The Mother: Only, Sri Aurobindo’s idea would seem to be that opposites are the quickest and most effective means of shaping Matter so that it can intensify its manifestation.  As an experience, this is absolutely certain, in the sense that, ﬁrst of all, when one comes into contact with eternal Love, the supreme Love, one immediately has — how to put it? — a perception, a sensation — it is not an understanding, it is something very concrete: even the most illumined material consciousness, however much it has been moulded and prepared, is of manifesting That. The ﬁrst thing one feels is this kind of incapacity. Then comes an experience: something which manifests a form of — one cannot call it exactly “cruelty”, because it is not cruelty as we know it — but within the totality of circumstances, a vibration appears and, with a certain intensity, refuses love as it is manifested here. It is precisely this: something in the material world which refuses the manifestation of love as it exists at present.


The Mother: I am not speaking of the ordinary world, I am speaking of the present consciousness at its highest. It is an experience, I am speaking of something that has happened. So the part of the consciousness which has been struck by this opposition makes a direct appeal to the origin of Love, .  Limits are broken and a ﬂood pours down which have manifested before; and something is expressed which was not expressed before.  When one sees this, there is obviously a similar experience from the point of view of what we call life and death.


The Mother: It is this kind of constant “brooding” or presence of Death and the  possibility of death, as it is said in: we have a constant companion throughout the journey from cradle to grave; we are constantly accompanied by this threat or presence of Death.  Well, along with this, in the cells, there is a call for a Power of Eternity, with an intensity which would not be there except for this constant threat. Then one understands, one begins to feel quite concretely that all these things are only ways of intensifying the manifestation, of making it progress, of making it more perfect. And if the means are crude, it is because the manifestation itself is very crude. And as it becomes more perfect and ﬁt to manifest that which is, the very crude means will give way to subtler ones and the world will progress without any need for such brutal oppositions.


The Mother: This is simply because the world is still in its infancy and human consciousness is still entirely in its infancy.  This is a very concrete experience.  It follows that when the earth no longer needs to die in order to progress, there will be no more death. When the earth no longer needs to suffer in order to progress, there will be no more suffering. And when the earth no longer needs to hate in order to love, there will be no more hatred.


The Mother: ()  This is the quickest and most effective means to bring creation out of its inertia and lead it towards its fulﬁlment.  ()  There is a certain aspect of creation — which may be a very modern one — it is the need to escape from disorder and confusion, from disharmony and confusion: a confusion, a disorder which takes every possible form, which becomes struggle, useless effort, wastage. It depends on the domain you are in, but in the material world, in action, it means useless complications,  waste of energy and material, waste of time, incomprehension, misunderstanding, confusion, disorder.


The Mother: This is what used to be called in the Vedas — I do not know the equivalent of this word, it is something twisted, which instead of going straight to the mark makes sharp, unnecessary zigzags. This is one of the things that is most opposed to the harmony of a purely divine action which has a simplicity... that seems childlike. Direct — direct, instead of making absurd and completely useless circumvolutions. Well, it is obviously the same thing: disorder is a way of stimulating the need for the pure divine simplicity.  The body feels very strongly, very strongly that everything could be simple, so simple!


The Mother: And so that the being — this kind of individual agglomerate — can be transformed, it needs precisely to become more simple, simple, simple. All these complications of Nature, which they are now beginning to understand and study, which are so intricate for the slightest thing — the smallest of our functions is the result of a system so complicated that it is almost unthinkable; certainly it would be impossible for human thought to plan and put together all these things — now science is discovering them, and one can see very clearly that if the functioning is to be divine, that is, if it is to escape this disorder and confusion, it must be simpliﬁed, simpliﬁed, simpliﬁed.  ( )  That is to say, Nature, or rather Nature in her attempt at selfexpression, was obliged to resort to an unbelievable and almost inﬁnite complication in order to reproduce the primal Simplicity.


The Mother: And we come back to the same thing. From this excess of complication arises the possibility of a simplicity which would not be empty but full — a full simplicity, a simplicity that contains everything; whereas without these complications, simplicity is empty.  Now they are making discoveries like that. In anatomy, for  example, they are discovering surgical treatments which are unbelievably complicated! It is like their classiﬁcation of the elements of Matter — what frightful complexity!


The Mother: And all this is for the purpose of... in an effort to express Unity, the one Simplicity — the divine state.  ( )  Perhaps it will go quickly.... But the question comes to this — an aspiration that is, intense and effective enough, to attract That which can transform complication into Simplicity, cruelty into Love, and so on.


The Mother: And it is no use complaining and saying that it is a pity, because it is like that. Why is it like that?... Probably, when it is no longer like that, we shall know. We could put it another way: if we knew, it would no longer be like that.  So, to speculate: “It would have been better if it had not been like that, etc.” — all that is unpractical, it is no use at all, it is useless.


The Mother: We must hurry up and do what is needed to put an end to it, that is all; it is the only practical thing.  For the body it is very interesting. But it is a mountain, a mountain of experiences that seem very small, but because of their multiplicity, they have their place.   As far as moral things are concerned, this is absolutely obvious, it is indisputable — all moral suffering moulds your character and leads you straight to ecstasy, when you know how to take it. But when it comes to the body...


The Mother: It is true that doctors have said that if one can teach the body to bear pain, it becomes more and more resilient and less easily disrupted — this is a concrete result. In the case of people who know how to avoid getting completely upset as soon as they have a pain somewhere, who are able to bear it quietly, to keep their balance, it seems that the body’s capacity to bear the disorder without going to pieces increases. This is a great achievement. I have asked myself this question from the purely practical, external standpoint and it seems to be like this.  Inwardly, I have been told this many times — told and shown by small experiences — that the body can bear much more than we think, if no fear or anxiety is added to the pain.


The Mother: If we eliminate the mental factor, the body, left to itself, has neither fear nor apprehension nor anxiety about what is going to happen — no anguish — and it can bear a great deal.  The second step is when the body has decided to bear it — you see, it takes the decision to bear it: immediately, the acuteness, what is acute in the pain disappears. I am speaking absolutely materially.  And if you are calm — here, another factor comes in, the need for inner calm — if you have the inner calm, then the pain changes into an almost pleasant sensation — not “pleasant” in the ordinary sense, but an almost comfortable feeling comes.  Again, I am speaking purely physically, materially.


The Mother: And the last stage, when the cells have faith in the divine Presence and in the sovereign divine Will, when they have this trust that all is for the good, then ecstasy comes — the cells open, like this, become luminous and ecstatic.  That makes four stages — only three are mentioned here.  The last one is probably not within everyone’s reach, but the ﬁrst three are quite evident — I it is like that. The  only thing that used to worry me was that it was not a purely psychological experience and that there was some wear in the body by the fact of enduring suffering. But I have asked doctors and I was told that if the body is taught to bear pain when it is very young, its capacity to endure increases so much that it can really resist disease; that is, the disease does not follow its normal course, it is arrested.


The Mother: That is precious.  I have rarely had this experience of renunciation — for there to be renunciation, one must be attached to things, and there was always this thirst, this need to go further, to go higher, to feel better, to do better, to have something better. And rather than having a feeling of renunciation one has the feeling that it is a good riddance — you get rid of something cumbersome that weighs you down and hinders your advance. That is what I was saying the other day: we are still everything we no longer want to be and He is everything we want to become — what we call “we” in our egoistic stupidity is precisely what we do not want to be any more, and we would be so happy to throw all that off, to get rid of all that, so as to be able to be what we want to be.  This is a very living experience.


The Mother: The only process that I have known, and which has been repeated several times during my life, is the renunciation of an error: something you believe to be true — which probably was true for a time — on which you base part of your action, but which in fact was only an opinion. You thought that it was a  true evaluation with all its logical consequences, and your action — part of your action — was based on that, and it all followed automatically; and suddenly, an experience, a circumstance or an intuition, warns you that your evaluation is not as true as it looked. Then there is a whole period of observation, of study — or sometimes it comes like a revelation, a massive demonstration — and not only the idea or the false knowledge, but all its consequences must be changed — perhaps a whole way of acting on some point. And at that moment there is a kind of sensation, something akin to the sensation of renunciation, which means that you must break up a whole set of things which had been built — sometimes it can be quite extensive, sometimes it is something very small, but the experience is the same: it is the movement of a force, a power that dissolves, and there is resistance from everything which has to be dissolved, from all the past habits; and it is this movement of dissolution, with its corresponding resistance, which is probably expressed in the ordinary human consciousness as a feeling of renunciation.  I saw this very recently — it is insigniﬁcant, these circumstances have no importance in themselves; they are interesting only in the context of the study.


The Mother: This is the only phenomenon that is familiar to me because it has been repeated several times in my life. As the being progresses, the power of dissolution increases, becomes more and more immediate and the resistance diminishes. But I have the memory of a period of maximum resistance — it was more than half a century ago — and it was nothing but that, it was always something outside myself — not outside my consciousness, but outside my will — something which resisted the will. I have never had the feeling of having to renounce anything, but I have had the feeling of having to apply pressure on things to dissolve them. Whereas now, more and more, the pressure is imperceptible, it is immediate; as soon as the force to dissolve a whole set of things manifests, there is no resistance, everything dissolves; on the contrary, there is  hardly any feeling of liberation — there is something which is amused again and says: “Oh, again!


