Letters to a Young Disciple

In my meditations I try to bring down a force from above which will change the lower being.

A going up and up higher, though a part of the total necessary movement, does not by itself have any effect on the outer being [...] the descent must first take place in the inner being. When the higher consciousness is settled in the inner being, then it can change the outer.

"Love and devotion depend on the opening of the psychic and for that the desires must go. The vital love offered by many to the Mother instead of the psychic love brings more disturbance than anything else because it is coupled with desire."

X used to press the hands or shoulders of some of his friends [...] we did feel some sensations of love and thrills.

There was no descent; but he felt the universal love and tried to express it in action instead of holding it in himself — so inevitably the vital took hold of it, as he had not yet the purification and the peace.

Why does my mind chew and re-chew what I hear from others?

It is a movement in every mind; you probably did not notice it before when the mind was not accustomed to silence. For everybody whatever takes hold of the mind tends to be ruminated like that.

How to stop the physical mental from that activity before it takes deep root?

What do you mean? Activity of the physical mind is not a new thing that needs to take root. It has been there very well rooted since you began your human evolution in the primaeval forests.

Does not the Yoga mean to keep the mind quiet and turn it always to the Divine?

Do you mean to say that in order to have quietness of the mind one must do nothing? Then neither the Mother nor I nor anyone else here has a quiet mind. Doing nothing with the mind is not quietude or silence.

Would a developed mind help the sadhana?

It may or may not — if it is too intellectually developed on certain rationalistic lines, it may hinder.

You said, “What I write usually helps only the mind and that too very little, for people really do not understand what I write.”

It is because the mind by itself cannot understand things that are beyond it [...] Each mind puts its own ideas in place of the Truth.

At this stage of the sadhana, should I try to divide my mental consciousness into two, one part doing mental work, the other part doing the sadhana?

It usually comes of itself, not by trying.

After stopping tea my mind seems to become dull. It has become difficult to attend my classes.

All that is evidently due to the vital-physical becoming tamasic because you refuse it its small desires. You should throw it away altogether and call down into the vital-physical the Mother’s Force.

If one tries to deal with the outer world without the poise of peace and silence, is he not likely to be entangled by the vital forces?

Yes, but in retirement from the outside things also vital forces can get hold of you.

the only return we have offered to the Mother is to tire her out by our ego and vital demands.

It is so — if the sadhaks had been different in their reaction to the Mother’s grace, the work in the physical would have been much easier and less perilously subject to hostile attacks

Is the whole of the inner being made up of sheaths only?

Yes. Sheaths is simply a term for bodies, because each is superimposed on the other and acts as a covering and can be cast off. Thus the physical body itself is called the food sheath and its throwing off is what is called death.

In Yoga the proper means is to train the mind and vital to meet women without thought of sex, to look on them as sadhaks and human beings only, not as objects of sexual possession and enjoyment.

Illness is a wrong movement of the body and is no more to be cherished than a wrong movement of the mind or vital. Pain and illness have to be borne with calm, detachment and equanimity, but not to be cherished — the sooner one gets rid of them the better.

Subconscient and material are parts of the lower nature. The subconscient is the basis of conservation. There is a general violent resistance by the vital in the sadhaks against change, a resistance for which there is no true reason except the subconscient unwillingness to alter the obscure foundations of human character.

In dreams and visions how can we be sure that what we see or hear is from you or Mother and not from an anti-divine force?

You cannot be sure unless you have sufficient experience and consciousness to discriminate. There are several people who have constructed an image of the Mother or myself and they come and say the things the person would like or expect them to say.