On the Prayers and Meditations
Q: I do not follow the construction: “But certain that Thy will alone exists”. (Prayers and Meditations, 11.12.1912)
A: But as I am certain that Thy will alone exists.
30.7.1934
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“Behind the veil is already heard the wordless symphony of gladness revealing Thy sublime presence.” (ibid., 11.12.1912)
Q: What does it signify?
A: Behind the appearances there exists a harmony of forces and movements which resembles an accord of all the diverse instruments in a perfect symphony.
30.7.1934
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“And all leads towards Me, who am endless Peace, shadowless Light, perfect Harmony, Certitude, Rest and supreme Blessedness.” (ibid., 5.2.1913)
Q: What does Certitude mean?
A: Faith confirmed by spiritual experience of that in which one has the faith.
31.7.1934
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“In this simplicity lies the greatest power, the power which is least mixed and least gives rise to harmful reactions.” (ibid., 12.2.1913).
Q: This simplicity cannot be good since it is mixed somewhat.
A: What can there be without mixture in the world such as it is presently? Nothing, nothing, nothing.
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“The power of the vital should be mistrusted for it gives you the taste of immediate results.” (ibid., 12.2.1913)
Q: How?
A: It is because we like immediate and visible results that we allow ourselves to be deceived by the vital.
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Q: I think it is only by consciousness that one can come to understand the play of the vital and reject it by control and divine help.
A: Certainly.
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“As soon as I have no longer any material responsibilities, all thoughts about these things flee far away from me, and I am solely and entirely occupied with Thee and Thy service.” (ibid., 11.5.1913)
Q: What is ‘Thy service’ when ‘material responsibilities’ are no longer there?
A: I wrote that because, for a time, I was not living at mine but at my mother’s and thus I had no more the responsibility of the mistress of the house who should see that all is well materially.
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“Then in that perfect peace and serenity, I unite my will to Thine, and in that integral silence I listen to thy truth and hear its expression.”
Q: I understand this to mean that only when one has perfect peace and serenity can he unite his will with Thine. And it is only in integral silence that one can hear the expression of Thy truth.
A: Yes, that is it.
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“It is by becoming conscious of Thy will and identifying ours with Thine that there is found the secret of true liberty and all-puissance the secret of the regeneration of forces and the transfiguration of the being.”
Q: What is the meaning of ‘the secret of the regeneration of forces’?
A: The vital and material forces are perverted. They must be regenerated so that they may be capable of expressing the divine will.
Q: ‘secret of the all-puissance’: does it mean the secret of the force that is all-puissant?
A: Yes.
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“To be constantly and integrally at one with Thee is to have the assurance that we shall overcome every obstacle and triumph over all difficulties, both within and without.”
Q: The inner difficulties are those concerning the mind, vital and physical — is that right?
A: Yes.
Q: External difficulties are those caused by material things.
A: Yes.
Q: To be at one with Thee integrally means consent of all the being.
A: In harmony.
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“Thou fillest my being, Thou animatest it, Thou settest in motion its hidden springs.”
Q: What are the hidden springs?
A: The springs mean the dynamic forces that give the impulsion of movement.
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Q: Is there a difference between losing the “sense of separativity” and “identification”? (ibid., 19.11.1912)
A: To lose the sense of separativity is the last stage before the identification and even in identification there are several stages.
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“When it is needful that something should be known, one knows it, and the more passive the mind to Thy illumination, the clearer and the more adequate is its expression.” (ibid., 3.12.1912)
Q: Mother, when will it be possible? It will be a wonderful thing when that happens.
A: It can take place only when one has given up all personal preference.
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“For now I should not be able to repeat what was said” (ibid., 3.12.1912)
Q: Why does it happen so?
A: Because the memory belongs to the mind and it is not the mind which spoke, it was a consciousness coming from beyond.
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“Yes, we should not put too much intensity, too much effort into our seeking for Thee…. We must not desire to see Thee.” (ibid., 5.12.1912)
Q: Is this meant for all? I had thought all this must be done.
A: Certainly not.
However, generally one must never try to reproduce my experiences. I started noting them after having attained communion with the Divine, a state to which you are far from having arrived.
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“And on earth now I am the joyful [joyeux] child at play.” (ibid., 17.5.1914)
Q: I think the “I” refers to you. Then why have you not said “joyeuse” (feminine)?
A: You ought to know the Hindu tradition that the world is the result of “the play of the divine Child”. It is with this One that I was identified.
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“I await, without haste, without inquietude, the tearing of another veil, the Union made more complete.” (ibid., 11.12.1912)
Q: Union between whom? Between you and the Lord of whom you speak?
A: Certainly it is the union with the Supreme that I spoke of.
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“I know that the veil is formed of a whole mass of imperfections, of attachments without number.”
Q: I believe this is the veil that exists between the Supreme and the obscure material world, but it has nothing to do with you.