The Mother: How many times one limits oneself....” How many times you think that you are advancing, continuously, smoothly, uninterruptedly, and yet how many times you set a little limit in front of yourself. It is not a big limit, for it is a very small thing in an immense whole, but it is a small limit to your action. And so when the Force acts to dissolve the limit, at ﬁrst you feel liberated, you are glad; but now, it is not even that, it is a smile. Because it is not a feeling of liberation, it is simply like removing a stone from your path so that you can go on.


The Mother: This idea of renunciation can only arise in a self-centred consciousness. Naturally, people — the ones I call altogether primitive — are attached to things: when they have something, they do not want to let it go! It seems so childish to me!... When they have to part with something, it hurts! Because they identify themselves with the things they have.


The Mother: But this is childishness.  The true process behind all this is the amount of resistance in things that were formed on a certain basis of knowledge — which was a knowledge at a particular time and which is no longer so at another — a partial knowledge, not ﬂeeting but impermanent. There is a whole set of things built upon this knowledge and they resist the force that says: “No! it is not true, () your basis is no longer true, let’s take it away!” And then, oh! it hurts — this is what people experience as renunciation.


The Mother: (Mother smiles)  This has been my problem for weeks.  I have come to this conclusion: in principle, it is the  consciousness and the union with the Divine that bring rapture — this is the principle — therefore, the consciousness and the union with the Divine, whether in the world as it is or in the construction of a future world, must be the same — in principle.  That is what I repeat to myself all the time: “How is it that you do not have this rapture?”  I have it — when the whole consciousness is centralised in union; at any time, in the midst of anything, with this movement of concentration of the consciousness on union, the rapture comes.


The Mother: But I must say that it disappears when I am working.... It is a world — a very chaotic world of work, where I act on everything around me; and necessarily, I am obliged to receive what is around me, so as to be able to act on it. I have reached a state in which all that I receive, even the things that are considered most painful, leave me absolutely calm and indifferent — “indifferent”, not an inactive indifference: without any painful reaction of any kind, absolutely neutral ( ), with perfect equality. But in this equality there is a precise knowledge of what is to be done, of what is to be said, of what is to be written, of what is to be decided, in short, everything that action entails. All that happens in a state of perfect neutrality, with the sense of Power at the same time: the Power ﬂows, the Power acts, and the neutrality remains — but there is no rapture.


The Mother: I do not have the enthusiasm, the delight, the fullness of action.  And I must say that this rapturous state of consciousness would be dangerous in the present condition of the world. Because it produces reactions that are almost absolute — I see that this state of rapture has a power. But I insist on the word formidable, in the sense that it is intolerant or intolerable — intolerable rather — to everything that is unlike it. It is the same thing or almost — not quite the same, but almost — as the supreme divine Love; the vibration of this ecstasy or rapture is a small beginning of the vibration of divine Love, and that is absolutely — yes, there is no other word for it — intolerant, in  the sense that it will not permit the presence of anything that is contrary to it.


The Mother: So it would have frightful consequences for the ordinary consciousness. I see it clearly, because sometimes this Power comes — this Power comes and one has the impression that everything is going to explode. For it can tolerate nothing but union, it can tolerate nothing but the response that accepts, that receives and accepts. And it is not an arbitrary will, it is by the  of its existence which is All-Power, “All-Power” not in the sense in which we understand it, but really All-Power.  That is to say that it exists entirely, totally, exclusively.


The Mother: It contains everything, but anything that is contrary to its vibration is compelled to change, since nothing can disappear. So this immediate, almost brutal, absolute change, in the world as it is, is a catastrophe.  This is the answer that I have received to my problem.  Because it was that, I was wondering, “Why? I who am...”


The Mother: At any instant all I have to do is this () and it is... there is nothing left but the Lord, everything is That — but so absolutely that everything which is not That disappears! But at the moment the proportion is such (), that too many things would have to disappear!  I have understood that.  It is impossible to satisfy desire perfectly — it is something impossible.


The Mother: And also to renounce desire. You renounce one desire and you have another. Therefore both are relatively impossible; what is possible is to enter into a state where there is no desire.   ()  It is a pity that I cannot note down all these experiences that come, because these last few days and during a whole period, there has been a very clear perception of the true working which is the expression of the supreme Will translated spontaneously, naturally, automatically through the individual instrument; one might even say — for the mind is quiet, it keeps quiet — through the body; and the perception of the moment when this expression of the divine Will is clouded — distorted — by the introduction of desire, the special vibration of desire, which has a quality all its own and which has many apparent causes


The Mother: : it is not only the thirst for something, the need for something, or the attachment to something; the same vibration can be set in motion, for example, by the fact that the will which is expressed seems to be, or at least is mistaken for, the expression of the supreme Will; but there has been a confusion between the immediate action which was obviously the expression of the supreme Will and the result which should have followed — it is a mistake we very often make. We are in the habit of thinking that when we want something it should come to us, because the vision is too shortsighted — too shortsighted and too limited; instead of having an overall vision which would show us that this particular vibration was necessary to set off a certain number of other vibrations and that it is the of all that which will have an effect, which is not the immediate effect of the vibration emitted. I do not know if this is clear, but it is a constant experience.  As a matter of fact, during this period, I have studied and observed this phenomenon: how the vibration of desire is added to the vibration of Will emitted by the Supreme — in our little everyday actions. And with the vision from above, if we take care to maintain the consciousness of this vision from above, we can see how this vibration emitted was exactly the vibration emitted by the Supreme, but instead of obtaining the immediate result expected by the surface consciousness, it was meant to set off a  whole series of vibrations and to achieve another, more distant and more complete result.


The Mother: I am not speaking of great things or of actions on a terrestrial scale, I am speaking of the very small things in life: for example, saying to someone,“Give me this”, and instead of giving it, that someone does not understand and gives something else. So if we do not take care to preserve an overall vision, a certain vibration may occur, for example a vibration of impatience or of dissatisfaction, together with the impression that the vibration from the Lord is not understood and not received. Well, this little added vibration of impatience or, in fact, of not understanding what is happening, this impression of a lack of receptivity or response, is of the same quality as desire — it cannot be called a desire, but it is the same kind of vibration — this is what comes to complicate things. If we have the complete, exact vision, we know that “Give me this” will produce something other than the immediate result and that this other thing will bring in something else which is exactly what should be. I do not know if I am making myself clear, it is rather complicated!


The Mother: But this gave me the key to the difference in quality between the vibration of Will and the vibration of desire, and at the same time the possibility of eliminating this vibration of desire by a wider and more total vision — wider, more total and far-seeing, that is to say, the vision of a greater whole.  I insist on this point, because this eliminates all moral factors. It eliminates this pejorative notion of desire. More and more , the vision is eliminating all notions of good and bad, right and wrong, inferior and superior, and all that.


The Mother: There is only what might almost be called a difference of vibratory quality — “quality” still gives the idea of superiority and inferiority; it is not quality, it is not intensity. I do not know the scientiﬁc term they use to distinguish one vibration from another, but that’s what it is.  And so what is noteworthy is that the vibration, what one might call the quality of the vibration that comes from the Lord, is constructive — it builds and it is peaceful and luminous; while  the other vibration of desire, or any similar vibration, complicates, destroys, confuses and twists things — confuses and distorts them, twists them. And this takes away the light; it produces a greyness, which can be intensiﬁed by violent movements into very dark shadows. But even when there is no passion, when passion does not intervene, it is like that.


The Mother: The physical reality has become nothing but a ﬁeld of vibrations that mingle and unfortunately also clash and conﬂict with one another; and the clash, the conﬂict is a climax of this kind of turmoil and disorder and confusion created by certain vibrations which are in fact vibrations of ignorance — because we do not know. They are vibrations of ignorance and they are too small, too narrow, too limited — too short. The problem is no longer perceived from a psychological point of view at all; there are only vibrations.   If we consider it from the psychological point of view...


The Mother: on the mental plane, it is very easy; on the vital plane it is not very difﬁcult; on the physical plane it is a little heavier, for it takes the form of “needs”; but here too there has been a ﬁeld of experience these last few days: the study of medical and scientiﬁc conceptions of the structure of the body, its needs, what is good or bad for it; and that, reduced to its essence, comes down to the same question of vibrations. It was rather interesting: there was an appearance — for all things as they are seen by the ordinary consciousness are pure appearances — there was an appearance of food-poisoning and it became the object of a special study in order to ﬁnd out whether there was anything absolute in it or whether the poisoning was relative, that is, based on ignorance and a bad reaction, and on the absence of the true vibration.  The conclusion was that it is a question of proportion between the amount, the sum of vibrations that belong to the Lord, and the vibrations that still belong to obscurity; and, depending on the proportion, it takes the form of something concrete and real or of something that can be eliminated, that is, which does not resist the inﬂuence of the vibration of Truth. And it was very interesting, for as soon as the consciousness was informed  of the cause of the disturbance in the functioning of the body — the consciousness saw where it came from, what it was — immediately, the observation began with the idea, “Let us see what is happening.”


The Mother: First, put the body in a state of perfect rest with the certitude — which is always there — that nothing happens except by the will of the Lord, that the result is also the will of the Lord, and that therefore one should be completely quiet; so the body is completely quiet, untroubled, it is not restless, not vibrating, nothing — completely quiet. And then, to what extent are the effects inevitable? As a certain amount of matter containing an element unfavourable to the elements of the body and to the life of the body has been absorbed, what is the proportion of favourable and unfavourable elements, or of favourable and unfavourable vibrations? Then I saw very clearly that the proportion varies according to the number of body cells under the direct inﬂuence, which respond only to the supreme vibration, and the others which still belong to the ordinary way of vibrating. It was very clear, because one could see all the possibilities, from the ordinary mass which is completely upset by this intrusion and in which one has to ﬁght with all the ordinary methods to get rid of the undesirable element, to the total response of the cells to the supreme Force, which means that the intrusion can have no effect.


