The Mother: That makes you save time, a lot of time.  But that is their only usefulness: to be able to answer questions.  And, in fact, you should have a brain which is lively enough to ask questions. I don’t know, but you never have anything to ask me or it is so seldom. But that shows a terrible mental laziness!


The Mother: At times I tell you, “Don’t question, try to ﬁnd out by yourselves certain inner things”, that is understood; but when I am here and tell you, “Haven’t you any questions to ask?”  — Silence.... So, that proves that you have no mental curiosity.  And I don’t ask you necessarily to put questions on what I have just read; I am always ready to answer any question whatsoever, asked by anyone. Well, I must say we are not very rich in questions!


The Mother: It is not often that I have an opportunity of telling you something.  I hasten to tell you that if you ask me technical questions on the sciences, physics or whatever, I could very well answer, “I know nothing about it, study your books or ask your teacher”; but if you ask me questions in my ﬁeld, I shall always answer you.  So, one last attempt: Has anyone here a question to ask me?


The Mother: ( )  Wonderful! ( ) Well, that’s all then.


The Mother: It is love.  It is not intuition. It is knowledge through love, light through love, understanding through love. Sri Aurobindo says that it is not intuition, for intuition belongs to the intellect — at least in its expression, the expression of intuition is intellectual. While this is a kind of direct knowledge almost by identity, which comes from love.


The Mother: The oracle? That is the power of divination, of foresight, of understanding symbols, and that is in the psychic being. Prophets, for example, do not prophesy with the mind, it is through a  contact, beyond emotions and sentiments. Sri Aurobindo even says that the Vedas, particularly, were not written with the mind and through the head.


The Mother: The form of the hymn welled up spontaneously from the psychic being, along with the words.   More or less, yes. The more perfect the contact, the greater the power.  It also depends on the outer possibilities of the being. But I have already explained that to you several times, I have already told you that when one enters into contact with one’s psychic, certain faculties develop spontaneously.


The Mother: For instance, there are people with no intellectual education who suddenly get quite a remarkable power of expression, which comes in this way, spontaneously, through the inner contact with the psychic being.  What!  Yes, this is the materialistic and purely physical thought which freezes and congeals the emotions, takes away all the warmth of the soul, all the fervour, all the ardour of the feelings and the religious consciousness, and makes you coldly reasonable.   As an intermediary, did you say?  For the true role of the mind is the formation and organisation of action.


The Mother: The mind has a formative and organising power, and it is that which puts the different elements of inspiration in order, for action, for organising action. And if it would only conﬁne itself to that role, receiving inspirations — whether from above or from the mystic centre of the soul — and simply formulating the plan of action — in broad outline or in minute detail, for the smallest things of life or the great terrestrial organisations — it would amply fulﬁl its function.  It is not an instrument of knowledge.  But it can use knowledge for action, to organise action. It is an instrument of organisation and formation, very powerful and very capable when it is well developed.


The Mother: One can feel this very clearly when one wants to organise one’s life, for instance — to put the different elements in their place in one’s existence. There is a certain intellectual faculty which immediately puts each thing in its place and makes a plan and organises. And it is not a knowledge that comes from the mind, it is a knowledge which comes, as I said, from the mystic depths of the soul or from a higher consciousness; and the mind concentrates it in the physical world and organises it to give a basis of action to the higher consciousness.  One has this experience very clearly when one wants to organise one’s life.  Then, there is another use.


The Mother: When one is in contact with one’s reason, with the rational centre of the intellect, the pure reason, it is a powerful control over all vital impulses. All that comes from the vital world can be very ﬁrmly controlled by it and used in a disciplined and organised action. But it must be at the service of something else — not work for its own satisfaction.  These are the two uses of the mind: it is a controlling force, an instrument of control, and it is a power of organisation. That is its true place.


The Mother: Oh! yes, my child, certainly. It is even the most direct way.  One can realise the Divine, that is to say, identify oneself with the Divine, become fully conscious of the Divine and be an instrument of the Divine. But naturally, one does not realise the integral yoga, for it is only along one line.


The Mother: But from the point of view of identiﬁcation with the Divine it is even the most direct path.  One cannot express Him intellectually, but one can express Him in action, one can express Him in feelings, one can express Him in life.  ( )  Yes, that is very true.


The Mother: But it is not the same part of the being that has the depression and the joy.  If you are speaking of pleasure, the pleasure of the vital is something very ﬂeeting, and I think that in life — in life as it is at present — there are more occasions for displeasure than for pleasure. Pleasure in itself is extremely ﬂeeting, for if the same vibration of pleasure is prolonged a little, it becomes unpleasant or even repulsive — exactly the same vibration.   Pleasure in itself is something very fugitive. But if you are speaking of joy, that is something altogether different, it is a kind of warmth and illumination in the heart, you see — one may feel joy in the mind also, but it is a kind of warmth and beatiﬁc illumination occurring somewhere.


The Mother: That is a quality which is not yet fully developed and one is rarely in the psychological state that’s needed to have it. And that is why it is fugitive. Otherwise joy is constantly there in the truth of the being, in the reality of the being, in your true Self, in your soul, in your psychic being, joy is constantly there.  It has nothing to do with pleasure: it is a kind of inner delight.  But one is rarely in a state to feel it, unless one has become fully conscious of one’s psychic being.


The Mother: That is why when it comes it is fugitive, for the psychological condition necessary to perceive it is not often there. On the other hand, one is almost constantly in an ordinary vital state where the least unpleasant thing very spontaneously and easily brings you depression — depression if you are a weak person, revolt if you are a strong one. Every desire which is not satisﬁed, every impulse which meets an obstacle, every unpleasant contact with outside things, very easily and very spontaneously creates depression or revolt, for that is the normal state of things — normal in life as it is today. While joy is an exceptional state.  And so, pleasure, pleasure which is simply a pleasing sensation — if it lasts, not only does it lose its edge, but it ends up by becoming unpleasant; one can’t bear it long.


The Mother: So, quite naturally it comes and goes. That is to say, the very thing that gives you pleasure — exactly the same vibration — after a short while, doesn’t give it to you any longer. And if it persists, it becomes unpleasant for you. That is why you can’t have pleasure for a long time.  The only thing which can be lasting is joy, if one enters into contact with the truth of the being which holds this joy permanently.


The Mother: How does this mixture come about?   Not in the same place.  It is not our physical heart, you understand. It is this centre here ().


The Mother: But there are various depths. The more you come to the surface, the more is it mixed, naturally, with vital impulses and even purely physical reactions, purely physical sensations. The deeper you go, the less the mixture. And if you go deep enough, you ﬁnd the feeling absolutely pure, behind. It is a question of depth.


The Mother: One throws oneself out all the time; all the time one lives, as it were, outside oneself, in such a superﬁcial sensation that it is almost as though one were outside oneself. As soon as one wants even to observe oneself a little, control oneself a little, simply know what is happening, one is always obliged to draw back or pull towards oneself, to pull inwards something which is constantly like that, on the surface. And it is this surface thing which meets all external contacts, puts you in touch with similar vibrations coming from others. That happens almost outside you.  That is the constant dispersal of the ordinary consciousness.


The Mother: For instance, take a movement, an inspiration coming from the psychic depths of the being — for it comes even to those who are not conscious of their psychic — a kind of inspiration coming from the depths; well, in order to make itself perceptible it has to come to the surface. And as it comes to the surface, it gets mixed with all sorts of things which have nothing to do with it but which want to make use of it. As, for instance, all the desires and passions of the vital which, as soon as a force from the depths rises to the surface, catch hold of it for their  own satisfaction. Or else people who live in the mind and want to understand and evaluate their experience, to judge it: then it is the mind that seizes upon this inspiration or this force which rises to the surface, for its own beneﬁt, for its own satisfaction — and it becomes mixed, and that spoils everything. And this happens constantly; constantly surface movements creep into the inspiration from the depths and deform it, veil it, deﬁle it, ruin it completely, deforming it to such an extent that it is no longer recognisable.


The Mother: Ah! excuse me, it is a reciprocal movement. And it depends on the proportion. The inspiration from within acts, of course.  It is not that it is completely absorbed and destroyed, it isn’t that.


The Mother: Necessarily, it acts but it becomes mixed, it loses its purity and original power. But all the same something remains, and the result depends on the proportion of the forces, and this proportion is very different depending on the individual.  There comes a time when one deliberately calls the deep inner inspiration and surrenders to it, when it can enter almost completely pure and make you act in accordance with the Divine Will.  The mixture is not unavoidable; it is only what usually happens. And the proportion is very different according to the individual.


The Mother: With some, when the psychic within takes a decision and sends out a force, it is quite visible, it is visibly a psychic inspiration. One can at times see a sort of shadow pass which comes from the mind or the vital; but these are interventions of no importance which cannot at all change the nature of the psychic inspiration, if one does not let them have the upper hand.  None of these things is irremediable, for otherwise there would be no hope of progress.   Why, what is the problem? What is the difﬁculty?


The Mother: This is a purely individual matter.  The ﬁrst condition is to receive inspirations from the soul — exactly what we were just speaking about — for if one does not receive them, how can one follow one’s soul? The ﬁrst condition is to be a little conscious of one’s soul and receive its inspirations.  Then, naturally, it goes without saying that one must obey them instead of obeying the reasoning intellect.  But how to do it?


