Letters 1935

There is a strain in my eyes. Reading has become difficult. What to do?

For the eyes you can try boric acid lotion; it should at least take away the pain. You will have to be careful about your eyes. Reading by night (too much) is unadvisable.

Why are all sorts of things coming into me? Can nothing be done?

If you shake off your sense of helplessness and call down the Force or let it pass, then something can be done.

My friends wonder why I take so little food. But why should I eat much just to satisfy the body’s appetite?

Food is necessary for the maintenance of the body which is the instrument of the sadhana, so it must be taken in sufficient quantity for that. It is not to satisfy the appetite but for this purpose that you must take sufficient food.

Due to the sciatica-pain, it is difficult to sit on an ordinary chair. Could I be given an easy chair so that my body can rest while I follow the movement of the sadhana?

Mother does not believe much in an easy chair sadhana... What the Mother meant was that this meditating on an easy chair which is so common in the Ashram is a new thing to her and she finds it rather a tamasic habit.

While washing the big flower-vase of the Reception Room, one part fell from my hands and it broke. So may I take this dream as prophetic?

One sees many things like that which are not necessarily prophetic (rarely they are), but only suggestions, formations etc. on the vital plane.

Is the time come for me to start becoming conscious of my nights? My normal sleep is filled with unconsciousness.

It does not matter much at present. Put your waking consciousness right.

The sleep-consciousness has to be changed quickly as it is a fundamental basis.

First you will have to get the capacity of getting it back as soon as you rise.

An Ashramite says that at present the Mother and you have started to send us down into the lower nature. Is it true?

We are sending nobody nowhere. The sadhana itself has come down into the depth of the physical and subconscient to make them open ...

While concentrating, sometimes I get the experience of gathering different lights and forces on the head at the same time. I am surprised.

I suppose the physical consciousness is not accustomed to the play of lights and forces.

Are there many sadhaks here who are under the same spell of inertia as I am?

Yes — it is a natural result of the consciousness’s descent into the physical and the struggle with the subconscient resistance. Only its form varies with different people.

When the outer being is so totally obscured how to keep an aspiration?

One can always have an aspiration in the inner being, if the inner being keeps its separateness. This difficulty is due to old habits of the physical mind and vital, which still have the power to repeat themselves by rising from the subconscient ...

Why all this suffering of the physical being on the way to the Divine?

It is the nature of the sadhana. The forces of the Ignorance are a perversion of the earth-nature and the adverse Powers make use of them. They do not give up their control of men without a struggle.

What is the matter with [my present sadhana]? — one after another, attacks are persistently coming. [...]

This negation is the very nature of the physical resistance and the physical resistance is the whole base of the denial of the Divine in the world. [...] You have to face this character of the physical resistance and conquer it however often it may rise. It is the price of the transformation of the earth-consciousness.

It is the nature of the physical mind to be obstinate. Physical nature exists by constant repetition of the same thing [...]. When therefore we want to get rid of the old movements of physical nature, they resist by this kind of obstinate recurrence. One has to be very persistent in rejection to get rid of it.