The Mother: ﬁrst, one must try not to be selﬁsh — which is something quite different, isn’t it?... If you take the English words you understand the difference. In English, you see, there is the word “selﬁsh”, and there is also the word “egoism”. The ego — “ego” — exists in English, and “selﬁsh”. And these are two very different things; in French there is not this distinction.


The Mother: They say, “I don’t want to be selﬁsh”, you see. But this is a very small thing, very small! People, when they stop being selﬁsh, think they have made tremendous  progress! But it’s a very small thing. It is simply, oh, it is simply to have a sense of its ridiculousness.


The Mother: You can’t imagine how ridiculous these selﬁsh people are!  When one sees them thinking all the time about themselves, referring everything to themselves, governed simply by their own little person, placing themselves in the centre of the universe and trying to organise the whole universe including God around themselves, as though that were the most important thing in the universe. If one could only see oneself objectively, you know, as one sees oneself in a mirror, observe oneself living, it is so grotesque! ( )


The Mother: That’s enough for you to... One suddenly feels that he is becoming — oh, so absolutely ridiculous!   I remember I read in French — it was a translation — a sentence of Tagore’s which amused me very much. He was speaking of a little dog.


The Mother: He said... he compared it with something... I don’t remember the details now, but what struck me was this: the little dog was sitting on its mistress’s lap and fancying itself the centre of the universe! This struck me very strongly. It is true!


The Mother: I used to know a little dog like this! But there are many like that, almost all are like that. You see, they want everybody to pay attention to them, and in fact they succeed very well. Because when there is a little dog, as when there is a little child — it’s almost the same thing — everyone attends to them.  Haven’t you noticed that when a child of this height ( ) comes along, everything else stops?


The Mother: Before that, people could speak, say interesting things, be busy with something higher; but as soon as a child comes along, everybody begins to smile, to mimic a baby, to try to make it speak, to attend to it. One can’t bring along a child without everybody fussing over it, wanting to take it, to make it speak. So naturally the child feels itself the centre of the universe! It is quite natural!  For a puppy it is the same thing, for a kitten it is the same.


The Mother: It is a kind of... it is a very poor deformation of a kind of need to protect something that’s smaller than oneself. And this is one of the forms, one of the earliest forms of unegoistic manifestation of  the ego! It feels so comfortable when it can protect something, busy itself with something much smaller, much weaker than itself, which is almost at its mercy, almost — even entirely — at its mercy, which has no power to resist. And so one feels good and generous because one doesn’t crush it!


The Mother: This is the ﬁrst manifestation of generosity in the world.  But all this, when one can see behind it and a little above, it cures you from being selﬁsh, for truly it is ridiculous! It is truly ridiculous!  So there is a long, long, long way to go before merging one’s ego in the Divine.


The Mother: Merge one’s ego in the Divine! But ﬁrst, one can’t merge one’s ego in the Divine before becoming completely individualised. Do you know what it means to be individualised? Capable of resisting all outer inﬂuences?  Some days ago I received a letter from someone who told me that he was very hesitant about reading books of ordinary literature, for example, novels or dramas, because his nature had an almost insuperable tendency to receive imprints of the characters in these books and to begin living the feelings and thoughts of these characters, the nature of these persons.


The Mother: There are many more people than one would think who are like that.  They read a book and while they are reading it they feel within themselves all kinds of emotions, thoughts, desires, intentions, plans, even ideals. They are simply just absorbed in the reading of the book. They are not even aware of it, because at least ninety-nine parts of an individual’s character are made of soft butter — inedible of course... but on which if one presses one’s thumb, an imprint is made.  Now, everything is a “thumb”: an expressed thought, a sentence read, an object looked at, an observation of what someone else does, and of one’s neighbour’s will.


The Mother: And all these wills... you know, when one sees them they are all there, like this, intermingled (), each one trying to get the uppermost and causing a kind of perpetual conﬂict within,  outside.... It goes in and out of people like that, you see, like electric currents. One is not at all aware of all this, and it is a perpetual conﬂict of all the wills which are trying to express themselves; and the strongest one will succeed. But as there are many of these and as one has to ﬁght alone against a great number, it is not easy.


The Mother: So one is tossed like a cork on the waves of the sea.... One day one wants this, the next day one wants that, at one moment one is pushed from this side, at another from that, now one lifts one’s face to the sky (), now one is sunk deep in a hole. And so this is the existence one has!  First one must become a conscious, well-knit, being, who exists in himself, by himself, independently of all his surroundings, who can hear anything, read anything, see anything without changing. He receives from outside only what he wants to receive; he automatically refuses all that is not in conformity with his plan and nothing can leave an imprint on him unless he agrees to receive the imprint.


The Mother: Then one begins to become an individuality! When one is an individuality, one can make an offering of it.  For, unless one possesses something, one cannot give it. First, one must be, and then afterwards one can give oneself.


The Mother: And for the separative ego to disappear, as you say, one must be able to give oneself entirely, totally without reservation. And to be able to give oneself, one must ﬁrst exist. And to exist one must be individualised.  If your body were not made in the rigid form it is — for it is terribly rigid, isn’t it? — well, if all that were not so ﬁxed, if you had no skin, here, like this, solid, if externally you were the reﬂection of what you are in the vital and mental ﬁelds, it would be worse than being a jelly-ﬁsh! Everything would fuse into everything else, like this....


The Mother: Oh, what a mess it would be!  That is why it was at ﬁrst necessary to give a very rigid form.  Afterwards we complain about it. We say, “The physical is ﬁxed,  it is a nuisance; it lacks plasticity, it lacks suppleness, it hasn’t that ﬂuidity which can enable us to merge into the Divine.” But this was absolutely necessary, for without this... if you simply went out of your body (most of you can’t do it because the vital being is hardly more individualised than the physical), if you came out of your body and went into the vital world, you would see that all things there intermingle, they are mixed, they divide; all kinds of vibrations, currents of forces come and go, struggle, try to destroy one another, take possession of each other, absorb each other, throw each other out...


The Mother: and so it goes on! But it is very difﬁcult to ﬁnd a real personality in all this.  These are forces, movements, desires, vibrations.  There are individualities, there are personalities! But these are powers.


The Mother: People who are individualised in that world are either heroes or devils!   And now, in the mind... () If only you become conscious of your physical mind in itself... Some people have called it a public square, because everything comes there, goes across, passes, comes back....


The Mother: All ideas go there, they enter at one place, leave by another, some are here, some there, and it is a public square, not very well organised, for usually ideas meet and knock into one another, there are accidents of all kinds. But then one becomes aware: “?” or “ ?”  One needs years of very attentive, very careful, very reasonable, very coherent work, organisation, selection, construction, in order to succeed simply in forming, oh, simply this little thing, !  One believes one has one’s own way of thinking. Not at all.


The Mother: It depends totally upon the people one speaks with or the books one has read or on the mood one is in. It depends also on whether you have a good or bad digestion, it depends on whether you are shut up in a room without proper ventilation or whether you are in the open air; it depends on whether you have a beautiful landscape before you; it depends on whether  there is sunshine or rain! You are not aware of it, but you think all kinds of things, completely different according to a heap of things which have nothing to do with you!  And for this to become a coordinated, coherent, logical thought, a long thorough work is necessary. And then, the best part of it is that when you have succeeded in making a beautiful, well-formed, very strong, very powerful mental construction, the ﬁrst thing you will be told is, “You must break this so that you can unite with the Divine!”


The Mother: But so long as you haven’t made it, you cannot unite with the Divine because you have nothing to give to the Divine except a mass of things which are not yourself!.  I am repeating what I said a while ago.  Truly, in the present state of the world, the only thing one can give the Divine is one’s body. But that’s what one doesn’t give Him. Yes, one can try to consecrate one’s work!


The Mother: But still, here there are so many elements which are not true!  You want to merge your body in the Divine, eh? Just try!  How are you going to do this? You can merge your mind, you can merge your vital, you can fuse all your emotions, you can fuse all your aspirations, you can fuse all that, but your body — how are you going to do that?


The Mother: You are not going to melt it in a boiling-pot! () And yet it is the only thing about which you can say with certitude, “It is”, and give a name to it; yet even your name is a convention... but still, you are in the habit of calling yourself by a certain name — say, “This, this is I.” You look at yourself in a mirror, and although what you were twenty years ago is very different from what you are now... it is unrecognisable...


The Mother: still something makes you say all the same, “Yes, this is I.” Yes? “I am so-and-so” — Peter, Louis, Jack, Andr´e, whoever it may be....  ( ) And even this, if one were to look at oneself, every seven years all the cells are changed, and it is only by a kind of habit that it remains the same.


The Mother: Does it remain the same?  Do you have photographs of the time you were very young? And  the photographs when you were ten, twenty, thirty years old — it is because one very much wants to do so that one recognises oneself; otherwise, truly, one is not at all the same.... When you were this height and now when you are this height, that makes a considerable difference! So, there we are...


The Mother: All this... it is not in order to swamp you that I tell you all this. It is only in order to tell you that before speaking of merging one’s ego in the Divine, one must ﬁrst know a little what one is. The ego is there. Its necessity is that you become conscious, independent beings, individualised — I mean in the sense of independent — that you may not be the public square where everything goes criss-cross!


The Mother: That you may exist in yourselves. That is why there is an ego. It is like that; that is why also there is a skin, like that... though truly, even physical forces pass through the skin. There is a vibration which goes a certain distance. But still, it’s the skin that prevents us from blending into one another.


The Mother: But everything else must be like that too.  ( ) And then, later, one offers all this to the Divine. Years of work are needed.


