The Sunlit Path

9. Develop Your Will-Power

Build rather than destroy

Is blaming oneself a good way to progress?

Blaming oneself? No, not necessarily. It can be useful, it is indeed useful from time to time to get out of the illusion of one’s own perfection. But you waste a lot of energy in self-criticism. It is much better to use that same energy to make progress, a concrete progress, something more useful. For example, if you have thoughts that you don’t like, thoughts that are ugly, vulgar and disturbing, and you say, “Oh, how insufferable I am; I still have thoughts like this, what a nuisance!”, it would be much better to use that same energy simply to do this (gesture) and drive away the thoughts.

And that is only the first step. The second step is to try to have other thoughts, to take interest in something else: either to read or to reflect, but to try to fill your mind with something more interesting, to use your energy to build rather than destroy.

It is necessary, of course, from time to time to recognise your faults; it is absolutely indispensable. But to get weighed down by them is not necessary. What is necessary is to use all your energy to build up the qualities you want to have and to do what you want to do. That is much more important.

Guard against despair

For some people events are always contrary to what they desire or aspire for or believe to be good for them. Often they despair. Is this necessary for their progress?

Despair is never necessary for progress; it is always a sign of weakness and tamas and often it indicates the presence of an adverse force — that is, a force that acts purposely against the sadhana.

So in all the circumstances of life, you must always be very careful to guard against despair.

Besides, this habit of being gloomy, morose and despairing does not really depend on events but on a lack of faith in the nature. One who has faith in himself can face all difficulties, all circumstances, even the most adverse ones, without getting discouraged or despairing. He fights bravely to the end. Natures that lack faith also lack endurance and courage.

One chooses to be weak

Mother, there are mistakes — one knows they are mistakes, but still it is as though one were pushed into making them. Then?

Pushed by what? Ah, this is just what happens! It is the lower nature, the instincts of the subconscient that govern you and make you do things you should not do. And so it is a choice between your will and accepting submission. There is always a moment when one can decide. [. . .]

It is a choice between weak submission and an assertive will. And if the will is clear, if it is based on truth, if it really obeys the truth and is clear, it always has the power to refuse the wrong movement. It is an excuse you give yourself when you say, “I couldn’t.” It isn’t true. It is really that you didn’t want to in the right way. For there is always the choice between saying “yes” and saying “no”. But one chooses to be weak and later one gives this excuse, saying, “It is not my fault; it was stronger than me.” It is your fault if the thing was stronger than you. Because you are not these impulses — you are a conscious soul and an intelligent will, and it is your duty to see that that is what governs you and not the impulses from below.

To fall back into an error

To fall back into an error that one knows to be an error, to make a mistake again that one has already made and knows to be a mistake, this seems to me fantastic! It is a long time — at least relatively long, by human reckoning — it is a long time I have been on earth, and I still have not managed to understand this. It seems, it seems impossible to me!

Wrong thoughts, wrong impulses, inner and outer falsehoods, things that are ugly, things that are base, so long as one does them or has them through ignorance — ignorance is there in the world — one understands, one is used to doing it, it is ignorance and one doesn’t know that it should be otherwise. But the moment the knowledge is there, the light is there, the moment one has seen the thing as it is, how can one do it again? That I don’t understand!

What is one made of, then? Is one made of shreds? Is one made of — I don’t know what, of jelly? It can’t be explained. But is there no incentive, no will, nothing? Is there no inner dynamism?

Strengthening the will

Mother, how can one strengthen one’s will?

Oh, just as one strengthens one’s muscles, by methodical exercise. You take a little thing, something you want to do or don’t want to do. Begin with something small, not something very central to the being, a small detail. And then, for example, if you are in the habit of doing something, you insist with the same regularity on not doing it (or on doing something else), you insist on it and you force yourself to do it just as you force yourself to lift a weight — it is the same thing. You make the same kind of effort, but it is more of an inner effort. And after having taken little things like that, things that are relatively easy, well, after taking them and succeeding with them, you can unite with a greater force and try a more complicated experiment. And gradually, if you do this regularly, you will end up acquiring an independent and very strong will.

Learning to will

Learning how to will is something very important. And truly to will, you have to unify your being. Basically, to be a being you have to unify yourself first. If you are pulled by absolutely opposite tendencies, if you spend three-fourths of your life without being conscious of yourself and why you do things, are you a real being? You don’t exist! You are a mass of influences, movements, forces, actions, reactions, but you are not a being. You begin to become a being when you begin to have a will. And you can’t have a will unless you are unified. And when you have a will, then you can say, you can say to the Divine: “I want what You want.” But not before that. Because to want what the Divine wants, you must have a will — otherwise you can want nothing at all. You would like to, you would like to very much, you would really like to want what the Divine wants to do. But you don’t possess a will to give to Him and put at His service.

10. The Influence of Others

Others are a mirror

When something in a person seems completely unacceptable or ridiculous to you — “What, he is like that! He behaves like that! He says things like that! He does things like that!” — you should say to yourself, “Well, look here, but perhaps I do the same thing without being aware of it. I had better look into myself first before criticising him, to make sure that I am not doing the very same thing in a slightly different way.” If you have the good sense and intelligence to do this each time you are shocked by another person’s behaviour, you will realise that in life your relations with others are like a mirror placed in front of you so that you can more easily and clearly see the weaknesses you carry within yourself.

In a general and almost absolute way, something that shocks you in others is the very thing you carry in yourself in a more or less veiled, more or less hidden form, though perhaps in a slightly different guise which allows you to delude yourself. And what seems inoffensive enough in yourself becomes monstrous as soon as you see it in others.

Try to experience this; this will help you a lot, a lot, to change yourself. At the same time it will bring a smiling tolerance into your relationships with others, the goodwill that comes from understanding, and very often it will put an end to these completely useless quarrels.

Look upon everything with a benevolent smile. Take all the things that irritate you as a lesson meant for you, and you will live a lot more peacefully and more effectively as well, because a great deal of your energy certainly goes to waste in the irritation you feel when you don’t find in others the perfection you would like to realise in yourself.

You stop short at the perfection that others should realise and you are seldom conscious of the goal you should be pursuing yourself. If you are conscious of it, well then, begin with the work that has been given to you — in other words, realise what you have to do and don’t bother about what others do, because it is not your business, after all. And the best way to take the right attitude is simply to say, “All those around me, all the circumstances of my life, all the people close to me, are a mirror held up to me by the Divine Consciousness to show me the progress I have to make. All that shocks me in others means a work I have to do in myself.”

And perhaps if you carried true perfection in yourself, you would discover it more often in others.

Remain unmoved by insults

It is far more difficult to remain calm, unmoved, unshaken when confronted with something very unpleasant — whether it be words or acts levelled against you — infinitely more difficult than to respond with the same violence.

Suppose someone insults you. If in the face of these insults, you can remain unmoved (not only outwardly, I mean integrally), without being shaken or touched in any way — you are there like a force one can do nothing against, and you don’t reply, you don’t make a gesture, you don’t say a word, all the insults thrown at you leave you absolutely untouched inwardly and outwardly; you can keep your heartbeats absolutely quiet, you can keep the thoughts in your head absolutely still and calm without their being in the least disturbed (in other words, your head doesn’t respond immediately with similar vibrations) and your nerves don’t feel gripped with the need to return a few blows to relieve themselves — if you can be like that, you have a static power, and it is infinitely more powerful than if you had the kind of force that makes you answer insult by insult, blow by blow and disturbance by disturbance.

Be good for the sake of being good

You must not cherish the illusion that if you want to follow the straight path, if you are modest, if you seek purity, if you are disinterested, if you wish to lead a solitary existence and have a clear judgment, things will become easy — it is quite the contrary! When you begin to advance towards inner and outer perfection, the difficulties start at the same time.

Very often I have heard people tell me, “Oh, now that I am trying to be good, everyone seems to be bad to me!” But this is precisely to teach you that one should not be good with an interested motive, one should not be good so that others will be good to you — one should be good for the sake of being good.

It is always the same lesson: one must do as well as one can, the best that one can, but without expecting a result, without doing it with the result in mind. To expect a reward for a good action, to become good because one thinks it will make life easier — this very attitude takes away all value from the good action.

You must be good for the love of goodness, you must be just for the love of justice, you must be pure for the love of purity, and you must be disinterested for the love of disinterestedness — then you are sure to advance on the way.

The only way out

You see, in the present condition of the world, circumstances are always difficult. The whole world is in a condition of strife, conflict, between the forces of truth and light wanting to manifest and the opposition of all that does not want to change, which represents in the past what is fixed, hardened and refuses to go. Naturally, each individual feels his own difficulties and is faced by the same obstacles.

There is only one way for you. It is total, complete and unconditional surrender. What I mean by that is the giving up not only of your actions, work, ambitions, but also of all your feelings, in the sense that all that you do, all that you are, is exclusively for the Divine. So, you feel above the surrounding human reactions — not only above them but protected from them by the wall of the Divine’s Grace. Once you have no more desires, no more attachments, once you have given up all necessity of receiving a reward from human beings, whoever they are — knowing that the only reward that is worth getting is the one that comes from the Supreme and that never fails — once you give up the attachment to all exterior beings and things, you at once feel in your heart this Presence, this Force, this Grace that is always with you.

And there is no other remedy. It’s the only remedy, for everybody without exception. To all those who suffer, it is the same thing that has to be said: all suffering is the sign that the surrender is not total. Then, when you feel in you a “bang”, like that, instead of saying, “Oh, this is bad” or “This circumstance is difficult,” you say, “My surrender is not perfect.” Then it’s all right. And then you feel the Grace that helps you and leads you, and you go on. And one day you emerge into that peace that nothing can trouble. You answer to all the contrary forces, the contrary movements, the attacks, the misunderstandings, the bad wills, with the same smile that comes from full confidence in the Divine Grace.

And that is the only way out, there is no other.

This world is a world of conflict, suffering, difficulty, strain; it is made of it. It has not yet changed, it will take some time before changing. And for each one there is a possibility of getting out. If you lean back on the presence of the Supreme Grace, that is the only way out.

[. . .] Don’t expect human appreciation — because human beings don’t know on what grounds to appreciate something, and, moreover, when there is something that is superior to them, they don’t like it.

But where to get such a strength?

Within you. The Divine Presence is in you. It is in you. You look for it outside: look inside. It is in you. The Presence is there. You want the appreciation of others to get strength — you will never get it. The strength is in you. If you want, you can aspire for what seems to you the supreme goal, supreme light, supreme knowledge, supreme love. But it is in you — otherwise you would never be able to contact it. If you go deep enough inside you, you will find it there, like a flame that is always burning straight up.

And don’t believe that it is so difficult to do. It is because the look is always turned outside that you don’t feel the Presence. But if, instead of looking outside for support, you concentrate and you pray — inside, to the supreme knowledge — to know at each moment what is to be done, the way to do it, and if you give all you are, all you do in order to acquire perfection, you will feel that the support is there, always guiding, showing the way. And if there is a difficulty, then instead of wanting to fight, you hand it over, hand it over to the supreme wisdom to deal with it — to deal with all the bad wills, all the misunderstandings, all the bad reactions.

If you surrender completely, it is no more your concern: it’s the concern of the Supreme who takes it up and knows better than anybody else what is to be done. The only way out, only way out. There, my child.

The influence of others

Sweet Mother, how can one escape from the influence of others?

By concentrating more and more totally and completely on the Divine. If you aspire with all your ardour, if you want to receive only the divine influence, if you always draw to yourself what is gripped, caught by other influences and, with your will, put it under the divine influence, you succeed in doing it. It is a work that cannot be done in a day, in a minute; you have to be vigilant for a very long time, for years; but you can succeed.

First you must want it.

For everything, first you must understand, want it, and then begin to practise — begin just a little bit.

Open only to the divine

Sweet Mother, what is meant by “an exclusive self-opening to the divine Power”?

Instead of “self-opening” we could put “receptivity”, something that opens in order to receive. Then instead of opening and receiving from all sides and everybody, as is usually done, one opens only to the Divine in order to receive only the Divine Force. This is just the opposite of what people usually do. They are always open on the surface, they receive all the influences from every side. And then that creates in them what we might call a hodgepodge (Mother laughs) of all kinds of contradictory movements which naturally create countless difficulties. So here you are advised to open only to the Divine and to receive only the Divine Force to the exclusion of everything else. This diminishes all difficulties almost entirely.

Stepping back

Most of you live on the surface of your being, exposed to the touch of external influences. You live almost projected, as it were, outside your own body, and when you meet some unpleasant being similarly projected you get upset. The whole trouble arises out of your not being accustomed to stepping back. You must always step back into yourself — learn to go deep within — step back and you will be safe. Do not lend yourself to the superficial forces which move in the outside world. Even if you are in a hurry to do something, step back for a while and you will discover to your surprise how much sooner and with what greater success your work can be done. If someone is angry with you, do not be caught in his vibrations but simply step back and his anger, finding no support or response, will vanish. Always keep your peace, resist all temptation to lose it. Never decide anything without stepping back, never speak a word without stepping back, never throw yourself into action without stepping back. All that belongs to the ordinary world is impermanent and fugitive, so there is nothing in it worth getting upset about. What is lasting, eternal, immortal and infinite — that indeed is worth having, worth conquering, worth possessing. It is Divine Light, Divine Love, Divine Life — it is also Supreme Peace, Perfect Joy and All-Mastery upon earth with the Complete Manifestation as the crowning. When you get the sense of the relativity of things, then whatever happens you can step back and look; you can remain quiet and call on the Divine Force and wait for an answer. Then you will know exactly what to do. Remember, therefore, that you cannot receive the answer before you are very peaceful. Practise that inner peace, make at least a small beginning and go on in your practice until it becomes a habit with you.

11. Adverse Forces

Attacks from adverse forces

Attacks from adverse forces are inevitable: you have to take them as tests on your way and go courageously through the ordeal. The struggle may be hard, but when you come out of it, you have gained something, you have advanced a step. There is even a necessity for the existence of the hostile forces. They make your determination stronger, your aspiration clearer.

It is true, however, that they exist because you gave them reason to exist. So long as there is something in you which answers to them, their intervention is perfectly legitimate. If nothing in you responded, if they had no hold upon any part of your nature, they would retire and leave you. In any case, they need not stop or hamper your spiritual progress. . . .

In any case, when an attack comes the wisest attitude is to consider that it comes from outside and to say, “This is not myself and I will have nothing to do with it.” You have to deal in the same way with all lower impulses and desires and all doubts and questionings in the mind. If you identify yourself with them, the difficulty in fighting them becomes all the greater; for then you have the feeling that you are facing the never easy task of overcoming your own nature. But once you able to say, “No, this is not myself, I will have nothing to do with it”, it becomes much easier to disperse them.

Send the adverse force away

The most important thing to do when you are attacked by an adverse force, is to say to yourself, “Yes, the force comes from outside and the attack is there, but there must surely be a correspondence in my nature — otherwise it could not have attacked me. Well, I am going to look inside myself and see what is allowing that force to come, and I am going to send it away or transform it or put the light of consciousness on it so that it may be converted or drive it out so that it no longer remains inside me.”

There is a way, you see. When the force comes, the adverse force, when it attacks, the part that corresponds to it rushes out to meet it; it steps forward. A kind of meeting takes place. If at that time, instead of being totally overwhelmed or taken by surprise and put off your guard, you watch very carefully to see what it was that vibrated in you (it goes tat, tat, tat — something has entered), then you can catch it. At that moment, you catch it and say to it, “Get out with your friends, I don’t want you any more!” You send them both away, the part that attracted the thing and the thing it attracted; you send them away and you are absolutely clear.

The hole made by boasting

In their relation with human beings, they [the hostile forces] take a rather malicious pleasure in testing them. For example, if you are not extremely strong and extremely sincere, and you tell yourself, “Oh, I am sure of my faith” — this, for example, among many other things — at once something happens that is going to try to shake your faith completely. This is . . . I suppose it is their diversion, their amusement.

How many times, yes, when someone boasts — it may be in a very childish way — but when someone boasts about something: “Oh, I am sure of it, I will never make that mistake”, at once I see a hostile formation passing there, like that, and it enters by the little hole made by boasting. It enters inside like that, and then it penetrates, and then it prepares everything so that you do exactly what you didn’t want to do. But this is an amusement — it certainly is not to help you to progress. (Mother laughs.) But if you know how to take it, it does help you to progress. You say, “Good, next time I won’t boast.”

12. Fear and Courage

Fear is an impurity

Fear is an impurity, one of the greatest impurities, one of those that come most directly from the anti-divine forces which want to destroy the divine action on earth. And the first duty of those who really want to do Yoga is to eliminate from their consciousness, with all the force, all the sincerity, all the endurance they are capable of, even the shadow of fear. To walk on the path, one must be dauntless and never indulge in that mean little weak and nasty cringing in oneself which is fear.

An indomitable courage, a perfect sincerity and a sincere self-giving, so that one doesn’t calculate or bargain, one doesn’t give with the idea of receiving, one doesn’t trust with the idea of being protected, one doesn’t have a faith that asks for proof — this is indispensable to walk on the path, and this alone can truly shelter one from all danger.

Fear is a lack of trust

Why does one feel afraid?

I suppose it is because one is egoistic!

There are three reasons. First, an excessive concern about one’s security. Next, what one doesn’t know always gives an uneasy feeling, which is translated in the consciousness by fear. And above all, one doesn’t have the habit of spontaneous trust in the Divine. If you look into things deeply enough, this is the real reason.

There are people who don’t even know that That exists, but one could tell it to them, using other words: “You have no faith in your destiny” or “You know nothing about the Grace” — anything whatever, you may put it as you like, but the root of the matter is a lack of trust. If one always had the feeling that it is the best that happens in all circumstances, one would not be afraid.

Conquering fear

One of the great remedies for conquering fear is to boldly face what one is afraid of. You are confronted with the danger you fear and you are no longer afraid of it. The fear disappears. From the Yogic viewpoint, the viewpoint of discipline, this is the cure recommended. In the ancient initiations, especially in Egypt, in order to practise occultism, as I was telling you last week, it was necessary to abolish the fear of death completely. So one of the practices in those days was to lay the neophyte in a sarcophagus and leave him in there for a few days, as though he were dead. He was not left to die, of course, neither of hunger nor suffocation, but still he remained lying there as though he were dead. It seems that cures you of all fear.

When fear comes, if one succeeds in putting consciousness, knowledge, force, light on it, one can cure it altogether.

True courage

True courage, in its deepest sense, is being able to face everything, everything in life, from the smallest things to the greatest, from material things to things of the spirit, without a shudder, without physically . . . without the heart starting to beat faster, without the nerves trembling, and without the slightest emotion in any part of the being. Face everything with a constant awareness of the Divine Presence, with a total self-giving to the Divine, and with the whole being unified in that will — then you can go forward in life and face anything whatever. Without a shudder, I say, without a vibration. This, yes, this is the result of a long effort, unless one is born with a special grace, unless one is born that way. But that is even rarer.

Pleasure and pain

If you can face suffering with courage, endurance and an unshakable faith in the Divine Grace, if instead of avoiding suffering when it comes, you can enter into it with this will, this aspiration to go through it in order to find the luminous Truth, the invariable Delight that is at the core of everything, then the door of pain is often more direct and immediate than the door of satisfaction or contentment.

I am not talking about pleasure, because pleasure turns its back constantly and almost completely on this deep Divine Delight.

Pleasure is a deceptive and perverse disguise which turns us away from our goal, and certainly we should not seek it if we are eager to find the Truth. Pleasure dissipates us, deceives us, leads us astray. Pain brings us back to a deeper truth by obliging us to concentrate in order to be able to bear it, in order to face the thing that is grinding us down. It is in pain that one most easily finds the true strength again, when one is strong. It is in pain that one most easily finds the true faith again, faith in something that is above and beyond all pain.

The reason for blows

“O Thou that lovest, strike! If Thou strike me not now, I shall know that Thou lovest me not.”

Thoughts and Aphorisms — Sri Aurobindo

All those who aspire for divine perfection know that the blows which the Lord gives us in His infinite love and grace are the surest and fastest way to make us progress. And the harder the blows, the more they feel the greatness of the divine love. Ordinary men, on the contrary, always ask God to give them an easy, pleasant and successful life. In every personal satisfaction they see a sign of divine mercy, but if, on the other hand, they meet with unhappiness and misfortune in life, they complain and say to God, “You do not love me.”

In opposition to this crude and ignorant attitude, Sri Aurobindo says to the Divine Beloved, “Strike, strike hard, let me feel the intensity of Your love for me.”

Many blows are needed

Mother, even when one tries to think that one is powerless, there is something that believes one is powerful. So?

Oh yes, oh yes! Oh, it is very difficult to be sincere! That is why blows multiply and sometimes become terrible, because that is the only thing which breaks down your stupidity. That is the justification of calamities. Only when you are in an acutely painful situation and faced with something that really affects you deeply, well, that makes the stupidity dissolve a bit. But as you say, even when something dissolves, there is still a little something that remains inside. And that is why it lasts so long.

How many blows are needed in life for one to know to the very depths that one is nothing, that one can do nothing, that one does not exist, that one is nothing, that there is no being without the Divine Consciousness and the Grace. From the moment one knows it, it is over; all the difficulties are gone – when one knows it integrally and there is nothing that resists. But until that moment . . . And it takes a very long time.

Never get discouraged

You must tell yourself, “With the means of transport at my disposal I have reached a certain point, but these means don’t allow me to go farther. What should I do — sit down and not budge? Not at all. I must find another means of transport.” This will happen quite often, but after a while you will get used to it. You must sit down for a moment, meditate, and then find another way. You must increase your concentration, your aspiration and your trust, and with the new help that comes to you, make a new programme, work out other means to replace those you have left behind. This is how one progresses stage by stage.

But you must be very careful at each stage to apply as perfectly as possible what you have gained or learned. If you remain in an indrawn state of consciousness and don’t materially apply the inner progress, a time will surely come when you won’t be able to move forward because your outer being, unchanged, will act like a chain holding you back and preventing you from advancing. So the most important point (which everybody talks about but only a few do) is to put into practice what you know. With that you have a good chance of succeeding, and with perseverance you will surely get there. You must never get discouraged when you find yourself before a wall. Never say, “Oh, what can I do? It is still there!” Like that the difficulty will still be there and still be there and still be there, till the very end. It is only when you reach the goal that everything will suddenly give way.

13. Endurance and Effort

Go to the end

People have a beautiful experience and say, “Ah, now this is it.” And then it subsides, diminishes, gets veiled, and suddenly something quite unexpected, absolutely commonplace and apparently uninteresting comes up and blocks your way. And then you say, “Ah! What good is it to have made this progress if it is going to start all over again? Why do it? I made an effort, I succeeded, achieved something, and now it’s as if I had done nothing! It’s really hopeless.” Because you have had no endurance.

If one has endurance one says, “It’s all right. Good, I will begin again for as long as it takes — a thousand times, ten thousand times, a hundred thousand times if necessary. I will begin again, but I will go to the end and nothing will have the power to stop me on the way.”

This is most necessary, most necessary.

Pay the price

All of you who have come here have been told many things; you have been put in contact with a world of truth, you live in it, the air you breathe is full of it. And yet how few of you know that these truths are valuable only if they are put into practice and that it is useless to speak of consciousness, knowledge, equality, universality, infinity, eternity, supreme truth, divine presence and . . . all sorts of things like that unless you make an effort in yourself to live these things and feel them in you concretely.

And don’t tell yourself, “Oh, I have been here so many years! Oh, I would really like to have a result for my efforts!” You must know that very persistent efforts and very steadfast endurance are necessary to master the slightest weakness, the least pettiness, the least meanness in one’s nature. What is the use of talking about Divine Love if one cannot love without egoism? What is the use of talking about immortality if one is obstinately attached to the past and the present and is unwilling to give anything in order to receive everything?

You are still very young, but you must learn right away that to reach the goal you must know how to pay the price and that to understand the supreme truths you have to put them into practice in your daily life.

Effort gives joy

An aim gives meaning, a purpose to life, and this purpose implies making an effort, and in effort one finds joy.

Exactly. It is effort that gives joy. A human being who doesn’t know how to make an effort will never find joy. Those who are essentially lazy will never find joy — they don’t have the strength to be joyful! It is effort that gives joy. Effort makes the being vibrate at a certain degree of tension that makes it possible for one to feel joy. [. . .]

It is only effort, in whatever domain it may be — material effort, moral effort, intellectual effort — that creates in the being certain vibrations that enable you to enter into contact with the universal vibrations, and this is what gives joy. It is effort that pulls you out of inertia; it is effort that makes you receptive to the universal forces. And the one thing above all that spontaneously gives joy, even to those who do not practise Yoga, who have no spiritual aspiration, who lead quite an ordinary life, is the exchange of forces with the universal forces. People don’t know this, they won’t be able to tell you it is due to this, but it is true.

14. Receptivity to the Universal Forces

The universal vital force

Sweet Mother, how can one draw upon the “universal vital force”?

One can do it in many ways.

First of all, you must know that it exists and that you can enter into contact with it. Second, you must try to make this contact, to feel it circulating everywhere, through everything, in all persons and all circumstances. To have this experience, for example: when you are in the countryside among trees, to see it circulating everywhere in Nature, in trees and things, and then to commune with it, to feel yourself close to it, and each time you want to connect with it again, to recall that impression you had and try to make contact.

