other. It is the Mother’s Force that gives the push, but also the peace.SRI AUROBINDO
The Mother
with Letters on the Mother
Section Two
The Mother, Sri Aurobindo and the Integral Yoga
Two in One
One Consciousness
99
The opposition between the Mother’s consciousness and my consciousness was an invention of the old days (due mainly to X, Y and others of that time) and emerged in a time when the Mother was not fully recognised or accepted by some of those who were here at the beginning. Even after they had recognised her they persisted in this meaningless opposition and did great harm to them and others. The Mother’s consciousness and mine are the same, the one Divine Consciousness in two, because that is necessary for the play. Nothing can be done without her knowledge and force, without her consciousness – if anybody really feels her consciousness, he should know that I am there behind it and if he feels me it is the same with hers. If a separation is made like that (I leave aside the turns which their minds so strongly put upon these things), how can the Truth establish itself – from the Truth there is no such separation.
13 November 1934
One Force
100
Is there any difference in your working and the Mother’s working – I mean any difference in the force or effectivity?
No, it is a single Power.
23 May 1933
*
101
Of course you are right in saying we are one and whatever is given is from both. If I give, the Mother’s Force goes with it, or else the sadhak would get nothing, and if the Mother gives, my support goes with it and gives it my light as well as the Mother’s. It is two sides of one indivisible action, one carrying with it the other. It is the Mother’s Force that gives the push, but also the peace.
16 July 1936
*
102
Whatever one gets from the Mother, comes from myself also – there is no difference. So, too, if I give anything, it is by the Mother’s Force that it goes to the sadhak.
20 August 1936
One Path
103
There is something undivine in the world, a part that seems obscure; I said to the Mother that its truth here is expressed by the Mother’s Light. The other truth is expressed by Sri Aurobindo’s Light. They are two different paths and seem to be poles apart, yet they meet some place above.
If you allow such strange and wrong ideas to get hold of you, it is not surprising that you get confusion and find it difficult to make any steady progress.
The Mother’s consciousness is the divine Consciousness and the Light that comes from it is the light of the divine Truth; the Force that she brings down is the force of the divine Truth. One who receives and accepts and lives in the Mother’s light, will begin to see the truth on all the planes, the mental, the vital, the physical. He will reject all that is undivine; the undivine is the falsehood, the ignorance, the error of the dark forces; the undivine is all that is obscure and unwilling to accept the divine Truth and its light and force. The undivine, therefore, is all that is unwilling to accept the light and force of the Mother. That is why I am always telling you to keep yourself in contact with the Mother and with her Light and Force, because it is only so that you can come out of the confusion and obscurity and receive the Truth that comes from above.
When we speak of the Mother’s Light or my Light in a special sense, we are speaking of a special occult action – we are speaking of certain lights which come from the Supermind. In this action the Mother’s is the white Light which purifies, illumines, brings down the whole essence and power of the Truth 
and makes the transformation possible. But in fact all light that comes from above, from the highest divine Truth is the Mother’s.
There is no difference between the Mother’s path and mine; we have and have always had the same path, the path that leads to the supramental change and the divine realisation; not only at the end, but from the beginning they have been the same.
The attempt to set up a division and opposition of this kind, putting the Mother on one side and myself on another and opposite or quite different side, has always been a trick of the forces of the Falsehood when they want to prevent a sadhaka from reaching the Truth. Dismiss all such falsehoods from your mind.
Know that the Mother’s light and force are the light and force of the Truth; remain always in contact with the Mother’s light and force, then only can you grow into the divine Truth.
10 September 1931
*
104
I want to ask whether the idea of the Mother is the same as that of God. I thought that what we call Sri Aurobindo’s Light or the Supramental Light leads to the realisation of God, while the realisation of the Mother is the realisation of Consciousness going parallel and also beyond in its separateness. If the One is the Mother, then does Sri Aurobindo’s Light lead to something different, such as the ideals of the Upanishads – the realisation of the Purusha etc.? These differences never seem to meet in oneness.
I wrote once before that these ideas about the separation between the Mother and myself and our paths being different or our goal different are quite erroneous. Our path is the same; our goal too is the same – the Supramental Divine.
24 February 1932
*
105
Mother was doing Yoga before she knew or met Sri Aurobindo; but their lines of sadhana independently followed the same course. When they met, they helped each other in perfecting the 
sadhana. What is known as Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga is the joint creation of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother; they are now completely identified – the sadhana in the Asram and all arrangement is done directly by the Mother, Sri Aurobindo supports her from behind. All who come here for practising Yoga have to surrender themselves to the Mother who helps them always and builds up their spiritual life.
Undated
No Less nor Greater
106
I feel the Divine as spirit everywhere, pulling me towards Him. He is the Self of all and the Master of all. I feel He is greater than the Mother. I feel He is the Divine who is embodied in my Father Sri Aurobindo.
It is one aspect of the Divine – but the Divine as the Self and Lord and the Divine as the Mother are the same – there is no less nor greater.
31 March 1934
*
107
Why do some people here consider you greater than the Mother? Are not both of you from the same plane? Is it not a veil over the human vision that makes such a distinction?
It is the minds that see surface things only and cannot see what is behind them.
28 March 1935
One in Two Bodies
108
Mother and I are one but in two bodies; there is no necessity for both the bodies to do the same thing always. On the contrary, as we are one it is quite sufficient for one to sign, just as it is quite sufficient for one to go down to receive Pranam or give meditation.
Undated
*
109
The Mother and I are one and equal. Also she is supreme here and has the right to arrange the work as she thinks best for the 
work, no one has any right or claim or proprietorship over any work that may be given him. The Asram is the Mother’s creation and would not have existed but for her, the work she does is her creation and has not been given to her and cannot be taken from her. Try to understand this elementary truth, if you want to have any right relation or attitude towards the Mother.
June 1935
Appendix. Two Texts
Sri Aurobindo wrote these two pieces around 1927, soon after the Mother took up the charge of the Ashram. In the first, he speaks from the point of view of the Mother; in the second, he speaks from the point of view of “the God of Wealth”. The second piece may have been written for a disciple who had undertaken to collect money for the Ashram.
1
I am the Shakti of Sri Aurobindo alone, and the Mother of all my children.
My children are all equally part of my consciousness and of my being. When transformed and realised, all will have an equal right to manifest each one an aspect of myself and Sri Aurobindo.
It is the unity of all in the solidarity of a common manifestation that will allow the creation of the new and divine world upon the Earth. Each will bring his part, but no part will be complete except as a power in the solidarity of the whole.
2
I am the God of Wealth, the Strong and Splendid, I am the Master of the thousands and the Regent of the millions, I am the puissant Creator, the full-handed gatherer, the opulent disposer of treasures. All the riches of every kind that are in the earth and on the earth and below it and all the riches that are in the waters are mine by right; I have power over all their plenitudes. My power is for the Mother; I call all these riches for her, that I may dedicate them to her, that I may lay them at the feet of the Mother of Radiances. ॐ तथास्तु
Incarnation and Evolution
The Mystery of Incarnation
110
Many years ago, the Mother wrote regarding life in the Asram: “In our daily practices we are endeavouring to express the great mystery of the Divine Incarnation.”1 I pray that this message may be explained to me – and that I be enabled to understand its meaning fully and clearly.
It means that we act as we do because we take it as a fact that the Divine can manifest and is manifested in a human body.
Is this a message which can be circulated to all the members of the Asram?
Yes, they ought to know it.
To outsiders?
Not unless they are interested and seek the meaning of what we do.
I am also eager to know whether in my occupations at Madras, professionally and otherwise, I can pursue the life outlined in the message? Whether this message has any relation to such a life as mine?
Yes, of course, it applies to everybody who accepts the fundamental truth on which Mother based what she wrote.
29 December 1933
*
111
What is the utility of making an effort for other realisations once we have known the supreme secret (uttamaṃ rahasyam) that you are the Divine Incarnate and the Mother is the Para-Shakti? That is the highest realisation, I think, and all others – the realisation of the cosmic consciousness, of the presence of the immanent Divine, even of the silent immutable Brahman – are secondary in comparison with it. Whatever is to be done in the world will be done by you and the Mother.
Yes, but for that to be a constant realisation in its fullness the same effort has to be made and if made will bring the other realisations with it as parts of the main realisation.
