, if I send out a force or a thought or a movement, an action to someone, in his atmosphere this takes my form, in his mental consciousness it takes my form. So he sees it. It is a fact.


The Mother: I send something and he sees it. It is not my whole being (there the interpretation goes wrong most of the time), but it is something of myself.  Certainly it has a signiﬁcance. It has mostly even a very precise aim: either it is that I want to do something or to say something to someone, or it is that I want to change something in that person or give him some needed knowledge or else I want to put someone on his guard against something — put him on his guard, tell him to be careful — or else I come to answer a question at times.


The Mother: Symbolic dreams... symbolic dreams are usually very coherent, one remembers everything, to the least detail; it is more living, more real, more intense than the material life, and it is fairly rare. When one returns from a symbolic dream, one remembers everything, all the details, and feels that one has lived for those moments a much intenser and truer life than the physical one. And it leaves a very deep impression upon you.   This does not happen very often, you know.


The Mother: Usually it comes when it is very necessary.  Has anyone any dreams to narrate?  It would be interesting. I could give you an example. If you have a dream to relate, I could explain it to you.


The Mother: Ah! You have one. Let us hear your dream.


The Mother: And then? That’s all?  But what it was you don’t remember!  (Another child)  What?


The Mother: I am weeping?  I, I weep? (  Wait a little!... That’s when one is very sad oneself, isn’t it?


The Mother: That, indeed, is very symbolic. It means precisely... no, I shall tell you afterwards. But generally speaking, it means this: that every time one is unhappy, well, it is one more suffering added to the collective suffering of the Divine.  It is from a state of deep compassion that the Divine acts in Matter and this deep compassion is translated in Matter precisely by this psychic sorrow which is spoken about here.


The Mother: We read that this evening. That is as though something were reversed, it is the same thing but reversed in this way ( )   Well, the Divine’s state of compassion is translated in the psychic consciousness by a sorrow that is not egoistic, a sorrow that is the expression of the identiﬁcation through sympathy with universal sorrow. In the I have said this (in one of the later ones), I have described at length an experience in which way I say, “I wept... the sweetest tears of my life”, because it was not over myself that I wept, you understand.


The Mother: Well, that is it. You know, human beings always suffer because of egoistic causes, humanly. Even when, for instance (I have explained this often), they lose someone they loved, and suffer and weep, it is not over the state of that person they weep, for most of the time, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they do not know the state of the person, they cannot even know whether that person is happy or unhappy, whether he is suffering or in peace, but it is over the sense of separation they themselves experience, because they loved to have that person near them and he has gone. So, always at the root of human sorrow there is  a turning back upon oneself, more or less conscious, more or less — how to put it? — acknowledged, but it is always that. Even when one weeps over another’s misery, there is always a mixture.


The Mother: There is a mixture, but as soon as the psychic gets mingled in the sorrow, there is an element of “compassion in reverse” (that’s what I was trying to explain a moment ago) which comes into the being and, if one can disentangle the two, concentrate upon that, come out of one’s ego and unite with this compassion in reverse, through this one can come into contact with the great universal Compassion which is something immense, vast, calm, powerful, deep, full of perfect peace and an inﬁnite sweetness.  And this is what I mean when I say that if one just knows how to deepen one’s sorrow, go right to its very heart, rise beyond the egoistic and personal part and go deeper, one can open the door of a great revelation. That does not mean that you must seek sorrow for sorrow’s sake, but when it is there, when it comes upon you, always if you can manage to rise above the egoism of your sorrow — seeing ﬁrst which is the egoistic part, what it is that makes you suffer, what the egoistic cause of your suffering is, and then rising above that and going beyond, towards something universal, towards a deep fundamental truth , then you enter that inﬁnite Compassion, and there, truly it is a psychic door that opens. So, if someone sees me shedding tears, if at that moment one tries to unite completely — you understand, to enter into these tears, melt in them — this can open the door.


The Mother: One can open the door and have the full experience, a very exceptional experience, which leaves a very deep mark upon your consciousness. Usually it is never effaced. But if the door closes again, if once again you become what you are in your ordinary movements, that still remains somewhere behind and you can go back to it in moments of intense concentration; you can go back to it and you feel once again that immensity of an inﬁnite sweetness, a great peace, which... understands everything but not intellectually, which has compassion for all things, which can embrace all things and so heal all things.   Naturally, it is always the same thing: one must... must sincerely want to be healed, for otherwise it does not work. If one wants to have the experience solely for the experience’s sake and then the next minute one returns to what one was before, this does not work.


The Mother: But if sincerely one wants to be healed, if one has a real aspiration to overcome the obstacle, to rise — rise above oneself, to give up all that pulls one back, to break the limits, become clear, purify oneself of all that blocks the way, if truly one has the will not to fall back into past errors, to surge up from the darkness and ignorance, to rise into the light, stripped of all that is too human, too small, too ignorant — then that works. It works, works powerfully. At times it works deﬁnitively and totally. But there must be nothing that clings to the old movements, keeps quiet at the moment, hides itself, and then later shows its face and says, “Yes, yes, it is very ﬁne, your experience, but now it is my turn!”


The Mother: Then, when that happens, I do not answer for anything, because sometimes, as a reaction it becomes worse. That is why I always come back to the same thing, say always the same thing: one must be truly sincere, truly.  One must be ready, if there is something which is clinging, clinging tightly, one must be ready to tear it away completely, without its leaving any trace behind. This is why at times one makes the same mistake and repeats it, until the suffering is sufﬁciently great to impose a total sincerity. One must not try that method, it is bad.


The Mother: It is bad because it destroys many things, it wastes much energy, spreads bad vibrations. But if one can’t do otherwise, well, in the intensity of suffering one can ﬁnd the will for perfect sincerity.  And there is a moment — in everyone’s life there is a moment — when this need for perfect sincerity comes as a deﬁnitive choice. There is a moment in one’s individual life, also a moment in the collective life when one belongs to a group, a moment when the choice be made, when the puriﬁcation be done. Sometimes this becomes very serious, it is almost a  question of life and death for the group: it make a decisive progress... if it wants to survive.


The Mother: ( )  No other dreams?  (The ﬁrst child)


The Mother: There is no explanation, my child. You saw something of which you are not conscious in your physical being, that’s all. The Forces are always there, full of tender affection, love, help, of... but one is not aware of this because one lives in too narrow, too small a consciousness. There is no need of any explanation, these things are not explained.


The Mother: It is a fact. If you like, there is an experience, a fact, something happens — there is also its translation in your brain. When you wake up it is a sort of interpretation of your dream which you remember. It is very rarely that one is conscious at the time the experience occurs and conscious of the experience as it really is. For that one must be very wakeful during the night, quite awake in one’s sleep.


The Mother: Usually this is not the case. There is one part of the being which has an experience; when that part of the being which had gone out of the body re-enters it, brings back the experience , the brain receives a contact with this experience, translates it by images, words, ideas, impressions, feelings, and when one wakes up one catches something of this, and with that makes a “dream”. But it is only a transcription of something that has happened — which has an analogy, a similarity, but which wasn’t exactly what one receives as a dream.  In your experience of the night which produced the dream, you entered into contact with these Forces which envelop, help, sustain, and... you understand, don’t you? — which are full of love and tenderness, which help and welcome all those  who come — which, in fact, are there, everywhere at work all the time.


The Mother: So you became aware of that. When you woke up, this was translated through images you know, that is, that you come to see me, receive blessings, and then as there was a new feeling — that of contact with this Force which envelops and helps — this gave you the impression that I was taking you in my arms and embracing you. It was translated in this way. The fact is there; the translation is that of your brain.  Some people make me do very funny things at night!


