The Mother: And truly this was so concrete an experience, you know, so real that... ah, two seconds later, you see, the play, the music, the actors, the scene, the pictures and all that were gone like absolutely secondary things, completely unimportant, while this joy of having mastered something in oneself and done something not simply selﬁsh, this joy ﬁlled all the being with an incomparable serenity — a delightful experience... Well, it is not just an individual, personal experience. All those who want to try can have it.   There is a kind of inner communion with the psychic being which takes place when one willingly gives up a desire, and because of this one feels a much greater joy than if he had satisﬁed his desire. Besides, most usually, almost without exception, when one satisﬁes a desire it always leaves a kind of bitter taste somewhere.


The Mother: There is not one satisﬁed desire which does not give a kind of bitterness; as when one has eaten too sugary a sweet it ﬁlls your mouth with bitterness. It is like that. You must try sincerely.  Naturally you must not pretend to give up desire and keep it in a corner, because then one becomes very unhappy. You must do it sincerely.


The Mother: ( )  I heard you clearly. But it is the meaning of your question which I don’t understand.


The Mother: Oh, oh, no, not at all. “The psychic need is realised”, you mean, “How is it realised? How is it expressed in the outer life?” What do you call “realising”? Not clear?


The Mother: It is not very clear in your thought? “Psychic need” to begin with, what do you call “the psychic need”? The need to know one’s psychic being or the need of the psychic to express itself?  It expresses itself by realising itself, expressing itself.  You mean whether it needs to go through the mind?


The Mother: Thank God,  no, because it would be a very difﬁcult operation. The psychic need is an expression of the divine Grace and it is expressed by the divine Grace.  Psychic life in the universe is a work of the divine Grace.  Psychic growth is a work of the divine Grace and the ultimate power of the psychic being over the physical-being will also be a result of the divine Grace. And the mind, if it wants to be at all useful, has only to remain very quiet, as quiet as it can, because if it meddles in it, it is sure to spoil everything.


The Mother: Ah, excuse me, I did not say that one doesn’t need the mind. The mind is useful for something else. The mind is an instrument for formation and organisation, and if the mind lets the psychic make use of it, that will be very good. But it is not the mind which will help the psychic to manifest. The roles are reversed.


The Mother: The mind can be an instrument for the manifestation of the psychic later, when it has already taken possession of the outer consciousness. It is rarely so before that. Usually it is a veil and an obstruction. But surely it can’t help in the manifestation. It can help in the action if it takes its true place and true movement.


The Mother: And if it becomes completely docile to the psychic inspiration, it can help to organise life, for this is its function, its reason of existence. But ﬁrst of all the psychic being must have taken possession of the ﬁeld, must be the master of the house. Then, later, things can be arranged.   There is only one way for the outer being.


The Mother: Let us take the physical being — the physical being, the poor little physical being, the outer being, which knows nothing, can do nothing by itself. Well, for it there is only one way of allowing the psychic being to manifest: with the candid warmth of a child () to aspire, pray, ask, want with all its strength, without reasoning or trying to understand. One can’t imagine how great an obstruction reasoning and this effort to  understand put in the experience. At the moment when you are on the point of reaching a state in which something will happen, some vibration will be changed in the consciousness of the being... you are all tense in an aspiration and have succeeded in fastening your aspiration, and you are standing there awaiting the answer, if this wretched mind begins to stir and to wonder, “What is happening, and what’s going to happen, when is it going to happen, how is it going to happen, and why is it like that, and in what order will things manifest?”


The Mother: it is all over, you may get up and sweep out your room, you are not ﬁt for anything else.  It expresses itself constantly without them. Only, in order that the ordinary human being may perceive it, it has to express itself through them, because the ordinary human being is not in direct contact with the psychic. If it was in direct contact with the psychic it would be psychic in its manifestation — and all would be truly well. But as it is not in contact with the psychic it doesn’t even know what it is, it wonders all bewildered what kind of a being it can be; so to reach this ordinary human consciousness it must use ordinary means, that is, go through the mind, the vital and the physical.


The Mother: One of them may be skipped but surely not the last, otherwise one is no longer conscious of anything at all. The ordinary human being is conscious only in his physical being, and only in relatively rare moments is he conscious of his mind, just a little more frequently of his vital, but all this is mixed up in his consciousness, so much so that he would be quite unable to say “This movement comes from the mind, this from the vital, this from the physical.” This already asks for a considerable development in order to be able to distinguish within oneself the source of the different movements one has. And it is so mixed  that even when one tries, at the beginning it is very difﬁcult to classify and separate one thing from another.  It is as when one works with colours, takes three or four or ﬁve different colours and puts them in the same water and beats them up together, it makes a grey, indistinct and incomprehensible mixture, you see, and one can’t say which is red, which blue, which green, which yellow; it is something dirty, lots of colours mixed.


The Mother: So ﬁrst of all one must do this little work of separating the red, blue, yellow, green — putting them like this, each in its corner. It is not at all easy.  I have met people who used to think themselves extremely intelligent, by the way, who thought they knew a lot, and when I spoke to them about the different parts of the being they looked at me like this () and asked me, “But what are you speaking about?” They did not understand at all. I am speaking of people who have the reputation of being intelligent.


The Mother: They don’t understand at all. For them it is just the consciousness; it is the consciousness — “It is my consciousness” and then there is the neighbour’s consciousness; and again there are things which do not have any consciousness. And then I asked them whether animals had a consciousness; so they began to scratch their heads and said, “Perhaps it is we who put our consciousness in the animal when we look at it,” like that...  It will not be able to manifest perfectly unless all the parts of the being collaborate. But I don’t think that the mind was fashioned with the intention of making it disappear.


The Mother: It is a part of the general structure.  Your body, you see, if it were without a mind it would be quite at a loss. It would perhaps be more like a plant than a  body. There is nothing that you do from morning to evening in which the mind does not have its action.  Well, if the psychic guides the mind, the mind will act in a psychic way.


The Mother: Then it will be a remarkable mind, absolutely harmonious and doing the right thing in the right way.  But the vital — it is the same thing, exactly the same phenomenon for the vital. The vital as it is at present is said to be the cause of all the troubles and all the difﬁculties, the seat of the desires, passions, impulses, revolts, etc., etc. But if the vital is entirely surrendered to the psychic, it becomes a wonderful instrument, full of enthusiasm, power, force of realisation, impetus, courage.  And then there remains the poor physical...


The Mother: The poor physical being has been accused of all the misdeeds. In the days of old it was always said that it was impossible, one could do nothing with something so inert, so obscure, so little receptive. But if it too was surrendered to the psychic it also would do the right thing in the right way, and then it would have a stability, a quietude, an exactness in its movements which the other parts of the being don’t have, a precision in the execution which one can’t have without a body. You have only to see when the body is just a little out of order, when it is ill, how many things you can no longer do, even with a strong will, a great concentration of the vital and the mind. Even when one has the precise knowledge of what ought to be done, if the body is out of order one can no longer do it.


The Mother: Even... I mean, even an activity which is not purely physical, as for instance, writing something.  If your brain is a little unwell — fever, cold — it is very difﬁcult to make it work properly. There is lassitude and something vague, a difﬁculty in catching things with precision; there occur even very strange phenomena, ideas get mixed up before one is able to express them, things enter into conﬂict and  contradict each other; instead of joining together and coming in this way (); you see, they begin to do this (gesture), so then it creates a disorder. So one tries to catch this one and it escapes. One goes to look for that one, hop!


The Mother: It runs away.  And all this just because there is fever which has disturbed things a little, or a cold, you know, what is called a cold in the head, which has slightly disturbed the functioning. If you rise above it, you are absolutely lucid, you are fully conscious, have complete lucidity. Even if you are extremely ill, it makes no difference. Up there you know everything perfectly, you see everything perfectly, you understand everything perfectly, there is no change.


The Mother: But if you want to put all that on paper, take pencil and paper and begin to write and formulate it, you will see that a slight disturbance comes in like that, as I said; instead of things being grouped together and directed as it usually happens in one’s normal state, they do this or go like that or like that (), there is disorder... why, strangely it resembles ultramodern painting. It is like that.  I always think that the artists who do this painting must be doing it in a ﬁt of pretty high fever. Things come up in this way and when you try to put them in some reasonable order, there are always some which escape or hide themselves or run away like that, or come and knock against others, and all this creates an incoherence.


The Mother: It must be the most favourable condition for painting in the latest style, it must be the very height of fever. Oh, I suspect they produce this by artiﬁcial means. God knows what drug they take or what kind of hashish they eat or smoke, in what opium dreams they live — surely. People who smoke opium say they have marvellous visions. It must be something like that.


The Mother: ( )  I am speaking to you about this because soon perhaps you will be shown a collection of coloured photographs which we have received from a photographer in... I think it’s California.


The Mother: Los Angeles is in California, isn’t it? () I still know my geography!  Well, you see, it is absolutely ultra-modern painting. It is photography.


The Mother: There is no painting there, it is photography. They are negatives printed on photographic paper in colour. The colour is admirable. I don’t know any painter who can produce such beautiful, living warm colours, so marvellously beautiful.  But the composition is ultra-modern.