The Mother: By what method?... This is something purely personal. Each one must ﬁnd his own method. The principle is there; if one wants to apply it, for each one the method is different. It all depends on the extent to which one is conscious of the inspirations from the soul, on the degree of identity one has with it.


The Mother: So one can’t give the same remedy for everybody.  Is that all?   If one did not spend, one would never receive. The great force a child has for growth, for development is that he spends without stint.  Naturally, when one spends, one must recuperate and must have the time that is needed to recuperate; but what a child cannot do one day, he can do the next.


The Mother: So if you never go beyond the limit you have reached, you will never progress. It is quite obvious that people who practise physical culture, for example, if they make progress, it is just because they gradually exceed, go beyond what they could do.  It is all a matter of balance. And the period of receptivity should be in proportion to the period of expenditure.


The Mother: But if one conﬁnes oneself to what one can do at a given moment... First of all it is impossible, for if one doesn’t progress, one falls back. Therefore, one must make a little effort to do a little more than before. Then one is on the upward path.  If one is afraid of doing too much, one is sure to go down again and lose one’s capacities.


The Mother: One must always try a little more, a little better than one did the day before or the previous moment. Only, the more one increases one’s effort, the more should one increase one’s capacity of receptivity and the opportunities to receive. For instance, from the purely physical point of view, if one wants to develop one’s muscles, a progressive effort must be made by them, that is to say, a greater and greater effort, but at the same time one must do what is needed: massage, hydrotherapy, etc. to increase at the same time their capacity to receive.  And rest. A rest which is not a falling into the inconscient — which generally tires you more than it refreshes — but a conscious rest, a concentration in which one opens oneself and absorbs the forces which come, the universal forces.


The Mother: The limits of the body’s possibilities are so elastic! People who undergo a methodical and scientiﬁc training, rational, systematic, arrive at absolutely startling results. They demand things from their bodies which, naturally, without training it  would be quite impossible to do. And certainly, they must gradually go beyond what they could do, not only from the point of view of perfection, but also from the point of view of strength.  If they have that fear of doing more than they are able, of overdoing things, they will never progress.


The Mother: Only, at the same time one must do what is necessary for recuperating. That is the whole principle of physical culture. And one sees things which for an ignorant and untrained man are absolutely miraculous, performed by bodies which have been methodically trained.  All this is good. And many other things are good.


The Mother: And it depends on what each one can do.  It is a little too personal a question, isn’t it?  It depends on each one, it is the same thing. If one generalises, it makes no sense any longer. To remember, you must not forget, that’s all!


The Mother: But very often it happens that people form groups and make rules for themselves. That is a discipline which is self-imposed.  It constantly happens. All societies, secret or other, and all initiation groups have always done things like that: they make rules which they impose upon themselves and usually follow very strictly. And there are even terrible penalties and quite disastrous consequences when, after having taken the oath, one wants to leave the discipline.


The Mother: This happens constantly in the world.  One could discuss the effectiveness, that would be another thing. But in any case, the question is not “whether one can do  it” — it does happen, it is something which has been happening since the most ancient times. Always man has tried to form groups in one way or another and impose laws on these groups.  And if it is a mystic group, they are mystic laws.


The Mother: But one enters the group freely, and therefore one accepts them.  Usually, in those groups the ﬁrst thing they do is to tell you, “These are the laws, the rules of the group, do you accept them or not?” If you don’t accept them, you don’t enter; if you accept them, it is you who impose them on yourself. You are not forced into a group like that! It is not like being subject, for example, to the atavism of the family in which you are born.


The Mother: That is imposed from outside. You are born in a family and are subject to the atavism, the laws of a rigid family atavism, which is imposed from outside. For, almost universally, the permission of the one who is brought into the world or his acceptance is never asked: you are brought here by force, the environment is imposed on you by force, the laws of the atavism of the milieu by force, and indeed you do what you can with them — the best you can, let us hope! But when it is a group of friends or a society, unless you have no personal will and are carried away by someone else whom you obey, it is you yourself who decide whether you accept these laws or not.  It is obvious that the question becomes a little more subtle when it is a matter of religion, for that is a part of the imposition on the child before he is born.


The Mother: If he is born in a religion, that religion is imposed upon him. Obviously, according to the true rules, there is an age when, supposedly, after having been instructed in the religion in which you are born, you choose to be in it or not. But very few people have the capacity for individual choice. It is the custom of the family or the environment in which they live, and they follow it blindly, for it is more comfortable  than reacting; one is born into it and one is almost forced to follow that religion. One must have a very considerable strength and independence of character to come out of it, for usually you have to break through with much commotion and that has serious repercussions on your life.


The Mother: Last week I spoke to you about birth: how souls enter a body;  and I told you that the body is formed in a very unsatisfactory way for almost everyone — exceptions are so rare that one can hardly speak of them.  I told you that due to this obscure birth one arrives with a whole physical baggage of things which generally have to be got rid of, if one truly wants to progress, and someone has quoted my own sentence which runs like this: “You are brought here by force, the environment is imposed on you by force, the laws of atavism of the milieu by force...”  And now the person who wrote to me has asked me who does all that.  Of course I could have been more explicit, but I thought I had been clear enough.


The Mother: The body is formed by a man and a woman who become the father and mother, and it is they who don’t even have the  of asking the being they are going to bring into the world whether it would like to come or whether this is in accordance with its destiny. And it is on this body they have formed that they impose by force, by force of necessity, an atavism, an environment, later an education, which will almost always be obstacles to its future growth.  Therefore, I said here and I am repeating it — I thought I had been clear enough — that it was about the physical parents and the physical body I was speaking, nothing else. And that the soul which incarnates, whether it be in course of development or fully developed, has to struggle against the circumstances imposed on it by this animal birth, struggle in order to  ﬁnd its true path and again discover its own self fully. That’s all.


The Mother: Now, if you have something else to ask.... Nobody has anything to say?  To ask? For that they must have an occult knowledge which they don’t usually have.


The Mother: But anyway, what is possible is that instead of doing the thing like an animal driven by instinct or desire and most of the time, without even wanting it, they do it at will, with an aspiration, putting themselves in a state of aspiration and almost of prayer, so that the being they are going to form may be one ﬁt to embody a soul which they call down to incarnate in that form. I knew people — not many, this does not often happen, but still I knew some who chose special circumstances, prepared themselves through special concentration and meditation and aspiration and sought to bring down, into the body they were going to form, an exceptional being.  In many countries of old — and even now in certain countries — the woman who was going to have a child was placed in special conditions of beauty, harmony, peace and well-being, in very harmonious physical conditions, so that the child could be formed in the best possible conditions. This is obviously what ought to be done, for it is within the reach of human possibilities.  Human beings are developed enough for this not to be something quite exceptional.


The Mother: And yet it is quite exceptional, for very few people think of it, while there are people who have children without even wanting to.  That was what I wanted to say.  It is possible to call a soul, but one must be at least a little conscious oneself, and must want to do what one does in the best conditions. This is very rare, but it is possible.   I don’t understand your question very well.


The Mother: You mean whether it can choose between different bodies?  Well, it is very exceptional, after all, in the great mass of humanity, that a conscious soul incarnates voluntarily. It is something very unusual. I have already told you that when a soul is conscious, fully formed, and wants to incarnate, usually from its psychic plane it looks for a corresponding psychic light at a certain place upon earth. Besides, during its previous incarnation, before going away, before leaving the earth-atmosphere, usually as a result of the experience it had in the life that is coming to an end, the soul chooses more or less — not in all details but broadly — the conditions of its future life.


The Mother: But these are exceptional cases. Possibly we could speak of it for ourselves here, but for the majority, the vast majority of men, even those who are educated, it is out of the question. And what comes then is a psychic being in formation, more or less formed, and there are all the stages of formation from the spark which becomes a little light to the fully formed being, and this extends over thousands of years. This ascent of the soul to become a conscious being having its own will, capable of determining the choice of its own life, takes thousands of years.  So, you are thinking of a soul which would say, “No, I refuse this body, I am going to look for another”?...


The Mother: I don’t  say it is impossible — everything is possible. It does happen, in fact, that children are still-born, which means that there was no soul to incarnate in them. But it may be for other reasons also; it may be for reasons of malformation only; one can’t say.  I don’t say it is impossible, but generally, when a conscious and free soul chooses to take a body on earth again, even before its birth it works on this body. So it has no reason not to accept even the inconveniences which may result from the ignorance of the parents; for it has chosen the place for a reason which was not one of ignorance: it saw a light there — it might have been simply the light of a possibility, but there was a light and  it has come there.


The Mother: So, it is all very well to say, “Ah! no, I don’t like it”, but where would it go to choose another it likes?... That may happen, I don’t say it is impossible, but it cannot happen very often. For, when from the psychic plane the soul looks at the earth and chooses the place for its next birth, it chooses it with sufﬁcient discernment not to be altogether grossly mistaken.  It has also happened that souls have incarnated and then left. There are many reasons why they go away.


The Mother: Children who die very young, after a few days or a few weeks — this may be for a similar reason. Most often it is said that the soul needed just a little experience to complete its formation, that it had it during these few weeks and then left. Everything is possible.  And as many stories would be needed to tell the story of souls as are needed to tell the story of men. That is to say, they are innumerable and the instances are as different as possible from one another.