The Mother: You must not only... ( )... become conscious of yourself, conscious in all details, but you must organise what you call “yourself” around the psychic centre, the divine centre of your being, so that it would make a single, coherent, fully conscious being. And as this divine centre is itself already consecrated ( ) entirely to the Divine, if everything is organised harmoniously around it, everything is consecrated to the Divine.  And so, when the Divine thinks it proper, when the time has come, when the work of individualisation is complete, then the Divine gives you permission to let your ego merge in Him, to live henceforward only for the Divine.  But it is the Divine who takes this decision. You must ﬁrst have done all this work, become a conscious being, solely and exclusively centred around the Divine and governed by Him.


The Mother: And after all that, there is still an ego; because it is  the ego which serves to make you an individual. But once this work is perfect, fully accomplished, then, at that moment, you may tell the Divine, “Here I am, I am ready. Do you want me?” And the Divine usually says, “Yes.” All is over, everything is accomplished.


The Mother: And you become a real instrument for the Divine’s work. But ﬁrst the instrument must be constructed.  You think that you are sent to school, that you are made to do exercises, all this just for the pleasure of vexing you? Oh, no! It is because it’s indispensable for you to have a frame in which you can learn how to form yourself.


The Mother: If you did your work of individualisation, of total formation, by yourself, all alone in a corner, nothing at all would be asked of you. But you don’t do it, you wouldn’t do it, there’s not a single child who would do it, he wouldn’t even know how to do it, where to begin.  If a child were not taught how to live, he could not live, he wouldn’t know how to do anything, anything. I don’t want to speak about disgusting details, but even the most elementary things he would not do properly if he were not taught how to do them. Therefore, one must, step by step...


The Mother: That is to say, if everyone had to go through the whole experience needed for the formation of an individuality, he would be long dead before having begun to live! This is the contribution — accumulated through centuries — of those who have had the experience and tell you, “Well, if you want to go quickly, to know in a few years what has been learnt through centuries, do this!” Read, learn, study and then, in the material ﬁeld, you will be taught to do this in this way, that in that way, this again in this way ().  Once you know a little, you can ﬁnd your own method, if you have the genius for it! But ﬁrst one must stand on one’s own feet and know how to walk.


The Mother: It is very difﬁcult to learn it all alone.  It’s like that for everyone. One must form oneself. Therefore, one needs education. There we are!


The Mother: ( ) Do you have something to ask? No?


The Mother: Is there anyone who has something to ask?   That one doesn’t commit stupidities?  Yes, yes.  One has sat upon it.  For that, ﬁrst of all, you must become conscious of it, you see, put it right in front of you, and cut the links which attach it to your consciousness.


The Mother: It is a work of inner psychology, you know.  One can see, when one studies oneself very attentively.... For example, if you observe yourself, you see that one day you are very generous. Let us take this, it is easy to understand. Very generous: generous in your feelings, generous in your sensations, generous in your thoughts and even in material things; that is, you understand the faults of others, their intentions, weaknesses, even nasty movements.


The Mother: You see all this, and you are full of good feelings, of generosity. You tell yourself, “Well... everyone does the best he can!” — like that.   Another day — or perhaps the very next minute — you will notice in yourself a kind of dryness, ﬁxity, something that is bitter, that judges severely, that goes as far as bearing a grudge, has rancour, would like the evil-doer punished, that almost has feelings of vengeance; just the very opposite of the former! One day someone harms you and you say, “Doesn’t matter! He did not know”... or “He couldn’t do otherwise”... or “That’s his nature”... or “He could not understand!”


The Mother: The next day — or perhaps an hour later — you say, “He must be punished! He must pay for it! He must be made to feel that he has done wrong!” — with a kind of rage; and you want to take things, you want to keep them for yourself, you have all the feelings of jealousy, envy, narrowness, you see, just the very opposite of the other feeling.  This is the dark side. And so, the moment one sees it, if one looks at it and doesn’t say, “It is I”, if one says, “No, it is my shadow, it is the being I must throw out of myself”, one puts on it the light of the other part, one tries to bring them face to face;


The Mother: and with the knowledge and light of the other, one doesn’t try so much to convince — because that is very difﬁcult — but one compels it to remain quiet... ﬁrst to stand farther away, then one ﬂings it very far away so that it can no longer return — putting a great light on it. There are instances in which it is possible to change, but this is very rare. There are instances in which one can put upon this being — or this shadow — put upon it such an intense light that it transforms it, and it changes into what is the truth of your being.  But this is a rare thing....


The Mother: It can be done, but it is rare.  Usually, the best thing is to say, “No, this is not I! I don’t want it! I have nothing to do with this movement, it doesn’t exist for me, it is something contrary to my nature!” And so, by dint of insisting and driving it away, ﬁnally one separates oneself from it.


The Mother: But one must ﬁrst be clear and sincere enough to see the conﬂict within oneself. Usually one doesn’t pay any attention to  these things. One goes from one extreme to the other. You see, you can say, to put it in very simple words: one day I am good, the next day I am bad. And this seems quite natural....


The Mother: Or even, sometimes for one hour you are good and the next hour you are wicked; or else, sometimes the whole day through one is good and suddenly one becomes wicked, for a minute very wicked, all the more wicked as one was good! Only, one doesn’t observe it, thoughts cross one’s mind, violent, bad, hateful things, like that... Usually one pays no attention to it. But this is what must be caught! As soon as it manifests, you must catch it like this () with a very ﬁrm grip, and then hold it, hold it up to the light and say, “No!


The Mother: I don’t want you! I — don’t — want — you! I have nothing to do with this! You are going to get out of here, and you won’t return!”  (


The Mother: ) And this is something — an experience that one can have daily, or almost... when one has those movements of great enthusiasm, great aspiration, when one suddenly becomes conscious of the divine goal, the urge towards the Divine, the desire to take part in the divine work, when one comes out of oneself in a great joy and great force... and then, a few hours later, one is miserable for a tiny little thing; one indulges in so petty, so narrow, so commonplace a self-interestedness, has such a dull desire... and all the rest has evaporated as if it did not exist. One is quite accustomed to contradictions; one doesn’t pay attention to this and that is why all these things live comfortably together as neighbours. One must ﬁrst discover them and prevent them from intermingling in one’s consciousness: decide between them, separate the shadow from the light.


The Mother: Later one can get rid of the shadow.  There we are, and now it is time. Anything urgent to ask?  No?  Ah!


The Mother: Those that one has! ()   I don’t think there is much difference; it is almost the same thing. Perhaps the attitude is not quite the same, but there is not much of a difference. In “servant” there seems to be something more: it is the joy of serving. The worker — he has only the joy of the work.


The Mother: But the work that is done as a service brings still greater joy.  I think self-love is a pleasant word for vanity. Self-love means that one loves oneself more than anything else; and what he implies by this, you see, are exactly those reactions of a vanity which is vexed when one is not appreciated at one’s true worth, when one does not receive the praise one thinks one deserves, or the reward one believes one has earned, and when one is not complimented for everything one does. Indeed, all these movements come from dissatisfaction, because one doesn’t receive what one hoped to, what one thought one deserved to receive!  It is the opposite of a passive or inert identiﬁcation.


The Mother: It is an identiﬁcation that is full of energy, will, action, enthusiasm; whereas one can be identiﬁed also in a kind of torpor.    Words of Long Ago  Um! So! We justify all our weaknesses?


The Mother: It is not a positive want of self-conﬁdence; it is a lack of conﬁdence in what the divine Grace can do for us. To justify one’s weaknesses is a kind of laziness and inertia.  Well, when one doesn’t want to make an effort to correct oneself, one says, “Oh, it is impossible, I can’t do it, I don’t have the strength, I am not made of that stuff, I don’t have the necessary qualities, I could never do it.” It is absolute laziness, it is in order to avoid the required effort. When you are asked to make progress: “Oh, it is beyond my capacity, I am a poor creature, I can do nothing!”


The Mother: That’s all. It is almost ill-will. It is extreme laziness, a refusal to make any effort. One accepts all one’s defects and incapacities in order not to have to make the necessary effort to overcome them. One says, “I am like that, I can’t be otherwise!”


The Mother: It is a refusal to let the divine Grace work in you. It is a justiﬁcation of your own ill-will.  Has someone there a question? Or isn’t there any?  The universe is called the play of the Divine!


The Mother: Why? That’s a way of speaking! You feel that it is not an amusing game? There are many who don’t (), who ﬁnd that the play is not amusing. But still, it’s a way of speaking....


The Mother: One speaks of — without thinking that it is joyful — one speaks of “the play  of forces”; it is the movement, the interaction. All activities are the play of forces. So one can take it in that sense. But, you see, it means that the divine Force, the divine Consciousness, has exteriorised itself to create the universe and all the play of forces in the universe. That’s what it means, nothing else.


The Mother: I don’t mean necessarily playing in the Playground! It can mean many other things!  ( ) Nothing? You don’t have anything either?  Perversions of the ego?


The Mother: ( ) Perversion is something that goes astray from the divine truth and purity. The moment you start living in ignorance and falsehood, you live in perversion; and the whole world is made of ignorance and falsehood at present. So this means that if you remain in the ordinary consciousness, you are necessarily in the perversion of the ego.


The Mother: But surely...  It is not even very difﬁcult. You can ﬁrst do it as a preparation so as to become capable of receiving the divine forces, and then, as a service, so that you may help in constructing the whole organisation of the Ashram. You can do it not with any personal  gain in view, but with the intention of making yourselves ready to accomplish the divine work!