A: To do my work I have been obliged to identify myself with the material world and its imperfections.
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Q: In the Prayer of 26.11.1912 you speak of having “almost entirely lost the gross illusion of ‘me’ and ‘mine’”. Even after this identification, the attitude does not completely let the divine act as He wishes!
A: In everything there are degrees and the perfection of one day does not any more seem a perfection the next day.
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“How many times a day still, I act without my action being consecrated to Thee.” (ibid., 2.11.1912)
Q: Can one act without consecration even after communion with the Divine?
A: Certainly, communion and consecration are very different things.
Q: But is it possible to have communion before consecration?
A: The part of being which has the communion is not the same that has no consecration.
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“Thou art there wherever there is need of Thee, and if they could have the supreme faith to give up seeking for Thee, but rather to await Thee Thou wouldst be there whenever there was need of Thee.” (ibid., 10.2.1913)
Q: Is that not for me?
A: It is for all — for you as for others — who are capable of taking the attitude with an integral sincerity; but I must say that it is still more difficult than to make the effort.
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“More and more I fail to make a distinction between Thy work and my life, between my personality and the whole earth.” (ibid., 17.6.1913)
Q: Does it mean that the whole of your life had become a supreme work and that you had become the whole earth — one with the earth?
A: Yes.
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“Thy voice is so modest, impartial, sublime in its patience and its mercy that it does not make itself heard with any authority, any potency of will; it is like a cool, soft and pure breeze, it is like a crystalline murmur that imparts a note of harmony to discordant concert.” (ibid., 27.6.1913)
Q: I do not understand what is this voice. And how to listen to it.
A: It is the voice of the Divine; by becoming silent.
Q: Is this the same voice that comes from the depths of the heart and guides men, shows the right path, prevents men from blinding themselves?
A: When the voice comes from the heart it can have the same divine origin, but it expresses through the psychic.
Q: Then does the voice of the Divine come directly to the being?
A: That can happen under certain conditions.
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“Although my whole being is in theory consecrated to Thee, O Sublime, Master… I still find it hard to carry out this consecration in detail. It has taken me several weeks to learn that the reason for this written meditation, its justification, lies in the very fact of addressing it to Thee. In this way I shall put into material shape each day a little of the conversation I have so often with Thee.” (ibid., 2.11.1912)
Q: How to have conversation with the Divine even when one has not consecrated practically one’s being to the Divine?
A: Well! You will understand when that happens to you.
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“Then are they ready to participate in the contemplation, and to identify themselves with Thee in the supreme concentration.” (ibid., 28.11.1912)
Q: What is this contemplation and supreme concentration?
A: You will understand it when you will have had the experience.
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“Thou art ourselves in our real being.” (ibid., 15.8.1913)
Q: I do not understand what ‘our’ reality signifies? I thought there is only one Reality.
A: I use the word ‘Reality’ in the sense of the truth of the being.
Q: I believe it is in this truth that there is no division whatever between the Lord and ourselves.
A: That is exactly what I have said.
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“In truth, the essence of the impression that is felt in the presence of the most sweet, the most calm, the most compassionate smile, has a feeble analogy with what I feel when I so perceive Thee.” (ibid., 8.8.1913)
Q: What is this smile? I think only the Divine can have such a smile.
A: Not the Divine but those who have a divine consciousness.
Q: What is the difference between having a divine consciousness and becoming one with the Divine?
A: I have not mentioned someone who becomes one with the Divine; I have spoken of the Divine himself because it is that which your sentence seemed to mean.
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“Thou who ever teachest me the lesson of love” (ibid., 17.8.1913)
Q: Teach the lesson of love — does it mean how to love?
A: What is the true nature of love.
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“Is that not enough to cure us of all personal thoughts and to make us unfurl our wings and soar above the contingencies of the material life so that we can fly up into Thy divine atmosphere with the power to return as messengers to the earth and announce the glorious tidings of thy Advent which is near?” (ibid., 17.8.1913)
Q: It is not clear to me to cure all personal thoughts one must soar into the divine atmosphere and immediately return — the idea is not clear.
A: It will become clear later with the beginning of experience.
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“It was necessary that all pride should be broken, crushed, trampled down definitively, so that I may at last be capable of understanding, seeing and feeling things as they are.” (ibid., 7.10.1913)
Q: Is that sufficient (only the breaking up of pride)?
A: In this case it was sufficient.
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“I am on visit here as everywhere else.”
Q: Visit of the Divine?
A: A visit of the Divine, yes…
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“Thy messenger and thy servant upon earth, a stranger among men, and yet the very soul of their lives and the love in their hearts.” (ibid.)
Q: I do not understand the underlined words.
A: You will understand later when you will be more conscious.
Q: How is the soul stranger in the life of men and to the love in their hearts?
A: I have not said such a stupidity.