30 October 1936
The Reason for Their Embodiment
112
The supramental creation, since it is to be a creation upon earth, must be not only an inner change but a physical and external manifestation also. And it is precisely for this part of the work, the most difficult of all, that surrender is most needful; for this reason, that it is the actual descent of the supramental Divine into Matter and the working of the Divine Presence and Power there that can alone make the physical and external change possible. Even the most powerful self-assertion of human will and endeavour is impotent to bring it about; as for egoistic insistence and vital revolt, they are, so long as they last, insuperable obstacles to the descent. Only a calm, pure and surrendered physical consciousness, full of the psychic aspiration, can be its field; this alone can make an effective opening of the material being to the Light and Power and the supramental change a thing actual and practicable. It is for this that we are here in the body, and it is for this that you and other sadhaks are in the Asram near us. But it is not by insistence on petty demands and satisfactions in the external field or on an outer nearness pleasing to the vital nature and its pride or desire that you can get the true relation with the Divine in this province. If you want the realisation there, it is the true nearness that you must seek, the descent and presence of the Mother in your physical consciousness, her constant inner touch 
in the physical being and its activities, her will and knowledge behind all its work and thought and movement and the ever present Ananda of that presence expelling all vital and physical separateness, craving and desire. If you have that, then you have all the nearness you can ask for and the rest you will gladly leave to the Mother’s knowledge and will to decide. For with this in you there can be no feeling of being kept away, no sense of “gulf” and “distance”, no complaint of a unity that is lacking or an empty dryness and denial of nearness.
6 December 1930
*
113
You have written in a letter, “A surrender by any means is good, but obviously the Impersonal is not enough, for surrender to that may be limited in result to the inner experience without any transformation of the outer being.”2 I do not understand.
It is rather surprising that you should be unable to understand such a simple and familiar statement; for that has been always the whole reason of this Yoga that to follow after the Impersonal only brings inner experience or at the most mukti. Without the action of the integral Divine there is no change of the whole nature. If it were not so the Mother would not be here and I would not be here – if a realisation of the Impersonal were sufficient.
15 September 1936
Connections in Past Lives
114
By what puṇya of ours has the Grace granted to us, mere humans, this rare privilege of coming here at the Divine’s Feet?
It is the call of your soul that brought you here and also some aspiration or connection with the Mother and myself in past lives.
6 May 1933
*
115
What sort of bhakti in my past lives has brought me to the Mother’s feet?
The aspiration for union with the Divine and perhaps also for the descent of the Divine on the earth.
8 May 1933
*
116
People make all sorts of effort to have God’s darshan; some even weep and weep, yet they fail to obtain it. We in the Asram don’t seem to have done very much, and yet we are here with you. What has brought this about?
There are many things that have brought it about – a connection in past lives with the Mother and myself, the development of your nature in former births which made it possible for you to seek the Divine, bhakti in those lives bearing its fruit now – finally, the Divine Grace.
October 1935
Carrying on the Evolution
117
It is said that you and the Mother have been on the earth since its creation. But what have you been doing for so many millions of years in disguise? I say “disguise” because it is only now that you are showing yourselves to the world in your real nature.
Carrying on the evolution.
25 September 1935
*
118
I fail to understand what you mean by “Carrying on the evolution.” Could you explain this more fully?
That would mean writing the whole of human history. I can only say that as there are special descents to carry on the evolution to a farther stage, so also something of the Divine is always there to help through each stage itself in one direction or another.
26 September 1935
*
119
I can understand how ordinary people in the past may not have recognised your presence, especially when you lived outwardly like human beings. But how is it that even Sri Krishna, Buddha or Christ could not recognise your presence in this world?
Presence where and in whom? If they did not meet, they would not recognise, and even if they met there is no reason why the Mother and I should cast off the veil which hung over these personalities and reveal the Divine behind them. Those lives were not meant for any such purpose.
27 September 1935
*
120
If you and the Mother were on earth all the time, it would mean that you were here when those great beings descended. Then whatever your external cloak, how could you hide your inner self – the true divinity – from them?
But why cannot the inner self be hidden from all in such lives? Your reasoning would only have some force if the presence on earth then were as the Avatar, but not if it was only as a Vibhuti.
So, in answer to the question, “Presence where and in whom?” I would say, “Presence in this world and in Thyself and the Mother.”
“Presence in Thyself” means nothing. It is “presence” in or behind some body and behind some outer personality. Also “presence” in what part of the world? If Mother were in Rome at the time of Buddha, how could Buddha know as he did not even know the existence of Rome?
I did not mean that you or the Mother needed to cast off your veil. It is those great men who should have recognised you in spite of the veil.
One can be a great man without knowing such things as that. Great men or even great Vibhutis need not be omniscient or know things which it was not useful for them to know.
27 September 1935
*
121
You write: “But why cannot the inner self be hidden from all in such lives?” I fail to understand how anyone could hide one’s inner self from Avatars and Vibhutis.
An Avatar or Vibhuti have the knowledge that is necessary for their work; they need not have more. There was absolutely no reason why Buddha should know what was going on in Rome. An Avatar even does not manifest all the Divine omniscience and omnipotence; he has not come for any such unnecessary display; all that is behind him but not in the front of his consciousness. As for the Vibhuti, the Vibhuti need not even know that he is a power of the Divine. Some Vibhutis, like Julius Caesar for instance, have been atheists. Buddha himself did not believe in a personal God, only in some impersonal and indescribable Permanent.
Still I can’t understand one thing: even though you did not cast off your veil, how could Krishna, Buddha and Christ not help casting off their veil in order to recognise you?
Why should they? The veil was there necessary for their work. Why should it be thrown off? So if the Mother was present in the life of Christ, she was there not as the Divine Manifestation but as one altogether human. For her to be recognised as the Divine would have created a tremendous disorder and frustrated the work Christ came to do by breaking its proper limits.
Moreover, you must have heard that just before Christ was born some Rishis from India knew of the divine Descent and set out for Jerusalem merely by their inspiration, though they had not known what and where Jerusalem was.
I never heard of Rishis from India going there. There is a legend of some Mages getting an intimation that a divine Birth was there on earth and following a star that led them to the stable in which Christ was born. But this is a legend, not history.
29 September 1935
*
122
Since you and the Mother were on earth constantly from the beginning what was the need for Avataras coming down here one after another?
We were not on earth as Avataras.
15 December 1935
*
123
You say that you both were not on earth as Avatars and yet you were carrying on the evolution. Since the Divine Himself was on the earth carrying on the evolution, what was the necessity for the coming down of the Avatars who are portions of Himself?
The Avatar is necessary when a special work is to be done and in crises of the evolution. The Avatar is a special manifestation, while for the rest of the time it is the Divine working within the ordinary human limits as a Vibhuti.
18 December 1935
The Guru, the Divine and the Truth
124
Is there really any difference between the Guru, the Divine and the Truth in our Yoga? I have been considering that the Mother and yourself are not only the Gurus but also the Divine, and that whatever either of you say is the law of the Truth. Why then are you using these three different words?3
I wrote the general law of spiritual life and obedience. You have to know that as well as its special application here. Moreover many here are satisfied with saying “The Mother is divine,” but they do not follow her commands. Others do not really regard her as Divine – they treat her as if she were an ordinary Guru.
13 June 1933
*
125
Yesterday you spoke about the Mother’s commands. What are they? I want to try to follow them.
They are supposed to be known. You have to do the right thing and follow the Yoga sincerely.
14 June 1933
The Mother, Sri Aurobindo and the Overmind
126
Even the Overmind is for all but the Mother and myself either unrealised or only an influence, mostly subjective.
24 March 1934
The Mother, Sri Aurobindo and the Supramental Descent
127
X has made the following remark: “The present preparation is going on to bring down the Supermind into the physical of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.” Is it correct?
[Sri Aurobindo bracketed “The present preparation is going on to bring down the Supermind into the physical”, and wrote:]
Not quite correct in all points. The things to be brought down were in us no doubt – but not all outwardly manifested, from the beginning. Of course X’s statement is altogether true only as far as the bracket goes.
14 September 1935
*
128
When you wrote “as far as the bracket goes”, did you not notice that you cut off the last part of X’s answer?
Yes, of course. What is being done is meant to prepare the manifestation of the supermind in the earth-consciousness down to Matter itself, so it can’t be for the physical of myself or the Mother alone.
15 September 1935
*
129
It seems to me that if the Supermind has not descended into Mother’s body-consciousness, it is not because she is not ready for it, but because she has first to prepare the physical of the sadhaks and of the earth to a certain extent. But some people here take it in the wrong way; they think that the Supermind has not yet descended into her body because she has not yet reached perfection. Am I right?
Certainly. If we had lived physically in the Supermind from the beginning, nobody would have been able to approach us nor could the sadhana have been done. There could have been no hope of contact between ourselves and the earth and men. Even as it is, Mother has to come down towards the lower consciousness of the sadhaks instead of keeping always in her own, otherwise they begin to say, “How far away, how severe you were; you do not love me, I get no help from you etc. etc.” The Divine has to veil himself in order to meet the human.
18 October 1935
The Triple Transformation and Control over Death
130
There are three stages of the sadhana, psychic change, transition to the higher levels of consciousness – with a descent of their powers, conscious forces – the supramental. In the last even the control over death is a later, not an initial stage. Each of these stages demands a great length of time and a high and long endeavour. The legend related to you comes partly from a false idea that Mother and Sri Aurobindo will bring down everything and the sadhaks have only to wait and receive, a misconception responsible for much inner indolence and inertia, and the fact that for a long time a certain protection was over the Asram so that there was no death of any sadhak and little illness – the legend survives, though the circumstances are not now the same.