The Mother: I have heard all kinds of extraordinary stories. But it is always the same thing: there is a fact behind, they entered into contact either with an emanation or with a force or an action, as I was saying just now, but then, in their brain it was translated by images which at times are very astonishing! But that, of course, is their translation. As for me, when they tell me all that, it gives me the picture of the state of their mental, vital and physical consciousness. Just the deformation in the translation sufﬁces for me to know what the state of their mind is.


The Mother: And I cannot tell them, “It was not I”, for it was I! Only they have changed this in their own way, which is at times quite surprising! Still, in the present instance, the image is very ﬁne.  Here we are, my children, anything else?  Very well, tell us.


The Mother: It was when the sea had receded?   Was it local or general? I mean, was it any sea or the sea here?  Were you on the shore here?


The Mother: Oh! You were watching from the Tennis Ground?  The lighthouse. Four black horses and one white horse.


The Mother: Ah!   Necessarily.  Perhaps it concerns the future of Pondicherry. It is a pity you don’t remember the number.


The Mother: It could have given an indication.  There had been a kind of tempest?  And the sea had receded afterwards?   Ah!


The Mother: It is symbolical.   Yes, yes. After the storm the sky clears up.   I can’t tell deﬁnitively because some information is missing.


The Mother: But still, it concerns perhaps the future of Pondicherry. We shall see that.   Without the dream? ()


The Mother: Ah!  Very well, for the moment we are in the storm. We shall see when the sea recedes. ( )


The Mother: (Another child) It is very good. It is very necessary! ()  It is a fact. You have only to take it like that and make an effort to have a quiet mind, see that this mind surrenders and becomes perfectly honest. It is very good, it is a programme — and then, one must concentrate on that.


The Mother: my children, is that all?  I think we shall stop.   No questions?... I was going to propose a meditation.  Because one has not learnt to do it.


The Mother: Why, suddenly you take a fancy: today I am going to meditate. You have never done so before. You sit down and imagine you are going to begin meditating. But it is something to learn as one learns mathematics or the piano.


The Mother: It is not learnt just like that! It is not enough to sit with crossed arms and crossed legs in order to meditate. You must learn how to meditate. Everywhere all kinds of rules have been given about what should be done in order to be able to meditate.  If at a tender age, when you are taught, for instance, how to squat, if one was taught at the same time not to think or to remain very quiet or to concentrate or gather one’s thoughts, or... all sorts of things one must learn to do, like meditating; if, when quite young and at the same time that you were taught to stand straight, for instance, and walk or sit or even eat — you are taught many things but you are not aware of this, for they are taught when you are very small — if you were taught to meditate also, then spontaneously, later, you could, the day you decide to do so, sit down and meditate.


The Mother: But you are not taught this. You are taught absolutely nothing of the kind. Besides, usually you are taught very few things — you are not taught even to sleep.  People think that they have only to lie down in their bed and then they sleep. But this is not true!


The Mother: One must learn how to sleep  as one must learn to eat, learn to do anything at all. And if one does not learn, well, one does it badly! Or one takes years and years to learn how to do it, and during all those years when it is badly done, all sorts of unpleasant things occur. And it is only after suffering much, making many mistakes, committing many stupidities, that, gradually, when one is old and has white hair, one begins to know how to do something. But if, when you were quite small, your parents or those who look after you, took the trouble to teach you how to do what you do, do it properly as it should be done, in the right way, then that would help you to avoid all — all these mistakes you make through the years.


The Mother: And not only do you make mistakes, but nobody tells you they are mistakes! And so you are surprised that you fall ill, are tired, don’t know how to do the things that you wish to do, and that you have never been taught. Some children are not taught anything, and so they need years and years and years to learn the simplest things, even the most elementary thing: to be clean.   It is true that most of the time parents do not teach this because they do not know it themselves!


The Mother: For they themselves did not have anyone to teach them. So they do not know... they have groped in the dark all their life to learn how to live. And so naturally they are not in a position to teach you how to live, for they do not know it themselves. If you are left to yourself, you understand, it needs years, years of experience to learn the simplest thing, and even then you must think about it.


The Mother: If you don’t think about it, you will never learn.  To live in the right way is a very difﬁcult art, and unless one begins to learn it when quite young and to make an effort, one never knows it very well. Simply the art of keeping one’s body in good health, one’s mind quiet and goodwill in one’s heart — things which are indispensable in order to live decently — I don’t say in comfort, I don’t say remarkably, I only say decently. Well, I don’t think there are many who take care to teach this to their children.  Is that all?


The Mother: Some other work? That depends upon you. It depends upon each one and on what one wants. If you want to do sadhana, it is obvious that you must have at least partially an occupation which is not selﬁsh, that is, which is not done for oneself alone. Studies are all very well — very necessary, even quite indispensable, it’s precisely one of the things I was talking about just a while ago, that you must learn when you are young, for when you are grown-up it becomes much more difﬁcult — but there is an age when you can acquire the indispensable foundation for your studies, and if you want to begin to do sadhana, you must do something which does not have an exclusively personal motive.


The Mother: One must do something a little unselﬁsh, for if one is exclusively occupied with oneself, one gets shut up in a sort of carapace and is not open to the universal forces. A small unselﬁsh movement, a small action done with no egoistic aim opens a door upon something other than one’s own small, very tiny person.  One is usually shut up in a shell and becomes aware of other shells only when there is a shock or friction. But the consciousness of the circulating Force, of the interdependence of beings — this is a very rare thing. It is one of the indispensable stages of sadhana.


The Mother: That means?  Yes, if you study with the feeling that you must develop yourselves to become instruments. But truly, it is done in a very different spirit, isn’t it? — very different. To begin with, there  are no longer subjects you like and those you don’t, no longer any classes which bore you and those which don’t, no longer any difﬁcult things and things not difﬁcult, no longer any teachers who are pleasant or any who are not — all that disappears immediately.


The Mother: One enters a state in which one takes whatever happens as an opportunity to learn to prepare oneself for the divine work, and everything becomes interesting. Naturally, if one is doing that, it is quite all right.   Bulletin  Yes, yes, yes. It is very good if it is done with that aim.


The Mother: But it must be with that aim. For instance, when one wants to understand the deep laws of life, wants to be ready to receive whatever message is sent by the Divine, if one wants to be able to penetrate the secrets of the Manifestation, all this asks for a developed mind, so one studies with that will. But then one no longer needs to choose one’s particular subject of study, for everything, no matter what, the least little circumstance in life, becomes a teacher who can teach you something, teach you how to think and act. Even — I think I said this precisely — even the reﬂections of an ignorant child can help you to understand something you didn’t understand before. Your attitude is so different.


The Mother: It is always an attitude which is awaiting a discovery, an opportunity for progress, a rectiﬁcation of a wrong movement, a step ahead, and so it is like a magnet that attracts from all around you opportunities to make this progress. The least things can teach you how to progress. As you have the consciousness and will to progress, everything becomes an opportunity, and you project this consciousness and will to progress upon all things.  And not only is this useful for you, but it is useful for all those around you with whom you have a contact.   Let us take simply a question about your class, shall we?


The Mother: — the school class. Even as an undisciplined, disobedient and illwilled child can disorganise the class — and this is why at times one is obliged to put him out, because simply by his presence he can completely disorganise the class — so too, if there is a student who has the absolutely right attitude, the will to learn in everything, so that not a word is pronounced, not a gesture made, but it becomes for him an opportunity to learn something — his presence can have the opposite effect and help the class to rise in education. If, consciously, he is in this state of intensity of aspiration to learn and correct himself, he communicates this to the others.... It is true that in the present state of things the bad example is much more contagious than the good one! It is much easier to follow the bad example than the good, but the good too is useful, and a class with a true student who is there only because he wants to learn and apply himself, who is deeply interested in every opportunity to learn — this creates a solid atmosphere.