The Mother: This seems to me even quite indispensable if you want to proﬁt fully from the situation. If you keep the ordinary point of view, well, you will always ﬁnd yourselves in conditions which are not quite satisfactory, and incapable of receiving all the forces you can receive.  Eh? Excuse me, it is not for the pleasure of doing the long jump, it is to make your body more perfect in its functioning, and, therefore, a more suitable instrument for receiving the divine forces and manifesting them.  Why, everything, everything one does in this place must be done in this spirit, otherwise you do not even proﬁt by the opportunity given to you, the circumstances given to you.


The Mother: I explained to you the other day, didn’t I, that the Consciousness is here, penetrating all things and trying to manifest in all movements?  But if you, on your side, tell yourself that the effort you are making, the progress you are making, you make in order to become more capable of receiving this Consciousness and of manifesting it, the work will naturally be much better and much quicker. And this seems to me even quite elementary, to tell you the truth; I am surprised that it could be otherwise! Because your presence in an Ashram organised as it is organised would have no meaning if it were not that! Of what use would it be?


The Mother: There are any number of universities, schools in the world which are very well organised!  But if you are here, it is for! It is because here there is a possibility of absorbing consciousness and progress which is not found elsewhere. And if you don’t prepare yourselves to receive this, well, you will lose the chance that’s given to you!   Why, I have never spoken of this before, because it seemed so obvious to me that it was not at all necessary to say it.


The Mother: No, but... () What do you think, in a general way? It is by some kind of chance or luck — or just because your parents are here — that by chance you happen to be here, or what?


The Mother: I don’t know! ( ) That you could as well be here as anywhere else, or what?


The Mother: You are all old enough to have thought a little, and reﬂected a little. You have never asked yourselves, “Why am I here?”  Have you asked yourselves this? Or is it something which... I indeed thought that you ought to take it as something quite... that it was understood, quite natural!


The Mother: So, I never spoke to you about it. Why, I would be interested in knowing... () Have you thought of this, you there?


The Mother: That’s right, but you can repeat it. () And you?  Have you thought about it? Or do you take it like that... because papa and mamma are here, so I am here? ()


The Mother: ( )  And you?  Ah, you understood! Not before that?


The Mother: But how old are you all, on an average, here? Fifteen or sixteen?  Seventeen? Twenty? No?


The Mother: It is not like that? The Red Group is  between ﬁfteen and twenty, isn’t it? Are there some here who are younger?  But one begins to think at thirteen. One begins to think, to ask oneself questions, one even wonders, “What is life, and why do we live?”


The Mother: And still more when one ﬁnds oneself in a place like this, which is not quite an ordinary place: “Why am I here?” and “What is the use of being here?” and “What is the reason for being here?” Eh? — You do not think? You do not think? I know two or three of you who think about it because you have told me.


The Mother: But () the others? You have never asked yourselves these questions, no?... Nobody is saying a word! ()   (


The Mother: ) So you, you have never thought about it? You have. () Ah!


The Mother: They don’t want to say anything.  All right, let’s not talk any more about it then. ( )  That’s all?


The Mother: Is that enough?  Ah, that is interesting! What is the reason of your being here?  Well, it’s for each one to ﬁnd it. Have you found it, you?


The Mother: No, not yet? Why, that’s another very interesting question!  If you... ( ) If you asked yourselves this, you would be obliged to seek the answer somewhere, within — because it is you, the answer.


The Mother: “What is there in us that has made us come here?” The answer is within. There is nothing outside. And if you go deep enough, you will ﬁnd a very clear answer... ( ) and an interesting answer.


The Mother: If you go deep enough, into a sufﬁciently complete silence from all outer things, you will ﬁnd within you that ﬂame about which I often speak, and in this ﬂame you will see You will see the aspiration of centuries which has been concentrated gradually, to lead you  through countless births — that preparation which has been made through thousands of years, and is reaching its culmination.  And as you will have gone very deep to ﬁnd this, all your incapacities, all your weaknesses, everything in you that denies and does not understand, all that — you will feel that it is not yourself, it is just like a garment which serves in some way and which you have put on for the time being. But you will understand that in order to be truly capable of proﬁting fully by the opportunity to do what you wanted to do, what you have aspired to do for such a long time, you must gradually bring the light, the consciousness, the truth into all these obscure elements of the external garment, so that you may be able to understand integrally! And not only that you may understand it, but that you may be able to do it .


The Mother: For centuries this has been prepared in you, not in this... ( ) this is quite recent, isn’t it?... but in your true self.  And it has been awaiting  And then you enter into the marvellous. You see to what an extent it is extraordinary... that things which one has so long hoped for, things for which one has prayed so much, made so many efforts, suddenly a moment comes when It is the moment when great things are done.


The Mother: One must not miss the opportunity.   ( )  On the 15th of August I shall give you something written by Sri Aurobindo which is precisely on this subject — it is called You will read it carefully and you will understand.


The Mother: There we are.   These!  ()  Yes.


The Mother: What does this mean? It means what it says. ( ) It means that in the world the single force of the creating energy is divided in all the manifestations, even the most contrary manifestations, you see.


The Mother: It is this single force which, in the creation, is divided into Purusha and Prakriti and, also, energy and resistance. That’s what it means; at the origin the force is single and in the manifestation it is divided, and it is divided in all the contraries, which are at the same time complementaries. Because, for creation, this division was necessary, otherwise there would have been only one single thing all the time.   It means the incarnation of an emanation. An emanation of the Mother incarnates in a being and this being becomes a Vibhuti.


The Mother: This means, you see, that precisely there are different qualities, different ways of being which manifest in different forms and that each of these forms is one of the godheads whom men have worshipped and whom they understand because of the limitations. When something is limited it is more easily understandable for man than when it is unlimited, for man has a limited nature and he naturally understands what is limited. And so, to be comprehensible, things must be divided and limited. Otherwise the Power in its essence, which is indivisible and unlimited, is absolutely above human comprehension — for man as he now is, in his present state.  “The triple world...”?


The Mother: The Ignorance?  Matter, life and mind; that is, the physical, the vital and the mental, the triple world of the Ignorance.  What?   My child, you must see them. When you see them you will know....


The Mother: The aspect is different in each case, according to the people to whom she shows herself, according to the work she does... not the one seen in this body.   Oh, Lord! ( )


The Mother: When a very small child tries to make someone’s portrait, does it resemble that person? It is very much like this, sometimes worse! Because the child is frank and sincere, whereas the one who makes the images of the gods is full of ﬁxed notions and preconceived ideas, or else of all that others have said about the subject and of what has been written in the scriptures and what has been seen by people. And so he is bound by all that., there are artists who have an inner vision, a great aspiration, a great purity of soul and of vision, who have made things which are reasonably good.


The Mother: But this is extremely rare. And generally, I believe it is almost the opposite.  I have seen some of these forms in the vital and mental worlds, which were truly human creations. There is a force from beyond which manifests. But in these triple worlds of falsehood, truly man has created God in his own image — more or less — and there are beings which manifest in forms which are the result of the formative thought of man.


The Mother: And here, you see, it is truly frightful! I have seen some of these formations... ()  and all this is so obscure, so incomprehensible, inexpressive....   Some of the gods are more ill-treated than others.


The Mother: For example, that poor Mahakali, you know, what things are done to her!... It is so, it is unimaginable! But this form lives  only in a very low world... yes, in the lowest vital; and what it possesses of the original being is something... a reﬂection so remote from the origin that it is unrecognisable. However, usually, it is this that is attracted by human consciousness. And when an idol is made, you see, and the priest brings down a form — when the ceremony takes place in a regular manner, he puts himself in an inner state of invocation and tries to bring down a form or an emanation of the godhead into the idol in order to give it a power — if the priest is truly a man with a power of invocation, he can succeed.


The Mother: But usually — there are exceptions to everything — but usually these people have been educated in the common ideas according to tradition. And so, when they think of the godhead whom they are invoking, they think of all the attributes and appearances that have been given to it, and the invocation is usually addressed to entities of the vital world or at best to those of the mental world, but not to the Being itself. And it is these small entities which manifest in one idol or another. All these idols in small temples or even in families — some people have their little shrines, you know, in their homes and keep an image of the godhead they worship — these entities manifest in them; sometimes the consequences are rather unfortunate, for these forms are precisely remote from the original godhead that... they are awkward formations.  Some of those Kalis they worship in certain families are veritable monsters!


The Mother: I can tell you, believe me, that I have advised some people to take the statue and throw it in the Ganges in order to get rid of a thoroughly disastrous inﬂuence. In fact, this has succeeded very well.... Some of these are... unlucky presences. But this is man’s own fault. It is not the fault of the godheads.


The Mother: It would be wrong to put the blame on the godheads. It is man’s fault. He wants to fashion the gods in his own image. Some who are wicked make them still more autocratic; and those who are nice make them still more nice; that is, men have magniﬁed their own defects a little more.


The Mother: In the mental world human thought is constantly creating forms.  Human thought is very creative in the mental world. All the time when you are thinking, you are creating forms and you send them out in the atmosphere and they go and do their work.  Constantly you are surrounded by a heap of small formations.  Naturally, there are people who can’t even think clearly.


The Mother: So they form nothing at all except faint eddies. But people who think clearly are surrounded by a heap of little forms which, sometimes, go out to do some work in others; and when one thinks of them again, they return.  And we have instances of people who are troubled by their own formations, which return constantly as though to take possession of them, and which they can’t get rid of because they don’t know how to undo the formations they have made. There are more cases of this kind than one would think. When they have made a particularly strong formation — for themselves, you see, relatively — this formation is always tied up with the one who makes it and returns to knock at the brain to receive forces and ends up by truly acting as a necessity.