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“In the unchanging solitude of the desert there is something of thy majestic presence, and I understand why one of the best means of finding thee has always been to retire into these immense plains of sand.” (ibid., 14.3.1914)
Q: You understand; would you make me understand?
A: In perceiving the “majestic presence”, I understood.
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“This marvellous silence manifests Thee, in spite of the folly of human agitation, — the immutable and constant silence so living in everything that one has only to listen in order to hear it.” (ibid., 2.1.1914)
Q: I do not understand this.
A: When you will have the experience of silence, you will understand.
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“I know that a day will come when thou willst transform all those who approach us.” (ibid., 11.1.1914)
Q: What does ‘us’ signify?
A: If someone asks you you will say you know nothing.
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“All the individual faculties slumber and the consciousness is not awakened in the transcendental states; that is to say, its awakening in them is intermittent and in between it is asleep.” (ibid., 19.5.1914)
Q: Does it mean before the consciousness is awake in the transcendent state there is a period when it sleeps? How long does it sleep like this?
A: The consciousness sleeps in all till it is awakened — for a second or for eternity.
Q: Then I do not think you meant this. How could your consciousness have been asleep in 1914?
A: Evidently not.
Q: Then what does it exactly mean?
A: There are experiences of universal order which can be revealed only to those who have had them.
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“Those who recognise thee not, those who know thee not, Those who…” (ibid., 1.6.1914)
Q: Why is the third Those in capitals?
A: It is a misprint; it ought to be small t.
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“How many and different are the degrees of consciousness! This world should be reserved for that which, in a being, is illumined by thy Presence, identifies itself with thee and participates in thy absolute Consciousness, for that which has knowledge, which is ‘perfectly awakened’, as says the Buddha.” (ibid., 13.3.1914)
Q: Does it mean that when one is illumined by thy presence and identifies with thee, there are no more degrees of consciousness for him?
A: I mean that the word consciousness must be reserved for one who is conscious of the divine Presence.
Q: “In a being” — Which being?
A: Does not matter which.
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“Outside this state, there are infinite degrees of consciousness descending down to the complete darkness, the veritable inconscience which may be a domain not yet touched by the light of thy divine love (but that appears improbable in physical substance), or which is, by reason of some ignorance, outside our individual region of perception.”
Q: What is this “veritable inconscience” you speak of?
A: The subconscient of the subconscient.
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“But the fugitive duration of this supreme consciousness can be explained only by the complexity of the elements of the being, by their inequality in the illumination and by the fact that they enter successively into activity.”
Q: I do not follow.
A: Later when your brain will have formed a little more and you have a little more knowledge, you will understand what I mean to say.
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“Undoubtedly we must learn how to control our subconscient as we control our conscious thought. The means of arriving at it are numerous…. But there is certainly something more rapidly effective.” (ibid., 25.11.1913)
Q: What is that?
A: The descent of the supramental.
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“Thou hast sent me the struggle… I welcome it…. One of the best means of bringing back to light some element of the work which might otherwise have been forgotten.” (ibid., 22.6.1920)
Q: I do not follow.
A: It does not concern personally but the universal movements.
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“A few days back I had known, I had heard: ‘If thou weepest frankly and without constraint before me, many things will change, a great victory will be won.’” (ibid., 12.7.1918)
Q: Weeping here does not have the usual meaning, is it not?
A: Evidently.
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“The world is divided into two contrary forces which struggle for supremacy and both are equally opposed to thy law.” (ibid., 9.9.1914)
Q: Which are these forces?
A: If you had read the Meditations carefully you would not need to pose this question. The two forces are those of construction and destruction.
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“And if I always show myself to be at the height of what thou expectest from me, a day will come O Lord, when thou wilt be upon the earth, and the whole earth will rise against thee. But thou wilt take the earth in thy arms and it will be transformed.” (ibid., 17.1.1915)
Q: I do not understand.
A: Yes, it needs some more years of spiritual progress for you before you are able to understand.
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“May my consciousness be identified with thy consciousness so that thou alone mayst be the will acting through this fragile and transient instrument.” (ibid., 9.5.1914)
Q: Why do you call the instrument fragile and transient?
A: The instrument in question here is the earth which has a fugitive life in regard to the eternal consciousness.
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“All rules have vanished, the regularity of the discipline has disappeared, all effort has ceased; not by my own will, not, I think by negligence either, but because the circumstances conspire to make it so.” (ibid., 23.4.1914)
Q: How does this happen? Because the Divine has taken possession and there is no more effort to be made?
A: Yes.
Q: Does the Divine draw away from us?
A: No, it is we who draw away from Him.
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Q: When you write “O Divine Force, Supreme Illuminator, listen to our prayers, do not draw away, do not retire, help us to combat…” What do you mean to say?
A: I spoke not to the Divine himself but to a Force, emanation of the Divine, descended to do a certain work on the earth and could have receded if it had seen that the work which it had come to do was impossible.