The Mother: But this is still the dream of tomorrow — we are on the way. And the proportion has become quite favourable — I cannot say all-powerful, far from it — quite favourable, which means that the consequences of the disturbance did not last very long and the damage was, so to say, minimal.  But all the experiences at the moment, one after the other — all the experiences of the body — lead to the same conclusion : everything depends on the proportion of elements responding exclusively to the inﬂuence of the Supreme, the elements that are half and half, on the way to transformation, and the elements that are still in the old process of vibration of Matter. Their number seems to be diminishing; it seems to  be diminishing greatly, but there are still enough of them to produce unpleasant effects or reactions — things that are not transformed, that still belong to ordinary life.


The Mother: But every problem — whether psychological or purely material or chemical — the whole problem comes down to this: they are nothing but vibrations. And there is the perception of this totality of vibrations and the perception of what one might call, very crudely and approximately, the difference between constructive and destructive vibrations. We could say — it is simply a way of putting it — that all vibrations that come from the One and express Oneness are constructive and that all the complications of the ordinary separative consciousness lead to destruction.  ()  It is always said that it is desire which creates difﬁculties, and


The Mother: indeed it is like that. Desire may simply be something added to the vibration of will. The Will — when it is the one Will, the supreme Will expressing itself — is direct, immediate, there are no possible obstacles; and so everything that delays, hinders, causes complication or even failure is an admixture of desire.  One can see it in everything. For example, take an external ﬁeld of action, with the external world, external things — of course, to say that it is “external” is simply to put oneself in a false position — but, for example, from the higher consciousness, the Truth-consciousness, you tell someone, “Go” — I am giving one example among millions — “Go and see this person and tell him this in order to obtain that.”


The Mother: If this person is receptive, immobile within and surrendered, then he goes, he sees the person and tells him and the thing is done — without complication whatever, like that. If this person has an active mental consciousness, if he does not have total faith, if he has all the mixture of everything brought in by ego and ignorance,  he sees difﬁculties, he sees problems to be solved, he sees all the complications — and of course, all this happens. And so according to the proportion — everything is always a question of proportion — according to the proportion, it creates complications, it takes time, the thing is delayed or even worse, it is distorted, it does not happen exactly as it should, it is changed, diminished, distorted or in the end it is not done at all — there are many, many degrees, but all that belongs to the domain of complications — mental complications — and desire. Whereas the other way is immediate. There are countless examples of these cases — of all cases — and also of the “immediate case”.


The Mother: Then people tell you: “Oh, you have performed a miracle!” — no miracle has been performed: that is how it should always be.  It is because the intermediary did not add himself to the action.  I do not know if this is clear, but anyway...  So this ranges from the smallest thing to an action on the terrestrial scale. There are examples, in terrestrial action, of things that have been done in this way — if there is a good intermediary.


The Mother: Nobody understood how it was done, why it was done — like that, very, very simply, everything turned out well. And in other cases, to get a visa or a permit one has to move mountains. So, from the smallest thing, the smallest physical indisposition to a worldwide action, it is all the same principle, everything comes to the same principle.  This doesn’t require any explanation.  That is to say, it should be explained to children that the statement,, the Scriptures,  , are always a diminution of the experience, they are always less than the experience.


The Mother: There may be people who need to know this.  Oh, it’s delightful!  One can only smile and say, “Never doubt your experience, for your experience is the truth of your being, but do not imagine that it is a universal truth; and never on the basis of this truth deny the truth of others, because for each one, his experience is the truth of his being. And a total truth would only be the totality of all these individual truths... plus the experience of the Lord Himself!”


The Mother: I assume that this is an answer to the Biblical belief in the “Commandments of God” received by Moses, supposedly uttered by the Lord Himself and heard by Moses — it is an indirect way of saying () that this is not possible.  “Our supreme authority” “because the soul saw it” — but it can only be a supreme authority for the soul that saw it, not for every soul. For the soul that had this experience and saw, it is the supreme authority, but not for the others.  This was one of the things which used to make me think when I was a small child: these ten “Commandments”, which  are besides extraordinarily commonplace. Love thy father and thy mother....


The Mother: Do not kill.... It is revoltingly commonplace. And Moses went up Mount Sinai to hear that!   Now, I do not know whether Sri Aurobindo was thinking of the Indian Scriptures....


The Mother: There were also Chinese Scriptures....  ()  More and more my experience is that revelation — it does come — revelation may be universally applicable, but it is always personal in form, always personal.  It is as if one had an of vision of the Truth. It is necessarily, necessarily an angle, from the very moment it is put into words.


The Mother: You have a wordless, thoughtless experience of a kind of vibration which gives you a feeling of absolute truth and then, if you remain very still, without seeking to know anything, after some time it is as if the vibration were passing through a ﬁlter and it is translated as a kind of idea. Then this idea — it is still rather hazy, that is, very general — if you continue to keep very still, attentive and silent, this idea passes through another ﬁlter, and then a kind of condensation occurs, like drops, and it turns into words.  But then, when you have had the experience very sincerely — that is, when you are not fooling yourself — it is necessarily only one point, of saying the thing, that’s all. And it cannot be more than that. Besides, it is very easy to observe that when you are in the habit of using a particular language, it comes in that language; for me it always comes either in English or in French, it does not come in Chinese or in Japanese!


The Mother: The words are inevitably English or French; and sometimes there is a Sanskrit word — but that is because, physically, I learnt Sanskrit. I have occasionally heard — not physically — Sanskrit pronounced by another being; but it does not crystallise, it remains nebulous; and when I come back to an entirely material  consciousness, I remember a vague sound, not a precise word.  Therefore, it is an individual angle from the very moment it is formulated.  You must have a kind of sincerity. You are seized with enthusiasm, because the experience brings an extraordinary power: the Power is there — it is there, before the words, and it diminishes with the words — but the Power is there and with this Power you feel very universal, you have the feeling: “It is a universal revelation” — yes, it is a universal revelation, but when you put it into words, it is no longer universal; then it is relevant only for minds that are built to understand this way of speaking.


The Mother: The Force is behind, but you have to go beyond the words.  ( )  Things of this sort come to me more and more often and I jot them down on a piece of paper. It is always the same process, always.


The Mother: First of all, a kind of explosion, an explosion of truth-power — it is like a great, white ﬁreworks display ( ), much more than a ﬁreworks display! And it spins round and round (), it churns and churns; then there is the impression of an idea — but the idea is lower, it is like a covering; the idea contains its own sensation, it also brings a sensation — the sensation was there before, but without the idea, and so the sensation could not be deﬁned. There is only one thing, it is always an explosion of luminous Power. And then, afterwards, if you look at it and remain very quiet — the head, especially, should keep quiet — everything becomes silent (), then suddenly someone speaks inside the head — someone speaks. It is this explosion speaking.


The Mother: Then I take a pencil and paper and I write. But between what speaks and what writes there is still a little space to be crossed, so that when it is written down something up there is not satisﬁed.  So I remain quiet a little longer — “No, not that word, this one”  — sometimes it takes two days to become quite ﬁnal. But those who are satisﬁed with the power of the experience make short work of this, and send out into the world sensational revelations that are distortions of the Truth.  You must be very steady, very quiet, very critical — especially very quiet, silent, silent, silent, without trying to seize hold of the experience — “Oh! What is it, what is it?” — that spoils everything.


The Mother: But watch — watch very closely. In the words there is something left, something that remains of the original vibration — so little! But there is something, something that makes you smile, that is pleasant, like a sparkling wine, and here ( ), here it is dull. Then you look with your knowledge of the language, or with your sense of word-rhythm: “Look, there’s a pebble.”  You must remove the pebble; and then you wait and suddenly it comes, plop!


The Mother: it falls into place: the right word. If you are patient, after a day or two, it becomes absolutely accurate.  I am not quite sure that this is not ironical.... To people who say “The Scripture is infallible”, he answers: “Yes, yes, of course the Scriptures are infallible, but beware of your own understanding!”  But here is the word of truth:  ()


The Mother: Impossible, I can’t say anything.   Yes, naturally.  Well, yes, there it is!  This is precisely what one cannot say!


The Mother: When you have the vision and the consciousness of the Order of Truth, of what is direct, the direct expression of the Truth, you immediately have an impression of something inexpressible, because all words belong to the other domain; all images, all comparisons, all expressions belong to the other domain.   This is precisely the great difﬁculty I had — it was on the 29th of February. During the whole time that I lived in this consciousness of the manifestation of the Truth, I tried to formulate what I was feeling, what I was seeing — it was impossible. There were no words. And immediately, simply the formulation would cause an instantaneous fall back into the other consciousness.


The Mother: On that occasion, the memory of this aphorism about the sun and the earth came back to me... even to say a “change of consciousness” — a change of consciousness is also a movement.  I don’t think one can say anything. I feel incapable of saying anything, because all the things we say are uninteresting approximations.  Yes, everything — the whole world is different!