The Mother: So, to decide arbitrarily: “It is like that, not like this; this is what happens and not that”, this is childishness. can happen. There are instances which occur more frequently than others, one can generalise, but one can never say, “This is not possible and it is always like this or always like that.” That is not how things happen.


The Mother: But anyway — anyway — even in the best cases, even when  the soul has come consciously, even when it has consciously participated in the formation of the physical body, still so long as the body is formed in the usual animal way, it will have to struggle and correct all those things which come from this human animality.  Inevitably, parents have a particular formation, they are particularly healthy or unhealthy; even taking things at their best, they have a heap of atavisms, habits, formations in the subconscious and even in the unconscious, which come from their own birth, the environment they have lived in, their own life; and even if they are remarkable people, they have a large number of things which are quite opposed to the true psychic life — even the best of them, even the most conscious. And besides, there is all that is going to happen. Even if one takes a great deal of trouble over the education of one’s children, they will come in contact with all sorts of people who will have an inﬂuence over them, especially when they are very young, and these inﬂuences enter the subconscious, one has to struggle against them later on. I say: even in the best cases, because of the way in which the body is formed at present, you have to face innumerable difﬁculties which come more or less from the subconscious, but rise to the surface and against which you have to struggle before you can become completely free and develop normally.


The Mother: Is that all?  ( )  Now, since the end of February, I have received a considerable number of questions on: I have answered as best I could. But it so happens that in Sri Aurobindo’s book there is a note on a certain  page, and in this note he answers these questions.


The Mother: I always tell people: if you were to take a little trouble to read what Sri Aurobindo has written, many of your questions would become useless, for Sri Aurobindo has already answered them. However, people probably have neither the time nor the patience nor the will, nor all that is needed, and they don’t read. The books are published, they are even, I believe, generously distributed, but few read them. Anyway, here is Sri Aurobindo’s answer. Try to think, and if you have a special question to ask I shall answer it.


The Mother: Listen:  That is to say, to hope to receive, use and form in oneself a supramental being, and consequently a supramental world, there must ﬁrst of all be an expansion of consciousness and a personal progress: not to have sudden ﬂights, a little aspiration, a little effort, and then fall back into somnolence. This must be the idea of the being, the will of the being, the  effort of the being, the preoccupation of the being.  If for ﬁve minutes in the day you happen to remember that there is something in the universe like the supramental Force, and that, after all, “it would be nice if it manifested in me”, and  then all the rest of the time you are thinking of something else and are busy with other things, there is not much chance that it would come and do any serious work in you. Sri Aurobindo says this quite clearly and precisely.


The Mother: He does not tell you that will do it, he says it is the Divine Will. So don’t come and say, “Ah! I can’t.” No one is asking you to do it. But there enough aspiration and adhesion in the being to make the expansion of the being, the expansion of consciousness possible. For, to tell the truth, everybody is small, small, small, so small that there is not enough room to put any supramental in!


The Mother: It is so small that it is already quite ﬁlled up with all the ordinary little human movements. There must be a great widening to make room for the movements of the Supermind.  And then there must also be an aspiration for progress: not to be satisﬁed with what one is, how one is, what one does, what one knows or thinks one knows; but to have a constant aspiration for something more, something better, for a greater light, a vaster consciousness, a truer truth and a more universal goodness. And over and above all this, a goodwill which never fails.  That can’t be done in a few days.


The Mother: Moreover, I believe that I had taken my precautions in this matter and that, when I announced that it had been granted to the earth to receive the supramental Force in order to manifest it, this did not mean that the manifestation would be instantaneously apparent, and that everybody would suddenly ﬁnd himself transported to a peak of light and of possibilities and realisation, without any effort. I said immediately that it would not be like that. I even said that it would take quite a long time.  But still, people have complained that its advent has not made things easier, and that even, in some cases, they have become more difﬁcult. I am very sorry, but I can do nothing about it.


The Mother: For it is not the fault of the supramental Force, the fault lies in the way in which it was received. I know instances in which truly the aspiration was sincere and the collaboration complete,  and in which many things that had seemed very difﬁcult in the past at once became inﬁnitely easier.  However, there is a very great difference, always, between a kind of mental curiosity which plays with words and ideas, and a true aspiration of the being which means that truly, really, it is which counts, essentially, and nothing else — that aspiration, that inner will because of which nothing has any value except, that realisation; nothing counts except; there is no other reason for existence, for living, than.  And yet it is this that’s needed if one wants the Supramental to become visible to the naked eye.  And mark that I am not speaking of a physical transformation, for this everyone knows: you don’t expect to become luminous and plastic overnight, to lose your weight, be able to displace yourself freely, appear in a dozen places at the same time and what not....


The Mother: No, I believe you are reasonable enough not to expect this to happen right away. It will take some time.  But still, simply, the working of the consciousness, simply a certain self-mastery, a control over one’s body, a direct knowledge of things, a capacity of identiﬁcation and a clear vision — instead of that hazy and vague sight which sees only the mere appearances that are so deceptive, so unreal, so fossilised — a more direct perception, an inner perception, this ought to be able to come and come quickly if one has prepared oneself.  Simply to have that feeling that the air one breathes is more living, the strength one has more lasting. And instead of always groping like a blind man to know what should be done, to have a clear, precise, inner intimation: it is this — not that:.


The Mother: These are things one can acquire immediately if one is ready.  ( )  Today I received some other questions which have nothing to do with the subject before us at present, questions as old as the earth, which I have already answered hundreds of times; but   still, it seems that it couldn’t have gone in, for again I am asked: Haven’t I told you why bad thoughts come?...


The Mother: For as many reasons as there are bad thoughts! Each one comes for its own special reason: it may be through afﬁnity, it may be just to tease you, it may be because you call them, it may be because you expose yourself to attacks, it may be all this at once and many more things besides.  Bad thoughts come because there is something corresponding somewhere within you; otherwise you might see something  like that, but they would not come inside you. I suppose the question means: why do you suddenly think something bad?  Because the stages are very different.


The Mother: I have already explained to you that the mental atmosphere is worse than any public place when a crowd is there: innumerable ideas, thoughts of all kinds and all forms criss-cross in such a complicated tangle that it is impossible to make out anything precise. Your head is in the midst of it, and your mind even more so: it bathes in it as one bathes in the sea. And all this comes and goes, passes, turns, collides, enters, goes out.... If you were conscious of the mental atmosphere in which you live, obviously it would be a little maddening! I think personal cerebral limits are quite necessary as a ﬁlter, for a very long time in life.


The Mother: To be able to get out of all that and live fully in the mental atmosphere as it is, seeing it as it is — it is the same for the vital atmosphere, by the way; that is perhaps yet uglier! — to live in it and see it as it is, one must be strong, one must have a very steady sense of inner direction. But in any case, whether you see it or not, whether you feel it or not, it is a fact, it is like that.  So one cannot ask where bad thoughts come from — they are everywhere. Why do they come? — where would they go?


The Mother: You are right in the midst of them!  What governs this ﬁlter of consciousness which makes you  conscious of certain thoughts and not conscious of others, is your inner attitude, your inner afﬁnities, your inner habits — I am speaking of the mind, not of the psychic — it is your education, your cerebral development, etc. That is a kind of ﬁlter formed by your ego, and certain thoughts pass through it and others don’t — automatically. That is why the nature of the thoughts you receive may be quite an important indication for you of the kind of character you have — it may be quite subconscious for you, for a man is not in the habit of really knowing himself, but it is an indication of the general tendency of your character. To put things in a very simpliﬁed way, if you take an optimist, for instance, well, in general, optimistic ideas will come to him; for a pessimist they will generally be pessimistic ideas — I am speaking very broadly — for a person with a rebellious nature, they will be rebellious ideas; and for a very sheepish person, they will be sheepish ideas!


The Mother: Granting that sheep have ideas! That is the usual normal condition.  Now, if it so happens that you have decided to progress and if you enter the path of yoga, then a new factor intervenes.  As soon as you want to progress, you immediately meet the resistance of everything that does not want to progress both in you and around you. And this resistance naturally expresses itself in all the thoughts that correspond to it.


The Mother: Suppose that you want to make a progress regarding attachment to food, for example; well, almost constantly there will come to you thoughts particularly interested in food, about what should be taken, what should not be taken, how it should be taken, how it should not be taken; and these ideas will come to you, they will seem quite natural to you. And the more you say within yourself, “Oh! how I would like to be free from all that, what a hindrance to my progress are all these preoccupations”, the more will they come, quietly, until the progress is truly made within and you have risen to a level of consciousness where you can see all these things from above and put them — which is not a very big place in the universe! And so on, for all  things. Therefore, your occupations and afﬁnities are going to put you almost contradictorily into contact not only with ideas having an afﬁnity and relation with your way of being, but with the opposite. And if you don’t take care from the beginning to keep an attitude of discernment, you will be turned into a mental battleﬁeld.


The Mother: If you know how to rise to a higher level, simply into a region of the speculative mind which is not quite the ordinary physical mind, you can see all this play and all this struggle, all this conﬂict, all these contradictions as a curiosity which does not touch or affect you. If you rise a step higher still and see the goal towards which you want to go, you will gradually come to discern between ideas favourable to your progress which you will keep, and ideas opposed to this progress which harm and impair it; and from above you will have the power to set them aside, calmly, without being otherwise affected by them. But if you remain there, at that level in the midst of that confusion and conﬂict, well, you risk getting a headache!  The best thing to do is to occupy yourself with something practical which will compel you to concentrate specially: studies, work or some physical occupation for the body which demands attention — anything at all that forces you to concentrate on what you are doing and no longer be a prey to these ramblings.  But if you have the misfortune to remain there and look at them, then surely, as I said, you will get a headache.