26 July 1937
Difficulties of the Pathfinders
The Burden of Humanity
131
Mother spoke to me of the right attitude as one without tension and strain, one which is full of sunshine and as spontaneous as a flower opening to the light. This is all very well for beings like you and the Mother, who are Avatars, but how can we poor mortals take this vague prescription for guidance? And how to get this attitude if not through constant prayer, arduous meditation and a constant effort to reject wrong movements?
You say that this way is too difficult for you or the likes of you and it is only “avatars” like myself or the Mother that can do it. That is a strange misconception, for it is on the contrary the easiest and simplest and most direct way and anyone can do it, if he makes his mind and vital quiet, even those who have a tenth of your capacity can do it. It is the other way of tension and strain and hard endeavour that is difficult and needs a great force of Tapasya. As for the Mother and myself, we have had to try all ways, follow all methods, to surmount mountains of difficulties, a far heavier burden to bear than you or anybody else in this Asram or outside, far more difficult conditions, battles to fight, wounds to endure, ways to cleave through impenetrable morass and desert and forest, hostile masses to conquer, a work such as I am certain none else had to do before us. For the Leader of the Way in a work like ours has not only to bring down and represent and embody the Divine, but to represent too the ascending element in humanity and to bear the burden of humanity to the full and experience not in a mere play or līlā but in grim earnest all the obstruction, difficulty, opposition, baffled and hampered and only slowly victorious labour which are possible on the Path. But it is not necessary nor tolerable that all that should be repeated over again to the full in the experience 
of others. It is because we have the complete experience that we can show a straighter and easier road to others – if they will only consent to take it. It is because of our experience won at a tremendous price that we can urge upon you and others, “Take the psychic attitude; follow the straight sunlit path, with the Divine openly or secretly upbearing you – if secretly, he will yet show himself in good time,– do not insist on the hard, hampered, roundabout and difficult journey.”
5 May 1932
*
132
As for the question about the illness, perfection in the physical plane is indeed part of the ideal of the Yoga, but it is the last item and, so long as the fundamental change has not been made in the material consciousness to which the body belongs, one may have a certain perfection on other planes without having immunity in the body. We have not sought perfection for our own separate sake, but as part of a general change creating a possibility of perfection for others. That could not have been done without our accepting and facing the difficulties of the realisation and transformation and overcoming them for ourselves. It has been done to a sufficient degree on the other planes – but not yet on the most material part of the physical plane. Till it is done, the fight there continues and, though there may be and is a force of Yogic action and defence, there cannot be immunity. The Mother’s difficulties are not her own; she bears the difficulties of others also and those that are inherent in the general action and working for transformation. If it had been otherwise, it would be a very different matter.
August 1936
*
133
The Mother has often lost flesh and put it on again. It is lasting longer this time because of the pressure of the struggle in the material part of Nature – for the main burden of the struggle on each plane has always fallen on her, since it is she who bears up all the others.
22 October 1936
Difficulties and the Sunlit Path
134
You are quite mistaken in thinking that the possibility of the sunlit path is a discovery or original invention of mine. The very first books of Yoga I read more than thirty years ago spoke of the dark and the sunlit way and emphasised the superiority of the second over the other.
It is not either because I have myself trod the sunlit way or flinched from difficulty and suffering and danger. I have had my full share of these things and the Mother has had ten times her full share. But that was because the finders of the Way had to face these things in order to conquer. No difficulty that can come on the sadhak but has faced us on the path; against many we have had to struggle hundreds of times (in fact, that is an understatement) before we could overcome; many still remain protesting that they have a right until the perfect perfection is there. But we have never consented to admit their inevitable necessity for others. It is in fact to ensure an easier path to others hereafter that we have borne that burden. It was with that object that the Mother once prayed to the Divine that whatever difficulties, dangers, sufferings were necessary for the path might be laid on her rather than on others. It has been so far heard that as a result of daily and terrible struggles for years those who put an entire and sincere confidence in her are able to follow the sunlit path and even those who cannot, yet when they do put the trust find their path suddenly easy and, if it becomes difficult again, it is only when distrust, revolt, abhiman, or other darknesses come upon them. The sunlit path is not altogether a fable.
November 1935
Vital Sensitiveness
135
Does everybody have to pass through the stage of vital sensitiveness?
The Mother and myself have passed through it. It comes inevitably in the full opening of the being to the universal.
17 April 1936
Self-imposed Bareness
136
After realisation whatever the Higher Will demands is the best4 – but first detachment is the rule. To reach the Freedom without the discipline and detachment is given to few. The Mother and myself went for years through the utmost self-imposed bareness of life.
15 November 1933
Joyous Sacrifice
137
By the way, do you think that the Mother or myself or others who have taken up the spiritual life had not enjoyed life and that it is therefore that the Mother was able to speak of a joyous sacrifice to the Divine as the true spirit of spiritual sacrifice? Or do you think we spent the preliminary stages in longings for the lost fleshpots of Egypt and that it was only later on we felt the joy of the spiritual sacrifice? Of course we did not; we and many others had no difficulty on the score of giving up anything we thought necessary to give up and no hankerings afterwards. Your rule is as usual a stiff rule that does not at all apply generally.
17 October 1935
No Grand Trunk Road
138
I have heard that X has come down to this sorrowful world of ours from one of those rarefied invisible worlds; for one like him, everything becomes a Grand Trunk Road.
Nobody has found this Yoga a Grand Trunk Road, neither X nor Y nor even myself or the Mother. All such ideas are a romantic illusion.
August 1935
Helpers on the Way
Sadhana through the Mother and Sri Aurobindo
139
These are questions that I cannot answer – it is not for me to reply to such queries5. I can only say that the final aim of the Yoga here is to bring down the supramental Truth (all other aims and stages being preliminary and instrumental) and organise its action. The Asram proceeds on the assumption that this has to be done through myself and the Mother and in accepting this aim and the descent of this Truth the sadhaks accept myself and the Mother and must be guided by us and receive from us what is descending and cannot attain it otherwise. If they follow or want some other Truth, they are free to do so but they cannot do it here, because here they will not succeed, as it is not the end for which the Divine Force is working here. And it has been found that if they reject the Power that comes from us to follow something which is not that, it leads them out of this way and they cannot profit by our presence or by the Yoga or form a harmonious unit in the work that is to be done here. That is all I am prepared to say in this matter.
30 December 1932
The Only Way to Advance
140
This morning when I saw the Mother I got some contact with her consciousness. I was very impressed by her saying that she thought I am sincerely doing sadhana and by her giving me the flower called Supramental Future. Both these things gave me hope, especially the latter, for I have been wondering whether I would realise up to the supramental consciousness.
These days many forces have been pulling me in different directions; in this way I don’t arrive at the Truth or at the organisation of my being. Now and then I get experiences, but I also get confusion and nothing is settled. Sometimes the very law of life seems to be fight and disagreement.
Today I felt a quiet peace in the vital and the Mother’s consciousness. For a long time I remained quiet after seeing the Mother. I am getting many experiences, but the consciousness gets diverted by suggestions and by activity.
1. A quiet mind makes consciousness easier.
2. If you keep a quiet mind and a constant contact with myself and the Mother and the true Light and Force, then things will become easy and straight – it is the only way to get to the realisation.
3. It is a mistake to think that this method will not lead you to the supramental realisation. It is the only way to advance towards the supramental change.
4. It is because you become doubtful and begin to follow after other ways and other (lower) experiences that you get again confused and full of incertitudes.
5. Keep to one way, the way shown to you by me. It is by following this way that you can reach the wideness you want – if you run about on many ways, that will bring not wideness but confusion.
6. Here in the lower nature there are many things, but they are in a state of disharmony, so to follow them all together means disharmony, confusion, want of organisation, fight. In the higher (supramental) nature there is a greater wideness and much more is there than in the lower nature; but all is harmony, organisation, peace. Follow therefore the one way that leads to the higher supramental nature.
7. Do not be impatient, because full knowledge does not come to you at once. In quietude of mind keep the contact, let the true Light and Force work and with time all knowledge will come and the Truth will grow in you.
2 February 1932
Taking Refuge in Their Protection
141
You may be sure that we shall not desert you and that we would never dream of doing so. You say truly that what drives you into these moods is the Asuric Maya or a goad from the Asura – it is what we speak of as the hostile Force. What answers to it is a part of the human vital that has an attraction or habit of response to suffering, self-torment, depression and despair. But in itself what comes is from outside and not from within you. It is, as I have more than once told you, a formation that has been made and repeats itself and this is shown by the fact that once it starts it goes round always in the same course of ideas, suggestions and feelings. The first thing you have to do is to recognise it for what it is. It was not, for instance, “all your nature” that advised you not to write to the Mother, but it was the suggestion of this Force. If you recognise these things as suggestions – and of a Force adverse to you and your sadhana – it is easier to meet and answer than if you see it as something in yourself. The second thing is to take refuge in your better and higher self against that vital part which responds to these suggestions. You must not regard this part as all your nature, but only a part of your vital which has taken an exaggerated prominence. Even in the vital the larger part by far was that which had high ambitions, generous feelings, a large-heartedness which everybody was obliged to recognise. That is what you must regard as your real self and you must believe that the Divine has a use for that and for the faculties that have been given you – believe not in a rajasic or egoistic spirit but in the spirit of the instrument called and chosen to purify itself and be fit for its work and service – and because of that you have no right to throw it or yourself away, but have to persevere quietly till you are rid of the lower nature and the Asuric Maya. And, last but not least, you have to develop the power and the habit of taking refuge in the protection of the Mother and myself. It is for this reason that the habit of criticising and judging by the outer mind or cherishing its preconceived ideas and formations must disappear. You should repeat always to yourself when it tries to rise, “Sri Aurobindo and the Mother know better than myself – they have the experience and knowledge which I have not – they must surely be acting for the best and in a greater light than that of ordinary human knowledge.” If you can fix that idea in yourself so that it will remain even in clouded moments, you will be able to face much more easily the suggestions of the Asuric Maya.