The Mother: What is most... oh, let us call it “reasonable” — if I say “reasonable” they immediately think: “Then it must be ugly”, but it is true, from a certain point of view it is true, yet — the most reasonable thing which is still not reasonable enough to be ugly, is, I think, the portrait of the photographer-artist; I don’t know, he doesn’t say that it is his photo but he gives a small name, you see: “So-andso is concentrating”, I think, or something like that: “Someone is concentrating, reﬂecting, going within”, something like that.  The titles are very ﬁne, they are also ultra-modern. There is this one: so we see the gentleman a bit tenuous as though seen through a veil, a light veil, but it is still a man’s head. We see that it’s the photograph of a head, and the head is not distorted.


The Mother: It is completely there, only a little withdrawn in the background, you see; and then right in the foreground there are brilliant lines with tortuous forms, zigzags, intercrossing things, others which sprout up like the beginnings of branches and leaves, with brilliant colours. All this is in the front, because you see he came out of the physical, went into the background and entered within himself — inside himself — that’s it, these zigzags, twistings, efﬂorescences. And the colour is marvellous, exquisite. This is “Mr. So-and-so goes within”. It’s the thing we can understand best, we poor people who are not ultra-modern.


The Mother: That’s what we can understand best. There are others. We wonder why there’s the title on the picture. You should ask the author, he would explain it to you. But just imagine,


The Mother: it is beautiful; it doesn’t make sense, it has a false feel, but it is beautiful. It is so beautiful that I said we had to have an exhibition, that it gave me the idea  of making photographs like that... not I, I am no photographer, I know nothing about it, but to have photographs like this made by a photographer; but then unfortunately with an idea at the back. So that will not be at all ultra-modern. But if one could ﬁnd, you see, how to use these colours for something which I call expressive, it could become wonderful, truly wonderful.  That will take a year, perhaps more to be realised.


The Mother: But still, the guilty one is this gentleman with his photography.  It seems that he is famous all over the world — but I understand nothing of all this, you see — and that it means a considerable labour to do something like this. Of course, these are superimpositions of negatives, a negative taken of these superimpositions, and this is still very complicated. I am not trying to explain it to you, I don’t understand anything about it, but I am told that it was a lot of work, very difﬁcult, the mastery of an extremely complicated technique and an effect which has never been achieved before. These are coloured photographs as large as this, that’s very large for coloured photographs.


The Mother: And there’s a red in them... Oh, the most beautiful reds that Nature has been able to produce in ﬂowers or sunsets — this is still more beautiful. But how he has done it I don’t know. There is brown, there is green, there is yellow, there are all kinds of things. Some are more pretty, some less pretty


The Mother: , there are mixtures more or less happy; some photographs seem to have been taken with the help of a microscope: inﬁnitely small things which, becoming large, look extraordinary; things like that. And we can see very clearly that there are superimpositions, but there are exceptional colour effects. There we are.   I don’t know when they will show this to you — one of these days, unless they have been sent back already, I don’t know, I must ﬁnd out.


The Mother: I know I asked that they should be shown to you.  Well, I ﬁnd this better... oh, my goodness, happily there is no painter here... (), better than modern painting. And this is photography. For modern painting has not yet been able to use colours with such transparency and brilliance.


The Mother: Water-colour  becomes something completely dull beside this. Oil colour is like mud. The stained glass could perhaps do something; but there, you see, it is the sun playing behind which is the great master.  But that is more difﬁcult.  Stained glasses — I had thought of making them.


The Mother: You see, what I wanted were visions which I would have liked to give. I tried several times to reproduce visions in painting — it becomes stupid. It becomes stupid because the means of expression is bad.  I had thought of stained glass, but you see, stained glass — these are bits of coloured glass and they have to be joined. So they are joined with a small leaden thread; but that’s horrible.


The Mother: All these little leaden threads are like that, it is frightful.  But this is quite good, we shall be able to do something.  There we are.  , my children.   It is better not to lose it.


The Mother: () But in fact the thing ought to be only... It is not the thing itself to which one must be attached.  It is to open oneself to what is within, what I put into the thing I give, this indeed is much more important. And, of course, there can always be an accident but it is certain that if one gives to a thing its inner symbolical or spiritual value, there is much less chance of losing it;


The Mother: it creates a kind of relation because of which there is not much chance of losing it. It remains close to you.  I have the feeling, when someone loses something I have given him, that he was just in contact with the outer form, the shell, and not with what I had put inside, otherwise he would not have lost it; I have the feeling that there is a lack of deeper perception. Perhaps one was very attached to the outer form, but not very open to what was behind.  That’s modern science.


The Mother: Yes... well, if you wait some ﬁfty years, they will have found something else, and it will change, and vitamins will be forgotten... But now, what did you want to ask?     (Laughter)


The Mother: Ah, this is... First, to use things with an understanding of their true utility, the knowledge of their real use, with the utmost care so that they do not get spoilt and with the least confusion.  I am going to give you an example: you have a pair of scissors. There are scissors of all kinds, there are scissors for cutting paper, and there are scissors for cutting thread... Now if you have the pair of scissors which you need, use it for the thing it is made for.


The Mother: But I know people who, when they have a pair of scissors, use it without any discernment to cut anything at all, to cut small silk threads, and they try to cut a wire also with it or else they use it as a tool to open tins, you see; for anything whatever, where they need an instrument they get hold of their scissors and use them. So naturally, after quite a short while they come to me again and say, “Oh, my pair of scissors is spoilt, I would like to have another.” And they are very much surprised when I tell them, “No, you won’t have another, because you have spoilt this one, because you have used it badly.” This is just one example. I could give many others.


The Mother: People use something which gets dirty and is spoilt in becoming dirty, or they forget to clean it or neglect it, because all this takes time.   There is a kind of respect for the object one has, which must make one treat it with much consideration and try to preserve it as long as possible, not because one is attached to it and desires it, but because an object is something respectable which has sometimes cost a lot of effort and labour in the producing and so must as a result be considered with the respect due to the work and effort put into it.  There are people who have nothing, who don’t even have the things which are absolutely indispensable, and who are compelled to make them in some way for their personal use.  I have seen people of this kind who, with much effort and  ingenuity had managed to make for themselves certain things which are more or less indispensable from the practical point of view.


The Mother: But the way they treated them, because they were aware of the effort they had put in to make them, was remarkable — the care, that kind of respect for the object they had produced, because they knew how much labour it had cost them. But people who have plenty of money in their pockets, and when they need something turn the knob of a shop-door, enter and put down the money and take the thing, they treat it like that.  They harm themselves and give a very bad example.  Many a time I say, “No, use what you have. Try to make the best possible use of it.


The Mother: Don’t throw away things uselessly, don’t ask uselessly. Try to do with what you have, putting into it all the care, all the order, all the necessary method, and avoiding confusion.”  Here, you know, we have a small chit-pad, and people write every month what they want; and then it happens that we were compelled to ration things because otherwise it was becoming something excessive. But this rationing often turned against its purpose.  I remember visiting a sadhak in his room, it is now some twenty-ﬁve years ago or so.


The Mother: It is an old story. I remember it still.  There was a rack hanging from the wall, a rack with ﬁve shelves; the rack was as big as this, and there were ﬁve shelves one above another and they were all... all these shelves were full, over-full of tiny soap pieces. So I asked him, “But for heaven’s sake, what are you doing with all these pieces of soap?


The Mother: Why do you have all these pieces of soap there? Why don’t you use them?” He said to me, “Ah, we have the right to one cake of soap per month, so every month I ask for soap. It happens that I don’t ﬁnish it in that month, I keep the pieces.”   It was like that, he made a collection; because he had the right to a cake of soap, he wanted to take the soap, and to take the soap he put the former piece aside.


The Mother: It is an authentic story. I am not inventing it.  Many people here are like that. I won’t tell you their names but I know them well. There are many like that.


The Mother: They have a right to something, they will ask for it even if they don’t need it, because they have the right. This indeed is... well, in fact it is... an attitude... we won’t qualify it.   There is also the miser who ﬁlls his chest with pieces of gold and never uses them.


The Mother: Gold does not rot, otherwise truly it rots morally, because something that does not circulate becomes very ill. Now, no conclusions!  I don’t think they are the same for everyone. It depends on the country, it depends on the habits, and to tell you the truth, if one analyses very closely, I don’t think there are many. You see, if you travel round the world, in every country people have different habits of sleeping, habits of eating, habits of dressing, habits for making their toilet.


The Mother: And quite naturally, they will tell you that the things they use are indispensable. But if you change countries you will realise that all these things are of no use for those people, because they make use of other things which are just as useful for them and seem to them indispensable. Then once again you change the country, and yet again it is other things. So ﬁnally, if anyone has travelled a little over the world, he says, “But what is really useful?” I consider a tooth-brush as something indispensable.


The Mother: My neighbour will look at me and tell me, “What’s that, your tooth-brush? I use my ﬁngers and it is absolutely all right.” And everything’s like that, isn’t it?   Food — it seems to you that a certain amount of things is indispensable in order to give you the necessary strength and that they are such and such things because you are accustomed to them, but in another country it is altogether different.  So one can’t make a rule; and if one wants to be absolutely strict, I think


The Mother: it is a purely personal question, that it depends on each one’s body; because as soon as you grow wide in your consciousness, you realise that the things which seem indispensable to you are not at all so, that you can very well do without them, carry on very well, work very well, have a lot of energy without having any of the things which seem to you indispensable. Are there any things in the whole world which are indispensable, I mean material things? Yes, one can say a small amount of food — and one can’t make a general rule, it depends on the climate.  Nature is foreseeing enough, she produces in each climate the right thing for it. Of course, one should not put man at the centre and say that Nature has made this for the good of man, I don’t think it is like that, because she had invented all this long before man appeared on the earth.