The Mother: For it is a problem which must be resolved either by a descent into practical life and a concentration on some practical effort or else by rising above and looking from above at all this chaos so as to be able to bring some order into it and set it right.  But one must never remain on the same plane, it is a plane which is no good either for physical or moral health.   Do you know what that means? — The aspiration must be formulated the star is visible; and that doesn’t last long, does it? Well, if an aspiration can be formulated while the star is visible, this means that it is all the time, present, in the forefront of the consciousness — this does not apply to ordinary things, it has nothing to do with that, it concerns a spiritual aspiration.


The Mother: But the point is that if you are able to articulate your spiritual aspiration just at that moment, it means that it is right in front of your consciousness, that it dominates your consciousness. And, necessarily, what dominates your consciousness can be realised very swiftly.  I had the opportunity to make this experiment. Exactly this.  The moment the star was passing, at that very moment there sprang up from the consciousness: “To realise the divine union, for my body.”


The Mother: That very moment.  And before the end of the year, it was done.  But it was not because of the star! It was because that dominated my whole consciousness and I was thinking of nothing but that, I wanted only that, thought only of that, acted only for that. So, this thing which generally takes a whole lifetime — it is said the minimum time is thirty-ﬁve years! — before twelve months had passed, it was done.


The Mother: But that was because I thought only of that.  And it was because I was thinking only of that, that just when the star ﬂashed by I could formulate it — not merely a vague impression — formulate it in precise words like this: “To  realise union with the Divine”, the inner Divine, the thing we speak of, the very thing we speak of.  Therefore, what is important is not the star but the aspiration. The star is only like an outer demonstration, nothing else.  But it is not necessary to have a shooting star in order to realise swiftly!


The Mother: What is necessary is that the whole will of the being should be concentrated on one point.  ()  (.) What I have here isn’t very interesting. There is one very practical question which I have already explained to you several times, but perhaps it will be good to explain it yet once again.


The Mother: It is this: For this — as for everything else in this domain which may be called the “outposts” of occultism or the threshold of occultism — each one must ﬁnd his own movement; for what is most effective for each one is the method for which he has been more or less prepared and which is most familiar to him. So it is very difﬁcult to make a general rule.  But there is a preparation which may be of a general kind.  That is, to accustom the body methodically to understand that it is only the outer expression of a truer and deeper reality and that it is this truer and deeper reality which governs its destiny — though it is not usually aware of it.  One can prepare the body through a series of observations, studies, understandings, by showing it examples, making it  understand things as one makes a child understand them, either by observing its own movements — but generally, in this, one is comparatively blind! — or by observing those of others.


The Mother: And in a more general way, this preparation will be based on recognised studies, on clear facts. Like this, for instance: that a certain number of persons, placed in exactly similar circumstances, experience, each one of them, very different effects. One may go even further: in a given set of deﬁnite circumstances, there is a certain number of particular, deﬁnite individuals, in apparently quite identical conditions, and for some the effects are catastrophic, while others escape without any harm.  During the war there was a very large number of such examples for study. In epidemics it is the same thing; in cataclysms of Nature, like tidal waves or earthquakes or cyclones, it is the same thing.


The Mother: The body understands these things if they are shown and explained to it as one explains things to a child: “You see, there was something that acted there, not only the plain material fact by itself.” And, unless some bad will is there, it understands.  This is a preparation.  Gradually, if you make use of this understanding, you must, with a methodical work of infusing consciousness into the cells of the body, infuse at the same time the truth of the divine Presence. This work takes time, but, if done methodically and constantly, it produces an effect.


The Mother: So you have prepared the ground.   Suppose that as a result of some illness or other, there is some sort of pain at a precise spot. At that moment all will depend, as I said at the beginning, on the approach most familiar to you.  But we can give an example.


The Mother: You are in pain, in great pain; it is hurting very much, you are suffering a lot.   First point: do not stress the pain by telling yourself, “Oh, how painful! Oh, this pain is unbearable! Oh, it is becoming worse and worse, I shall never be able to bear it”, etc., all this sort of thing.


The Mother: The more you go on thinking like this and feeling  like this and the more your attention is concentrated on it, the pain increases amazingly.  So, the ﬁrst point: to control yourself sufﬁciently not to do that.  Second point: as I said, it depends on your habits. If you know how to concentrate, to be quiet, and if you can bring into yourself a certain peace, of any kind — it may be a mental peace, it may be a vital peace, it may be a psychic peace; they have different values and qualities, this is an individual question — you try to realise within yourself a state of peace or attempt to enter into a conscious contact with a force of peace.... Suppose you succeed more or less completely.


The Mother: Then, if you can draw the peace into yourself and bring it down into the solar plexus — for we are not talking of inner states but of your physical body — and from there direct it very calmly, very slowly I might say, but very persistently, towards the place where the pain is more or less sharp, and ﬁx it there, this is very good.  This is not always enough.   But if by widening this movement you can add a sort of mental formation with a little life in it — not just cold, but with a little life in it — that the only reality is the divine Reality, and all the cells of this body are a more or less deformed expression of this divine Reality — there is only one Reality, the Divine, and our body is a more or less deformed expression of this sole Reality — if by my aspiration, my concentration, I can bring into the cells of the body the consciousness of this Reality, all disorder must necessarily cease.  If you can add to that a movement of complete and trusting surrender to the Grace, then I am sure that within ﬁve minutes your suffering will disappear.


The Mother: If you know how to do it.  You may try and yet not succeed. But you must know how to try again and again and again, until you do succeed. But if you do those three things at the same time, well, there is no pain which can resist.  That’s all, then.


The Mother: ()  Now, another question. It is about


The Mother: what I said last week in connection with the psychic, which sees from its psychic domain, which looks at the earth, seeking a place where it can reincarnate in favourable conditions. Then I said that from the psychic domain it looks at the earth to see a “corresponding light” there.  Someone asks me what I mean by a “corresponding light”.  I simply mean a psychic light.


The Mother: For there are people who have a more or less awakened psychic, and this psychic, more or less awakened, is visible from the psychic domain to psychic beings.  So, when they see a light somewhere, they ﬁnd it a favourable place to manifest....   (.) Now, I think we are going to have a wet meditation, my children!


The Mother: ( ) Take away this mike, these poor things don’t like the rain.  (


The Mother: )  I have received three questions, one of which would require some fairly unpleasant remarks which I don’t want to make to you.... There are two others here which I could perhaps answer: One is about a sentence in where Sri Aurobindo speaks of the psychic being as “insisting” on “beauty restored to its priesthood of interpretation of the Eternal.” I have been asked what this means.  To tell the truth, I don’t know why; I don’t know if it is the old ascetic idea that beauty has no place in yoga, or if it is the word “priesthood” of interpretation of the Eternal, for which an explanation is being asked.  In the ﬁrst case, I believe I have already said often enough and repeated that in the physical world, of all things it is beauty which best expresses the Divine.


The Mother: The physical world is the world of form, and the perfection of form is beauty. So I think it is not necessary to go over all that again. And once we admit this, that in the physical world beauty is the best and closest expression of the Divine, it is natural to speak of it as a “priestess”, who interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its true role is to put the whole of manifested nature into contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, harmony, and through a sense of the ideal which raises you towards something higher. So I think this justiﬁes the word “priesthood” and explains and answers the question.


The Mother: ( )  The other question is about a phrase I used — I believe it was last week — when I spoke of the “threshold of occultism”. So a question is put to me about this occult world, that is to say,  the world invisible to ordinary physical eyes, and I am asked for explanations or comments on the beings who live in these worlds which are invisible to ordinary eyes.  I am even told that I speak very often of negative entities, that is to say, of hostile formations, of small beings formed from the disintegration of human beings after their death — the disintegration of the vital or mental being at death — but that I have never spoken of the great beings, the magniﬁcent beings or positive entities which help the evolution.


The Mother: I believe I have spoken to you about these quite often, but still I have been asked once again for explanations.  Well, the occult world is not one single region where everything is mixed, which only becomes occult because we can’t see it. The occult world is a gradation of regions, one could perhaps say, of more and more etherial or subtle regions, anyway, those farther and farther removed in their nature from the physical materiality we ordinarily see. And each one of these domains is a world in itself, having its forms and inhabited by beings with a density, one might say, analogous to that of the domain in which they live. Just as in the physical world we are of the same materiality as the physical world, so in the vital world, in the mental world, in the overmind world and in the supramental world — and in many others, inﬁnite others — there are beings which have a form whose substance is similar to the one of that world.


The Mother: This means that if you are able to enter consciously into that world with the part of your being which corresponds to that domain, you can move there quite objectively, as in the material world.  And there, there are as many, and even many more things to see and observe than in our poor little material world, which belongs to only zone of this inﬁnite gradation. You meet all sorts of things in these domains, and you need to make a study as profound, perhaps still more profound than in the physical world, to be able to know what is happening there, to have relations with the beings who live there.   It is obvious that as one goes farther, as it were, from the material world, the forms and consciousness of those beings are of a purity, beauty and perfection much higher than our ordinary physical forms. It is only in the nearest vital world, the one which is, so to say, mixed with our material life — though it lies beyond it and there is a zone where the vital is no longer mixed with the material world — of that material vital one can say that in some of its aspects it is even uglier than things here, for it is ﬁlled with a bad will which is not counterbalanced by the presence of the psychic being which, in the physical world, amends, corrects, puts right, directs this bad will.


