The Mother: Now, how can that be done?... Indeed, since you repeat it to me, it is very likely that I must have said that somewhere.... I must have said the contrary also! But if you put it in this way, that everything that happens has been decided in advance, then with the consciousness of time that you have now, it is as if you said: yesterday it was decided what would happen today; and this year it is decided what will happen next year. It is in this way that the thing is translated in your consciousness — naturally, because it is thus that we see, think, understand and above all speak and express ourselves.


The Mother: But it is not like that.  There are people who have perceived this unreality so strongly that they have felt there was no reason why they could not go back instead of going forward, for backward, forward, the present, everything that we express in this way exists all at the same time. It is on different levels. If I tell you: “What is happening to you had been decided in advance”, I could also say: “What is happening here, has already happened elsewhere”, that would be equally true, and equally false, because it is impossible to express this in words.  I am going to give you an example which perhaps will make  you understand.


The Mother: I do not remember exactly when it happened; it must have been some time in the year 1920 probably (perhaps earlier, perhaps in 1914-1915, but I don’t think so, it was some time in the year 1920). One day — every day I used to meditate with Sri Aurobindo: he used to sit on one side of a table and I on the other, on the veranda — and one day in this way, in meditation, I entered (how to put it?...), I went up very high, entered very deep or came out of myself (well, whatever one may say does not express what happened, these are merely ways of speaking), I reached a place or a state of consciousness from which I told Sri Aurobindo just casually and quite simply: “India is free.” It was in 1920. Then he put to me a question: “How?” And I answered him: “Without any ﬁght, without a battle, without a revolution.


The Mother: The English themselves will leave, for the condition of the world will be such that they won’t be able to do anything else except go away.”  It was. I spoke in the future when he asked me the question, but there where I had seen, I said, India free, it was a fact. Now, India was not free at that time: it was 1920.  Yet it was there, it had been done.


The Mother: And it happened in 1947.  That is to say, from the external physical point of view I saw it twenty-seven years in advance. But it had been done.  No, for the freedom could have come about without Pakistan.


The Mother: Indeed, if they had listened to Sri Aurobindo there would have been no Pakistan.   Well, externally it seems to take time, but in fact it is like that.  That depends upon the nature of the event. There are many  things....


The Mother: That depends also upon the level from which one sees.  There is a plane where there are all the possibilities, and on that level, as there are all the possibilities, there is the possibility also of changing these possibilities. If a catastrophe is foreseen in that plane, one can have the power of preventing it also. In other cases, even though one is forewarned, one has no action upon the event. And yet there, it depends on the level from where one sees.


The Mother: A case of this kind was reported to me once where the very seeing of a thing prevented it from happening. An American gentleman had arrived at one of those big American hotels where there are lifts (you do not go down a staircase, you take a lift to go up or come down); now, early in the morning just before getting up, he had a dream which he remembered well: he had seen a boy dressed as a lift-boy and making the same movement a lift-boy makes directing you to get in. He was there. And then, at the end of the movement, instead of a lift, there was a hearse!  — that is to say, that kind of carriage...


The Mother: oh! you must have seen some here now and then, to carry the dead to the cemetery; when they are not burnt, they are carried on a bier with black draperies, etc. So there was such a carriage, a hearse for carrying the dead. And the boy was signing to him to get into the carriage.  When he came out of his room, the boy was there with the lift to take him down: exactly the same boy, the same face, the same dress, the same gesture.


The Mother: He remembered the hearse — he did not get into the lift. He said: “No, no!” and he walked down. And before he reached the groundﬂoor, he heard a terrible noise and the lift had crashed down to the ground and all who were in it were killed. It was because of the dream that he had not got in, for he had understood.  Therefore in such a case when you have the vision, you can avert the catastrophe.


The Mother: There are other cases, as I said, when you are simply forewarned. You are forewarned. In reality, it is to help you to prepare within for what must come, so that you may take the right inner attitude to face the event. It is like a lesson telling  you: “This is what it must teach you.” You cannot change the thing, but you can change your attitude and your inner reaction.


The Mother: Instead of having a bad reaction, a wrong attitude towards the experience that occurs, you have a good reaction, a good attitude, and you derive as much beneﬁt as possible out of what has happened.  In either case, it depends absolutely on the plane on which you see. When you have control over your nights and are conscious of your sleep and your dreams or of your visions, you also see the difference between the two; you can distinguish the difference: what is given to you as a warning so that you may intervene and what is given to you as an intimation so that you may take the right attitude towards what is going to happen. It is always a lesson, but it is not always the same lesson. At times you can act with your will; at times you must learn the inner lesson which the incident is about to give you so that you may be ready for the event to have a fully favourable consequence.


The Mother: The same thing holds for everything that you see, there are hundreds of different varieties of visions and dreams and each one brings you the lesson it has to bring.   For example, when people are taken ill or when they are caught in an accident. Well, whether I see it myself or come to know of it from outside through someone’s telling me about it — in every case it is not the same. There are cases when I am informed and I see that it is for intervening and I have the full power to change the consequence, that is, to cure the sick person.


The Mother: There are cases where I see I am not to intervene. For instance, it is time for the person to leave his body: he will leave the body.  But knowing this, I must do for the person and for those around him what has to be done for the event to have the maximum beneﬁcial effect or the minimum adverse effect — it depends on the circumstances.  There are events appertaining to a universal necessity and those one cannot change. There are events still in the balance which can be decided either way.


The Mother: The whole thing is to have a  perception that’s not only clear-sighted but also quite impartial and impersonal, without even the shadow of a shadow of preference. Then, when one is in that perfect state — it can’t be said, of neutrality, it is not neutrality: it is a state of consciousness which is immobile like a mirror — then one can see within it the quality of the thing that’s happening, one can see the things that have been decided so that they cannot be altered and those that are still in the balance and can be changed.  To tell the truth, for each event the situation is different.  There are some that can be changed completely, reversed altogether; there are some that are capable of undergoing quite a considerable change; there are others that can suffer only a slight modiﬁcation — a slight modiﬁcation but one that has a considerable consequence; and there are some that are inevitable; they are so because they are so; if you tried to oppose, you would break your head against a wall and that would serve no purpose. The whole thing is to have this perspicacity, know to which domain the event belongs and not will any other thing than what .


The Mother: I could give hundreds of instances of different cases.  A thing seems to have been completely determined: it is  to be so. But you have within you a will that surges up, a ﬂame that is kindled, a great aspiration that is in harmony with a higher Will and you force it upon the event. And then a kind of combination takes place: what had to happen will happen, but along with something else which comes at the same time and changes the nature of the former. For events of importance to the earth, this happens very often.


The Mother: For example, when an entire set of movements, circumstances, combinations of forces bring about an absolute necessity of war, one can, by calling in another force, change the extent and the consequences, and sometimes even the nature of the war, but one is not able to avert it. I could give you examples of this kind, of a very general nature.  I told you the other day with regard to the “spirit” of death, what can be done, through an inner action, to prevent Death  from coming to someone’s house; but then it goes to another’s.  You cannot deprive Death of what is its due. I have explained this to you.


The Mother: There are other cases where one might say in a somewhat childish way: “Death was not yet informed”, and so you can take away from it its booty without any consequences.  But that does not always happen. There are cases when one does that. But put in this way it sounds childish like a fairy tale. Yet, it corresponds to something in the setting of the circumstances: it depends on the way the circumstances move.


The Mother: What I would like to bring home to you is that the problem is extremely complicated and subtle, and that at times the direction of the movement can be altered a little; at other times, the movement can be reversed; and at still others just the consequences and the inner attitude with regard to the movement alone can be changed. And naturally men see all these things in a too simpliﬁed way and translate all this by their prayer to God: they say, in one case, “God has given me what I asked from him”, in another case, “He has refused me.” And so, that’s that. That is how they understand and it is sheer stupidity.


The Mother: To know how it happens, you must have a general, collective consciousness, at least as wide as the earth. That is the minimum.  To understand truly one must have a universal consciousness.  Then you can understand. For, I have said it somewhere in what I was reading today; I have said that all things are interdependent and there is neither any “beginning” nor any “end”.


The Mother: Where do you put the beginning? ... To understand that, you  have to go beyond the earth-bound consciousness, you have to enter a universal consciousness. Then you will be able to understand.  But we are compelled — I am repeating what I said at the beginning — we are compelled to say things one after another.


The Mother: We say: “When the universe began... When the creation began... it begins in that way.... This happened and then that happened and then this took place and then that took place....” We say one thing after another, and to say the truth, it is not really like that at all! From a certain point of view, it is foolishness, but we cannot do otherwise. I cannot say all the words at the same time.


The Mother: So it is the state of our consciousness and the means at our disposal for expressing ourselves which make us say things that are stupid from the point of view of the absolute knowledge.  But it is an approximation. Our stupidity is an approximation and becomes less stupid when we become aware that it happens only because we cannot express ourselves otherwise. We are obliged to say things in succession, but they are a single whole.  And for most people it is not merely a question of saying but of knowing.


The Mother: They know things only one after another, feel them still more thus, live them yet more so. But there is a consciousness in which one knows all at the same time, understands all at the same time, can express all at the same time and can live wholly at the same time. But how to do it? Here it is not like that!  And so, you see, what one tries to do is to bring the two modes of consciousness as near each other as one is able to, so that even while living externally in the way we are compelled to do (because the physical world is like that and our physical consciousness is like that), we may be able at the same time to join the other Consciousness so closely that while doing things according to the material law and in the material way, in our consciousness we may not lose sight of the fact that it is only an approximation, a translation, and that it is not the Thing itself.