The Mother: But it is a kind of harmony which develops between the climatic conditions of a country and its produce, as we know that there is a harmony between the size of animals and the largeness of the country they live in. For example, the elephants of India are much smaller than those of Africa. And it is said that this is because in Africa the spaces are immense, so the animals are very big.  It is a kind of harmony established in the creation and as the countries become smaller, as the zones in which these animals live grow smaller, well, the animal becomes smaller until it disappears completely when there is no proper relation left between the free space and its own size.


The Mother: If you construct many houses, well, there will no longer be any bears, any wolves; naturally, ﬁrst the lions and tigers disappear, but in this I believe men have done something... Fear makes them very destructive.  But the greater the masses of human beings and the lesser the  free spaces, the more do the animal species grow smaller. So how can we make rules?  The more money one has the more one is in a state of calamity, my child.


The Mother: Yes, it is a calamity.  It is a catastrophe to have money. It makes you stupid, it makes you miserly, it makes you wicked. It is one of the greatest calamities in the world. Money is something one ought not to have until one no longer has desires.


The Mother: When one no longer has any desires, any attachments, when one has a consciousness vast as the earth, then one may have as much money as there is on the earth; it would be very good for everyone. But if one is not like that, all the money one has is like a curse upon him. This I could tell anyone at all to his face, even to the man who thinks that it is a merit to have become rich. It is a calamity and perhaps it is a disgrace, that is, it is an expression of a divine displeasure.  It is inﬁnitely more difﬁcult to be good, to be wise, to be intelligent and generous, to be more generous, you follow me, when one is rich than when one is poor.


The Mother: I have known many people in many countries, and the most generous people I have ever met in all the countries, were the poorest. And as soon as the pockets are full, one is caught by a kind of illness, which is a sordid attachment to money. I assure you it is a curse.  So the ﬁrst thing to do when one has money is to give it. But as it is said that it should not be given without discernment, don’t go and give it like those who practise philanthropy, because that ﬁlls them with a sense of their own goodness, their generosity and their own importance.


The Mother: You must act in a sattwic way, that is, make the best possible use of it. And so, each one must ﬁnd in his highest consciousness what the best possible use of the money he has can be. And truly money has no value unless it circulates. For each and every one, money is valuable only when one has spent it. If one doesn’t spend it...


The Mother: I tell you, men take  care to choose things which do not deteriorate, that is, gold — which does not decompose. Otherwise, from the moral point of view it rots. And now that gold has been replaced by paper, if you keep paper for a long time without taking care of it, you will see when you open your drawer that there are small silver-ﬁsh which have regaled themselves on your paper-rupees. So they will have left a lace-work which the bank will refuse.  There are countries and religions which always say that God makes those whom He loves poor.


The Mother: I don’t know if that is true; but there is one thing which is true, that surely when someone is born rich or has become very rich, in any case when he possesses much from the point of view of material riches, it is certainly not a sign that the Divine has chosen him for His divine Grace, and he must make honourable amends if he wants to walk on the path, the true path, to the Divine.  Wealth is a force — I have already told you this once — a force of Nature; and it should be a means of circulation, a power in movement, as ﬂowing water is a power in movement.   It is something which can serve to produce, to organise. It is a convenient means, because in fact it is only a means of making things circulate fully and freely.


The Mother: This force should be in the hands of those who know how to make the best possible use of it, that is, as I said at the beginning, people who have abolished in themselves or in some way or other got rid of every personal desire and every attachment. To this should be added a vision vast enough to understand the needs of the earth, a knowledge complete enough to know how to organise all these needs and use this force by these means.  If, besides this, these beings have a higher spiritual knowledge, then they can utilise this force to construct gradually upon the earth what will be capable of manifesting the divine Power, Force and Grace. And then this power of money, wealth, this ﬁnancial force, of which I just said that it was like a curse, would become a supreme blessing for the good of all.  For I think that it is the best things which become the worst.


The Mother: Perhaps the worst also can become the best. Some people also say that it is the worst men who become the best. I hope the best don’t become the worst, for that indeed would be sad.  But still, certainly, the greatest power, if badly used, can be a very great calamity; whereas this same very great power if well utilised can be a blessing. All depends on the use that’s made of things.


The Mother: Each thing in the world has its place, its work, a real use; and if used for something else it creates a disorder, confusion, chaos. And that’s because in the world as it is, very few things are utilised for their true work, very few things are really in their place, and it is because the world is in a frightful chaos that there is all this misery and suffering. If each thing was in its place, in a harmonious balance, the whole world could progress without needing to be in the state of misery and suffering in which it is.  There!  So there is nothing that’s bad in itself, but there are many things — almost all — which are not in their place.


The Mother: Perhaps in the body also it is like that. There is nothing that’s bad in itself; but many things are not in their place, and that is why one becomes ill. There is created an inner disharmony. So the result is that one is ill. And people always think that it is not their fault that they are ill, and it is always their fault, and they are very angry when they are told this.


The Mother: “You have no pity.” And yet it is true.  There we are. That’s enough, isn’t it?  That’s all.


The Mother: Then we stop. The dose is complete.   I think primitive man was very close to the animal and lived more by instinct than by intelligence, you see. He ate when he was hungry, without any rule of any kind. Perhaps he had his tastes and preferences too, we know nothing much about it, but he lived much more materially, much less mentally and vitally than now.


The Mother: Surely primitive man was very material, very near the animal. And as the centuries pass, man becomes more mental and more vital; and as he becomes more vital and mental, naturally reﬁnement is possible, intelligence grows, but also the possibility of perversion and distortion. You see, there is a difference between educating one’s senses to the point of being able to bring in all kinds of reﬁnements, developments, knowledge, all the possibilities of appreciation, taste, and all that — there is a difference between this, which is truly a development and progress of consciousness, and attachment or greediness.  One can, for example, very well make a very deep study of taste and have a very detailed knowledge of the different tastes of things, of the association between ideas and taste, in order to acquire a full development — not positively vital, but a development of the senses. There is a great difference between this and those who eat through greediness, who think all the time about food.


The Mother: You see, for them eating is the most important  thing; all their thoughts are concentrated on it, and they eat not because they need to eat but through desire and greed and gluttony.  In fact people who work in order to develop their taste, to reﬁne it, are rarely very much attached to food. It is not through attachment to food that they do it. It is for the cultivation of their senses, which is a very different thing. It is like the artist, you know, who trains his eyes to appreciate forms and colours, lines, the composition of things, the harmony found in physical nature; it is not at all through desire that he does this, it is through taste, culture, the development of the sense of sight and the appreciation of beauty.


The Mother: And usually artists who are real artists and love their art and live in the sense of beauty, seeking beauty, are people who don’t have many desires. They live in the sense of a growth not only visual, but of the appreciation of beauty.  There is a great difference between this and people who live by their impulses and desires. That’s altogether something else.  Usually all education, all culture, all reﬁnement of the senses and the being is one of the best ways of curing instincts, desires, passions.


The Mother: To eliminate these things does not cure them; to cultivate, intellectualise, reﬁne them, this is the surest means of curing. To give the greatest possible development for progress and growth, to acquire a certain sense of harmony and exactness of perception, this is a part of the culture of the being, of the education of the being. It is like the people who cultivate their intelligence, who learn, read, think, compare, study. These people’s minds widen and they are much vaster and more understanding than those who live without mental education, with a few petty ideas which sometimes are even contradictory in their consciousness and govern them totally because these are the only ones they have and they think these are unique ideas which should guide their life; these people are altogether narrow and limited whereas those who are trained and have studied — this at least widens their minds and they can see, compare ideas and see that all possible ideas are there in the world and that it  is a pettiness, an absurdity to be attached to a limited number of ideas and consider them the exclusive expression of truth.  Education is certainly one of the best means of preparing the consciousness for a higher development.


The Mother: There are people with very crude and very simple natures, who can have great aspiration and attain a certain spiritual development, but the base will always be of an inferior quality, and as soon as they return to their ordinary consciousness they will ﬁnd obstacles in it, because the stuff is too thin, there are not enough elements in their vital and material consciousness to enable them to bear the descent of a higher force.  To eat through greediness and a passion for food is something completely different from studying the different tastes and knowing how to compare them, combine them and appreciate them.   Are there any other questions? No?


The Mother: It is one of the senses; it is said that it’s the tongue; I don’t know.  It is the sense of taste, as there is the sense of touch. How does it happen that we feel something with the tips of the ﬁngers?  There are nerves there, nerves and consciousness. Taste — it is the nerves and consciousness which are in the tongue and the palate.


The Mother: Oh, it is the word which is the same... The word is used in a literal sense and then in a ﬁgurative sense. He has a taste for something — that’s a ﬁgurative way of using the word. It does not mean that it is the same thing as the taste of the tongue; or of somebody we say that he has good taste, it means that he knows how to appreciate clearly and judiciously, but it doesn’t mean that he tastes with his tongue.   It is because usually the vital being is very closely concentrated on the body and when the body is well fed it takes its strength from the food, its energy from the food, and it is one way...