Some people find that they enter more deeply into contact with it through certain movements, certain gestures, certain activities. I knew people who made gestures while walking; this really gave them the feeling that they were in contact — certain gestures they made while walking. But children do this spontaneously. When they give themselves completely in their games, running, playing, jumping, shouting, when they spend all their energies like that, they give themselves completely, and in the joy of playing and moving and running they put themselves in contact with this universal vital force. They don’t know it, but they spend their vital force while in contact with the universal vital force, and that is why they can run without really feeling very tired, except after a very long time. [. . .]

I knew some young people who had always lived in cities — in a city and in those little rooms they have in the big cities in which everyone is crowded. Now, they had come to spend their holidays in the countryside, in the south of France, and there the sun is very hot. [. . .] When they walked around the countryside the first few days, they began to get really terrible headaches and to feel quite uncomfortable because of the sun; but then they suddenly thought: “Well, if we make friends with the sun, it won’t harm us any more!” And they began to make a kind of inner effort of friendship and trust in the sun, and when they were out in the sun, instead of trying to shrink from it, telling themselves, “Oh, how hot it is and how it burns!” they said, “Oh, how full of strength and joy and love the sun is!” and so on. They opened themselves like this (gesture), and not only did they no longer suffer but they felt so strong afterwards that they went around telling anyone who said “It is hot”, they would tell them, “Do like us, you will see how good it feels.” And they could remain for hours in the full sun, bareheaded, without feeling any discomfort. It is the same principle.

It is the same principle. They linked themselves to the universal vital force which is in the sun and received that force, which removed from them all that was unpleasant.

When one is in the countryside, when one walks under trees and feels so close to Nature, to the trees, the sky, all the leaves, all the branches, all the grasses, when one feels a great friendship with these things and breathes this air which is so good, scented by all the plants, then one opens oneself, and by opening oneself one communes with the universal forces. And for everything it is like that.

Receiving the universal forces

Sweet Mother, do the universal vital forces have any limits?

I don’t think that the forces have a limit, because compared with us they are certainly unlimited, but our capacity of reception has limits. Beyond a certain measure we cannot absorb them, so we have to keep a balance between the expenditure and the capacity to receive. If one spends all at once, in a sort of impulse — in an impulsive movement, for example — if one spends much more than one has received, one needs a brief moment of concentration, calm, receptivity, to absorb the universal forces. You must put yourself in a certain condition to receive them and then they last for a certain time, and once you have spent them you must begin again to receive them. In this sense there are limits. It isn’t the forces that are limited, it is the receptivity. [. . .]

How can we increase the receptivity? By progressing.

One has to know how to open oneself, to begin with, and then, in great quietness, know how to assimilate the forces one has received, and not throw them out again. One must know how to assimilate them.

So progress lies in a normal but progressive equilibrium: periods of assimilation — reception, assimilation — and periods of expenditure, and knowing how to balance the two and alternate them in a rhythm, which is your own personal rhythm. You should not go beyond your capacity, you should not remain below it either, because the universal vital forces are not something you can put into a strong-box — they have to circulate. So you must know both how to receive and how to spend, but also know how to increase your capacity of reception so that you have more and more of the things that are to be used, to be spent.

Three sources of energy

For the vast majority of people, all their vital force comes to them from below, from the earth, from food, from sensations. From food, they draw vital energy from food, and they . . . by seeing, hearing, touching, feeling, they contact the energies contained in Matter. They draw them in that way; that is their customary source.

Now some people have a very developed vital, a vital they have subjected to a discipline, and they have a sense of immensity and are in contact with the world and the movements of the world-forces. So they can receive if, in a movement of calling . . . they can receive the universal vital forces that enter them and renew the dose of energy they need.

There are others, who are very rare (or else in very rare moments of their individual lives), who have an aspiration for the higher consciousness, the higher force, the higher knowledge, and who, by that call, draw to themselves the forces of the higher realms. So that also renews in them very special energies, energies of a special value. But unless one is practising Yoga, a regular discipline, generally one does not often contact that source; one draws from the same level or from below.

15. Aspiration

Activity and passivity

An active movement is one in which you throw your force out — that is, something flows out of you in a movement, a thought, a feeling; something goes out of you to others or to the world. Passivity is when you remain like this (gesture), open, and receive what comes from outside. It doesn’t at all depend on whether you move or sit still; it’s not that at all. To be active is to throw the consciousness or the force or the movement from within outwards. To be passive is to remain still and receive what comes from outside. [. . .]

Now if you want to get the true inspiration, the inner direction, the guidance, and if you want to have the Force, if you want to receive the Force that will guide you and make you act as you should, then you no longer move — I don’t mean move physically, but nothing goes out of you; on the contrary, you remain as though you were absolutely still, but open, and you wait for the Force to enter, and then you open yourself as much as you can to absorb all that comes into you. And that is the movement: instead of outgoing vibrations, there is a sort of calm stillness, but completely open, as though you were opening all your pores like that to the Force which must come down into you and transform your action and consciousness.

Receptivity is the result of a fine passivity.

The flame and the vase

You can be in this state of aspiration, of a will that calls something — to be precise, the will to open yourself and receive and the aspiration that calls the Force you want to receive — and at the same time be in this state of complete inner stillness that enables you to be completely penetrated; because it is in this stillness that you can be penetrated, that you become permeable to the Force. Well, the two can be simultaneous without the one disturbing the other, or they can alternate so closely that they can hardly be distinguished. But you can be like that, like a great flame rising in aspiration and at the same time as though this flame formed a vase, a large vase that opens and receives all that comes down.

The two can go together. And when one succeeds in having them both together, one can have them constantly, whatever one may be doing. Only there may be a slight, a very slight displacement of consciousness, almost imperceptible, which first becomes aware of the flame and then of the vase of receptivity, of the thing that seeks to be filled and the flame that rises to call down what must fill the vase — a very slight back-and-forth movement and so close that it gives the impression that one has both at the same time.

Aspiration and receptivity

Aspiration in anyone, no matter who it is, has the same power, but the effect of this aspiration differs. Because aspiration is aspiration: if one has aspiration, it has a power in it. Only, this aspiration calls down a response, and the response, the effect that is the result of the aspiration, depends on each person; it depends on his receptivity. One can have a very intense aspiration and a very weak receptivity. I know many people of this kind; they say, “Oh, but I aspire all the time and yet I receive nothing!” It is impossible that they receive nothing, in the sense that the response is sure to come, but they do not receive it. The response comes, but they are not receptive, so they receive nothing. [. . .]

When you have an aspiration, a very active aspiration, your aspiration is going to do its work. It is going to call down a response to what you aspire for. But later, if you begin to think of something else or you are not attentive or you are not receptive, you don’t notice that your aspiration has received a response. This happens very often. So people tell you, “I aspire and then I don’t receive anything, I don’t get a response.” Yes, you do get a response, but you don’t notice it because you continue to be active like this, like a mill turning all the time.

Find that something

We can, simply by a sincere aspiration, open a sealed door in ourselves and find . . . that Something which will change the whole significance of life, answer all our questions, solve all our problems, and lead us to the perfection we aspire for without knowing it, to the Reality that alone can satisfy us and give us lasting joy, balance, strength, life.

You have heard this many times before.

You have heard it — oh, there are even some here who are so used to it that for them it seems to be the same thing as drinking a glass of water or opening a window to let in the sunlight. [. . .]

We have tried a little, but now we are going to try seriously!

The starting-point: to want it, truly to want it, to need it. The next step: to think of that above all. A day comes very quickly when one is unable to think of anything else.

That is the one thing which counts. And then . . .

You formulate your aspiration, you let the true prayer spring up from your heart, the prayer that expresses the sincerity of the need. And then . . . well, you will see what happens.

Something will happen. Something will surely happen.

For each one it will take a different form.

Aspiration is like an arrow

Aspiration is like an arrow, like this (gesture upward). So you aspire, you want very earnestly to understand, to know, to enter into the Truth. Yes? And then with that aspiration you do like this (same gesture). Your aspiration rises, rises, rises, rises, rises, rises straight up, very strong, and then it strikes against a kind of (how to put it) a lid that is there, hard like iron and extremely thick, and it does not pass through. And then you say, “See, what is the use of aspiring? Nothing happens. I come up against something hard and I cannot pass through it.” But you know, the drop of water that falls on the rock ends up by making a chasm: it cuts through the rock from top to bottom. Your aspiration is a drop of water that rises instead of falling. Then by the force of rising, it pounds, pounds, pounds, and one day it makes a hole by the force of its rising; and when it makes the hole, suddenly it springs up out of this lid and enters an immensity of light, and you say, “Ah, now I understand!”

It is like that.

So one has to be very persistent, very obstinate and have an aspiration that rises straight upward, meaning that it doesn’t go roaming about here and there, looking for all sorts of things.

Only this: to understand, to understand, to understand; to learn, to know, to be.

When one reaches the very top, there is nothing more to understand, nothing more to learn — one is, and when one is, one understands and knows.

16. Concentration

Concentrating one’s attention

Whatever you want to do in life, one thing is absolutely indispensable and at the basis of everything — the capacity to concentrate your attention. If you can gather together the rays of attention and consciousness on one point and maintain this concentration with a persistent will, nothing can resist it, nothing whatever, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one. But this discipline has to be followed in a constant and, so to say, imperturbable way. It is not that you should always be concentrated on the same thing — that’s not what I mean; I mean learning to concentrate.

And materially, for studies, for sports, for any physical or mental development, it is absolutely indispensable. And the value of an individual is in proportion to the value of his attention.

And from the spiritual point of view it is even more important. There is no spiritual obstacle that can resist a penetrating power of concentration. For example, the discovery of the psychic being, union with the inner Divine, opening to the higher spheres, all can be obtained by an intense and obstinate power of concentration — but one must learn how to do it.

There is nothing in the human field, or even the superhuman field, to which the power of concentration is not the key.

You can be the best athlete, you can be the best student, you can be an artistic, literary or scientific genius, you can be the greatest saint with this capacity. And each person has in himself a tiny little beginning of it — it is given to everyone, but people do not cultivate it.

Perfect attention

What is concentration?

It is bringing all the scattered threads of consciousness back to a single point, a single idea. Those who can achieve perfect attention succeed in everything they take up; they will always make rapid progress. And this kind of concentration can be developed just as muscles are developed; one can follow different systems, different methods of training. Today we know, for example, that with discipline the most pitiful weakling can become as strong as anyone else.

One must not have a will that flickers out like a candle. The will, the concentration has to be cultivated; it is a question of method, of regular exercise. If you want to, you can.

But the thought “What’s the use?” must not come in to weaken the will. The idea that one is born with a certain character and can do nothing about it is a stupidity.

Concentrate in the centre of aspiration

It is always better to try to concentrate in a centre, the centre of aspiration one might say, the place where the flame of aspiration burns, to gather all one’s energies there at the solar plexus centre and, if possible, obtain an attentive silence, as though one wanted to listen to something extremely subtle, something that demands complete attention, complete concentration and total silence. And then not to move any more. Not to think any more, not to budge, and to make this movement of opening in order to receive all that can be received, but taking good care not to try to know what is happening while it is happening — because if one wants to understand or even to observe actively, it keeps up a kind of cerebral activity which is unfavourable to the fullness of the receptivity. To be silent, as totally silent as possible, in an attentive concentration, and then not to move any more.

If one succeeds in doing this, then when everything is over, when one comes out of meditation, sometime later (usually not immediately) from within the being something new springs up in the consciousness: a new understanding, a new appreciation of things, a new attitude towards life — in short, a new way of being.

17. Meditation and Work

Dynamic meditation

I think the most important thing is to know why one meditates. This is what gives the quality of meditation and makes it of one kind or another.

You can meditate to open yourself to the Divine Force, you can meditate to reject the ordinary consciousness, you can meditate to enter the depths of your being, you can meditate to learn how to give yourself integrally — you can meditate for all kinds of things. You can meditate to enter into peace and calm and silence — this is what people generally do, but without much success. But you can also meditate to receive the Force of transformation, to discover the points to be transformed, to trace the line of progress. And then again, you can meditate for very practical reasons: when you have a difficulty to clear up, a solution to find, when you want help in some activity, you can meditate for that too.

I think each one has his own way of meditation. But if one wants the meditation to be dynamic, one must have an aspiration for progress and the meditation must be done to foster and satisfy this aspiration for progress. Then it becomes dynamic.

Meditation and spiritual progress

The number of hours spent in meditation is no proof of spiritual progress. It is a proof of your progress when you no longer have to make an effort to meditate. Then you have rather to make an effort to stop meditating: it becomes difficult to stop meditation, difficult to stop thinking of the Divine, difficult to come down to the ordinary consciousness. Then you are sure of progress, then you have made real progress when concentration in the Divine is the necessity of your life, when you cannot do without it, when it continues naturally from morning to night whatever you may be engaged in doing. Whether you sit down to meditate or go about and do things and work, what is required of you is consciousness; that is the one need — to be constantly conscious of the Divine.

But is not sitting down to meditation an indispensable discipline, and does it not give a more intense and concentrated union with the Divine?

That may be. But a discipline in itself is not what we are seeking. What we are seeking is to be concentrated on the Divine in all that we do, at all times, in all our acts and in every movement. There are some here who have been told to meditate; but also there are others who have not been asked to do any meditation at all. But it must not be thought that they are not progressing. They too follow a discipline, but it is of another nature. To work, to act with devotion and an inner consecration is also a spiritual discipline. The final aim is to be in constant union with the Divine, not only in meditation but in all circumstances and in all the active life.

Meditate under all circumstances

You may be engaged in the most active activity — for example, playing basketball, which requires a lot of movement — and yet not lose the attitude of inner meditation and concentration on the Divine. And when you get that, you will see that everything you do changes its quality. Not only will you do it better, but you will do it with an altogether unexpected strength and at the same time you will keep your consciousness so high and pure that nothing can touch you any more. And note that this can go so far that even if you have an accident, you won’t be hurt. Naturally, this is a peak, but it is a peak you can aspire for.

Do not fall into the very common error of believing that in order to meditate you have to sit in a completely quiet corner where nobody passes by, where you are in a classic position and absolutely motionless — it isn’t true. What is needed is to succeed in meditating under all circumstances, and what I call “meditating” is not emptying your head but concentrating yourself in a contemplation of the Divine; and if you maintain this contemplation inside yourself, all that you do will change its quality — not its appearance, for apparently it will be the same thing, but its quality. And life will change its quality, and you, you will feel a little different from what you were before, with a peace, a certitude, an inner calm, an invariable force, something that never gives way.

Control of the body

Those who despise physical activities are people who won’t be able to take a single step on the true path of integral Yoga unless they first get rid of their contempt. Control of the body in all its forms is an indispensable basis. A body that governs you is an enemy; it is an unacceptable disorder. It is the enlightened will of the mind that should govern the body, and not the body that should impose its law on the mind. When one knows that something is bad, one should not be able of doing it. When one wants to achieve something, one should be able to do it and not be hampered at every step by the body’s incapacity or ill-will or lack of collaboration; and for that one has to follow a physical discipline and become master in one’s own home.

It is all very fine to escape into meditation and, from the height of one’s so-called grandeur, look down on material things, but one who is not master in his own home is a slave.

The body needs activity

The body needs activity: if you keep it inactive, it will start to revolt by becoming sick and so on. It needs an activity, it really needs an activity, such as planting flowers, building a house, something really material. You must feel it. Some people do exercises, some people ride bicycles — there are countless activities — but in your little group you must all come to an understanding so that each one can find the activity that suits his temperament, his nature and his need.

But not with ideas. Ideas are not much good; ideas give you preconceptions, such as, “This is a good work; that work is beneath my dignity,” and all that sort of nonsense. There is no bad work — there are only bad workers. All work is good when you know how to do it in the right way. All work. And it is a kind of communion. If you are fortunate enough to be conscious of an inner light, you will see that in your manual work it is as though you had called the Divine down into things; then the communion becomes very concrete. There is a whole world to be discovered, and it is marvellous.

Remember and offer

When we are concentrated in mental movements or intellectual pursuits, why do we sometimes forget or lose touch with the Divine?

You lose it because your consciousness is still divided. The Divine has not settled into your mind; you are not wholly consecrated to the Divine Life. Otherwise you could concentrate to any extent upon such things and still you would have the sense of being helped and supported by the Divine.

In all pursuits, intellectual or active, your one motto should be, “Remember and offer.” Let whatever you do be done as an offering to the Divine. And this too will be an excellent discipline for you; it will prevent you from doing many foolish and useless things.

18. The Divine Work

The three victories

The first victory is to create an individual being. And then later the second victory is to give this individual being to the Divine. And the third victory is that the Divine changes your individual being into a divine being.

There are three stages: the first is to become an individual; the second is to consecrate the individual so that he may surrender entirely to the Divine and be identified with Him; and the third is that the Divine takes possession of this individual and changes him into a being in His own image; that is, he too becomes divine. Generally, all the Yogas have stopped at the second victory. When one had succeeded in surrendering the individual and giving him unreservedly to the Divine in order to be identified with Him, one considered his work finished and thought that everything was done. But we, we begin there, and we say: No, this is only a beginning. We want this Divine with whom we are identified to enter our individual being and make it a divine personality acting in a divine world. And this is what we call transformation. But the other victory precedes it; it must precede it. If that is not done, there is no possibility of doing the third. One can’t go from the first to the third; one must pass through the second.

Consecration to the divine work

Each time someone comes to tell me, “I have come for my Yoga”, I say, “Oh no, then don’t come! It is much more difficult here than anywhere else.” [. . .]

If someone comes to tell me, “I have come to work, I have come to make myself useful”, it is all right. But if someone comes and says, “I have a lot of difficulties outside, I haven’t managed to overcome these difficulties, I want to come here because it will help me”, I say, “No, no, it will be much more difficult here; your difficulties will increase considerably.” And that is because they are no longer isolated difficulties; they are collective difficulties.

So in addition to your own personal difficulty, you have all the friction, all the contacts, all the reactions, all the things that come from outside, as a test. Precisely on the weak spot, the thing that is hardest to work out — it is there that you will hear someone say the sentence that was just the one you didn’t want to hear; or someone will make a gesture towards you which was just the one that could shock you; or you find yourself facing a circumstance, a movement, a fact, an object, anything at all, just the thing that . . . “Ah, how I wish this wouldn’t happen!” And that is just what will happen — and happen more and more. Because you don’t do the Yoga for yourself alone — you do the Yoga for everybody, without wanting to, automatically.

So when people come and tell me, “I come here for peace, for quietness, for the leisure to do my Yoga”, I say, “No, no, no! Go somewhere else right away; you will be much more peaceful anywhere else than here.”

If someone comes and says, “Well, here I am. I feel that I should consecrate myself to the divine work, I am ready to do any work at all that you give me”, then I say, “Good, that’s all right. If you have goodwill, endurance and some capacity, it is all right. But to find the solitude necessary for your inner development, it is better to go somewhere else, anywhere else, but not here.”

Why we do this work

All this perfection we are going to achieve is not for a personal and selfish end, it is to be able to manifest the Divine, to be put at the service of the Divine. We are not pursuing this development with a selfish intention of personal perfection; we are pursuing it because the divine work has to be accomplished.

But why do we do this divine work? Is it to make ourselves . . .

No, not at all! It is because it is the Divine Will. It is not for any personal reason at all — it should not be that. It is because it is the Divine Will and it is the divine work.

As long as one mixes a personal aspiration into it or a personal desire, a selfish will, it always creates a mixture and it is not an exact expression of the Divine Will. The only thing that should matter is the Divine, His Will, His manifestation, His expression. One is here for that, one wants that and nothing else. And as long as a feeling of self, of ego, of person comes in, well, it proves that one is not yet what one ought to be, that’s all. I don’t say that this can be done overnight, but it is indeed the truth.

True integrity

Mother, why is it that here, in work, some people allow themselves to satisfy their fancies and as a result a lot of money is wasted?

It is not only money that is wasted!

Energy, Consciousness is infinitely, a thousand times more wasted than money. If there would be no wastage, my word, I think there could be no Ashram! There is not a second when there isn’t some wastage — sometimes it is worse than that. There is this habit — hardly conscious, I hope — of absorbing as much Energy and Consciousness as one can and using it for one’s personal satisfaction. This is something which is happening every minute. If all the Energy, all the Consciousness that is constantly poured out on you all were used for the true purpose — that is, for the divine work and preparation for the divine work — we would already be very far on the way, much farther than we are. But each one more or less consciously, and in any case instinctively, absorbs as much Consciousness and Energy as he can, and as soon as he feels this Energy in himself, he uses it for personal ends, for his own satisfaction.

Who thinks that all this Force which is here, which is infinitely greater, infinitely more precious than all the money-forces, this Force which is here and is consciously, constantly given with endless perseverance and patience for one single purpose alone — that of realising the divine work — who thinks of not wasting it? Who realises that it is a sacred duty to make progress, to prepare oneself to understand better and live better? Because people live by the Divine Energy, they live by the Divine Consciousness, yet they use them for their personal, selfish ends.

You are shocked when a few thousand rupees are wasted, but you are not shocked when there are . . . when streams of Consciousness and Energy are diverted from their true purpose!

If one wants to do a divine work on earth, one must come with tons of patience and endurance. One must know how to live in eternity and wait for the consciousness to awaken in each one — the consciousness of what true integrity is.

The spirit of divine work

Mother, if for example in the long jump one makes an effort to jump a greater and greater distance, how is one doing the divine work?

What? Excuse me, it is not for the pleasure of doing a long jump, it is to make your body more perfect in its functioning and thus an instrument more fit to receive the divine forces and manifest them.

Why, everything, everything one does in this place ought to be done in this spirit — otherwise you are not even taking advantage of the opportunity given to you, the circumstances given to you. I explained to you the other day, didn’t I, that the Consciousness is here, penetrating everything and trying to manifest in all movements. But if you, on your side, tell yourself that the effort you make, the progress you make, you make in order to become more capable of receiving this Consciousness and manifesting it, the work will naturally be much better and go more quickly.

19. Peace and Quiet

The illusion of action

Agitation, haste, restlessness lead nowhere. It is foam on the sea; it is a great fuss that stops with itself. Men have a feeling that if they are not all the time running about and bursting into fits of feverish activity, they are doing nothing. It is an illusion to think that all these so called movements change things. It is merely taking a cup and beating the water in it; the water is moved about, but it is not changed for all your beating. This illusion of action is one of the greatest illusions of human nature. It hurts progress because it brings on you the necessity of rushing always into some excited movement. If you could only perceive the illusion and see how useless it all is, how it changes nothing! Nowhere can you achieve anything by it. Those who are thus rushing about are the tools of forces that make them dance for their own amusement. And they are not forces of the best quality either.

Whatever has been done in the world has been done by the very few who can stand outside the action in silence; for it is they who are the instruments of the Divine Power. They are dynamic agents, conscious instruments; they bring down the forces that change the world. Things can be done in that way, not by a restless activity. In peace, in silence and in quietness the world was built; and each time that something is to be truly built, it is in peace and silence and quietness that it must be done. It is ignorance to believe that you must run from morning to night and labour at all sorts of futile things in order to do something for the world.

Learn to be quiet

The noise made by all the words, all the ideas in your head is so deafening that it prevents you from hearing the truth when it wants to manifest.

To learn to be quiet and silent . . . When you have a problem to solve, instead of turning over in your head all the possibilities, all the consequences, all the possible things you should or should not do, if you remain quiet — if possible with an aspiration for goodwill, a need for goodwill — the solution comes very quickly. And because you are silent, you are able to hear it.

When you are caught in a difficulty, try this method: instead of becoming restless, turning over all the ideas, actively seeking solutions, worrying, fretting, running here and there inside your head — I don’t mean externally, because externally you probably have enough common sense not to do that, but inside, in your head — remain quiet. And according to your nature, with ardour or peace, with intensity or widening or with all these together, call for the Light and wait for it to come.

In this way the path will be considerably shortened.

Peace, peace, peace

How can one establish a settled peace and silence in the mind?

First of all, you must want it.

And then you must try, and you must persist, you must continue to try . . . You sit quietly, to begin with; and then, instead of thinking of fifty things, you begin saying to yourself, “Peace, peace, peace; peace, peace, calm, peace.” You imagine peace and calm. You aspire, you ask for it to come: “Peace, peace, calm.” And then, when something comes and touches you and acts, you say quietly, like this, “Peace, peace, peace.” You don’t look at the thoughts, you don’t listen to the thoughts, no. You must not pay attention to all that comes.

You know, when someone bothers you a lot and you want to get rid of him, you don’t listen to him, do you? Good! You turn your head away and think of something else. Well, you must do that: when thoughts come, you must not look at them, you must not listen to them, you must not pay any attention to them at all; you must behave as if they didn’t exist, you see! And then, you constantly repeat like a kind of — how to put it — like an idiot who always repeats the same thing. Well, you must do the same thing, you must repeat, “Peace, peace, peace.”

So you try this for a few minutes and then do what you have to do; and then, another time, you begin again, you sit down again and try. You do this when you get up in the morning, you do this in the evening when you go to bed. You can do this . . . Look, if you want to digest your food properly, you can do this for a few minutes before eating. You can’t imagine how much this will help your digestion! Before starting to eat, you sit quietly for a while and say, “Peace, peace, peace”, and everything becomes calm (Mother stretches out her arms on both sides). And then you must continue, and there comes a time when you no longer need to sit down, and no matter what you are doing, no matter what you are saying, it is always “Peace, peace, peace.” Everything remains here like this (gesture in front of the forehead), it doesn’t enter, it remains like this. And then one is always in perfect peace . . . after some years.