The Mother: Ah! Nor do I. When these questions were put to me, I had the utmost difﬁculty in answering them, for they were altogether outside my understanding of things. Here precisely, when I read the question, I felt like telling you: “I am very sorry, but the person who put the question had a terribly confused thought and consciousness, she was mixing up everything.”


The Mother: For there are three things mixed up here.  First of all, I do not know who told her that our will is only an expression or echo of the universal Will.... Perhaps I had said somewhere before that there is only Will and it is translated or rather deformed in the individual consciousness and this Will is taken as one’s own will. I must have said something like that, and that our will becomes truly our own will by the fact that it separates itself from the initial universal Will and it is so deformed that it no longer resembles that Will at all. So, it must be that which worked in her head and she asked whether our will was only the expression or echo of the universal Will.


The Mother: What place does there remain then for individual initiative... that is to say, what can the individual do? Can he say, “It is I who have decided? It is I, I have decided that?”


The Mother: Then the second question; but here I do not understand at all: “Is the individual merely an instrument for recording universal movements?”  What does that mean? I do not understand quite well what was meant by that. An instrument for recording? A gramophone, probably, yes, for recording universal movements....


The Mother: There are very few people who are capable of recording universal movements, to start with. Generally, they record only the movements  of their small surrounding, themselves and what’s around them.  And then, a third idea is added to that: “Has he no power of creation?” This is yet another thing. But I answered (perhaps at that time I understood better what she meant than I do now!), I answered, for I speak of the three things in the text that follows.


The Mother: I said that only when the individual rises in his consciousness up to the highest Consciousness which is the origin of all things, where is the origin of all things, can he become a creator. That is to say, if he is identiﬁed with the creative Consciousness, he  naturally and he becomes the creative Consciousness. If he identiﬁes himself, he is identiﬁed.  So, what was it that was troubling you in the question?  What did you not understand?


The Mother: The whole question? And now, do you understand?... Not quite?  I told you that you did not understand because it was muddled up; in one question three different ideas were included. So naturally it created a confusion.


The Mother: But taken separately they are what I explained to you just now, most probably; that is to say, one has this altogether ignorant and obliterated consciousness and is convinced that he is the cause and effect, the origin and result of himself, separate from all others, separate with a limited power to act upon others and a little greater capacity to be set in movement by others or to react to others’ inﬂuence. That is how people think usually, something like that, isn’t that so? How do you feel, you? What effect do you have upon yourself? And you?


The Mother: And you? ...  You have never thought about it? You have never looked  into yourself to see what effect you exercise upon yourself?  Never thought over it?


The Mother: No? How do you feel? Nobody will tell me? Come, you tell me that. Never tried to understand how you feel?


The Mother: Yes? No? How strange! Never sought to understand how, for example, decisions take place in you? From where do they come?


The Mother: What makes you decide one thing rather than another?  And what is the relation between a decision of yours and your action? And to what extent do you have the freedom of choice between one thing and another? And how far do you feel you are able to, you are free to do this or that or that other or nothing at all?... You have pondered over that?


The Mother: Yes? Is there any one among the students who has thought over it? No? Nobody put the question to himself? You?


The Mother: You?...  One cannot explain?  It is difﬁcult to explain? Even this simple little thing, to see where in your consciousness the wills that come from outside meet your will (which you call yours, which comes from within), at what place the two join together and to what extent the one from outside acts upon that from within and the one from within acts upon that from outside? You have never tried to ﬁnd this out?


The Mother: It has never seemed to you unbearable that a will from outside should have an action upon your will? No?   Oh!


The Mother: I am putting very difﬁcult problems! But, my children, I was preoccupied with that when I was a child of ﬁve! ... So I thought you must have been preoccupied with it since a long time.


The Mother: Yes, many. That is one of the very ﬁrst discoveries. There is one part which wants things this way; and then at another moment, another way, and a third time, one wants still another thing!  Besides, there is even this: something that wants and another which says no. So?


The Mother: But it is exactly that which has to be found if you wish in the least to organise yourself. Why not project yourself upon a screen, as in the cinema, and then look at yourself moving on it? How interesting it is!  This is the ﬁrst step.  You project yourself on the screen and then observe and see all that is moving there and how it moves and what happens.


The Mother: You make a little diagram, it becomes so interesting then.  And then, after a while, when you are quite accustomed to seeing, you can go one step further and take a decision. Or even a still greater step : you organise — arrange, take up all that, put each thing in its place, organise in such a way that you begin to have a straight movement with an inner meaning.  And then you become conscious of your direction and are able to say: “Very well, it will be thus; my life will develop in that way, because that is the logic of my being.


The Mother: Now, I have arranged all that within me, each thing has been put in its place, and so naturally a central orientation is forming.  I am following this orientation. One step more and I know what will happen to me for I myself am deciding it....” I do not know, I am telling you this; to me it seemed terribly interesting, the most interesting thing in the world. There was nothing, no other thing that interested me more than that.


The Mother: This happened to me.... I was ﬁve or six or seven years old (at seven the thing became quite serious) and I had a father who loved the circus, and he came and told me: “Come with me, I am going to the circus on Sunday.” I said: “No, I am doing something much more interesting than going to the circus!” Or  again, young friends invited me to attend a meeting where we were to play together, enjoy together: “No, I enjoy here much more....” And it was quite sincere.


The Mother: It was not a pose: for me, it was like this, it was true. There was nothing in the world more enjoyable than that.  And I am so convinced that anybody who does it in that way, with the same freshness and sincerity, will obtain most interesting results.... To put all that on a screen in front of yourself and look at what is happening. And the ﬁrst step is to know all that is happening and then you must not try to shut your eyes when something does not appear pleasant to you!


The Mother: You must keep them wide open and put each thing in that way before the screen. Then you make quite an interesting discovery. And then the next step is to start telling yourself: “Since all that is happening within me, why should I not put this thing in this way and then that thing in that way and then this other in this way and thus wouldn’t I be doing something logical that has a meaning? Why should I not remove that thing which stands obstructing the way, these conﬂicting wills? Why?


The Mother: And what does that represent in the being? Why is it there? If it were put there, would it not help instead of harming me?” And so on.  And little by little, little by little, you see clearer and then you see why you are made like that, what is the thing you have got to do — that for which.


The Mother: And then, quite naturally, since all is organised for this thing to happen, the path becomes straight and you can say beforehand: “It is in this way that it will happen.” And when things come from outside to try and upset all that, you are able to say: “No, I accept this, for it helps; I reject that, for that harms.” And then, after a few years, you curb yourself as you curb a horse: you do whatever you like, in the way you like and you go wherever you like.  It seems to me this is worth the trouble. I believe it is the most interesting thing.


The Mother: This screen? It is the psychic consciousness.  Play? It is the play of the central consciousness. It is precisely the consciousness that is at the origin of the psychic being.


The Mother: And then there you have to take only a tiny step to ﬁnd out how this psychic consciousness should reﬂect and translate the one supreme Consciousness. And there the matter ends. This last step becomes very easy.  But it is the secret that’s discovered at the end. And when it is discovered, there is no more ﬁghting, for the battle has already been fought and everything arranged; so it is in one single movement and in a way as simple, as natural and as straight as possible that the thing happens, without any reaction.


The Mother: I think that is what the sages of the past meant when they said: “Know thyself.” Not anything else. But then, instead of going in there as if with a bandage on your eyes, and knocking your nose or forehead against something hard to ﬁnd out that it is hard or that it is a wall or a closed door or an obstruction or some bad will; instead of all that, there is no need of years of experience and all kinds of misfortune and more or less unpleasant circumstances, in order to learn to know oneself: you do the work quietly, as I said.  When I did that, there was no cinema, so I could not compare what I was doing with the cinema — it was not yet there, but it is exactly like projecting on the screen what is inside,  objectifying it. And a screen that’s all white, quite smooth, that does not deform.


The Mother: If the screen were not quite smooth and very white, your image would be all hazy, you would not be able to see anything. Well, it is the same thing. The screen must be very white, quite smooth, quite clean, quite pure. Then one sees things as they are.  You must have a great deal of sincerity, a little courage and perseverance and then a sort of mental curiosity, you understand, curious, seeking to know, interested, wanting to learn.


The Mother: To love to learn: that, one must have in one’s nature. To ﬁnd it impossible to stand before something grey, all hazy, in which nothing is seen clearly and which gives you quite an unpleasant feeling, for you do not know where you begin and where you end, what is yours and what is not yours and what is settled and what is not settled — what is this pulp-like thing you call yourself in which things get intermingled and act upon one another without even your being aware of it? You ask yourself: “But why have I done this?”  You know nothing about it. “And why have I felt that?”


The Mother: You don’t know that, either. And then, you are thrown into a world outside that is only fog and you are thrown into a world inside that is also for you another kind of fog, still more impenetrable, in which you live, like a cork thrown upon the waters and the waves carry it away or cast it into the air, and it drops and rolls on. That is quite an unpleasant state. I do not know, but to me it appears unpleasant.  To see clearly, to see one’s way, where one is going, why one is going there, how one is to go there and what one is going to do and what is the kind of relation with others...