The Mother: it is obviously almost the only way; not the only one, but the most important in the present conditions of life... but it is a very tamasic way of absorbing energy.  If you think about it, you see, it is the vital energy which is in either plants or animals, that is, logically it is of an inferior quality to the vital energy which should be in man, who is a slightly higher being in the gradation of the species. So if you draw from below you draw at the same time the inconscience that is below.  It is impossible to eat without absorbing a considerable amount of inconscience; this makes you heavy, coarsens you; and then if you eat much, a large amount of your consciousness is absorbed in digesting and assimilating what you have eaten.


The Mother: So already, if you don’t take food, you don’t have all this inconscience to assimilate and transform inside you; it sets free the energies. And then, as there is an instinct in the being to recuperate the energies spent, if you don’t take them from food, that is, from below, you instinctively make an effort to take them through union with the universal vital forces which are free, and if one knows how to assimilate them one does so directly and then there is no limit.  It is not like your stomach which can digest only a certain amount of food, and therefore you can’t take in more than that; and even the food you take liberates only a little bit, a very small quantity of vital energy. And so what can remain with you after all the work of swallowing, digesting, etc.? Not much, you see.


The Mother: But if you learn... and this indeed is a kind of instinct, one learns instinctively to draw towards himself the universal energies which move freely in the universe and are unlimited in quantity... as much of these as you are capable of drawing towards you, you can absorb — so instinctively when there is no support from below which comes from food, you  make the necessary movement to recuperate the energies from outside, and absorb as much of them as you are capable of doing, and sometimes more. So this puts you in a kind of state of excitement, and if your body is very strong and can bear being without food for a certain length of time, then you keep your balance and can use these energies for all kinds of things, as for example, to progress, to become more conscious and transform your nature. But if your physical body doesn’t have much in reserve and grows considerably weak from not eating, then this creates an imbalance between the intensity of the energies you absorb and the capacity of the body to hold them, and then this causes disturbances. You lose your balance, and all the balance of forces is destroyed, and anything at all may happen to you.


The Mother: In any case, you lose much control over yourself and become usually very excited, and you take this excitement for a higher state. But often it is simply an inner imbalance, nothing more.  It sharpens the receptivity very much. For example, precisely when one fasts and no longer takes the energies from below, well, if you breathe in the odour of a ﬂower it nourishes you, the perfume nourishes you, it gives you a great deal of energy; but otherwise you do not notice it.  There are certain faculties which get intensiﬁed, and so one takes that for a spiritual effect.


The Mother: It has very little to do with the spiritual life except that there are people who eat much, think much about their food, are very deeply absorbed in it, and then when they have eaten well — and as I say, they must digest it, and so all their energies are concentrated on their digestion — these people are dull in mind, and this pulls them down very much towards matter; so if they stop eating and stop thinking about food — because there is one thing, that if one fasts and thinks all the time that he is hungry and would like to eat, then it is ten times worse than eating — and can truly fast because they think of something else and are occupied with something else and are not interested in food — then that can help one to climb to a slightly higher degree of consciousness, to free himself  from the slavery to material needs. But fasting is above all good for those who believe in it — as everything. When you have the faith that this will make you progress, is going to purify you, it does you good. If you don’t believe in it, it doesn’t do much, except that it makes you thin.  There was...


The Mother: Maeterlinck — you know the books of Maeterlinck, I think; you must have read and others. He was a very fat man, and as he had a sense of beauty, becoming fat upset him very much. So he had decided to fast once a week; one day in the week he did not eat, and as he was an intelligent man he did not bother about food; he wrote, he worked hard on that day, and that kept him reasonably well and in an elegant form; and from that point of view it was very useful to him.  This is the surest result: if one doesn’t eat one grows thin; so if one is too fat and wants to grow thin, it is a good means. But on condition that one doesn’t pass the day thinking of food, because then, as soon as one stops his fast, he dashes for it and eats so much that he gets back all that he has lost.


The Mother: In fact, the best thing is not to think about it but to regulate one’s life automatically enough not to need to think of eating. You eat at ﬁxed hours, eat reasonably, you don’t even need to think of the food when you are taking it; you must eat calmly, that’s all, quietly, with concentration, and when you do not eat you must never think about it. You must not eat too much, because then you will have to think about your digestion, and it will be very unpleasant for you and will make you waste much time. You must eat just... you must put an end to all desire, all attraction, all movements of the vital, because when you eat simply because the body needs to eat, the body will tell you absolutely precisely and exactly when it has had enough; you see, when one is not moved by a vital desire or mental ideas, one grasps this with surety.


The Mother: “Now it is enough,” says the body, “I don’t want any more.” So one stops.  As soon as one has ideas or else desires in the vital, and there is, for instance, something that you like particularly, because you like it particularly you eat three times too much of it... In fact,  this may cure you to a certain extent, because if you don’t have a very strong stomach, you get indigestion, and then after that you have a disgust for the thing which has given you indigestion. Still, these are rather drastic means.


The Mother: One can make progress without having recourse to such means. The best is not to think about it.  Of course there are people who prepare food for themselves and for others, and who are obliged to think about it, but just a very little. One can prepare food while thinking about more interesting things. But in any case, the less one thinks about it the better; and when one is not concerned with it, either mentally or vitally, the body becomes a very good indicator.


The Mother: When it is hungry it will tell you, when it needs to take in something, it will tell you; when it has ﬁnished, when it doesn’t need any more, it will tell you; and when it doesn’t need food, it doesn’t think about it, it thinks of something else. It is only the head which creates all the trouble. In fact it is always the head which creates the trouble, because one doesn’t know how to use it. If one knew how to use it, it could also create harmony. But it is something very strange that people always use their imagination for something bad, and it is very very rarely that they use their imagination for the good.


The Mother: Instead of thinking of happy things which would help to keep them in balance and harmony, they always think of all the possible catastrophes, and so naturally they disturb the balance of their being, and into the bargain, if they are unfortunate enough to be afraid, they attract the catastrophes they fear.  There we are. That’s all? No questions?  Good night, my children.


The Mother: It is the spirit of consecration and...  What is the other one you said?  Yes, it is the same thing. It is the consciousness that’s turned exclusively to the Divine, and wants the divine realisation and nothing else; and the right spirit is the spirit of consecration to the Divine which wants only the transformation and nothing else, that is, something which does not try to seek its own satisfaction in the fulﬁlment of the aspiration.  There is always, as soon as there’s an aspiration...


The Mother: it may be very sincere and spontaneous but immediately the mind and vital are there, watching like robbers behind the door; and if a force answers they rush upon it for their own satisfaction. So there one must take very, very, very great care, because though the aspiration might be sincere, the call absolutely spontaneous and sincere and very pure, as soon as the answer comes the two brigands are there, trying to take possession of what comes for their own satisfaction. And what comes is very good but they immediately pervert it, they use it for personal ends, for the satisfaction of their desires or ambitions, and they spoil everything.  And naturally, not only do they spoil everything but they stop the experience. So unless one takes good care, one is stuck there, and cannot move forward.


The Mother: If some Grace is above you, when  the Grace sees this it automatically gives you a terrible blow to recall you to the reality, to your senses; it gives you a good knock on the head or in the stomach or the heart or anywhere else so that all of a sudden you say, “Oh, that won’t do any more.”  No questions?  Ah, yogic repose. It means that instead of an unconscious sleep it is a sleep — if you want to call it sleep — a conscious sleep. The body is in a state of complete repose, with the nerves relaxed, the muscles relaxed; one is completely relaxed and at rest; but the spirit remains conscious, conscious enough to be able to put the vital also at rest, the mind also at rest, and let everything be in a state of peace, quietude, immobility, so that the consciousness may be completely free.


The Mother: Then the consciousness can either rest also, if it thinks it necessary, or work if it thinks that is needed; and in any case it is free to do as it wants, what it wants, and to go to the regions to which it wants to go. But the parts belonging to the present physical being, that is, the mind, vital and physical, are in a complete repose and a kind of immobility, due to which the hours of sleep do not need to be so long. One can cut short the number of hours of sleep very much if one leaves the body in this state of rest. But this asks for much work, and a very conscious work, you see, very conscious and very persistent. It cannot be had immediately, it may require years of discipline.


The Mother: Only, once it is acquired, well, one has mastered sleep and can prevent, well... For example, there are many people who, when they go to sleep, are in a very good state of consciousness, and when they wake up in the morning they are completely dazed and have lost all that they had gained the previous day; and that’s because their sleep is unconscious and they go out in the vital or the mind or the subtle physical; they go to undesirable places or else fall into the inconscience and lose in this inconscience all  they had gained before... It is something very necessary, but it can’t be acquired very easily. It is one of the most difﬁcult things to do, but it is very useful; only, one can hardly do it without a very close guidance, because unless one knows how to do it even to the last detail, one risks doing stupid things.  In any case one thing you can do in all security is, before going to sleep, to concentrate, relax all tension in the physical being, try...


The Mother: that is, in the body try so that the body lies like a soft rag on the bed, that it is no longer something with twitchings and cramps; to relax it completely as though it were a kind of thing like a rag. And then, the vital: to calm it, calm it as much as you can, make it as quiet, as peaceful as possible. And then the mind also — the mind, try to keep it like that, without any activity.  You must put upon the brain the force of great peace, great quietude, of silence if possible, and not follow ideas actively, not make any effort, nothing, nothing; you must relax all movement there too, but relax it in a kind of silence and quietude as great as possible.  Once you have done all this, you may add either a prayer or an aspiration in accordance with your nature, to ask for the consciousness and peace and to be protected against all the adverse forces throughout the sleep, to be in a concentration of quiet aspiration and in the protection; ask the Grace to watch over your sleep; and then go to sleep.