The idea of suicide is always a sign of these Asuric formations. Like all the rest it is perfectly irrational – for the suicide after death goes through a hell of misery far worse than was possible in life and when he is reborn he has to face the same problems and difficulties he fled from, but in an acuter form and in much less favourable circumstances. The other justifying suggestions were equally irrational and untrue. Wherever you went, the blow would always fall on ourselves and the Asram, for you are and would remain too intimately identified with us for it to be otherwise and distance would make no difference. And certainly the verse in the Gita does not cover a case of suicide, but refers to the consciousness and concentration of the Yogi in his departure.
18 October 1934
Their Attitude towards the Sadhaks
142
You need not think that anything can alter our attitude towards you. That which is extended to you is not a vital human love which can be altered by external things: it remains and persistently we shall try to help and lift you up and lead you towards the Light where in the union of soul and heart you will recognise the Friend and the Mother.
Undated
*
143
I was overjoyed to read your letter – first because it relieved me from the anxiety which your persistent trouble had given and, most, because of the clarity of consciousness which has liberated you. Yes, that was the main difficulty – that and the clinging to wrong ideas which it has created. You should never doubt about the reality and sincerity of our feeling towards you, mine and the Mother’s – for it creates a veil and separates, where there should be no separation, and it is a first barrier against that openness which is necessary if one is to receive fully or even at all from the Guru. Of course, I saw that something had blinded you and was keeping you unconscious of the source of the trouble, but there was needed a certain clarity of the soul to remove it. Now that it has come, I trust that it will keep the mind clear and free the ways of the spirit.
Undated
*
144
When these moods come upon you, why do you run away from the Mother and avoid her? Why do you not come to her, tell her frankly what you feel and what is in your mind and let her take the trouble from you?
The reasons you give for wishing to leave us are no good reasons at all. If you want to see the richness and greatness of God, you will, if you wait, see more of it with us than you ever can outside. And if you want to see the Himalayas, it will be much better for you to see them hereafter with your Mother beside you.
You are quite mistaken when you say that if you will go, there will be no Devil left in the Asram. The Devil is not here because of you; he is here because he wants to give trouble to the Mother and spoil her work. And what he chiefly wants is to drive her children away from her, and especially those who like you are nearest to her. If you go, he will remain; and not only he will remain, but he will feel that he has won a great victory and will set himself with a double vigour to attack her through others.
You talk of not giving trouble to the Mother and to me; but do you not realise that nothing can be worse trouble to us than your going away? The moods of revolt that come upon you are clouds that pass; but to see you leave us in this way and feel our love rejected and your place near us empty would be indeed a real trouble to us and we would feel it more deeply than anything else you could do.
You know that it is not true that your sole desire is to go away. It is only so when you are in these moods. And you know that these are moods that pass, and if you allow the Mother to take them away, they go at once. The trouble is that when they come, you take them too much to heart and you begin to think that there is nothing else to do but go away. I assure you that that is no solution and that we would much rather have you with us even with these moods than be separated from you; compared with our love for you, the trouble they give us is mere dust in the balance.
Read this letter, talk with the Mother and act according to your true self; never mind the rest.
7 March 1930
*
145
I hope you have been able to recover or have begun to recover from the mass of suggestions that fell upon you with regard to the Mother’s relations with you and her feeling towards you which have not varied from a constant loving kindness, affection and good will. Especially since the time you returned from Bengal her appreciation of the good work you have done for us there has been constant and never varied for a moment. The suggestions that fell upon you were certainly the result of a passing despondency and nervous upset: there was nothing on our side, no coldness, no displeasure, no indifference and, had these or any similar feelings been there – and there never was any reason for her feeling them – she could not have and had no wish to manifest anything of the kind either by gesture or otherwise. These were the suggestions of an adverse force which wanted to push you away from her and create a distance between her and you so that you might be discouraged in your sadhana and, if possible, induced to go away from us. It is impossible that we should ever accept the idea of your leaving us and unthinkable that we should ever admit any sunderance between us. This attack upon you, the depression and nervous upset and all these suggestions were part of a general attack which has been raging against us from adverse forces for some time past, but I hope that the worst of it is over for you and that you will be able to go on untroubled in your sadhana. It is needless then to insist that she never thought of you as excluded from her Light which is also mine; that Light will be with you and will, I hope, help to light you on your path towards the realisation you long for.
4 April 1950
Faithfulness to the Light and the Call
146
When I spoke of being faithful to the light of the soul and the divine Call, I was not referring to anything in the past or to any lapse on your part. I was simply suggesting the great need in all crises and attacks,– to refuse to listen to any suggestions, impulses, lures and to oppose to them all the call of the Truth, the imperative beckoning of the Light. In all doubt and depression, to say “I belong to the Divine, I cannot fail”; to all suggestions of impurity and unfitness, to reply “I am a child of Immortality chosen by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother; I have but to be true to myself and to them – the victory is sure; even if I fell, I would be sure to rise again”; to all impulsions to depart and serve some other ideal, to reply “This is the greatest, this is the Truth, this alone can satisfy the soul within me; I will endure through all tests and tribulations to the very end of the divine journey.” This is what I mean by faithfulness to the Light and the Call.
31 March 1930
Openness to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo
147
Is it the same whether we write to Sri Aurobindo or to the Mother? Some say that both are one, so whether we write to Sri Aurobindo or to the Mother we are open to the Mother. Is this correct?
It is true that we are one, but there is also a relation, which necessitates that one should be open to the Mother.
Can it happen that one who is open to Sri Aurobindo is not open to the Mother? Is it that whoever is open to the Mother is open to Sri Aurobindo?
The Mother proposition is true. If one is open to Sri Aurobindo and not to the Mother it means that one is not really open to Sri Aurobindo.
Very often Sri Aurobindo says one should allow the Mother’s force to govern. Does it mean that there is a difference between the two forces?
There is one force only, the Mother’s force – or, if you like to put it like that, the Mother is Sri Aurobindo’s Force.
Undated
*
148
Somebody told me: “When I came here, Sri Aurobindo never used to teach us anything about the Yoga. He told us to follow our own knowledge.” Is this so?
I am not aware of that. But now also the Mother does not teach, she asks all to open and receive. But she does not tell them and I don’t think I told people to follow their own “knowledge”.
26 April 1933
Their Presence
149
It is quite sure that we are with you day and night; even if you do not yet see the Mother in your dreams or feel her presence, you should think of her as there and supporting you and that will surely help you.
If there is a natural movement of your mind to identify Shiva in the way you speak of and it jumps to myself and the Mother, why not let it take the jump? Perhaps it is not a jump but a natural transition, and reconciliation and not a conflict. Certainly, your pranams are always accepted by us and always will be.
Undated
*
150
Our presence, force, peace, love are always with you. That is a thing you must realise and learn to keep the consciousness of it. If you do that, all the rest is of minor importance (your difficulties, the old nature etc.) and will be set right in due time.
Undated
Calling the Mother and Sri Aurobindo
151
While aspiring towards the Mother and repeating her name, your name comes in as well. Strange!
You must always aspire towards the Mother, because hers is the force which can alone give you the true realisation of the Divine. If your mind wants to do otherwise, you must control it. Any separation made by it between the Mother and myself (like substituting my name for hers) must be discouraged – because when that happens, errors may creep into the inner experience.
Undated
*
152
When I aspire to feel Mother with me and call “Mother, Mother”, something in me calls “Lord, Lord” and I feel him near me! What is this you are doing, Lord?
Probably I come to work in you so that it may become easier for you to feel the Mother with you always.
Undated
Receiving Their Influence
153
There are no conditions for receiving the influence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother6 except faith, an entire sincerity in following the spiritual path and a will and capacity to open oneself to the influence; but this capacity usually comes as the result of sincerity and faith.
It is quite possible to follow the Yoga while remaining outside the Asram. There are many both in Northern and Southern India who do it.
You can submit your doubts for elucidation to Sri Aurobindo, if brief answers are sufficient, as he has little time. If longer and more detailed answers are necessary, it could only be done through one of his disciples.