The Mother: But that is a problem so wonderfully interesting — it is interesting — and you can always discover things every minute! One’s work is never ﬁnished.  There is a time, there is a certain state of consciousness when you have the feeling that you are in that condition with all the weight of the world lying heavy upon you and besides you are going in blinkers and do not know where you are going,  but there is something which is pushing you. And that is truly a very unpleasant condition. And there is another moment when one draws oneself up and is able to see what is there above, and one becomes it; then one looks at the world as though from the top of a very very high mountain and one sees all that is happening below; then one can choose one’s way and follow it.


The Mother: That is a more pleasant condition. This then is truly the truth, you are upon earth, surely. All individual beings and all the little concentrations of consciousness were created to do this work. It is the very reason for existence: to be able to become fully conscious of a certain sum of vibrations representing an individual being and put order there and ﬁnd one’s way and follow it.  And so, as men do not know it and do not do it, life comes and gives them a blow here: “Oh! that hurts”, then a blow there: “Ah! that’s hurting me.”


The Mother: And the thing goes on like that and all the time it is like that. And all the time they are getting pain somewhere. They suffer, they cry, they groan. But it is simply due to that reason, there is no other: it is that they have not done that little work. If, when they were quite young, there had been someone to teach them to do the work and they had done it without losing time, they could have gone through life gloriously and instead of suffering they would have been all-powerful masters of their destiny.


The Mother: This is not to say that necessarily all things would become pleasant. It is not at all that. But your reaction towards things becomes the true reaction and instead of suffering, you learn; instead of being miserable, you go forward and progress.  After all, I believe it is for this that you are here — so that there is someone who can tell you: “There, well, try that. It is worth trying.”


The Mother: Indeed, this should be said when children are quite young. For unless it be awakened in their consciousness, they won’t understand. Yet it can be done even with a very young brain, for at ﬁve one doesn’t have a very big brain; you have particularly the feeling that there are gaps, that many things  should be known but are not known. The brain has not yet been formed. There is the consciousness there, fully conscious, luminous, clear-sighted, all is there; but there are gaps, and when one tries to draw anything out of it, it does not come through.


The Mother: That is what happens when one is quite young. But if one continues little by little, little by little, the ideas are organised as they come, and instead of being a chaos which must be put into order afterwards, it gets organised as it takes shape. It is a great advantage.  Anyway, you are all still very young. You can try.


The Mother: Try for ﬁve minutes every day — not more — looking at yourself, seeing what happens there, within. It is so interesting!   There are in the psychic being two very different kinds of progress: one consisting in its formation, building and organisation. For the psychic starts by being only a kind of tiny divine spark within the being and out of this spark will emerge progressively an independent conscious being having its own action and will. The psychic being at its origin is only a spark of the divine consciousness and it is through successive lives that it builds up a conscious individuality.


The Mother: It is a progress similar to that of a growing child. It is a thing in the making. For a long time, in most human beings the psychic is a being in the making.  It is not a fully individualised, fully conscious being and master of itself and it needs all its rebirths, one after another, in order to build itself and become fully conscious.  But this sort of progress has an end.


The Mother: There comes a time when the being is fully developed, fully individualised, fully master of itself and its destiny. When this being or one of these psychic beings has reached that stage and takes birth in a human being, that makes a very great difference: the human being, so to say, is born free. He is not tied to circumstances, to surroundings, to his origin and atavism, like ordinary people. He comes into the world with the purpose of doing something, with a work to carry out, a mission to fulﬁl. From this point of view his progress in growth has come to an end, that is, it is not indispensable for him to take birth again in a body.


The Mother: Till then rebirth is a necessity, for it is through rebirth that he grows; it is in the physical life and in a physical body that he gradually develops and becomes a fully conscious being. But once he is fully formed, he is free, in this sense that he can take birth or not, at will. So there, one kind of progress stops.   But if this fully formed being wants to become an instrument of work for the Divine, if instead of retiring to repose in a psychic bliss, in its own domain, he chooses to be a worker upon earth to help in the fulﬁlment of the Divine Work, then he has a fresh progress to make, a progress in the capacity for work, for organisation of his work and for expression of the Divine Will.  So there is a time when the thing changes.


The Mother: So long as he remains in the world, so long as he chooses to work for the Divine, he will progress. Only if he withdraws into the psychic world and refuses to continue doing the Divine Work or renounces it, can he remain in a static condition outside all progress, because, as I have told you, only upon earth is there progress, only in the physical world; it is not acquired everywhere. ln the psychic world there is a kind of blissful repose. One remains what one is, without any movement.  They are compelled to progress whether they want it or not.


The Mother: The psychic being itself progresses in them and they are not conscious of it. But they themselves are compelled to progress.  That is to say, they follow a curve. They follow an ascent in life. It is the same progress as that of the growing child; there comes a time when it is at the summit of its growth and then, unless it changes the plane of progress, unless the purely physical progress turns into a mental progress, a psychic progress, a spiritual progress, it goes down the curve and then there will be a decomposition and it will not exist any longer.


The Mother: It is just because progress is not constant and perpetual in the physical world that there is a growth, an apogee, a decline and a decomposition. For anything that does not advance, falls back; all that does not progress, regresses.  So this is just what happens physically . The physical world has not learnt how to progress indeﬁnitely; it arrives at a certain point, then it is either tired of progressing or is not capable  of progressing in the present constitution, but in any case it stops progressing and after a time decomposes.


The Mother: Those who lead a purely physical life reach a kind of summit, then they slide down very quickly. But now, with the general collective human progress, there is behind the physical progress a vital progress and a mental progress, so that the mental progress can go on for a very long time, even after the physical progress has come to a stop, and through this mental progress one keeps up a kind of ascent long after the physical has ceased to progress.   And then there are those who do yoga, who become conscious of their psychic being, are united with it, participate in its life; these, indeed, progress till the last breath of their life.  And they do not stop even after death, when they have left their body under the plea that the body cannot last any longer: they continue to progress.


The Mother: It is the incapacity of the body to transform itself, to continue progressing that causes it to regress and in the end become more and more open to the inner disequilibrium until one day that becomes strong enough to bring about a total imbalance and it can no longer regain its balance and health. We shall see that next week. It is only in the pure spiritual life — that which is outside all physical and terrestrial existence, including the mental — that there is no progress. You reach a static state and are outside all movements of progress. But at the same time you are outside the manifestation also.


The Mother: When you reach that state, you no longer belong to the manifestation, you go out of the manifested world.   One must go out of the manifested world in order to go out of all progress, because the two are identical: manifestation means progress and progress means manifestation.  Many! That is indeed a wonderful thing.


The Mother: I did not think there have been so many.... So?    Ah! Inspirations come from very many different places.


The Mother: There are inspirations that may be very material, there are inspirations that may be vital, there are inspirations that come from all kinds of mental planes, and there are very, very rare inspirations that come from the higher mind or from a still higher region. All inspirations do not come from the same place. Hence, to be inspired does not necessarily mean that one is a higher being.... One may be inspired also to do and say many stupid things!  It means receiving something which is beyond you, which was not within you; to open yourself to an inﬂuence which is outside your individual conscious being.


The Mother: Indeed, one can have also an inspiration to commit a murder! In countries where they decapitate murderers, cut off their heads, this causes a very brutal death which throws out the vital being, not allowing it the time to decompose for coming out of the body; the vital being is violently thrown out of the body, with all its impulses; and generally it goes and lodges itself in one of those present there, men half horriﬁed, half with a kind of unhealthy curiosity. That makes the opening and it enters within. Statistics have proved that most young murderers admit that the impulse came to them when they were present at the death of another murderer. It was an “inspiration”, but of a detestable kind.


The Mother: Fundamentally it is a moment of openness to something which was not within your personal consciousness, which comes from outside and rushes into you and makes you do something.  This is the widest formula that can be given.  Now, generally, when people say: “Oh! he is an inspired poet”, it means he has received something from high above and  expressed it in a remarkable manner. But one should rather say that his inspiration is of a high quality.  Whenever one wants it?


The Mother: Generally not, for one does not know the mechanism of one’s being and cannot open the doors at will.  It is a thing that can be done. It is one of the earliest things that you are taught to do in Yoga: to open the door whenever one wants. It is the result of meditation or concentration or aspiration: all these processes are followed to open the door somewhere.  And generally you try to open it precisely towards the highest thing, not towards anything whatever.


The Mother: For the other kind of receptivity people unfortunately always have.... It is impossible to be altogether shut up in an ivory tower — besides, I believe it would not be very favourable, it would be impossible to progress if one were completely shut up in oneself. One would be able only to rearrange whatever was in oneself. Just imagine you were like a closed globe, altogether closed, that there was no communication with outside — you put out nothing, you receive nothing, you are shut up — you have a few elements of consciousness, movements, vibrations (call them what you like), all that is contained as within a ball, along with your consciousness also. You have no relation with things outside, you are conscious only of yourself.


The Mother: What can you do?... Change the organisation within; that you can do, you can do many things by changing this organisation. But it is conﬁned to that. It is a kind of inner progress, but there is no true progress in relation to the forces outside oneself. You would ﬁnd yourself extremely limited after a time, you would be tired of yourself: turning and turning again, turning and turning again the elements inside — not very pleasant.