The Mother: You can help.  It is not money alone that is wasted!  Energy, Consciousness is, a thousand times more wasted than money. Should there be no wastage... my word, I believe the Ashram couldn’t be here!


The Mother: There is not a second when there isn’t any wastage — sometimes it is worse than that.   There is this habit — hardly conscious, I hope — of absorbing as much Energy, as much Consciousness as one can and using it for one’s personal satisfactions. That indeed is something which is happening every minute. If all the Energy, all the Consciousness which is constantly poured out upon you all, were used for the true purpose, that is, for the divine work and the preparation for the divine work, we should be already very far on the road, much  farther than we are.


The Mother: But everybody, more or less consciously, and in any case instinctively, absorbs as much Consciousness and Energy as he can and as soon as he feels this Energy in himself, he uses it for his personal ends, his own satisfaction.  Who thinks that all this Force that is here, that is inﬁnitely greater, inﬁnitely more precious than all money-forces, this Force which is here and is given consciously, constantly, with an endless perseverance and patience, only for, that of realising the divine work — who thinks of not wasting it? Who realises that it is a sacred duty to make progress, to prepare oneself to understand better and live better? For people live the divine Energy, they live the divine Consciousness, and use them for their personal, selﬁsh ends.  You are shocked when a few thousand rupees are wasted but not shocked when there are... when streams of Consciousness and Energy are diverted from their true purpose!


The Mother: If one wants to do a divine work upon earth, one must come with tons of patience and endurance. One must know how to live in eternity and wait for the consciousness to awaken in everyone — the consciousness of what integrity is.   If you read a book it will help you to transform yourself. But it is not the book which will transform you. A dream is an indication, it gives you the exact picture of what is going on within you, of the state you are in, of the state of your surroundings, and with these indications you can do what is necessary to transform yourself.


The Mother: But it is not the dream that will transform you.   Now... One says always the same thing.... There is a difference between what is said and what is done.


The Mother: I could read this sentence to you a hundred times; there are some sentences here, you know... I have told you this so often, so often, so often, and he says it so clearly, doesn’t he? What are these things? ( ) I am going to repeat them to you, I shall repeat them to you a hundred times, but unless you decide that you have... ( )


The Mother: It is we who are creating the lightnings now! ( ) Ah!  Where is this?


The Mother: () Do you know? ( .) Here we are!   “The mind clinging to its own ideas”!


The Mother: See, how many times I have told you this! “The vital preferring its own desires”! And then the mind becomes the accomplice of the vital and gives admirable explanations for keeping the desires by reasoning, explaining, giving justiﬁcations also, and all these things are very useful to it. I have heard people say that the best way to get rid of desires is to satisfy them. They make a theory of it.


The Mother: You continue to satisfy your desires and then, naturally, you have others, for desires — well, one replaces another very easily, and you continue to satisfy the new ones under the idea that you are going to get cured. That will take you at least a hundred lives!  And then, ﬁnally, habits!... There is a charming phrase here — I appreciated it fully — in which Sri Aurobindo is asked, “What is meant by ‘the physical adhering to its own habits’?”  What are the habits which the physical must throw off?


The Mother: It is this preference for the food you were used to when you were very young, the food you ate in the country where you were born and about which you feel when you no longer get it that you have not anything at all to eat, that you are miserable.  I don’t know, I believe there won’t be a dozen people here who have come to the Ashram and eaten the food of the Ashram without saying, “Oh! I am not used to this food. It is very difﬁcult.” And how many, how many hundreds of people who prepare their own food because they cannot eat the food of the Ashram!


The Mother: ( ) And then, they justify this! So it is here that these ideas begin to come, and they say, “My health! I can’t digest well!”


The Mother: All this is only in their head. There is not a word of truth in it.  . It is a perpetual lie in which everybody lives, and in this matter, indeed, I may tell you what I think, you have not advanced any farther than the mass of human beings.  I make an exception for the very, very, very rare ones who are not like that.


The Mother: They could be counted on one’s ﬁngers. And all, all justify this, all, all — “Oh, my poor children! They are  not used to eating this food. How shall we manage? They will die because of this change of food!”


The Mother: Well, I, indeed, can give a remedy for that. You take a boat, take a train and go round the world several times, you are obliged to eat in each country the food of that country, and after you have done this several times, you will understand your stupidity... It is a stupidity. A frightful   One is tied up there like this ( ) to one’s gastric habits.


The Mother: Now I have said what was on my mind! You may ask questions.   ( )


The Mother: No questions?   Prayers and Meditations  “What must happen will happen”? You know what I meant? — that there have been prophecies from the beginning of the world that there will be a new earth and a new human race and that the Divine will be manifest upon earth: and so I tell you, what must happen, will happen; what has been predicted, will be realised.


The Mother: There we are, it is that, it is not a small little explanation, quite down-to-earth, not at all!   ( )


The Mother: Nobody has any questions? I have squashed all your questions at one stroke! ()  They are the ones who will realise it, my child. It is those who have made it who will realise it and who have been working for that through centuries. And so?


The Mother: If you had understood what I told you, you would not have put this question!  Is that all? We are sheltered, it is not raining, it is quite comfortable. It does not awaken your desire to know something, does it? Or are you afraid of another rebuff?


The Mother: ( ) What is the work of the psychic being? You want it to have some work? What do you want to say exactly? What is its function?


The Mother: Ah! Very well. One could put it this way, that it is like an electric wire that connects the generator with the lamp. Now, if someone has understood, let him explain what I said!


The Mother: (Laughter)  Ah, there we are! So, what is the generator and what the lamp?  That is exactly it.


The Mother: What is the generator and what the lamp? Or rather, who is the generator and who is the lamp?  It is the body, it is the visible being.  So, that is its function. This means that if there were no psychic in Matter, it would not be able to have any direct contact with the Divine.


The Mother: And it is happily due to this psychic presence in Matter that the contact between Matter and the Divine can be direct and all human beings can be told, “You carry the Divine within you, and you have only to enter within yourself and you will ﬁnd Him.” It is something very particular to the human being or rather to the inhabitants of the earth. In the human being the psychic becomes more conscious,  more formed, more conscious and more independent also. It is individualised in human beings. But it is a speciality of the earth.


The Mother: It is a direct infusion, special and redeeming, in the most inconscient and obscure Matter, so that it might once again awake through stages to the divine Consciousness, the divine Presence and ﬁnally to the Divine Himself. It is the presence of the psychic which makes man an exceptional being — I don’t like to tell him this very much, because already he thinks too much of himself; he has such a high opinion of himself that it is not necessary to encourage him! But still, this is a fact — so much so that there are beings of other domains of the universe, those called by some people demigods and even gods, beings, for instance, of what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind, who are very eager to take a physical body on earth to have the experience of the psychic, for they don’t have it. These beings certainly have many qualities that men don’t, but they lack this divine presence which is altogether exceptional and exists only on the earth and nowhere else. All these inhabitants of the higher worlds, the Higher Mind, Overmind and other regions have no psychic being.


The Mother: Of course, the beings of the vital worlds don’t have it either. But these latter don’t regret it, they don’t want it. There are only those very rare ones, quite exceptional, who want to be converted, and for this they act without delay, they immediately take a physical body. The others don’t want it; it is something which binds them and constrains them to a rule they do not want.  But it is a fact, so I am obliged to state that this is how it is, that it is an exceptional quality of the human being to carry within himself the psychic and, truly speaking, he does not take full advantage from it.


The Mother: He does not seem to consider this quality as something very, very desirable, from the way he treats this presence — exactly that! He prefers to it the ideas of his mind, prefers the desires of his vital being and the habits of his physical.  I don’t know how many of you have read the Bible; it is not very entertaining to read it, and besides, it is very long, but still,   in the Bible there is a story I have always liked very much. There were two brothers, if I am not mistaken, Esau and Jacob.