28 October 1934
*
154
We are doubtful about the advisability of your coming here the next winter. Your illness and the fact that you suffer from the heat stand in the way, for in Southern India the heat is extreme. The sudden change of climate and ways of life may be hard to bear. Moreover there will not be truly competent medical aid and advice available here as it would be in America. Finally, you do not know perhaps that I am living for the present in an entire retirement, not seeing or speaking with anyone, even the disciples in the Asram, only coming out to give a silent blessing three times in a year. The Mother also has not time to give free or frequent access to those who are here. You would therefore probably be disappointed if you came here with the idea of a personal contact with us to help you in your spiritual endeavour. The personal touch is there but it is more of an inward closeness with only a few points of physical contact to support it. But this inner contact, inner help can very well be received at a distance. We have not any disciples in America, though several Americans have come recently here and became interested in the Yoga. But we have disciples in France and some of these have been able already to establish an inner closeness with us and to become aware of our nearness and help in their spiritual endeavour and experience. We would advise you therefore to try this way where you are rather than face the difficulty and inconveniences of a journey and stay here which, if necessary, could be undertaken with more advantage after you have gone some way on the path rather than at present.
9 September 1936
Following a Hostile Influence
155
If you want the plain and simple truth, the plain truth is this that you have entered into a complete falsehood and have put yourself into the hands of a hostile Influence that lives by confusion and ignorance. You began by setting your own imperfect thinking power against a superior Truth and Knowledge. And by false and fantastic reasonings you have so clouded your mind that it has become entirely muddled and confused and incapable of understanding the plainest distinctions or discriminating between falsehood and Truth. This is evident in all you are saying and doing; it is not Truth and religion, but the false and inadequate ideas of your own confused and weakened mind that you are trying to force upon others.
The letter you wrote to me shows a surprising inability to understand the plainest distinctions and the simplest truths. The one who was an instrument for giving birth to the physical body of X was no doubt in her lifetime his material mother. But the relation which exists between the Mother here and X (and between the Mother and all who accept her), is a psychic and spiritual motherhood. It is a far greater relation than that of the physical mother to her child; it gives all that human motherhood can give, but in a much higher way, and it contains in itself infinitely more. It can therefore, because it is greater and more complete, take altogether the room of the physical relation and replace it both in the inward and the outward life. There is nothing here that can confuse anyone who has common sense and a straightforward intelligence. The physical fact cannot in the least stand in the way of the greater psychic and spiritual truth or prevent it from being true. X is perfectly right when he says that this is his true mother; for she has given him a new birth in an inner life and is creating him anew for a diviner existence.
The idea of spiritual Motherhood is not an invention of this Asram; it is an eternal truth which has been recognised for ages past both in Europe and in Asia. The distinction I have drawn between the physical relation and the psychic and spiritual relation is also not a new invention; it is an idea known and understood everywhere and found to be perfectly plain and simple by all. It is the present confused state of your own mind which prevents you from understanding what men have found natural and intelligible everywhere.
As for X and Y, you have no claim over them and no right to control their thoughts and actions. X is of an age to choose and decide; he can think and act for himself and has no need of you to think and act for him. You are not his guardian nor Y’s; you are not even the head of the family. On what ground do you claim to decide where he shall go or where he shall stay? Your pretension to have the responsibility for him or her before God is an arrogant and grotesque absurdity. Each one is responsible for himself before God unless he freely chooses to place the responsibility upon another in whom he trusts. No one has the right to impose himself as a religious or spiritual guide on others against their free will. You have no claim at all to dictate to X or Y either in their inner or their outer life. It is again the confusion and incoherence of your mind in its present state that prevents you from recognising these plain and simple facts.
Again, you say that you ask only for the Truth and yet you speak like a narrow and ignorant fanatic who refuses to believe in anything but the religion in which he was born. All fanaticism is false, because it is a contradiction of the very nature of God and of Truth. Truth cannot be shut up in a single book, Bible or Veda or Koran, or in a single religion. The Divine Being is eternal and universal and infinite and cannot be the sole property of the Mussulmans or of the Semitic religions only,– those that happened to be in a line from the Bible and to have Jewish or Arabian prophets for their founders. Hindus and Confucians and Taoists and all others have as much right to enter into relation with God and find the Truth in their own way. All religions have some truth in them, but none has the whole truth; all are created in time and finally decline and perish. Mahomed himself never pretended that the Koran was the last message of God and there would be no other. God and Truth outlast these religions and manifest themselves anew in whatever way or form the Divine Wisdom chooses. You cannot shut up God in the limitations of your own narrow brain or dictate to the Divine Power and Consciousness how or where or through whom it shall manifest; you cannot put up your puny barriers against the divine Omnipotence. These again are simple truths which are now being recognised all over the world; only the childish in mind or those who vegetate in some formula of the past deny them.
You have insisted on my writing and asked for the Truth and I have answered. But if you want to be a Mussulman, no one prevents you. If the Truth I bring is too great for you to understand or to bear, you are free to go and live in a half-truth or in your own ignorance. I am not here to convert anyone; I do not preach to the world to come to me and I call no one. I am here to establish the divine life and the divine Consciousness in those who of themselves feel the call to come to me and cleave to it and in no others. I am not asking you and the Mother is not asking you to accept us. You can go any day to Hyderabad and live either the worldly life or a religious life according to your own preference. But as you are free so also are others free to stay here and follow their own way. You are not entitled to try to make yourself a centre of disturbance and an obstacle to their peace and their spiritual progress.
In answering you I am answering the ideas which have been put in you by the Power of darkness and ignorance that is just now using you for its own purpose. This Power is very obviously not the divine Power. It is a Power of Falsehood that is making you do and say extravagant things which are not Islamic but a caricature of Islamic faith and action; its intention is to make not only Islam but all spirituality and religion ridiculous through you. It hopes to disturb the divine work upon earth, even if it can only do it a little. It is trying to spoil your brain and destroy your intelligence, to make you say and do foolish and extravagant things and turn you into an object of sorrow and pity for your friends and well-wishers and a laughing-stock to others. If you have any respect for yourself or for God or religion, if you truly hope for the Truth and Light, if you wish for the awakening and salvation of your soul, you must stop speaking and doing these extravagant things and you must throw away the Influence that is now driving you.
23 October 1929
*
156
Your remark of yesterday, “There is no quarrel on the Mother’s part, the quarrel is with me”, intrigues me. The basis of my quarrel with the Mother is that I do not feel her, so we have no dealings with each other. Whereas you are always with me, so how can there be any quarrel with you? I recognise, of course, my arrogance, egoism and pride in this matter.
If you listen to the inspirations of the Asura against the Mother that brings a quarrel with me – just as if you did anything against me, it will land you in a quarrel with her. It is precisely this arrogance, egoism and pride that make it difficult for you to feel the Mother.
11 April 1933
*
157
If all that you write against us is correct, there is only one logical conclusion possible that the Mother and myself are a queer combination of impotent imbecile and selfish mean-minded oppressive Asura. Perhaps we are, though I am not yet persuaded to recognise myself or the Mother in the picture. But why do you want to be docile and devoted to such people?
The other conclusion to be gathered from your remarks is that our life work is likely to be and is indeed already a failure because of our insincerity and tyrannical meanness and our leniency and love for the insincere and oppression of the sincere and our unspiritual conduct in all ways. It may be so. I have tried to offer what I felt to be the Light and the Truth to the Earth and her children – if the Earth and her children do not want it or if my Truth is falsehood and my Light is Darkness and Evil in the eyes of men – well, be it so. If there is nothing to be done on earth, the Mother and I can always return into our own Self and see the thing better done by others.
24 April 1933
Misinterpreting Their Words
158
These doctrines still sound strange to me. I should also be very glad to know of the swift and easy method of Yoga by which all that can be done in a few years – or else not at all, for that seems to be your alternative. What I see in this Asram is that people catch hold of something said or written by the Mother, give it an interpretation other than or far beyond its true meaning and deduce from it a crudely extreme logical conclusion which is quite contrary to our knowledge and experience. If we protest against these crude ideas being put upon us, the “disciples” cling to their own deductions and delusions and push aside our protests as inconsistent with what we have once said, insincere or unintelligible. The Mother has long ago given up trying to correct these things, for she finds that they do not listen to her but to something in their own minds which they follow and announce as hers. I still sometimes try, but with no great success. As for the logical conclusion drawn – well! It is natural, I suppose, and part of the game. It is so much easier to come to vehement simple logical conclusions than to look at the truth as it is, many-sided and whole.
16 April 1935
*
159
I have always told you that you should not take what any sadhak says or thinks as authoritative or coming from me or the Mother. Even when they say that it is from me or her, it cannot be accepted, for it is often an idea of their own minds which they “think” to be ours also or a onesided misunderstanding of what we may have said in a particular connection but which their minds apply to something with which it was not connected or to all things in general. But when they simply write to you their own ideas without referring to us at all, why on earth should you suppose or imagine that it comes from us? I know nothing of what X wrote to you, except from your own letter. What X writes is X’s, we must not be held responsible for it. For that matter no sadhak, whoever he or she may be, can stand for us in our place or speak for us. Each must be taken as speaking on his own account his own thought or feeling.