The Mother: But it is rather a limited zone and, as soon as one goes beyond it, one can ﬁnd and meet things that are not favourable to human life, beings not on the same scale as human existence, but having their own beauty and grandeur, with whom one may establish relations which may become quite pleasant and even useful.  Only, as I have already told you, it is not very prudent to venture into these domains without a previous initiation and, above all, a puriﬁcation of nature which prevents you from entering there all weighed down and deformed by your desires, your passions, egoisms, fears and weaknesses. Before undertaking these activities one needs a complete preparation of self-puriﬁcation and widening of the consciousness which is absolutely indispensable.  In these invisible worlds there are also regions which are the result of human mental formations. One can ﬁnd there all one wants.


The Mother: In fact, one very often ﬁnds there exactly what one expects to ﬁnd. There are hells, there are paradises, there are purgatories. There are all sorts of things in accordance with the different religions and their conceptions. These things have only a very relative existence, but with a relativity similar to that of material things here; that is to say, for someone who ﬁnds himself there, they are entirely real and their effects quite tangible. One needs an inner liberation, a wideness of the consciousness and a contact with a deeper and higher truth to be able to escape from  the illusion of their reality.


The Mother: But this is something almost similar to what happens here: human beings here are mostly convinced that the only reality is the physical reality — the reality of what one can touch, can see — and for them, all that cannot be seen, cannot be touched, cannot be felt, is after all, problematical; well, what happens there is an identical phenomenon. People who at the moment of death are convinced, for one reason or another, that they are going to paradise or maybe to hell,  themselves there after their death; and for them it is truly a paradise or a hell. And it is extremely difﬁcult to make them come out of it and go to a place which is more true, more real.  So it is difﬁcult to speak of all these worlds, these innumerable worlds, in a few minutes. It is a knowledge which needs a lived experience of many years, thoroughly systematic, and which requires, as I said, an inner preparation absolutely indispensable, to make it harmless.


The Mother: We all get the chance to have a little contact — very partial, very superﬁcial — with these worlds in our dreams. And the study of dreams itself already demands much time and care, and in itself may constitute a preparation for a deeper study of the invisible worlds.  I think that is all we can proﬁtably say about it this evening.  ( )


The Mother: The last question is from somebody who ﬁnds that I have made promises a little lightly and that, after all, I haven’t kept my word!... Perhaps I expected more from humanity than it was capable of giving me — about that I don’t know. Perhaps it is a purely superﬁcial impression.  I said more or less this, that those who are here in the Ashram will know the descent of the Supermind — they can’t blame me for not having informed them when it came, I made no mystery of it! — and that they will participate in it — indeed, I did not forbid anyone to participate in it!


The Mother: On the contrary, I  believe I encouraged everybody to be open and to receive it, and try to proﬁt by it.  And so I said: From that moment the transforming Grace will radiate in the most effective way. Well, I challenge anyone to tell me the opposite!  But here indeed it begins to be a little more... I added: And fortunately for the aspirants this happy future — I don’t think I wrote it in this way, but that doesn’t matter — this happy future will materialise for them in spite of the obstacles that the unregenerate human nature may put up against it.


The Mother: I continue to hope that it will be like this!  But now that person, who is perhaps a bit impatient, tells me this: “Why have the difﬁculties increased for quite a large number of sadhaks?” ( .) Who told you that it is not because you have become more conscious! that all your difﬁculties were there before, only you did not know it?


The Mother: ... If you see more clearly and see things which are not very pretty, it is not the fault of the Supermind, it is your fault! It gives you a light, a mirror in which you can see yourself better than you did before, and you are a little troubled because it is not always very pretty? But what can I do?  And this person concludes: “Doesn’t the supramental Force work here in spite of all the obstacles the unregenerate human nature puts up against it?”


The Mother: Truly, I hope it does! for otherwise, nothing could be done, the world would never be regenerated.  But I have explained to you why it seems more difﬁcult to you.  It is because you are a little more conscious now and see things you did not see before.  There is yet another reason.


The Mother: When the Force which is at work is stronger, more insistent, naturally what resists, resists as strongly. And if instead — it is here I have to say something that’s not very pleasant — if instead of being hypnotised by your little difﬁculties, your little inconveniences, your small discomforts, your “big” defects, if instead of being hypnotised by all that, you tried to see the other side, how much more powerful the  Force is, the Grace more active, the Help more tangible; in a word, if you were a little less egoistic and less concentrated on yourselves and had a little wider vision in which you could include things that don’t concern you personally, perhaps your view of the problem would change.  Well, this is what I advise you to do, and then we shall speak about it later when you have tried my remedy: don’t think so much about yourself.  After all, this perhaps is the problem which interests you most, but it is certainly not the most interesting!    Prayers and Meditations


The Mother: This is an experience. Do you know what an unlived dream is?... I did not take the word “dream” in the sense of dreams at night; I took the word dream to mean something one has built up in the best and most clear-sighted part of one’s being, something which is an ideal one would like to see realised, something higher, more beautiful, more noble, more wonderful than all that has been created, and one has a power of imagination or creation somewhere in one’s consciousness and one builds something so that it may be realised.  And then, for some reason or other, it is not realised. Either the world was not ready or perhaps the formation was not sufﬁcient,


The Mother: but it is not realised. And so the hours pass, sterile, unproductive — useless, vain, empty — they seem to fade away because they have no result and no usefulness.  And so I said: “And the hours pass, fading away like unlived dreams.”  ( )


The Mother: I have received two questions. One is about a passage from  where it is said:  This brings us back to the symbol of Krishna and Radha.  Krishna is the One of whom Sri Aurobindo speaks here, the divine Flute-player, that is to say, the immanent and universal Divine who is the supreme power of attraction; and the soul, the psychic personality, called here Radha, who responds to the call of the Flute-player. So I have been asked to say something this evening on the Radha-consciousness, that is, in fact, on the way in which the individual soul answers the call of the Divine.  It so happens that this is exactly what Sri Aurobindo has described in the chapter we have just read: it is that capacity of ﬁnding Ananda in all things through identiﬁcation with the one divine Presence and a complete self-giving to that Presence.


The Mother: So I don’t think I have much to add; what I could say would be a limitation or a diminution of the totality of this experience.  ( ) This consciousness has the capacity of changing everything into a perpetual ecstasy, for instead of seeing things in their discordant appearance, one now sees only the divine Presence, the divine Will and the Grace everywhere; and every event, every element, every circumstance, every form changes into a way, a detail through which one can draw more intimately and profoundly closer to the Divine. Discordances disappear, ugliness vanishes; there is now only the splendour of  the divine Presence in a Love shining in all things.


The Mother: It is obvious that from a practical point of view one must be able to remain at a constant and unshakable height in order to be in that state without exposing oneself to fairly troublesome consequences. That is probably why those who wished to live in this state used to withdraw from the world and ﬁnd the universal contact through Nature.... I must say, without meaning to be unpleasant to men, that it is inﬁnitely easier to realise this state of consciousness when one is surrounded by trees, ﬂowers, plants and even animals than by human beings. It is easier but not indispensable. And if one wants the state to be truly integral, one must be able to keep it at every moment, in the presence of anyone and anything.


The Mother: There are countless legends or stories of this kind, like that of Prahlad,for instance, which we saw recently in a ﬁlm, stories which illustrate that state of consciousness. And I am not only convinced, but I myself have the quite tangible experience that if in the presence of some danger or an enemy or some ill-will, you are able to remain in this condition and see the Divine in all things, well, the danger will have no effect, the ill-will can do nothing to you, and the enemy will either be transformed or run away. That is quite certain.  But I must add a word which is quite important. You must not seek this state of consciousness with any motive or seek it because it is a protection or a help.


The Mother: You must have it sincerely, spontaneously, constantly; it must be a normal, natural,  effortless way of being. Then it is effective. But if you try in the least to imitate the movement with the idea of obtaining a particular result, it won’t succeed. The result is not obtained at all. And then in your ignorance you will perhaps say, “Oh! but they told me that, but it is not true!”


The Mother: That is because there was some insincerity somewhere.  Otherwise, if you are really sincere, that is, if it is an integral and spontaneous experience, it is all-powerful. If, looking into somebody’s eyes, you can spontaneously see the divine Presence there, the worst movements vanish, the worst obstacles disappear; and the ﬂame of an inﬁnite joy awakes, sometimes in the other person as well as in oneself. If in the other person there is the least possibility or just a tiny rift in his ill-will, the ﬂame shines forth.  That is just on the way!


The Mother: That happens when one is still on the way, when one has not reached the goal. They have that, they insist a lot on this, for... for they like to prolong the human road, simply because they enjoy this human road and because, as I told you, if you want to remain in life, in contact with life, a certain relativity necessarily remains in the experience. They like it that way — they like to quarrel with the Divine, they like the feeling of separation, these things give them pleasure! For they remain in the human consciousness and want to remain there.