The Mother: Everything is different. And the experience has convinced me of one thing, which I still feel continually, that both states — of Truth and Falsehood — are simultaneous, concomitant, and that only... yes, what he calls a “change of consciousness”, that is to say that one is either in this consciousness or in that consciousness, but one does not move for all that.  We are obliged to use words that move, because for us everything moves; but this change of consciousness is not a movement — it is not a movement. So then how can we speak about it or describe it?...  Even if we say, “one state taking the place of another”, with “taking the place of” we immediately introduce movement....


The Mother: All our words are like that, what can we say?...  Yesterday again, the experience was absolutely concrete and powerful, that there is no need to move oneself or to move anything whatever for this Truth-Consciousness to replace the  consciousness of deformation or distortion. That is to say, the capacity to live and be this true — essential and true — vibration seems to have the power to this vibration for the vibration of falsehood and distortion, to such an extent that... for example, the natural result of distortion or of the vibration of distortion, should be an accident or a catastrophe; but if, inside these vibrations, there is a consciousness which has the power to become conscious of the vibration of Truth and therefore to manifest the vibration of Truth, it can — and must — annul the other, which would be translated in the external phenomenon by an intervention that would avert the catastrophe.  It is a growing impression that the True is the only way to change the world, that all the other processes of slow transformation are always at a tangent — one draws nearer and nearer but one never arrives — and that the last step must be this: the substitution of the true vibration.  We do have partial proofs.


The Mother: But since they are partial, they are not conclusive, because for the ordinary vision and understanding explanations can always be found: one can say that the accident, for example, was “intended” and “fated” to be forestalled, and that it was not forestalled by this intervention at all, but by the “determinism” that had decided it. And how to prove it? How to prove even to oneself that it is not so? It is impossible.  As soon as you express it, you enter into the mind, and as soon as you enter the mind, there is this kind of logic, which is frightful because it is all-powerful: if everything already exists, co-existing from all eternity, how can one thing be changed into another?...


The Mother: How can anything “change”?   You are told — Sri Aurobindo has just said it himself — that for the consciousness of the Lord there is no past, no time, no movement, nothing — everything is. To translate this, we say “from all eternity”, which is nonsense, but anyway, everything is. So everything (), and that is all there is to it, there is nothing to be done.


The Mother: This conception, or rather this way of speaking — for it is only a way of speaking — cancels  all sense of progress, it cancels evolution, it cancels... You are told that it is part of the determinism that you should strive for progress — yes, all that is empty talk.  And note that this way of speaking is only a minute of experience, it is the whole experience. There is a moment when one like that, but it is not total, it is partial. It is only  way of feeling, it is not everything.


The Mother: There is something much deeper and much more inexpressible than that in the eternal consciousness — much more. This is only the ﬁrst bewilderment one feels when one leaves the ordinary consciousness, but that is not everything. It is not everything. When the memory of this aphorism came back to me recently, I had the impression that it was merely a little glimpse one suddenly has, and a feeling of opposition between the two states, but that is not everything, it is not everything. There is something else.


The Mother: There is something else which is altogether different from what we understand, but .  And this is what cannot be said. It cannot be said because it is inexpressible, inexpressible.  This amounts to a feeling that everything which in our ordinary consciousness becomes false, untrue, distorted, crooked, is all for the Truth-Consciousness. But true in what way?


The Mother: That is precisely something which cannot be put into words, because words belong to Falsehood.  ( ) Let us be clear.... I am afraid that what we call “Matter” is in fact only the false appearance of the world.   There is something, but...


The Mother: This aphorism would lead to an absolute subjectivity and only this absolute subjectivity would be true — well, it is like that. For that is Pralaya, Nirvana. But Nirvana is not the only thing, there is an objectivity which is real, which is not false — but how to put it!... It is something I have felt several times — several times, not only in a ﬂash — the reality of... how to express it? One is always betrayed by one’s own words....


The Mother: In the perfect sense of Oneness and in the consciousness of Oneness, there is room for objectiveness, objectivity — the one does not destroy the other, not at all. One can have a feeling of differentiation: not that it is not oneself, but it is a different vision. I have told you, everything one can say is nothing, it is nonsense, because words are meant to express the unreal world, but... Yes, perhaps this is what Sri Aurobindo calls the sense of multiplicity in unity, it may correspond a little; just as one feels the inner multiplicity of one’s being, something like that... I no longer have the feeling of a separate self, not at all, not at all, even in the body, but that does not prevent me from having a certain sense of objective relation — yes, look — this is the same thing as his “relation of consciousness” between earth and sun, which changes ().


The Mother: It is true that this is perhaps the best way of saying it! It is a relation of consciousness. It is not at all a relation of self and “others” — not at all, that is completely cancelled — but it might be like a relation of consciousness between the different parts of one’s being. And obviously, that gives objectivity to the different parts.  (


The Mother: )  To come back to the example, which is very easy to understand, of the accident that is forestalled, one can very well imagine that the intervention of the Truth-Consciousness was decided “from all eternity” and that there is no element,  but nevertheless, it was this intervention which stopped the accident — which gives an exact picture of the power of this true consciousness over the other one. And if you project your own way of being onto the Supreme, you can imagine that it amuses Him to make all kinds of experiments, to see how things play themselves out. That is another matter. Nevertheless there is an All-Consciousness that knows all things from all eternity — all this in words that are absolutely inadequate.


The Mother: But nevertheless, when you look at the process, it was this intervention which was able to forestall the accident: the substitution of a false consciousness by a true one arrested the process of the false consciousness.  It seems to me that this happens quite often — much more often than one might think. For example, each time an illness is cured, each time an accident is avoided, each time a catastrophe, even a terrestrial catastrophe, is averted, in all these things, it is always an intervention of the vibration of harmony in the vibration of disorder that causes the disorder to cease.  So the people, the faithful, who always say, “By the grace of God, this has happened,” are not so wrong.  I am simply observing a fact, that this vibration of order and harmony intervenes — the causes of its intervention have nothing to do with it, it is merely a scientiﬁc observation — and I have experienced this quite a number of times.


The Mother: Yes.  That’s it, yes, exactly. Exactly.  And from this point of view, I have even seen...


The Mother: The ordinary idea that this phenomenon must necessarily occur ﬁrst in the  body where the Consciousness is expressed more constantly, seems absolutely useless and subordinate; on the contrary, it occurs everywhere at the same time, wherever it can do so most easily and completely, and it is not necessarily this agglomerate of cells () that is most prepared for this operation. Therefore it may remain as it is in its appearance for a very long time, even if its understanding and receptivity are exceptional. I mean that the awareness, the conscious perception of this body is inﬁnitely superior to the awareness of all the others with which it is in contact, except at those moments — the moments — when other bodies, as if by Grace, have this perception; whereas for this body, it is a natural and constant state. It is the effective result of the fact that this Truth-Consciousness is more constantly concentrated on this group of cells than on any other — more directly. But the substitution of one vibration for the other — in circumstances, in action, in objects — occurs at the point where it can have the most striking and effectual results.


The Mother: It is something I have felt very, very clearly and which one cannot feel so long as the physical ego is there, because the physical ego has the sense of its own importance and that disappears entirely with the physical ego. And when it disappears one has the precise perception that the intervention or the manifestation of the true vibration does not depend on egos or individualities — human or national individualities or even those of Nature: animals, plants, etc. It depends on a certain play of the cells and Matter in which some agglomerates are particularly favourable to the transformation — not “transformation”, but substitution, to be precise: the substitution of the vibration of Truth for the vibration of Falsehood. And this phenomenon can be quite independent of any groupings or individualities — it may be one piece here, one piece there, one thing here, one thing there — and it always corresponds to a certain quality of vibration that brings about an expansion — a receptive expansion. Then the phenomenon can take place.


The Mother: Unfortunately, as I said at the beginning, all words belong to the world of appearances.  ( )  And this has been my experience all this time, with a vision and a conviction — the conviction of experience: the two vibrations are like that ( ), all the time. All the time, all the time.


The Mother: Perhaps the feeling of wonder comes when the amount of inﬁltration is great enough to become perceptible. But I have the impression — and a very acute impression — that this phenomenon is taking place all the time, all the time, everywhere (), in a minute, inﬁnitesimal way; and in certain circumstances, certain conditions which are visible, visible to that vision — it is a kind of luminous expansion, I cannot explain — there, the mass


The Mother: of inﬁltration is great enough to give the impression of a miracle. But otherwise it is something that occurs all the time, all the time, ceaselessly, in the world (), like an inﬁnitesimal quantity of Falsehood being replaced by Light, Falsehood being replaced by Light... constantly.  And this vibration — which I feel and see — gives an impression of ﬁre. This is what the Vedic Rishis must have translated as the “Flame” — in the human consciousness, in man, in Matter they always spoke of a Flame.


The Mother: It is in fact a vibration which has the intensity of a higher ﬁre.  Several times, when the work was very concentrated or condensed, the body even felt that it was the equivalent of a fever.  Two or three nights ago, something like that happened; there was this descent of Force, a descent of this Truth-Power with a special intensity.... Well, that is what is happening — happening everywhere, all the time. So, if it happens in an agglomerate that is large enough, it appears to be a miracle — but it is the miracle of.