The Mother: But all the while you externalise yourself and all the while you bring back something from this externalisation; it is like  something porous: a force goes out and then a force comes in .   There are pulsations like that. And this is why it is so important to choose the environment in which one lives, because there is constantly a kind of interchange between what you give and what you receive.


The Mother: People who throw themselves out a great deal in activity, receive more. But they receive on the same level, the level of their activity. Children, for example, who are younger, who always move about, always shout and romp and jump (very rarely do they keep quiet, except while asleep, and perhaps not even so), well, they spend much and they receive much, and generally it is the physical and vital energy that is spent and it is physical and vital energies that are received. They recuperate a good part of what they spend. So there, it is very important for them to be in surroundings where they can, after they have spent or while they are spending, recover something that is at least equal in quality to theirs, that is not of an inferior quality.


The Mother: When you no longer have this generosity in your movements, you receive much less and this is one of the reasons — one of the chief reasons — why physical progress stops. It is because you become thrifty, you try not to waste; the mind intervenes: “Take care, don’t tire yourself, don’t do too much, etc.” The mind intervenes and physical receptivity diminishes a great deal. Finally, you do not grow any more — by growing reasonable, you stop growing altogether!  But receptivity opens to other levels.


The Mother: Those who live in a world of desires and passions, increase their vital receptivity so much at times that it reaches proportions very unpleasant to themselves and to their surroundings. And then there are those who live in the mental consciousness; their mental receptivity grows very much. All who create mentally, study and live in mental activity, if the mental activity is constant, can progress indeﬁnitely. Mind in the human being does not stop functioning even when the physical instrument has deteriorated. It may no longer manifest its intelligence materially, if there is a lesion in the brain, for example, but nothing can prevent the mind  itself, independently of the instrument, from progressing, from continuing to grow.


The Mother: It is a being that lasts inﬁnitely longer than the physical. It is still young when physically one is already old.  Only when you do not take enough care to keep your brain in a good state, only if accidents occur and there are lesions then you can no longer express yourself. But the mind in itself continues to grow. And those who have a sufﬁcient physical balance, for example, those who have not gone to excesses of any kind, who have never mistreated their body, who have never poisoned themselves like most people — who have never smoked, drunk alcohol and so on — keep their brain in a relatively good condition and they can progress, even in their expression, till the end of their life.


The Mother: It is only if in the last years of their life they make a kind of withdrawal within themselves, that they lose their power of expression. But the mind goes on progressing.  The vital is by nature immortal. But it is not organised, and in its normal state, it is over-excited, full of contradictory passions and impulses. So with all that it destroys itself.


The Mother: But otherwise the elements continue to exist. A desire, a passion is a very living thing and continues to live for a very long time, even independently of the being who... is subjected to them, I might say, rather than creates them, because they are things that one is subjected to, that rush upon you from outside like a storm that seizes you and carries you away, unless you keep very calm like that, very still, very quiet, as though one were clinging to something solid and immobile in oneself, allowing the storm to pass over when it begins to blow — it blows, but one must not stir, one must not let oneself tremble or shiver or shake; one must remain altogether immobile and know that these are passing storms. And when the storm has blown over, it passes and goes away; then one can heave a deep breath and resume one’s normal balance; and there has been only a minimum destruction. In such cases, generally, things turn out well in the end.  But those who are like a piece of cork on the water and rush about in all directions and do not succeed in recovering their  poise and watching themselves, anything can happen to them.


The Mother: They may be drawn into a whirlpool all of a sudden and lo! engulfed. And there remains nothing.  That’s all?   Yes.


The Mother: What is this state? People who know that they are doing foolish things, who are conscious, but who are not able to refrain from them, because their mind does not have enough strength to check them?...  But the mind never has sufﬁcient strength to check them!  For the mind is an instrument made to see all things from all sides. Then how can you expect to have a will strong enough to resist an impulse when the mind looks at it ﬁrst from this side and then from that side?


The Mother: And then it says: “After all, it is like that and why should it not be like that?” And so, where is your will?...  As I said there, it always ﬁnds a way to explain everything, justify everything and give admirable reasons for all things.  It is only the psychic being that has the strength to intervene.  If your mind is in contact with your psychic being, if it receives the inﬂuence of the psychic being, then it is strong enough to organise the resistance.


The Mother: It knows what the true thing is and  what the false; and knowing what the true thing is, if it has the goodwill, it will organise the resistance, give battle and gain the victory. But that is the only condition: it must be in contact with the psychic being.  For even the most beautiful theories, even if one knows mentally many things and holds admirable principles, that is not sufﬁciently strong to create a will capable of resisting an impulse. At one time you are quite determined, you have decided that it would be thus — for example, that you would not do such a thing: it is settled, you will not do it — but how is it that suddenly (you do not know how or why nor what has happened), you have not decided anything at all! And then you immediately ﬁnd in yourself an excellent reason for doing the thing....


The Mother: Among others, there is a certain kind of excuse which is always given: “Well, if I do it this time, at least I shall be convinced that it is very bad and I shall do it no longer and this will be the last time.” It is the prettiest excuse one always gives to oneself: “This is the last time I am doing it. This time, I am doing it to understand perfectly that it is bad and that it must not be done and I shall not do it any more. This is the last time.”  Every time, it is the last time!


The Mother: and you begin again.  Of course there are some who have less clear ideas and who say to themselves: “After all, why don’t I want to do it? These are theories, they are principles that might not be true. If I have this impulse, what is it that tells me that this impulse is not better than a theory?...” It is not for them the last time.


The Mother: It is something they accept as quite natural.  Between these two extremes there are all the possibilities.  But the most dangerous of all is to say: “Well, I am doing it once more this time, that will purify me of this. Afterwards I shall no longer do it.” Now the puriﬁcation is never enough!


The Mother: It happens only when you have decided: “Well, this time, I am going to try not to do it, and I shall not do it, I shall apply all my strength and I shall not do it.” Even if you have just a little success, it is much. Not a big success, but just a small success,  a very partial success: you do not carry out what you yearn to do; but the yearning, the desire, the passion is still there and that produces whirls within, but outside you resist, “I shall not do it, I shall not move; even if I have to bind myself hand and foot, I shall not do it.” It is a partial success — but it is a great victory because, due to this, next time you will be able to do a little more. That is to say, instead of holding all the violent passions within yourself, you can begin calming them a little; and you will calm them slowly at ﬁrst, with difﬁculty.


The Mother: They will remain long, they will come back, they will trouble you, vex you, produce in you a great disgust, all that, but if you resist well and say: “No, I shall carry out nothing; whatever the cost, I shall not carry out anything; I will stay like a rock”, then little by little, little by little, that thins out, thins out and you begin to learn the second attitude: “Now I want my consciousness to be above those things. There will still be many battles but if my consciousness stands above that, little by little there will come a time when this will return no longer.” And then there is a time when you feel that you are absolutely free: you do not even perceive it, and then that is all. It may take a long time, it may come soon: that depends on the strength of character, on the sincerity of the aspiration. But even for people who have just a little sincerity, if they subject themselves to this process, they succeed.


The Mother: It takes time. They succeed in the ﬁrst item: in not expressing. All forces upon earth tend towards self-expression.  These forces come with the object of manifesting themselves and if you place a barrier and refuse to express them, they may try to beat against the barrier for a time, but in the end, they will tire themselves out and not being manifested, they will withdraw and leave you quiet.  So you must never say: “I shall ﬁrst purify my thought, purify my body, purify my vital and then later I shall purify my action.”


The Mother: That is the normal order, but it never succeeds. The effective order is to begin from the outside: “The very ﬁrst thing is that I do not do it, and afterwards, I desire it no longer and  next I close my doors completely to all impulses: they no longer exist for me, I am now outside all that.” This is the true order, the order that is effective. First, not to do it. And then you will no longer have desire for anything and after that it will go out of your consciousness completely.


The Mother: It is an interesting question. That depends. As I have just told you, there are psychic beings who are in the making, progressing; these generally, right at the outset, cannot choose much, but when they have arrived at a certain degree of growth and of consciousness (generally while they are still in a physical body and have had a certain amount of experience), they decide at that time what their next ﬁeld of experience will be like.  I can give you some rather external examples. For instance, a psychic being needed to have the experience of mastery, of power in order to know the reactions and how it is possible to turn all these movements towards the Divine: to learn what a life of power may teach you.


The Mother: It took birth in a king or a queen.  These enjoyed some power and during that time they had their experiences; they reached the end of the ﬁeld of experience. Now, they know what they wanted to know, they are about to go, they are going to leave their body that’s now become useless, and they are going to prepare for the next experience. Well, at that time, when the psychic being is still in the body and has noted what it has learnt, it decides for the next occasion. And sometimes it is a movement of action and reaction: because it has studied one entire ﬁeld, it needs to study the opposite ﬁeld.


The Mother: And very often it chooses a very different life from the one it had. So before leaving, it says: “Next time, it is in this domain that I shall take birth....” Suppose, for example, the psychic has reached a stage of growth when it would like to have the chance of working on the physical body to make it capable of coming consciously into  contact with the Divine and of transforming it. Now, it is about to leave the body in which it had authority, power, activity, the body it has used for its growth; it says: “Next time I shall take birth in a neutral environment, neither low nor high, where it will not be necessary (how to put it?) to have a highly external life, where one will have neither great power nor great misery — altogether neutral, as you know, the life in between.” It chooses that.