But at the beginning, a very small beginning, two or three minutes, it is very simple. For something complicated you must make an effort, and when you make an effort you are not quiet. It is difficult to make an effort while remaining quiet. Very simple, very simple, you must be very simple in these things. It is as though you were learning how to call a friend: by repeatedly being called he comes. Well, you make peace and calm your friends and you call them: “Come, peace, peace, peace, peace, come.”

Sit down quietly

When you have a little time, whether it is an hour or a few minutes, tell yourself, “At last I have some time to concentrate, to collect myself, to recall the purpose of my life, to offer myself to that which is true and eternal.” If you took care to do this each time you are not harassed by outer circumstances, you would find that you are advancing very quickly on the path. Instead of wasting your time chatting, doing useless things, reading things that lower your consciousness, it is better to be moderate, balanced, patient and quiet, but never lose an opportunity that is given to you — in other words, to use for the true end the unoccupied moment before you.

When you have nothing to do, you become restless, you run about, you meet friends, you take a walk, to speak only of the best things; I am not talking about things that obviously should not be done. Instead of that, sit down quietly before the sky, before the sea or under some trees, whatever is possible (here you have all of them) and try to realise one of these things — to understand why you live, to learn how you should live, to think about what you want to do and what should be done and what is the best way of escaping from the ignorance, the falsehood, the pain in which you live.

Make your consciousness vast

Sweet Mother, how can we make our consciousness vast?

Vast? Ah, there are many ways of doing this.

The easiest way is to identify yourself with something vast. For instance, when you feel that you are closed up in a thought, a will, a consciousness that is quite narrow and limited, when you feel as though you were in a shell, then if you begin to think about something very vast, such as the immensity of the water of an ocean, and if you can really think of this ocean and how it stretches out far, far, far, far, in all directions, like this (Mother stretches out her arms), how in relation to you it is so far, so far that you cannot see the other shore, you cannot reach its end anywhere, neither behind nor in front nor to the right or left — it is wide, wide, wide, wide — you think of this and then you feel that you are floating on this sea, like this, and that there are no limits. [. . .] This is really very easy. Then you widen your consciousness a little.

There are other people, for example, who begin by looking at the sky, and then they imagine all these spaces between all those stars, and all . . . that kind of infinity of spaces in which the earth is a tiny point and you too are just a very tiny point, smaller than an ant, on the earth. And then you look at the sky and you feel that you are floating in these infinite spaces between the planets and that you are growing vaster and vaster so that you can go farther and farther. Some people succeed with this.

There is also a way that consists in trying to identify yourself with everything upon earth. For example, when you have a small, narrow outlook on something and you are troubled by the outlook of others, by their point of view, you must begin by shifting your consciousness, trying to put it into others and trying gradually to identify yourself with all the other ways of thinking. This is a little more (how to put it) dangerous. Because to identify yourself with the thought and will of others means to identify yourself with a heap of stupidities (Mother laughs) and all kinds of ill will, and this may bring consequences that are not very good. But still, some people do this more easily. For instance, when they have a disagreement with someone, then to widen their consciousness they try to put themselves in the other person’s place and see the thing not from their own point of view but from the other person’s point of view. This widens the consciousness, though not as much as the first ways I spoke about, which are quite innocent. They don’t do you any harm, they do you a lot of good, they make you very peaceful.

Open to the higher regions

If you open to the higher regions of consciousness and the force descends from above, it quite naturally establishes a silence in the lower regions, because they are governed by this higher power which descends. This power comes from higher regions of the mind or from beyond, even from the Supermind. So when this force and consciousness come down and enter into the consciousness of a lower plane, this consciousness naturally becomes quiet, because it is invaded, flooded as it were, by this higher light which transforms it.

In fact, this is really the only way of establishing a constant silence in your mind. It is to open yourself to the higher regions and allow this higher consciousness, this force, this light to come down continuously into the lower mind and take possession of it. And then when this happens, the lower mind can remain constantly quiet and silent, because it is this force which acts and fills the whole being. You can act, write and speak without the mind being active, with this force coming down from above, penetrating the mind and using it; and the mind itself becomes simply a passive instrument. And in fact, this is the only way to establish silence, because once this is established, silence is established — the mind no longer stirs, it acts only under the impetus of this force when it manifests in it. The mind is like a very quiet, very silent field, and when the force comes it sets the elements in motion and uses them and expresses itself through the mind without the mind being disturbed. It remains very quiet.

20. Birth into the Spirit

Spiritual experience

You speak of spiritual experience. What is an experience and how can one have it?

It is something that puts you in contact with a consciousness higher than the one you normally have. You have a certain feeling about yourself, you are not even conscious of it — for you it is your normal condition, you see. Well, if you suddenly become conscious of something in you that is very different and much higher, then that will be a spiritual experience, whatever it may be. You may formulate it with a mental idea, you may not formulate it; you may explain it to yourself, you may not explain it; it may last or it may not last — it may be instantaneous. But when there is this essential difference in the consciousness and when, of course, the quality that comes is very . . . much higher, much clearer, much purer than what you normally have, then you may call that a spiritual experience. This means that there are thousands of different things which can be called spiritual experiences.

Should one aspire to have a spiritual experience?

I think it is wiser to aspire to make progress or to be more conscious or to be better or to do better, rather than to aspire for a spiritual experience, because that might open the door to more or less imaginary or falsified experiences, to movements of the vital which take on the appearance of higher things. One can deceive oneself by having an aspiration for experiences. Basically, the experience should come spontaneously as the result of inner progress, but not for itself or in itself.

Come out of words

The great problem is that you think with words, but these words are empty of meaning; most of the time they are merely words. You speak of the Divine, you speak of the Supreme, you speak of Yoga, you say many things — but does all that correspond in your mind to something concrete? To a thought, a feeling, a clear idea, an experience? Or are they simply words?

. . . You have to see the thing, the experience behind the words. Here we speak of Yoga, but elsewhere one would speak differently. Some would say, “I am seeking my purpose in life”, and so on. Those who have a religious bent will say, “I want to find the Divine Presence.” There are fifty ways of saying the thing, but it is the thing that is important; you must feel it in your mind, in your heart, everywhere. It must be concrete and living; otherwise you cannot advance. You have to come out of words and get into action, get into experience, get into life.

Live that reality

There is “something”, there is a Reality that is beyond all our expressions, and one can succeed in contacting it by practising a discipline. One can identify oneself with it. Once one is identified with it, one knows what it is, but one cannot express it because words cannot convey it. Then if you use one kind of vocabulary, if you have a certain mental conviction, you will use the vocabulary corresponding to that conviction. If you belong to another group which has another way of speaking, you will speak of it or even think about it in that way. I am telling you this to give you the right impression, that there is something that cannot be grasped — grasped by thought — but which exists. But the name you give it doesn’t matter much, it’s not important — it exists.

So the only thing to do is to enter into contact with it — not to give it a name or describe it. In fact, there is hardly any use in giving it a name or describing it. You must try to enter into contact with it, concentrate on it, live it, live that Reality, and the name you give it isn’t important at all once you have the experience. The experience is all that matters. And when people associate the experience with a particular expression of it — and in such a narrow way, so self-enclosed that apart from this formula one can find nothing — that is a limitation. One must be able to live that Reality on all possible paths, on all occasions, under all formations; one must live it, because that indeed is true, because that is supremely good, because that is all-powerful, because that knows everything, because that . . . Yes, one can live that, but one cannot speak about it. And if one does speak, all that one says about it is not very important — it is just a way of speaking, that’s all.

There is an entire line of philosophers and others who have replaced the idea of God by an idea of an impersonal Absolute or an idea of Truth or an idea of Justice or even an idea of Progress, something eternally progressive. But for one who has in himself the capacity to identify with That, what one says about it is not very important. Sometimes one can read a whole book of philosophy and not progress a step farther. Sometimes one can be an absolutely fervent devotee of a religion and not progress. There are people who have spent entire lifetimes seated in contemplation and achieved nothing. But there are people (we have well-known examples) who used to do the most humble manual works, such as a cobbler repairing old shoes, who have had an experience.

It is completely beyond what one thinks and says about it. It is something that exists, that’s all. And all that is needed is to be that — to succeed in identifying oneself with it and living it. Sometimes you read a sentence in a book and it leads you there. Sometimes you read whole books of philosophy or religion and they get you nowhere. There are also people who are helped to advance by reading philosophy books. But all these things are secondary. There is only one thing that is important — it is a sincere and persistent will, because these things don’t happen overnight, so you must persevere. When you feel that you are not advancing, you must not get discouraged, you must try to find out what in your nature is resisting and then make the necessary progress. And all of a sudden you move forward, and when you reach the end you have an experience.

And what is remarkable is that people who have followed altogether different paths, with altogether different mental constructions, from the most faithful to the most unbelieving, even materialists, have arrived at that experience — it is the same for everyone. Because it is true, because it is real, because it is the sole Reality. And it is quite simply That. I say nothing more. The way one speaks of it is not important. What is important is to follow the path, your path, whatever path it may be — and yes, to go there.

Birth into the spirit

In the life of the individual, the spirit is what makes all the difference. As long as one speaks of the spirit and it is merely something one has read about, whose existence one knows about vaguely, but not as a very concrete reality for the consciousness, it means that one is not born into the spirit. And when one is born into the spirit, it becomes something far more concrete, far more living, far more real, far more tangible than the whole material world — and that is what makes the essential difference between beings. When that becomes spontaneously real — the true, concrete existence, the atmosphere one can freely breathe — then one knows that one has crossed over to the other side. But as long as it is something rather vague and imprecise — one has heard about it, one knows that it exists, but . . . it has no concrete reality — well, it means that the new birth has not yet taken place.

A reversal of consciousness

There is a moment — because it is a question that becomes more and more intense and more and more acute — when you even have the feeling, clearly, that things are strange, that they are not real. A moment comes when this sensation you have of yourself, of being yourself, becomes strange; there is a kind of sense of unreality. And the question keeps coming up: “But then, what am I?” Well, there is a moment when it comes up with such concentration and such intensity that, with this intensity of concentration, suddenly a reversal takes place, and then instead of being on this side you are on that side. And when you are on that side everything is very simple: you understand, you know, you are, you live, and then you clearly see the unreality of the rest, and that is enough.

You see, you may have to wait for days, for months, for years, for centuries, for lives before this moment comes. But if you intensify your aspiration, there is a moment when the pressure is so great and the intensity of the question is so strong that something tips in the consciousness, and then there is absolutely this feeling: instead of being here, you are there; instead of looking from outside and trying to see inside, you are inside; and the moment you are inside absolutely everything changes completely, and all that seemed true to you, natural, normal, real, tangible, all that suddenly, yes, it seems quite bizarre to you, quite strange, quite unreal, quite absurd. But you have touched something that is supremely true and eternally beautiful, and that you never lose again.

Once the reversal has taken place, you may slip back into an external state of consciousness, not lose normal contact with the things of life, but that remains and it never moves. In your dealings with others, you may fall back a little into their ignorance and blindness, but something is always there, living, standing erect inside; and it does not move any more until it manages to penetrate everything to the point where it is over and blindness disappears for ever. And this is an absolutely tangible experience, it is something more concrete than the most concrete thing, it is more concrete than a blow on your head, it is something more real than anything else whatever.

That is why I always say, when people ask me how one can know whether he is in contact with his psychic being or how one can know whether he has found the Divine, well, it makes me laugh. Because when it happens to you it is over; you are no longer able to ask the question — it is done. You don’t ask how it happens — it is done.

21. The Psychic Being

The psychic being

[The psychic being] is a centre of light and truth and knowledge and beauty and harmony which the Divine Self in each of you creates by his presence, little by little; it is influenced, formed and moved by the Divine Consciousness of which it is a part and parcel. It is in each of you the deep inner being which you have to find in order that you may come in contact with the Divine in you. It is the intermediary between the Divine Consciousness and your external consciousness; it is the builder of the inner life, it is that which manifests in the outer nature the order and rule of the Divine Will. If you become aware in your outer consciousness of the psychic being within you and unite with it, you can find the pure Eternal Consciousness and live in it; instead of being moved by the Ignorance as the human being constantly is, you grow aware of the presence of an eternal light and knowledge within you, and to it you surrender and are integrally consecrated to it and moved by it in all things.

For your psychic is that part of you which is already given to the Divine. It is its influence gradually spreading from within towards the most outward and material boundaries of your consciousness that will bring about the transformation of your entire nature. There can be no obscurity here; it is the luminous part in you. Most people are unconscious of this psychic part within them; the effort of Yoga is to make you conscious of it, so that the process of your transformation, instead of a slow labour extending through centuries, can be pressed into one life or even a few years.

The psychic being is that which persists after death, because it is your eternal self; it is this that carries the consciousness forward from life to life.

The psychic being is the real individuality of the true and divine individual within you. For your individuality means your special mode of expression and your psychic being is a special aspect of the one Divine Consciousness that has taken shape in you.

Contact with one’s psychic being

In ordinary life there isn’t one person in a million who is in conscious contact with his psychic being, even momentarily. The psychic being may work from within, but it works so invisibly and unconsciously that for the outer being it is as though it didn’t exist. And in most cases, the immense majority, almost the totality of cases, it is as though it were asleep, not at all active, in a kind of torpor.

It is only through sadhana and a very persistent effort that one succeeds in having conscious contact with his psychic being. [. . .]

In almost every case, a very, very sustained effort is needed to become conscious of one’s psychic being. Generally if one can do it in thirty years, one is considered very lucky — thirty years of sustained effort, I say. It can happen faster, but it is so rare that at once one says, “That is not an ordinary human being.” That is the case for people who have been considered divine beings more or less, people who were great Yogis, great initiates.

The temple within you

In the depths of your consciousness is the psychic being, the temple of the Divine within you. This is the centre round which should come about the unification of all these divergent parts, all these contradictory movements of your being. Once you have got the consciousness of the psychic being and its aspiration, these doubts and difficulties can be destroyed. It takes more or less time, but you will surely succeed in the end. Once you have turned to the Divine, saying, “I want to be yours”, and the Divine has said, “Yes”, the whole world cannot keep you from it. When the central being has made its surrender, the chief difficulty has disappeared. The outer being is like a crust. In ordinary people the crust is so hard and thick that they are not conscious of the Divine within them. If once, even for a moment only, the inner being has said, “I am here and I am yours”, then it is as though a bridge has been built and little by little the crust becomes thinner and thinner until the two parts are wholly joined and the inner and the outer become one.

Organisation around the divine centre

This kind of work, this harmonisation and organisation of the being around the divine centre, can only be done in a physical body and on earth. In fact this is the essential, original reason for physical life — because as soon as you are no longer in a physical body, you can no longer do it at all.

And what is even more remarkable is that only human beings can do it, because only human beings have at the centre of themselves the divine presence in the psychic being. [. . .]

And yet human beings come into a physical body without knowing why. Most of them go through life without knowing why, they leave their body without knowing why, and they have to begin the same thing all over again, indefinitely, until one day someone comes along and tells them, “Listen! This has a purpose, you know! You are here for this work. Don’t miss your opportunity!”

And how many years are wasted.

The function of the psychic being

What is the work of the psychic being?

What is the work of the psychic being? You want it to have some work? What are you trying to say exactly? What is its function? Yes, well, one could put it this way — it is like an electric wire that connects the generator with the lamp. Now, if someone has understood, let him explain what I said! [. . .]

The generator is the Divine and the lamp is the body.

It is the body, it is the visible being.

So that is its function. This means that if there were no psychic in Matter, it would not be able to have any direct contact with the Divine. And it is thanks to this psychic presence in Matter that the contact between Matter and the Divine can be direct and human beings can be told, “You carry the Divine within you, and you have only to enter within yourself and you will find Him.”

The psychic being and difficulties

I think that, in general, the more psychic one is, the more difficulties one has — only one is armed to face the difficulties. But the more psychic one is, the more one is out of harmony with the present state of the world — and when one is out of harmony with something, the result is difficulties. And I have noticed that very often it is those who have many difficulties who are more or less in close contact with their psychic being. If you want to talk about outer circumstances — I am not talking about character, that is quite different, but about outer circumstances — the people who have to struggle the most and have the most reason to suffer are those who have a very developed psychic being.

To begin with, the development of the psychic being has a result which has two sides to it that go together. With the development of the psychic being, the sensitivity of the being grows, and with the growth of sensitivity there is also a growth in the capacity for suffering. But there is a counterpart to this. To the extent that you are in contact with the psychic being, you face the circumstances of life in a completely different way and with a sort of inner freedom that enables you to stand back from a circumstance and not feel the shock in the ordinary way. You can face the difficulty or the outer things with peace and calm and enough inner knowledge not to be troubled. So on one hand you are more sensitive and on the other you have more strength to deal with the sensitivity.

The psychic and the truth

Is the psychic being identified with the inner Truth?

It is organised around it and enters into contact with it. The psychic is moved by the Truth. The Truth is something eternally self-existent and dependent on nothing in time or space, whereas the psychic being is a being that grows, takes shape, progresses and individualises itself more and more. In this way it becomes increasingly capable of manifesting the Truth, the eternal Truth that is one and permanent. The psychic being is a progressive being, which means that the relation between the psychic being and the Truth is a progressive one. It is not possible to become conscious of one’s psychic being without becoming conscious of the inner Truth at the same time. All those who have had this experience — not a mental experience, but an integral experience of contact with the psychic being, not a contact with an idea they have constructed of it, but a truly concrete contact — all say the same thing: from the very moment this contact takes place, one is absolutely conscious of the eternal Truth within oneself and one sees that it is the purpose of life and the guide of the world.

Psychic knowledge

The perception of the exterior consciousness may deny the perception of the psychic. But the psychic has the true knowledge, an intuitive, instinctive knowledge. It says, “I know; I cannot give reasons, but I know.” For its knowledge is not mental, based on experience or proved true. It does not believe after proofs are given. Faith is the movement of the soul whose knowledge is spontaneous and direct. Even if the whole world denies and brings forward a thousand proofs to the contrary, still it knows by an inner knowledge, a direct perception that can stand against everything, a perception by identity. The knowledge of the psychic is something which is concrete and tangible, a solid mass. You can also bring it into your mental, your vital and your physical; and then you have an integral faith — a faith which can really move mountains.

Doing Yoga with the head

I believe there is a vast difference between an effort for transformation that comes directly from the psychic centre of the being and one that comes from a kind of mental construction to get something.

I don’t know, it is very difficult to make oneself understood, but as long as the thing goes around in the head like this (Mother turns a finger near her forehead), it has no power. It has very little power, extremely limited. One has the feeling that with great difficulty one gathers up a will (a rather artificial will at that) and one tries to catch something, and the next minute it has completely vanished. And one doesn’t even realise it; one says, “How did it happen like that?”

I don’t know, it seems to me that it is very difficult to do Yoga with the head — unless one is gripped.

The will is not in the head.

The will — what I call the will — is something here (Mother points to the centre of the chest), which has a power of action, a power of realisation.

What one does only in the head is subject to countless fluctuations; it is not possible to construct a theory, for example, without immediately coming up against things that give all the opposite arguments. And then there is the great skill of the mind, you see: it can prove anything whatsoever, debate anything at all, so one doesn’t get a single step farther. Even if momentarily one catches an idea that has a certain force, unless one can keep that state of intensity, as soon as there is any relaxation all the opposite things come up and, as you know, they come with all the charm of their expression. So it is a never-ending battle.

The heart has wings

There are people in whom the psychic movement, the emotional impulse is stronger than the intellectual understanding. They feel an irresistible attraction for the Divine without knowing, without having the slightest idea what it is, what it could be, what it represents — nothing, no intellectual conception, but a kind of impulse, an attraction, a need, an inevitable need.

And those who have that, and if, I may say, as a result of the Grace they have a mind that doesn’t trouble them, doesn’t question, doesn’t discuss — they go very fast. [. . .]

There are others who understand first, who are very intellectual, who have studied, who can play with words and ideas, who will give you brilliant lectures on all the philosophies, the religions, the human conceptions, and they may take years just to advance one step. Because all that goes on in the head.

Many things go in the head. I have already told you several times that the head is like a public square. Anything at all can enter there, go in, pass through, go out, and create a lot of disorder. And those who have the habit of playing with ideas are the ones who are hampered the most from going farther. It is a lovely game, an attractive game that gives you the feeling that you are not altogether ordinary, not on the level of ordinary life — but it cuts off the wings.

It is not the head that has wings, it is the heart.

22. The Ego

Get out of the ego

The whole universe moves in accordance with your ego: you are at the centre, and the universe turns around you. If you look at yourself attentively, you will see that it is like that. Your vision of the universe is that you are at the centre and the universe is all around you — so there is no place for anything else. It is not the universe you see; it is yourself you see in the universe.

So first for all, to begin with, you must be able to get out of this ego. Afterwards there must be, well, a certain state of non-existence. Then you begin to see things as they are, from a little higher up. But if you want to know things as they really are, you must be ab-so-lute-ly like a mirror: silent, peaceful, still, impartial, without preferences, in a state of total receptivity. And if you are like that, you will begin to see that there are many things you are not aware of, but which are there, and they will start becoming active in you. Then you will be able to be in these things, instead of being entirely closed up in the little point you are in the universe.

There are all sorts of ways of getting out of yourself, but it is indispensable to do so if you want to begin to know things as they are and not in terms of yourself.

The hard shell of ego

This sense of one’s own person becomes like a cage, like a prison that shuts you in and prevents you from being true, from knowing truly, acting truly, understanding truly. It is as though someone had put you in a very hard shell and you were compelled to stay there.

This is the first sensation you have. Later you begin to tap against the shell in order to break it. Sometimes it resists for a very long time. But still, when you begin to feel this, feel that what you believed to be yourself — the person doing things and for whom things are done, the person who exists and makes you what you are — yes, when you pass from this to the awareness that this is a prison preventing you from truly being yourself, then you have made great progress and there is hope. You feel yourself stifled, crushed, completely closed up in a prison without air, without light, without an opening, and then you begin pushing from inside, pushing, pushing, pushing so that it may break.

And the day it breaks, the day it opens, suddenly you enter the psychic consciousness, and then you understand. And then truly, if you have a sense of humour, you laugh — you realise your stupidity.

Cut the knot of the ego

Sweet Mother, what does the “knot of the ego” mean?

Knot? Oh, it is an image, you see. But it is something that clings to you and binds you as tightly as the well-made knot of a rope. And so it is always said that in order to really progress, the first thing to do is to cut the knot of the ego. It is very expressive and makes a good image, doesn’t it? You are tied up, you are closed up in yourself, bound in a prison, as it were, by knots that bind all the parts of the being together. This is what creates a sense of cohesion, but at the same time it is a limit, a limitation. You cannot receive all the forces you would like to receive because you are closed up in this shell made up of a heap of knots in the rope that binds you.

Sweet Mother, how to cut the knot of the ego?

How to cut it? Take a sword and strike it (laughter) when you become aware of it. Because usually you are not aware; you think that what happens to you is quite natural; and in fact it is quite natural, but you also think it is quite good. So to begin with, you must have great clarity of mind in order to see that you are tied up in all these knots that hold you in bondage. And then, when you are aware that something is tight there, so tight that you have tried hard but it will not budge, well, then you imagine that your will is like the blade of a very sharp sword, and with all your might you strike a blow to this knot (in your imagination of course; you don’t actually pick up a sword), and that has an effect.

Of course, you can do this work from the psychological view point, discovering all the elements that make up this knot, the whole set of resistances, habits, preferences, all that keeps you tightly bound. Then when you become aware of this, you can concentrate and call the Divine Force and Grace and strike a good blow to this formation, to these things that bind so tightly that nothing can separate them. And at that moment you must resolve that you will no longer listen to these things, that you will listen only to the divine consciousness and you will do no other work than the divine work, without worrying about personal results, free from all attachment, free from all preference, free from all hope for success, power, satisfaction, vanity, all that. All that must disappear and you must see only the Divine Will embodied in your will and making you act. Then, like that, you are cured.

The ego and “pulling”

What attitude should one have to get out of the ego?

Attitude? It is rather a will, isn’t it? You must want it. Are you asking what you must do? The surest way is to give yourself to the Divine — not to try to draw the Divine to yourself, but to try to give yourself to the Divine. Then at least you are obliged to come out of yourself a little bit, to begin with. Generally, you see, when people think of the Divine, the first thing they do is to “pull” as much as they can into themselves, and then they usually receive nothing at all. They tell you, “Oh, I called, I prayed, and I got no response. I got no answer, nothing came.” But then if you ask, “Did you offer yourself?” — “No, I pulled.” — “Well, yes, that’s why it didn’t come!” It is not that it didn’t come, it is that when you pull, you remain so shut up in your ego, as I told you just now, and this creates a wall between you and what you are to receive. You put yourself in prison and then you are surprised that in your prison you feel nothing. Prison, and even without windows on to the street.

Throw yourself out (Mother opens her hands), give yourself without holding anything back, simply for the joy of giving yourself. Then there is a chance you may feel something.