The Mother: Well, Esau was very hungry, that’s the story, isn’t it? I believe he was a hunter or something; anyway, the story goes like this. He came back home very hungry, and told Jacob he was very hungry, and he was so hungry that he said to him, “Listen, if you give me your mess of pottage” (Jacob had prepared some stew), “if you give me your mess of pottage I will give you my birthright.” You know, one can understand the story quite superﬁcially, but it has a very profound meaning: the birthright is the right of being the son of God. And so he was quite ready to give up his divine right because he was hungry, for a concrete, material thing, for food.


The Mother: This is a very old story, but it is eternally true.   Ask something else.  No, no, I didn’t say that. (


The Mother: ) I was speaking only of food.  I was speaking of those who came here and who did not begin, you understand, who did not... The story is very interesting.  There are people who come, full of goodwill, moreover — I think I have written this somewhere in the — their goodwill is so overﬂowing that when they arrive everything is perfect, including the food.


The Mother: They ﬁnd it very good as long as they are in their psychic consciousness. When begins to go down, the old habits begin to rise up; you understand, when the psychic consciousness comes down, the old habits climb back into their place. And then they begin saying: “It is strange! I used to like this, but I don’t like it any more; it has become bad, this food!”  This is an intermediary period, and later, after some time, more or less shyly according to their nature they say ( ), “Couldn’t I have my personal food?


The Mother: For... I don’t know, my stomach does not digest this!” ( ) Well, I say  that among the people in the Ashram, I am not sure...


The Mother: but there are very, very few who haven’t done that. And those who have told themselves, “Oh, as for me, it is all the same to me, I eat what I am given, and I don’t bother about it” — these, indeed, can truly be counted on your ﬁngers.  One must look at the thing very clearly, you understand, for there are some who do not dare to speak, many do not dare to say anything, except when they are a little indisposed or really have a stomach-ache or they think they have a stomach-ache and go to see a doctor. The doctor tells them, “Oh, try this or try that and see” — just the things they were accustomed to eating. The doctor begins by asking them, “What were you used to eating formerly?”


The Mother: ( ) “Weren’t you used to taking this?” ( )


The Mother: In this way. Then naturally, immediately they say, “Yes, yes, yes, I think that will do me good!” ()   So, now! ( )


The Mother: My child, I hope not! The question of food is just one question — I can’t say it’s secondary, for it is very symptomatic — it is altogether... it is related to the most physical consciousness, and from that point of view it expresses very well the physical condition. But indeed, this poor body! One must be a little patient with it.


The Mother: It is not that which discourages me — if I could be discouraged — it is the vital. Oh! Really, with its accomplice, the mind, these two rascals together, taking each other’s support, making excuses and presenting to you such a marvellous picture of your own difﬁculties in order to justify them — that, indeed, is terrible. From this point of view Sri Aurobindo wrote a little rule which for some time we had put up everywhere. But, I believe, it must have disappeared now or else people are so used to it that they no longer even look at it.


The Mother: It said: “Always behave as if the Mother was looking at you,” and Sri Aurobindo added,  “because she is, indeed, always present.” Still these physical eyes... “No, no, no, she is not there”, and so the ﬁrst instinct  is to hide things. Not only does one do everything that one wouldn’t do before me, but as one doesn’t at all believe the last part of Sri Aurobindo’s sentence, that even though I am not there physically, perhaps still I know how things are, so the ﬁrst instinct is to hide things, and the moment one enters that path, it is like stepping into quicksand.


The Mother: One goes down, down, down; it seizes you, swallows you up, it draws you down in such a way that it is very difﬁcult to come out of it. Of all things this is the worst: “Ah, provided that Mother does not know!” And so it begins like that and that’s the end. Well, I hope not many among you tell lies, but still, usually the end of the curve is that!


The Mother: And so, you understand, this is one of those stupidities without equal; for — I am going to tell you something — and I can tell you this with impunity: even if you don’t want that to happen, it will happen all the same!  People come for blessings in the morning, you know, or else during the night I go on inspection, everywhere I move around, going to everyone. In both cases, even in the morning when they come to receive a ﬂower, I have only to look at them. There is something around their heads, and at times it is as clear as though they said, “This indeed is something I shall never tell.”  They tell this, “Never will I tell you this and this and that”; you understand, they tell me this by telling me that they will not say it.


The Mother: By telling me, “I shall not tell you this”, they tell me.    (Laughter)  ( )


The Mother: I look as if... I listen, yes? I listen as though I knew nothing, don’t I? It is good like that, and sometimes I exclaim “Ah!” and “Oh!” as though I did not know, don’t I? Well, my  child, all that is for another reason.


The Mother: I have explained that already several times.  When I see people and am busy with them, I want to — I don’t say it is always possible, but still — I want to see in them their psychic being, their ideal, what they want to do, what they want to be, in order to keep it, pull it to the surface; all my work consists of this: what I see I pull out always. And so, when I am doing that, apart from those cases in which I am aware that people are a little conscious of themselves, I am not always sure of the degree of their outer consciousness; and when I ask questions it is to know the difference between what they are conscious of and what I see; and this I am doing all the time. It looks as though I did not know, doesn’t it? I ask a question to ﬁnd out: “What do you feel?


The Mother: What do you think? What have you experienced? What...” You know, it is to have a clear picture of the degree of your consciousness.  There is a tremendous difference between what you know about yourself and what I know about you.


The Mother: What I know about you is obviously what you ought to be. So, outwardly one sees clearly what people are like, but that is just an outer phenomenon, you know. Between the two there is the vital and mental domain which is the most important from the human point of view, and it is there that in everyone the consciousness of what he ought to be should be reﬂected, so that he may realise it. But there is a vast distance between what each one knows about himself, what is actively conscious in him and what he is in the truth of his being. It is more difﬁcult for me; this intermediate domain is a very cloudy one, for me it is a domain of falsehood, what I call falsehood.


The Mother: There are two words in English, “falsehood” and “lie”; well, it is the sense of falsehood.  It is not a lie in the sense that one tells a lie, but it is a domain of what is not true, what is not at all the experience of the truth of a being, and yet it is of this that he is almost solely conscious.  Only a very few have the inner perception of what they want to be, what they want to do, of what the truth of their being is.   There are not many such. Or else it comes and then gets veiled; suddenly one has a ﬂash and then it gets clouded over.


The Mother: And so the questions I put are always in order to know the state of this surface consciousness, which for me is something quite unreal, something that is not true.  There is such a contradiction between the brutal fact of your daily way of life and the picture I have before myself of what each one of you ought to be, a picture I keep there with all the power of my consciousness so that you may realise it — and that is yourself, that, yes, is yourself! It is not this ignorant being, stupid and insincere — sometimes dishonest — who is the... whom you call yourself.  Listen, I am not quite young according to ordinary human notions. I am fairly old.


The Mother: From my earliest childhood I have not stopped observing things. When I was very young I was chided for never speaking. It was because I spent my time observing.  I passed my time observing, I registered everything, I learnt all I could, I did not stop learning. Well, I can still feel surprised.


The Mother: Suddenly I ﬁnd myself looking at such twisted, insincere and obscure movements that I tell myself, “It is not possible. Can such a thing exist?” Indeed, things which still come to me, day after day, “It is not possible! In the world things happen in this way?” And yet I have seen a great number of people, I began being interested in people when very young, I have seen many countries, done what I recommend to others; in every country I lived the life of that country in order to understand it well, and


The Mother: there is nothing which interested me in my outer being as much as learning.  Well, now I still feel that I know nothing. There may occur in this world and in the human consciousness things which are beyond me! I don’t understand how it can be possible. For me, when someone is so twisted up, to the point of being unrecognisable, I get the feeling — I always get the feeling that this consciousness of truth which is trying to manifest is seized and completely deformed.