The Mother: The moment there is perfect identiﬁcation, all this disappears.  So, it is as though one were depriving oneself of the pleasure of a drama! There is something that has gone out of life, that is, its illusion. They still need a reasonable amount of illusion; they can’t enter directly into the Truth.


The Mother: In fact, for the feeling of separation to disappear, you must have realised within yourself a perfect identity; and once this perfect identity is realised, well, the story comes to an end, there is nothing more to tell.  That is why it is said that if the world, if creation realised its perfect identity with the Divine, there would no longer be any creation. If you realise this perfect identity in which there is no longer any possibility of distinction and if the entire universe realised this perfect identity in which there is no longer any possibility of distinction, well, there would no longer be any universe. It would be a return to Pralaya.


The Mother: So the solution is to ﬁnd Ananda, even in the play, in this exchange in which one both gives and receives, in which one seems to be two; and that is why they keep the duality.  Otherwise, in identity, nothing remains but the identity. If the identity is complete and perfect, there is no more objectivisation.  But I said this somewhere when speaking about the story of love. I think nobody — oh! I don’t know — probably very few people noticed the distinction.


The Mother: I said that it begins with the Ananda of identity, and that after the full circuit of the creation, it ends in the Ananda of union. Well, if there had been no circuit,  there would never be the Ananda of union, there would only be the Ananda of identity. Were there no circuit, there would be no union.  This is perhaps a little subtle, but it is a fact: and perhaps it is just in order that the Ananda of identity may ﬁnd what I might call its consummation and crowning in the Ananda of union, that the whole circuit was made.  But if there is perfect identity, there can be no union, the feeling of union does not exist, for it necessarily implies something other than perfect identity.


The Mother: There can be perfect union but there is no perfect identity.   Don’t try to understand with words and with your head, for these two words express altogether different experiences. And yet the result is the same, but one is rich with all that was not in the other, the richness of the whole experience — the whole universal experience.  This is perhaps because the union is not constant.


The Mother: If you ask me, I believe this is just literature, my children! Anyway, it is certainly in order to give you an artistic picture of human life as it is!  But these people live in the vital and like it. Ah! one can’t talk about that, because...


The Mother: Well, I have another question here, a very small question, but not without interest.   It is from someone who is trying to prepare himself to receive the Supermind, and in this preparation, among other things come prayer and meditation. And then there is this reﬂection which is very frank and which very few would have the courage to make. Here it is:  This is not an individual case, it is extremely common.


The Mother: I have already said this a number of times, but still it was in passing — that people who claim to meditate for hours every day and spend their whole day praying, to me it seems that three-fourths of the time it must be absolutely mechanical; that is to say, it loses all its sincerity. For human nature is not made for that and the human mind is not built that way.  In order to concentrate and meditate one must do an exercise which I could call the “mental muscle-building” of concentration. One must really make an effort — as one makes a muscular effort, for instance, to lift a weight — if you want the concentration to be sincere and not artiﬁcial.  The same thing for the urge of prayer: suddenly a ﬂame is lit, you feel an enthusiastic, a great fervour, and express it in words which, to be true, must be spontaneous.


The Mother: This must come from the heart, directly, with ardour, without passing through the head. That is a prayer. If there are just words jostling in your head, it is no longer a prayer. Well, if you don’t throw more fuel into the ﬂame, after a time it dies out. If you do not give your muscles time to relax, if you don’t slacken the movement, your muscles lose the capacity of taking strains.


The Mother: So it is quite natural, and even indispensable, for the intensity of the movement to cease after a certain time. Naturally, someone who  is accustomed to lifting weights can do it much longer than one who has never done it before. It is the same thing; someone who is accustomed to concentration can concentrate much longer than one who is not in the habit. But for everybody there comes a time when one must let go, relax, in order to begin again.  Therefore, whether immediately or after a few minutes or a few hours, if the movement becomes mechanical, it means that you have relaxed and that you need no longer pretend that you are meditating.


The Mother: It is better to do something useful.  If you cannot manage to do a little exercise, for instance, in order to neutralise the effect of the mental tension, you may read or try to note down what happened to you, you may express things. Then that produces a relaxation, the necessary relaxation. But the duration of the meditation is only relatively important; its length simply shows how far you are accustomed to this activity.  Of course, this may increase a great deal, but there is always a limit; and when the limit is reached one must stop, that’s all.


The Mother: It is not an insincerity, it is an incapacity. What becomes insincere is if you pretend to meditate when you are no longer meditating or you say prayers like many people who go to the temple or to church, perform ceremonies and repeat their prayers as one repeats a more or less well-learnt lesson. Then it is no longer either prayer or meditation, it is simply a profession. It is not interesting.  Not necessarily!


The Mother: I said: either he will be converted or he will run away. I did not say he is always converted! I said: if there is the least little rift in his bad will, the thing will enter; and then he can suddenly be changed, or at any rate become incapable of acting. But if that is not there, well, he will go away. But he  won’t be able to do anything.


The Mother: What I assert is that he won’t be able to do anything; and if he can do something it is a sign that the state of consciousness you were in was not sufﬁciently pure and complete.  I don’t quite understand your question.   So many enemies of the Divine?  But why are there so many completely unconscious human beings?


The Mother: I ﬁnd that still more astonishing! For it is quite simply an act of unconsciousness: to be an enemy of the Divine is nothing but being unconscious.  (A teacher)  But, excuse me, the Divine where? I don’t understand your reasoning.


The Mother: But after all, suppose there is one man in a million who has realised this consciousness in himself. It is possible he may have had an effect on those around him — and yet I took care to tell you that for this state to be perfectly realised, generally it is necessary to live in solitude, otherwise there are too many contradictory things, there are too many brutally material necessities which contradict it, for you to be able to attain that state  absolutely perfectly. But if you do attain it absolutely perfectly, everything around you will necessarily become divine.   And so?


The Mother: I don’t even understand the argument.  (The teacher)  No, I still haven’t caught it!  (Another disciple)   (Laughter)


The Mother: No, I admit I don’t follow you at all, neither him, nor you, nor you! ( ) Good Lord, what do you all mean!


The Mother: Oh!... That depends exclusively upon each one. Usually one is an enemy of one’s own idea of the Divine, and that is why it is said that one who denies the Divine is very often the greatest devotee. For if he did not have within himself the certitude that the Divine exists, he would not take the trouble of denying Him.  And this is still stronger in one who hates Him, for if he did not have somewhere far within himself the certitude of the Divine’s existence, how could he hate Him?


The Mother: This has been symbolised here in India in the stories of those who wanted to identify themselves with the divine Reality and chose to become His enemies, for the path of the enemy was more direct than the path of the worshipper. These are wellknown stories here, all the old legends and Indian mythology speak about it. Well, this simply illustrates the fact that one who  has never put the problem to himself and never given the faintest thought to the existence of the Divine is certainly farther away from the Divine than one who hates Him or denies Him. For one can’t deny something one has never thought about.  He who says or writes: “I declare, I certify, all my experience goes to prove that there is no Divine, no such thing exists, it is just man’s imagination, man’s creation...”, that means he has already thought over the problem any number of times and that something within him is prodigiously interested in this problem.


The Mother: As for the one who detests Him — there it is even more obvious: one can’t be the enemy of an illusion.  So (), your question no longer holds.  For perhaps, after all, this is one more form of meeting which may have its interest. One sometimes says in a lighter vein: “My intimate enemy”, and it is perhaps not altogether wrong.  Perhaps there is more intimacy in hatred than in ignorance.


The Mother: One is nearer to what one hates than to what one is ignorant of.  This doesn’t mean I recommend hatred! That is not what I am saying, but I have very often happened to see more love in a look or an expression of fury and hatred than in an absolutely dull and inert state. It is deformed, spoilt, disﬁgured, whatever you like, but there is something living, a ﬂame is there.  Of course, even in unconsciousness and immobility, in the complete inertia — apparently — of the stone, one may ﬁnd a dazzling Light, that of the divine Presence.


The Mother: But then that is the state we were just speaking about: one sees Him everywhere, meets Him everywhere, and in so manifold and marvellously harmonised a way that all these difﬁculties disappear.  ( )  Truly speaking, to be practical, the problem could be expressed like this. If the Divine had not conceived His creation as progressive, there could have been from the beginning a beatiﬁc, immobile and unchangeable condition.


The Mother: But the minute... How  shall I explain it, I don’t know. Just because the universe had to be progressive, perfect identity, the bliss of this identity, the full consciousness of this identity had necessarily to be veiled, otherwise nothing would have ever stirred.  A static universe may be conceived. One could conceive of something which is “all at one and the same time”: that there is no time, only a kind of objectivisation — but not an unfolding in which things manifest progressively one after another, according to a special rhythm; that they are all manifested at the same time, all at once.


The Mother: Then all would be in a blissful state and there would be no universe as we see it, the element of unfolding would be missing, which constitutes... well, what we live in at present.  But once we admit this principle that the universe is progressive, the unfolding progressive, that instead of seeing everything together and all at once, our perception is progressive, then everything takes its right place within it. And inevitably, the future perfection must be felt as something higher than what was there before. The realisation towards which we are moving must necessarily seem superior to the one which was accomplished before.  And this opens the door to everything — to all possibilities.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo often said this: what appeared beautiful, good, even perfect, and marvellous and divine at a given moment in the universe, can no longer appear so now. And what now seems to us beautiful, marvellous, divine and perfect, will be an obscurity after some time. And in the same way, the gods who were all-powerful at a certain period belong to a lower reality than the gods who will manifest tomorrow.   And that is a sign that the universe is progressive.


