Mother’s Role in our Sadhana

Why do we hear that the Mother experiences this or that? Has she still to go on experiencing?

Experiencing what? She has her own experiences in bringing down the things that have to be brought down — but what the sadhaks experience she had long ago. The Divine does the sadhana first for the world and then in others.

Sometimes a sadhak feels as if not only he but also the Mother goes through a certain experience in us. The poet Harin often speaks of such a happening as “I am thrilled by Thee and Thou art thrilled by me. I am happy by Thee and so Thou art by me”, etc. I cannot understand how such experiences take place.

Naturally, the Mother does the sadhana in each sadhaka — only it is conditioned by their need and their receptivity.

I request a little more elaboration of your answer: “She has her own experiences in bringing down the things that have to be brought down…”

I have said that 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.

Is not the Mother far above what we feel as experience?

The Mother is not an “experience”, she is the Being and the Consciousness and the Power that contains the experience.

At present my inner being wants to impose one simple and straight attitude on my outer being — “Accept heartily whatever the Divine Mother does.” This indeed is a very essential thing to be realised if any real or lasting progress is to be achieved.

Yes, it is essential.

Early in the morning, among the flood of ideas, particularly this one flashed through me very clearly: “Your inner being should now adopt this attitude to any difficulty, fall or attack: ‘It is not of your own nature, it belongs to the general Nature.’ One who is accepted by the Mother gets an automatic protection from such things. Be always at ease and one with the Mother.”

Very good — it is the attitude I wanted you to take.

The waves of subconscient tamas rose up today. Becoming detached I invoked the Mother’s help. Then I watched her Force fighting it out. This experience proves the deeper urge of my Prakriti: “Whatever the confrontation with the lower nature, it will be met by the Mother. And I shall remain as a dynamic and luminous channel.”

Quite right.

One who is sincere and open exclusively to the Divine Mother would refuse to believe that this Yoga is the most arduous and difficult. It is so for only those who refuse to take her as their all. When she is our all, she travels with us and saves us from hardships and falls which are of our own making. Is it not so?

Of course; but most do not find it easy to take the Mother as their all.

I wrote to you the other day that after some time the dark and the ignorant part of my subconscient would also come under the Mother’s control. Some people would perhaps laugh at such a premature prayer; but then is it not true that when a child cries for his Mother she always comes to him? Moreover, this Mother is not merely a human mother, but a Divine Mother, who is more sensitive to the crying of her child than any human being could be. She is always eager to remove him from the grip of the ordinary nature and lift him wholly into her light. The ordinary human being is under the impression that it is only he who feels such an unbearable separation from her. And he thinks too that it is he who is doing the entire sadhana in order to reach the Divine while she just remains above and aloof. We sadhaks should realise this most important truth: that it is she who first does the sadhana for us, for each one of us, that without her there would be no sadhana done — at least not the supramental one.

The anti-Divine forces are always trying to throw thorns on our path; and yet how is it that we find it clean and luminous? It is just because the Mother has done the sadhana first for us that all the obstructions and darkness have been swept away and the path made clear.

Some people who have fallen into the habit of struggling may well ask: “Why do we then find the journey full of difficulties, gloom and despair? All sorts of suggestions and attacks surround us from all sides to drive us out of the path.” They undergo all these because they take an indirect road, not the one made ready for us by the Mother. After a long strenuous labour she has hewn a special path, which leads more or less straight to the goal. Not that failures, depression etc. never approach those who tread it; but these difficulties do not trouble them very much, as they are clearly seen to be foreign to this path — as if coming from the side like some solitary gust of sand.

Yes, that is the right Knowledge.

Beside the path prepared by the Mother, there are many sidetracks which try to attract the seeker of the Truth. They use deceptive means to pull the sadhak towards their side, separating him thereby from the Mother, his true Guide and Light.

Quite right.

What is the Mother’s physical touch if not a self-giving to each of us? But its importance is lost to our ordinary consciousness because, when it is given often, this consciousness turns every opportunity into a habit or a mere formality.

That is what most have made of it.

With the Mother I seem to be stationed over the head, floating or rising all the time, while below the body hangs like a coat.

It is very good.

What is meant by becoming the Mother’s instrument if not to think, move and act as she makes one think, move and act?

Yes, that is right.

When the Mother’s higher action came over all my head I began to lose my balance and merge in her consciousness.

I do not know what you mean by losing the balance. To merge in there one need not lose any balance; though one may become unconscious of the physical body.

After the meditation, I found my consciousness filled with the Mother’s inner gifts. Does it not indicate that she is making up for my lapse of the last four days when I was so much externalised?

Very often the working begins more strongly after a period like that.

I would very much like to know about the nature of the Mother’s action on the sadhaks here. The human vital is so stupid and self-centred. In the beginning has she not to start working by slightly allowing the vitals indulgence and then slowly put some pressure either directly or indirectly for its change? Are these notions at all valid?

You attributed too many motives — e.g. that the Mother tries to allow the vital by indulging it in the beginning. She has no such intention. She behaves naturally and simply with the being — whatever change there is is in the vital’s impressions about her action rather than in the action itself — except in so far as there is a change necessitated by the change in the consciousness.

Many try to judge the Mother from her outer actions without some inner or higher basis. This method would obstruct us from arriving at the right destination.

Yes, that is the mistake all the sadhaks make. How can they understand the Mother’s actions unless they are united in consciousness with the Mother, have in fact the same consciousness as hers?

When a certain aspect of the Mother is powerfully prominent the other aspects withdraw into the background. In fact that was what happened to me yesterday. With the arrival of a powerful muteness the love stood back. This, I suppose, happens in the early stages — afterwards it will be possible to feel all the aspects together and at the same higher pitch.

Yes.

This withdrawing of one or more aspects into the background is, I think, to give prominence to one particular aspect, so that it can carry out certain important things.

Yes, that often happens.

My psychic feels that whatever be our condition — be it full of difficulties, darkness or attacks — all will evaporate as soon as we get the Mothers physical touch. Why then do so many disciples say that they return from her with the same bad state they had before approaching her? Is it not because of their lack of faith in her divinity?

Naturally, when there is not the opening they will feel nothing, for the consciousness will not respond — the force then works behind the veil to prepare things, but gives no immediate visible result.

What are these stupid waves moving about the Ashram atmosphere? They say: Non-pranam day[1] means a day of rest for the sadhana. Does marching on with the Mother bring fatigue? As for the ‘rest’ do we really need it?

It is the ordinary attitude of the physical consciousness — but once the fundamental consciousness is fixed, there is no reason why the sadhana should stop for a single day or need rest.

[1] During this period the Mother used to give us Pranams every day except Mondays. So Monday was called a non-pranam day, when she used to wash her hair and then walk on the small terrace above Dyuman’s room in order to dry it.