Never try to pull the force

I would like to recommend something to you. In your desire to progress and your aspiration for realisation, be very careful not to try to pull the forces towards you. Give yourself, open yourself with as much disinterestedness as you can through constant self-forgetfulness, increase your receptivity to the utmost, but never try to pull the Force towards you, because wanting to pull is already a dangerous act of egoism. You can aspire, you can open yourself, you can give yourself, but never try to take. When things go wrong, people blame the Force, but it is not the Force that is responsible: it is ambition, it is egoism, it is ignorance and the weakness of the vessel.

Give yourself generously and with perfect disinterestedness; then, from a deeper point of view, nothing bad will ever happen to you. Try to take and you will be on the brink of the abyss.

23. Self-Giving

Give instead of taking

If you were spread out in everything, if all the vibrations that come and go expressed the need to merge with everything, to widen yourself, to grow, not by remaining within your limits but by coming out of them, and finally to identify yourself with everything, you would no longer have anything to lose because you would have everything. But you don’t know this, and since you don’t know it, you can’t do it. You try to take, to accumulate, accumulate, accumulate. But it is not possible, you cannot accumulate — you have to identify yourself.

And then, the little bit you give, you want to get it back. You give a good thought, you expect some recognition; you give a little affection, you expect to get it back from others. Because you cannot be the good thought in everything, you cannot be the affection, the tenderness in everything. You feel like this, all cut off and limited, and you are afraid of losing everything; you are afraid of losing what you have because you feel you would have less — whereas if you could identify yourself with everything, you would no longer need to pull. The more you expand yourself, the more you have. The more you identify yourself, the more you become. And then instead of taking, you give — and the more you give, the more you grow.

Give yourself entirely

The more you give yourself, the more you have the experience — it is not a feeling or an impression or a sensation, it is a total experience — that the more you give yourself to the Divine, the more He is with you, totally, constantly, at every moment, in all your thoughts, all your needs, and there is not an aspiration that does not get an immediate response, and you have the sense of complete, constant intimacy, of total closeness. It is as though you carried . . . as though the Divine were all the time with you: you walk and He walks with you, you sleep and He sleeps with you, you eat and He eats with you, you think and He thinks with you, you love and He is the love in you.

But for this, you have to give yourself entirely, totally, exclusively, reserving nothing, keeping nothing for yourself, not holding anything back, not dispersing anything either. The least little thing in your being that is not given to the Divine is a waste; it is a waste of your joy, something that lessens your happiness by that much. All that you do not give to the Divine . . . it is as if you drew back from the possibility of the Divine giving Himself to you.

You don’t feel Him close to you, constantly with you, because you don’t belong to Him, because you belong to hundreds of other things and other people. In your thoughts, in your actions, in your feelings and impulses, there are millions of things you don’t give to Him, and that is why you don’t feel Him always with you, because all these things are so many screens and walls between Him and you.

But if you give Him everything, if you hold nothing back, He will be with you constantly and totally in all that you do, all that you think, all that you feel, always, at every moment. But for that you have to give yourself totally, holding nothing back; each little thing you hold back is a stone you lay to build up a wall between the Divine and you.

24. The Divine Will

The gift of every moment

At every moment you can make the gift of your will in an aspiration — an aspiration that is formulated very simply: not only “Lord, let Thy Will be done”, but “Grant that I may do, as well as I can, the best thing to do.”

You may not know at every moment what the best thing to do is, nor how to do it, but you can place your will in the hands of the Divine to do the best possible, the best thing possible. It will have marvellous results, you will see. Do this conscientiously, with sincerity and perseverance, and you will find that you are advancing with giant strides. It is like that, you see. You have to do things with all the ardour of your soul, with all the strength of your will. At every moment, do the best possible, the best thing possible. What others do is not your concern — this is something I can never repeat to you often enough.

Offer your will

You have a will and you can offer that will. Take the example of becoming conscious of your nights. If you take the attitude of passive surrender, you would say, “When it is the Divine Will that I should become conscious, then I shall become conscious.” On the other hand, if you offer your will to the Divine, you begin to will, you say, “I will become conscious of my nights.” You have the will that it should be done; you do not sit down idle and wait. The surrender comes in when you take the attitude that says, “I give my will to the Divine. I intensely want to become conscious of my night, I have not the knowledge, let the Divine Will work it out for me.” Your will must continue to act steadily, not in the way of choosing a particular action or demanding a particular object, but as an ardent aspiration concentrated upon the end to be achieved. This is the first step.

When is it the Divine Will?

How are we to know, you will ask, when it is the Divine Will that makes us act? The Divine Will is not difficult to recognise. It is unmistakable. You can know it without being very far on the path. Only you must listen to its voice, the small voice that is here in the heart. Once you are accustomed to listen, if you do anything that is contrary to the Divine Will, you feel an uneasiness. If you persist on the wrong track, you get very much disturbed. If, however, you give some material excuse as the cause of your uneasiness and proceed on your way, you gradually lose the faculty of perception and finally you may go on doing all kinds of wrong and feel no uneasiness. But if, when once you feel the least disturbance, you stop and ask of your inner self, “What is the cause of this?” then you do get the real answer and the whole thing becomes quite clear. Do not try to give a material excuse when you feel a little depression or a slight uneasiness. When you stop and look about for the reason, be absolutely straight and sincere. At first your mind will construct a very plausible and beautiful explanation. Do not accept it, but look beyond and ask, “What is it that is behind this movement? Why am I doing this?” Finally you will discover, hidden in a corner, the little ripple — a slight wrong turn or twist in your attitude that is causing the trouble or disturbance.

Knowing the Divine Will

There are four conditions for knowing the Divine Will:

First essential condition: an absolute sincerity.

Second: to overcome your desires and preferences.

Third: to silence your mind and listen.

Fourth: to obey at once when you receive the order.

If you persist, you will perceive the Divine Will more and more clearly. But even before you know what it is, you can make an offering of your own will and you will see that all circumstances will be arranged precisely to make you do the right thing. But you must not be like the person I knew who used to say, “I always see the Divine Will in others.” That can land you anywhere; there is nothing more dangerous because if you see the “Divine Will” in others, you are sure to do their will, not the Divine Will. There also we can say that not one among many, many human beings acts according to the Divine Will.

You know the story of the irritable elephant, his mahout, and the man who would not make way for the elephant. Standing in the middle of the road, the man said to the mahout, “The Divine Will is in me and the Divine Will does not want me to move.” The mahout, a man of some wit, replied, “But the Divine Will in the elephant wants you to move!”

The right attitude

There are certain scrupulous people who set problems for themselves and then they have great difficulty solving them because they are stating the problem wrongly. I knew a young woman who was a Theosophist and trying to practise; she told me, “We are taught that the Divine Will should prevail in all we do; but in the morning when I have my breakfast, how can I know whether God wants me to put two lumps of sugar in my coffee or only one? . . . And it was touching, you know; I had some difficulty explaining to her that the spirit in which she drank her coffee, the attitude she had towards her food, was much more important than the number of lumps of sugar she put into it.

It is the same with all the little things you do every moment. The Divine Consciousness doesn’t work in the human way; it doesn’t decide how many lumps of sugar you will put in your coffee. Little by little, it gives you the right attitude towards actions and things — an attitude of consecration, suppleness, consent, aspiration, goodwill, plasticity, striving for progress — and that is what matters, far more than the little decisions you make at every second. You can try to find out what the most correct thing to do is, but it is not by mental discussion or posing a mental problem that these things can be solved; it is precisely by an inner attitude that creates an atmosphere of harmony, a progressive harmony in which all that you do will necessarily be, in the given circumstances, the best thing that could be done.

25. Faith

Keep faith

[We must have] faith that it is always the best that happens. At the time we may not consider it the best because we are ignorant, and blind as well, because we fail to see the consequences of things and what will happen later. But we must keep faith that if it is like that, if we rely on the Divine, if we give Him full charge of ourselves, if we let Him decide everything for us, well, we must know that it is always the best that happens to us. This is an absolute fact. To the extent that you surrender, it is the best that happens to you. This may not agree with what you would like, with your preference or desire, because these things are blind; but it is the best from the spiritual point of view, the best for your progress, your development, your spiritual growth, your true life. It is always like that.

And you must keep this faith, because faith is the expression of trust in the Divine and the self-giving you make to the Divine. And when you make it, it is something absolutely marvellous. This is a fact; these are not just words, you see, it is a fact. When you look back at all kinds of things you didn’t understand at the time they happened to you, you realise that it was just the thing needed to compel you to make the necessary progress. Always, without exception. It is our blindness that prevents us from seeing it.

Faith through aspiration

Can one have faith through aspiration?

What? Faith through aspiration? I think so, yes, because it is rare to have it spontaneously, to be born with it. Very few people have the good fortune to have a spontaneous faith. But if one is very sincere in one’s aspiration, one gets it. Aspiration can bring everything, provided it is sincere and constant.

You always have a tiny element of faith in you, whether it is faith in what your parents have said or faith in the books you have studied. After all, your whole education is based upon faith of this kind. Those who educated you told you certain things. You had no way of checking them because you were too young and had no experience. But you have faith in what they told you and you proceed on that faith. So everyone has a little bit of faith, and to increase it one can use one’s aspiration.

A childlike trust

What are the conditions in which there is a descent of faith?

The most important condition is an almost childlike trust, the candid trust of a child who is sure that it will come, who doesn’t even ask himself about it; when he needs something, he is sure that it will come. Well, it is this, this kind of trust — this is the most important condition.

To aspire is indispensable. But some people aspire with such a conflict inside them between faith and lack of faith, trust and lack of trust, an optimism that is sure of victory and a pessimism that wonders when the catastrophe will come. Now if this is in your being, you may aspire, but you don’t get anything. And you say, “I aspired, but I didn’t get anything.” It is because you constantly demolish your aspiration by your lack of trust.

[. . .] “What I need will be given to me; if I pray, I am sure to get an answer; if I am in difficulty and ask for help, the help will come — and not only will it come but it will take care of everything.” If the trust is there, spontaneous, candid, unquestioning, it works better than anything else and the results are marvellous. It is the contradictions and doubts of the mind that spoil everything, that kind of idea that comes when one is in difficulty: “Oh, it is impossible! I will never manage it. And if it is going to get worse, if this condition I am in, which I don’t want, is going to get even worse? If I keep sliding down? If, if, if, if” — like that, and one builds a wall between oneself and the Force one wants to receive.

The psychic being has this trust, it has it wonderfully, without a shadow, without discussion, without contradiction. And when it is like that, there is not a prayer that does not get answered, not an aspiration that fails to be realised.

Guarding one’s faith

Certainly personal effort is needed to keep one’s faith and enable it to grow within. Later, much later, looking back some day, we may see that all that has happened, even what seemed worst to us, was a Divine Grace to make us advance on the way; and then we become aware that the personal effort was also a grace. But before reaching that point, one has to go very far, struggle a lot, sometimes even suffer a great deal.

To sit down in inert passivity and say, “If I am supposed to have faith, I will have it; the Divine will give it to me”, is an attitude of laziness, of unconsciousness and almost of bad will.

For the inner flame to burn, one must feed it. One must tend the fire, throw into it the fuel of all the faults one wants to get rid of, all that delays the progress, all that obscures the path. If one doesn’t feed the fire, it smoulders under the ashes of one’s unconsciousness and inertia, and then not years but lives, centuries will pass before one reaches the goal.

One has to guard one’s faith as one guards the birth of something infinitely precious, and protect it very carefully from anything that might damage it.

In the darkness and ignorance of the beginning, faith is the most direct expression of the Divine Power that comes to fight and conquer.

26. The Divine Grace

The action of the Grace

No matter how great your faith and trust in the Divine Grace, no matter how great your capacity to see it at work in all circumstances, at every moment, at every point in life, you will never succeed in understanding the marvellous immensity of its action and the precision, the exactness with which this action is accomplished. You will never be able to grasp the extent to which the Grace does everything, is behind everything, organises everything, arranges everything so that the march forward to the divine realisation may be as swift, as complete, as total and harmonious as possible, considering the circumstances of the world.

As soon as you are in contact with it, there is not a second in time, not a point in space which does not show you dazzlingly this perpetual work of the Grace, this constant intervention of the Grace.

And once you have seen this, you feel that you are never equal to it, for you should never forget it, you should never have any fear, any anxiety, any regret, any shrinking or even any suffering. If you were in union with this Grace, if you saw it everywhere, you would begin to live a life of exultation, of omnipotence, of infinite happiness.

And that would be the best possible collaboration in the divine work.

Feel the need for the Grace

How can one accept the Grace with gratitude?

Ah! First of all, you must feel the need for it.

This, this is the most important point. It is to have a certain inner humility that makes you aware that you are helpless without the Grace, that truly without it, well, you are incomplete and you are powerless. This, to begin with, is the first thing.

[. . .] And then, if you become aware that only the Grace can do [what you cannot do], that only the grace can pull you out of the situation you find yourself in, can give you the solution and the strength to come out of it, then quite naturally an intense aspiration awakens in you, a consciousness that expresses itself as an opening. If you call, if you aspire and if you expect to get a response, you will quite naturally open yourself to the Grace.

And later — you must pay close attention to this (Mother puts her fingers on her lips) — the Grace will respond to you, the Grace will pull you out of your trouble, the Grace will give you the solution to your problem or help you to get out of your difficulty; but once you are free from the trouble and have come out of your difficulty, don’t forget that it is the Grace which pulled you out, and don’t think that it was you who did it. Because this, this is the important point. Most people, as soon as the difficulty is over, say, “After all, I pulled myself out of it rather well.”

There you are! And then you close the door — you lock it, don’t you — and you cannot receive anything any more. Once again you need some acute distress, some terrible difficulty for this kind of inner stupidity to give way and for you to realise once more that you can do nothing. Because it is only when you become aware that you are powerless that you begin to be a little bit open and plastic. But as long as you think that what you do depends on your own skill and your own capacity, well really, not only do you shut one door, but you shut lots of doors one after another, and you lock them. You shut yourself up in a fortress and nothing can enter there. That is the great drawback: one forgets very quickly, one is quite naturally satisfied with one’s own capacity.

The Grace and the sinner

How can [the Grace] help the sinner?

It doesn’t help the sinner to be a sinner! It helps the sinner to give up his sin; in other words it doesn’t reject the sinner, saying, “I won’t do anything for you.” It is always there even when he is sinning, to help him to come out of it, but not to keep on sinning.

There is a great difference between this and the idea that you are bad, so “I won’t look after you, I will cast you far from me, and whatever will happen to you will happen — I’m not bothered about it.” That is the general idea. One says, “God has rejected me.” No, it is not that. You may not be able to feel the Grace, but it will always be there, even with the worst of sinners, even with the worst of criminals, to help him to change, to be cured of his crime and healed of his sin, if he wants to be healed. It won’t reject him, but it won’t help him to do evil — it wouldn’t be the Grace any more.

Identify yourself with the Grace

It is the Divine Grace that makes you progress, and with the Divine Grace you feel the Divine Joy. But instead of identifying with the Grace that makes you progress, you identify yourself with the ugly thing you want to get rid of — so naturally you feel like that and suffer.

This is an experiment you can make if you are just a little bit conscious. There is something in you that you don’t want, something bad; for one reason or another you don’t want it, you want to uproot it. Well, if you identify yourself even a little with that thing, you feel the pain of the extraction. If on the contrary, you identify yourself with the Divine Force that comes to free you, you feel the joy of the Divine Grace and you experience the delight of the progress you have made.

All this is a sure sign for you, a sure indication of what you identify yourself with. If you are identified with the forces from below, you suffer; if you are identified with the forces from above, you are happy.

27. Create Your Own Atmosphere

Bad thoughts

Sri Aurobindo says that all that one thinks one is, one can become by the very fact of thinking it. This awareness of the fact that all that one thinks, one can be, is a very important key to the development of the being, not only from the standpoint of the possibilities of the being but also from the standpoint of control and of the choice of what one will be, of what one wants to be.

This makes us understand the necessity of not admitting into ourselves any thought that destroys aspiration or the creation of the truth of our being. It reveals the considerable importance of not allowing what one doesn’t want to be or doesn’t want to do to formulate itself into thought in the being. Because to think these things is already the beginning of their realisation. From every point of view it is bad to concentrate on what one doesn’t want, on what one has to reject, on what one refuses to be, because the very fact of thinking about the things one wants to reject gives them a sort of right to exist in oneself. This explains the considerable importance of not allowing destructive suggestions — thoughts of ill-will, hatred, destruction — to enter, because merely to think of them is already to give them a power of realisation.

Sri Aurobindo says that thought is not the cause of existence but is an intermediary; it is the instrument that gives form to life, to creation. And the control of this instrument is of the utmost importance if one wants disorder and all that is anti-divine to disappear from creation.

One should not admit bad thoughts into oneself under the pretext that they are merely thoughts — they are tools of execution. And one should not allow them to exist in oneself if one does not want them to do their work of destruction.

Unpleasant thoughts

Mother, at times unpleasant thoughts come and disturb us. How can we get rid of them?

There are several ways. Generally — it depends on people — generally the easiest way is to think of something else, in other words, to concentrate one’s attention on something that has nothing to do with that thought, no relation with that thought, such as reading or work — usually something creative, some creative work. For example, those who write, while they are writing — let us simply take a novelist: while he is writing, all other thoughts are gone because he is concentrated on what he is doing. When he has finished writing, other thoughts will return if he has no control. But precisely when one is attacked by a thought, one can try to do some creative work; for example, the scientist can do some research work, a special study to discover something, something that is very absorbing. This is the easiest way.

Of course, those who have begun to control their thought can make a movement of rejection — to push out the thought as one would push out a physical object. But that is more difficult and calls for a much greater mastery. If one can manage it, it is more active effective, in the sense that if you reject that movement, that thought, if you chase it away effectively and constantly or almost repeatedly, finally it no longer comes, while in the other case it can always return. That makes two ways.

The third way is to be able to bring down a light from above, a light sufficiently great that it will be a “denial” in a deeper sense. I mean that if the thought which comes is something obscure, especially if it comes from the subconscient or the inconscient and is sustained by instinct, if one can bring down from above the light of a true knowledge, a higher power, and put the light on that thought, one can dissolve it or enlighten it or transform it. This is the supreme method. It is a bit more difficult, but it can be done, and if one does it one is cured — not only does the thought stop coming, but the cause is removed.

The first step is to think of something else — but that way, well, it will be repeated indefinitely; the second is to fight; and the third is to transform. When one has reached the third step, not only is one cured but one has made a definitive progress.

Concentrate on what you want to be

Lest you get discouraged by your own faults, the Dhammapada gives you this solacing image: the purest lily can spring out of a heap of rubbish by the wayside. In other words, there is nothing so rotten that it cannot give birth to the purest realisation.

Whatever the past may be or whatever the errors committed or whatever the ignorance in which one may have lived, one carries deep within oneself the supreme purity that can translate itself into a marvellous realisation.

The whole point is to think of that, to concentrate on that, and not to concern yourself with all the obstacles and all the difficulties and all the hindrances. Concentrate exclusively on what you want to be. Forget as completely as possible what you don’t want to be.

Imagination

I say to you never be dejected and disappointed but let your imagination be always hopeful and joyously plastic to the stress of the higher Truth, so that the latter may find you full of the necessary formations to hold its creative light.

The imagination is like a knife which may be used for good or evil purposes. If you always dwell in the idea and feeling that you are going to be transformed, then you will help the process of the Yoga. If, on the contrary, you give in to dejection and bewail that you are not fit or that you are incapable of realisation, you poison your own being. It is just on account of this very important truth that I am so tirelessly insistent in telling you to let anything happen but for heaven’s sake, not to get depressed. Live rather in the constant hope and conviction that what we are doing will prove a success. In other words, let your imagination be moulded by your faith in Sri Aurobindo.

Imagination opens up the path

What is the function, the utility of the imagination?

If you know how to use it, as I have said, you can create for yourself your own inner and outer life; you can build your own existence with your imagination, if you know how to use it and have some power. In fact, it is an elementary way of creating, of forming things in the world. I have always felt that if one lacked the capacity of imagination, one would not make any progress. Your imagination always goes ahead of your life. When you think of yourself, you usually imagine what you would like to be, don’t you, and that goes ahead of you and you follow; then that continues to go ahead and you follow. Imagination opens up for you the path of realisation.

People who are not imaginative — it is very difficult to make them budge. They see only what is there in front of their nose, they feel only what they are at the moment, and they cannot move forward because they are blocked by the immediate thing.

The atmosphere you create

You carry with you, around you, in you the atmosphere created by your actions, and if what you do is beautiful and harmonious and good, then your atmosphere is beautiful and harmonious and good — whereas if you live in base selfishness, unscrupulous self-interest, pitiless ill will, then that is what you will breathe at every moment of your life, and that is misery, that is perpetual uneasiness, that is hopeless ugliness of being ugly. [. . .]

When you are good, when you are generous, noble, disinterested, kind, you create in and around you a certain atmosphere, and that atmosphere is a kind of luminous ease. You breathe, you blossom like a flower in the sun, you no longer retreat painfully into yourself, bitter, revolted, miserable. Spontaneously, naturally, the atmosphere becomes luminous and the air you breathe is full of happiness. And that is the air you breath in your body and also outside your body, in the waking state and in the state of sleep, in life and in the passage beyond life, beyond earthly life until your new life.

Every wrong action has on the consciousness the effect of a withering wind or a freezing cold or burning flames that consume you. Every good and kind deed brings light, restfulness, joy, the sunshine in which flowers bloom.

Create your own atmosphere

Sweet Mother, here it is written: “A spiritual atmosphere is more important than outer conditions; if one can get that and also create one’s own spiritual air to breathe in and live in it, that is the true condition of progress.”

Bases of Yoga — Sri Aurobindo

How can one get that and also create one’s true spiritual atmosphere?

[. . .] It is precisely by inner discipline. You can create your own atmosphere by controlling your thoughts, turning them exclusively towards sadhana, by controlling your actions, turning them exclusively towards sadhana, abolishing all and all useless ordinary outer activity, living a more intense inner life, and separating yourself from ordinary things, ordinary thoughts, ordinary reactions, ordinary actions. Then you create a kind of atmosphere around you.

For example, instead of reading any odd thing and chit-chatting and doing just anything, if you read only what helps you to follow the path, if you act only according to what can lead you to the divine realisation, if you get rid of all the desires and impulses in you that are turned towards outer things, if you calm your mental being, if you quiet your vital being, if you close yourself off to suggestions coming from outside and become indifferent to the actions of the people around you, you create such a spiritual atmosphere that nothing can touch it, and it no longer depends at all on circumstances or on who you live with or the conditions you live in, because you are enclosed in your own spiritual atmosphere.

And that is how you acquire it — by turning your attention solely towards spiritual life, by reading only what can help you in spiritual life, by doing only what leads you to spiritual life, and so on. Then you create your own atmosphere. But naturally, if you open all the doors, listen to what people tell you, follow the advice of this one and the inspirations of that one and are full of desires for outside things, then you cannot create a spiritual atmosphere for yourself. You will have an ordinary atmosphere like everybody else.

28. Educating the Mind

Do many different things

Sweet Mother, at school it is not possible to take many subjects. We have to specialise.

Yes, yes! I have heard this, especially from your teachers. I don’t agree, and I know it very well; it is being repeated to me all the time: if one wants to do something properly, one has to specialise. It is the same thing for sports too. It is the same thing for everything in life. It is said and it is repeated, and there are people who can prove it: to do something well, one has to specialise; one must do that and concentrate. If one wants to be a good philosopher, one must only do philosophy; if one wants to be a good chemist, one must only do chemistry; and if one wants to be a good tennis player, one must only play tennis. That is not what I think, that’s all I can say.

My experience is different. I believe there are general faculties and it is much more important to acquire those than to specialise. Unless, of course, it is like Monsieur and Madame Curie who wanted to develop a certain science, to find something new; then of course they were obliged to concentrate on their science. But still, that was only until they had found it; once they had found it, nothing stopped them from widening their mind.

This is something I have heard from my earliest childhood, and I believe our great grandparents heard the same thing, and it has always been preached that if you want to succeed in something you must do that thing alone. As for me, I was scolded all the time because I did so many different things! And I was always told that I would never be good at anything. I studied, I did painting, I did music, and then I was busy with other things as well. And I was told that my music wouldn’t be up to much, my painting wouldn’t be worth anything and my studies would be absolutely incomplete. It is probably quite true, but even so, I have found that it had its advantages — precisely the advantages I am talking about — widening one’s mind and understanding, making them supple.

Education and freedom

You see, the great thing here is that the principle of education is a principle of freedom and, to put it briefly, the whole life here is organised around the greatest possible freedom of movement; that is to say, the rules, regulations and restrictions are reduced to an absolute minimum. If you compare this with the way parents usually educate their children — with a constant “Don’t do that; you can’t do that”, “Do this”, “Go do that”, and, well, orders and rules — there is considerable difference.

In schools and colleges everywhere, the rules are infinitely more strict than those we have here. And since we don’t impose on you the absolute condition of making progress, you make it when it pleases you, you don’t make it when it doesn’t please you, and then you take things as easy as you can.