The Mother: This has been said, this has been repeated, but people don’t understand, you know, when it concerns all those great ages, that they are like a reduction of the universal progress to the human measure.  That is why if one enters the state in which everything, as it is, appears perfectly divine, one necessarily goes out of  the universal movement at the same time. This is what people like Buddha or Shankara had understood. They expressed in their own way that if you could realise the state in which everything appears to you perfectly divine or perfectly perfect, you necessarily go out of the universal movement and enter the Unmanifest.  This is correct.


The Mother: It is like that.  They were sufﬁciently dissatisﬁed with life as it was and had very little hope that it could become better ; so for them this was the ideal solution. I call it escaping, but still.... It is not so easy!


The Mother: But for them it was the ideal solution — up to a certain point, for... there is perhaps one more step to take.  But it is a fact. If one wants to remain in the universe, one must admit the principle of progress, for this is a progressive universe. If you want to realise a static perfection, well, you will inevitably be thrown out of the universe, for you will no longer belong to its principle.  It is a choice.


The Mother: Only, Sri Aurobindo often used to say: people who choose the exit forget that at the same time they will lose the consciousness with which they could congratulate themselves on their choice! They forget that.   There is a purely physical form of the act, like those forms in cults in which a particular gesture, a particular movement is meant to express the consecration. That is purely material, as for example, lighting incense, arranging offerings, or even looking after a temple, decorating an idol, indeed all such purely physical acts.  The second part is a sort of mental consecration which makes the act that is performed a symbol.


The Mother: One is not satisﬁed with merely lighting the incense, but while lighting the incense one makes this gesture symbolic — for example, of the aspiration burning in the body or of self-giving in a dissolution, in the puriﬁcation of the ﬁre. That is to say, ﬁrst the act, then the symbol in this act and the symbolic understanding of what is done.  And ﬁnally, behind these two, an aspiration for union; that all this, these acts and the symbol you make of them, may be only a means of drawing closer and closer to the Divine and making yourself ﬁt to unite with Him.  These three things must be there for the act to be complete: that is, something purely material, something mental, and something psychic, the psychic aspiration. If one of the three is there  without the other two, it is incomplete.


The Mother: As a rule, very rarely are the three consciously combined. That produces beings of exceptional sincerity and consecration: the entire being, in all its parts, participates in the action.  ( )  (.)


The Mother: Well, there was a time we had some difﬁculty in ﬁnding questions; now we have gone to the other extreme! I have so many that they would keep us at least till midnight if they were all to be answered! So I shall have to make a selection.... There is one at once very common and very practical which seems to me quite appropriate.


The Mother: I have noted — much too often, I must say — that most of you do not listen to what I say, so much so that many a time I have answered a question in detail and immediately afterwards someone or other among you asks me exactly the same question, as though I had not said anything! And the phenomenon is explicable: each one is shut up in his own thought, just as, I suppose, you are in the habit of doing at school where you repeat your lesson to yourself if you are attentive and hardworking, and don’t listen to what the teacher is asking or what the other students are answering, and thus lose three-quarters of the advantage of not being alone in the class. Here, it is more serious, for I never give a personal, individual answer, I reply for everybody to proﬁt by it and if, instead of listening, you continue thinking of what is in your head, it is quite obvious that you lose the opportunity of learning something. That’s the ﬁrst point. If you are here, well, ﬁrst listen, don’t think of something else....


The Mother: But that too is not enough, that’s just the beginning: there is one good way of listening and many bad ways of listening.  I don’t know if any of you are so fond of music as to know how to hear it. But if you want to listen to music, you must create an absolute silence in your head, you must not follow or accept a single thought, and must be entirely concentrated, like  a sort of screen which receives, without movement or noise, the vibration of the music. That is the only way, there is no other, the only way of hearing music and understanding it. If you admit in the least the movements and fancies of your thought, the whole value of the music escapes you.


The Mother: Well, to understand a teaching which is not quite of the ordinary material kind but implies an opening to something more deep within, this necessity of silence is far greater still. If, instead of listening to what you are told, you begin to jump on the idea in order to ask another question or even to discuss what is said under the false pretext of understanding better, all that you are told passes like smoke without leaving any effect.  Similarly, when you have an experience, you must never, during the period of the experience, try to understand what it is, for you immediately cause it to vanish, or you deform it and take away its purity ; in the same way, if you want a spiritual teaching to enter into you, you must be absolutely in your head, immobile like a mirror which not only reﬂects but absorbs the ray of light, lets it enter and go deep within, so that from the depths of your consciousness it may spring up again, some day or other, in the form of knowledge.  If you don’t do that, you are wasting your time, and, into the bargain, wasting mine.


The Mother: That’s a proved fact. I thought I had already told you this several times, but still perhaps I didn’t tell you clearly enough. If you come here, come with the intention of. What happens you will know later; the effect of this silent attitude you will recognise later; but for the moment, the only thing to do is to be like this (), silent, immobile, attentive, concentrated.  That is all.


The Mother: The second question is of an altogether external kind — relatively. But it seems quite indispensable, for it concerns our sports education and also, generally, the psychological basis on which we have founded our activity here. These things have been  written by Sri Aurobindo, I have written them very often, have explained them to you many a time, but I am really sorry I am obliged to state that it has not entered your consciousness.  I don’t want to start a war against what you feel and do, but I should like you at least to understand things are done here as they are, instead of letting yourselves go in a retrograde impulsiveness and copying all that is done elsewhere under the pretext that it is “like that” that things are done, under the pretext that your parents and great-grandparents, your relatives and friends, and the grandparents of your friends, all those who stay outside continue to do things in this way and consider it the normal, natural way of doing them.  I don’t dispute the fact, in the sense that humanity was created by Nature for a special purpose and special ends, and in order to realise her ends she has produced beings and also given them special habits and special functions.


The Mother: Therefore, if you speak of “natural” things, I cannot tell you that this is not “natural”, for that is the way of Nature. But still, I believe I have told you — not only once but many times, and Sri Aurobindo also has written this, not once but many a time — that we are not here to recommence, perpetuate, continue what is done elsewhere.  And we have given a concrete form to this fact specially in our education; for I must say, without offending anyone, that those who come here after having already seen much of life, those who have quite a heavy past behind them, may ﬁnd it difﬁcult to change their attitude and point of view immediately, but if you take very young children who have not yet been too spoiled — they are always spoiled — but those who have not yet been too spoiled by ordinary education, the ideas of their family, the atavism of their parents, etc., you have a chance of orientating the consciousness on the right path and getting a tangible and concrete result.  To tell the truth, we have nothing to complain about, for we have had striking proofs that if one knows how to do it, what we claim is possible.


The Mother: What we claim is this, that in similar conditions, with the same education and the same possibilities, there is no reason to make a categorical distinction, ﬁnal and imperative, between what we call men and women. For us, human beings are the expression of a single soul. It is true, as I said at the beginning, that Nature has differentiated her expressions for the satisfaction of her needs and the realisation of her purpose, but if our needs and purposes are of kind and we don’t recognise the physical ends conceived by Nature as ﬁnal, and absolute, then we can try to develop consciousness on another line.  Unfortunately, we have noticed one thing. As the years pass and the little girls grow up into big girls, suddenly we ﬁnd that they begin to remember that they are girls, that they must be pretty, they must please, must dress up in a special way, put on little affectations to attract attention — and the whole result of our work collapses.


The Mother: There are some — there are always exceptions to the rule — who have understood and who try to realise. But even among these there is still in the background that kind of little satisfaction of not being quite “like the others”, of being able to do what the others cannot, and for this to be clearly seen, well, they must compare themselves with the others!   So that is exactly the occasion of what I have just told you.  It is a question from one of you which has given rise to another question, and I hope that if I explain to you once more in detail, insisting on the fact, we shall perhaps be able to start anew and realise something more complete and more clear.


The Mother: We come down altogether to earthly things: somebody has been very successful in athletics and has come ﬁrst in one event.  This somebody is a “she”, for convenience in speaking. And so,  ah! besides the satisfaction of having done well, there was a little satisfaction in having done better than the others, and she came to ask:  We have, I believe, repeated and reiterated that there are no “women’s” and no “men’s” records, there are only group records.


The Mother: There is the green group — the various green groups — there is the red group, the grey group, the blue group, the khaki group, the white group. You may tell me that some of these groups are exclusively men’s or women’s. I shall answer what I have just said, that unless one comes here very young, it is difﬁcult to change one’s habits, and that is what has made this separation necessary — but it is not the ideal. And if we made it a habit to announce gloriously: “This very remarkable girl has done what no other girl could do before”, oh, la, la, what a fall it would be! Not to mention that this encourages vanity — which is not good — it is also an assertion that this fact is remarkable; now it is not at all a remarkable fact that it is a girl: it is remarkable because she has done very well, and there are many boys who have not done so well.


The Mother: But if one wants to magnify this ﬁne fact by comparing her with other girls who have not done as well, it becomes deplorable.  So this question was brought to me. I believe that person has been given the answer which I have just told you, that there are only group records and no records of sexes.  But that is not all. I am told that some have heard — not once but hundreds of times, especially from those who come from outside with all the ideas of the world outside — this question: There are some who consider it a scandal; some consider it a glaring error from the physical, material point of view.


