Letters to a Young Disciple

Since you saw wrong things entering me, why did you not warn me about them?

Here again is the rajasic ego in you, dictating to us what we should have done and showing us our mistakes.

"Although there is no ego in the spiritual planes, yet by the spiritual experience the ego on the lower planes may get aggrandised through pride and wrong reception of the experience. Also one may by entering into the larger mental and vital planes aggrandise the ego."

The higher consciousness keeps contact only through my passive self and if I work some part in me feels disturbed.

It is always so with everybody unless one feels the Mother’s Force working through one in the action. It is possible to work through the passive state, provided one feels that one is not doing the work but it is being done through one.

I am still not able to control my speech.... If this defect continues, I am afraid, I shall have to observe mauna [silence].

Mauna is seldom of much use. After it is over, the speech starts again as in the old times. It is in speech itself that the speech must change.

I come to hear many things which disturb me. Should I resolutely avoid them?

Unless you wear cotton wool in your ears or shut yourself in a closed room, you can’t help hearing all sorts of things. You have not to be affected by them or think about them, that is all.

You wrote about the lower forces: “In the working out sometimes they rise, sometimes they disappear.” Cannot the lower forces be worked out easily in their own field without their rising up and disturbing the whole being?

I am not aware of any case in which the lower forces did not rise up. If such a case occurred I fancy it would be the first in human history.

What was there on the head that pressed so powerfully?

The power from above.

Why was it doing so?

It must have been to make a fresh opening.

Why am I singled out by the difficulties? Any error on my part?

Everybody has his full share of difficulties, except those who do not mind what difficulties they have. Difficulties come from the old nature trying to rise up — they need not be the result of any error.

What can I do under the present clouded circumstances?

Get rid of the “what can I do” mentality. That is the one thing to do under any circumstances. If you shake off your sense of helplessness and call down the force or let it pass, then something can be done.

If a sadhak commits a mistake in his sadhana why do others bother about it? They are not here to enlighten him.

It is certainly superfluous to intervene in another person’s sadhana — but you should receive all remarks and criticisms about yourself with a quiet mind and without any reaction against the critic.

It is again our ego which makes us think that on the higher spiritual planes there would be no need of aspiration. Even our sweet Mother prays day and night — we can feel it distinctly when she plays on the organ!

Yes — All that is very true. It is a prayer or invocation that Mother makes in the music.

Will you not teach me how to aspire properly so that there may be no mental push in it?

A quiet prayer or remembrance of the object of aspiration without a pull for results is the way for doing that. If along with that, there is a faith that it is sure to come, it is the best for this condition.

But what can one do when the difficulty seems overwhelmingly great?

If you cannot do anything else, you must at least remain detached — there is always a part of the being that can remain detached and go on persisting in calling down the Force from above.

I pray to the Mother to see the plight of her child .... and know how the vital has filled it with agony and pain.

.... There must be no tamasic (inert, passive) surrender to the Mother.... Surrender must be luminous, active, a willed offering to the Mother and reception of her Force and support to its workings, at the same time a strong vigilant will to reject all that is not hers. Too many sadhaks cry before the attacks of their lower nature “I am helpless, I cannot react..."

The struggle between the higher and the lower forces goes on within in the same way. What to do then?

Nothing can be done except to keep yourself detached, unless you can recover the use of the knowledge and the will or else bring down the Mother’s Force.

Does such a [golden] path truly exist somewhere or is it only a visionary idea?

There is such a sunlit or golden path, but it is difficult for man with the pull of his lower nature to follow it.

Difficult no doubt it is, but is it really impossible for the human being to tread the sunlit path?

It is not impossible. But only one or two have been able to do it — which proves that it is not easy.

"... the Divine does the sadhana first for the world and then gives what is brought down to others. There can be no sadhana without realisations and experiences. Both myself and the Mother have done sadhana. The Prayers and Meditations are a record of Mother’s experiences."

Could I have an interview with the Mother? I want to discuss [my difficulties] and get at least a verbal solution.

This method of asking questions and getting solutions in an interview is one of which the Mother does not approve. She finds it useless....