There are some — I don’t say this absolutely — there are some who try, but they try spontaneously. Naturally, from the spiritual point of view, this is infinitely more valuable. The progress you make will be because you feel in yourself the need to make it, because it is an urge that pushes you forward spontaneously, and not because it is something imposed on you like a rule. This progress, from the spiritual viewpoint, is infinitely superior. All in you that tries to do things well, tries to do it spontaneously and sincerely; it is something that comes from inside you and not because you have been promised rewards if you do well and punishments if you do poorly. Our system is not based on that.

It may be that at a certain moment something comes along to make you feel that your effort has been appreciated, but the effort was not made with that in view; in other words, no promises are made beforehand nor are they balanced by equivalent punishments. That is not the practice here. Generally things are arranged in such a way that the satisfaction of having done well seems like the best of rewards and when you do poorly you punish yourself in the sense that you feel miserable and unhappy and uneasy — and that is really the most concrete punishment you have. And so all these movements, from the viewpoint of inner spiritual growth, have an infinitely greater value than when they are the result of an external rule.

Mental culture

You have a mental instrument with many possibilities, many faculties, but they are latent faculties and possibilities and they need special education, special training so that they can express the Light. This much is certain: in ordinary life the brain is the seat of the outer expression of the mental consciousness. Well, if this brain is not developed, if it is crude, then there are countless things that cannot be expressed because they don’t have the instrument required to express them. It would be like a musical instrument with most of its notes missing — it creates a rough approximation but not something precise.

Mental culture, intellectual education, changes the constitution of your brain, enlarges it considerably, and as a result its expression becomes more complete and precise. This is not necessary if you want to escape from life and go off into inexpressible heights, but if you want to express your experience in outer life, it is indispensable.

Mother, you said that if one overdevelops these faculties of analysis, deduction, etc., too much, they become obstacles to spiritual experiences, no?

If they are not controlled, not mastered, yes. But not necessarily, not necessarily. It may make control of them a bit more difficult, because naturally it is more difficult to master an individualised being than a crude one. With completer individualisation the ego becomes more crystallised and also more self-satisfied, doesn’t it? But supposing one has overcome this difficulty, well, in a highly developed individual the result is infinitely superior to the result obtained in a crude and uneducated nature. I am not saying that the process of transformation, or rather of consecration, is not more difficult, but once it is achieved the result is far superior. This can be compared quite well to two musical instruments, one having a certain number of notes and the other having ten times as many. Well, it may be easier to play an instrument with four or five notes, but the music one can play on a complete keyboard is obviously far superior.

One could even compare this to an orchestra more than to a simple instrument. A human being, a fully developed human individual, is a lot like one of those tremendous orchestras which has hundreds of players. It is obviously very difficult to control and conduct them, but the result can be marvellous.

Organise your life

There are people who cannot keep a cupboard or drawer in order. They may be in a room that looks quite neat and tidy on the outside; then you open a drawer or you open a cupboard — it is like a battlefield! Everything is pell-mell. You find everything in a jumble; nothing is arranged. These are people with a poor little head in which ideas lie in the same state as their material objects. They haven’t organised their ideas, they haven’t put them in order — they live in cerebral confusion.

And this is a sure sign; I have never met an exception to this rule. People who don’t know how to keep their things in order — the ideas in their heads are in disorder, always. They exist together, the most contradictory ideas are mixed together, and not through a higher synthesis (don’t you believe it), but simply because of disorder and an inability to organise their ideas. You don’t have to speak even for ten minutes with people if you can manage to enter their room and open the drawers of their tables and look in their cupboard — you know what state they are in, don’t you?

[. . .] One has to organise one’s belongings and at the same time organise one’s ideas in the same way, and one must know exactly where things are and be able to go straight to them because one’s organisation is logical. It is your own logic — it may not be your neighbour’s logic, not necessarily, it is your own logic — but since your organisation is logical, you know exactly where a thing is and, as I said, if that thing is not in place, you know it immediately. And those who can do that are generally those who can put their ideas in order, and they can also organise their character and finally they can control their movements.

And then, if you make some progress, you succeed in governing your physical life, you begin to get control over your physical movements. If you take life in that way, it becomes really interesting. If you live in confusion, in disorder, in inner and outer chaos where everything is mixed up and you are not conscious of anything, much less in control of things, that is not living.

Form your own way of thinking

It takes years of work, organisation, selection and construction, very attentive, very careful, very reasonable, very coherent, to succeed simply in forming, oh, simply this little thing, your own way of thinking!

You believe you have your own way of thinking. Not at all. It depends totally on the people you talk to or the books you have read or the mood you are in. It also depends on whether you have good or bad digestion, it depends on whether you are shut up in a room without proper ventilation or in the open air, it depends on whether you have a beautiful landscape before you, it depends on whether there is sun or rain! You are not aware of it, but you think all sorts of things that are completely different depending on a heap of things that have nothing to do with you!

And for this thinking to become coordinated, coherent, logical, a long and meticulous effort is necessary.

Work crystallises your thought

The usefulness of work is nothing but this: to crystallise this mental power. Because unless you put what you learn into practice through work or deeper study, at least half of what you learn will be lost, will disappear with time. But even so, it will leave you with one thing — the capacity to crystallise your thought, to make something clear out of it, something precise, exact and organised. And that is the true utility of work: to organise your cerebral capacity. [. . .]

I am going to explain this to you. When you have understood something, it forms a little crystal in you, like a shining little point. And when you have many, many, many of these points in you, then you will begin to be intelligent. This is the utility of work, not simply to stuff your head with a heap of things that take you nowhere. [. . .]

Basically, from a general point of view, especially an intellectual viewpoint, the most important thing is the capacity of attention and concentration — that is what you must work to develop. From the viewpoint of action, physical action, it is the will: you must work to build up an unshakable will. From the intellectual viewpoint you must work to build up a power of concentration that nothing can shake. And if you have both concentration and will, you will be a genius and nothing will resist you.

Remembering what you learn

The true way to retain [what you learn] is to understand; it is not to learn by heart. When you learn something by heart, it is mechanical, isn’t it? But after a time it will be erased unless you use it constantly. For example, you are made to learn the multiplication tables by heart; if you constantly use them, you will remember them, but if by chance you remain for years without using them, you will forget them completely. But if you understand the principle, you will be able to remember them. You see, the principle of multiplication, if you understand it in a mathematical sense, you will no longer need to learn it by heart; the operation will be done quite naturally in your brain. And it is the same for everything.

If you understand the thing, if you grasp the meaning of the principle behind it, you can remember it indefinitely, for hundreds of years if you live hundreds of years; while for something you have learned by heart, after a time the brain cells multiply, get replaced, and some things get erased. [. . .] In one’s life there are things that remain like landmarks; there are others that get totally erased, to the extent that one doesn’t remember them at all; they are gone. But there are things that are truly like milestones, like landmarks in life. Well, these things were conscious experiences — in other words they were understood — so the experience remains indefinitely, and with just a tiny movement of consciousness you can bring it back again. But something that is learned mechanically — I tell you, unless you use it daily, it gets erased.

Knowledge is within you

There is one thing certain about the mind and its workings; it is that you can understand only what you already know in your own inner self. What strikes you in a book is what you have already experienced deep within you. Men find a book or a teaching very wonderful and often you hear them say, “That is exactly what I myself feel and know, but I could not bring it out or express it as well as it is expressed here.” When men come across a book of true knowledge, each finds himself there, and at every new reading he discovers things that he did not see in it at first; it opens to him each time a new field of knowledge that had till then escaped him in it. But that is because it reaches layers of knowledge that were waiting for expression in the subconscious in him; the expression has now been given by somebody else and much better than he could himself have done it. But, once expressed, he immediately recognises it and feels that it is the truth. The knowledge that seems to come to you from outside is only an occasion for bringing out the knowledge that is within you.

Reading that awakens

For those who are searching, who are feeling their way, who are rather unsure, who are pulled this way and that, who have many interests in life, who are unsteady, unstable in their will for realisation, it is very good to read because it puts you in touch with the subject, it gives you an interest in the thing.

[. . .] There is a kind of reading that awakens in you an interest in the thing and it can help you in the initial search. Ordinarily, even if one has had experiences, one needs to have a connection of thought or idea with the thing so that the effort may be crystallised more consciously.

But the more you know, the more you must be absolutely sincere in your experience; that is, you must not use the formative power of your mind to imagine and so create the experience in yourself. From the standpoint of orientation it can be useful, but from the standpoint of experience it takes away from it its dynamic value; it lacks the intensity of an experience that comes because the moral and spiritual conditions needed for it to occur have been created. There is the whole mental conditioning that is added and it takes away something of the spontaneity. All this is a matter of proportion. Each one must find the exact amount he needs — how much reading, how much meditation, how much concentration, how much . . . It is different for each one.

Reading Sri Aurobindo’s writings

In a general and almost absolute way, if you truly wish to benefit from these readings, as from all of Sri Aurobindo’s writings, the best method is this: having gathered your consciousness and focussed your attention on what you are reading, you must establish a minimum degree of mental tranquillity — if you can obtain perfect silence, that is the best thing — and reach a state of mental stillness, of cerebral stillness I might say, so that your attention becomes as calm and still as a mirror, like the surface of absolutely still water. Then what you have read passes through the surface and penetrates deep into your being, where it is received with a minimum of distortion. And afterwards, sometimes long afterwards, it wells up again from the depths and manifests in the brain with its full power of comprehension, not as knowledge acquired from outside but as a light one carried within.

In this way the faculty of understanding is at its highest, whereas if your mind remains restless while you read and immediately tries to understand what it is reading, you lose more than three-quarters of the force, the knowledge and the truth contained in the words. And if you are able to stop asking questions until this process of absorption and inner awakening is completed, well, you will find that you have far fewer things to ask because you will have a better understanding of what you have read.

Listening to music

Mother, when one listens to music, how should one truly listen to it?

For that, if you can be completely silent, you see, silent and attentive, as though you were simply an instrument which has to record it — you don’t move, you are simply something that listens — if you can be absolutely silent, absolutely motionless like that, then the thing enters. And it is only later, some time later, that you can notice the effect — either what it meant or the impression it made on you.

But the best way of listening is this: it is to be like a still mirror and very concentrated, very silent. In fact, we see people who truly love music . . . I have seen musicians listening to music — musicians, composers or performers who truly love music — I have seen them listening to music; they sit completely still, they are like that, they don’t move at all. Everything, everything is like that. And if one can stop thinking, it is very good; then one benefits fully. It is one of the means of inner opening and one of the most powerful.

29. Beauty and Art

The sense of beauty

To do this yoga, one must have, at least a little, the sense of beauty. If one does not have it, one misses one of the most important aspects of the physical world.

There is this beauty, this dignity of soul — it is something I am very sensitive to; it is something that moves me and evokes in me a great respect, always.

Yes, this beauty of soul that is visible in the face, this kind of dignity, this harmony of integral realisation. When the soul becomes visible in the physical, it gives this dignity, this beauty, this majesty — the majesty that comes from being the Tabernacle. Then even things that have no particular beauty put on a sense of eternal beauty, of the eternal beauty.

I have seen, like this, faces that pass from one extreme to the other in a flash. Someone has this kind of beauty and harmony, this sense of divine dignity in the body; then suddenly there arises the perception of an obstacle, a difficulty and a sense of defect, of unworthiness — and then there comes a sudden deformation in the appearance, a kind of decomposition of the features! And yet it was the same face. It was like a flash of lightning, and it was dreadful. A kind of hideousness of torment and degradation — what has been translated in religions as “the torment of sin” — it really gives you a face! Even features that are beautiful in themselves become hideous. And it was the same features, the same person.

Then I saw how horrible the sense of sin is, how much it belongs to the world of falsehood.

A sense of gratitude

This kind of sense of gratitude that the Divine exists, this feeling of marvellous thankfulness that truly fills you with sublime joy because the Divine does exist, because there is something in the universe that is the Divine, because it is not just this monstrosity we see, because the Divine is there, because the Divine exists. And each time the least little thing puts you in contact with the sublime reality of this divine existence, either directly or indirectly, the heart is filled with such an intense joy, such a marvellous joy, with a gratitude that has a savour more delightful than anything else at all.

There is nothing that gives you a joy equal to that of gratitude. One hears a bird sing, one sees a lovely flower, one looks at a little child, one observes an act of generosity, one reads a beautiful sentence, one looks at a setting sun — whatever it is, suddenly it comes to you, this kind of emotion, but so deep and so intense, that the world manifests the Divine, that there is something behind the world that is the Divine.

True art

True art is intended to express the beautiful, but in close intimacy with the universal movement. The greatest nations and the most cultured races have always considered art as a part of life and made it subservient to life. Art was like that in Japan in its best moments; it was like that in all the best moments in the history of art. But most artists are like parasites growing on the margin of life; they do not seem to know that art should be the expression of the Divine in life and through life. In everything, everywhere, in all relations truth must be brought out in its all-embracing rhythm and every movement of life should be an expression of beauty and harmony. Skill is not art, talent is not art. Art is a living harmony and beauty that must be expressed in all the movements of existence. This manifestation of beauty and harmony is part of the Divine realisation upon earth, perhaps even its greatest part.

Art and yoga

Does the work of an artist improve if he does yoga?

The discipline of Art has at its centre the same principle as the discipline of Yoga. In both the aim is to become more and more conscious; in both you have to learn to see and feel something that is beyond the ordinary vision and feeling, to go within and bring out from there deeper things. Painters have to follow a discipline for the growth of the consciousness of their eyes, which in itself is almost a Yoga. If they are true artists and try to see beyond and use their art for the expression of the inner world, they grow in consciousness by this concentration, which is not other than the consciousness given by Yoga. Why then should not Yogic consciousness be a help to artistic creation? I have known some who had very little training and skill and yet through Yoga acquired a fine capacity in writing and painting.

A living art

When one paints a picture or composes music or writes poetry, each one has his own way of expression. Every painter, every musician, every poet, every sculptor has, or ought to have, a unique, personal contact with the Divine, and through the work that is his speciality, the art he has mastered, he should express that contact in his own way, with his own words, with his own colours. For him, instead of copying the

outer form of Nature, he takes these forms as the covering of something else — of his relationship with the deeper realities behind, to be precise — and he tries to make the forms express it. Instead of merely imitating what he sees, he tries to make them speak of what is behind them, and this is what makes all the difference between a living work of art and merely a flat copy of Nature.

Tell a beautiful story

Imaginary stories put one in contact with life, with truth, don’t they?

Not always! And what does “contact with truth” mean? There is truth in a grain of sand — it means nothing.

Don’t you think there are enough ugly things in the world without giving an image of them in books? This is something that always used to surprise me, even when I was a child. Life is so ugly, so full of mean, miserable things, sometimes even repulsive things. What is the point of imagining even worse things than are already there? If you imagined something more beautiful, a lovelier life, that would be worth the trouble. People who take pleasure in writing about ugly things show a great poverty of mind; it is always the sign of a poverty of mind. It is infinitely more difficult to tell a story that is beautiful from beginning to end than to write a story ending in tragedy or catastrophe. Many authors, if they had to write a story that ends happily, in a beautiful way, would not be able to do it — they don’t have enough imagination for that. Very few stories have an uplifting ending; almost all of them end with a failure, for a very simple reason: it is much easier to fall than to rise. It is much harder to end one’s story on a note of grandeur and splendour, to make one’s hero a genius seeking to surpass himself, because for that one must be a genius oneself, and that is not given to everybody.

30. Success and Happiness

The materialism of modern times

At that time, the time of the Buddha, to live a spiritual life was a joy, a blessing, a state of great happiness that freed you from all the troubles of the world, all the sufferings, all the cares, making you happy, satisfied, contented.

It is the materialism of modern times that has turned spiritual effort into a hard struggle and sacrifice, a painful renunciation of all the so-called joys of life.

This insistence on the exclusive reality of the physical world, of physical pleasures, physical joys, physical possessions, is the result of the whole materialistic tendency of human civilisation. It was unthinkable in ancient times. On the contrary, withdrawal, concentration, liberation from all material cares, consecration to spiritual joy, that was indeed happiness.

From this point of view it is quite obvious that humanity is far from having progressed; and those who are born into the world in the centres of materialistic civilisation have in their subconscient this horrible notion that only material realities are real and that to be concerned with non-material things represents a marvellous spirit of sacrifice, an effort almost sublime. Not to be preoccupied from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn with all the little physical satisfactions, all the physical pleasures, physical sensations, physical concerns, is to bear evidence of a remarkable spirit.

Esau and Jacob

I don’t know how many of you have read the Bible; it is not very entertaining to read, and besides it is very long. But still, in the Bible there is a story I have always liked very much. There were two brothers, Esau and Jacob, if I am not mistaken. Well, Esau was very hungry — this is the story, you see; I believe he was a hunter or something; anyway, the story goes like this — he came back home very hungry, and he told Jacob he was very hungry. And he was so hungry that he said to him, “Listen, if you give me your bowl of stew” (Jacob had prepared some stew), “if you give me your bowl of stew I will give you my birthright.” You see, one can understand the story quite superficially, but it has a very deep meaning: the birthright is the right of being the son of God. And so he was quite ready to give up his divine right because he was hungry, for a concrete, material thing, for food. This is a very old story, but it is eternally true.

The price of success

You should not judge things by outer success or apparent defeat. We may say — and this is generally what always happens — we could say that the Divine gives what one desires, and of all lessons this is the best! Because if your desire is unconscious, obscure, egoistic, you increase the unconsciousness, the obscurity and the egoism in yourself; in other words, it takes you farther and farther from truth, from consciousness and from happiness. It takes you far from the Divine. And for the Divine, of course, only one thing is true — the divine consciousness, the divine union. And each time you put material things in front, you become more and more materialistic and go farther and farther from full success.

But for the Truth, that success is a terrible defeat. You have exchanged truth for falsehood!

To judge from appearances and apparent success is truly an act of complete ignorance. Even for the most hardened man, the man for whom everything has apparently been successful, even for him there is always a counter-effect. And this kind of hardening of the being which takes place, this veil which is formed — a thicker and thicker veil between the outer consciousness and the inner truth — one day or another becomes altogether intolerable. It is usually paid for very dearly, this outer success.

(Mother’s voice becomes extremely deep.) One must be very great, very pure, one must have a very high and very disinterested spiritual consciousness in order to be successful without being affected by it. Nothing is more difficult than being successful. This is indeed the true test of life!

When you don’t succeed, naturally you reflect, you go inside yourself and look there for consolation for your outer failure. And to those who have a flame in them — if the Divine really wants to help them, if they are mature enough to be helped, if they are ready to follow the path — blows will come one after another because it helps! This is the most powerful help, the most direct and effective help. If you succeed, be on guard; ask yourself, “At what price, at what cost have I bought success? I hope it is not a step towards…”

There are those who have gone beyond this, those who are conscious of their soul, those who have given themselves entirely, those who, as I said, are absolutely pure and disinterested and can succeed without it affecting them or touching them; well then, that is different. But one must be very high to be able to bear success. And after all, it is perhaps the final test that the Divine gives to someone: “Now you are noble, you are disinterested, you no longer have egoism, you belong only to me — I am going to make you triumph; let us see if you will bear the impact.

A perfect equality

When things happen that are not what we expect, not what we hope for, not what we want, things that are contrary to our desires, we call them misfortunes in our ignorance and we lament. But if we were to become a little wiser and observe the deeper consequences of these same events, we would find that they are leading us rapidly towards the Divine, towards the Beloved; whereas easy and pleasant circumstances encourage us to dally on the path, to stop along the way to pluck those flowers of pleasure that present themselves to us, flowers that we are too weak or not sincere enough to reject resolutely so that our march forward is not delayed.

One must already be very strong, very far along the way, to be able to face success and the little enjoyments it brings without giving way. Those who can do this, those who are strong, do not run after success; they do not seek it and they accept it with indifference, for they know and appreciate the value of the blows given by unhappiness and misfortune.

But ultimately the true attitude, the sign and proof that we are near the goal, is a perfect equality that enables us to accept success and failure, fortune and misfortune, happiness and sorrow with the same quiet joy, for all these things become marvellous gifts that the Lord in His infinite solicitude showers on us.

31. Wealth and Possessions

A perfect gift

What you are, give that; what you have, give that, and your gift will be perfect; from the spiritual point of view it will be perfect. This does not depend on how much wealth you have or the number of capacities in your nature; it depends on the perfection of your gift, in other words, the completeness of your gift.

I remember having read, in a book of Indian legends, a story like this. There was a very poor, very old woman who had nothing, who was quite destitute, who lived in a miserable little hut, and she had been given a fruit. It was a mango. She had eaten half of it and kept the other half for the next day, because it was something so wonderful that she did not often happen to get it — a mango. And then when night fell, someone knocked at the rickety door and asked for hospitality. And this someone came in and told her he wanted shelter and was hungry. So she said to him, “Well, I have no fire to warm you, I have no blanket to cover you, but I have half a mango left; that is all I have, if you want it; I have eaten half of it.” And it turned out that this someone was Shiva, and she was filled with an inner glory, for she had made a perfect gift of herself and all she had.

I read that, I found it magnificent. Well, yes, this is very descriptive — this is it, this is exactly it.

The rich man, or even people who are quite well-off and have all sorts of things in life, give to the Divine what they have in surplus — for that is the usual gesture: one has a little more money than one needs, one has a few more things than one needs, and so one generously gives that to the Divine. It is better than giving nothing. But even if this “little more” than what they need represents lakhs of rupees, the gift is less perfect than the gift of half a mango. For it is not by the quantity or the quality that it is measured: it is by the sincerity of the giving and the absoluteness of the giving.

The best use of money

It is infinitely more difficult to be good, to be wise, to be intelligent and generous — to be more generous, yes — when one is rich than when one is poor. I have known many people in many countries, and the most generous people I have met in those countries were always the poorest. And as soon as one’s pockets are full, one is caught by a kind of illness, which is a miserly attachment to money. I assure you it is a curse.

So the first thing to do when one has money is to give it. But as it is said that it should not be given without discernment, don’t go and give it like those who practise philanthropy, because that way of giving fills them with a sense of their goodness, their generosity, their importance. One must act in a sattwic way, which means to make the best possible use of it. So each one must find, in his highest consciousness, the best possible use of the money he has. And truly, money has no value unless it circulates. For each and every one, money is valuable only when one has spent it. [. . .]

Wealth is a force — I told you this once already — a force of Nature; and it should be a means of circulation, a power in movement, as flowing water is a power in movement. It is something that can be used to produce, to organise. It is a convenient means, because truly it is only a means of making things circulate fully and freely.

This force should be in the hands of those who know how to make the best possible use of it, in other words, as I said at the beginning, people who have abolished in themselves or somehow got rid of all personal desires and attachments. To this must be added a vision vast enough to understand the needs of the earth, a knowledge complete enough to know how to organise all these needs and make use of this force through these means.

If, in addition to this, these beings have a higher spiritual knowledge, then they can use this force to gradually build up on earth that which will be capable of manifesting the Divine Power, Force and Grace.

Money belongs to no one

The conflict about money is what might be called a “conflict of ownership”, but the truth is that money belongs to no one. This idea of possessing money has warped everything. Money should not be a possession; just like power, it is a means of action which is given to you, but you must use it according to . . . what we might call the “will of the Donor”, that is, in an impersonal and enlightened way. If you are a good instrument for distributing and using money, then it comes to you, and it comes to you according to your capacity to use it as it is meant to be used. That is the true mechanism.

The true attitude is this: money is a force intended for the work on earth, the work needed to prepare the earth to receive and manifest the divine forces, and the power to use it should come into the hands of those who have the clearest and truest and most comprehensive vision.

The value of production

It is said, “One cannot make a heap without making a hole” — one cannot enrich oneself without impoverishing someone else. Is it true?

It is not correct. If one produces something, instead of an impoverishment it is an enrichment; one simply puts into circulation in the world something else having a value equivalent to that of money.

But to say that “one cannot make a heap without making a hole” is true of those who speculate, who do business on the stock exchange or in finance — there it is true. It is impossible to have financial success in affairs of pure speculation without its it being detrimental to someone else. But it is limited to that. Otherwise a producer does not make a hole if he heaps up money in exchange for what he produces. To be sure there is the question of the value of the production, but if the production is truly an addition to the overall human wealth, it does not make a hole, it increases this wealth. And in another way, the same thing holds true not only in the material field but for art, for literature, for science, for any kind of production at all.

Have respect for things

How should we use things?

Ah, this is . . . First of all, to use things with an understanding of their true utility, with a knowledge of their real function, with the utmost care that they don’t get spoiled, and with the least confusion.

I will give you an example: you have a pair of scissors. There are scissors of all kinds: there are scissors for cutting paper, and there are scissors for cutting thread . . . Now if you have the pair of scissors you need, use it for the thing it is made for. But I know people who, when they have a pair of scissors, use it without discrimination to cut anything at all; they cut little silk threads and they also try to cut wire with it, or else they use it as a tool to open tin cans, you see; whatever they need an instrument for, they get hold of their scissors and use them. So naturally, after a little while they come to me again and say, “Oh, my pair of scissors is spoiled, I want another pair.” And they are extremely surprised when I tell them, “No, you won’t get another pair, because you spoiled this pair, because you used it badly.” This is just one example; I could give many others. People use something that gets dirty and becomes spoiled by being dirty; then they either forget to clean it or they neglect to clean it because it takes time.