The Mother: And how one can come to such a pass,  that — that I have not yet understood — how one can come to this point.  Here we are! This is not to discourage you; it is only to tell you why I sometimes ask questions. Even to a little baby I may ask questions. I always feel that one can learn something, always.


The Mother: There is something else still. There are all the things I see and I have told you, haven’t I, that at night I go for inspection while others sleep. It is very convenient for me, because in sleep one is just what one is. Well, I go around, I inspect and I see all kinds of things! You can’t imagine what!


The Mother: But each time that it is possible for me I ask questions, many questions, in order to check what I have seen. I have done this work for years and years and years; I began working at night in this way, consciously, in 1904 perhaps, that is, ﬁfty years ago, and I have not stopped.  Well, even now, in order to be sure of what I see, I always ask practical questions, so as to verify, and never do I know ( ), never do I have that kind of assurance people usually have of believing that they know, that they can’t be mistaken, and that the thing is understood.  The world is in perpetual transformation. Even were I to live a thousand years and more upon earth, I should continue to learn without stopping, and I am sure I would always learn something new, because what was true yesterday is no longer so today, and what is true today will no longer be so tomorrow; the world is perpetually changing, therefore, one can learn perpetually.


The Mother: And after all, I don’t know if that is not the very reason for the world, an objectiﬁcation of oneself in order to know oneself in all detail; there are many details, it can last a very long time, and they are unexpected ones!   There, then. Is the tape ﬁnished? For we can also stop now, it is late.


The Mother: Good night.   Who has a question?  What do you understand by “other things”?  The question has not been put very well.


The Mother: Do you mean...  Here what is spoken about are the inﬂuences which pass from one person to another — is that what you mean? Why doesn’t one receive the Divine as easily as, say, one receives a neighbour’s ill-will? Is that it?  Because it is not on the same plane.


The Mother: The neighbour’s ill-will or goodwill are on the same plane, whereas the Divine belongs to another world. That’s the reason why. If you want an image: all that is on a horizontal plane in relation to you is very easily received, but all that comes from a vertical direction is much more difﬁcult. First one must look up above, within oneself, and then open oneself so that it descends; while in the other way... one moves like that all the time. Don’t understand?


The Mother: And unfortunately, it is much easier to slide down, to fall than to climb up. It is much easier to respond to an inﬂuence  which drags you down than to a force that pulls you up. Is it not more easy to go down than to climb up? If you are at a certain place and have to climb a rock, it is much more difﬁcult than if you let yourself slide in order to go down below. Isn’t that so?


The Mother: Ah, indeed! Why? I believe it is rather just the opposite.  Yes, surely.


The Mother: The earth is full of adverse forces and of men who respond to these adverse forces; usually, the more one realises the Divine, the more enemies does he have around himself.   Oh, yes! At least they try. I don’t know if they succeed, but they try.


The Mother: They try, they have always tried.  () You think one acts against others only when they have done some harm? Usually it is just the contrary. Can you tell me why the strong use their strength against the weak? It is not that the weak have harmed them, but simply because they have the strength and wish to use it for their own ends and want to compel the weak to obey their force, so they beat them; when they have a chance, they ill-treat them.


The Mother: It is not because the weak have made mistakes; it is because they want to use their strength for their own purposes, for the satisfaction of their desires.   Suppose, for instance, that there are forces in the universe which are accustomed to govern, as there are certain asuric forces governing the earth. They do not want to lose their authority. So all who put out a force which could compel them to  withdraw, they attack with as much strength as they have.


The Mother: They do this to keep their power. But it is not because these people... in fact, you understand, it is not that they are wicked or bad. It is because the light and power they represent are completely opposed to the power represented by the other forces.  Naturally!


The Mother: He goes back into the Divine. But you know the story? He is reabsorbed by the Divine, as in the Ramayana; that story is quite true in this sense.   I know people who have rejected their psychic being and who still continue to live; and yet, logically it would seem that a human being without a psychic being would die, still they continue to live.


The Mother: And perhaps it would be necessary in order ﬁnally to dissolve these asuric forces in the world — perhaps it would be necessary for the Divine to withdraw his whole creation into himself, because these are at the very origin of the creation.  That, why, that is Pralaya! It is not transformation, it is the dissolution of the earth. It is said that there were six creations,  that is, six exteriorisations of the universe, and that six times the universe went back — it is recounted in the scriptures, you know — went back into the Divine. But it is said that this is the end.


The Mother: It is evidently one ending, but it is not the completion. It is because the creation lacked something and it was necessary to withdraw it and remake it. And it is said that our present creation is the seventh, and being the seventh it is the real one, that is, it is the ﬁnal one, and it will not be withdrawn again, that it will continue to be transformed and become more and more perfect, so as not to have to be withdrawn.  We shall see!  The ﬁrst six, yes, it is true.


The Mother: Even the order is given, the order in which... Because each creation is built on certain attributes, and the order of these attributes is given. I know them, I have written them somewhere. But I don’t have it with me. So I can’t give it to you, I would make a mistake.


The Mother: But one day I could bring you the paper on which it is written. All that I know is that this time it is the creation based on equilibrium. But a special equilibrium, for it is a progressive equilibrium. It is not a static equilibrium.  The attribute of the present creation is; that is why it is said that in this creation, if each thing is exactly in its place, in a perfect balance, well, there is no more evil.


The Mother: What is evil?  — it is things not in equilibrium! There is nothing that is bad in itself, it is only the position which is wrong, which is not the true position.  To be taken back into the Divine. There were four great Asuras.


The Mother: Out of the four, two are converted. They are taking part in the divine work. The other two are holding out well. How long will they hold out?


The Mother: We shall see. So, they have the choice between being converted, that is, taking their place, poised, in the whole totality or else being dissolved, that is, being reabsorbed into their Origin.  There is one of them who has almost attempted conversion and not succeeded. When it had to be done, it seemed to him quite unpleasant. So he has put it off till another time.


The Mother: As for the other, he refuses to try. He has taken up a very, very important position in the world, because people who don’t know things call him “Lord of the Nations”. In fact, I was speaking a while ago about the forces which govern the world and don’t want to give up their rule at all. They are perfectly satisﬁed with it — it is not that he does not know that his end will come one day, but still he always postpones it as long as he can.  But as they do not have human dimensions, it can go on for quite a long time, can’t it?


The Mother: As long as they ﬁnd somewhere upon earth a human consciousness ready to respond to their inﬂuence, they will remain. So you can imagine the problem! Now it is not through individuals, it is through nations that they exert their inﬂuence.  Do you know the four Asuras?  Do you know what the origin of these four Asuras is?


The Mother: ( ) Who knows this?   Yes, surely ; that’s just why I am asking you about it, to ﬁnd out if you remember the things I tell you!   And what?


The Mother: (Another child, laughing)  Ah!  Yes, it is something like that! It is something like that!


The Mother: Light or Consciousness, Ananda or Love, Life and Truth.  Then Light or Consciousness became Darkness and Inconscience. Love and Ananda became Hatred and Suffering, and Truth became Falsehood, and Life became Death. Well, it is the ﬁrst two... but not exactly in the same conditions. The ﬁrst is converted and works, but he has refused to take a human body, he says it is a limitation in his work; perhaps one day he will take one, but for the time being he refuses.


The Mother: The second is converted and has of his own will been dissolved. He has dissolved into his origin. And the last two are holding out well.   The one of Death tried to incarnate.


The Mother: But he could not get converted. He tried to incarnate, which is something very rare.  But it was a partial, not a total incarnation. That is difﬁcult for them, a total incarnation. Human bodies are quite small, human consciousnesses are too small.