The Mother: This is to sleep in the best possible conditions. What happens afterwards depends on your inner impulses, but if you do this persistently, night after night, night after night, after some time it will have its effect.  Usually, you see, one lies down on the bed and tries to sleep as quickly as possible, and then, that’s all, with a state of total ignorance of how it ought to be done. But what I have just told you, if you do that regularly it will have an effect. In any case, it can very well avoid the attacks which occur at night: one has gone to bed very nicely, one wakes up ill; this is something absolutely disastrous, it means that during the night one has been getting infected somewhere in a state of total inconscience.


The Mother: This is not so necessary. It is useful if one wants to have a great control over his sleep. But this also one must know how to do.  To remember one’s dreams — that’s in the morning; what I am telling you is for the evening.


The Mother: In the morning when you get up, you must not be in a hurry. That is, you must not wake up just at the moment when you must get out of bed; you must have some time in hand and must take good care, must make a formation before going to sleep, and take good care when waking up not to make any abrupt movement, because if you make an abrupt movement, automatically the memory of your dreams vanishes. You must remain with the head absolutely motionless on the pillow, without stirring, until you can quietly recall to yourself the consciousness which went out, and recall it as one pulls at something, very gently, without any knocking and without haste, in a state of attention and concentration. And then, as the consciousness comes back to you, the consciousness that went out, if you remain quite motionless, very quiet, and do not begin once again to think of all kinds of things, it will bring back ﬁrst an impression and then the memory, sometimes a fragmentary memory. But if you remain in that same state of receptive immobility, then it can become more and more a conscious memory.


The Mother: But for this you must have time. If there is the least feeling that you have to hurry, it is ﬁnished, you can do nothing at all. You must not even ask yourself, when waking up, “What is the time?” It is absolutely ﬁnished. If you do that, everything vanishes.


The Mother: (Laughter)  This means one thing or other: either that one has not slept enough, and so should sleep again or else that one is a little tamasic by nature and likes to be in the inconscience.   So, that’s all, my children? No questions?


The Mother: When one is outwardly active, how to keep the concentration?... Oh, this should not be very difﬁcult. Truly it should not be very difﬁcult. For me what seems difﬁcult is not to keep a kind of intensity of inner consciousness, to be separated from it; this seems something impossible. Once one catches that within oneself, how can one separate oneself from it, if you have had it once, if it has become a reality for you, this consciousness and this inner union with the psychic, and this consciousness and intensity of aspiration, and this ﬂame which is always lit?


The Mother: Why, whatever one may be doing, this cannot be extinguished, it is always there.  It seems to me that to separate oneself from it, once it is there, you must close a door, you must deliberately close the door, like this, upon it, and say, “I am no longer interested in it.” But if one truly has the will to keep the contact, it doesn’t seem very difﬁcult to me. It seems to me that one must really have the will to turn one’s back upon it for it to go away; otherwise it is there, behind everything, all things, constantly. And if on the contrary one has made it a habit, when saying something, when making a movement, simply a movement or doing anything at all, to refer always to that, in there, not to feel capable of doing something without having that at the back, there, to tell you, “Yes, this way, not that way.


The Mother: That, no, not that, this”, then it is difﬁcult to live without it.  Some people, because it troubles them, because it puts a control on their impulses and they want to feel absolutely free and independent (what they call independent), seem deliberately to bang the door, like that, they slam the door violently to stop it. Then naturally, once it is done, it is done; then one becomes something so superﬁcial, so weak, so petty, so ignorant,  so stupid! How can one bear to be like that? It seems to me that immediately the instinct would be to take a step backwards, open the door hurriedly and put oneself again into contact, saying, “No, no, no, not this state, not this frightful state of ignorance” — in which you don’t even know what you ought to say or ought not to say, what you ought to do or ought not to do, where you should go or should not go, nothing, nothing, you are in an obscure and incoherent immensity.


The Mother: It is a dreadful state. But when the door is open and this thing is behind, it is absolutely comfortable at every minute, as though one were leaning one’s back against a great light, a great consciousness, like this... “Ah, now, here we are, this is what ought to be done, that’s what ought to be said, this is the movement to be made”, etc. So, then one is comfortable, quiet, without anguish, without any problem, without any anxiety. One does what one wants to do; whether people take it more or less well is their affair, but for oneself it is like that.


The Mother: And note that I am telling you this because I take the greatest care to open your door, inside all of you, and if you have only a little... a small movement of concentration within you, you don’t have to spend those long periods in front of a closed door which does not move, of which you do not have the key, and which you do not know how to open. Sometimes one has to wait stuck to the door for hours or for days or months or sometimes for years, and you do not know what to do.  It is not like that for you, my children.  The door is open, only one must look towards it. One must not turn one’s back to it.


The Mother: Ah, that’s all?  You are asking what it is?  All desires, all impulses, all egoistical, obscure, ignorant,  passionate, violent movements — in fact most of the movements one makes every day. This is the error of the lower vital. It wants to have everything for itself.


The Mother: It wants to be the master of the whole life, to govern everything. And when the mind is an accomplice — which happens ninety-nine and a half times out of a hundred — the mind says, “This indeed is called living one’s life, a right to live one’s life.” It means the right to be an ignorant and stupid animal.  Sleep can be a very active means of concentration and inner knowledge. Sleep is the school one has to go through, if one knows how to learn his lesson there, so that the inner being may be independent of the physical form, conscious in itself and master of its own life.


The Mother: There are entire parts of the being which need this immobility and semi-consciousness of the outer being, of the body, in order to be able to live their own life, independently.  Only, people don’t know, they sleep because they sleep, as they eat, as they live — by a kind of instinct, a semi-conscious impulse. They don’t even ask themselves the question. You are asking the question now: Why does one sleep? But there are millions and millions of beings who sleep without ever having asked themselves the question why one sleeps.


The Mother: They sleep because they feel sleepy, they eat because they are hungry, and they do foolish things because their instincts push them, without thinking, without reasoning; but for those who know, sleep is a school, an excellent school for something other than the school of waking hours.  It is another school for another purpose, but it is a school.   If one wants to make the maximum progress possible, one must know how to use one’s nights as one uses one’s days; only, usually, people don’t at all know what to do, and they try to remain awake and all that they create is a physical and vital  imbalance — and sometimes a mental one also — as a result.  The physical and all material physical parts should be absolutely at rest, but a repose which is not a fall into the inconscient — this is one of the conditions.


The Mother: And the vital must be in a repose of silence. Then if you have these three things at rest, the inner being which is rarely in relation with the outer life, because the outer life is too noisy and too unconscious for it to be able to manifest itself, can become aware of itself and awaken, become active and act upon the lower parts, establish a conscious contact. This is the real reason for sleep, apart from the necessity that, in the present conditions of life, activity and rest, rest and activity must alternate.  The body needs rest but there are very few people, as I said, who know how to sleep. They sleep in such conditions that they don’t wake up refreshed or are hardly rested at all.


The Mother: But this is an entire science to learn.  Physical reserves? You mean the reserve of energy?  It depends on the capacity to receive the universal vital force; because in fact, through food also it is these vital forces one receives but one receives them from below. But in order to have reserves you must know how to receive the universal vital forces constantly and to have a kind of balance in the being which prevents you from spending more than you have.


The Mother: A proportion has to be kept between the receptivity and the expenditure. It is a kind of harmony in the being which must be established. Only, some people have an almost instinctive power of attracting towards them the vital forces or absorbing them — the universal vital forces, I mean — and so they make up their expense as they go along spending. These people can produce  much more than others. Some of them, in certain conditions like sleep or a kind of repose or relaxation, can accumulate forces and later they exhaust them, so to say, in their activities and they must yet once again charge the battery afterwards — this is already a much less favourable condition.


The Mother: Some people don’t know how to receive the forces at all.  These live on the energies concentrated in the body — for there is some concentrated energy in all the cells of the body. They live upon that, but after some time, they are drained out completely if they don’t know how to recuperate; when they have spent all the energies which were concentrated inside them either they fall ill or they never recuperate them. So this cannot last very long; it lasts the average lifetime of human beings, and yet, at the end of a certain number of years they are no longer able to make the same effort or to produce as much, or above all to make any progress.


The Mother: But those who know instinctively or who have learnt to receive and accumulate the universal vital forces, these can last almost indeﬁnitely. The wear and tear is very little, especially if they know how to do it and do it with knowledge and method; then here it can reach a certain degree of perfection.   When one knows, sometimes just two or three minutes are sufﬁcient to recuperate the energies spent over a long period.  Only, one must know how to do it.


The Mother: But those who draw back upon themselves, who turn and double up on themselves, cannot do this. One must live all the time in a very vast and very expansive consciousness (I don’t know if you understand the word, it means something which extends very homogeneously and quietly, as when the tide is at its height and the water spreads like that, quietly — that’s the impression). The vital must be like that — then one is open to the universal forces. But if, for example, one has the very bad habit of exchanging vital forces with one’s fellowmen, then one loses the capacity altogether. So unless one is in relation with someone, one receives nothing at all.