The Mother: One must hold ﬁrm, because it has consequences, it brings a sensation of Power, and very few people can feel it, experience it, without their balance being more or less disturbed, because they do not have a sufﬁcient basis of peace, of vast and very, quiet peace. Many times I have said: There is only answer, one single answer: one must be quiet, quiet, and even more quiet, more and more quiet, and not trying to ﬁnd a solution with the head, because it cannot. One must only be quiet — quiet, quiet, immovably quiet. Calm and peace, calm and peace — that is the  answer.  I do not say that it is the cure, but it is the only answer: to endure in calm and peace, to endure in calm and peace....


The Mother: Then something will happen.   It seems so obvious!  To be free from all attachment does not mean running away from all occasion for attachment. All these people who assert their asceticism, not only run away but warn others not to try!  This seems so obvious to me.


The Mother: When you need to run away from a thing in order not to experience it, it means that you are not above it, you are still on the same level.  Anything that suppresses, diminishes or lessens cannot bring freedom. Freedom has to be experienced in the whole of life and in all sensations.  As a matter of fact I have made a whole series of studies on the subject, on the purely physical plane.... In order to be above all possible error, we tend to eliminate any occasion for error.


The Mother: For example, if you do not want to say any useless words, you stop speaking; people who take a vow of silence imagine that this is control of speech — it is not true! It is only eliminating the occasion for speech and therefore for saying useless things. It is the same thing with food: eating only what is necessary. In the transitional state we have reached, we no longer want to lead this entirely animal life based on material  exchange and food; but it would be foolish to believe that we have reached a state where the body can subsist entirely without food — nevertheless there is already a great difference, since they are trying to ﬁnd the essential nutrients in things in order to lessen the volume. But the natural tendency is to fast — it is a mistake!


The Mother: For fear of being mistaken in our actions, we stop doing anything at all; for fear of being mistaken in our speech, we stop speaking; for fear of eating for the pleasure of eating, we do not eat at all — this is not freedom, it is simply reducing the manifestation to a minimum; and the natural conclusion is Nirvana. But if the Lord wanted only Nirvana, nothing but Nirvana would exist! It is obvious that He conceives of the coexistence of all opposites, and that for Him this must be the beginning of a totality. So obviously, if one feels meant for that, one can choose only one of His manifestations, that is to say, the absence of manifestation. But it is still a limitation.


The Mother: And this is not the only way to ﬁnd Him, far from it!  It is a very common tendency which probably originates from an ancient suggestion or perhaps from some lack, some incapacity — reduce, reduce, reduce one’s needs, reduce one’s activities, reduce one’s words, reduce one’s food, reduce one’s active life — and all that becomes so narrow. In one’s aspiration not to make any more mistakes, one eliminates any occasion for making them. It is not a cure.  But the other way is much, much more difﬁcult.


The Mother: ( )  No, the solution is to act only under the divine impulsion, to speak only under the divine impulsion, to eat only under the divine impulsion. That is the difﬁcult thing, because naturally, you immediately confuse the divine impulsion with your personal impulses.  I suppose this was the idea of all the apostles of renunciation:  to eliminate everything coming from outside or from below so that if something from above should manifest one would be in a condition to receive it.


The Mother: But from the collective point of view, this process could take thousands of years. From the individual point of view, it is possible; but then one must keep intact the aspiration to receive the true impulsion — not the aspiration for “complete liberation”, but the aspiration for identiﬁcation with the Supreme, that is to say, to will only what He wills, to do only what He wants: to exist by and in Him alone. So one can try the method of renunciation, but this is for one who wants to cut himself off from others. And in that case, can there be any integrality? It seems impossible to me.


The Mother: To proclaim publicly what one wants to do is a considerable help. It may give rise to objections, scorn, conﬂict, but this is largely compensated for by public “expectation”, so to say, by what other people expect from you. This was certainly the reason for those robes: to let people know. Of course, that may bring you the scorn, the bad will of some people, but then there are all those who feel they must not interfere or meddle with this, that it is not their concern.  I do not know why, but it always seemed to me like showing off — it may not be and in some cases it is not, but all the same it is a way of saying to people, “Look, this is what I am.”


The Mother: And as I say, it may help, but it has its drawbacks.  It is another childishness.  All these things are means, stages, steps, but... true freedom is to be free of everything — including means.  ( )


The Mother: It is a restriction, a constriction, whereas the True Thing is an opening, a widening, an identiﬁcation with the whole.  When you reduce, reduce, reduce yourself, you do not have any feeling of losing yourself, it takes away your fear of losing yourself — you become something solid and compact. But if you  choose the method of widening — the greatest possible widening — you must not be afraid of losing yourself.  It is much more difﬁcult.  Oh, you must know what to take and what to leave!


The Mother: That is the other extreme.... Certainly, monasteries, retreats, escape into the forests or caves are necessary to counterbalance modern hyper-activity; and yet there is less of all that now than there was one or two thousand years ago. But to me this seems to have been a lack of understanding — it did not last.  Of course, it is this excessive activity which makes an excessive immobility necessary.  How can one avoid falling into one kind of excess or the other?


The Mother: My child, that is why the Ashram was created! That was the idea. Because, in France, I was always asking myself: How can one ﬁnd the time to ﬁnd oneself? How can one even ﬁnd the time to understand how to become free? So then I thought: a place where material needs will be sufﬁciently provided for, so that if one truly wants to become free, one can do so.


The Mother: And the  Ashram was founded on this idea, not on any other — a place where people would have enough to live on so as to have time to think of the True Thing.   ( ) Human nature is such that laziness has taken the place of aspiration — not for everyone, but anyway in quite a general way — and licence or libertinism has taken the place of freedom — which would tend to prove that the human race has to pass through a period of rough handling before it is ready to pull itself away more sincerely from its slavery to activity.


The Mother: Indeed, the ﬁrst movement is this: “Oh! To ﬁnd the place where one can concentrate, ﬁnd oneself, truly live without being preoccupied with material things.” That is the ﬁrst aspiration. It was even on this basis, at any rate in the beginning, that disciples were chosen — but it does not last! Things become easy and so one lets oneself go.


The Mother: There are no moral restraints and so one acts foolishly.  But one cannot even say that there was a mistake in the selection — one would be tempted to believe it, but it is not true; because the selection was made according to a very precise and clear inner indication.... It is probably the difﬁculty of keeping the inner attitude unmixed. This is exactly what Sri Aurobindo wanted, what he was trying for. He said: “If I could ﬁnd one hundred people, that would be enough.”


The Mother: But it did not stay one hundred for long, and I must say that even when it was a hundred, it was already mixed.  Many came, attracted by the True Thing, but... one lets oneself go. That is, it is impossible to hold ﬁrm in one’s true position.  Yes, of course!   Yes, that’s it!


The Mother: That is to say, man is still so crude that he needs extremes. That is what Sri Aurobindo said: For love to be true, hatred was necessary; true love could be born only under the pressure of hatred. That’s it. Well, one must accept things as they are and try to go further. That is all.


The Mother: That is probably why there are so many difﬁculties — difﬁculties accumulate here: difﬁculties of character, health and circumstances. It is because the consciousness awakens under the stress of difﬁculties. If everything is easy and peaceful, one falls asleep.  That is also how Sri Aurobindo explained the necessity of war. In peacetime, one becomes slack.


The Mother: It is a pity.  I cannot say that I ﬁnd it very pretty, but it seems to be like that.  This is just what Sri Aurobindo said in: If you have the Force and the Knowledge and misuse the moment, woe to you.  It is not revenge, it is not punishment, not at all, but you draw upon yourself a necessity, the necessity for a violent impulsion — to react to something violent.  (


The Mother: )  This is an experience I am having more and more: for the contact with this true divine Love to be able to manifest, that is, to express itself freely, it demands an extraordinary strength in beings and things, which does not yet exist. Otherwise everything falls apart.  There are lots of very convincing details, but of course, because they are “details” or very personal things, one cannot  speak of them; but on the evidence of repeated experiences, I have to say this: when this Power of Love — which is so wonderful, which is beyond all expression — as soon as it begins to manifest abundantly, freely, it is as if quantities of things crumbled down immediately — they cannot stand. They cannot stand, they are dissolved.


The Mother: Then... then everything stops.  And this stopping, which one might think is a disgrace, is just the opposite! It is an inﬁnite Grace.  Simply to perceive, a little concretely and tangibly, the difference between the vibration in which one lives normally and almost continually, and that vibration — simply to observe this inﬁrmity, which I call sickening — it really makes you feel sick — that is enough to stop everything.


The Mother: Only yesterday, this morning, there are long moments when this Power manifests; then suddenly, there is a kind of wisdom, an immeasurable wisdom which causes everything to subside in perfect tranquillity: what must be shall be, it will take the time that is needed. And then everything is all right. In this way, everything is all right immediately. But the splendour fades.  One has only to be patient.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo also has written this: Aspire intensely, but without impatience.... The difference between intensity and impatience is very subtle — it is all a difference in vibration. It is subtle, but it makes all the difference.  Intensely, but without impatience.


The Mother: That’s it. One must be in that state.  And for a very long time, a very long time, one must be satisﬁed with inner results, that is, results in one’s personal and individual reactions, one’s inner contact with the rest of the world — one must not expect or be premature in wanting things to materialise. Because our hastiness usually delays things.


The Mother: If it is like that, it is like that.  We — I mean men — live harassed lives. It is a kind of halfawareness of the shortness of their lives; they do not think of it, but they feel it half-consciously. And so they are always  wanting — quick, quick, quick — to rush from one thing to another, to do one thing quickly and move on to the next one, instead of letting each thing live in its own eternity. They are always wanting: forward, forward, forward....