The Mother: It returns to its own psychic world for the necessary rest, for assimilation of the experience gained, for preparation of the future experience. It naturally remembers its choice and, before coming down once more, when it has ﬁnished its assimilation, when it is time to return, to come down upon earth, it cannot, from that domain, see material things as we see them, you know: they appear to it in another form. But still the differences can be foreseen: the differences of environment, differences of activity in the environment are clearly seen, quite perceptible. It can have a vision that is total or global. It can choose.


The Mother: At times it chooses the country; when it wants a certain kind of education, civilisation, inﬂuence, it can choose its country beforehand. Sometimes it can’t, sometimes it chooses only its environment and the kind of life it will lead. And then from up there, before it comes down, it looks for the kind of vibrations it wants; it sees them very clearly. It is as though it was aiming at the place where it is going to drop. But it is an approximation because of the fact that another condition is necessary: not only its choice but also a receptivity from below and an aspiration.


The Mother: There must be someone in the environment it has chosen, generally the mother (sometimes both the parents, but the most indispensable is the mother), she must have an aspiration or a receptivity, something sufﬁciently passive and open or a conscious aspiration towards something higher. And that kindles for the psychic being a little light. In the mass representing for it the environment in which it wants to be born, if under the inﬂuence of its own projected will a small light is kindled, then it knows that it is there it must go.  It is necessary, it is this that makes the difference in months  or days, perhaps, not so much perhaps in years; however, this creates an uncertainty, and that is why it cannot foretell the exact date: “On that date, that day, at that hour I shall take birth.” It needs to ﬁnd someone receptive.


The Mother: When it sees that, it rushes down. But what happens is something like an image: it is not exactly that, but something very similar. It throws itself down into an unconsciousness, because the physical world, even human consciousness whatever it may be, is very unconscious in comparison with the psychic consciousness. So it rushes into an unconsciousness. It is as though it fell on its head.


The Mother: That stuns it. And so generally, apart from some very very rare exceptions, for a long time it does not know. It does not know any longer where it is nor what it is doing nor why it is there, nothing at all.  It ﬁnds a great difﬁculty in expressing itself, especially through a baby that has no brain, naturally; it is only the embryo of a brain which is hardly formed and it does not have the elements for manifesting itself. So it is very rare for a child to manifest immediately the exceptional being it contains....


The Mother: That happens.  We have heard about such things. It happens, but generally some time is needed. Only slowly it awakens from its stupor and becomes aware that it is there for some reason and by choice.  And usually this coincides with the intensive mental education which shuts you completely from the psychic consciousness.


The Mother: So a mass of circumstances, happenings of all kinds, emotions, all sorts of things are necessary to open the inner doors so that one might begin to remember that after all one has come from another world and one has come for a particular reason.  Otherwise, if all went normally, it could very quickly have a connection, very quickly. If it had the luck to ﬁnd someone possessing a little knowledge, and instead of falling into a world of ignorance, it fell upon a little bit of knowledge, everything would be done quite quickly.  But the psychic will and psychic growth escape completely all common notions of justice, of reward and punishment as men understand them. There are religions, there are philosophies that  tell you all kinds of stories, which are simply the application of notions of human justice to the invisible world, and so these are stupidities.


The Mother: For it is not at all like that truly; the notion of reward and punishment as man understands it is an absurdity.  That does not apply at all, not at all to the inner realities. So once you enter the true spiritual world, all that becomes really stupidities. For things are not at all like that.  A large number of people come and tell me: “What then have I done in my previous life to be now in such difﬁcult conditions, with such misfortunes happening to me?”


The Mother: And most often I am obliged to tell them: “But don’t you see that it is a blessing upon you, a grace! And perhaps in your previous life you have asked for it so that you could make a greater progress....” These ideas are quite current: “Oh! I am ill. Oh!


The Mother: my body is in a bad condition, what have I done? What crime have I committed in the other life so that in this one...” This is all childishness.  So there you are., my children.


The Mother: Not only by looking at his eyes. I know the character of a man through self-identiﬁcation. And then outwardly, if you want, the eyes are like doors or windows: there are some which are open, so one enters within, goes very deep inside, and one may see everything that happens there. There are others which are partly open, partly closed; others still have a veil, a kind of curtain; and then there are others which are fastened, locked up, doors closed so well that they cannot be opened. Indeed, this is already an indication, it gives an indication of the strength of the inner life, the sincerity and transparency of the being.


The Mother: And so, through these doors that are open I enter and identify myself with the person within. And I see what he sees, understand what he understands, think what he thinks, and I could do what he does (but usually I refrain from that!) and in this way I get to know what people are like. And it doesn’t need much time; it goes very fast. It can even be done through a photograph, but not so well. A photograph captures only a moment, a minute of somebody; if there were many photographs...


The Mother: But still, even with a photograph, by going a little deeper one can have a fairly clear idea. But knowledge is knowledge by identiﬁcation.  That is, one must become that which one wants to know. One may surmise, imagine, deduce, one may reason, but one does not know.


The Mother: No, why?  One can learn how to identify oneself. One must learn. It is  indispensable if one wants to get out of one’s ego. For so long as one is shut up in one’s ego, one can’t make any progress.


The Mother: There are many ways. I’ll tell you one.  When I was in Paris, I used to go to many places where there were gatherings of all kinds, people making all sorts of researches, spiritual (so-called spiritual), occult researches, etc.  And once I was invited to meet a young lady (I believe she was Swedish) who had found a method of knowledge, exactly a method for learning. And so she explained it to us.


The Mother: We were three or four (her French was not very good but she was quite sure about what she was saying!); she said: “It’s like this, you take an object or make a sign on a blackboard or take a drawing — that is not important — take whatever is most convenient for you. Suppose, for instance, that I draw for you... (she had a blackboard) I draw a design.” She drew a kind of half-geometric design. “Now, you sit in front of the design and concentrate all your attention upon it — upon that design which is there.


The Mother: You concentrate, concentrate without letting anything else enter your consciousness — except that. Your eyes are ﬁxed on the drawing and don’t move at all. You are as it were hypnotised by the drawing. You look (and so she sat there, looking), you look, look, look.... I don’t know, it takes more or less time, but still for one who is used to it, it goes pretty fast.


The Mother: You look, look, look, you that drawing you are looking at. Nothing else exists in the world any longer except the drawing, and then, suddenly, you pass to the other side; and when you pass to the other side you enter a new consciousness, and you know.”  We had a good laugh, for it was amusing. But it is quite true, it is an excellent method to practise. Naturally, instead of taking a drawing or any object, you may take, for instance, an idea, a few words.


The Mother: You have a problem preoccupying you, you don’t know the solution of the problem; well, you objectify  your problem in your mind, put it in the most precise, exact, succinct terms possible, and then concentrate, make an effort; you concentrate only on the words, and if possible on the idea they represent, that is, upon your problem — you concentrate, concentrate, concentrate until nothing else exists but that. And it is true that, all of a sudden, you have the feeling of something opening, and one is on the other side. The other side of what?... It means that you have opened a door of your consciousness, and instantaneously you have the solution of your problem.  It is an excellent method of learning “how” to identify oneself.


The Mother: For instance, you are with someone. This person tells you something, you tell him the contrary (as it usually happens, simply through a spirit of contradiction) and you begin arguing.  Naturally, you will never come to any point, except a quarrel if you are ill-natured. But instead of doing that, instead of remaining shut up in your own ideas or your own words, if you tell yourself: “Wait a little, I am going to try and see why he said that to me. Yes, why did he tell me that?”


The Mother: And you concentrate: “Why, why, why?” You stand there, just like that, trying. The other person continues speaking, doesn’t he? — and is very happy too, for you don’t contradict him any longer!  He talks profusely and is sure he has convinced you.


The Mother: Then you concentrate more and more on what he is saying, and with the feeling that gradually, through his words, you are entering his mind. When you enter his head, suddenly you enter into his way of thinking, and next, just imagine, you understand why he is speaking to you thus! And then, if you have a fairly swift intelligence and put what you have just come to understand alongside what you had known before, you have the two ways together, and so can ﬁnd the truth reconciling both. And here you have truly made progress. And this is the best way of widening one’s thought.


The Mother: If you are beginning an argument, keep quiet immediately, instantaneously. You must be silent, say nothing at all, and then  try to see the thing as the other person sees it — that won’t make you forget your own way of seeing it, not at all! but you will be able to put both of them together. And you will truly have made progress, a real progress.  It is the same for everything.


The Mother: In all that you do together with others, if you do not agree, take it as a divine Grace, a marvellous opportunity given you to make a progress. And it is simple: instead of being on this side, you are on the other; instead of looking at yourself, you enter the other person and look. You must have just a little bit of imagination, a little more control over your thoughts, over your movements. But that is not very difﬁcult. When you have tried it out a little, after a while you ﬁnd it very easy.


The Mother: You must not just look and then make a mental effort, telling yourself: “Why is it like this and like that? Why does he do that?  Why does he say that?” You will never arrive at anything. You won’t understand, you will imagine all kinds of explanations which will be worthless and teach you nothing at all except to tell yourself: “That person is stupid or else wicked” — things that lead nowhere.