There is a kind of respect for the object one has, which ought to make one treat it with a lot of consideration and try to preserve it as long as possible, not because one is attached to it and desires it, but because an object is something worthy of respect which has sometimes taken a lot of effort and work to produce, and therefore it should be treated with the respect due to the work and effort put into it. . . .

Many times I have said, “No, use what you have; try to make the best possible use of it. Don’t throw things away needlessly, don’t ask for them needlessly. Try to manage with what you have, putting into it all the care, all the order, all the effort needed, avoiding confusion.”

32. Food

The problem of food

If one wishes to pass from this ordinary life to a higher one, the problem [of food] begins to get interesting; and after coming to a higher life, if one tries to prepare oneself for the transformation, then it becomes very important. Because there are definitely foods that help the body to become subtle and others that keep it in a state of animality. But it is only at that time that it becomes very important, not before; and before reaching that moment, there are many other things to do.

It would certainly be better to purify your mind and purify your vital before thinking of purifying your body. Because even if you take all possible precautions and physically live being careful to absorb only what will help to make your body subtle, if your mind and vital remain in a state of desire, unconsciousness, darkness, passion and all the rest, it won’t be of any use at all. Your body will simply become weak, disconnected from your inner life, and one fine day it will fall ill.

You should begin from within — I told you this once before. You should begin from above; you should first purify the higher and then purify the lower. I am not saying that you should indulge in all sorts of degrading things with the body — that’s not what I am saying to you. Don’t take it as a suggestion to lose control over your desires! It’s not that at all. But what I mean is, don’t try to be an angel in your body if you’re not already just a little bit of an angel in your mind and vital; for that would disconnect you in a different way than the usual one, but not a better way. We said the other day that what is most important is to keep your balance. Well, to keep your balance everything must progress at the same time. You must not leave one part of your being in darkness and try to bring the other part to the light. You must take great care not to leave any corner dark.

Eat reasonably

The best thing is not to think about food, but to regulate your life automatically enough that there isn’t any need to think about eating. You eat at fixed hours, you eat reasonably, you don’t even need to think of the food when you are taking it; you should eat calmly, that’s all, quietly, with concentration, and when you are not eating you should not think of it at all. You should not eat too much, because then you will have to think about your digestion, and it will be most unpleasant for you and make you waste a lot of time. You should eat just . . . you should put an end to all desire, all attraction, all movements of the vital — because when you eat simply because the body needs to eat, your body will tell you quite precisely and exactly when it has had enough. You see, when you are not motivated by vital desire or by mental ideas, you grasp this with certainty. “It is enough now,” the body says, “I don’t want any more.” So you stop.

Offer your food to the Divine

As long as our body is obliged to take in foreign matter in order to subsist, it will absorb at the same time a considerable amount of inert and unconscious forces, or forces with a rather undesirable consciousness, and this alchemy must take place inside the body. We were talking about the kinds of consciousness we absorb with food, but there is also the unconsciousness that is absorbed with food — a lot of it. And that is why in many Yogas one was advised to offer the Divine what one was going to eat before eating it (Mother makes a gesture of offering, hands joined, palms open). It consists in calling the Divine into the food before eating it. One offers it to Him — that is, one puts it in contact with the Divine, so that it may be under the divine influence when one eats it. This is very useful, it is very good. If one knows how to do it, it is very useful; it considerably reduces the work of inner transformation that must be done.

33. Smoking, Drinking and Drugs

Life without drugs

Some people believe that smoking, drinking and so on will form part of the life of tomorrow. It is their affair. If they want to go through that experience, let them do it. They will realise that they are imprisoning themselves in their own desires. But anyway, I am not a moralist, not at all, not at all, not at all. It is their affair. But the Ashram is not the place for it. Thank God, here in the Ashram we have learned that life is something else. True life is not the satisfaction of desires.

I can affirm from experience that all the experiences brought about by drugs, all that contact with the invisible world, you can have in a much better way, a more conscious and controlled way, without drugs. Only you have to control yourself — it is harder than swallowing poison. But I am not going to preach.

Drinking and drugs

There are human beings who also indulge in vice — one vice or another, such as alcoholic drinks or drug injections — and who know very well that it is leading them to destruction and death, but they choose to do it knowingly.

They have no control over themselves.

There is always a moment when one has control. And if one had never once said “Yes”, if one had not made the decision, one would not have done it.

There is not a single human being who lacks the energy and ability to resist something imposed on him, if he is left free to do so. When people tell you, “I am unable to do otherwise”, it is because in the depths of their hearts they don’t want to do otherwise; they have accepted to be slaves of their vice. There is a moment when one accepts.

Tobacco and alcohol

Why do tobacco and alcohol destroy the memory and will?

Why? Because they do so. There is no moral reason — it is a fact. There is a poison in alcohol, there is a poison in tobacco, and that poison goes into the cells and damages them.

Alcohol is never expelled, so to say; it accumulates in a certain part of the brain, and then, after the accumulation, those cells no longer function at all. Some people even go mad because of it — it is called delirium tremens, the result of having drunk too much alcohol which is not absorbed, but which remains like that concentrated in the brain. And it is so radical that . . .There are provinces in France, for example, which produce wine; the wine has a very low percentage of alcohol — I believe it is four or five per cent — a very low percentage. And the people there, because they make it, drink the wine as one drinks water. They drink their wine pure and after a time they become ill — they have disorders of the brain. I knew people like this: the brain had become disordered, it no longer functioned.

And as for tobacco — nicotine is a very serious poison; it is a poison that destroys cells. I have said that it is a slow poison because you don’t feel it immediately, except when you smoke for the first time and it makes you very ill. And that ought to make you understand that it should not be done.

But people are so stupid that they think it is a weakness, so they continue smoking until they get used to the poison. And then the body no longer reacts, it allows itself to be destroyed without reacting: you get rid of the reaction.

It is the same thing physically as it is morally. When you do something you should not do and your psychic tells you in its quiet little voice not to do it, and then you do it anyway, after a while it will no longer say anything to you, and you will no longer have any inner reactions at all to your bad actions, because you have refused to listen to the voice when it spoke to you. And then, naturally, you go from bad to worse and fall into a hole.

Well, for tobacco it is the same thing: the first time the body reacts violently, it vomits, it tells you, “I don’t want it! Not at any price!” But you compel it with your mental and vital stupidity, you force it to do it; and then gradually it no longer reacts, it lets itself be poisoned until it decomposes. The functioning deteriorates, the nerves get affected: they no longer transmit the will because they are affected, they are poisoned. They no longer have the power to transmit the will. And in the end people begin to tremble, they have nervous movements. There are quite a few, one need not go very far to find them. And they are like that only because they have committed excesses: they drank and they smoked. And when they pick up an object they shake (gesture). That’s what one gets from doing it.

34. Sex and Love

The sexual impulse

Humanity has the sexual impulse in a way that is in a way altogether natural, spontaneous and, I would say, legitimate. This impulse will naturally and spontaneously disappear with animality. Many other things will also disappear — for example the need to eat and perhaps also the need to sleep in the way we sleep now. But the most conscious impulse in a higher humanity, the impulse that has continued to be a source of. . . bliss is a big word, but joy, delight, is certainly sexual activity, and that will have absolutely no reason to exist in the functioning of Nature when the need to create in that way no longer exists. As a result, the capacity to relate to the joy of life will rise by one step or be oriented differently.

But what the ancient spiritual aspirants attempted on principle — sexual negation — is an absurd thing, because that must be only for those who have gone beyond this stage and no longer have any animality in them. And it must drop off naturally, effortlessly and without struggle. To make it a centre of conflict and struggle is ridiculous. It is only when the consciousness ceases to be human that it drops off quite naturally.

Here there is a transition that can be somewhat difficult, because beings in transition are always in an unstable state of equilibrium. But within oneself there is a kind of flame and a need which makes it not painful — it is not a painful effort, it is something one can do with a smile. But to seek to impose it on those who are not ready for this transition is absurd.

This is common sense. They are human, and they should not pretend that they are not.

It is only when the impulse spontaneously becomes impossible for you, when you feel that it is something painful and contrary to your deeper need that it becomes easy; then, well, you cut these bonds outwardly and it is ended.

Sex and yoga

There is another danger; it is in connection with the sex impulses. Yoga in its process of purification will lay bare and throw up all hidden impulses and desires in you. And you must learn not to hide things nor leave them aside, you have to face them and conquer and remould them. The first effect of Yoga, however, is to take away the mental control, and the hungers that lie dormant are suddenly set free, they rush up and invade the being. So long as this mental control has not been replaced by the Divine control, there is a period of transition when your sincerity and surrender will be put to the test. The strength of such impulses as those of sex lies usually in the fact that people take too much notice of them; they protest too vehemently and endeavour to control them by coercion, hold them within and sit upon them. But the more you think of a thing and say, “I don’t want it, I don’t want it”, the more you are bound to it. What you should do is to keep the thing away from you, to dissociate from it, take as little notice of it as possible and, even if you happen to think of it, remain indifferent and unconcerned.

The impulses and desires that come up by the pressure of Yoga should be faced in a spirit of detachment and serenity, as something foreign to yourself or belonging to the outside world. They should be offered to the Divine, so that the Divine may take them up and transmute them.

If you have once opened yourself to the Divine, if the power of the Divine has once come down into you and yet you try to keep to the old forces, you prepare troubles and difficulties and dangers for yourself. You must be vigilant and see that you do not use the Divine as a cloak for the satisfaction of your desires.

Know how to love

It is said that to become conscious of Divine Love all other love must be abandoned. What is the best way of rejecting the other love that clings so obstinately (laughter) and does not easily leave us?

To go through — ah!

To go through, to see what is behind it, not to stop at the appearance, not to be satisfied with the outer form, to look for the principle that is behind this love, and not be satisfied until you have found the origin of the feeling in yourself. Then the outer form will crumble of itself and you will be in contact with the Divine Love that is behind all things.

This is the best way.

To want to reject the one in order to find the other is very difficult — it is almost impossible. Because human nature is so limited, so full of contradictions and so exclusive in its movements that if one wants to reject love in its lower form — that is, human love as human beings experience it — and if one makes an inner effort to reject it, one usually rejects the entire capacity to feel love and becomes like a stone. And then, sometimes, one has to wait for years or centuries before the capacity to receive and express love reawakens in oneself. Therefore, when love comes, in whatever form it may be,

the best way is to try to pierce through its outer appearance and find the divine principle that is behind it and gives it existence. Naturally, this way is full of snares and difficulties, but it is more effective. In other words, instead of ceasing to love because one loves wrongly, one must stop loving wrongly and want to love in the right way.

For example, the love between human beings in all its forms — the love of parents for children, of children for parents, of brothers and sisters, of friends and lovers — is all tainted with ignorance, selfishness and all the other defects that are the ordinary human defects. So instead of completely ceasing to love — which is very difficult besides, as Sri Aurobindo says, and would simply dry up the heart and serve no end — one must learn to love in the right way: to love with devotion, with self-giving, with self-abnegation, and to struggle not against love itself but against its distorted forms, against all forms of monopoly, attachment, possessiveness, jealousy and all the feelings that accompany these principal things. Not to want to possess or dominate, and not to want to impose one’s will, one’s whims, one’s desires. Not to want to take, to receive, but to give. Not to insist on the other person’s response, but to be satisfied with one’s own love. Not to seek one’s personal interest and joy and the fulfilment of one’s personal desire, but to be satisfied with giving one’s love and affection without demanding a response. Simply to be happy to love, nothing more.

If you do that, you have taken a great step forward, and through this attitude you can gradually advance further in the feeling itself, and one day you will realise that love is not something personal, that love is a universal divine feeling which manifests through you more or less well, but which in its essence is something divine.

The first step is to stop being selfish. For everyone it is the same thing, not only for those who want to do Yoga but also in ordinary life: if you want to know how to love, you must not love yourself first and above all selfishly; you must give yourself to the object of your love without demanding anything in return. This discipline is elementary in order to exceed yourself and lead a life that is not altogether gross.

As for Yoga we may add something else: it is, as I said in the beginning, the will to pierce through this limited human form of love and discover the principle of Divine Love which is behind it. Then you are sure to get a result. This is better than drying up the heart. It is a bit more difficult, perhaps, but it is better in every way. For in this way, instead of egoistically making others suffer, well, you can let them go on quietly in their own movement and simply make an effort to transform yourself without imposing your will on others, which even in ordinary life is a step towards something higher and a little bit more harmonious.

To know what love is

If you want to know what love is, you must love the Divine; then there is a chance of knowing what love is. I have said that one grows into the likeness of what one loves. So if one loves the Divine, then gradually, through this effort of love, one grows more and more like the Divine, and then one can identify with the Divine Love and know what it is; otherwise one cannot.

Inevitably, the love between two human beings, whatever it may be, is always made of ignorance, lack of understanding, weakness and this terrible sense of separation. It is as though you wanted to enter the presence of a unique Splendour and the first thing you did was to put a curtain, two curtains, three curtains between yourself and that Splendour, and then you are quite surprised to have only a vague impression of it and not the thing itself. The first thing to do is to remove the curtains, to take them all away, to pass through and find yourself in the presence of the Splendour — then you will know what that Splendour is. But if you put veil after veil between it and yourself, you will never see it. You may have a vague sort of feeling — “Oh, there is something” — but that’s all.

Divine Love is always there

Divine Love is there in all its intensity, a formidable power, but most people — ninety-nine percent — feel nothing at all! What they feel is solely in proportion to what they are, to their capacity to receive. Imagine, for instance, that you are bathing in an atmosphere all vibrant with Divine Love — you are not aware of it at all! Sometimes, rarely, for a few seconds there is suddenly the feeling of “something”. Then you say, “Oh, Divine Love came to me!” What a joke! It is simply that for some reason or other you were a tiny little bit open, so you felt it. But it is there, always, like the Divine Consciousness. It is the same thing: it is there all the time, in its full intensity, but one is not even aware of it.

Or else in an intermittent way, one is suddenly in a good state, so one feels something and says, “Oh, the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Love are turned towards me, are directed towards me!” It is not at all like that. One has just a tiny little opening, very tiny, at times like a pinhead, and naturally it rushes in. Because it is like an active atmosphere: as soon as there is a possibility of being received, it is received. But this is true for all divine things. They are there, only one doesn’t receive them because one is closed up, blocked, one is busy with other things most of the time. Most of the time one is full of oneself, and since one is full of oneself, there is no place for anything else. One is very actively (laughing) concerned with other things. One is full of things — there is no place for the Divine.

But He is there.

35. Sleep

Before going to sleep

One thing you can do with complete safety is this: before going to sleep, concentrate, relax all the tension in your physical being. Try — in your body, that is — try to make the body like a rag on the bed, so that it is no longer something with twitches and cramps; relax it completely as though it were something like a rag. And then the vital: calm it, calm it as much as you can, make it as quiet and peaceful as possible. And then the mind too — the mind, try to keep it like that, inactive. You have to put on the brain a force of great peace, of great calm, of silence if possible, and not pursue ideas actively, not make any effort, nothing, nothing. You must relax all movement there too, but relax it in a kind of silence and calm as great as possible.

Once you have done all this, you may add either a prayer or an aspiration, according to your nature, asking for consciousness, for peace, and asking to be protected against any adverse forces during sleep — to be in a concentration of quiet aspiration and a state of protection. Ask the Grace to watch over your sleep, and then go to sleep. This is the way to sleep in the best possible conditions. What happens afterwards depends on your inner impulses, but if you do this persistently, night after night, night after night, after some time it will have its effect.

36. Illness and Death

Preventing illness

Sweet Mother, when one sees an illness coming, how can one prevent it?

Ah! First of all, you must not want it, and nothing in the body must want it. You must have a very strong will not to be ill. This is the first condition.

The second condition is to call the light — a light of equilibrium, a light of peace, quietness and balance — and push it into all the cells of the body, enjoining them not to be afraid. That is the second condition.

First, not to want to be ill, and then not to be afraid of illness. You must neither attract it nor tremble before it. You must not want illness at all. But you must not want it because you fear it. You must not be afraid; you must have a calm certitude and complete trust in the power of the Grace to shelter you from everything. And then think of something else, don’t bother about it any more. When you have done these two things — refusing the illness with all your will, infusing a trust that completely eliminates fear in the cells of the body, and then concerning yourself with something else, no longer thinking about the illness, forgetting that it exists — well, if you know how to do this, you can even be in contact with people who have contagious diseases and still you won’t catch them. But you must know how to do this.

Many people say, “Oh, see here, I’m not afraid,” They are not afraid in their mind — their mind is not afraid, it is strong; it is not afraid, but the body trembles, and one is not aware of it because the trembling goes on in the cells of the body. It trembles with terrible anxiety and that is what attracts the illness. That is where you must put the Force and the quietude of perfect peace and absolute trust in the Grace.

The moment of death

Once one has left his body, whether one is conscious or unconscious, developed or undeveloped, one always goes to the same domain, to begin with — unless one is a Yogi who can do what he likes with himself; but that, well, that is so rare that one cannot consider it. All men, when they leave their body, are flung into a domain of the lower vital which has nothing especially pleasant about it. [. . .]

The most important thing in this case is the last state of consciousness one was in while both were joined together, when the vital being and the body were still united. So the last state of consciousness — one may say the last desire or the last hope or the last aspiration — has a tremendous importance for the first encounter one has with the invisible world. And here the responsibility of the people around the dying person is much greater than they think. If they can help him to enter his highest consciousness, they will render him the greatest service they can. But usually what they do is to cling to him as much as they can and pull him towards themselves with a fierce selfishness; what happens then is that instead of being able to get into a slightly higher consciousness which will protect him in his departure, he is gripped by material things and it is a terrible inner struggle to free himself both from his body and from his attachments.

37. Morality and Spiritual Life

Spirituality and morality

[There is a] great difference between spirituality and morality, two things that are constantly confused with each other. The spiritual life, the life of Yoga, has for its object to grow into the divine consciousness and for its result to purify, intensify, glorify and perfect what is in you. It makes you a power for manifesting the Divine; it raises the character of each personality to its full value and brings it to its maximum expression; for this is part of the Divine plan. Morality proceeds by a mental construction and, with a few ideas of what is good and what is not, sets up an ideal type into which all must force themselves. [. . .] All are to be moulded according to its single ideal pattern, everybody is to be made uniformly and faultlessly the same. It is because morality is of this rigid unreal nature that it is in its principle and its working the contrary of the spiritual life. The spiritual life reveals the one essence in all, but reveals too its infinite diversity; it works for diversity in oneness and for perfection in that diversity. Morality lifts up one artificial standard contrary to the variety of life and the freedom of the spirit. Creating something mental, fixed and limited, it asks all to conform to it. All must labour to acquire the same qualities and the same ideal nature. Morality is not divine or of the Divine; it is of man and human.

Morality takes for its basic element a fixed division into the good and the bad; but this is an arbitrary notion. It takes things that are relative and tries to impose them as absolutes; for this good and this bad differ in differing climates and times, epochs and countries. The moral notion goes so far as to say that there are good desires and bad desires and calls on you to accept the one and reject the other. But the spiritual life demands that you should reject desire altogether. Its law is that you must cast aside all movements that draw you away from the Divine. You must reject them, not because they are bad in themselves, — for they may be good for another man or in another sphere, — but because they belong to the impulses or forces that, being unillumined and ignorant, stand in the way of your approach to the Divine. All desires, whether good or bad, come within this description, for desire itself arises from an unillumined vital being and its ignorance. On the other hand you must accept all movements that bring you into contact with the Divine. But you accept them, not because they are good in themselves, but because they bring you to the Divine. Accept then all that takes you to the Divine. Reject all that takes you away from it, but do not say that this is good and that is bad or try to impose your outlook on others; for, what you term bad may be the very thing that is good for your neighbour who is not trying to realise the Divine Life.

Hasn’t morality helped?

Sweet Mother, hasn’t morality helped us to increase our consciousness?

That depends on people. There are people who are helped by it, there are people who are not helped at all.

Morality is something quite artificial and arbitrary and in most cases, among the best, it hinders the true spiritual effort by giving one a sort of moral satisfaction that one is on the right path and one is an honest man and does one’s duty and fulfils all the moral obligations of life. Then one is so self-satisfied that one no longer moves or makes any progress.

It is very difficult for a virtuous man to enter the path of God; this has been said very often, but it is altogether true, for he is very self-satisfied, he thinks he has realised what he is supposed to realise, he no longer has the aspiration or even the elementary humility that makes one want to progress. You see, one who is known here as a sattwic man is usually very comfortably settled in his own virtue and never thinks of coming out of it. So that puts you a million miles away from divine realisation.

What really helps, until you have found the inner light, is to make for yourself a certain number of rules which naturally should not be too rigid and fixed, but still should be precise enough to prevent you from completely straying from the right path or making irreparable mistakes — mistakes with consequences you suffer from your whole life.

To do that, it is good to establish a certain number of principles in yourself — but for each one they must be in harmony with his nature. If you adopt a collective social rule, you immediately make yourself a slave of this social rule, and that prevents you almost radically from making any effort for transformation.

Serving humanity

Why do you want to serve humanity — what is your idea? It is ambition, it is to become a great man among men. This is difficult to understand? I can see that!

The Divine is everywhere, so if one serves humanity, one serves the Divine. Isn’t that so?

That is marvellous! In that case, the clearest thing to say is, “The Divine is in me. If I serve myself, I am also serving the Divine!” (Laughter) The fact is, the Divine is everywhere; the Divine will do His own work very well without you.

I see quite clearly that you don’t understand. But really, if you understand that the Divine is there, in everything, then what are you meddling in by serving humanity? To serve humanity you should know better than the Divine what ought to be done for it. Do you know better than the Divine how to serve it?

The Divine is everywhere. Yes, things don’t seem to be divine. As for myself, I see only one solution: if you want to help humanity, there is only one thing to do, and that is to take yourself as completely as possible and offer yourself to the Divine. That is the solution. Because in that way, at least the material reality you represent will be able to become a little more like the Divine.

We are told that the Divine is in all things. Why don’t things change? Because the Divine gets no response — nothing responds to the Divine. You have to search the depths of your consciousness to see Him.

What do you want to do to serve humanity? Give food to the poor? You can feed millions of them, but that won’t be a solution; the problem will remain the same. Give new and better living conditions to men? The Divine is in them: how is it that things don’t change? The Divine must know better than you do the condition of humanity.

What are you? You represent only a little bit of consciousness and a little bit of matter; that is what you call “me”. If you want to help humanity, the world or the universe, the only thing to do is to give that little bit entirely to the Divine. Why is the world not divine? It is obvious that the world is not in order. So the only solution to the problem is to give what belongs to you. Give it totally, entirely to the Divine, not only for yourself but for humanity, for the universe. There is no better solution.

How do you want to help humanity? You don’t even know what it needs. Perhaps you know even less what power you are serving. How can you change anything, really, without having changed yourself? In any case, you are not powerful enough to do it. How do you expect to help someone else if you don’t have a higher consciousness than he has? It is such a childish idea! It is children who say, “I am opening a boarding-house, I am going to build a nursery, give soup to the poor, expound some knowledge, spread some religion.” It is only because you think that you are better than others; you think you know better than they do what they should be or do. That’s what it is, serving humanity! You want to continue all that? It has not changed things much. It is not to help humanity that one opens a hospital or a school. [. . .]

You can open millions of hospitals — it won’t prevent people from getting ill. On the contrary, they will have every support and encouragement to fall ill. We are steeped in ideas of this kind. This puts your consciousness at ease: “I have come to the world, I must help others.” You tell yourself, “How unselfish I am! I am going to help humanity.” All that is nothing but egoism.

In fact, the first human being that concerns you is yourself. You want to alleviate suffering, but unless you can change the capacity for suffering into a certainty of being happy, the world won’t change, it will always remain the same. We turn in a circle; one civilisation follows another, one catastrophe follows another, but the thing does not change because something is missing, something is not there — it is consciousness. That’s all.

38. Religion and Yoga

The religious mind

Religion belongs to the higher mind of humanity. It is the effort of man’s higher mind to approach, as far as lies in its power, something beyond it, something to which humanity gives the name God or Spirit or Truth or Faith or Knowledge or the Infinite, some kind of Absolute, which the human mind cannot reach and yet tries to reach. Religion may be divine in its ultimate origin; in its actual nature it is not divine but human. In truth we should speak rather of religions than of religion; for the religions made by man are many. [. . .]

The first and principle article of these established and formal religions runs always, “Mine is the supreme, the only truth, all others are in falsehood or inferior.” For without this fundamental dogma, established credal religions could not have existed. If you do not believe and proclaim that you alone possess the one or the highest truth, you will not be able to impress people and make them flock to you.

This attitude is natural to the religious mind; but it is just that which makes religion stand in the way of the spiritual life. The articles and dogmas of a religion are mind-made things and, if you cling to them and shut yourself up in a code of life made out for you, you do not know and cannot know the truth of the Spirit that lies beyond all codes and dogmas, wide and large and free. When you stop at a religious creed and tie yourself in it, taking it for the only truth in the world, you stop the advance and widening of your inner soul. But if you look at religion from another angle, it need not always be an obstacle to all men. If you regard it as one of the higher activities of humanity and if you can see in it the aspirations of man without ignoring the imperfection of all man-made things, it may well be a kind of help for you to approach the spiritual life. Taking it up in a serious and earnest spirit, you can try to find out what truth is there, what aspiration lies hidden in it, what divine inspiration has undergone transformation and deformation here by the human mind and a human organisation, and with an appropriate mental stand you can get religion even as it is to throw some light on your way and to lend some support to your spiritual endeavour.