The Mother: And the work is spoilt.  That is why some people have preached: the only moment that matters is the present moment. In practice it is not true, but from the psychological point of view it ought to be true. That is to say, to live to the utmost of one’s capacities at every minute, without planning or wanting, waiting or preparing for the next. Because you are always hurrying, hurrying, hurrying....


The Mother: And nothing you do is good. You are in a state of inner tension which is completely false — completely false.  All those who have tried to be wise have always said it — the Chinese preached it, the Indians preached it — to live in the awareness of Eternity. In Europe also they said that one should contemplate the sky and the stars and identify oneself with their inﬁnitude — all things that widen you and give you peace.  These are means, but they are indispensable.


The Mother: And I have observed this in the cells of the body; they always seem to be in a hurry to do what they have to do, lest they have no time to do it. So they do nothing properly. Muddled people — some people turn everything upside down, their movements are jerky and confused — have this to a high degree, this kind of haste — quick, quick, quick.... Yesterday, someone was complaining of rheumatic pains and he was saying, “Oh, it is such a waste of time. I do things so slowly!” I said (), “So what!”


The Mother: He didn’t like it. You see, for someone to complain when he is in pain means that he is soft, that is all; but to say, “I am wasting so much time, I do things so slowly!” It gave a very clear picture of the haste in which men live. You go hurtling through life... to go where?... You end with a crash!


The Mother: What is the use of that?   ( )  In reality, the moral of all these aphorisms is that it is much more important to be than to seem to be — one must live and not pretend to live — and that it is much more important to realise something entirely, sincerely, perfectly than to let others know that you are realising it!  It is the same thing again: when you are compelled to say what you are doing, you spoil half your action.


The Mother: And yet, at the same time, this helps you to take your bearings, to ﬁnd out exactly where you are.  That was the wisdom of the Buddha who spoke of “the Middle Way”: neither too much of this nor too much of that, neither falling into this nor falling into that — a little of everything and a balanced way... but. Purity and sincerity are the same thing.  This raises all sorts of questions. For example, how is it that Narada could not see the soul?


The Mother: For me, it is very simple. Narada was a demi-god, he belonged to the overmind world and he was able to materialise himself, but these beings have no psychic. The gods do not have within them the divine spark, which is the core of the psychic, because only on earth — I am not even speaking of the material universe — only on earth did this descent of divine Love take place, which was the origin of the divine Presence in the core of Matter. And naturally, since they have no psychic being, they do not know the psychic being. Some of these beings have even  wanted to take a physical body so as to have the experience of the psychic being —


The Mother: but not many of them.  As a rule, they did it only partially, through an “emanation”, not a total descent. For example, Vivekananda is said to have been an incarnation — a — of Shiva; but Shiva himself has clearly expressed his will to come down on earth only with the supramental world. When the earth is ready for the supramental life, he will come. And almost all these beings will manifest — they are waiting for that moment, they do not want any of the present struggle and the obscurity.


The Mother: Certainly Narada was one of those who came here.... In fact, it was for fun! He liked to play with circumstances. But he had no knowledge of the psychic being and that must have prevented him from recognising the psychic being where it existed.  But all these things cannot be explained; they are personal ideas and experiences; this knowledge is not objective enough to be taught.


The Mother: One can say nothing about a phenomenon which depends on one’s personal experience and which has a value only for the person who has the experience.  What Sri Aurobindo said is based on the traditional learning of India and he spoke of what agreed with his own experience.  Yes, to be in relation with the soul, that is, the psychic being, one must have a psychic being oneself, and only men — men who belong to the evolution, who are sons of the terrestrial creation — possess a psychic being.  None of these gods has a psychic being. It is only by coming down and uniting with the psychic being of a man that they can have one, but they have none themselves.


The Mother: This is perfect.   As it happens, two or three days ago I wrote something in reply to a question and I said something like this: Sri Aurobindo is the Lord, but only a part of the Lord, not the Lord in His totality, because the Lord is all — all that is manifested and all that is not manifested. Then I added: There is nothing that is not the Lord, nothing — there is nothing that is not the Lord, but few indeed are those who are of the Lord. And it is this unconsciousness of the creation which constitutes its Falsehood.


The Mother: All at once it was so obvious: “There it is! There it is!” How did Falsehood come? But that’s it, it is the unconsciousness of the creation that constitutes the Falsehood of the creation. And as soon as the creation once more becomes conscious of the Lord, Falsehood will cease.


The Mother: And it’s that, isn’t it? Everything is difﬁcult, laborious, hard, painful because everything is done outside the consciousness of the Lord. But when He takes possession of His domain once more — or rather when we allow Him to take possession of His domain once more — and when things are done in His consciousness, with His consciousness, everything will become not only easy, but wonderful, glorious — and in an inexpressible delight.  It came like something self-evident. We say, “What is it?


The Mother: What do we call Falsehood? Why is the creation false?” It is not an illusion in the sense of not existing: it really exists, but... it is not conscious of what it is! Not only unconscious of its origin, but unconscious of its essence, of its truth — it is not conscious of its truth. And that is why it lives in Falsehood.


The Mother: This aphorism is magniﬁcent. There is nothing to say, it says everything.  This is the continuation of what we were saying before about those who want to “see”. Ramakrishna is supposed to have said to Vivekananda, “You can see the Lord just as you see me and hear His voice just as you hear mine.” Some people understood this as an announcement that the Lord was on earth in ﬂesh and blood.


The Mother: I said (): “No, it is not that! What he meant is that if you enter the true consciousness, you can hear Him — I say, hear much more clearly than you hear physically and see much more clearly than you see physically. ” — “Oh! But...” —


The Mother: Immediately they open their eyes wide, it becomes something unreal!  The “wonders” are all right, that is their business. But it is their overweening self-assurance that makes me smile. They imagine that they know. They imagine that they have the key, that is what makes one smile.


The Mother: They imagine that with everything they have learnt they are the masters of Nature — that is childishness.  Something will always escape them so long as they are not in touch with the creative Force and the creative Will.  It is an experiment you can easily make. A scientist can explain all visible phenomena, he can even use physical forces and  make them do what he wants — and they have achieved staggering results from the material point of view — but if you just ask them this question, this simple question, “What is death?”  — in fact they know nothing about it.


The Mother: They can describe the phenomenon as it happens materially, but if they are sincere, they are obliged to say that it explains nothing.  There always comes a time when it no longer explains anything. Because to know... to know is to have power.  ()  Ultimately, what is most accessible to materialistic thought, to scientiﬁc thought, is the fact that they cannot foresee.


The Mother: They can foresee many things, but the unfolding of terrestrial events is beyond their prevision. I think that this is the only thing they can admit — there is a problematical element, a ﬁeld of unpredictability which eludes all their calculations.  I have never talked with a typical scientist who had the most up-to-date knowledge, so I am not quite sure, I do not know how far they admit the unpredictable or the incalculable.  What Sri Aurobindo means, I think, is that when one is in communion with the soul and has the knowledge of the soul, that knowledge is so much more wonderful than material knowledge that there is almost a smile of disdain. I do not think he means that the knowledge of the soul teaches you things about material life that one cannot learn through science.


The Mother: The only point — I do not know whether science has reached it — is the unpredictability of the future. But perhaps they say it is because they have not yet reached perfection in their instruments and methods. For example, perhaps they think that when man ﬁrst appeared on earth, if they had had the instruments which they have now, they would have been able to foresee the transformation of the animal into man or the appearance of man as a consequence of “something” in the animal — ( ). I don’t know about their most modern claims. In that  case, they ought to be able to measure or perceive the difference in the atmosphere now, after the intrusion of something which was not there before, because that still belongs to the material domain.


The Mother: But I do not think this is what Sri Aurobindo meant; I think he meant that the world of the soul and the inner realities are so much more wonderful than physical realities, that all physical “wonders” make you smile — it is more like that.  It has that power and exercises it constantly, but the human consciousness is not aware of it; and the big difference is that it is becoming aware. But it is becoming aware of something that is, and which others deny because they cannot see it.  For example, I have had the opportunity to study this. For me, circumstances, characters, all events and all beings move according to certain “laws”, so to say, which are not rigid, but which I can perceive and which enable me to see: this will lead to that and that will lead there, and since this person is like that, this will happen to him.


The Mother: It is more and more precise. Because of this, I could, if necessary, make predictions. But this relation of  cause and effect in that domain is quite obvious for me and it is corroborated by the facts; for them — those who do not have this vision and consciousness of the soul, as Sri Aurobindo says — circumstances unfold according to other superﬁcial laws, which they consider as the natural consequences of things, completely superﬁcial laws that do not stand up to deep analysis. But they do not have the inner capacity, so it does not worry them, it seems obvious to them.  I mean that this inner knowledge does not have the power to convince them.


The Mother: So that when in connection with any particular event I see: “Oh, but it is quite, quite obvious — for me — I have seen the Force of the Lord at work here, I have such and such a thing happen and of course that is what is going to occur” — for me, it is quite obvious, but I do not say what I know, because it does not correspond to anything in their experience; to them it would sound like rambling or pretension. That is to say, when you do not have the experience yourself, another person’s experience is not convincing, it cannot convince you.  It is not so much a power of acting on Matter — that is happening constantly; but, unless hypnotic methods are used, which are worthless, which lead nowhere — it is a power to open the understanding ( ); that is what is so difﬁcult.... A thing one has not experienced does not exist.  Even if some kind of miracle were to happen in front of them, they would have a material explanation for it; for them it would not be a miracle in the sense of an intervention of a force or power other than the material forces and powers.