The Mother: As for the other, he has emanations which are very active in certain human bodies and have played a big role in the recent history of the earth!    Oh yes, oh yes! Just like men who are under asuric inﬂuences.  They are the worst enemies among themselves.


The Mother: We must say it is a blessing, for if they had an understanding, things would be much more difﬁcult. Perhaps it is so just because it is a law of equilibrium that governs the world. It is in order to lessen the strength of their inﬂuence. But still...  That Lord of Falsehood has truly a lot of inﬂuence.


The Mother: This is what catches you with a contagion as strong as that of contagious diseases. Stronger still!  He sent emanations upon earth but I don’t think that was with the purpose of conversion. Anyway, he did not succeed in it.


The Mother: Yes. Also they do not usually work upon one man. But they try to get hold of the earth-atmosphere, you understand, and without getting hold of men, they can’t get hold of the earthatmosphere, because it is in man that the highest terrestrial force manifests. As for taking a human body for conversion, that indeed is quite... the answer is quite simple.


The Mother: It is because in man there is a psychic being and there is no Asura who can eternally resist the inﬂuence of the psychic being, even were he to refuse as much as he could to surrender and bind himself closely. That’s exactly the contradiction of their existence.  He was speaking of human love manifesting as Bhakti, as a  force of devotion for the Divine, and he says that at the beginning your love for the Divine is a very human love with all the characteristics of human love. He describes this very well, besides. Yet if you persist and make the necessary effort, it is not impossible for this human love to be transformed into divine love through identiﬁcation with what you love.


The Mother: He has not said that the love between two persons can change into divine love. It is not that at all! He has always said the opposite. He spoke about someone who had asked him about devotion, you know, about the sadhak’s love for the Divine. At the beginning your love is altogether human — and he speaks of it even as commercial barter.


The Mother: If you make progress, your love will change into divine love, into true devotion.  You mean the desire to read it? Because one probably needs what is in it! If you have an attraction for something, usually it is that you need to read it, and it is exactly the thing you need to understand which comes to you. You can use this even with an altogether material method which I have often given you.


The Mother: See, you concentrate — if you have a difﬁculty or want to be helped, you concentrate and then insert a marker in a book and you alight upon the thing which is the answer to what you have asked. That is the most material means; but if the mind is well disposed, then, quite naturally, when it reads the titles, it will say, “Oh, this is what I want to read”, without even knowing what is within, because it will feel that this is what has to be read to answer its question or its need.  Some people have this power even without having tried to make any progress, and somebody will always come along to give them a book and tell them, without even knowing why, “Here, read this book, it will interest you”; or else they will  enter a house and see a book lying on the table — it is just the one thing they will want to read. It depends a great deal on the intensity of the inner aspiration. If you are in a state of conscious aspiration and very sincere, well, everything around you will be arranged in order to help in your aspiration, whether directly or indirectly, that is, either to make you progress, put you in touch with something new or to eliminate from your nature something that has to disappear.


The Mother: This is something quite remarkable. If you are truly in a state of intensity of aspiration, there is not a circumstance which does not come to help you to realise this aspiration. Everything comes, everything, as though there were a perfect and absolute consciousness organising around you all things, and you yourself in your outer ignorance may not recognise it and may protest at ﬁrst against the circumstances as they show themselves, may complain, may try to change them; but after a while, when you have become wiser, and there is a certain distance between you and the event, well, you will realise that it was just what you needed to do to make the necessary progress.  And, you know, it is a will, a supreme goodwill which arranges all things around you, and even when you complain and protest instead of accepting, it is exactly at such moments that it acts most effectively.  I have written a short sentence which will appear in the , the next.


The Mother: It goes something like this (I don’t remember the words exactly now): If you say to the Divine with conviction, “I want only You”, the Divine will arrange all the circumstances in such a way as to compel you to be sincere. Something in the being... “I want only You.”... the aspiration... and then one wants a hundred odd things all the time, isn’t that so?


The Mother: At times something comes, just... usually to disturb everything — it stands in the way and prevents you from realising your aspiration. Well, the Divine will come without showing  Himself, without your seeing Him, without your having any inkling of it, and He will arrange all the circumstances in such a way that everything that prevents you from belonging solely to the Divine will be removed from your path, inevitably. Then when all is removed, you begin to howl and complain; but later, if you are sincere and look at yourself straight in the eye... you have said to the Lord, you have said, “I want only You.” He will remain close to you, all the rest will go away.


The Mother: This is indeed a higher Grace. Only, you must say this with conviction. I don’t even mean that you must say it integrally, because if one says it integrally, the work is done. What is necessary is that one part of the being, indeed the central will, says it with conviction: “I want only You.” Even once, and it sufﬁces: all that takes more or less long, sometimes it stretches over years, but one reaches the goal.


The Mother: Eh? The more the imperfections, the longer it takes; the more the attachments one has, the longer it takes.  !


The Mother: Any questions?  Do you want me to tell you a story? I knew a lady, a young Swedish woman, who was doing sadhana; and she was by habit a vegetarian, from both choice and habit. One day she was invited by some friends who gave her chicken for dinner. She did not want to make a fuss, she ate the chicken.


The Mother: But afterwards, during the night suddenly she found herself in a basket with her head between two pieces of wicker-work, shaken, shaken, shaken, and feeling wretched, miserable; and then, after that she found herself head down, feet in the air, and being shaken, shaken, shaken. () She felt perfectly miserable; and then all of a sudden, somebody began pulling out things from her body, and that hurt her terribly, and then someone came along with a knife and chopped off her head; and then she woke up. She told me all this; she said she had never had such a frightful nightmare, that  she had not thought of anything before going to sleep, that it was just the consciousness of the poor chicken that had entered her, and that she had experienced in her dream all the anguish the poor chicken had suffered when it was carried to the market, sold, its feathers plucked and its neck cut! ()  That’s what happens! That is to say, in a greater or lesser proportion you swallow along with the meat a little of the consciousness of the animal you eat.


The Mother: It is not very serious, but it is not always very pleasant. And obviously it does not help you in being on the side of man rather than of the beast! It is evident that primitive men, those who were still much closer to the beast than to the spirit, apparently used to eat raw meat, and that gives much more strength than cooked meat. They killed the animal, tore it apart and bit into it, and they were very strong. And moreover, this is why there was in their intestines that little piece, the appendix which in those days was much bigger and served to digest the raw meat.


The Mother: And then man began to cook. He found out that things tasted better that way, and he ate cooked meat and gradually the appendix grew smaller and was no longer of any use at all. So now it is an encumbrance which at times brings on an illness.  This is to tell you that perhaps now it is time to change one’s food and go over to something a little less bestial! It depends absolutely on each one’s state of consciousness.


The Mother: For an ordinary man, living an ordinary life, having ordinary activities, not thinking at all of anything else except earning his living, of keeping himself ﬁt and perhaps taking care of his family, it is good to eat meat, it is all right for him to eat anything at all, whatever agrees with him, whatever does him good.  But if one wishes to pass from this ordinary life to a higher one, the problem begins to become interesting; and if, after having come to a higher life, one tries to prepare oneself for the transformation , then it becomes very important. For there certainly are foods which help the body to become subtle and others which keep it in a state of animality. But it is only at that  particular time that this becomes very important, not before; and before reaching that moment, there are many other things to do.


The Mother: Certainly it is better to purify one’s mind and purify one’s vital before thinking of purifying one’s body. For even if you take all possible precautions and live physically taking care not to absorb anything except what will help to subtilise your body, if your mind and vital remain in a state of desire, inconscience, darkness, passion and so on, that won’t be of any use at all.  Only, your body will become weak, dislocated from the inner life and one ﬁne day it will fall ill.  One must begin from inside, I have already told you this once. One must begin from above, ﬁrst purify the higher and then purify the lower.