Yoga and religion

Sweet Mother, what is the difference between Yoga and religion?

Ah, my child! It is as though you were asking me the difference between a dog and a cat!

(Long silence)

Imagine someone who somehow or other has heard of something like the Divine or has had a personal feeling that something like that exists, and he begins to make all kinds of efforts — efforts of will, efforts of discipline, efforts of concentration — all kinds of efforts to find this Divine, to discover what He is, to become conscious of Him and unite with Him. Well, this person is doing Yoga.

Now if this person has noted down all the methods he has used and constructs a fixed system and if he establishes all that he has discovered as absolute laws — for example, he says, “The Divine is like this; to find the Divine you have to do this, you have to make this gesture, take this attitude, perform this ceremony. And you have to admit that this is the truth; you have to say, ‘I recognise that this is the Truth and I subscribe to it completely, and your method is the only right one, the only one that exists.’” If all that is written down, organised, arranged into fixed laws and ceremonies, it becomes a religion.

Religious exercises

Sweet Mother, are religious exercises very important for those who have an ordinary consciousness?

Religious exercises? I don’t know! What do you mean by religious exercises?

Japa, etc.

Oh, those things! If it helps you, it is fine. If it doesn’t help you, it is just. . . It is one of those completely relative things; it is completely relative. Its value lies only in the effect it has on you and the extent to which you believe in it. If it helps you to concentrate, it is all right. The ordinary consciousness always does this simply through superstition, with the idea that “If I do this, if I go to the temple or church once a week, if I offer prayers, something very good will happen to me.” This is the superstition, spread all over the world, but it has no value from the spiritual point of view.

Sri Aurobindo’s teaching

Many people say that Sri Aurobindo’s teaching is a new religion. Would you say it is a religion?

People who say that are fools who don’t even know what they are talking about. You only have to read what Sri Aurobindo has written to know that it is impossible to base a religion on his works, because he presents each problem, each question in all its aspects, showing the truth contained in each way of seeing things, and he explains that in order to arrive at the Truth, you must work out a synthesis that goes beyond all mental conceptions and rise into a transcendence beyond thought. [. . .]

I repeat that when we speak of Sri Aurobindo there can be no question of a teaching nor even of a revelation, but of an action from the Supreme. No religion can be founded on that.

But men are so foolish that they can change anything into a religion, so great is their need of a fixed framework for their narrow thought and limited action. They don’t feel secure unless they can assert that this is true and that is not true — but such an assertion becomes impossible for anyone who has read and understood what Sri Aurobindo has written. Religion and Yoga do not belong to the same plane of being, and spiritual life can exist in all its purity only when it is free from all mental dogma.

Spiritual life, East and West

Whatever difference there is between the West and the East in relation to spiritual life lies not in the inner being or nature, which is an invariable and constant thing, but in the mental habits, in the modes of outer expression and presentation which are the result of education and environment and other external conditions. All people, whether occidental or oriental, are alike in their deepest feelings; they are different in their way of thinking. Sincerity, for example, is a quality which is the same everywhere. Those who are sincere, to whichever nation they belong, are all sincere in the same way. Only the forms given to this sincerity vary. The mind works in different ways in different people, but the heart is the same everywhere; the heart is a much truer reality, and the differences belong to the superficial parts. As soon as you go deep enough, you meet something that is one in all. All meet in the Divine.

39. Words, Opinions, Judgments

The power of mantra

When you are playing and suddenly you become aware that something is going wrong — you are making mistakes, you are inattentive, sometimes opposing currents conflict with what you are doing — if you develop the habit of calling, automatically at that moment, such as with a mantra, of repeating a word, it has an extraordinary effect. You choose your mantra, or rather one day it comes to you spontaneously in a moment of difficulty. At a time when things are very difficult, when you feel a kind of anguish, a sort of anxiety, when you don’t know what is going to happen, suddenly it springs up in you, the word springs up in you. For each one it may be different. But if you notice this and each time you face a difficulty you repeat it, it becomes irresistible. For instance, if you feel you are about to fall ill, if you feel you are doing badly what you are doing, if you feel something bad is going to attack you, then . . .

But it must be spontaneous in your being, it has to spring up in you without your needing to think about it: you choose your mantra because it is a spontaneous expression of your aspiration; it may be one word, two or three words, a sentence — that depends on each one — but it must be a sound that awakens in you a certain condition. Then, when you have that, I assure you that you can go through anything without difficulty. [. . .]

It is best when the word comes to you spontaneously.

You call, yes, in a moment of great difficulty (mental, vital, physical, emotional, whatever it may be), and suddenly it springs up in you, two or three words, like magical words. You must remember them and make a habit of repeating them at moments when difficulties come. If you make a habit, one day it will come to you spontaneously — when the difficulty comes, at the same time the mantra will come. Then you will see that the results are wonderful. But it must not be an artificial thing or something you arbitrarily decide: “I will use these words”; nor should somebody else tell you, “Oh, you know, this is very good!” — it may be very good for him, but not for everyone.

Say only the indispensable words

I suggest that every one of you should try — oh, not for long, just for an hour a day — to say nothing but the absolutely indispensable words. Not one word more, not one word less. Take one hour of your life, the one most convenient for you, and during that time observe yourself attentively and say only the absolutely indispensable words.

At the beginning, the first difficulty will be to know what is absolutely indispensable and what is not. This is already a study, and every day you will do it better.

Next, you will see that as long as you say nothing, it is not very difficult to remain absolutely silent, but as soon as you begin to speak, always or almost always you say two or three or ten or twenty useless words which it was not at all necessary to say.

Gossiping degrades you

There is a state in which a simple conversation that obliges you to remain on the level of ordinary life gives you a headache, turns your stomach and, if it continues, may give you a fever. I am speaking, of course, about the gossipy kind of conversation. I think that with a few exceptions everyone indulges in this exercise and talks about things one should keep quiet about or chit-chats about other things. It becomes so natural that you are not troubled by it. But if you continue like that, you completely prevent your consciousness from rising higher; you bind yourself with iron chains to the ordinary consciousness and the work in the subconscious is not done or has not even begun. Those who want to rise higher already have enough difficulties without looking for encouragement outside.

Naturally, the effort to keep the consciousness at a high level is tiring at the beginning, like the exercises you do to develop your muscles. But you don’t give up gymnastics because of that! So mentally you must do the same thing: you must not allow your mind to stoop low. Gossiping degrades you and if you want to do Yoga, you must stop doing it, that’s all.

Widening your thought

You are with someone. That person tells you something, you say the opposite, as it usually happens, simply through a spirit of contradiction, and you start arguing. Naturally, you never come to anything but a quarrel if you are ill-tempered. But instead of doing that, instead of holding on to your own ideas or words, if you tell yourself, “Wait a bit, I am going to try and see why he said that to me. Yes, why did he say that?” And you concentrate: “Why, why, why?” You stand there, just like that, trying. The other person continues speaking, doesn’t he, and he is very happy too because you are no longer contradicting him! He talks profusely and is sure he has convinced you. Then you concentrate more and more on what he is saying, and you have the feeling that gradually, through his words, you are entering his mind. When you enter his mind, suddenly you enter into his way of thinking, and then, just imagine, you understand why he is talking like that to you! And then, if you have a fairly quick intelligence and you put what you have just come to understand beside what you already knew, you have the two ways of thinking together, and so you can find the truth reconciling both. And here you have truly made some progress. And this the best way of widening your thought.

If you are beginning an argument, keep quiet immediately, right away. You must keep quiet, say nothing at all, and then try to see the thing as the other person sees it — that won’t make you forget your own way of seeing it, not at all, but you will be able to put the two ways of seeing together — and you will have truly made some progress, some real progress.

The affairs of others

What is the best attitude? Is it an attitude of intervention or an attitude of non-interference? Which is better?

Ah, that’s just it, to intervene you must be sure that you are right; you must be sure that your vision of things is higher, better or truer than the vision of the other person or persons. So it is always wiser not to intervene — people intervene without rhyme or reason, simply because they are in the habit of giving their opinion to others.

Even when you have the vision of the true thing, it is rarely wise to intervene. It only becomes indispensable when someone wants to do something which will necessarily lead to catastrophe. Even then, intervention (smiling) is not always very effective.

Basically, intervention is justified only when you are absolutely sure that you not only have the vision of truth but also a clear vision of the consequences. To intervene in someone else’s actions, one must be a prophet — a prophet, and a prophet with total goodness and compassion. One must even have a vision of the consequences that the intervention will have on the destiny of the other person. People are always giving each other advice: “Do this, don’t do that.” I see that they have no idea how much confusion they create, how much they increase confusion and disorder. And sometimes they hinder the normal development of the individual.

I think that opinions are always dangerous and most of the time absolutely worthless.

You should not meddle with someone else’s affairs unless, to begin with, you are infinitely wiser than he is — of course, you always think you are wiser! But I mean in an objective way and not according to your own opinion — unless you see further and better and you are yourself above passions, desires and blind reactions. You yourself must be above all these things in order to have the right to intervene in someone else’s life — even when he asks you to do so. And when he does not, it is simply meddling with something that is none of your business.

Judging others

Unless your vision is constantly the vision of the Divine in all things, you have not only no right but also no capacity to judge the condition that others are in. And to pronounce a judgment on someone without having this vision spontaneously, effortlessly, is precisely an example of the mental presumptuousness Sri Aurobindo always spoke of. And you will find that one who has the vision, one who has the consciousness and is able to see the truth in all things, never feels the need to judge anything whatever. Because he understands everything and knows everything. Therefore, once and for all, you must tell yourself that the moment you begin to judge things, persons, circumstances, you are in the most total human ignorance.

In short, one could put it like this: when one understands, one no longer judges; and when one judges, it means that one doesn’t know.

Passing judgments

The conclusion is always the same: the only true attitude is one of humility, of silent respect before what one doesn’t know, and of inner aspiration to come out of one’s ignorance. One of the things that would make humanity progress the most would be for it to respect what it doesn’t know, to willingly acknowledge that it doesn’t know and therefore is unable to judge. We constantly do just the opposite. We pass final judgments on things about which we have no knowledge whatever, and we say with a peremptory air, “This is possible, that is impossible”, when we don’t even know what we are talking about. And we put on superior airs because we doubt things about which we never had any knowledge.

Men believe that doubt is a sign of superiority, whereas it is really a sign of inferiority. Scepticism and doubt are two of the greatest obstacles to progress; they add presumptuousness to ignorance.

40. Virtue and Purity

The Sun of divine laughter

“If men took life less seriously, they would very soon make it more perfect. God never takes His works seriously; therefore one looks out on this wonderful Universe.”

Thoughts and Aphorisms — Sri Aurobindo

One might ask how taking things seriously has prevented life from being more perfect.

Virtue has always spent its time eliminating whatever it found bad in life, and if all the virtues of the various countries of the world were put together, very few things would remain in existence.

Virtue claims to seek perfection, but perfection is a totality, so the two movements contradict each other. A virtue that eliminates, reduces, fixes limits, and a perfection that accepts everything, rejects nothing but puts each thing in its place, obviously cannot agree.

Taking life seriously usually consists of two movements: the first is to give importance to things that probably have none, and the second is to want life to be reduced to a certain number of qualities that are considered pure and worthy of existence. In some people [. . .] this virtue becomes dry, arid, grey, aggressive, and it finds faults everywhere, in everything that is joyful, free and happy.

The only way to make life perfect — I mean life here on earth, of course — is to look at it from high enough above to see it as a whole, not only in its present totality but in the whole of the past, present and future: what it has been, what it is and what it will be. One must be able to see everything at once — because that is the only way to put everything in its place. Nothing can be eliminated, nothing should be eliminated, but each thing must be in its place in complete harmony with all the rest. And then all these things that seem so bad, so reprehensible, so unacceptable to the puritan mind, would become movements of delight and freedom in a totally divine life. And then nothing would prevent us from knowing, understanding, feeling and living this wonderful laughter of the Supreme who takes infinite delight in watching Himself live infinitely.

This delight, this wonderful laughter that dissolves every shadow, every pain, every suffering! You only have to go deep enough within yourself to find the inner Sun, to let yourself be flooded by it; and then there is nothing but a cascade of harmonious, luminous, sunlit laughter, which leaves no room for any shadow or pain. [. . .]

And this Sun, this Sun of divine laughter is at the centre of all things, the truth of all things. We must learn to see it, to feel it, to live it. And for that, let us avoid people who take life seriously; they are very boring people.

As soon as the atmosphere becomes grave you can be sure that something is wrong, that there is a troubling influence, an old habit trying to reassert itself, which should not be accepted. All this regret, all this remorse, the feeling of being unworthy, of being at fault — and then one step further and you have the sense of sin — oh! to me it all seems to belong to another age, an age of darkness.

But everything that persists, that tries to hang on and endure, all these prohibitions and this habit of cutting life in two, into small things and big things, the sacred and the profane — “What!” say these people who profess to follow a spiritual life, “how can you make such little things, such insignificant things the object of spiritual experience?”

And yet this is an experience that is becoming more and more concrete and real, even materially: it is not that there are some things where the Lord is and some things where He is not. The Lord is always there. He takes nothing seriously, everything amuses Him and He plays with you, if you know how to play. You don’t know how to play, people don’t know how to play, but how well He knows how to play! How well He plays! With everything, with the smallest things: you have some things to put on the table? Don’t feel that you have to think and arrange them, no, let’s play: let’s put this one here and that one there, and this one like that. And then another time it’s different again. What a nice game and such fun!

So it is agreed, we shall try to learn how to laugh with the Lord.

The need to be virtuous

Basically, this kind of will for purity, for good in men — which expresses itself in the ordinary mentality as the need to be virtuous — is the great obstacle to true self-giving. It is the origin of Falsehood and even more it is the very source of hypocrisy — the refusal to accept to take upon oneself one’s share of the burden of difficulties. [. ]

Do not try to appear virtuous. See how much you are united, one with all that is anti-divine. Take up your share of the burden, accept yourselves to be impure and false, and in that way you will be able to take up the Shadow and offer it. And to the extent that you are able to take it and offer it, things will change.

Do not try to be among the pure. Accept to be with those who are in darkness, and give it all with total love.

Total purity

Sweet Mother, to be pure means what?

What does it mean to be pure? One is truly perfectly pure only when the whole being, in all its elements and all its movements, consents fully, exclusively to the Divine Will. That is total purity. It does not depend on any moral or social law, any mental convention of any kind. It depends exclusively on this: when all the elements and all the movements of the being consent exclusively and totally to the Divine Will. [. . .] As soon as one speaks of these things, mental and moral conventions create a deformation in the consciousness. As soon as one speaks of purity, a moral monument comes to the front and it completely falsifies one’s conception. And note to be moral from the social point of view is infinitely easier than to be moral from the spiritual point of view. To be moral from the social point of view, one only has to be careful not to do anything that others disapprove of; that may be somewhat difficult, but still it is not impossible; and, as I said, one can be a monument of insincerity and impurity while doing it. Whereas to be pure from the spiritual point of view means having a vigilance, a consciousness, a sincerity that stands up to every test.

Now let me put you on your guard against [. . .] people who live in their vital consciousness and say, “I am above moral laws. I follow a higher law. I am free from all moral laws.” And they say this because they want to indulge in all kinds of licentiousness. These people, then, have a double impurity: they have spiritual impurity and in addition they have social impurity. And they usually have a very good opinion of themselves and assert their desire to live their life with unequalled impudence. But we don’t want these people. In general, the people I have found most difficult to convert are very respectable people. I am sorry, but I have had far more difficulty with respectable people than with those who were not, because they had such a good opinion of themselves that it was impossible to open them. But the true thing is difficult. That is, one must be very alert, very self-controlled, very patient and have unfailing goodwill. One must not forget to have a small dose of humility, a sufficient dose, and one must never be satisfied with the sincerity one has; one must always want more.

41. Freedom and Responsibility

The right to be free

Many times in his writings, particularly in The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo warns us against the imaginings of those who believe they can do sadhana without strict self-control and who heed all sorts of inspirations which lead them to a dangerous imbalance where all their repressed, hidden, secret desires come out into the open under the pretence of liberation from ordinary conventions and ordinary reason.

One can be free only by soaring to the heights, high above human passions. Only when one has achieved a higher, selfless freedom and done away with all desires and impulses does one have the right to be free.

But neither should people who are very reasonable, very moral according to ordinary social laws, think themselves wise, because their wisdom is an illusion and has no deeper truth.

One who would break the law must be above the law. One who would ignore conventions must be above conventions. One who would despise all rules must be above all rules. And the motive for this liberation must never be a personal, egoistic one — to satisfy an ambition or aggrandise one’s personality through a feeling of superiority, out of contempt for others, to set oneself above the herd and regard it with condescension. Be on your guard when you feel in yourself this sense of superiority and look down upon others ironically, as if to say, “I’m no longer made of such stuff.” That’s when you go off track and are in danger of falling into an abyss.

Freedom and morality

If anyone imagined that he could cross over to the other side without passing through this stage [of moral perfection], he would risk making a great mistake, and risk taking for perfect freedom a perfect weakness in regard to his lower nature.

It is almost impossible to pass from the mental being — even the most perfect and remarkable mental being — to the true spiritual life without having realised this ideal of moral perfection for a certain period of time, however brief it may be. Many people try to take a short-cut and they want to assert their inner freedom before having overcome all the weaknesses of their outer nature; they are in great danger of deluding themselves. True spiritual life, complete freedom, is something far higher than the highest moral realisations, but one must take care that this so-called freedom is not an indulgence and a contempt for all rules.

One must go higher, higher, always higher — nothing less than what the highest humanity has achieved.

One must be able to spontaneously be all that humanity has considered highest, most beautiful, most perfect, most disinterested, most comprehensive and best, before spreading one’s spiritual wings and regarding all that from above as something still belonging to the individual self, so that one can enter into the true spirituality, which is limitless and lives integrally in infinity and eternity.

Freedom and asceticism

To be free from all attachment does not mean running away from all occasion for attachment. All these people who assert their asceticism not only run away but warn others not to try! This seems so obvious to me. When you need to run away from something in order to avoid experiencing it, it means that you are not above it, you are still on the same level.

Anything that suppresses, diminishes or lessens cannot bring freedom. Freedom has to be experienced in the whole of life and in all sensations.

As a matter of fact I have made a whole series of studies on the subject, on the purely physical plane. In order to be above all possible error, we tend to eliminate any occasion for error. For example, if you don’t want to say any useless words, you stop speaking; people who take a vow of silence imagine that this is control of speech — it is not true! It is only eliminating the occasion for speech and thus for saying useless things. It is the same thing with food — to eat only what is necessary. [. . .] But the natural tendency is to fast — it is a mistake!

For fear of being mistaken in our actions, we stop doing anything at all; for fear of being mistaken in our speech, we stop speaking; for fear of eating for the pleasure of eating, we do not eat at all. This is not freedom, it is simply reducing the manifestation to a minimum; and the natural conclusion is Nirvana. But if the Lord wanted only Nirvana, nothing but Nirvana would exist! It is obvious that He conceives of the coexistence of all opposites, and that for Him this must be the beginning of a totality. So then obviously, if one feels meant for it, one can choose only one of His manifestations, namely the absence of manifestation. But it is still a limitation — and it is not the only way to find Him, far from it!

It is a very common tendency, which probably originates from an ancient suggestion or perhaps from some lack, some incapacity. Reduce, reduce, reduce your needs, reduce your activities, reduce your words, reduce your food, reduce your active life — and everything becomes so narrow. In your aspiration not to make any more mistakes, you eliminate any occasion for making them. It is not a cure.

But the other way is much, much more difficult.

(Silence)

No, the solution is to act only under the divine impulsion, to speak only under the divine impulsion, to eat only under the divine impulsion. This is a difficult thing to do, because of course you immediately confuse the divine impulsion with your personal impulses.

I suppose this was the idea of all the apostles of renunciation: to eliminate everything coming from outside or from below so that if something from above should manifest one would be in a condition to receive it. But from the collective point of view, this process could take thousands of years. From the individual point of view, it is possible; but then one must keep intact the aspiration to receive the true impulsion — not the aspiration for “complete liberation”, but the aspiration for active identification with the Supreme; this means, to want only what He wants, to do only what He wants, to exist by Him alone and in Him alone. So one can try the method of renunciation, but that is the way for one who wants to cut himself off from others. And in that case, can there be any integrality? It does not seem possible to me. To publically proclaim what one wants to do is a considerable help. It may give rise to objections, scorn, conflict, but this is largely compensated by public expectation, so to speak, by what others expect of you. This was surely the reason for those robes [of the sannyasins]: to let people know. Of course, that may bring you the contempt of certain people, and the bad will, but then there are those who feel that they should not interfere or bother about it — it is not their concern. I don’t know why, but it has always seemed to me like showing off; it may not be, and in some cases it is not, but all the same it is a way of saying to people, “See, this is what I am.” And as I say, it may help, but it has its drawbacks. It is still childishness.

All these things are means, stages, steps, but . . . true freedom is to be free of everything, including means.

(Silence)

It is a restriction, a constriction, whereas the True Thing is an opening, a widening, an identification with the whole.

When you reduce, reduce, reduce yourself, you do not have the feeling of losing yourself; it takes away the fear of losing yourself — you become something solid and compact. But if you choose the method of widening, the greatest possible widening, you must not be afraid of losing yourself.

It is much more difficult.

Freedom and service

Outwardly one cannot imagine how one can be free and in servitude at the same time, but there is an attitude that reconciles the two and makes it one of the happiest states of material existence.

Freedom is a kind of instinctive need, a necessity for the integral development of the being. In its essence it is a perfect realisation of the highest consciousness, it is the expression of oneness and of union with the Divine, it is the very sense of the Origin and the fulfilment. But because this One has manifested in the many, in the multiplicity, something had to serve as a link between the Origin and the manifestation, and the most perfect link one can conceive of is love. And what is the first gesture of love? To give oneself, to serve. What is its spontaneous, immediate, inevitable movement? To serve. To serve in a joyful, complete, total self-giving.

So in their purity, in their truth, these two things — freedom and service — far from being contradictory, are complementary. It is in perfect union with the supreme Reality that perfect freedom is found, because all ignorance, all unconsciousness is a bondage which makes one impotent, limited, incapable. The least ignorance in oneself is a limitation; one is no longer free. As long as there is an element of unconsciousness in the being, it is a limitation, a bondage. It is in perfect union with the supreme Reality that perfect freedom can exist. And how is one to realise this union if not through spontaneous self-giving — the gift of love. And as I said, the first gesture, the first expression of love is service.

[. . .] It is indeed love that leads to oneness, and it is oneness that is the true expression of freedom. So those who claim independence in the name of their right to freedom, turn their backs completely on this true freedom, because they deny love.

Freedom and surrender

What is remarkable is that when one is perfectly surrendered to the Divine one is perfectly free. And this is in fact the absolute condition for freedom: to belong to the Divine alone. You are free from the whole world because you belong to Him alone. And this surrender is the supreme liberation: you are also free from your little personal ego, and of all things that is the most difficult thing — and the happiest thing too, the only thing that can give you constant peace, continual joy and the feeling of infinite freedom from all that troubles you, belittles you, diminishes you, impoverishes you, all that can create in you the least anxiety, the slightest fear. You no longer fear anything, you are no longer afraid of anything; you are the supreme master of your destiny because it is the Divine who wills in you and guides everything. But this does not happen overnight. A little time is needed and a great deal of ardour in the will, not afraid of the effort and not discouraged when one doesn’t succeed, knowing that the victory is certain and that one must hold on till it comes. There you are.

42. Progress

Go farther

Always man takes upon his shoulders an interminable burden. He does not want to drop anything of the past and he stoops more and more under the weight of useless accumulation.

You have a guide for part of the way, but when you have travelled that part leave the road and the guide and go farther! This is something men find difficult to do. When they get hold of something that helps them, they cling to it, and then they don’t want to budge any more. Those who have progressed with the help of Christianity don’t want to give it up and they carry it on their shoulders; those who have progressed with the help of Buddhism don’t want to leave it and they carry it on their shoulders, and so this hampers the journey and one is indefinitely delayed.

Once you have passed a stage, let it drop, let it go! Go farther.

Get rid of all ties

If your aim is to be free, in the freedom of the Spirit, you must get rid of all the ties that are not the inner truth of your being, but come from the subconscious habits. If you wish to consecrate yourself entirely, absolutely and exclusively to the Divine, you must do it in all completeness; you must not leave bits of yourself tied here and there. [. . .]

When you come to the Yoga, you must be ready to have all your mental buildings and all your vital scaffoldings shattered to pieces. You must be prepared to be suspended in the air with nothing to support you except your faith. You will have to forget your past self and it clings altogether, to pluck it out of your consciousness and be born anew, free from every kind of bondage. Think not of what you were, but of what you aspire to be; be altogether in what you want to realise. Turn from your dead past and look straight towards the future. Your religion, country, family lie there; it is the DIVINE.

Mental formations

I don’t believe at all in limits that cannot be crossed.

But I see quite clearly the mental formations people have and also a kind of laziness in the face of the effort needed. And this laziness and these limits are like diseases. But they are curable diseases. If you are a normal person, well, provided you take the trouble and know the method, your capacity for growth is almost unlimited.