The Mother: They would have their material explanation. For them it would not be convincing.  You can only understand if you yourself have touched this domain in your experience.  And one can see, one can see clearly: there is a possibility of understanding only insofar as something has awakened. That is the support, the basis.


The Mother: That is exactly what I mean. The transformation can take place up to a certain point without one even being aware of it.  They say that there is a great difference: when man came, the animal had no way of perceiving it. Well, I say it is exactly the same thing: in spite of everything man has realised, man has no way of perceiving it — certain things may occur and he will only know about it much later, when “something” within him has developed enough for him to perceive it.  Even scientiﬁc development carried to its extreme, to the point where one really feels that there is almost no difference, where they arrive at this unity of substance, for example, where it seems that there is only an almost indiscernible or imperceptible transition between one state and the other — the material and the spiritual — well, no, it is not like that.


The Mother: To perceive this kind of unity, one must already carry within oneself the experience of ; otherwise one cannot perceive it.  And precisely because they have acquired the capacity to explain, they explain external phenomena to themselves in such a way that they remain in their denial of the reality of inner phenomena — they say that these are, as it were, extensions of what they have studied.  Only, because of his very constitution, because there hardly exists a human being who hasn’t at least a reﬂection, or a shadow, or a beginning of a relation with his subtle being, his inner being, his soul — because of that there is always a ﬂaw in their denial. But they consider that to be a weakness — it is their only strength.


The Mother: ( )  It is really when one has the experience — the experience and  knowledge and identity with the higher forces — that one can see the relativity of all external knowledge; but until then, no, one cannot, one denies the other realities.  I think this is what Sri Aurobindo meant: only when the other consciousness has been developed will the scientist smile and say, “Yes, it was all very well, but...”  In reality, one cannot lead to the other — except by an act of grace; if inwardly, there is an absolute sincerity which enables the scientist to see, to sense, to perceive the point at which it eludes him, then that can lead him to the other state of consciousness, but by his own procedures.


The Mother: Something must abdicate and accept the new methods, the new perceptions, the new vibration, the new state of soul.  So, it is an individual matter. It is not a question of class or category — the question is whether the scientist is ready to be... something else.  ()  One can only state one thing: everything you know, however beautiful, is nothing compared to what you can know if you are able to use the other methods.


The Mother: ()  This has been the whole object of my work recently: how to touch this refusal to know? It has been there for a long time.  It is the continuation of what Sri Aurobindo said in one of his letters: he says that India has done much more for spiritual life with her methods than Europe has done with all her doubts and questionings. That’s exactly it.


The Mother: It is a kind of refusal — the refusal to accept a particular method of knowledge which is not the purely material one, and the denial of experience, of the reality of experience. How can one convince them of that?... And then, there is the method of Kali which is to give a sound thrashing. But  according to me that means a lot of damage without much result.  This is another big problem.


The Mother: It seems that the only method which can overcome all resistances is the method of Love. But then the adverse forces have perverted love in such a way that many very sincere people, sincere seekers, have steeled themselves, so to say, against this method, because of its distortion. That is the difﬁculty. That is why it is taking time.


The Mother: However...   Silence... Oh! It is better to practise it than to talk about it.


The Mother: It is an experience I had here, long ago: the difference between wanting to spread and make use of what one has learnt, immediately, and the contact with higher knowledge, where one remains as quiet as one can so that it can have a transforming effect. I have had the living experience of this — half a day of living experience — but now that seems old to me, old, far behind.  This is what people used to seek in the past when they wanted to  escape from life. They would go into a trance, they would leave their body quite still and they would go within and they were perfectly happy. And with the Sannyasis who had themselves buried alive it was like that.


The Mother: They said, “Now, I have ﬁnished my work” — their language was very impressive — “I have ﬁnished, I am entering into Samadhi” and they had themselves buried alive. They went into a room or something, and then it was closed and that was the end of it. And that is what happened: they went into a trance, and after some time, naturally, their body was dissolved and they were in peace.   Powerful, yes.


The Mother: Not an eternity — Eternity.  No, because it is not manifested, it is outside the manifestation.  But Sri Aurobindo wants us to bring it down here. That is the difﬁculty. And one must accept inﬁrmity and even the appearance of imbecility, everything, and not one out of ﬁfty million has the courage for that.


The Mother: There are millions of ways of ﬂeeing. There is only one way to remain: it is truly to have courage and endurance, to accept every appearance of inﬁrmity, helplessness, incomprehension, even an apparent denial of the Truth. But if one does not accept that, it will never change. Those who want to remain great, luminous, strong, powerful and so on and so forth, well, let them stay up there, they cannot do anything for the earth.   And this incomprehension is a very small thing — a very small thing because the consciousness is such that it is not affected in the least — but it is a total and all-embracing incomprehension!


The Mother: That is to say, one is insulted and held in contempt and all that, just because of what one is doing; for, according to them — all the “great minds” of the earth — one has forsaken one’s divinity. They do not put it like that, they say: “What?  You claim to have a divine consciousness, and then...” And one meets it in everybody, in all circumstances. From time to time, someone, for a moment, has a ﬂash, but it is quite exceptional,


The Mother: whereas, “Well then, show your power” — this is everywhere.  That’s it: “Show your power, change the world. And to begin with, do what I want. I mean, the ﬁrst and most important thing is to do what I want — show your power!” That is what they say constantly.


The Mother: This corresponds to a kind of vibration — the vibration received from people who hate. It is a vibration that is fundamentally the same, so to say, as the vibration of love. In its very depths there is the same sensation. Although on the surface it is the opposite, it is supported by the same vibration. And one could  say that one is the slave of what one hates just as much as of what one loves, perhaps even more so.


The Mother: It is something that grips you, that haunts you, and which you cherish; a sensation you cherish, for underneath its violence there is a warmth of attraction which is just as great as the warmth you feel for what you love. And it seems that this distortion in the appearance only exists in the activity of the manifestation, that is, entirely on the surface.  One is obsessed by what one hates even more than by what one loves. And the obsession comes from this inner vibration.  All these “feelings” — what to call them? — have a mode of vibration, with something very essential at the core, and covering layers, as it were.


The Mother: And the most central vibration is the same, and as it expands to express itself, it becomes distorted. With love, it is quite obvious; it becomes, outwardly, in the vast majority of cases, something whose nature is quite different from the inner vibration, because it is something that withdraws into itself, shrivels up and wants to draw things towards itself in an egoistic movement of possession. You to be loved. You say, “I love that person,” but at the same time there is what you want; the feeling is lived as, “I want to be loved.”


The Mother: And so this distortion is almost as great as the distortion of hatred which consists in wanting to destroy what you love in order not to be bound by it. Because you cannot obtain what you want from the object of your love, you want to destroy it in order to become free; in the other case, you shrivel up almost in an inner rage, because you cannot obtain, you cannot absorb what you love. And truly speaking (), from the standpoint of the deeper truth, there is not much difference!  It is only when the central vibration remains pure and expresses itself in its initial purity, which is an unfolding — what to call it?... it is something that radiates, a vibration that spreads out in splendour; and it is a blossoming, yes, a radiant blossoming — then it remains true.


The Mother: And materially, this is translated as self-giving, self-forgetfulness, generosity of soul. And that is the  only true movement. But what is usually called “love” is as far removed from the central vibration of true Love as hatred; only, one withdraws, shrivels up and hardens, and the other strikes.  This is what makes all the difference.  And it is not seen with ideas, it is seen with vibrations.


The Mother: It is very interesting.  In fact I have had to study this a great deal recently. I have had the opportunity to see these vibrations. The external results may be deplorable, from the practical point of view they may be dreadful; that is to say, this kind of vibration encourages the urge to harm, to destroy; but from the standpoint of the deeper truth, this distortion is not much greater than the other, it is only of a more aggressive nature — and even then...  If one pursues this experience further and deeper, if one concentrates on this vibration, one realises that it is the initial vibration of creation, the vibration which has been altered, distorted in all that exists.


The Mother: And then there is a kind of allembracing warmth — one cannot call it exactly a “sweetness”, but it is a kind of strong sweetness — an all-embracing warmth in which there is as much smile as sadness — much more smile than sadness....  This does not justify the distortion, but it is above all a reaction to the choice that the human mentality — especially the human morality — has made between one kind of distortion and another. There is a whole series of distortions that have been labelled “bad” and there is a whole series of distortions towards which people are full of indulgence, almost compliments. And yet from the essential point of view these distortions are not much better than the others — it is a matter of choice.  In fact, one should ﬁrst perceive central vibration and then appreciate its and wonderful quality so much that one would automatically and spontaneously avoid all distortions, whatever they may be, the virtuous as well as the vicious.


The Mother: We always come back to the same thing, there is only one  solution: to attain the truth of things and cling to it — this essential truth, the truth of essential Love — and cling to it.  Only last week there was a whole development of this experience.  In fact, it is the same thing for worlds as for individuals, for universes as for worlds. Only the duration is different — an individual is small, a world is a little bigger, and a universe is a little bigger still!