The Mother: I am not saying that one must indulge in all sorts of degrading things in the body. That’s not what I am telling you. Don’t take it as an advice not to exercise control over your desires! It isn’t that at all. But what I mean is, do not try to be an angel in the body if you are not already just a little of an angel in your mind and vital; for that would dislocate you in a different way from the usual one, but not one that is better.


The Mother: We said the other day that what is most important is to keep the equilibrium. Well, to keep the equilibrium everything must progress at the same time. You must not leave one part of your being in darkness and try to bring the other into light.  You must take great care not to leave any corner dark. There you are.


The Mother: Eggs were forbidden?  Ah, people say many things, but I am not responsible for all the things they say! () I don’t remember ever refusing  an egg to someone who needed it from the point of view of health. But if people come and ask for something just out of greediness, for pleasure, I always refuse, as much now as before.  It is only from the point of view of health, you know, of the physical equilibrium, that certain things are allowed.


The Mother: Everything is allowed. I haven’t refused meat to one who needed it. There were people who ate it because they needed it. But if someone comes asking me for something just in order to satisfy a desire, I say “No”, whatever it may be, even ice-cream! ()  It’s not yet formed, the consciousness of the chicken.


The Mother: Of course, one must take care to eat the egg fresh before the chick begins to be formed.  For all that, I believe the chicken is more conscious than the beetroot. () But I ought to tell you my own experience.  Only I was thinking this was not something common.


The Mother: In Tokyo I had a garden and in this garden I was growing vegetables myself. I had a fairly big garden and many vegetables.  And so, every morning I used to go for a walk, after having watered them and all the rest; I used to walk around to choose which vegetables I could take for eating. Well, just imagine!  There were some which said to me, “No, no, no, no, no.”...


The Mother: And then there were others which called, and I saw them from a distance, and they were saying, “Take me, take me, take me!”  So it was very simple, I looked for those which wanted to be taken and never did I touch those which did not. I used to think it was something exceptional. I loved my plants very much, I used to look after them, I had put a lot of consciousness into  them while watering them, cleaning them, so I thought they had a special capacity, perhaps.


The Mother: But in France it was the same thing. I had a garden also in the south of France where I used to grow peas, radishes, carrots.  Well, there were some which were happy, which asked to be taken and eaten, and there were those which said, “No, no, no, don’t touch me, don’t touch me!” ()  Well, I experimented precisely to ﬁnd out; and the result was not always the same. At times it was indeed that the plant was not edible; it was not good, it was hard or bitter, it was not good for eating.


The Mother: At other times it happened that it was not ready, that it was too early; it wasn’t ripe. By waiting for a day or two, a day or two later it said to me, “Take me, take me, take me!”   ( )


The Mother: Well then, they were not! ( ) This leads to nothing at all, except to pride, a spiritual pride, that’s all. But surely not to the realisation of the Divine.


The Mother: It is said, many things are said.  Certainly! Because it is their nature to be faithful, and they have no mental complications. What prevents men from being faithful are their mental complications. Most men are not  faithful because they fear being duped.


The Mother: You don’t know what it is to be duped? They fear being deceived, being exploited.  They fear... Behind their faithfulness there is still a very big egoism which is more or less hidden, and there is always that bargaining, more or less conscious, of give-and-take: one gives oneself to someone but whether one tells oneself this or not, one expects something in exchange. You are faithful, but also want others to be faithful to you, that is, look after you, to be quite sweet to you, and, especially not to try to proﬁt by your faithfulness.


The Mother: None of these complications are there in the dog, for its mind is very rudimentary. It does not have this marvellous capacity of reasoning that men have, a capacity which has made them commit so many stupidities.  Only one cannot turn and go back. One cannot become a dog again. So one must become a higher man and have the quality of the dog on a higher plane; that is, instead of its being a half-conscious ﬁdelity, and in any case very instinctive, a sort of need that ties it down, it must be a willed, conscious ﬁdelity, and especially above all egoism.


The Mother: There is a point where all the virtues are united: it is a point that goes beyond the ego. If we take this faithfulness, if we take devotion, take love, the meaning of service, all these things, when they are above the egoistic level, they meet, in the sense that they give themselves and do not expect anything in exchange. And if you climb one step higher, instead of its being done with the idea of duty and abnegation, it is done with an intense joy which carries within itself its own reward, which needs nothing in exchange, for it carries its joy in itself.  But then, for that you must have climbed quite high and must no longer have that turning back upon yourself which, of all things, pulls you down lowest. That kind of... that sympathy, full of selfpity, wherein one cajoles and caresses oneself and says, “Poor me!”, that, indeed, is something terrible, and one does this so constantly, without being aware of it.


The Mother: This turning back upon oneself, a kind of degrading self-compassion, in which one tells oneself in a tone so full of pity, “Nobody understands me! No  one loves me! No one cares for me as people should!” etc., and one goes on and on.... And now this is really terrible, it draws you down into a hole immediately.  One must have gone far beyond all that, left it very far behind oneself, in order to truly have the joy of faithfulness, the joy of self-giving, which does not care at all, no, indeed, not at all, in any way, whether it is properly received or gets the adequate response.


The Mother: Not to expect anything in exchange for what one does, not to expect anything, not through asceticism or a sense of sacriﬁce but because one has the joy of the consciousness one is in and that is enough; this is much better than all one can receive, from whomsoever it be; but that again is something else.  There are quite a few stages between the two.  Physically, yes.   Ah!


The Mother: I said that through personal experience and then that...  There’s no why about it, is there? Everyone should ﬁnd this out for himself, or not ﬁnd it out. But I have heard from those who are interested in earth-chemistry that there are certain rays — () isn’t that so? Tell us, do you know about it?


The Mother: — sun-rays which remain active in the atmosphere till midnight, and other rays which become active afterwards, and these give you strength and those draw it out of you. But there are many things like that; at least this, you understand, is something we hear of or read in books. I am giving it to you for what it is worth, I know nothing. Somebody who is very well up in the subject could give you a fuller explanation. (


The Mother: ) But certain things are true, in practice. I cannot say why; perhaps they are only personal things! But still, I have heard of a similar  experience from others also. For instance, you go into the sea, remain there a few minutes and you come out full of strength.


The Mother: You go into the sea and remain in it for an hour and you come out completely exhausted! Even with a hot bath it is the same thing. You have a hot bath; you are very tired; you get into it; you remain there at the most for a moment; you come out and feel quite fresh. You remain there for a quarter of an hour, you come out, you have lost all your strength, your energy, there’s nothing left, you are drained out.  I tell you this, I cannot speak to you with any competence about the reason, but the fact is there.


The Mother: It is like that. For myself I have an explanation, but it is good only for me, it does not work for others. So it is useless.   As for these stages of sleep which are spoken about here, if one is conscious of one’s nights, one can cover them in a few minutes.