The Mother: “Why aren’t girls treated in a special way and quite differently from boys?” — then the great argument — “.”   Ah! thank you. Then why do we have an Ashram? Why do we have a Centre of Education?


The Mother: If everywhere the same things  are done, we don’t need to repeat them, we won’t do them any better than others.  And when they put this argument in my way, they couldn’t tell me anything that appears more utterly stupid to me. It is done everywhere? That is just the reason for not doing it; for if we do what others do, it is not worth the trouble doing anything at all. We want precisely to introduce into the world something which is not there; but if we keep all the habits of the world, all the preferences of the world, all the constructions of the world, I don’t see how we can get out of the rut and do something new.


The Mother: My children, I have told you, repeated it in every tone, in every way: if you really want to proﬁt by your stay here, try to look at things and understand them with a new vision and a new understanding based on something higher, something deeper, vaster, something more true, something which is not yet but will be one day. And it is because we want to build this future that we have taken this special stand.  I tell you that we have had quite material proofs of the correctness and truth of our position, but... they are not lasting.


The Mother: Why? Because it is extremely easy to fall back into the ordinary consciousness, and there is nothing more difﬁcult than to always stand on the top of the ladder and try to look at the world from up there.  We to obey the orders of Nature, even if these orders have millions of years of habits behind them. And one thing is certain, the argument of Nature when she is opposed to things changing, is: “It has always been thus.” I claim this is not true.


The Mother: Whether she likes it or not, things change, and a day will come when it will be said: “Ah! yes, there was a time when it was like that, but now it is different.”  Well, grant only for some time, in a way which is still that of faith and trust, that we are in fact bringing about this change, that we have come to a point where things are going to take a turn and a new orientation. You are simply asked to have just a little faith and trust and allow yourselves to be guided.   Otherwise, well, you will lose the advantage of being here, that’s all.


The Mother: And you will go back with the same weaknesses and same habits one sees in life as it is outside. There you are.  You thought I was a little severe, a little hard, and that after all it was not easy to satisfy me! That is why you tie pretty little pink ribbons in your hair or on pigtails hanging at the back.  I say, perhaps a little uncharitably: “You look ridiculous!”


The Mother: For you think you are very ﬁne to look at, but truly this makes you ridiculous. If you want to go out into the world and preen yourselves as girls do in the world and give yourselves airs in order to please because that is your sole defense and sole weapon, to attract attention and to please, and be quite pretty, quite seductive, you are quite free to do so, it’s no longer my concern.  But indeed to do all that here is ridiculous. It is ridiculous and you also bring yourselves down immediately to a level which is not very pretty.  Naturally, you may blame me for telling you all this in front of “the other sex”.


The Mother: But I include him in the ridicule, for if he did not think as he does, if he did not feel as he does and did not act as he does, you would have long ago been disgusted with these childish little affectations. There we are.  Now I have told you all I wanted to say. I think this is enough for today, isn’t it? You have really had it!


The Mother: For God’s sake, can’t you forget that you are a girl or a boy, and try to become a human being?  I don’t see why there should be one special ideal for the physical  education of girls and another for the education of boys.  Physical education aims at developing all the possibilities of the human body — possibilities of harmony, strength, suppleness, skill, endurance — and increasing the mastery of the functions of its members and organs, making the body a perfect instrument at the disposal of the conscious will. This programme is excellent for all human beings equally; there is no reason for wanting to have another one for girls.


The Mother: Why make a distinction between the two? They are both human beings trying to become ﬁt instruments for the divine work, above questions of sex, caste, creed and nationality; they are all children of the same inﬁnite Mother and aspirants to the one and eternal Godhead.  Perfect harmony of proportions, suppleness and strength, grace and force, plasticity, endurance and, above all, an excellent health, unvarying, unchanging, the result of a pure soul, of a joyful trust in life and an unshakable faith in the divine Grace.   One word more to ﬁnish: I have told you these things because you needed to hear them.


The Mother: But don’t make an absolute dogma from them, for that takes away all their truth.   That depends on who offers the worship.  It is not that which is of importance for the spiritual value.  For the integrality and the complete truth of the Yoga it is important not to limit one’s aspiration to one form or another. But from the spiritual point of view, whatever the object of worship, if the movement is perfectly sincere, if the self-giving is integral and absolute, the spiritual result can be the same; for, whatever object you take, through it — sometimes in spite of it, despite it — you always reach the supreme Reality, in the measure and proportion of the sincerity of your consecration.


The Mother: That is why it is always said that, no matter what aspect of the Divine you adore or even what guide you choose, if you are perfect in your self-giving and absolutely sincere, you are to attain the spiritual goal.  But the result is no longer the same when you want to realise the integral yoga. Then you must not limit yourself in any way, even in the path of your consecration.... Only, these are two very different things.  Spiritual realisation — as it was formerly understood, as it is still commonly understood — is union with the Supreme in some way or other, either within you or through some form or other; it is the fusion of your being with the Supreme, with the Absolute, almost the disappearance of your individuality in this fusion.


The Mother: And that depends absolutely on the sincerity and  the integrality of your self-giving, rather than on the choice you make of that to which you want to give yourself. For... the very sincerity of your aspiration will make you cross all limitations and ﬁnd the Supreme, for you carry Him within yourself.   Whether you seek Him outside, whether you seek Him within, whether you seek Him in a form or without form, if your aspiration is sincere enough and your resolution sincere enough, you are sure to reach the goal.


The Mother: But if you want to make the complementary movement of which Sri Aurobindo speaks, that is to say, to return to the outer consciousness and world after having realised this union in yourself, and transform this outer consciousness and world, then in this case you cannot limit yourself in any way, for otherwise you will not be able to accomplish your work.  Essentially, you must be able to ﬁnd this oneness with the Divine in all forms, all aspects, in every way that has been used to reach Him. And you must go beyond that and ﬁnd a new way.  So, the ﬁrst point to clear up in your thought — and it is a point of capital importance: you must not confuse the integral yoga with other spiritual realisations, which may be very high but cover a very limited ﬁeld, for theirs is a movement only in depth.  You may pierce a hole, you see, with your aspiration and make a movement in depth through anything at all.


The Mother: All depends on the intensity and sincerity of your aspiration — on the sincerity, that is to say, on how far your self-giving is complete, integral, absolute. But it does not depend on the form you have chosen: necessarily, you will have to pass through in order to ﬁnd what is behind.   But if you want to transform your nature and your being, and if you want to participate in the creation of a new world, then this aspiration, this sharp and linear point is no longer enough. One must include everything and contain everything in one’s consciousness.  Naturally, that is much more difﬁcult.


The Mother: What?  Oh! what I have just read to you today?   It is precisely that part of the being which is not satisﬁed with abstractions and with escaping from life and evading it and leaving it as it is. It is that part of the being which wants to be integral, wants to be integrally transformed or at any rate to participate integrally in the inner adoration.


The Mother: In every normal being there is the necessity, the need — an absolute need to translate into a physical form what he feels and wants internally. I consider those who always want to evade life in order to have self-realisation as abnormal and incomplete.  And in fact, these are usually weak natures. But those who have strength, force and a kind of healthy equilibrium in themselves, feel an absolute need to realise materially their spiritual realisation; they are not satisﬁed with going away into the clouds or into worlds where forms no longer exist. They must have their physical consciousness and even their body participate in their inner experience.


The Mother: Now, it may be said that the need to adopt or follow or participate in a religion as it is found all ready-made, arises rather from the “herd instinct” in human beings. The true thing would be for each one to ﬁnd that form of adoration or cult which is his own and expresses spontaneously and individually his own special relation with the Divine; that would be the ideal condition.  To adopt a religion because one is born in that religion or because the people one loves and trusts practise that religion or because when one goes to a particular place where others pray and worship, one feels helped in one’s own prayer and worship, is not the sign of a very strong nature; I should say it is rather the sign of a weakness or at any rate of a lack of originality.  But to want to translate into the forms of one’s physical life the inner aspiration and adoration is quite legitimate, and it is much more sincere than what is done by a man who splits himself into two, leads a physical life quite mechanically and ordinarily and, when he can do it, when he has the time or when it suits him, withdraws within himself, escapes from physical  life and the physical consciousness and goes to far-off heights to ﬁnd his spiritual joys.  Someone who tries to make his material life the expression of his highest aspiration is certainly more noble, more upright and sincere in character than a man who splits himself into two saying that the outer life is of no importance and will never change and must be accepted as it is, and that, in reality only the inner attitude counts.


The Mother: ( )  My ﬁle of questions is increasing! And I must say they are not all equally interesting; but still, I could perhaps take one or two of them for the satisfaction of those who have asked them.


The Mother: First, some of you have got into the habit of sending me questions without signing them, for fear that I may reveal the identity of the one who has asked the question! I shall never reveal it, you may rest assured; and even if I make an unpleasant remark, nobody will know who it is for! ( )  There is another thing.


The Mother: Some of you don’t take the trouble of asking your questions in French. As I did not give you notice openly that I would reply only to questions in French, I have translated one or two of them for the moment; but in future, if you want me to consider your questions, they must be expressed in French. Even if there are many mistakes, it does not matter, I shall correct them!  Here is one which has been asked in English, to which the answer is very short. I am asked: I have said this many times, but this is an opportunity to repeat it: it is.