The Mother: It is a whole world to know; one truly lives in ignorance, one has powers one doesn’t know about, so naturally one uses them very badly. One uses them somewhat unconsciously and very badly.  I don’t know if you have ever heard of Madame DavidNeel who went to Tibet and has written books on Tibet, and who was a Buddhist; and Buddhists — Buddhists of the strictest tradition — do not believe in the Divine, do not believe in his Eternity and do not believe in gods who are truly divine, but they know admirably how to use the mental domain; and Buddhist discipline makes you a good master of the mental instrument and mental domain.  We used to discuss many things and once she told me: “Listen, I made an experiment.”


The Mother: (She had studied a bit of theosophy also.) She said: “I formed a; with my thought I formed  a” And she knew (this has been proved) that at a given moment mental formations acquire a personal life independent of the fashioner — though they are linked with him — but independent, in the sense that they can have their own will. And so she told me: “Just imagine, I had made my so well that he became a personality independent of me and constantly came to trouble me! He used to come, scold me for one thing, give me advice for another, and he wanted to direct my life; and I could not succeed in getting rid of him.


The Mother: It was extremely difﬁcult, and I didn’t know what to do!”  So I asked her how she had tried. She told me how. She said, “He troubles me a lot, my very troublesome.  He does not leave me in peace.


The Mother: He disturbs my meditations, he hinders me from working; and yet I know quite well that it is I who created him, and I can’t get rid of him!” Then I said, “That’s because you don’t have the ‘trick’....” ( )  And I explained to her what she should do.


The Mother: And the next day — I used to see her almost every day in those days, you see — the next day she came and told me, “Ah, I am freed from my !” () She had not the connection because that’s of no use. One must know how to one’s creation, that is the only way. To swallow up again one’s formations.  But, you see, in a smaller measure and less perfectly one is making formations all the time.


The Mother: When, for instance, one thinks of somebody quite powerfully, there is a small emanation of mental substance which, instantaneously, goes to this person, you understand, a vibration of your thought which goes and touches his; and if he is receptive, he sees you. He sees you and tells you, “You came last night to see me!” That’s because you made a small formation and this formation went and did its work, which was to put you into contact with this person or else to carry a message if you had something special to tell him; and that was done. This happens constantly, but as it is quite a constant and spontaneous phenomenon and done in ignorance, one is not even aware that one does this, one does it automatically.   People who have desires add to the mental formation a kind of small envelope, a vital shell which gives it a still greater reality.


The Mother: These people are usually surrounded by a number of tiny entities which are their own formations, their own mental formations clothed with vital force, which come all the time to strike them to try to make them realise materially the formations they have made.  You have perhaps read the books of Maurice Magre; there are some in the library. He describes this; he had come here, Maurice Magre, and we spoke and he told me that he had always noticed — he was highly sensitive — he had always noticed that people who have sexual desires are surrounded by a kind of small swarm of entities who are somewhat viscous and rather ugly and which torment them constantly, awakening desire in them. He said he had seen this around certain people. It was like being surrounded by a swarm of mosquitoes, yes!


The Mother: But it is more gross, and much uglier still, and it is viscous, it is horrible, and it turns round and round the person and gives him no peace, and it awakens in him the desire that has formed these entities and they batten on it. It is their food. This is absolutely true.  His observation was quite correct. His vision was very true.


The Mother: It like that.  But everyone carries around himself the atmosphere of his own desires. So you don’t at all require that people should tell you anything; you have only to look and you see around them exactly the state they are in. They may want to give themselves the airs of angels or saints but they can’t deceive you, because that thing is there, turning around them. So, just imagine!


The Mother: ( .) You see what you are like, how many of you there, all of you here, and each one has his own little world in this way, of mental formations of which some are clothed in vital substance, and all these crawl together, mix with each other, knock against each other. There is a struggle to see which is the strongest, which tries to realise itself, and all this creates an atmosphere indeed!...   When you come to me, it is all this I see. It is exactly this I see, and that is why your coming is useful.


The Mother: Because, to give you a ﬂower is of course very nice, but that’s not anything much... there are things more important than that. But every time I see you, in a second — a ﬂash is enough, a second — each one who comes appears with all his formations, and then I do just... I do just this... (). The ﬂower is an excuse, through the ﬂower I give something.


The Mother: And then, when sometimes, you know, I seem to go deep within, my eyes close, and then very slowly either I give something or I don’t move for a moment — that’s when the work to be done is urgent. Sometimes it is necessary to intervene for one reason or another, to help or to demolish something, or to push you towards some progress which is beginning, or other things like that.... So I just catch hold of your hand sometimes, you see: “Don’t move!” So the person thinks: “Mother has gone into a trance.” I feel quite amused....


The Mother: ( ) I am busy working, putting things in order; sometimes I am obliged to perform a surgical operation, I take away certain things which are there and should not be there. A second is enough, you see, I don’t need any time for this; sometimes the work takes a little longer, a few more seconds, a minute.... Otherwise, usually — in a general way — when things are as we would say “normal”, it is enough just to see, you understand, and... the response?


The Mother: I give the ﬂower... even without the ﬂower, like this... simply I put just the little ﬂash or sometimes the little red-hot iron, or a light, anything, and just at the right moment and the right place where it is needed... and “!  Ah, my child, terribly afraid! ( )


The Mother: All those which are illwilled try to hide, and usually do you know what they do? They  gather together behind the head of the one who comes () in order not to be seen. But this is useless, because, just think, I have the capacity to see through. ( )


The Mother: Otherwise — they always do this, instinctively. When they can manage to get in, they try to get in. But then... I intervene with greater force, because that is nasty. These are people who have the instinct to hide, you see.


The Mother: So I pursue them, there inside. With others very little is needed, very little; but there are some — there are such people, you know, they themselves have told me — when they are about to come to me, it is as though there were something which pulled them back, which told them: “No, no, no, it’s not worthwhile, why go there? There are so many people for Mother to see, why add one more?” And they draw back, like that, so that they don’t come. So I always tell them what it is: “It would be better not to listen to that, for it’s not something with a very good conscience.”


The Mother: Some people cannot bear it. There have been instances like this, of people who were obliged to run away, because they themselves were too attached to their own formations and did not want to get rid of them. Naturally there is only one way, to run away!  There we are!  We shall stop now for today.


The Mother: That means men. It is another way of saying human beings upon the earth, beings upon earth. There are also... it means animals also. She is very, very loving towards animals and animals love her very much; even the most ferocious ones become very gentle with her, and that is why instead of using the words “human beings”, he has used “embodied beings”, beings with a body upon earth.


The Mother: ( )  Questions?  Did not understand?


The Mother: Because you don’t have a poetic mind, so... It is a poetic image to express... You must not understand these things with a positivist mind; you must have a little feeling for the harmony of words and phrases.    It means that she makes the plan of what the world ought to be.


The Mother: So she lays down the large lines of the plan, of what the world should be, of the universe. She has a vision of the whole, a global creation; instead of seeing the details she sees the totality of things, she lays down the large lines of the plan, and what the creation should be like, towards what it ought to advance, and then what the results will be. She has a universal vision, she is less concerned with the details than with the whole.   Mahasaraswati.


The Mother: Yes, because she is... () precisely the goddess of perfection. For her everything must be done down to the last detail, and done in an absolutely perfect way. And she wants, she insists that it should be done physically, totally, materially, that it should not remain in the air, you see, like a mental or vital action, but that it should be a physical realisation in all its details, and all the details be perfect, that nothing be neglected. So all that the others undertake in the other domains she concretises and brings to its material perfection.  It is not like that.


The Mother: It is put like that and it is one particular way of seeing things. But in fact, it is... () It could be said with as much exactness, that at each moment the entire universe is recreated, and both are equally true.   (


The Mother: )  If we take the world as it is, like a chemical compound of a certain nature, with all the inevitable consequences resulting from the composition of this body, and if we think that in this composition there can enter at any moment a new element, it will necessarily change the composition of the whole, you understand? Well, it is something like that, on a greater and more complicated scale; but it is something like that.  The universe is a mass of elements which form a certain compound, and in accordance with this compound all things are organised — as in an internal organisation, you see ( ), quite strictly. But this is not a culmination; it is something in the course of construction.


The Mother: And at any moment at all, through a certain kind of action, one or several new elements may be introduced into the whole, and necessarily, all the internal combinations change. Well, the universe is something like that.  I am speaking of the material universe. The material universe is a concretisation of a certain aspect, a certain emanation of the Supreme. But this concretisation is progressive — and not necessarily constant, not necessarily regular, but answering to a much more subtle law of freedom.


The Mother: In this compound new elements penetrate and change the whole organisation. So, this organisation which was in itself perfect and unfolding itself according to its own law, is almost suddenly changed and all the internal relations become different.  So this gives the impression of something either incoherent or unexpected or of a miracle according to how one looks at the problem. And this makes for two concomitant things: a determinism which would be absolute in itself if there were not this freedom, absolute also, of the unexpected and additional in the universe. I don’t know if you have followed, but I have tried to express that.


The Mother: Eh, this addition?...  Yes. By the aspiration of the supreme Consciousness.  Yes. It is at work in this world and, working in this world, for the necessity of the work, it works for a certain end, you see, to bring the darkened consciousness back to its normal state of divine consciousness.


The Mother: And each time in its work it meets with a new obstacle, a new thing to conquer or transform, it calls to a new Force. ( ) And this new Force is like a new creation. And so, as everything has its correspondence, it may be said in the same way that each being has in its different domains — a human being — it has in its different domains a destiny which is, so to speak, But it has also the capacity, through aspiration, to enter into contact with a higher domain and introduce the action of this higher domain in these more material determinisms.