The Mother: One does not need to wait for hours of sleep to do this, you understand; if one is conscious, one can pass through all that in a few minutes. To begin with, when one is conscious of one’s nights, the ﬁrst thing to do before falling fast asleep, just in the state when one begins to relax, relax all one’s nerves — I have explained this to you already, one relaxes all the nerves and lets oneself go... like this... you know — well, at that moment, one must relax very carefully all mental activity and make that quiet, as quiet as possible, and not go off to sleep until the mind is quite calm. Then you escape quite a long period of useless excitement which is extremely tiring. If you can so manage that the mind relaxes and enters into a complete peace ﬁrst, your sleep will immediately become very peaceful and very refreshing;


The Mother: naturally, your vital must not be in a turmoil, for then, in that case, it will take you into all sorts of places and make you commit all kinds of stupidities, and the result will be that you will wake up even more tired than when you went to sleep.  But if you are conscious, after having calmed your vital, when you begin to come out from your physical consciousness and enter a more subtle consciousness, you put your vital to  sleep, you say to it, “Rest now, keep very quiet”, and then you enter your mental activity and say to the mind, “Rest now, remain very quiet”, and you put it to sleep also; and then you come out of the mind into a higher region, and there, if it begins to interest you, for instance, if it is the ﬁrst time you have gone there, you may look at what is happening, have your experience, learn things — at times one learns very interesting things; and then, sometimes one can become aware of a certain general state also, have ideas about other people, other things; it is interesting!  And later, if you have had enough of this, you say, “Keep quiet, sleep, don’t move”, and you put that to sleep, and rise to a still higher consciousness, and so on, till you reach a state where you are on the borders of, I am not speaking of physical form — on the borders of all form, much higher than the form of thought, naturally; on the borders of all form and all vibration, in the perfect silence, what here we call Sachchidananda. And when you are there, everything stops, all vibrations subside, and if you remain there just three minutes, you come back to your body rested, refreshed, fortiﬁed, as though you had slept for hours! This is something one can learn to do.


The Mother: I don’t say it can be done overnight, a little work is necessary and also some persistence, but still... this one must learn to do; and when you are very anxious, very tired, very... for instance, when you have just undergone violent attacks from hostile forces in one form or another and are very tired, if you follow this process consciously, well, within a few minutes all that disappears completely. It is something worth learning. Only, one must be very, very, very persevering, for... Wait a bit, I am going to tell you something more about it.


The Mother: When I began studying occultism, I became aware that — just when I began to work upon my nights in order to make them conscious — I became aware that there was between the subtle-physical and the most material vital a small region, very small, which was not sufﬁciently developed to serve as a conscious link between the two activities. So what took place in the  consciousness of the most material vital did not get translated exactly in the consciousness of the most subtle physical. Some of it got lost on the way because it was like a — not positively a void but something only half-conscious, not sufﬁciently developed. I knew there was only one way, that was to work to develop it.  I began working.


The Mother: This happened sometime about the month of February, I believe. One month, two months, three, four, no result. We go on. Five months, six months... it was at the end of July or the beginning of August.


The Mother: I left Paris, the house I was staying in, and went to the countryside, quite a small place on the seashore, to stay with some friends who had a garden. Now, in that garden there was a lawn — you know what a lawn is, don’t you? grass — where there were ﬂowers and around it some trees. It was a ﬁne


The Mother: place, very quiet, very silent. I lay on the grass, like this, ﬂat on my stomach, my elbows in the grass, and then suddenly all the life of that Nature, all the life of that region between the subtle-physical and the most material vital, which is very living in plants and in Nature, all that region became all at once, suddenly, without any transition, absolutely living, intense, conscious, marvellous; and this was the result, wasn’t it?, of six months of work which had given nothing. I had not noticed anything; but just a little shift like that and the result was there! It is like the chick in the egg, yes! It is there for a very long time and yet one sees nothing at all.


The Mother: And one wonders whether there is indeed a chick in the egg; and then, suddenly “Tick!”, there is a tiny hole, you know, and then everything bursts and out comes the chick! It is quite ready, but it took all that time to be formed; that’s how it is. When you want to prepare something within you, that is how it is, it is like the chick in the egg. You need a very long time, and this without having the least result, never getting discouraged, and continuing your effort, absolutely regularly, as though you had eternity before you and, moreover, as though you were quite disinterested about the result. You do the work because you do it.


The Mother: And then, suddenly, one day, it bursts and you see before you the full result of your work.   But you understand, don’t you? One speaks like this, very easily, of becoming conscious of one’s nights, having control over one’s sleep-activities and all sorts of things of this kind, but you need to do many such little works like the one I have just described to you. Many of these are needed to obtain this result.  When one is accomplished, you realise that there is another missing, and when this is done, you realise there is still another, and so on, until one ﬁne day you can do what I said, and you go from one plane to another, like that, putting all to rest, until you come out of all activity and enter the supreme rest, consciously.


The Mother: It is worth the trouble.  There you are!  Another question? No?  Finished.


The Mother: That’s the end of the book!   No. That is, if it is latent in someone, it can be developed by practice. But if one doesn’t have occult power, he may try for ﬁfty years, he won’t get anywhere.


The Mother: Everybody cannot have occult power. It is as though you were asking whether everybody could be a musician, everybody could be a painter, everybody could... Some can, some can’t. It is a question of temperament.   They are not at all the same thing.


The Mother: Mysticism is a more or less emotive relation with what one senses to be a divine power — that kind of highly emotional, affective, very intense relation with something invisible which is or is taken for the Divine. That is mysticism.  Occultism is exactly what he has said: it is the knowledge of invisible forces and the power to handle them. It is a science. It is altogether a science.


The Mother: I always compare occultism with chemistry, for it is the same kind of knowledge as the knowledge of chemistry for material things. It is a knowledge of invisible forces, their different vibrations, their interrelations, the combinations which can be made by bringing them together and the power one can exercise over them. It is absolutely scientiﬁc; and it ought to be learnt like a science; that is, one cannot practise occultism as something emotional or something vague and imprecise. You must work at it as you would do at chemistry, and learn all the rules or ﬁnd them if there is nobody to teach you. But it is at some risk to yourself that you can ﬁnd them.


The Mother: There are combinations here as explosive as certain chemical combinations.   In this life? That depends upon what one wants to do. You mean in the life of yoga?


The Mother: Not at all necessary. And besides, as he says, there are many who are not gifted, who don’t have the faculty. Lots of people, as soon as they have the least experience, the least experience, for instance when they just begin to come out of their body, are panic-stricken, and this indeed is something very difﬁcult to cure. It can be cured if one has a strong will and a great self-mastery. But many people are not able to dissociate their states of being.


The Mother: If they dissociate them, something goes wrong, their body suffers; while there are others who go out, take a walk, return. For them this is quite natural. Usually, those who are interested in this — unless  it is only a kind of mental curiosity — are also gifted. They may not know it but they can be taught. But these things have to be practised with precaution.


The Mother: For instance — I am going to give you an example: as soon as one goes out of the body, no matter how slightly, and even just mentally, well, that part of the mind which controls the functioning goes out; and the automatic side of the mind which makes or produces movements or glandular secretions, that whole automatic side, you see, remains without the protection and control of the conscious, thinking part. Well, in the atmosphere there are always numerous little entities, very tiny, usually originating from human disintegrations, which are like physical microbes, some kind of microbes of the vital. They are more visible and have a will of their own. One can’t say they are wicked but they are full of mischief. They like to have a good time and enjoy themselves at people’s expense.


The Mother: So, as soon as they see that you are not sufﬁciently protected, they get hold of the automatic mind and bring upon you all sorts of quite unpleasant things — as, for example, some people swallow their tongue when in a trance; this suffocates them if they don’t take care. Others bite their tongue; sometimes this hurts very badly. All sorts of things like this may happen to you — which means that normally you should never enter into a trance without having somebody nearby to watch over you, and not only watch just physically but... watch with the conscious power of preventing these little entities from getting hold of your nervous centres which are not protected by the conscious Presence. This is a general rule. There are greater dangers than that.


The Mother: When one goes out of the body materially — and nothing but the contact of a link remains, you understand, it is a kind of link like a thread of light joining the being that has gone out with the one that remains behind — if this link is protected, nothing happens. But if it is not protected, there may be adverse forces, not only full of mischief but with much ill-will also, which could come and cut it. And then, once it is cut, you  may try as hard as you like, but you cannot get back into the body.   Yes, after a while.