The Mother: On the other hand, if you only make that little movement, and instead of looking at him as an object quite alien to you, you try to enter within, you enter within, into that little head that’s before you, and then, suddenly, you ﬁnd yourself  on the other side, you look at yourself and understand quite well what he is saying — everything is clear, the why, the how, the reason, the feeling which is behind the whole thing.... It is an experiment you have the opportunity of making a hundred times a day.  At ﬁrst you won’t succeed very well, but if you persist, you will end up by succeeding admirably. This adds a lot of interest to life.


The Mother: And besides it is a work which really makes you progress, for it makes you come out of that little armour of yours in which you are nicely shut up, in which you knock against everything. You have seen moths knocking against the light, haven’t you? ... Everyone’s consciousness is like that, it goes along knocking here, knocking there, for these are things  foreign to it. But instead of knocking about, one enters within, then it becomes a part of oneself.


The Mother: One widens oneself, breathes freely, has enough space to move in, one doesn’t knock against anything, one enters, penetrates, understands. And one lives in many places at the same time. It is very interesting, one does it automatically.  For instance, when you are reading a book that interests you very much, a wonderful novel full of exciting adventures, when you are completely absorbed in the story, at times you forget your class-hour or even dinner-time or your bed-time.  You are completely absorbed in what you are reading.


The Mother: Well, this is a phenomenon of self-identiﬁcation. And if you do it with a certain perfection, you succeed in understanding ahead what is going to happen. There is a moment when, being fully absorbed in the story, you come to know (without trying to look for it) towards what end the author is leading you, how he is going to unfold his story and come to his conclusion. For you have identiﬁed yourself with the creative thought of the author. You do it more or less perfectly, without knowing that you are doing it, but these are phenomena of self-identiﬁcation.


The Mother: There are, in Paris, theatres of the third or fourth rank where sensational dramas are performed. These are suburban theatres. They are not for intellectuals but for the masses, and all the elements are always extremely dramatic, moving. Well, those who go there are mostly very simple people and forget completely that they are in a theatre. They identify themselves with the drama.


The Mother: And so, things like this happen: on the stage there is the traitor hiding behind the door, and the hero comes along, not aware naturally that the traitor is hiding there and he is going to be killed. Now, there are people sitting up there (in what is called the gallery), right up in the theatre, who shout: “Look out, he is there!” () It has not happened just once, it happens hundreds of times, spontaneously. I had seen a play of this kind called, I believe; anyway it was quite a sensational drama and it was being played at the  . In this play there was a room.


The Mother: On the stage a large room could be seen and at its side a small room and... I don’t remember the story now, but in the small room there was a button which could be pressed, and by pressing the button the ceiling of the bigger room could be brought down on those who were there so as to crush them inexorably!... And a warning had been given, people had already spoken about it, passed on the word. And now there was a traitor who had hidden himself in the little room and he knew the trick of the button, and then there was the hero who came in with other people, and they started arguing; and everyone knew that the ceiling was going to come down.... I didn’t say anything, I remembered I was in the theatre, I was waiting to see how the author was going to get out of this situation to save his hero (for it was evident he couldn’t kill him off like that before everybody!).


The Mother: But the others were not at all in the same state. Well, there were spectators who shouted, really shouted: “Look out, mind the ceiling!” That’s how it was.  These are phenomena of self-identiﬁcation. Only, they are involuntary.


The Mother: And this is also one of the methods used today to cure nervous diseases. When someone cannot sleep, cannot be restful because he is too excited and nervous and his nerves are ill and weakened by excessive agitation, he is told to sit in front of an aquarium, for instance — an aquarium, that’s very lovely, isn’t it? — before an aquarium with pretty little ﬁsh in it, goldﬁsh; just to sit there, settle down in an easy-chair and try not to think of anything (particularly not of his troubles) and look at the ﬁsh. So he looks at the ﬁsh, moving around, coming and going, swimming, gliding, turning, meeting, crossing, chasing one another indeﬁnitely, and also the water ﬂowing slowly and the passing ﬁsh. After a while he lives the life of ﬁshes: he comes and goes, swims, glides, plays. And at the end of the hour his nerves are in a perfect state and he is completely restful!


The Mother: But the condition is that one must not think of one’s troubles, simply watch the ﬁsh.   You know, the only way of knowing the Divine is by identifying oneself with Him. There is no other, there is only one, one single way. Hence, once you are master of this method of identiﬁcation, you can identify yourself. So you choose your object for identiﬁcation, you want to identify yourself with the Divine.


The Mother: But so long as you do not know how to identify yourself, a hundred and one things will always come across your path, pulling you here, pulling you there, scattering you, and you will not be able to identify yourself with Him. But if you have learnt how to identify yourself , then you have only to direct the identiﬁcation, place it where you want it, and then hold on there until you get a result. It will come very fast if you are master of your power of identiﬁcation. Yes, it will come very quickly.


The Mother: Ramakrishna used to say that the time could vary between three days, three hours and three minutes. Three days for very slow people, three hours for those who were a little swifter, three minutes for those who are used to it.   For very slow people, yes. He was asked: “How long does it take one to get identiﬁed with the Divine?” that was his answer.


The Mother: No, not without doing anything. It is not necessary to do nothing simply in order to be identiﬁed with the Divine. Evidently you cannot remain seated motionless for three days without doing anything; it would mean you had already attained an extraordinary degree of perfection if you could do that — forget all your needs and remain motionless for three days. No, it is not that he means; the thought must be concentrated solely on the Divine.


The Mother: And he did it before that person, to show him, prove to him that  what he was saying was true. That did not take him more than three minutes.  But it is just that, what hinders the experience is the absence of the practice of concentration, and also the absence of onepointedness, singleness of purpose, of will. One “wants” it for a minute, two minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, an hour, and afterwards, one wants many other things.... One “thinks” about it for a few seconds, and after that thinks of a thousand other things.


The Mother: So naturally in this way you could take an eternity.  For indeed, in this you cannot add up; if it could be accumulated like grains of sand, if with every thought you give to the Divine you place a little grain of sand somewhere, after a time this would make a mountain. But it is not like that, it does not remain. It has no result. It does not accumulate, you cannot go on adding, cannot progress quantitatively — you can progress in intensity, progress qualitatively.


The Mother: Yes, you can learn within yourself how to do it; but what you have done counts only in this way. It does not get accumulated like grains of sand on a dune. Else it would be enough to become quite clever and tell yourself: “Well, I shall give at least a dozen thoughts to the Divine every day.” And then, by little bits like that, after some time one has a little hill....  Well, my children, it will soon be ten o’clock.


The Mother: But if someone has a very interesting question... You? Ask.  Very interesting?  Why?


The Mother: But, my child, there are all kinds of things in Nature!  No two things are identical. All the possibilities exist in Nature:  everything you can imagine and a hundred million times more.  So you notice that there are intelligent people and again others who are not. And then there are others still who are unbalanced.


The Mother: And yet, your observations cover a very narrow ﬁeld.  But you can tell yourself that all this exists and hundreds of thousands of millions of other things also exist, and that no two things are alike in the world. And I don’t think there is anything one can imagine which doesn’t exist somewhere. This is exactly what amuses Nature most — she tries out everything, does everything, makes everything, undoes everything, and she makes all possible combinations and goes on changing them, re-handling them, remaking them, and it is a perpetual movement of all the possibilities following one another, clashing, intermingling, combining and falling apart. No two moments of terrestrial life are alike; and for how long has the earth existed?...


The Mother: Very well-informed people will perhaps tell you approximately. And for how long will it yet live? They will perhaps tell you that also: ﬁgures with many zeros, so many zeros that you won’t be able to read them. But it won’t ever be the same thing twice over nor will there be two similar moments. If you ﬁnd things looking alike, that is only an appearance.


The Mother: There are no two things alike, and no two identical moments. And all this goes so far back that you cannot keep count. And it goes so far forward that you can’t keep count either. And it will never be twice the same thing. So, you can’t ask me why this exists and why that exists!...


The Mother: You wanted to ask me why? Nature has much more imagination than you, you know! She imagines new things all the time. It must be so for it is changing all the time and all combinations are always new. Not two seconds in the universe are identical.


The Mother: She has a great deal of imagination. Have you never thought about that?... Do you ever really have two similar moments? No. You know very well that you are not today what you were yesterday and you won’t be tomorrow what you are today... and that if you went back only... say, ten years, you wouldn’t recognise yourself at all any longer!


The Mother: You don’t know  even what you used to think about, granting that you thought about anything!  So, there is no problem. All that you can do is to try and investigate the ﬁeld of experience given to you which is extremely limited, to see all the possibilities. And you could begin noting them; you would see that it would make a huge volume immediately, simply in that tiny little ﬁeld of experience which is yours!  And what are you?...


The Mother: One second in Eternity!  !   The sun, my child. Have you never seen leaves closing up when night comes, as soon as the sun dips below the horizon?  Something else means what?


The Mother: What are the possible openings for a tree?  A man? But they know nothing about man! As man aspires to be a god?... I knew animals which aspired to become human  beings, but they were living with human beings.


The Mother: Cats and dogs, for example, which lived in a close intimacy with human beings, truly had an aspiration. I had a cat which was very, very unhappy for being a cat, it wanted to be a man. It had an untimely death.  It used to meditate, it certainly did a kind of sadhana of its own, and when it left, even a portion of its vital being reincarnated in a human being. The little psychic element that was at the centre of the being went directly into a man, but even what was conscious in the vital of the cat went into a human being.