The Mother: And there it is still the same thing; these two things combined: a determinism which we could call “horizontal” (to make it understandable) in each domain, which is absolute, and the intervention of other domains or a much higher domain, in that determinism, which changes it completely. So, everyone is a set of determinisms which seem quite absolute, and has a total freedom to bring in the intervention of states of being or states of consciousness or forces of a higher domain; and calling these forces and bringing them into the external determinisms alters everything completely. And it is only thus that things can give the impression of the unexpected, the unknown and of freedom.   () From a certain point of view, yes. That is, without the Grace this could not happen.


The Mother: () But it is not... unless one brings everything back to the Grace. There is certainly a state of consciousness and a vision of things which make you refer everything back to the Grace and ﬁnish by discovering that it alone exists, and that it alone does everything.  But unless one goes to this extreme, before this, one can very well imagine that there is an element of personal aspiration in the being and that the Grace answers. That’s a way of speaking.


The Mother: The other one also is a way of speaking. The thing is more subtle than that, more unseizable. It is very difﬁcult to express these things in words, because, necessarily, it takes on a mental rigidity and there is a whole part of reality which disappears. But if one has the experience, one understands very well. The conclusion: one must have the experience.


The Mother: Ah, my child! () It is a disgust that is full of a total compassion.  It is something that takes upon itself the bad vibration in order to cure others of it.


The Mother: The consequences... () of a wrong and low movement — instead of throwing it back with cold justice upon the one who has committed the mistake, it absorbs it, in order to transform it within itself, and diminishes as far as possible the material consequences of the fault committed.  I believe that the old story about Shiva who had a black stain on his neck because he had swallowed all that was bad in the world, is an imaginative way of expressing this divine disgust. It made a black stain on his neck.   Yes...  No!


The Mother: I can say,! For, obviously there is an essential difference between a state of ignorance and a state of knowledge. Something painful happens to you, let us say; and in the ignorance this painful thing takes on a particular quality. But if you receive this painful thing in a state of knowledge, it does not have the same effect. Let us take even a material thing, say, a very material blow, a good blow like this ().


The Mother: Well, when one is in the ordinary human state of ignorance the blow has its full effect. It depends exclusively on its violence, on what has given the blow and who has received it, you see. But if the same blow is given in the same way and by the same thing to a being who has knowledge instead of ignorance, the reaction of the body will be such as to make the consequences... reduce the consequences to the minimum. And this is a concrete fact! This can go to the extent of even annulling the consequences altogether sometimes.


The Mother: It can go as far as that; that is, it can abolish the consequences, because the reaction is one of knowledge, instead of being a reaction of ignorance. So one cannot say that it is the same thing.  In moral things this is quite obvious, you see, because instead of receiving an emotional shock, for instance, with all the egoistic blindness of ordinary emotion, one objectivises, sees what it is, sees the combination in the vibration; and instantly one throws upon it light, knowledge and truth, and all things are put back in their place. That happens instantaneously. But I insist that even on the most material body, and in the most material way, the effect is not the same.


The Mother: Besides, it is very simple to understand, for if the effect were the same, it would have no happy consequence of any kind for the Divine to take upon Himself bad things! Because they would remain just what they are, and the  universe would continue to be what it is. It is because He has the power of transforming these obscure vibrations into vibrations of light that He can take everything upon Himself. Otherwise, not only would this be useless, but it would be impossible, it would be an absurdity.  Eh?


The Mother: “Knowledge” means what? If you have knowledge — the internal knowledge of the cells, of their existence, their composition, of the results of the blow, that is, the effect of the blow on the cells, and if at the same time you have the knowledge of what these cells ought to be and how they ought to react to the blow they receive, instead of a process like that of physical nature, which takes hours or days or months to mend something that is damaged, you can do it immediately. And, in fact, this is what happens!   (


The Mother: ) It is all a... it is a description of a very tiny part of the action. For when the action is integral and perfect, to this purely material knowledge there is added an internal knowledge, and a power to bring into play forces like the supramental forces, which can do instantaneously what takes in the material world a fairly long time, you see. There too, when one succeeds in bringing in not only the material knowledge which allows you to put things in their place as quickly as possible but also in making a supramental power and knowledge intervene, so that the force of truth can be projected upon the place — in such a way that everything is put under the inﬂuence of this force, and that things, elements, the cells and everything, everything constituting them, all become receptive to this supramental power and the organisation is made according to a law of truth — then  this may be even an opportunity not only of curing the effects of the blow, repairing the damage caused by the accident, but of making great progress in the general consciousness — and on the particular point also — a great progress in the receptivity of forces, in adaptation to these forces, in response to their inﬂuence.


The Mother: This is how something bad can be turned into something very good, when one has the power. It is an unlimited power, this, in the sense that if one has made a mistake and done something serious, if one has the power to bring this truth-consciousness, this supramental force, and let it act, it is an occasion for a tremendous progress. ( ) Which means that one should never feel discouraged; or even if one has made mistakes many a time, one must keep the will not to make them any longer, and be sure that one day or another one will triumph over the difﬁculty if one persists in one’s will.


The Mother: There we are!  Because her work came last; so she came last. ( ) It is in this order that they manifested, in the order given here.


The Mother: These aspects are like the attributes of the Mother, which manifested in succession according to the necessities of the work; and the necessity of perfection was the last, so she is the youngest.   To a certain extent, but not totally. It is always the same thing.  There is an independence which at times seems to be total, and at the same time a very close link and even one which is, so to say, absolute.


The Mother: The central consciousness, that is to say, here in the material world, is the Mahashakti, you know. Well, she always has the power to control the action of these different  aspects — though they are quite independent and act according to their own aspirations. And yet she can control them, in the sense that if...   Take, for example, the instance of Kali.


The Mother: If Kali decides that she is going to intervene and the Mahashakti, who has naturally a much more total and general vision of things, sees that the moment for intervention is not opportune or that it is too soon, well, she can very easily put a pressure upon Mahakali and tell her, “Keep quiet.” And the other is obliged to keep quiet; and yet she acts quite independently.  I say it is for this that Mahakali is there and does her work. But Mahakali has a particular way of seeing the work; and when one has the total vision, one can see that this, you know... She sees only her side of the work, and when one sees the whole, one may say, “Ah, no, this is not quite the time!” (


The Mother: )   Ah! I think it is time to stop.  (Pavitra repeating aloud)


The Mother: Ah, yes, and so?... You want me to give you the trick? ()  First wait till you know how to make these creations and I shall give you the “trick” afterwards! ()   I have prepared my answer. I knew someone would ask me that, because of all things this is the most interesting in this passage, and I have prepared my answer.


The Mother: I have prepared my answer to this and my answer to another question also. But ﬁrst I am going to read this one.  You asked: “What personality is this and when will she come?” () And this is my reply: “, bringing with her a splendour of power and love, an intensity of divine joy unknown to the earth so far.  The physical atmosphere was completely changed by it, saturated with new and marvellous possibilities.


The Mother: But for her to be able to settle and act down here, she needed to meet with at least a minimum of receptivity, to ﬁnd at least one human being having the requisite qualities in the vital and physical nature, a kind of super-Parsifal endowed with a spontaneous and integral purity, but at the same time having a strong and balanced body in order to bear the intensity of the Ananda she had brought without giving way.  Till now she has not obtained what was necessary. Men obstinately remain men and do not want to or cannot become supermen. They can only receive and express a love cut to their measure — a human love! And the marvellous joy of the divine Ananda escapes their perception.


The Mother: So, at times, she thinks of withdrawing, ﬁnding that the world is not ready to receive her. And this would be a cruel loss. It is true that for the moment her presence is more nominal than active, for she does not have the opportunity to manifest herself. But even so, she is a powerful help in the Work. For, of all the aspects of the Mother, this is the one which has the greatest power for the transformation of the body.


The Mother: Indeed, the cells which are able to vibrate to the contact of divine joy, to receive and preserve it, are regenerated cells on the way to becoming immortal. But the vibrations of divine joy and those of pleasure cannot lodge together in the same vital and physical system. So one must have  renounced experiencing all pleasure in order to be in a state to receive the Ananda. But very few are those who can renounce pleasure without, by the very fact, renouncing all participation in active life and plunging into a rigorous asceticism. And among those who know that it is in active life that the transformation must take place, some try to see pleasure as a more or less warped form of Ananda, and thus justify in themselves the quest for personal satisfaction, creating in themselves an almost insuperable obstacle to their own transformation.”


The Mother: Shall we stop here? We shall ﬁnish next time. That will give me time to ﬁnd out.   There, then.


The Mother: Now, if you want to ask something... ( ) Speak!  Whoever wants to say something may speak... anybody who wants to say something, not only the students.


The Mother: What?  Oh, one can always try.... The world is recreated at every moment. You can recreate a new world this very moment if you know how to create it, that is, if you are capable of changing your nature.  I have not said that she has gone away.


The Mother: I said that she thinks of going away, sometimes, from time to time.  Eh?  She came down because there was a possibility, because things had come to a certain stage and the time had come when she could descend.  In fact she came down because I thought it was possible that... she could succeed. (


The Mother: ) There are always possibilities, only... they must materialise. You see, a proof of what I told you is that it happened at a given moment and during... for two or three weeks, the atmosphere, not only of the Ashram but of the earth, was surcharged with such power, precisely, with so intense a divine joy, which creates so wonderful a power that things which were difﬁcult to do before could be  done almost instantaneously! There were repercussions in the whole world.