3 June 1937
Criticisms, Humility and Faith
160
First of all, why get upset by such slight things, a phrase in a poem, a tap on the head of doubt? I do not see at all why you should take it as a personal assault on yourself. It is clear from the poems themselves that they are not an assault but a riposte. Some have been criticising and ridiculing X’s faith and his sadhana, there have been criticisms and attacks on the Mother indicating that it is absurd to think of her as divine. X justifies his faith in his own way – and in doing so hits back at the critics and scorners. No doubt, he ought not to do so, he ought to disregard it all, as we have told him to more than once. But it is a hard rule to follow for a militant enthusiasm endowed with a gift of expression. But what is there in all that to affect you who do not gibe at faith, even if you yourself doubt, and do not attack or criticise the Mother.
As for the sense of superiority, that too is a little difficult to avoid when greater horizons open before the consciousness, unless one is already of a saintly and humble disposition. There are men like Nag Mahashoy in whom spiritual experience creates more and more humility, there are others like Vivekananda in whom it erects a giant sense of strength and superiority – European critics have taxed him with it rather severely; there are others in whom it fixes a sense of superiority to men and humility to the Divine. Each position has its value. Take Vivekananda’s famous answer to the Madras Pundit who objected to one of his assertions, “But Shankara does not say so.” To which Vivekananda replied, “No, Shankara does not say so, but I, Vivekananda, say so”, and the Pundit sank back amazed and speechless. That “I, Vivekananda” stands up to the ordinary eye like a Himalaya of self-confident egoism. But there was nothing false or unsound in Vivekananda’s spiritual experience. This was not mere egoism, but the sense of what he stood for and the attitude of the fighter who, as the representative of something very great, could not allow himself to be put down or belittled. This is not to deny the necessity of non-egoism and of spiritual humility, but to show that the question is not so easy as it appears at first sight. For if I have to express my spiritual experiences, I must do it with truth – I must record them, their bhāva, the thoughts, feelings, extensions of consciousness which accompany them. What can I do with the experience in which one feels the whole world in oneself or the force of the Divine flowing in one’s being and nature or the certitude of one’s faith against all doubts and doubters or one’s oneness with the Divine or the smallness of human thought and life compared with this greater knowledge and existence? And I have to use the word “I” – I cannot take refuge in saying “this body” or “this appearance”,– especially as I am not a Mayavadin. Shall I not inevitably fall into expressions which will make X shake his head at my assertions as full of pride and ego? I imagine it would be difficult to avoid it.
Another thing, it seems to me that you identify faith very much with mental belief – but real faith is something spiritual, a knowledge of the soul. The assertions you quote in your letter are the hard assertions of a mental belief leading to a great vehement assertion of one’s creed and god because they are one’s own and must therefore be greater than those of others – an attitude which is universal in human nature. Even the atheist is not tolerant, but declares his credo of Nature and Matter as the only truth and on all who disbelieve it or believe in other things he pours scorn as unenlightened morons and superstitious half-wits. I bear him no grudge for thinking me that; but I note that this attitude is not confined to religious faith but is equally natural to those who are free from religious faith and do not believe in Gods or Gurus.
I don’t think that real faith is so very superabundant in this Asram. There are some who have it, but for the most part I have met not only doubt, but sharp criticism, constant questioning, much mockery of faith and spiritual experience, violent attacks on myself and the Mother – and that has been going on for the last fourteen years and more. Things are not so bad as they were, but there is plenty of it left still, and I do not think the time has come when the danger of an excessive faith is likely to take body.
You will not, I hope, mind my putting the other side of the question. I simply want to point out that there is this other side, that there is much more to be said than at first sight appears, and the moral of it all is that one must bear with what calm and philosophy one can the conflicts of opposing tendencies in this welter of the Asram atmosphere and wait till the time has come when a greater Light and with it some true Harmony can purify and unite and recreate.
28 June 1934
Taking on the Sadhaks’ Difficulties
161
I thank you for a perfect night of rest and repose. I felt your presence throughout the night. Was it merely by your presence that the disquiet was dismissed as the rising sun dispels the night’s darkness? Or do you take upon yourself the disquiet as some yogis do to relieve their disciples?
No, I don’t take them on myself – though sometimes they try to throw themselves on me, but that is from the general atmosphere. The method of taking upon oneself had its utility at one time (the Mother used always to do it); but it is useful no longer. The thing has to be driven out, its right to remain altogether denied.
25 November 1932
Dealing with the Sadhaks
162
It is very silly and childish to have abhimāna; for it means that you expect everyone including the Mother and myself to act always according to your ideas and do what you want us to do and never do anything which will not please you! It is for the Mother to do whatever she finds to be right or necessary; you must understand that; otherwise you will always be making yourself miserable for nothing.
28 April 1932
*
163
It is no question of fault or punishment – if we have to condemn and punish people for their faults, and deal with the sadhaks like a tribunal of justice, no sadhana could be possible. I do not see how your reproach against us is justifiable. Our sole duty to the sadhaks is to take them towards their spiritual realisation – we cannot behave like the head of a family intervening in domestic quarrels, supporting one, putting our weight against the other! However often X may stumble we have to take him by the hand, lift him up again and get him to move once more towards the Divine. We have always done the same with you. But we could not support any demand of yours upon him. We have always treated it as something between him and the Divine. For you, the one thing we have insisted on and that with your full consent and with your prayers to us to be helped in doing it, is to cut the vital relation with him altogether and to base nothing upon it any more. Yet now you write to us that because we have not approved of your action of what you said to Y, no matter what that might be,– you renounce us forever.
I must ask you to return to your better self and your true consciousness and throw off these moods of vital passion which are unworthy of your soul. You have repeatedly written of your love for the Mother, the Ananda which you received from her and the number of spiritual experiences. Remember that and remember that that is your true way and your true being and nothing else matters. Get back your poise and throw off the lower nature and its darkness and ignorance.
29 March 1933
*
164
The Mother and myself deal with all according to the law of the Divine. We receive alike rich and poor, those who are high-born or low-born according to human standards, and extend to them an equal love and protection. Their progress in sadhana is our main concern – for they have come here for that, not to satisfy their palates or their bellies, not to make ordinary vital demands or to quarrel about position or place or comforts. That progress depends on how they answer to the Mother’s love or protection – whether they receive the forces she pours on all alike, whether they use or misuse what she gives them. But the Mother has no intention or obligation to deal with all outwardly in the same way – the demand that she should do so is absurd and imbecile – and if she did it, she would prove false to the truth of things and the law of the Divine. Each sadhak has to be dealt with according to his nature, his capacities, his real needs (not his claims or desires) and according to what is best for his spiritual welfare. As to how it is to be done, we refuse to be dictated to by the ignorance of those of the sadhaks who consider that the Mother must act according to their standards or their ideas of equality or justice or the demands of their vital or the notions they have brought with them from the outside world. We act according to the Light within us and for the Truth that we are striving to establish in this earthly Nature.
11 December 1933
*
165
The human consciousness is made of many materials and all cannot bear quickly a constant spiritual endeavour – they have to be trained, enlightened, changed in their habits. That is why the Mother and I always give time for the soul to grow upon the other parts and we do not mind if it takes time, provided there is a central sincerity and will – as certainly there is in you. Do not be impatient or easily discouraged because things do not go fast. Aspire, try to keep yourself in the sunshine of confidence and let the seed grow.
18 June 1934
*
166
X told me that Y has been insulting him often. But why does he allow himself to be insulted so badly that he has to go to his room and weep over it? Of course it is because he is afraid of bringing things down to the physical level and breaking them. But X also seems to have a good deal of hatred for Y and others too. How long can these hatreds be contained? What can be done for either of these men?
Each has to get rid of his wrong reactions – they are here for that. What other remedy is there? If they are not prepared to do that, then we remain on the ground of the ordinary life where one has to do as in a big family, intervening in quarrels, reconciling, soothing, rebuking, punishing, lecturing, somehow getting things going until the next clash. There is no end to that and we gave it up long ago. Each must mend himself – there is no other way out of it.
17 June 1935
*
167
From your answers to me it seems that the tamasic and rajasic elements of my nature have been at work for a long time and it will now take more time to get rid of them. But since you saw these wrong things entering me, would it not have been better to warn me of their intrusion so that I could keep a vigilant eye on them?
Here again is the rajasic ego in you dictating to us what we should have done and showing us our mistakes.
14 October 1935
*
168
A suggestion sometimes comes to me: “As Mother has become stricter with you at pranam, so Sri Aurobindo is becoming stricter with you in his letters.” Is what I have written all right?
You attributed too many motives – e.g. that the Mother tries to allure 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. Formerly you were writing from the higher mind mostly, but partly from the vital – the vital was often dissatisfied with my answers, so I ceased answering to it and wrote only what would help your higher mind and psychic. Now it is from the physical mind and vital that you often write and so my answers must be to them and they feel they are not given the answers they want or in the tone of indulgence they would like. But to satisfy and indulge them would not be helpful to your sadhana.