The Mother: But these are rather exceptional cases.  It is possible.  One can feel it. There is a certain state of consciousness in which one perceives this divine Love wherever it is found, and one does not feel so great a difference between creatures as it appears physically. There is much more aspiration than one would think in things we call inanimate.


The Mother: Much more. In stones also there is a kind of spontaneous sense of what is higher, more noble, more pure, and though they cannot express it in any way, they feel it, and this affects them differently.   Even in things, even in objects, even in stones, there is a strange receptivity which comes from this Presence. There are stones — if you know how to do it — that can accumulate forces.


The Mother: They can accumulate forces, keep them and transmit them. One  can take stones (what are called precious stones) and concentrate forces into them and they keep them. And these forces irradiate slowly, very gradually. But if one knows how to do it one can accumulate such a quantity as would last, so to speak, indeﬁnitely.  Certainly, yes!


The Mother: The stone can preserve the force almost indeﬁnitely. There are those stones which can serve as a link, there are stones which can serve as a battery. There are stones which can hold a force for protection. That indeed is remarkable, my child.  One can accumulate in a stone (particularly in amethysts) a force for protection, and the force truly protects the one who wears the stone.


The Mother: It is very interesting, I have experienced it. I knew someone who had a stone of this kind, charged with the power of protection, and it was wonderful when he wore it.... There are stones which can be used to foretell events. Some people know how to read in these stones events which are going to happen.  Stones can carry messages.


The Mother: Naturally, this requires an ability on both sides: on one side, a sufﬁciently strong power of concentration; on the other, a power to see and read directly, without using very precise words either. Consequently, because they can serve as batteries, it means that they carry within them the source of the force itself, otherwise they wouldn’t be receptive. It is a force of this kind that is at the origin of crystallisations, as in rock-crystals, for instance, which form such magniﬁcent patterns, with such a complete harmony, and that comes from one thing alone, this Presence at the centre. Now, one doesn’t see because one has no inner sensibility, but once one has the direct perception of the forces of love behind things, one sees that they are the same everywhere. Even in constructed things: one can come to understand what they say.


The Mother: Anything else?    To the ﬂowers? But it’s in the same way, by entering into contact with the nature of the ﬂower, its inner truth. Then one knows what it represents.


The Mother: Oh! but I told you that it would be later, several years later. I said that you had to be sufﬁciently old. I even said what age.


The Mother: I don’t now remember which, but the brain must be a little more ready to be able to follow.   Because they are shut up in themselves.  They sense their limitation and think that in order to grow, increase and even survive, they need to take things from outside, for they live in the consciousness of their personal limitation. So, for them, what they give makes a hole and this hole must be ﬁlled up by receiving something!... Naturally, this is a mistake.


The Mother: And the truth is that if instead of being shut up in the narrow limits of their little person, they could so widen their consciousness as to be able not only to identify themselves with others in their narrow limits, but to come out of these limits, pass beyond, spread out everywhere, unite with the one Consciousness and become all things, then, at that moment the narrow limits will vanish, but not before. And as long as one senses the narrow limits, one wants to take, for one fears to lose. One spends and wants to replenish. It is due to that, my child. For if one were spread out in all things, if all the vibrations which come and go expressed the need to merge into everything, to widen oneself, grow, not by remaining within one’s limits but coming out of them, and ﬁnally to be identiﬁed with everything, one would no longer have anything to lose for one would have everything.


The Mother: Only, one doesn’t know this. And so, as one doesn’t know, one can’t do it. One tries to take, accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, but that is impossible, one can’t accumulate. One must identify oneself. And then, the little bit one gives, one wants to get back: one has a kind thought, one expects some recognition; one gives a little affection, one expects it from others...


The Mother: for one doesn’t have the ability to become the kind thought in everything, one doesn’t have the ability to be the affection, the tender love in all things. One feels just like that, all cut up and limited, and fears to lose everything, fears to lose what one has because one would be impoverished. On the other hand, if one were able to identify oneself, one would no longer need to  pull. The more one spreads out, the more one has. The more one gets identiﬁed, the more one becomes.


The Mother: And then, instead of taking, one gives. And the more one gives, the more one grows.  But for this, one must be able to come out of the limits of one’s little ego. One must be identiﬁed with the Force, identiﬁed with the Vibration instead of being identiﬁed with one’s ego.  It is very difﬁcult, but one can succeed.


The Mother: They say so, but it is not always true, and it depends on people. I knew people (not many, but still...) for whom it was impossible to do anything bad. Everything in their nature revolted at the idea of doing harm; the spontaneous movement was completely against this. But this is rare. Still, it does exist.


The Mother: This happens because the world as it is at present is still largely under the inﬂuence of the adverse forces, particularly the vital force which is dynamic and generally makes you act.  This force is largely under the inﬂuence of the adverse vital, that is, forces which like to hurt, destroy, damage. That kind of will to spoil things: when one sees something beautiful, instead of admiring, loving, being happy, wishing that it grows and progresses (which is the true divine movement), one feels a sort of anger, rage, one wants to destroy, one wants to damage. This is the movement of the adverse forces. Unfortunately, this is quite spontaneous in many people, and even in children... the instinct to destroy and spoil.


The Mother: Well, it is the presence of the adverse forces. And these are forces which come directly from the vital world and incarnate on earth in human consciousness, and at times also in animal consciousness. It is the hatred for things beautiful, for what is pure, what is good, what is true.  It is the hatred of the divine Presence. And naturally, with this hatred, the will to destroy and damage, to spoil, mar, deform,  disﬁgure.


The Mother: One step more and it is the will to inﬂict suffering.  And all this is the inﬂuence of the adverse forces, which acts quite spontaneously in the inconscient, in the subconscient, in half-consciousness. It is only the pure and luminous consciousness which can oppose this and prevent it from acting. But the state of the world is such that this is a constant battle.  Very few people can escape from this hold.


The Mother: Everyone generally has a tiny little corner in him — at times quite small, at times bigger, sometimes quite unconscious, sometimes a little conscious, sometimes superbly, completely conscious — which likes destroying, likes spoiling. And the state of the world is such that when one gives way to that, one is helped by an onrush of forces which lie waiting for the opportunity, waiting for the moment to be able to manifest, which need human collaboration to be able to manifest and seek it. As soon as the opportunity comes, they rush forth, throwing out a formidable amount of energy. And so one feels stronger as soon as one begins to do evil. That is why it is easier, whilst if one wants to react, refuses to become the instrument of these forces, one must ﬁght hard, be very strong, very straight, very pure, very sincere, and above all, not egoistic.


The Mother: One must not turn round upon oneself, and must never be afraid. And this is not easy.  That is, the world is in such a state that in order never to be moved by the adverse forces — the forces of darkness, destruction, wickedness, hatred — one must be a hero, a true hero, who is not afraid of blows and fears nothing, who never turns round upon himself and doesn’t have that kind of self-pity which is so despicable a thing. That is why... in order not to do evil, think evil, wish evil, never, under any circumstances, one must be a hero....


The Mother: It is not always easy to be a hero. The days one is tired, the days one wants to rest, not to make any effort, one slips, everything slips down. It is terribly slippery. It is more slippery than a children’s toboggan. One slides down, down like that, down in a whirlwind.


The Mother: And it is only when one is right at the bottom that one realises that one has  come down. Then one must climb back. That is not always comfortable.  But for one who has faith in the Divine Grace, the return to the Light becomes easy.   Where does love come from?


The Mother: From the Origin of the universe.  Besides, I say that there. That’s what I say. I say that love is a supreme force which the Eternal Consciousness has emanated in order to send it into the world. Love comes from that.


The Mother: (  Bulletin ) This answers the question:  First, it is the joy of identity. Something must be there already which can become conscious of the identity, and that precisely is  love. Then comes the manifestation of love.


The Mother: And in its supreme form, that is, when it returns to its source crossing all the phases of its manifestation, it becomes the bliss of union. For the feeling of union comes as a consequence of the feeling of separation. The passage through the whole manifested universe gives the feeling of separation from the Origin; and the return to the Origin is the bliss of union, that is, the two things that were separated are united once again. And it is still Love; it is Love after the great circuit of the manifestation. When it returns to its Origin, it becomes the bliss of union.


The Mother: ( ):  That is the answer to your question. That is, no matter how high you may climb back, at the Origin you will ﬁnd love. But not what men call love.   If you love me, I shall love you?


The Mother: That’s exactly the way men speak: “If you love me, I love you, if you don’t love me, I don’t love you.” This is just the most human expression of love. And it goes still farther, they apply it also to their relation with the Divine. They say to the Divine: “If you do what I want, I shall say that you love me, and I shall love you. But if you don’t do what I want, then I won’t think at all that you love me, and I certainly will not love you.”


The Mother: That’s how it is. That means that it becomes commercial.  That begins to be better!  And what is better still is not to ask oneself whether one is loved or not, one should be absolutely indifferent to that. And that begins to be true love: one loves because one loves, not at all because one receives a response to one’s love or because the other person loves you.


The Mother: All those conditions — that is not love. One loves because one cannot do otherwise but love. One loves because one loves. One doesn’t care at all about what will happen; one is perfectly satisﬁed with the feeling of one’s love.  One loves because one loves.


The Mother: All the rest is bargaining, it is not love.  And, moreover, one thing is certain: the moment one experiences true love, one doesn’t even put the question any longer.  It seems altogether childish and ridiculous and insigniﬁcant to ask this question. One has the complete plenitude of joy and realisation the moment one experiences true love and one doesn’t at all need any kind of response. One love, that’s all.