The Mother: I don’t think there was one among you who was aware of it. You couldn’t even tell me when it happened, could you?    (Laughter)  I don’t know the dates.


The Mother: I don’t know. I don’t remember dates. I could tell you approximately, like that... ()  Perhaps if I consult my papers I would ﬁnd the dates. But I don’t know the dates.


The Mother: These, for me, are things which... All I know is that it happened before Sri Aurobindo left the body, that he had been told beforehand and recognised the fact...  ( )  There was a terrible ﬁght with the inconscient; for, as I saw that the receptivity was not what it ought to be, I put the responsibility for it on the inconscient and it was there that I tried to give battle.


The Mother: I don’t say that this had no result, but between the result obtained and the result hoped for, there was a great difference.  But I tell you this, you see... you are all so close, you bathe in the atmosphere, but... who was aware of anything? You continued to live your little life as usual, didn’t you?  ()


The Mother: Right!   ()  Eh?  You do not know? You...


The Mother: () Try to change your consciousness.  ()  There! Now ask the questions you wanted to ask me... ( ) Nothing to say?


The Mother: Eh?  I don’t know!   Oh, but you see, from the occult point of view, it is a selection! From the external point of view you may tell me that there are people in the world who are much superior to you, I won’t contradict you.


The Mother: But from the occult point of view it is a selection. There are here... one can say without being mistaken that most of the young people who are here have come because they have been promised that they will be here at the time of  the Realisation. They do not remember this. ( )


The Mother: I have already said quite often that when one comes down upon earth one falls headlong and this stuns one. ( ) It’s a pity. But still, one can get out of this stupefaction, can’t one?


The Mother: What is necessary is to enter into oneself, ﬁnd the immortal consciousness within, and then one becomes very keenly aware, one can remember very clearly the circumstances in which one aspired to be here when the Work is accomplished. But after all, to tell the truth, I think you have such an easy life that you don’t take much trouble!... Are there many among you who really feel  to ﬁnd your psychic being, to know what you really are, what you have to do, why you are here? One just goes on living or even complains when things are not too easy.  And then one takes things as they come, and sometimes, if some aspiration arises and one meets a difﬁculty in oneself, one says, “Oh, Mother is there, she will manage this for me”, and then thinks of something else!


The Mother: Yes. I have always said this: that happened since we were obliged to admit little children. You can’t imagine an ascetic life with little children of this height! (


The Mother: ) It is not possible. That was the gift of the war! When people found out that Pondicherry was the safest place on earth, naturally... when people came with a ﬂock of babies, and asked if they could ﬁnd shelter, as they could not be sent back, well!... That’s how it happened, not otherwise.


The Mother: At the beginning, ﬁrst of all, the ﬁrst condition was that one no longer had anything to do with one’s family; if a man was married, he had to forget completely from that very moment that he had a wife and children, to cut off all relationship; he had nothing to do with them. And if ever a woman asked to come because her husband was here, she was told, “You have no business here.”   At the beginning we were very, very, very strict. For a long time the ﬁrst condition was this: “You have no longer anything to do with your family.” Well, we are now far from that, aren’t we?


The Mother: And I tell you it was only in this way that it happened. It doesn’t mean that we didn’t see that it was necessary; it was a very necessary condition. So long as one keeps all the ties which bind one to life, you understand, which make you a slave of the ordinary life, how can you belong only to the Divine?  That’s childishness, it is not possible! But if you take the trouble to read the ﬁrst rules of the Ashram, even friendship among people was considered dangerous and not very desirable.


The Mother: We had tried to create an atmosphere where only one thing counted, the divine life. But as I said, you know, little by little... it has changed.  This has one advantage. We were too much outside life.


The Mother: Many problems did not occur which, when the full manifestation is wanted, would suddenly appear. We have taken up the problems a little too soon. But it was necessary to solve them. One learns many things in this way. Many difﬁculties are overcome.


The Mother: But it becomes more complicated. And perhaps, in the present conditions, with such a large number of elements which don’t have the least idea of the purpose for which they are here... it asks much more effort from the disciples than before.  Formerly, you see, we began with thirty-ﬁve, thirty-six; but even till a hundred and ﬁfty, even till a hundred and ﬁfty it was so much as though... they were as though held in an egg-shell in my consciousness, so close, you know, that I could direct all their movements, both inner and outer, all the time, everything was under complete control, at every moment, night and day.  And naturally, I believe, in those days they made some progress.


The Mother: It was altogether true that I did the sadhana for them, ! But then, you see, with this invasion, one can’t do sadhana for little chits of three or four or ﬁve, you understand. It is out of the question; all I can do is to put the consciousness  upon them and try to see that they grow up in the best possible conditions.  So, this has an advantage. It is that instead of being so totally and passively dependent, each one must make his own little effort and, truly speaking, this is excellent!


The Mother: I don’t remember now to whom I said today — I think it was a “birthday” person.... No, I don’t know... it was someone who told me he was eighteen.  Yes, I know it is her birthday today. But I don’t know if it was to her I said it.


The Mother: I said it to someone this morning.  I said that between the age of eighteen and twenty I had attained a conscious and constant union with the divine Presence and that I had done it, with to help me, not even books, you understand! When I found one — there came to my hands a little later Vivekananda’s — it seemed to me so wonderful a thing, you see, that someone could explain something to me. This made me gain in a few months what would have perhaps taken me years to do.  I met a man.


The Mother: I was perhaps twenty-one then, I think, either twenty or twenty-one. I met a man who was an Indian, who came from here, and he spoke to me about the Gita. There was a translation, which, by the way, was quite bad, and he advised me to read it and gave me the key — his key, it was his key — he told me: “Read the Gita, this translation of the Gita which is not up to much, but still that’s the only one in French.” At that time I wouldn’t have been able to understand anything in any other language. Besides, the English translations were as bad and I did not have...


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo had not yet written his.  He said, “Read the Gita, and take Krishna as the symbol of the immanent God, the inner Godhead.” This was all that he told me. He said to me, “Read it with that — the knowledge that Krishna represents the immanent God in the Gita, the God  who is within you.” Well, in one month the whole work was done!


The Mother: Now you, just see, you have been here since your very childhood, some of you, everything has been explained to you, the whole work has almost been chewed up for you, you have been — not only with words but with psychic aids, with all kinds of... in all possible ways — you have been put on the path to this inner discovery, and still you let yourselves live, like that... () it will come when it comes... if you think about it at all!  There, then. But this does not at all discourage me. Why, I ﬁnd it... quite amusing.


The Mother: Only, there are other things which I ﬁnd much more serious. That is when you try to deceive yourselves.... That indeed is not nice. You must not take one thing for another. As it is said, you must call a spade a spade, and human instinct human instinct, and not speak to me about divine things when they are purely human.


The Mother: There! You must not pretend to have supramental experiences when you are living in an altogether ordinary consciousness.  So here we are. If you see yourself face to face and know what you are like, and if by chance you make up your mind...  I am even astonished that you don’t feel an intense need for it: “How can one know?”


The Mother: For you know — you have been told, told repeatedly, it has been dinned into your ears — you know that you have a divine consciousness within you, and you can sleep night after night and play day after day and learn day after day, and not have the enthusiasm and intense will to enter into contact with yourself, yes, with yourself, here within!... ( ) This, this indeed, is beyond me!  The ﬁrst time I knew — and nobody told me this, I knew it by experience — the ﬁrst time I knew that there was a discovery to make within me, well, that was thing.  This had to be put before everything.


The Mother: And when I found, as I said, a book, a man, just to give me a little indication, to tell me, “Here you are. If you do this the path will open before you”,  why, I rushed headlong like a... like a cyclone, and nothing could have stopped me.  And how many years you have been here, half asleep! You think about it, of course, from time to time, especially when I speak to you about it; at times when you read. But that ardour, that will which conquers all obstacles, that concentration which overcomes!


The Mother: Who asked me just now what you should do?  Well, this is what you should do, my child. I have just told you.  I can’t hear!


The Mother: Oh, plastic? When you are full of goodwill, when you know that you know nothing, that you have everything to learn, then you begin to become a little plastic and when there is a force which puts a pressure, you answer.  But, you see, the description here... you have only to take the book and re-read the last description, that’s all. It is a very exact picture of the condition people are in.


The Mother: That’s on the last page... the description of the physical, the description of the mind, of the vital, all that is here; besides, he gives it often, doesn’t he? ( ) Here it is, in this paragraph: “But be on your guard and do not try to understand and judge the Divine Mother by your little earthly mind that loves to subject even the things that are beyond it to its own norms and standards, its narrow reasonings and erring impressions, its bottomless aggressive ignorance and its petty self-conﬁdent knowledge.” This you may  re-read from time to time, it will bring you back to your good sense.


The Mother: There we are. Is that all? Nothing more to ask? Nobody has anything to ask? Whoever wants to speak this evening may do so.


The Mother: ( ) You have nothing to say? Nor you? No one?


The Mother: Nobody is saying a word!  No, it inﬂates and strengthens your pride.  Renounce pleasure... but it isn’t through an ascetic discipline that one renounces pleasure! It is through an inner illumination and a kind of sublimation of the being which makes you feel all that is gross and obscure and unpleasant in pleasure.


The Mother: But you are not living exclusively in gross pleasure; otherwise, I suppose you wouldn’t be here.   ( ) You do all that for pleasure?


The Mother: () That’s perhaps your conception, I have nothing to tell you. If you can’t feel the difference between something that aspires to a higher life and something which ﬁnds itself altogether comfortable in the ordinary life, well, I cannot help you. You must ﬁrst have found that in yourself.   If you impose a discipline upon yourself and if it isn’t too stupid, it may help you.