9 December 1935
*
169
It seemed to me that the Mother did not respond to my smile yesterday and that she put unnecessary pressure on me in regard to X’s letter. And when you replied to my note in the evening with a simple “all right”, I felt a terrible emptiness and a want of sympathy. It seemed as if your “all right” was also a sort of pressure in regard to X’s letter.
The Mother put no pressure whatever about X’s letter and there was no reason why she should do so. As for myself, I never even thought of it when I wrote the “all right”. The word “pressure” besides is an entirely wrong one to use; the only thing we put is a supporting force to help you in your difficulties or else to bring down more peace and more of the higher consciousness. I do not see how that can be described as an unnecessary pressure or produce bad consequences. But the idea that we were displeased about X’s letter or withdrew our support or were putting any kind of pressure about it is absolutely groundless. You ought not to make constructions of the mind like that or believe in them; for it is always these wrong constructions that upset you.
5 June 1936
*
170
Unfortunately X seems to think that the Mother is harder than you: she is grim and does not love etc.
That is because Mother’s pressure for change is always strong – even when she does not put it as force it is there by the very nature of the Divine Energy in her.
11 March 1937
Awareness of the Sadhaks’ Movements
171
You and the Mother know what is going on in us, how and what we are aspiring for, how our nature is reacting to your help and guidance. What is then the necessity of writing all that to you?
It is necessary for you to be conscious, and to put your self-observation before us; it is on that that we can act. A mere action on our own observation without any corresponding consciousness on the part of the sadhak would lead to nothing.
7 January 1936
*
172
I thought that it is not possible for us to have spiritual experiences, especially major ones, without your previously knowing that so-and-so is having such-and-such an experience.
Previously? My God, we would have to spend all our time prevising the sadhaks’ experiences. Do you think Mother has nothing else to do? As for myself, I never previse anything, I only vise and revise. All that Mother prevised was that there was something not right in X, some part of him at odds with his aspiration. That might lead to trouble. That is why, entre nous, I want him to find out what part of him didn’t want the descent.
18 October 1936
Their Knowledge of Human Nature
173
Sometimes we feel that your answers (not so much the Mother’s) come from such a high plane that they seem to have no connection with our lives and do not consider the dualities, weaknesses, ignorance, etc. of human nature. Is it because it is a plane or planes of eternal and infinite Light, Power, Ananda, infallible Will-Force, which sees the human plane in the same way?
I think I know as much about the dualities, weaknesses, ignorance of human nature as you do and a great deal more. The idea that the Mother or I are spiritually great but ignorant of everything practical seems to be common in the Asram. It is an error to suppose that to be on a high spiritual plane makes one ignorant or unobservant of the world or of human nature. If I know nothing of human nature or do not consider it, I am obviously unfit to be anybody’s guide in the work of transformation, for nobody can transform human nature if he does not know what human nature is, does not see its workings or, even if he sees, does not take them into consideration at all. If I think that the human plane is like the plane or planes of infinite Light, Power, Ananda, infallible Will-Force, then I must be either a stark lunatic or a gibbering imbecile or a fool so abysmally idiotic as to be worth keeping in a museum as an exhibit. I am glad however to know that this is the opinion that you and all the other members of the Asram (I suppose this is what “we” means) have about me. I am glad however to know that you think the Mother is less of an exalted imbecile than myself.
30 April 1937
Their Patience
174
I am overwhelmed at the patience and compassion with which you put up with our insincerities, disobediences and loosenesses.
Human nature is like that in its very grain; so if we are not patient, there would be little hope of its changing. But there is something else in the human being which is sincere and can be a force for the change. The difficulty in people like X is to get at that something (it is so covered up) and get it to act.
8 July 1934
Their Help
175
Well, what an amazing mass of extraordinary mental constructions you have built up about the Mother and myself! The Mother is a great Yogi of a rather grave and impersonal type! I am Vedantic and vast and cosmic and impersonal and what not! What not indeed! Nothing is impossible after that!! However, I won’t protest – for mental constructions are to the mind like his favourite productions to an author, the more you criticise them the more the mind clings to them. Let me point out however by example how they come unnecessarily in your way and how very unnecessarily you let them do that, so that my insistence – in The Mother or elsewhere – on getting rid of mental constructions is not so groundless after all. The Mother told you very simply that if you prayed to her (your prayers to Krishna having according to you no effect) you would have received quicker help. That was simply to help you – she is here close to you and the others and any number here have received help by calling to her simply and directly, of course without any questions or misgivings. Even now there are several who are emerging out of the same illness as yours, a habit of many years of long attacks of black despondency with the usual round of suggestions, “unfitness, this Yoga hopeless for me, no response, no experience, the Divine does not love me, Mother is distant and far, how long can I go on, how can anyone live like this, running away, suicide etc.,” and they are emerging because they have suddenly managed to turn simply and directly towards her. So what the Mother said was not something unfounded and a mere idea of hers. But it was simply a suggestion to help you. How did your mind come to the conclusion that it was a command to be followed on pain of displeasure, spiritual hanging or rejection and exile? The habit of mental constructions, that is all. Fear? But the fear itself is a mental construction which could have no real foundation if you had remembered the constant indulgence and patience the Mother has always shown to you.
Undated
*
176
The doubt about the possibility of help is hardly a rational one, since all the evidence of life and of spiritual experience in the past and of the special experience of those, numerous enough, who have received help from the Mother and myself, is against the idea that no internal or spiritual help from one to another or from a Guru to his disciples or from myself to my disciples is possible. It is therefore not really a doubt arising from the reason but one that comes from the vital and physical mind that is troubling you. The physical mind doubts all that it has not itself experienced and even it doubts what it has itself experienced if that experience is no longer there or immediately palpable to it – the vital brings in the suggestions of despondency and despair to reinforce the doubt and prevent clear seeing. It is therefore a difficulty that cannot be effectively combated by the logical reason alone, but best by the clear perception that it is a self-created difficulty – a self-formed sanskara or mental formation which has become habitual and has to be broken up so that you may have a free mind and vital, free for experience.
As for the help, you expect a divine intervention to destroy the doubt, and the divine intervention is possible, but it comes usually only when the being is ready. You have indulged to a great extreme this habit of the recurrence of doubt, this mental formation or sanskara, and so the adverse force finds it easy to throw it upon you, to bring back the suggestion. You must have a steady working will to repel it whenever it comes and to refuse the tyranny of the sanskara of doubt – to annul the force of its recurrence. I think you have hardly done that in the past, you have rather supported the doubts when they came. So for some time at least you must do some hard work in the opposite direction. The help (I am not speaking of a divine intervention from above but of my help and the Mother’s) will be there. It can be effective in spite of your physical mind, but it will be more effective if this steady working will of which I speak is there as its instrument. There are always two elements in spiritual success – one’s own steady will and endeavour and the Power that in one way or another helps and gives the result of the endeavour.
I will do what is necessary to give the help you must receive. To say you cannot would not be true, for you have received times without number and it has helped you to recover.
26 January 1934
*
177
I don’t feel any devotion at all. I think you know how much I suffer and how helpless I am to do anything. Have pity on me, cure me by your Grace. Help me out of this pit of darkness by your mercy.
I will try to do so.
But it is a pity you cannot form the habit and stabilise the power to reject this thing when it comes – for it would mean that the difficulty was practically over and the whole being under the right direction and on the right way. Other difficulties are of minor importance, it is this one thing that is standing obstinately in the way of the soul’s deliverance.
I will put my force to pull you out – I hope I shall get the full response.
9 June 1934
*
178
Something in me is open to you and the Mother, for I can feel Peace coming into me. But I do not see how I can call for your help – selfishness, blindness and distrust of spiritual things are supreme in me.
I do not see why your having difficulties or the external consciousness denying the inner truth should prevent you from calling our help. At that rate hardly anybody could call for help. Almost everybody in the Asram except a few have this difficulty of the external consciousness denying or standing in the way of the inner experience and trying to cling to its old ways, ideas, habits and desires. This division in human nature is a universal fact and one should not make too much of it. Once the Peace and Power are there, it is best to trust to that to remove in time the opposition and enlighten and occupy the external nature.
19 July 1934
*
179
We are sorry that you have suffered so much. It was not to hurt you that the Mother put the pressure, but to liberate. It has always been with a deep affection and sympathy with you in your struggles that she has tried to help you. I trust you will recover soon your ease of mind and peace. I will try to give you all the help possible.
23 January 1935
*
180
The Mother and I will do all to get rid of the cloud which the physical mind presents against the permanent consciousness of your soul’s connection with the Mother; but let your thinking mind be firm in its will to be rid of it and to call the aid of our Force.
6 February 1936
*
181
Last night I got stuck at every stanza and had to send you and Mother frequent S.O.S.’s to rescue me. Do you really receive these signals, or do your impersonal Forces intercept them and do the necessary?
As we receive some hundreds of such signals daily, we are obliged to be impersonal about it, otherwise we would have no time for anything else.