The Mother: And one has the plenitude of the satisfaction of love. There is no need at all of any reciprocity.  I tell you, so long as there is this calculation in the mind or  the feelings and sensations, so long as there is some calculation, more or less acknowledged, it is bargaining, it is not love.   You can’t manage to understand?...


The Mother: I hope it will come one day!  All the rest is exactly what men have made of love. And besides it is not very pretty and leads to all kinds of things which are still less pretty, like jealousy, for instance, or envy, and  in violent natures it goes as far as hatred. The small beginning is this: the need, when one loves, that what one loves or the person one loves should know that he is loved.


The Mother: But in the relation with the Divine: one loves the Divine but insists that the Divine should know that one loves Him! That’s the beginning of the fall. One does not even think about the real thing. It doesn’t even slightly touch the mind.  One doesn’t think: one loves, that’s all.


The Mother: One loves and is in the plenitude of love and the intense joy of love, and then, that’s all.  It is a long, long, long way to go from what men call “love” to true love — a long way.  I am not even speaking here about all the repulsive forms it takes in the ordinary human consciousness; I am telling you about the best conditions, about love in its best form, even the most disinterested. I don’t know, if you question human beings, I would like to know very much the percentage of those who don’t even care for reciprocity. Simply that.


The Mother: Not those who say: “If you love me, I love you”, that indeed is at the very bottom of the ladder, right at the bottom, almost in the pit.... There is a still lower rung: “Love me and then I shall see if I love you.”  There you have to deal with altogether disgusting people. I am speaking only of the need of reciprocity: that is the ﬁrst step of the descending scale.  However, you will understand this one day.


The Mother: You are still very young.   It is almost the same as that of rather unintellectual men for the Divine. It is made of admiration, trust and a sense of security.  Admiration: it seems to you something really very beautiful. And it is not reasoned out: an admiration from the heart, so to speak, spontaneous.


The Mother: For instance, dogs have this in a very high degree.  And then, trust — naturally this is sometimes mixed with other things: with the feeling of some need and dependence, for it is that person who will give me to eat when I am hungry, give me shelter when it is rough weather, who will look after me. This is not the most beautiful side. And then, unfortunately, it gets mixed up (and I believe — I consider it entirely man’s fault) with a kind of fear; a feeling of dependence and a kind of fear of something which is much stronger, much more conscious, much more... which can harm you, and you have no strength to defend yourself. It is a pity, but I believe it is altogether man’s fault.


The Mother: But if men really deserved the love of animals, it would be made of a feeling of wonder and of the sense of security. It is something very ﬁne, this sense of security; something that’s able to protect you, to give you all that you need, and near which you can always ﬁnd shelter.  Animals have an altogether rudimentary mind. They are not tormented by incessant thoughts like human beings. For example, they feel a spontaneous gratitude for an act of kindness towards them, whilst men, ninety-eight times out of a hundred, begin to reason and ask themselves what interest one could have in being good.


The Mother: This is one of the great miseries of mental activity.  Animals are free from this and when you are kind to them they are grateful to you, spontaneously. And they have trust. So their love is made of that, and it turns into a very strong attachment, an irresistible need to be near you.  There is something else.


The Mother: If the master is really a good one and the animal faithful, there is an exchange of psychic and vital forces, an exchange which becomes for the animal something wonderful, giving it an intense joy. When they like to be quite close to you in that way, when you hold them, it is that they  vibrate internally. The force one gives them — the strength of affection, of tenderness, protection, all that — they feel it, and it creates a deep attachment in them. Even fairly easily, in some of the higher animals like dogs, elephants, and even horses, it creates quite a remarkable need for devotion (which indeed is not thwarted by all the reasonings and arguments of the mind), which is spontaneous and very pure in its essence, something that’s very beautiful.  The working of the mind in man in its rudimentary form, its ﬁrst manifestation has spoilt many things which were much ﬁner before.


The Mother: Naturally, if man rises to a higher level and makes good use of his intelligence, then things can take on a much greater value. But between the two, there is a passage where man makes the most vulgar and low use of his intelligence; he makes it an instrument for calculation, domination, deception, and there it becomes very ugly. I have known in my life animals I considered much higher than many people, for that sordid calculation, that wish to cheat and proﬁt was precisely not there in them. There are others that catch it — through contact with man they catch it — but there are those who don’t have it.  The unselﬁsh movement, uncalculating, is one of the most beautiful forms of psychic consciousness in the world.


The Mother: But the higher one rises in the scale of mental activity, the rarer it becomes. For with intelligence come all the skill and cleverness, and corruption, calculation. For instance, when a rose blossoms it does so spontaneously, for the joy of being beautiful, smelling sweet, expressing all its joy of living, and it does not calculate, it has nothing to gain out of it: it does so spontaneously, in the joy of being and living. Take a human being, well, apart from a very few exceptions, the moment his mind is active he tries to get some advantage out of his beauty and cleverness; he wants it to bring him something, either men’s admiration or even much more sordid gains yet. Consequently, from the psychic point of view, the rose is better than human beings.


The Mother: Only, if you climb a rung higher and consciously do what the rose does unconsciously, then it is much more beautiful. But it must be the same thing: a spontaneous ﬂowering of beauty, uncalculating, simply for the joy of being. Little children have this at times (at times, not always). Unfortunately, under the inﬂuence of their parents and the environment, they learn to be calculating when yet very young.  But this kind of wish to gain by what one has or does is truly one of the ugliest things in the world.


The Mother: And it is one of the most widespread and it has become so widespread, that it is almost spontaneous in man. Nothing can turn its back on the divine love more totally than that, that wish to calculate and proﬁt.  This is their form of love, this blossoming. Certainly, when one sees a rose opening to the sun, it is like a need to give its beauty.  Only, for us, it is almost unintelligible, for they do not think about what they do.


The Mother: A human being always associates with everything he does this ability to see himself doing it, that is, to think about himself, think of himself doing it. Man knows that he is doing something. Animals don’t think. It is not at all the same form of love. And ﬂowers, so to speak, are not conscious: it is a spontaneous movement, not a consciousness that is conscious of itself, not at all.


The Mother: But it is a great Force which acts through all that, the great universal Consciousness and the great Force of universal love which makes all things blossom in beauty.  That is what I have written there also ( ):   You know, crystals which are formed in matter already obey a movement of love; but this becomes quite perceptible in the vegetable kingdom, in the tree and plant. It is the need to grow to get more light. All these trees which are always growing higher — always growing, the smaller ones trying to catch up with the taller, the taller ones trying to climb yet higher; you put two plants side by side, they both try to ﬁnd an orientation that gives them the maximum light possible — that is the need to grow to get more air, more light, more space ( ): ... which in human beings becomes maternal love.


The Mother: The only difference is that it is conscious of itself. And in animals it is often even purer than in human beings. There are instances of the devotion, care, self-forgetfulness of animals for their young, which are absolutely wonderful. Only, it is spontaneous, not thought out, not reﬂected upon; the animal does not think about what it is doing. Man thinks.


The Mother: At times this spoils the movement (at times — most often), sometimes it can give it a higher worth but that is rare. There is less spontaneity in man’s movements than in an animal’s.  I had a puss, the ﬁrst time it had its kittens it did not want to move from there. It did not eat, did not satisfy any call of nature.  It remained there, stuck to her kittens, shielding them, feeding them; it was so afraid that something would happen to them.


The Mother: And that was quite unthought out, spontaneous. It refused to move, so frightened it was that some harm might come to them  — just through instinct. And then, when they were bigger, the trouble it took to educate them — it was marvellous. And what patience! And how it taught them to jump from wall to wall, to catch their food; how, with what care, it repeated once, ten times, a hundred times if necessary.


The Mother: It was never tired until the little one had done what it wanted. An extraordinary education.  It taught them how to skirt houses following the edge of walls, how to walk so as not to fall, what had to be done when there was much space between one wall and another, in order to cross over. The little ones were quite afraid when they saw the gap and refused to jump because they were frightened (it was not too far for them, but there was the gap and they did not dare) and then the mother jumped, it went over to the other side, it called them: come, come along. They did not move, they were trembling.


The Mother: It jumped back and then gave them a speech, it gave them little blows with its paw and licked them, and yet they did not move. It jumped. I saw it do this for over half an hour. But after half an hour it found that they had learnt enough, so it went behind the one it evidently considered the most ready, the most capable, and gave it a hard knock with its head. Then the little one, instinctively, jumped.


The Mother: Once it had jumped, it jumped again and again and again....  There are few mothers who have this patience., my children. That’s all? Nothing more?... Good night.


The Mother: It is impossible.   Religion is always a limitation for the spirit.  If a man has a spiritual life independently of his mental formations and the set limits in which he lives, then this spiritual life makes him, so to say, cross the religious principles and enter something higher.


The Mother: But his consecration must come from within and not be formal. If it comes exclusively from the form, then the limitation is so great that he cannot go farther.  There are people who have necessarily to come out of their religion if they do not want to be halted in their progress. But those who have practically no mental activity, who do not ask themselves any questions, who have only an intense devotion in their heart and an urge to give themselves to something that is inﬁnitely greater, for these it does not matter whether they have a religion or not. It is all the same.