The Mother: A discipline, I tell you — disciplines, tapasyas, all ascetic disciplines are, as ordinarily practised, the best means of making you proud, of building up in you such a terriﬁc pride that never, never will you be converted. It will have to be broken down with hammer-strokes.  The ﬁrst condition is a healthy humility which makes you realise that unless you are sustained, nourished, helped, enlightened, guided by the Divine, you are There now.  When you have felt that, not only understood it with your mind, but felt it down to your very body, then you will begin to be wise, but not before.  I thought someone would ask me, “Why doesn’t she stay because of you, since she has come at your call; why doesn’t she stay because of you?”


The Mother: But I have not been asked this.  For her this body is only one instrument among so many others in the eternity of times to come, not having for her any other importance than what is given to it by the earth and men and the measure in which it can serve as an intermediary to help in her manifestation and in her diffusion.  If I am surrounded by people who cannot receive her, I am useless — for her. This is very clear. So it is not that which will make her stay; and it is certainly not for any selﬁsh reason that I can ask her to stay.


The Mother: And then, all those aspects, all those personalities constantly manifest, but never manifest for personal reasons. Not a single one among them has ever thought of helping my body and I do not ask them, for they do not come  for that. But it is obvious that if I had around me receptivity and they could constantly manifest because there were people capable of receiving, this would help my body enormously. For, you see, all the vibrations would go through my body, and that would help it. But she has no opportunity to manifest, she has no chance.


The Mother: She only meets people who don’t even feel that she is here, they are not even aware of it. It makes no difference at all to them! So, how could she manifest?  And I am not going to ask her, “If you please, come and change my body.” We don’t have that kind of relation...


The Mother: and the body itself would not want it. It has never thought of itself, it has never cared for itself. And it is only through work that it can be transformed. Yes, surely, when she came, if there had been a receptivity and if she could have manifested with the power she came with... Even before her arrival...


The Mother: I can tell you one thing, that is, when I began with Sri Aurobindo to descend for the yoga, to descend from the mind into the vital, when we brought down our yoga from the mind into the vital, within one month — I was forty at that time, I didn’t look old, I looked younger than forty, but still I was forty — and after a month’s yoga I looked exactly eighteen. And someone who had seen me before, who had lived with me in Japan and came here, found it difﬁcult to recognise me. He asked me, “But really, is it you?” I said, “Obviously!”  Only when we descended from the vital into the physical, then it was gone, for in the physical the work is much harder.


The Mother: It was because there were many more things to change. But if a force like that could be manifested and received, it would have a tremendous action! Still, you see, it is... I am speaking about it because I thought you would ask the question... otherwise it is not...


The Mother: I am not in that kind of relation. You see, I mean, you take my body, this poor body; it is quite harmless, it does not at all try to draw either any attention or the forces, nor even to do anything else except its work as well as it can. And that’s how it is, you know. Its importance for the work is in proportion to  its usefulness and the importance the world gives it, because the action is for this world. In itself it is one body among countless others.


The Mother: If you could have taken a small decision to feel your psychic, I wouldn’t have wasted my time.  That’s all. There we are! Now it is over.   So ?...


The Mother: What are the adverse forces? There are as many of them as there are elements in the world. Only, unless they express themselves physically, we do not see them. So we are not aware of them. But I told you the other day that the atmosphere is full of countless formations which are usually made up of thoughts, desires, impulses, wills, and which are as mixed as men’s thoughts.


The Mother: There are good ones, there are bad ones; and behind that there are all the formations of the vital world, a world hostile to the Divine. Only the vital in man, under the psychic inﬂuence, can change and become a collaborator in the divine work.  Otherwise, the vital world is essentially formed of beings to the divine work, and those who open themselves to these forces without any control are naturally under the inﬂuence of the adverse forces. So, one can’t say what these adverse forces are. It would be easier to say what they are.


The Mother: () Do you have a question? You have a question? And you?


The Mother: You?  Eh? It is outside the text? It is farther on? That will be for next time.


The Mother: () And you, nothing? Now then, you, you too have nothing to ask?  So I have read very little?


The Mother: Pavitra:  I have received complaints because I read through too fast. I have been asked to read more slowly; so I read more slowly.   My child, the substance means... how shall I put it?...


The Mother: it means the stuff of which the mental being is made. It could be said, for instance, that the cells are the substance of your body. It is not exactly matter, the mind is not quite material, but it is the very thing of which the mind is made. If there were no mental substance, there would be no mental being. It would be only a vibration; and even a vibration needs a medium to manifest itself.


The Mother: But if your body were not made of material substance, you wouldn’t have a body. This is what is called substance. It is the thing of which something is made. And precisely, what is important is that people usually think that mind is just a mode of activity, whereas there is a mental substance as there is a vital  substance and physical substance. And as there is a substance, there is a corresponding world with an autonomous existence, that is to say, there can be a mind without any physical support.


The Mother: The physical body may disappear and the mind can continue to exist. It is here that it is important to understand that there is a mental substance which, obviously, is much more... () how to put it?... immaterial than physical matter.  Some people use a rather unclassical word, “rareﬁed”, but I don’t think it has exactly this sense. Well, you see, we say that substance has different densities, and the more material it becomes, the denser it is, the farther it moves away from matter, the less dense it is. But it is a substance all the same.


The Mother: There is even an etheric substance. I don’t say that this conforms with scientiﬁc theories; I don’t guarantee that I am not talking scientiﬁc heresies! But this is a () It is exactly — I think I said this when I spoke about occultism — I said the ﬁrst thing one must know before being able to practise occultism is that the different states of being have a different density, and they have an individual independent existence of their own, that they are existing realities, that they are truly real substances, that it is not just a way of being. There can be a mental being and mental activity and, for instance, a thought that is completely independent of the brain, whereas the materialistic theories say that it is the brain which creates mental activity.


The Mother: But this is not correct. The brain is the material transcription of the mental activity, and mental activity has its own domain; the mental domain has its reality, its own substance. One can think outside one’s brain, think, act, make formations outside one’s brain. One can even live, move, go from one place to another, have a direct knowledge of mental things in the mental world, in a word, absolutely independent of a body which, indeed, can be in a state of complete inertia, not only asleep but also in a cataleptic state. And moreover, it is quite certain that so long as one has not understood that one is made up of different states of being which have their own independent life, one can’t have a complete  control over one’s being.


The Mother: There will always be something that escapes you.   ( ) Do you have something to ask?


The Mother: Eh? Not from the book? If it is interesting it doesn’t matter!  Oh, but that — it is something altogether personal!


The Mother: Well, I can tell you: it is different for each one and it is for you to ﬁnd it out in yourself. And if you ﬁnd it you will have made some progress....   ( )


The Mother: ( ) Something to


The Mother: say?   ( ) You, do you have something to ask?


The Mother: No? No! You are dreaming! ( )


The Mother: Nobody has a question? ()  You?  What did you say?   Perhaps they came and you did not know it! Perhaps it is because you want to concentrate that you become aware that they are there.


The Mother: It may also happen that there is an element of contradiction in the consciousness and that when you want to be silent, something says, “No, I won’t be silent!”  I think that many of you have an inner contradiction like this. When you have resolved to be good, there is something which would like to push you into being wicked, and when you want to be quiet, there is something which pushes you into being agitated, and when you want to be silent, immediately thoughts begin to wander. It is a contradiction inherent in man’s nature.  It may be this; it may be what I said: that all these thoughts are there but as you were not paying any attention to them, you were not aware of them.


The Mother: It is quite certain that to create absolute silence is of all things the most difﬁcult, for many things of which one was not aware, become! There were all kinds of suggestions, movements, thoughts, formations which went on as though  in the outer consciousness, almost outside the consciousness, on the frontiers of consciousness; and as soon as one wants to be absolutely silent, one becomes aware of all these things which go on moving, moving, moving and make a lot of noise and prevent you from being silent. That is why it is better to remain very quiet, very calm and at the same time very attentive to something which is above you and to which you aspire, and if there is this kind of noise passing like that around you ( ), not to pay attention, not to look, not to heed it. If there are thoughts which go round and round and round like this (), which come and go, do not look, do not pay attention, but concentrate upwards in a great aspiration which one may even formulate — because often it helps the concentration — towards the light, the peace,  the quietude, towards a kind of inner impassiveness, so that the concentration may be strong enough for you not to attend to all that continues to whirl about all around. But if suddenly you say, “Ah, there’s some noise!


The Mother: Oh, here is a thought!” , then it is ﬁnished. You will never succeed in being quiet. Have you never seen those people who try to stop a quarrel by shouting still louder than the ones who are quarrelling? Well, it is something like that.


The Mother: ( )  What question?  Who can think with his heart? I can’t hear!


The Mother: The Bengalis can think with their hearts? That’s a poetic way of saying it. ( ) Where has he written this? It is indeed a very poetic description. That’s to say that they are essentially emotive beings and that their heart is conscious even in their thought, that their thought is not purely intellectual and dry, and that their heart is aware of their thought.


The Mother: That’s what he meant.  But I can also tell you that when I was in Japan I met a man who had formed a group, for... It can’t be said that it was for sadhana, but for a kind of discipline. He had a theory and it was on this theory that he had founded his group: that one can think in any part of one’s being whatever if one concentrates there.  That is to say, instead of thinking in your head, you can think in your chest.


