The Mother

Agenda

Volume 1

November 26, 1958

(Extract from the last Wednesday class)

Basically, the vast majority of men are like prisoners with all the doors and all the windows shut, so they suffocate (which is quite natural), but they have with them the key that opens the doors and the windows, and they don't use it... Certainly, there is a period when they don't know that they have the key, but even long after they do know it, long after they have been told, they hesitate to use it and doubt that it has the power to open the doors and windows, or even that it may be advisable to open them. And even once they feel that “After all, it might be a good thing,” a fear pursues them: “What is going to happen once all these doors and these windows open?...” They become afraid – afraid of losing themselves in this light and in this freedom. They want to remain what they call “themselves.” They love their falsehood and their slavery. Something in them loves it and remains clinging to it. They feel that without their limits, they would no longer exist.

That is why the journey is so long, so difficult. For if one would truly consent no longer to be, everything would become so easy, so swift, so luminous, so joyous – though perhaps not in the way men conceive of joy and ease. At heart, there are very few beings who are not enamored of struggle. There are very few who would consent to having no darkness or who can conceive of light as anything other than the opposite of obscurity: “Without shadow, there would be no painting. Without struggle, there would be no victory. Without suffering, there would be no joy.” That is what they think, and as long as they think like that, they are not yet born to the spirit.