The Mother: But naturally if you receive forces through others, you receive at the same time all the  difﬁculties of the other person, perhaps sometimes his qualities also, but these are less contagious. This indeed is something that shuts you up most.  Some people... unless they have more or less social relations with others, relations of friendship, conversing... and then it goes still farther...


The Mother: they don’t receive any forces; and this is how  they receive them. But this always makes a soup. The forces one receives are already half digested, in any case they don’t have their primal purity, and this affects your own capacity.  But when one has this capacity in his own consciousness — for example, you go for a walk and come to a place which is somewhat vast, like the seashore or like a great plain or the summit of a mountain, a place where the horizon is fairly vast, then if you have this kind of physical instinct which suddenly makes you as vast as the horizon, you have a sense of inﬁnity, immensity; and the vaster you become, the quieter and more peaceful you become.


The Mother: It is enough for you to have a contact with Nature like that.  There are many other means, but this one is very spontaneous. There is also... when you see something very beautiful you can have the same thing: a kind of inner joy and an opening to the forces, and so this widens you and ﬁlls you at the same time. There are many means but usually one does not use them.


The Mother: Naturally, if you enter into contemplation and aspire for a higher life and call down the forces from above, this recuperates your energies more than anything else. But there are numerous methods.  There we are. That’s all? Good.


The Mother: So,, my children.   Good night.


The Mother: I think I have already told you this once. One can ﬁnd the psychic through each part of the consciousness: you can ﬁnd a psychic behind the physical... you can enter into contact with the psychic directly through the physical consciousness, directly through the vital consciousness, directly through the mental consciousness. It is not as though you had to cross all the states of being in order to ﬁnd the psychic. You can enter the psychic without leaving your physical consciousness, through interiorisation, because it is not an ascent or gradation.


The Mother: It is an interiorisation, and this interiorisation can be done without passing through the other states of being, directly. This is what Sri Aurobindo means: you are in the physical consciousness, nothing prevents you from opening this physical consciousness to the psychic consciousness, you don’t need to develop vitally or mentally or to return to these states of being in order to enter into contact with the psychic. You can enter directly. The psychic manifests itself directly in your physical without passing through the other states; that’s what it means.  Well, so what?


The Mother: How should you do it? You must want it, then aspire; and then each time you do something which is contrary to this ideal, you must put it before yourself and put the light upon it and the will for change. Each time one makes an egoistic movement or does those things which should not be done, one must immediately catch it as though by its tail and then put it in the presence of one’s ideal and one’s will to progress, and put the light and consciousness upon it so that it may change.  To catch each thing that should not be done, catch it like that, and then hold it ﬁrmly in front of the light until the light can act upon it to transform it: this is a work which one can do all the time. No matter what one is doing, one can always do this work.


The Mother: Each time one becomes aware that there is something which is not all right, one must always catch it like this, prevent it from hiding, for it tries to hide: catch it and then keep it like this before the light of one’s conscious will, and then put the light upon it so that it changes.  Nothing? Any questions? What?  (.)


The Mother: Pavitra has a question? ( ) A question? ( .)  An incarnated being?


The Mother: Whom do you call an incarnated being?    Oh! Oh, oh, but I don’t understand your question very well. The present being, whatever it may be, and whoever may be within it, always has a psychic being.


The Mother: You see, usually it depends on the degree of evolution of the psychic being but still every psychic being which is in a body has states of being formed in the present formation. Its work is always to transform these; it is as though this were the part of the universe given to him for his work of transformation. And even if he has a vaster mission than that of his own person, unless he does this work in his person he cannot do the other... You cannot change the outer world unless you begin by changing yourself. This is the ﬁrst condition; and for everyone, great and small, old and young — old, I mean those who have lived very long, and young those who haven’t lived very long — it is always the same work.


The Mother: This is why life upon earth for a psychic being is the opportunity to progress.   The duration of earthly life is the time of progress. Outside earthly life there is, so to say, no progress. It is in earthly life that there is the possibility and the means of progress.


The Mother: But for all conscious beings it is the same thing, not only for those you call incarnated. It is for everyone the same thing. One must ﬁrst begin with the work on himself. When one has done the work on himself, one can do it on others; but the ﬁrst thing to do is to do it on oneself.


The Mother: And so, what?  What? What does He feel? You have never been in a place which is quite dark, where you are obliged to ﬁnd your way without having a light? Has it happened to you?...


The Mother: A place you do not know and which is quite dark, where you have to ﬁnd your way  without a light? Have you never been in a place like that? No?   Oh, you would know it if it has happened to you.


The Mother: For example, you are outside in... let us say, a forest... this is a big thing... but let us say, in a fairly large garden, and then, you have remained too long and there is no longer any light at all and you don’t know how to ﬁnd your way. Has this never happened to you?  You always had enough light?


The Mother: To have experiences? What kind of experiences? Have visions or have psychological experiences or — what kind of experiences?   In fact, the whole life is an experience, isn’t it?


The Mother: We spend our time having experiences. You mean having a contact with other realities than physical ones? Is it that? Ah!  Well, I think the ﬁrst condition is to have, to begin with, the faith that there is something other than the physical reality.


The Mother: This can be the ﬁrst condition. Then the second condition is to try to ﬁnd what it is, and the best ﬁeld of action is oneself. So one must begin by studying oneself a little, and manage to discern between what depends exclusively on the body and what on something else which is not the body. One can begin like that. One can begin by observing one’s feelings or thoughts in their working; because... sensations are so linked to the body that it is very difﬁcult to distinguish them, they are so tied to our senses, and the senses are instruments of the body, so it is difﬁcult to discern.


The Mother: But feelings already escape... the feelings one experiences; and to try to ﬁnd the root of this... and then the thoughts... What are thoughts?  If one begins to ﬁnd out, to understand what a feeling is and what a thought is, and how it works, then one can already go quite far on the path with that. One must at the same time observe how his feelings and thoughts have an action on the  body, what the reciprocity is.


The Mother: And then, there is another exercise which consists in looking into oneself for what is persistent, what is lasting, something which makes one say “I”, and which is not the body. For obviously, when one was very small, and then when each year one grows up, if one takes fairly long distances, for example a distance of about ten years, they are very different “I”s from what one was when as small as this (), and then what one is now; it is difﬁcult to say that it is the same person, you see. If one takes only this, still there is something which has the feeling of always being the same person. So one must reﬂect, seek, try to understand what it is. This indeed can lead you far on the path.


The Mother: Then if one also studies the relation between these different things — between thoughts, feelings, their action on the body, the reciprocal action of the body on these things — and also what it is that says “I” permanently, what it is that can trace a curve in the movement of the being, if one seeks carefully enough, it leads you quite far. Naturally if one seeks far enough and with enough persistence, one reaches the psychic.  It is the path to lead you to the psychic; and so this is the experience, it is the ﬁrst experience. When one has the contact with the permanent part of one’s immortal being, through this immortality one can go still further and reach the Eternal. It is still another state of consciousness.


The Mother: But it is in this way that one follows the path, gradually. There are other ways, but this is the one which is always within reach. You see, one always has his body with him, and his feelings and thoughts, and at any moment of the day whatever, even in the night one can be busy with this; while if one must have something else around him, people or things or certain conditions, it is more complicated; but this is always there within one’s reach. Nobody can prevent you from having your body with you, your thought and your feelings, your sensations; it is the ﬁeld of work which is always there, it is very convenient — no need to seek outside. One has all that is necessary.


The Mother: And so what must be acquired is the power of observation and the capacity for concentrating and for pursuing  a little continuously a certain movement in one’s being; as when you have some very strong feeling which takes hold of you, seizes you, then you must look at it, so to say, and concentrate upon it and manage to ﬁnd out where it comes from, what has brought you this. Just this work of concentrating in order to succeed in ﬁnding this out is enough to lead you straight to an experience.  And then if, for example, you want to do something practical, if in your feelings you are completely upset, agitated, if there’s a kind of storm within, then by concentrating you can try to ﬁnd out the cause of all that, you see, the inner cause, the real cause, and at the same time you can aspire to bring peace, quietude, a kind of inner immobility into your feelings, because without that you can’t see clearly. When everything is in a whirlwind one sees nothing; as when you are in a great tempest and the wind is blowing from all sides and there are clouds of dust, you cannot see ; it is the same thing.


The Mother: To be able to see, all must become quiet.  So you must aspire and then draw into this storm... draw peace, quietude, immobility, like this; and then if you succeed it is still another experience, it is the beginning.  Of course one can sit down and try... not to meditate, because that’s an activity of thought which does not lead to experience, but to concentrate and aspire and open oneself to the force from above; and if one does it persistently enough, there is a moment when one feels this force, this peace or this silence, this quietude descending, penetrating and descending into the being quite far. The ﬁrst day it may be very little, and then gradually it becomes more. This also is an experience.


The Mother: All these are easy things to do.  But if, for example, one has a dream, when one remembers it very precisely in its details and concentrates in order to understand this dream, this too can be an experience, some door of understanding can open and one may suddenly get the deep meaning which was hidden behind the dream ; this also is an experience — many things... and one always has the opportunity to have them. Of course the experience which most  gives you the sense of a revelation or of something new is the one you have as soon as you enter into contact with the psychic, and in the psychic, when you are in the presence of the Divine; this indeed is the typal experience, the one which has an action on the whole orientation and activity of the being.