6 November 1938
*
182
It is very painful for us to see you in this condition and it makes us very sad and anxious. Will you not make an effort and throw off the cloud that has fallen upon you? There is surely something you are not telling us, for nothing has happened to our knowledge that could make you go so far as to refuse food and reject persistently the love and solicitude of the Mother. Will you not tell us what is your reason and relieve your mind of its burden?
You are our beloved child. Nothing should be able to throw a shadow between you and our love. Throw off whatever shadow there is. I ask you to take your food as usual. Speak to the Mother; turn to us once more; call back the happiness and the sunshine.
Undated
Speaking One’s Thoughts Freely
183
X wants me to tell him all my thoughts. Can one tell to others what should be told to you? Since I have not told him everything, he says that I am stubborn and even the Mother finds it difficult to work in me. Is it true that the Mother finds it difficult to work in me?
It is quite unnecessary to say all your thoughts to X and it would not be good either. It is only to the Mother and myself that you can say freely all that is in you, not to anybody else. There is no reason why the Mother’s force should not be able to work in you as in others.
Undated
Sri Aurobindo’s Coming out of Retirement
184
I want to know clearly whether you have any idea of coming out to lead us and guide us as the Mother did in 1926.
I have no ideas about the matter, no mental decisions; when the time comes, the Mother and I will know what is to be done and do it according to the Truth.
21 November 1932
The Mother and Sri Aurobindo in Dreams, Visions and Experiences
Visions, Dreams and Experiences of Their Unity
185
From the intimations frequently received from the play of lights seen in visions, I am having a deep feeling that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are the same though we see them in different bodies. Is my feeling right?
Yes.
25 April 1933
*
186
In the centre of the flower “The Supramental manifestation upon earth”, I saw both the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. I saw only their faces and they were in the same figure and at the same time. What does this signify?
It is our joint or united presence in the manifestation.
10 November 1933
*
187
Today while the Mother was blessing me, I felt Sri Aurobindo’s hand beside the Mother’s hand. But when I opened my eyes, I saw only the Mother sitting there. Why did I experience this? Did Sri Aurobindo come at this time?
I am always with the Mother – it was therefore quite natural that you should feel the double blessing.
17 November 1933
*
188
The Mother and myself stand for the same Power in two forms – so the perception in the dream was perfectly logical. Ishwara-Shakti, Purusha-Prakriti are only the two sides of the one Divine (Brahman).
1933
*
189
It is a very common experience – that of the identity between myself and the Mother (the perception that we are one) expressed in the fusing of the two images.
4 November 1935
Other Dreams and Experiences
190
Is there any significance in Mother’s standing on the right side and your standing on the left in my experience?
Yes, she is the executive power and must have the right arm free for action. The symbolism which puts her on the left side belongs to the Ignorance. In the Ignorance she is on the left side, not free in her action, all is a wrong action or half result. For the supramental work the true symbol is the Mother on the right side.
20 February 1932
*
191
While meditating today I received the Mother’s peace and light and joy. Then for a short time I went deep inside and suddenly saw a tiger standing in front of me. Seeing the tiger, I kept calling the Mother and went near it. Then the tiger vanished and in its place stood a very beautiful boy and girl. A blue light came out from the boy’s body and a white light from the girl’s. They told me, “Let us go to the infinite God.” I was walking with them and then I woke up. Who was the tiger and the boy and girl? Why did they tell me that?
The tiger is some force that appears hostile. If you face it with the Mother’s name, the hostile force disappears and in its place come two Powers (the children) from myself (the blue light) and the Mother (the white light). It is probably an image of the vital under the influence of the psychic. At first it is inhabited by the tiger (anger, passion, desire etc.) – but as soon as the psychic influence masters it, that disappears and it is replaced by the Divine Children calling you to the Divine.
3 April 1933
*
192
When I look into the tuberose flowers which are growing on our terrace, I sometimes see Sri Aurobindo’s figure and sometimes the Mother’s and sometimes both together.
It is the flower of the new creation, so it is natural that you see us there.
6 November 1933
*
193
The dream was an indication of what the Mother and myself are and represent – I do not think that it is necessary to say more than that. It indicates that the fulfilment of what we stand for is the Divine Love and Ananda.
1933
*
194
On Darshan Day and the day before it I felt an intense love for you and for the Mother. It possessed my whole being for some time. There was a high and profound reverence for both of you and “a happiness that no worldly pleasure can give us”.
That is obviously psychic.
25 August 1934
*
195
In my dream two nights ago, I bowed down to a dark complexioned gentleman who was the devil, and devotionally too! How to discriminate before such a thing is done? Powers come to allure one and it is harmful to accept them, but how to recognise them? And in this case I recognised that this devil did not resemble you, but still I bowed. Sometimes in dream we have met the Mother in quite a different appearance, and still you said it was the Mother who came to us. Then?
Necessarily, Mother can manifest in many other forms besides her physical one, and though I am rather less multitudinous, I can also. But that does not mean that you can take any gentleman for me or any she for her. Your dream-self has to develop a certain discrimination. That discrimination cannot go by signs and forms, for the vital beggars can imitate almost anything, it must be intuitive.
23 May 1935
*
196
Well, it is quite natural that I should like to write rather about the Mother than about myself. But I suppose you refer to the experience with the photograph – it can be had of course with mine also, but it comes more easily with the Mother’s because her physical contact with the sadhaks is closer than mine.
The feeling of being a child comes often when there is the psychic influence behind.
4 May 1936
*
197
My being meets you or the Mother in dreams and receives your blessings. Has it any concrete value – as concrete as the Pranam touch?
What do you mean by concrete? It is concrete there just as the Abyssinian or Spanish wars are concrete here.
26 August 1936
*
198
X wishes to know what you and the Mother decide in reply to her last letter. She asked me to write to her. Shall I ask Mother tomorrow or would you prefer to write what I am to communicate to her?
I think I had better write it and you can communicate to her. It was an experience in a conscious dream in which she was becoming as if unconscious and her body was benumbed and then felt my hand on her forehead, the weight felt not only there but as if something was crushing her whole body, particularly a distinct pressure on the 3rd or 4th rib on the right side. The numbness was still there when she opened her eyes. She thinks it was my hand because of the weight, the strength of it. She wants to know also about our presence, how it comes, whether we are conscious of the call or it is only our Force that is working which is everywhere without the necessity of our personal knowledge. This is the answer.
“As to the dream, it was not a dream but an experience of the inner being in a conscious dream state, svapna-samādhi. The numbness and the feeling of being about to lose consciousness are always due to the pressure or descent of a Force to which the body is not accustomed, but feels strongly. Here it was not the physical body that was being directly pressed, but the subtle body, the sūkṣma śarīra in which the inner being more intimately dwells and in which it goes out in sleep or trance or in the moment of death. But the physical body in these vivid experiences feels as if it were itself that was having the experience; the numbness was the effect on it of the pressure. The pressure on the whole body would mean a pressure on the whole inner consciousness, perhaps for some modification or change which would make it more ready for knowledge or experience; the 3rd or 4th rib would indicate a region which belongs to the vital nature, the domain of the life-force, some pressure for a change there.
The strength of the hand, the weight would not necessarily indicate that it was mine – for it was an experience not of the physical hand or in the physical body, but in the subtle realms of the being and there the Mother’s touch and pressure might well be stronger and heavier than mine. The Mother does not remember the date, but one night about that period she was thinking strongly about her and putting a pressure for the removal of some obstacle to a spiritual opening. It is possible that this was what produced the experience. If it was myself, it must have been at a time when I was concentrating and sending the force to different people, but I remember nothing precise. I have often thought of her of course and sent a Force to help her.
It is not necessary for us always to be physically conscious of the action, for it is often carried out when the mind is occupied with outward things or when we sleep. The Mother’s sleep is not sleep but an inner consciousness, in which she is in communication with people or working everywhere. At the time she is aware, but she does not carry all that always into her waking consciousness or in her memory. A call would come in the occupied waking mind as the thought of the person coming – in a more free or in a concentrated state as a communication from the person in question; in concentration or in sleep or trance she would see the person coming and speaking to her or herself going there. Besides that wherever the Force is working, the Presence is there.”
27 September 1936
*
199
It is quite normal in dream to see the Mother or myself with another appearance than the present. These dreams are experiences on the vital plane where forms are not so rigid as in the physical world.
1 June 1937
1 The Mother, “Words of the Mother – III” (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2004), Collected Works of the Mother (second edition), vol. 15, p. 32.
2 Sri Aurobindo, “Letters on Yoga” (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1970), Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, vol. 23, p. 613.
3 See letter of 12 June 1933, published on page 672 of Letters on Himself and the Ashram”, volume 35 of “The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo”. – Ed.
4 This reply was written in answer to a sadhak’s remark concerning the wearing of beautiful clothing. – Ed.
5 The questions Sri Aurobindo was asked are not available. – Ed.
6 Written by Sri Aurobindo to his secretary, who replied to the correspondent. – Ed.