The Mother: And he said that one could think here () in the stomach. He took the stomach as the seat of, the vital force. He used certain Sanskrit words, you know, halfdigested, and all that.... But still, this does not matter, he was full of goodwill and he said that most human miseries come  from the fact that men think in their heads, that this makes the head ache, tires you and takes away your mental clarity. On the other hand, if you learn how to think here ( ), it gives you power, strength and calmness.


The Mother: And the most remarkable thing is that he had attained a kind of ability to bring down the mental power, the mental force here (); the mental activity was generated there, and no longer in the head. And he had cured a considerable number of people, considerable, some hundreds, who used to suffer from terrible headaches; he had cured them in this way.  I have tried it, it is quite easy, precisely because, as I told you a while ago, the mental force, mental activity is independent of the brain. We are in the habit of using the brain but we can use something else or rather, concentrate the mental force elsewhere, and have the impression that our mental activity comes from there. One can concentrate one’s mental force in the solar plexus, here (), and feel the mental activity coming out from there.


The Mother: That man used to say, “Haven’t you noticed that all men who have great power have a big belly? () — Because they concentrate their forces there, so this makes their stomach big!” He always used to give the example of Napoleon; and he said, “These people stand up quite straight, always straight with their head erect, never like this ( ), never like this (), never like this (; always quite straight up but with all their force here (), and so this makes them very powerful!” And he always spoke of Napoleon. He used to say, “Napoleon, you see...” ( )


The Mother: And he had a visit from Tagore when Tagore was in Japan and he told me, “Have you observed how Tagore stands quite upright, like this, with his head erect?” Then I told him, “But he doesn’t have a big stomach!” He said to me, “It will come.” ()  There were hundreds of people at his meetings. They would  all sit on their knees as one does in Japan.


The Mother: He struck a table with a stick and everyone brought down his mental force to the stomach; and then they remained like that for... oh! at least half an hour. And after half an hour he struck the table a second time and they released their mental force and began chatting... not very much, for the Japanese do not chat much, but nevertheless they talk.   There now! But mark that there was something very true, in the sense that if ever you have a headache I advise you to do this: to take the thought-force, the mental force — and even if you can draw a little of your vital force, that too — and make it come down, like this ( ).


The Mother: Well, if you have a headache or a congestion, if you have caught a touch of the sun, for instance, indeed if anything has happened to you, well, if you know how to do this and bring down the force here, like this, here ( ), or even lower down ( ), well, it will disappear. It will disappear. You will be able to do this in ﬁve minutes. You can try, the next time you have a headache.... I hope you won’t have a headache but the next time you have it, try this.


The Mother: Sit upright, like this ( ). The Japanese say you should sit on your heels — but that might disturb your meditation, sitting like that — they call it sitting at ease. The Indian fashion is like this (), otherwise you must sit like this (); this is harder when you are not accustomed to it.  So, sit quite at ease and then take all your force as though you were taking, you see... all the energy in your head, take it and then make it come down, down, down, like this, slowly, very carefully, right down here, down to the navel. And you will see that your headache will disappear.


The Mother: I have made the experiment many times.... It is a very good remedy, very easy; there is no need to take pills or injections; it gets cured in this way. So there you are!  Any other question? Yes!


The Mother: First of all, you must want it.  And then you must try and must persevere, keep on trying.  What I have just told you is a very good means. Yet there are others also. You sit quietly, to begin with; and then, instead of thinking of ﬁfty things, you begin saying to yourself, “Peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, calm, peace!”


The Mother: You imagine peace and calm. You aspire, ask that it may come: “Peace, peace, calm.”  And then, when something comes and touches you and acts, say quietly, like this, “Peace, peace, peace.” Do not look at the thoughts, do not listen to the thoughts, you understand. You must not pay attention to everything that comes.


The Mother: You know, when someone bothers you a great deal and you want to get rid of him, you don’t listen to him, do you? Good! You turn your head away () and think of something else. Well, you must do that: when thoughts come, you must not look at them, must not listen to them, must not pay any attention at all, you must behave as though they did not exist, you see! And then, repeat all the time like a kind of — how shall I put it? — as an idiot does, who repeats the same thing always.


The Mother: Well, you must do the same thing; you must repeat, “Peace, peace, peace.” So you try this for a few minutes and then do what you have to do; and then, another time, you begin again; sit down again and then try. Do this on getting up in the morning, do this in the evening when going to bed. You can do this... look, if you want to digest your food properly, you can do this for a few minutes before eating.


The Mother: You can’t imagine how much this helps your digestion! Before beginning to eat you sit quietly for a while and say, “Peace, peace, peace!” and becomes calm. It seems as though all the noises were going far, far, far away ( ) and then you must continue; and there comes a time when you no longer need to sit down, and no matter what you are doing, no matter what you are saying, it is  always “Peace, peace, peace.” Everything remains here, like this, it does not enter (), it remains like this. And then one is always in a perfect peace... after some years.


The Mother: But at the beginning, a very small beginning, two or three minutes, it is very simple. For something complicated you must make an effort, and when one makes an effort, one is not quiet. It is difﬁcult to make an effort while remaining quiet. Very simple, very simple, you must be very simple in these things. It is as though you were learning how to call a friend: by dint of being called he comes.


The Mother: Well, make peace and calm your friends and call them: “Come, peace, peace, peace, peace, come!”  Is that all, my children?  The faculty of understanding? Is that what you are asking about, whether it is in the head? I have just said the opposite.


The Mother: A few minutes ago I said that all mental faculties are in the mind and it is only by habit that they are in the head. One can understand from any place whatever. One can understand from wherever the seat of the consciousness is.  Were you thinking when you were born?  It has been a habit for a very long time — the parents of the parents of the parents, and so on — but not for everyone!


The Mother: It is like the habit of looking with the eyes, but it has been proved that it is possible to create centres of vision elsewhere than in  the eyes — with a little concentration. I don’t say that the brain is not made for thinking, I have never told you that, but I said that thought does not depend upon the brain, which is quite a different thing. If one knows how to handle mental forces, one sees clearly that the brain is very suitable for expressing oneself — it has evidently been made for that, for receiving thoughts and putting them into action, into expression, words — but it doesn’t need to be exclusive.   (


The Mother: ) I mean that this exclusiveness is a habit.  However, when one has done a little yoga seriously, one knows very well that one can think here ( ) one can think here, one can think here, one can think in front and, as I was saying just now, one can think much higher up — but naturally, one thinks that all thought-phenomena, concentration, are produced in the brain — and when one thinks up above, here (), one thinks much better than when one thinks here. It is only that one has never tried to do otherwise. Not “never tried”, there are quite a number of people who have tried and have succeeded.


The Mother: There you are, my children! I think that’s all. It’s enough for this evening.   Usually it continues to think, but this does not affect you any longer. It is not exactly “thinking”, it is like a market-place, you see.


The Mother: Things come, circulate, turn around, go out, come back, cross, sometimes collide. It is absolutely like a market-place.  These things go on like that ().  The factory of thoughts is... this does not occur very often.


The Mother: Some people have a particular kind of occupation which lies in giving a particular form to the thought-force that comes from outside. These are usually the people who write, speak, teach, and others... It is quite rare; usually things come and go, come back, return, and if one detaches oneself, one can even look at it all from above as though one were looking at a market-place from the top of a tower. Then all this becomes very amusing.  One can even see where thoughts come from, where they go, what they stir up, what the results are.


The Mother: Well, you see, naturally these words are used for classiﬁcation in order to make oneself understood; but truly, each part of the being is itself divided into four. There is a physical mind, a physical vital and a physical physical, and there is even a physical psychic which is behind. Well, there is a vital mind, a vital vital, a vital physical and also a vital psychic which is behind, hidden. And there is a mental mind, a mental vital, and  a mental physical and a mental psychic which is hidden behind.


The Mother: And each one corresponds to a particular kind of activity, and also to a particular region, a zone of consciousness and being.  And these zones or inner dimensions correspond to outer zones and dimensions, universal, or terrestrial if you like, to simplify the problem. There is a mental mind within you, there is a mental mind in the terrestrial atmosphere; and — how shall I put it? — the density of these inner and outer regions is the same, the vibratory mode is identical.  If you enter consciously into your mental mind, you can enter consciously the mental mind of the earth. We have explained this once, haven’t we?


The Mother: We made some sort of drawings, didn’t we? No, I am not speaking of the globe, I am speaking of... those in which we marked the regions, you know.  All educated people do it. Only the barbarian doesn’t do it. This is the very substance of education, you know, for it is understood that if one lives in society — indeed even if one lives quite alone, but still much more so if one lives in society — one cannot do all that his impulses drive him to do.


The Mother: It is altogether impossible, you know. From the time you are quite young, the work of your educators is to teach you to control your impulses and obey only those which are in conformity with the laws under which you live or with the ideal you wish to follow or the customs of the environment in which you are. The value of this mental construction which will govern your impulses depends a great deal on the surroundings in which you live and the character of the parents or people who educate you. But whether it be good or bad, mediocre or excellent, it is always the result of a mental control over the impulses. When your parents tell you, “You should not do this”, or when they say, “You have to do that”, this is a beginning of education for the mind’s control over the impulses.


The Mother: So the man of real merit or the more civilised man has a whole mental construction to which he must conform in order to be in harmony with the ideal of the environment in which he lives. But someone who does not conform at least to the smallest part of this construction would be considered a savage and would be thrown out of the society immediately. In fact, people who are criminals or half-mad are those who obey their impulses without any mental control. There isn’t a single person among you who gives way without control to all the impulses that get hold of him. You have only to observe yourselves living, you spend your time saying,“No, this I can’t do”, or “This I can”, or in restraining one movement or encouraging another.