The Mother: But it may come quickly or may also take time. Yet between the state in which one is at present and that state there are many rungs. I mean these are rungs of experiences one can have.  So it is a vast programme. The ﬁrst steps are these: to collect oneself, try to be very quiet and see what is happening within, the relations between things, and what is happening inside, not just live only on the surface.


The Mother: There. That’s all?  Yes, it means probably that instead of meditating in a silent concentration, one has opened one’s consciousness either in a vital domain or in a not very pleasant mental domain. That’s what it means.


The Mother: It can also mean — it depends on the degree of development one has reached — it can mean in certain cases, when one is master of one’s concentration and knows where one goes — still this already requires a fairly great discipline — it may be that it is a particular attack of adverse forces, of bad wills, coming either from certain beings or from certain domains; but it is not necessarily attacks; it can simply be that one has opened one’s consciousness in a place that’s not very desirable or else sometimes, often, that one had in himself a number of movements of the vital and the mind which were not very desirable, and when one enters the silence of meditation or that kind of passive attitude of expectation of something which is going to happen, all these vibrations which have gone out of  him come back to him in their real appearance which is not very pleasant. This happens often: one had bad feelings, not positively wicked but still things which are not desirable, bad thoughts, movements of dissatisfaction, revolt or impatience, or a lack of contentment or... you see, one may be angry with somebody, even in thought, no need of speaking... things like that. When one is quiet and tries to be still so as to have an experience, all these things come back to him in their true form, that is, not very pleasant forms: very ugly, forms which are at times very ugly.


The Mother: I think that I have already told you this several times: it’s something that happens frequently if you don’t control your thoughts and your vital reactions and if someone has displeased you for some reason or other, if that person has done or said something which you do not like, and you consider him hostile and so the spontaneous reaction is to want to punish him in some way or other or if one is still more primitive — if I may say so — to want to take vengeance or hope that something bad will happen to him.  However, it may even come very spontaneously, a violent reaction, like that, then you don’t think about it any more. But now, at night, when you are asleep, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, in a case like this, the person in question comes to you with an extreme violence, either to kill you or to make you ill, as though he wished you as much harm as possible, and then in your ignorance you say, “Well, I was quite right to be angry with him.” But it is quite simply your own formation which returns to you, nothing else but that. The person has nothing to do with it — he is quite innocent in the affair.


The Mother: This is a phenomenon which occurs very often, I mean for people who have movements of rancour or anger or violence; and they always see in a dream of this kind the justiﬁcation of their movements — whereas it is only a very striking image of their own feelings.  For the formation returns upon one in this way.   What should one do? First, never have bad thoughts to begin with; and then, secondly, never be afraid, even if you see extremely ugly things — not only have no fear but no disgust and no repulsion, simply a perfect quietude — and try to be as pure and calm as possible. Then, whatever it may be, whether it be your own formation or it comes from others, whether it be an attack or a bad place — no matter what it is — everything will be all right.


The Mother: But above all, this: quiet, calm, naturally sheltered from every kind of possible fear, and without any disgust, without any recoiling, nothing; like that: a perfect indifference with a complete calm. Then nothing bad can happen, absolutely nothing.  Even if it is truly an enemy who comes to attack you, he becomes powerless.  In all cases, without exception, whatever may happen, calm and quietude and serene peace and an absolute faith in the divine Grace — if you have all this, nothing can happen to you. And you must have all this if you want to have experiences; because experiences without this — it’s not good; but with this, it’s excellent.


The Mother: But it is not hopeless, because if it were hopeless never could we attain physical transformation.   There.  Now, questions.


The Mother: Ah!  There is a great difference between pushing back a thing simply because one doesn’t want it and changing the state of one’s consciousness which makes the thing totally foreign to one’s nature. Usually, when one has a movement one doesn’t want, one drives it away or pushes it back, but one doesn’t take the precaution of ﬁnding within oneself what has served and still serves as a support for this movement, the particular tendency, the fold of the consciousness which enables this thing to enter the consciousness. If, on the contrary, instead of simply making  a movement of reprobation and rejection, one enters deeply into his vital consciousness and ﬁnds the support, that is, a kind of particular little vibration buried very deeply in a corner, often in such a dark corner that it is difﬁcult to ﬁnd it there ; if one starts hunting it down, that is, if one goes within, concentrates, follows as it were the trail of this movement to its origin, one ﬁnds something like a very tiny serpent coiled up, something at times quite tiny, not bigger than a pea, but very black and sunk very deeply.


The Mother: And then there are two methods: either to put so intense a light, the light of a truth-consciousness so strong, that this will be dissolved; or else to catch the thing as with pincers, pull it out from its place and hold it up before one’s consciousness. The ﬁrst method is radical but one doesn’t always have at his disposal this light of truth, so one can’t always use it. The second method can be taken, but it hurts, it hurts as badly as the extraction of a tooth; I don’t know if you have ever had a tooth pulled out, but it hurts as much as that, and it hurts here, like that.  ( .) And usually one is not very courageous.


The Mother: When it hurts very much, well, one tries to efface it like this () and that is why things persist. But if one has the courage to take hold of it and pull it until it comes out and to put it before himself, even if it hurts very much... to hold it up like this () until one can see it clearly, and then dissolve it, then it is ﬁnished. The thing will never again hide in the subconscient and will never again return to bother you. But this is a radical operation. It must be done like an operation.


The Mother: You must ﬁrst have a great deal of perseverance in the search, for usually when one begins searching for these things the mind comes to give a hundred and one favourable explanations for your not needing to search. It tells you, “Why no, it is not at all your fault; it is this, it is that, it is the circumstances, it is the people, these are things received from outside — all kinds of excellent excuses, which, unless you are very ﬁrm in your resolution, make you let go, and then it is ﬁnished; and so, after  a short time the whole business has to be started again, the bad impulse or the thing you didn’t want, the movement you didn’t want, comes back, and so you must begin everything over again — till the day you decide to perform the operation. When the operation is done it is over, one is free. But, as I said, you must distrust mental explanations, because each time one says, “Yes, yes, at other times it was like that, but this time truly, truly it is not my fault, it is not my fault.” There you are.


The Mother: So it is ﬁnished.  You must begin again. The subconscient is there, the thing goes down, remains there, very comfortably, and the ﬁrst day you are not on your guard, hop! it surges up again and it can last — I knew people for whom it lasted more than thirty-ﬁve years, because they did not resolve even once to do what was necessary.  Yes, it hurts, it hurts a little, that’s all; afterwards it is ﬁnished.


The Mother: So there we are.  Nothing?... Nobody has anything to say? You, no? You have something to ask, you?


The Mother: Outside the subject? This subject includes everything. So how can it be outside the subject? The subconscient, we are told, is universal.


The Mother: “One is here” means “one is in the Ashram” or “one is in the class”? In the class? No! ( )


The Mother: Ah, good! So?   This depends on the cases. First, what do you call the next life?  You mean for people who have left their body and will take another?


The Mother: Well, it depends absolutely on the condition in which they died and their last wish, and on the resolution of the psychic. It is not a mechanical or imposed thing, it is different for each one.  I have already told you many times that, for the destiny which follows after death, the last state of consciousness is usually the most important. That is, if at the moment of death one has the intense aspiration to return to continue his work, then the conditions are arranged for it to be done. But, you see, there are all the possibilities for what happens after death.


The Mother: There are people who return in the psychic. You see, I have told you that the outer being is very rarely preserved; so we speak only of the psychic consciousness which, indeed, always persists.  And then there are people for whom the psychic returns to the psychic domain to assimilate the experience they have had and to prepare their future life. This may take centuries, it depends on the people.  The more evolved the psychic is, the nearer it is to its complete maturity, the greater the time between the births.


The Mother: There are beings who reincarnate only after a thousand years, two thousand years.  The closer one is to the beginning of the formation, the closer are the reincarnations; and sometimes even, altogether at the lower level, when man is quite near the animal, it goes like this (), that is, it is not unusual for people to reincarnate in the children of their children, like that, something like that, or just in the next generation. But this is always on a very primitive  level of evolution, and the psychic being is not very conscious, it is in the state of formation. And as it becomes more developed, the reincarnations, as I said, are at a greater distance from one another. When the psychic being is fully developed, when it no longer needs to return to earth for its development, when it is absolutely free, it has the choice between no longer coming back to earth if it ﬁnds that its work lies elsewhere or if it prefers to remain in the purely psychic consciousness, without reincarnating; or else it can come when it wants, as it wants, where it wants, perfectly consciously.


The Mother: And there are those who have united with forces of a universal order and with entities of the Overmind or elsewhere, who remain all the time in the earth atmosphere and take on bodies successively for the work.  This means that the moment the psychic being is completely formed and absolutely free — when it is completely formed it becomes absolutely free — it can do anything it likes, it depends on what it chooses; therefore one can’t say, “It will be like this, it will be like that”; it does exactly what it wants and it can even announce (that has happened), at the moment of the death of the body, what its next reincarnation will be and what it will do, and already choose what it is going to do. But before this state, which is not very frequent — it depends absolutely on the degree of development of the psychic and the hope formulated by the integral consciousness of the being — there is still the mental, vital and physical consciousness, united with the psychic consciousness; so at that moment, the moment of death, the moment of leaving the body, it formulates a hope or an aspiration or a will, and usually this decides the future life.  So one can’t ask a question saying, “What happens and what should be done?” All possible things happen, and everything can be done.