The Mother: But what has a beginning has an end.  We have to use words but the Thing escapes. What we know as “the eternal Principle”, “the Supreme”, “God”, has neither beginning nor end — we are obliged to say “it is”, but it is not like that, because it is beyond Non-Manifestation and Manifestation; it is something which we are unable to understand and perceive in the Manifestation — and that is what has neither beginning nor end. But constantly and eternally, That is manifested in something that begins and ends. Only there are two ways of “ending”, one which appears to be a destruction, an annihilation, and another which is a transformation; and it would seem that as the Manifestation becomes more perfect,  the necessity of destruction diminishes until a time comes when it will disappear and be replaced by a process of progressive transformation.


The Mother: But this is a very human and external way of putting it.  I am fully aware of the inadequacy of words, but through the words you must catch hold of the Thing.... The difﬁculty for human thought and still more for expression, is that words always carry a sense of beginning.  ( )


The Mother: I have had a perception of this manifestation — a “pulsating” manifestation, one might say, which expands and contracts, expands and contracts.... And there comes a time when there is such an expansion, such a ﬂuidity, plasticity, capacity for change that there is no longer any need for it to be reabsorbed so that it can take a new form; and there will be a progressive transformation. I used to know an occultist who said that this is the seventh universal creation, that there have already been six and that this is the seventh creation, but that this one will be able to transform itself without being reabsorbed — which obviously has no importance whatsoever, for when one has the eternal consciousness it does not matter whether it is like this or like that. Only in the limited human consciousness is there this kind of ambition or need for something that has no end, because, within, there is what might be called the “memory of eternity” and this memory of eternity aspires for the manifestation to share in this eternity. But if this sense of eternity is active and present, we do not grieve; we do not grieve when we throw away a spoiled garment — we may be attached to it, but even so we do not grieve!


The Mother: It is the same thing: if a universe disappears, it means that it has fully fulﬁlled its function, it has come to the end of its possibilities and must be replaced by another one.   I have followed the whole curve. When you are very small in consciousness and development, you feel a great need that the earth should not disappear, that it should continue perpetually — it can go on transforming itself, but it should always be the earth that goes on. A little later, when you are a little more mature, you give it much less importance. And when you are in constant communion with the sense of eternity, it becomes merely a question of choice; it is no longer a need, because it is something that does not affect the active consciousness.


The Mother: A few days ago — I do not remember when, but very recently — I lived this Consciousness for a whole morning and I saw, in the curve of the being’s development, that this kind of need, which seems to be deep-seated, for the life of the earth to be prolonged — for the life of the earth to be prolonged indeﬁnitely — this need is objectiﬁed, so to say, it is no longer so deepseated; it is like looking at a performance and judging whether it should be like this or like that. It was an interesting change of viewpoint.  It is like an artist, but an artist giving shape to himself, making one trial, two trials, three trials, as many as he needs, and then achieving something complete enough in itself and receptive enough to be able to adapt to new manifestations, to the needs of these new manifestations, so that it would not be necessary to draw everything back in, to mix it all up and bring it all out again. But it is nothing more than this, and as I say, a question of choice. After all, the manifestation is made for the delight of objectivisation — the delight or interest or, well...


The Mother: And once what has taken shape is plastic enough, receptive enough, ﬂexible enough and vast enough to be capable of being constantly moulded by the new forces that are manifesting, there is no longer any need to unmake everything in order to remake it.  With the curve also came an adage, “What has a beginning must have an end” — this seems to be one of those human mental constructions that are not necessarily true. But subjectively, what is interesting is that the problem gradually becomes less acute as  one views it from higher up, or from a more central point, to be more exact.  It seems that it is the same... not “principle”, because it is not a principle — the same law for the individual as for worlds and universes.  (


The Mother: )  As soon as one tries to express it ( ), everything becomes warped.... I was looking at this experience of the relation with the Consciousness, the All; this relation of the human being with the All; of the earth — the consciousness of the earth — with the All; of the consciousness of the manifested universe with the All; and of the consciousness that presides over the universe — over all the universes — with the All; and this inexpressible phenomenon that each point of consciousness — a point that does not occupy any space — each point of consciousness is capable of experiences.... It is very difﬁcult to express.  One could say that only limits make differences — differences in time, differences in space, differences in size, differences in power.


The Mother: It is only the limits. And as soon as the consciousness goes outside its limits at any point in the manifestation, whatever the dimension of this manifestation — yes, the dimension of this manifestation has absolutely no importance — at any point in the manifestation, if one goes outside the limits, it is Consciousness.  From this standpoint one could say that it is the acceptance of limits that has made the manifestation possible. The possibility of manifestation came with the acceptance of the sense of limits.... It is impossible to express.


The Mother: Always, as soon as one begins to speak, one has the impression of something which does this (), a kind of tipping over, and it is ﬁnished, the essential thing has gone. Then the metaphysical sense comes along and says, “One could put it like  this, one could put it like that....” To use words: every point contains the Consciousness of Inﬁnity and Eternity — these are words, nothing but words. But the possibility of this experience is there. It is like stepping back out of space....


The Mother: It might be amusing to say that even stone, even... oh, water certainly, ﬁre certainly, has power of Consciousness — the original — all the words that come are stupid — essential, primordial — all that means nothing — eternal, inﬁnite Consciousness.... All this is meaningless, it gives me the impression of dust thrown on glass to prevent it from being transparent!... Finally, in conclusion, after having relived this experience — these last few days I have had it repeatedly, it reigned supreme, in spite of everything, work, activities, it ruled over everything — any attachment to any formula, even the ones that have stirred people through the ages, seems childish to me. And now it’s only a matter of choice: you can choose whether it is like this or like that or like that; you can say this or this or that — amuse yourselves, my children... if it amuses you.  But it is certain — this is an observation for general use — it is certain that the human mind, in order to have the urge to act, needs to build a dwelling-place — more or less large, more or less complete, more or less ﬂexible — but it needs a dwellingplace.


The Mother: Only () it is not that! That distorts everything!  And what is strange, what is strange, is that outwardly one goes on living automatically according to certain ways of life, which no longer even have the virtue of seeming necessary to you, which no longer even have the force of habit, and which are accepted and lived almost automatically, with a sense — a kind of feeling or sensation, but it is neither feeling nor sensation, it is a kind of very subtle perception — that Something, so immense that it is undeﬁnable, wants it. I say “wants” it or I say “chooses” it, but it is “wills” it; it is a Will that does not function like the human will, but which wills it — which wills it or sees it or decides it. And in each thing there is this luminous, golden, imperative vibration... which  is necessarily all-powerful.


The Mother: And it provides as a background the perfect well-being of certitude, which, a little lower down in the consciousness, expresses itself by a smile of benevolent amusement.  It is certainly a very elegant way of saying the same thing I have just said!  This is another experience of these last few days. It came to me with an absolute certitude — although it is very difﬁcult to express — that this so-called “error” of the material world as it is, was indispensable; that is to say, the material mode or way of perceiving, of becoming aware of things, was gained through the “error” of this creation and would not have existed without it, and it is not something that will vanish into non-existence when we gain the true consciousness — it is something that in a special way — which was perceived, lived at that moment in the essential Consciousness.  It was like a justiﬁcation of the creation that has made possible a certain mode of perception — which might be described by the words “precision”, “exactness” in objectivisation — which could not have existed without it.


The Mother: Because when this  Consciousness — the perfect Consciousness, the true Consciousness, Consciousness — was there, present and lived to the exclusion of any other, there was something like a mode of vibration, so to say, a mode of vibration with objective precision and exactness, which could not have existed without this material form of creation.... You see, there was always this great “Why?” — “Why is it like this?” Why is there all this, which brought about everything that the human consciousness interprets as suffering, misery and helplessness and everything, all the horrors of ordinary consciousness — why? Why is it?  And so this was the answer: in the true Consciousness there is a mode of vibration, of precision and exactness and clarity in objectivisation, which could not have existed without that, which would not have had any opportunity to manifest.


The Mother: That is certain. That is the answer — the all-powerful answer to the “why”.  It is obvious — obvious — that what we experience as progress, as a progressive manifestation, is not simply a law of the material manifestation as we know it, but the very principle of the eternal Manifestation. To come down to the level of terrestrial thought, one might say that there is no manifestation without progress. But what call progress, what is “progress” to our consciousness, up there it is...


The Mother: it can be anything, a necessity, whatever you like — there is a kind of absolute that we do not understand, an absolute of being: it is like that because it is like that, that is all. But for our consciousness it is more and more, better and better — and these words are stupid — it is more and more perfect, better and better perceived. That is the very principle of manifestation.  One experience came very ﬂeetingly, but precisely enough to allow one to say, very clumsily, that — I was about to say the “ﬂavour” of the Non-Manifest — the Non-Manifest has a special ﬂavour because of the Manifest.  All this is just words, but that is all we have.


The Mother: Perhaps one day we shall have words or a language which can say these things  properly; it is possible, but it will be always a translation.  There is a level here () where something plays with words, with images, with phrases, like this ( ), that makes pretty pictures; it has a power of bringing you into contact with the Thing, which may be greater — at least as great, but perhaps greater — than here (), than the metaphysical expression — “metaphysical” is a manner of speaking. Images, that is to say, poetry. Here there is an almost more direct way of access to that inexpressible vibration. I see Sri Aurobindo’s expression in its poetic form, it has a charm and a simplicity — a simplicity and a sweetness and a penetrating charm — which brings you into direct contact much more intimately than all the things of the head.