The Mother: Everyone has one thing in mind: he asks a general question but in his mind it is an altogether particular question; but this — these things one does not discuss in public.  () Pavitra, you have a question?   (.) Ah, that’s a pity.


The Mother: It is always there; but one can’t always use it.  It is always there; it is everywhere; but it is not at your disposal in the sense that you don’t know how to make use of it.   Ah! But one must not ask personal questions.


The Mother: Of course if you ask me, “What should do?” — anyone at all among you — I shall tell you, “My children, it is very easy, you have only to call me, and then when you feel the contact, well, you put it upon the thing till that part has understood.”  But here too you must know, it hurts a little; I am warning you, you see, because the thing is clinging somewhere, and in order to pull it out you must have courage; and when you put the light of truth, well, it burns, sometimes it smarts, you see; you must know how to bear it. The sincerity must be sufﬁcient to... instead of shutting yourself up again and saying, “Oh! It hurts”, you must open very wide and receive fully.  Some people have all kinds of little things like this in their head, dark little things.


The Mother: Some people have them here ( ), others have them lower down, for each one it depends... but for each one it is the same thing, it is always... I am saying this because it is very remarkable that if one does the work — whoever it may be — the result is always the same, wherever it may be, whether in the head or the chest or in all the centres of consciousness, if one pushes the investigation far enough, step by step, step by step, untiringly, one always reaches  something; from far it looks like a pea... like the peas... a little black pea; but if one draws near carefully enough — it depends on the degree of concentration — one perceives that it is like a very tiny... serpent, the size of a microbe, but it is very small, all coiled up like that, rolled upon itself like that. Then one takes it by the tail and pulls it out.  Yes, precisely!


The Mother: () That makes a lot, quite an army. When it is in the head it is troublesome, because it is still more difﬁcult to discover them, and one is so full of wrong ideas that it is very difﬁcult to put any order in there. Where it is easiest to ﬁnd and cure is here (), but it is there that it hurts most; however it is the place where one ﬁnds it most easily and cures it most radically. Lower down in the vital it is more obscure and entangled — it is quite muddled.


The Mother: It is all mixed up and there are many of these things — when they are there, there are many. You must put some order there ﬁrst before ﬁnding them. There are some which are entangled like this (). For example, many people have the tendency to ﬂy into a rage — suddenly it takes possession of them. Pouff!


The Mother: They get terribly angry. It is here that one must look for the cause; and here it is all entangled, like this, all mixed up, and one must go very deep and very fast because this spreads with the swiftness of a ﬂood; and when it has spread, it is quite a mass of... like a black smoke which rises and burdens the consciousness, and it is very, very difﬁcult to put any order in there. But when one feels that the fury is going to rise up, if one hurries there immediately like that in the vital centre, and goes there with a torch which lights up well, one can ﬁnd the corner. If one ﬁnds the corner, hop! one does this, gets hold of it, and it is ﬁnished, the anger falls instantaneously, even before one has had the time to say a word. I give this example; there are hundreds of others.


The Mother: All affairs of feelings, vanity, ambition, passion — passion... yes, but still not only material passion: I mean (I don’t like to use the word because it is a travesty, but still) what men call love — all that, it is there one ﬁnds it, all attachments, all sentimentality, all this, it is in there.   Ah! In the head it is all the perversions of thought, all the treacheries — treacheries, there is a huge number of them: one betrays one’s soul so often and so persistently, it is frightful — all the decisions, the points of view and favourable explanations, as I was telling you, and then a kind of habit of criticising... What one doesn’t want to hear, when there is something higher which makes you feel your fault, there is a habit of immediately ﬁnding an explanation and a severe criticism of the idea or thought; or else some people turn it into ridicule; there are people who immediately oppose it with another idea or some commonplace notion or other.


The Mother: You can’t imagine the bazaar there is in the head!  It is something terrible. If you were to look really objectively at what is going on in there, it is frightful — before you put some order, see clearly, arrange all that, see that two contradictory ideas are not lined up parallel.  I know a large number of people who shelter in their minds contradictory ideas, not organised or synthesised — there is no question of a synthesis for them — but like... an almost fraternal cohabitation among things which are mortally opposed, that is, ideas which cannot lodge together. You can arrange them in a vast synthesis but that of course is a work of a higher order; yet two things, two ideas which have absolutely contradictory consequences in action and are absolutely contradictory explanations of the same fact...


The Mother: and these two things are there, side by side, they are even sometimes so close that one feels they are joined and live together without being troubled by the ridiculousness of their association.   I should one day give you a series of examples. Very often I tell you this, I have never given any examples; but one day I shall collect a number of examples for you and then give them to you. You will see this; if it were not sad it would be funny. Most men who have this don’t even notice it, it does not trouble them.


The Mother: If you have some ideas about things — you should surely have some ideas about things, about the world, about life, about the purpose of existence, the aim of existence, the future realisation; in fact you do have many ideas — well, try this little game one day: put all these ideas before yourself, like this, and then arrange them; you will see how easy it will be and you will perhaps have much fun; you will ﬁnd surprising things.  Already, this work alone, just this work of bringing them out, of simply putting them side by side in front of you, all the ideas you have on any subject whatever, as though you were obliged to write them out as an exercise — you see, a composition you are asked to write: “What do you think of this thing, this subject?” and you are obliged to make a draft of it — put all the ideas side by side, and you will see, it will be amusing.  Unless you are in the habit of having a central idea, if possible a ﬁxed central truth around which you arrange all the ideas, you organise them in a logical order with the right relation between each of them, each one in its place, and you make a kind of monument of it — if you have never done this and you try to read in your mind, you will see something there, really.


The Mother: In fact, I tell you, if it were not sad it would be very funny. One can’t imagine to what an extent one can, within the space of an hour, think about the most contradictory things, and without any astonishment.  It is a good exercise to put it down: All right, I am going to write a short essay on “What is... (take this, take anything at all, it doesn’t matter), what is the goal life aims at?” Or else “What is the purpose of existence upon earth?” or “Why are men born in order to die?” anything at all, take things like that.


The Mother: I don’t say take “Why did you play football today and will play  basketball tomorrow?” no, not things like that, because these you can always explain. I am speaking to you of things a little more general. Put that before you and then line up the ideas you have on the subject, you will see it will be amusing.


The Mother: Oh! This, this doesn’t exist, the other person’s idea and one’s own idea.  Nobody has ideas of his own: it is an immensity from which one draws according to his personal afﬁnity; ideas are a collective possession, a collective wealth.  Only, there are different stages. So there is the most common level, the one where all our brains bathe; this indeed swarms here, it is the level of “Mr. Everybody”.


The Mother: And then there is a level that’s slightly higher for people who are called thinkers.  And then there are higher levels still — many — some of them are beyond words but they are still domains of ideas. And then there are those capable of shooting right up, catching something which is like a light and making it come down with all its stock of ideas, all its stock of thoughts. An idea from a higher domain if pulled down organises itself and is crystallised in a large number of thoughts which can express that idea differently; and then if you are a writer or a poet or an artist, when you make it come lower down still, you can have all kinds of expressions, extremely varied and choice around a single little idea but one coming from very high above. And when you know how to do this, it teaches you to distinguish between the pure idea and the way of expressing it.


The Mother: Some people cannot do it in their own head because they have no imagination or faculty for writing, but they can do it through study by reading what others have written. There are, you know, lots of poets, for instance, who have expressed the  same idea — the same idea but with such different forms that when one reads many of them it becomes quite interesting to see (for people who love to read and read much). Ah, this idea, that one has said it like this, that other has expressed it like that, another has formulated it in this way, and so on. And so you have a whole stock of expressions which are expressions by different poets of the same single idea up there, above, high above. And you notice that there is an almost essential difference between the pure idea, the typal idea and its formulation in the mental world, even the speculative or artistic mental world.


The Mother: This is a very good thing to do when one loves gymnastics. It is mental gymnastics.  Well, if you want to be truly intelligent, you must know how to do mental gymnastics; as, you see, if you want really to have a fairly strong body you must know how to do physical gymnastics. It is the same thing. People who have never done mental gymnastics have a poor little brain, quite over-simple, and all their life they think like children.


The Mother: One must know how to do this — not take it seriously, in the sense that one shouldn’t have convictions, saying, “This idea is true and that is false; this formulation is correct and that one is not and this religion is the true one and that religion is false”, and so on and so forth... this, if you enter into it, you become absolutely stupid.  But if you can see all that and, for example, take all the religions, one after another and see how they have expressed the same aspiration of the human being for some Absolute, it becomes very interesting; and then you begin... yes, you begin to be able to juggle with all that. And then when you have mastered it all, you can rise above it and look at all the eternal human discussions with a smile.


The Mother: So there you are master of the thought and can no longer ﬂy into a rage because someone else does not think as you, something that’s unfortunately a very common malady here.  Now, there we are. Nobody has any questions, no?  That’s enough? Finished!


The Mother: It is what he describes later. He explains afterwards that what is in the mind is thrown out into the vital, what is in the higher vital is thrown out into the lower vital, and what is in the lower vital is thrown out into the physical, and what is in the physical is thrown out into the subconscient. He says it — all this.  No, this is the procedure, to reject always into a lower part of the being, and ﬁnally the last refuge, he says, is in the inconscient; and in order to get rid of something, to tell the truth, you must go right into the inconscient; if one pursues it there, it cannot go lower down. So there is only one solution for it, to transform itself.