There is this idea that everyone belongs to a certain type, that, for example, the pine tree will never be an oak tree and the palm tree will never become wheat. That is obvious. But this, this is something else: it means that the truth of your being is not the truth of your neighbour’s being. But in the truth of your being, according to your own formation, your progress is almost unlimited. It is limited only by your conviction that it is limited and by your ignorance of the true process; otherwise. . .

There is nothing you cannot do if you know how to do it.

Preconceived ideas

The best thing one can do is not to take sides, not to have preconceived ideas or principles. Oh, the moral principles, the fixed rules of conduct, what one must do and what one must not do, and the preconceived ideas from the moral point of view, from the point of view of progress, and all the social and mental conventions — there is no worse obstacle than that! There are people, I know people who have lost decades overcoming just one of these mental constructions! . . .

If one can be like this, open, truly open in a simplicity, well, the simplicity that knows it is ignorant — like this (gesture upward, of self-abandon), ready to receive whatever comes — then something can happen.

And naturally, the thirst for progress, the thirst for knowledge, the thirst for transformation and, above all, the thirst for Love and Truth — if one keeps that, one goes faster. Truly a thirst, a need, a need.

All the rest has no importance, it is that which one needs.

The joy of progress

Above all, it is the will for progress and self-purification that lights the [psychic] fire. The will for progress. Those who have a strong will, when they turn it towards spiritual progress and purification, automatically light the fire within themselves.

And each defect one wants to cure or each progress one wants to make — if one throws all that into the fire, it burns with a new intensity. And this is not merely an image; it is a fact in the subtle physical. One can feel the warmth of the flame, one can see the light of the flame in the subtle physical. And when there is something in the nature that prevents one from advancing and one throws it into this fire, it begins to burn and the flame becomes more intense. [. . .]

How can one feel sweetness and joy when one is in difficulty?

Precisely when the difficulty is egoistic or personal, if one makes an offering of it and throws it into the fire of purification, one immediately feels the joy of progress. If one does this sincerely, at once there is an upsurge of joy.

That is obviously what should be done instead of despairing or lamenting. If one offers it up and aspires sincerely for transformation and purification, one immediately feels joy spring up from the depths of the heart. Even when the difficulty is some great sorrow, one may do this with considerable success. One realises that behind the sorrow, however intense it may be, there is a divine joy.

43. Patience

Intensity and impatience

Aspire intensely, but without impatience. The difference between intensity and impatience is very subtle — it is a difference in vibration. It is subtle, but it makes all the difference.

Intensely, but without impatience. It is this, one must be in this state.

And for a very long time, a very long time, one must be satisfied with inner results, that is, with results in one’s personal, individual reactions, one’s inner contact with the rest of the world; one must not expect or hope too soon for things to materialise outwardly. Because it is our hastiness that usually delays things.

If it is like that, it is like that.

We — I mean men — live harassed lives. It is a kind of half-conscious feeling they have of the shortness of their lives; they don’t think of it, but they feel it half-consciously. And so they always want — quick, quick, quick — to rush from one thing to another, to do one thing quickly and then move on to the next thing, instead of letting each thing live in its own eternity. They always want — forward, forward, forward. And the work is spoiled.

Live in eternity

In the human consciousness everything is very slow. When we compare the time that is needed to realise something with the average length of human existence, it seems interminable. But happily there comes a time when one escapes from this notion, when one begins no longer to feel according to human measures. As soon as one is truly in touch with the psychic, one loses this kind of narrowness, and anxiety too, this anxiety which is so bad: “I must be quick, I must be quick; there is not much time. I have to hurry, there is not much time.” Then one does things very badly or one doesn’t do them at all. But as soon as there is contact with the psychic, all that disappears; one begins to be a little vaster and calm and peaceful and to live in eternity.

Time: friend or enemy?

How is time a friend?

It depends on how you look at it. It all depends on your relationship with it. If you take it as a friend, it becomes a friend. If you consider it as an enemy, it becomes your enemy.

But that is not what you are asking. What you are asking is how one feels when it is an enemy and how one feels when it is a friend. Well, when you become impatient and tell yourself, “Oh, I have to succeed in doing this. Why don’t I succeed in doing it?”, and when you fail to do it and fall into despair, then Time is your enemy. But when you tell yourself, “It is all right, I didn’t succeed this time, but next time I will succeed, and I am sure that one day or another I will do it”, then it becomes your friend.

44. Persistent Effort

The effort for progress

Sweet Mother, when we make an effort to do better but don’t see any progress, we feel discouraged. What is the best thing to do?

Not to get discouraged! Discouragement leads nowhere.

To begin with, the first thing to tell yourself is that you are almost totally incapable of knowing whether you are making progress or not, for very often what seems to us to be a state of stagnation is a long — sometimes very long, but in any case not endless — preparation for a leap forward. Sometimes we seem to be marking time for weeks or months, and then suddenly something that was being prepared makes its appearance, and we see that there is quite a considerable change and on several points at a time.

As with everything in Yoga, the effort for progress has to be made for the love of the effort for progress. The joy of effort and the aspiration for progress must be enough in themselves, quite independent of the result. Everything one does in Yoga must be done for the joy of doing it and not in view of the result one wants to achieve. In fact, always in life, in everything, the result does not belong to us. And if we want to keep the right attitude, we must act, feel, think and strive spontaneously, because that is what we have to do and not because of the result to be achieved.

As soon as we think of the result we begin to bargain, and that takes away all sincerity from the effort. You make an effort to progress because you feel in yourself the need, the imperative need to make an effort and progress; and this effort is the gift you offer to the Divine Consciousness in yourself, to the Divine Consciousness in the universe. It is your way of expressing your gratitude, of offering yourself, and whether it results in progress or not doesn’t matter. You will progress when it is decided that the time to progress has come and not because you desire it.

Horizontal and vertical progress

There is a horizontal advance between abrupt ascents. It is the moment of abrupt ascent that gives you the impression of something like a revelation, a great inner joy. But once you have climbed the step, if you want to climb it once more you have to go down again. You have to go on preparing yourself at this level in order to climb another step higher. The things that suddenly give you great joy are always ascents. But these ascents are prepared by a slow work of horizontal progress; this means that you must become ever more conscious, establish ever more perfectly what you are, drawing from it all the inner psychological consequences, and in action too. It is the long sustained use of an abrupt leap and, as I say, there are two kinds of progress. But the horizontal progress is indispensable.

You must not stop, you must not cling like that to your vertical progress and not want to budge because it has brought you a revelation. You must know how to leave it in order to prepare for another one.

True progress

We are on earth. The time one passes on earth is the time one can make progress. One does not progress outside of earthly life. Earthly, material life is essentially a life of progress — it is here that one makes progress. Outside earthly life one rests or is unconscious, or one may have periods of assimilation, periods of rest, periods of unconsciousness. But as for the periods of progress, they happen on earth and in the body. So when you take a body it is to make progress, and when you leave it the period of progress is over.

And true progress is sadhana; in other words, sadhana is the swiftest, most conscious progress. Otherwise one makes progress according to the rhythm of Nature, which means that it may take centuries and centuries, hundreds and thousands of years just to make the slightest bit of progress. But true progress is the progress made by sadhana. In Yoga one can do in a very short time what otherwise takes an interminable amount of time. But it is always in the body and always on earth that it is done, not elsewhere. That is why, when you are in a body you must take advantage of it and not waste your time, saying, “A little later, a little later.” It is much better to do it right away. All the years you pass without making progress are wasted years that you are sure to regret afterwards.

You must choose

You must choose. There is no “force like that” which chooses for you, no chance or luck or fate — that’s not true. Your will is free, it is deliberately left free and you have to choose. It is you who decides whether you will seek the Light or not, whether you will be a servant of the Truth or not — it is you. Or whether you have an aspiration or not — it is you who chooses. And even when you are told, “Make your surrender complete and the work will be done for you”, it is all very well, but to make your surrender complete, you have to choose every day and every moment to make your surrender complete — otherwise you won’t do it. It won’t get done by itself; it is you who must want to do it.

When it is done, all goes well; when you also have the Knowledge, all goes well; and when you are identified with the Divine, all goes even better; but until then you have to will, choose and decide. Don’t be lazy and fall sleep, saying, “Oh, the work will be done for me; I have nothing to do but let myself float down the stream.” Besides, it isn’t true; the work is not done by itself, because when the least little thing goes against your little will, it says, “No, not that!” Then?

Nothing is done until everything is done

In the old Chaldean tradition, young novices were very often given an image when they were invested with the white robe; they were told, “Don’t try to remove the stains one by one; the whole robe must be purified.”

Don’t try to correct your defects one by one, don’t try to overcome your weaknesses one by one — that won’t take you very far. The entire consciousness has to be changed, a reversal of consciousness has to be achieved — a rising out of the state you are in to a higher state in which you have control over the weaknesses you want to cure, and in which you have an overall vision of the work to be done.

I believe Sri Aurobindo has said this: the way things are, one may say that nothing is done until everything is done. One step forward is not enough; a total conversion is necessary.

How many times have I heard people who were making an effort say, “I am trying, but what is the use of my trying? Each time I think I have gained something, I find that I have to start all over again.” That happens because they are trying to move forward while standing still; they are trying to progress without changing their consciousness. It is the entire standpoint that has to be shifted; the whole consciousness has to get out of the rut it is in so that it can rise up and see things from above. This is the only way that victories will not be changed into defeats.

“Others are not doing it”

What prevents me from opening myself to the [Divine’s] influence is the suggestion, “Why hurry? Why so soon, since the others are not doing it?”

That is a frightful platitude!

That is one of the most stupid excuses imaginable! No, there are others much more subtle and dangerous than that. But even if you have to be the one and only being in the whole creation who gives himself integrally and in all purity to the Divine — and, being the only one, naturally be completely misunderstood by everybody, scoffed at, ridiculed, hated — even if you were that, there is no reason for not doing it. One either must be a ham actor or a fool. Because others don’t do it? But what does it matter whether they do it or not? “Why, the whole world can go askew — it doesn’t concern me. The only thing that concerns me is to go straight. What others do — how is that my concern? It is their business, not mine.”

This is the worst of all slaveries!

Who is your friend?

Your friend is not someone who encourages you to come down to your lowest level and encourages you to do stupid things with him or fall into bad ways with him or approves of all the nasty things you do, that’s understood. [. . .]

We don’t like the company of someone who has a contagious disease, and we avoid him carefully; generally he is segregated so that the contagion doesn’t spread. But the contagion of vice and bad behaviour, the contagion of degradation, falsehood and baseness is infinitely more dangerous than the contagion of any disease, and that is what has to be very carefully avoided.

You should consider as your best friend someone who tells you that he does not want to be part of any wrong or ugly act, someone who encourages you to resist base temptations; that is a friend. He is the one you should associate with and not someone you have fun with, but who strengthens your wrong inclinations. There you have it! Now, we won’t belabour the point and I hope that those I have in mind will understand what I have said.

Basically, you should choose as friends only those who are wiser than you, those whose company ennobles you and helps you to surpass yourself, to progress, to act in a better way and see more clearly. And finally, the best friend you can have — isn’t it the Divine, to whom you can say everything, reveal everything? For there is the source of all compassion, of all power to efface an error when it is no longer repeated, to open the way to true realisation. It is He who can understand all, heal all, help you always on the path, help you not to fail, not to stumble, not to fall, but to walk on straight to the goal. He is the true friend, the friend of good days and bad days, he who can understand, he who can heal, he who is always there when you need him. When you call him sincerely, he is always there to guide and uphold you, and to love you in the true way.

45. Finding the Divine

Rely on the Divine alone

There is one thing you must learn, and that is never to rely on anyone or anything other than the Divine. Because if you lean on anyone for support, that support will break — you can be sure of it. From the minute you start doing Yoga (I always speak of those who are doing Yoga; I don’t speak of ordinary life), for those who are doing Yoga, to depend on someone else is like wanting to transform that person into a representative of the Divine Force. Now you can be sure that there is not one person in a hundred million who can carry such a weight: he will break immediately.

So never take the attitude of hoping for support, help, comfort from anyone other than the Divine. That is absolute. I have never, not once, met anyone who tried to cling to something to find a support there (someone doing Yoga or put in touch with Yoga) who was not let down — it breaks, it ends, you lose your support. Then you say, “Life is difficult.” Life is not difficult, but you must know what you are doing. Never seek for support anywhere other than in the Divine. Never seek for satisfaction anywhere other than in the Divine. Never seek the satisfaction of your needs in anyone other than the Divine — never, for anything at all. All your needs can be satisfied only by the Divine. All your weaknesses can be borne and cured only by the Divine. He alone is capable of giving you what you need for everything, always, and if you try to find satisfaction or support or help or joy or God knows what in anyone else, you will always fall flat on your nose one day — and that always hurts; sometimes it even hurts very much.

Ask the Divine

If, for example, one wants to know something or one needs guidance or something else, how can one get it from the Divine, according to one’s need?

By asking the Divine for it. If you don’t ask Him, how can you get it?

If you turn to the Divine and have full trust and ask Him, you will get what you need — not necessarily what you imagine you need, but the true thing you need, you will get. But you must ask Him for it.

You must make the experiment sincerely. You must not try to get it by all sorts of external means and then expect the Divine to give it to you without even having asked Him. Basically, when you want somebody to give you something, you ask him for it, don’t you? Then why do you expect the Divine to give it to you without your having asked Him for it?

Find the Divine

Sweet Mother, how can we find the Divine who is hidden in us?

This has been explained many, many times. But the first thing is to want it, and to know precisely that this comes first, before anything else — this is the important thing. This is the first condition — all the rest can come later — this is the essential condition. You see, if once in a while, from time to time, when you have nothing to do and all is going well and you are not busy, you suddenly tell yourself, “Oh I would really like to find the Divine” — well, like that it may take a hundred thousand years.

But if this is the important thing, the only thing that matters, and everything else comes afterwards and you want nothing but this — well, this is the first condition. You have to establish this first; then we can talk about what comes next. First this. All the rest doesn’t matter. Only this matters. You are ready to give up everything to have this — this is the only thing that matters in life. Then you have put yourself in the condition of being able to take a step forward.

Know the Divine

You see, the only way to know the Divine is to identify yourself with Him. There is no other way, there is only one way, one single way. Then, once you have mastered the process of identification, you can identify yourself. So you choose your object for identification: you would like to identify yourself with the Divine. But as long as you don’t know how to identify yourself, a hundred and one things will always come across your path, pulling you here, pulling you there, dissipating you, and you won’t be able to identify yourself with Him. But if you have learned how to identify yourself, then you have only to focus the identification, place it where you want it, and then hold it there until you get a result. It will come very quickly if you have mastered your power of identification. Yes, it will come very quickly. Ramakrishna used to say that the time could vary between three days, three hours and three minutes — three days for very slow people, three hours for those who were a bit faster, three minutes for those who were used to it.

God has a sense of humour

Someone has asked me, “How is it possible for God to reveal Himself to an unbeliever?” That is very funny, because if it pleases God to reveal Himself to an unbeliever, I don’t see what would prevent Him from doing so!

On the contrary, He has a sense of humour. Sri Aurobindo has told us several times already that the Supreme has a sense of humour and that we are the ones who want to make Him into a grave, always serious character — and He may find it very amusing to come and embrace an unbeliever. Someone who only the day before was saying, “God does not exist. I don’t believe in Him; all that is foolishness and ignorance”, He takes him into His arms, He presses him to His heart, and He laughs in his face.

Everything is possible, even things that to our little, limited intelligence seem absurd.

The atheist and the believer

“The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Himself; but is the Theist any other? Well, perhaps; for he has seen the shadow of God and clutched at it.”

Thoughts and Aphorisms — Sri Aurobindo

What does “God playing at hide and seek with Himself” mean?

In the game of hide and seek, one person hides and the other seeks. So God hides from the atheist who says, “God? I don’t see Him, I don’t know where He is; therefore He doesn’t exist.” But the atheist doesn’t know that God is also inside him, so it is God who is denying His own existence. Isn’t that a game? And yet a day will come when the atheist will be brought face to face with himself and be obliged to recognize that He exists.

The believer thinks that he is very superior to the atheist, but all that he has been able to seize of God is His shadow and he clings to this shadow, imagining that it is God Himself. For if he really knew God, he would know that God is in each and every thing; then he would stop thinking he was superior to anybody.

46. God and His Creation

The material world

Is not this material world of ours very low down in the scale in the system of worlds that form the creation?

Ours is the most material world, but it is not necessarily “low down”, at least not for that reason; if it is low down, it is because it is obscure and ignorant, not because it is material. It is a mistake to make “matter” a synonym for obscurity and ignorance. And the material world too is not the only world in which we live: it is rather one of many in which we exist simultaneously, and in one way the most important of them all. For this world of matter is the point of concentration of all the worlds; it is the field of concretisation of all the worlds; it is the place where all the worlds will have to manifest. At present it is disharmonious and obscure; but that is only an accident, a false start. One day it will become beautiful, rhythmic, full of light; for that is the consummation for which it was made.

The Divine is not a stranger

But why does the Divine want to manifest Himself on earth in this chaos?

Because that is why He created the earth, not for any other motive. The earth is He Himself in a deformation and He wants to establish it once again in its truth. The earth is not something separate from Him and alien to Him; it is a deformation of Himself which must once again become what it was in its essence, that is, the Divine.

Then why is He a stranger to us?

But He is not a stranger, my child. You imagine that He is a stranger, but He is not, not in the least. He is the essence of your being, not at all a stranger. You may not know Him, but He is not a stranger; He is the very essence of your being. Without the Divine you would not exist. Without the Divine you could not exist even for a millionth part of a second.

There is nothing but Him

People are so deeply imbued with the Christian idea of “God the Creator” — the creation on one side and God on the other! When you think about it, you reject it, but it has penetrated into the sensations and feelings, so spontaneously, instinctively, almost subconsciously that you attribute to God everything you consider to be best and most beautiful and, above all, everything you wish to attain, to realise. Naturally, each one changes the content of his God according to his own consciousness, but it is always what he considers to be best. And that is also why, instinctively and spontaneously, subconsciously you are shocked by the idea that God can be things you don’t like, the things you don’t approve of or consider best.

I am putting this rather childishly on purpose, so that you can understand it properly. But it is like this — I am sure, because I observed it in myself for a very long time, as a result of the subconscious formation of childhood, environment, education, etc. You must be able to press into this body the consciousness of Oneness, the absolute, exclusive Oneness of the Divine — exclusive in the sense that nothing exists other than in this Oneness, even the things we find most repulsive. [. . .]

But it is Him. There is nothing but Him! This is what we ought to repeat to ourselves from morning to evening and from evening to morning, because we forget it at every moment.

There is only Him, there is nothing but Him. He alone exists, there is no existence without Him — there is only Him!

God and the universe

There is only one single solution to the problem — not to make any distinction between God and the universe at the origin. The universe is the Divine projected in space, and God is the universe at its origin. It is the same thing under one aspect or another, and you cannot divide them. It is the opposite conception to that of the “Creator and His work”. Only, it is very convenient to speak of the Creator and His work; it makes explanations very easy and the teaching quite elementary. But it is not the truth.

And then you say, “How is it that God who is all-powerful has allowed the world to be like this?” But it is your own conception! It is because you yourself happen to be in the midst of a set of circumstances that seem unpleasant to you, so you project that on the Divine and tell him, “Why have You made such a world?” — “I didn’t make it; it is you yourself, and if you become Myself once again, you will no longer feel as you do. What makes you feel as you do is that you are no longer Myself.” That is what He might say in reply. And in fact when you succeed in uniting your consciousness with the Divine Consciousness, there is no longer any problem.

Everything seems quite natural and simple and all right and exactly as it had to be.

The Lord is staging a play

If one looks carefully, one has to think that the Lord is staging a fantastic play for Himself! That the Manifestation is a play He is acting for Himself and with Himself.

He has taken the stance of a spectator and He is watching Himself. And so, in order to look at Himself, He has to accept the concept of time and space — otherwise He cannot do it! And immediately the whole comedy begins. But it is a comedy, nothing more.

We take it seriously because we are puppets! But as soon as we stop being puppets, we can see quite clearly that it is a comedy.

For some people it is also a real tragedy.

Yes, we are the ones who make it tragic. We are the ones who make it tragic. [. . .]

You see, only the person who is watching the play is not worried, because he knows everything that is going to happen and he has an absolute knowledge of everything — all that is happening, all that has happened and all that is going to happen — and it is all there, as one presence for him. And so it is the others who worry, the poor actors, who don’t even know, they don’t even know their parts! And they worry a great deal, because they are being made to enact something and they don’t know what it is.

This is something I have been feeling very strongly — we are all taking part in a play, but we don’t know what the play is, nor where it is going, nor where it comes from, nor what it is as a whole. We hardly know, and we know imperfectly, what we have to do from moment to moment. Our knowledge is imperfect, and so we worry! But when one knows everything, one can’t worry any more — one smiles. He must be having great fun, but we . . . And yet we are given the full power to have fun like Him.

We simply don’t take the trouble.

The play of the Lord

When one has the actual experience of the one and only existence of the Supreme and that all this is only the Supreme playing to Himself, instead of this being something disquieting or unpleasant or troubling, it is on the contrary a kind of total security.

The one reality is the Supreme, and all this is a game He plays to Himself. I find this far more comforting than the opposite view. And after all, this is the only certitude that all this can become something marvellous. [. . .]

You will see, there comes a time when one cannot bear oneself or life unless one takes the attitude that it is the Lord who is everything. You see, this Lord, how many things He possesses! He plays with all this, He plays, He plays at changing positions. And when one sees this, this whole, one has the feeling of a limitless marvel and that all this is the goal of our most wonderful aspirations — all this is quite possible, and will even be surpassed. Then one is comforted. Otherwise, existence . . . is inconsolable. [. . .]

The present way of being is a past that really should not exist any more. Whereas the other way: “Ah! At last, at last! This is why there is a world.” And everything else remains just as concrete and real — it does not become hazy! It is just as concrete, just as real, but . . . but it becomes divine, because . . . because it is the Divine. It is the Divine who plays.

47. The Only Solution

Let the Lord do everything

Now, when I start looking like this (Mother closes her eyes), two things are there at the same time: this smile, this joy, this laughter are there, and such peace! Such a full, luminous, total peace in which there are no more conflicts, no more contradictions. There are no more conflicts — it is one single luminous harmony, and yet everything we call error, suffering, misery, everything is there. It eliminates nothing. It is another way of seeing.

(Long silence)

There can be no doubt that if you sincerely want to get out of it, it is not so difficult after all: you don’t have to do anything, you only have to let the Lord do everything. And He does everything, He does everything. It is so wonderful, so wonderful!

He takes anything, even what we call a very ordinary intelligence, and He simply teaches you to put this intelligence aside, to rest it: “There, be quiet, don’t stir, don’t bother me; I don’t need you.” Then a door opens — you don’t even feel that you have to open it; it is wide open, you are taken to the other side. All that is done by Someone else, not by you. And then the other way becomes impossible.

All this . . . oh, this tremendous labour of the mind trying to understand, toiling, giving itself headaches! It is absolutely useless, absolutely useless, no use at all; it merely increases the confusion.

You are faced with a so-called problem: what should you say, what should you do, how should you act? There is nothing to do, nothing; you only have to say to the Lord, “Here, You see, it is like this.” That’s all. And then you remain very quiet. And then quite spontaneously, without thinking about it, without reflecting, without calculating, nothing, nothing, not the slightest effort, you do what has to be done — that is, the Lord does it, it is no longer you. He does it, He arranges the circumstances, He arranges the people, He puts the words into your mouth or your pen. He does everything, everything, everything, everything; you have nothing to do any more except to let yourself live blissfully.

I am more and more convinced that people do not really want it.

But clearing the ground is difficult, the work of clearing the ground beforehand.

But you don’t even have to do that! He does it for you.

But they are constantly breaking in: the old consciousness, the old thoughts.

Yes, they try to come in again, by habit. You only have to say, “Lord, You see, You see; You see, it is like this” — that’s all. “Lord, You see, You see this, You see this, You see this imbecile” — and it is over immediately. And it changes automatically, my child, without the slightest effort. Simply being sincere; in other words, truly wanting it to be right. You are perfectly conscious that you can do nothing about it, that you have no capacity. [. . . ]

But there is always something that wants to do it by itself; that’s the trouble, otherwise . . . No, you may be full of an excellent goodwill and then you want to do it. That is what complicates everything. Or else you don’t have faith, you don’t believe that the Lord will be able to do it and that you have to do it yourself because He doesn’t know how! (Mother laughs.) This, well, this kind of stupidity is very common. “How can He see things? We live in a world of Falsehood, how can He see Falsehood and see . . .” But He sees the thing as it is, exactly!

I am not talking about people with no intelligence, I am talking about people who are intelligent and who try

. . . There is a kind of conviction like that somewhere, even in people who know that we live in a world of Ignorance and Falsehood and that there is a Lord who is All-Truth — well, they say, “Precisely because He is All-Truth, He does not understand (Mother laughs), He does not understand our falsehood — I have to deal with it myself.” That is very strong, very common.

Oh, we make complications for nothing!

The only solution

I am fully convinced that the confusion [in the world] is there to teach us how to live from day to day, in other words, not to be concerned with what may happen, what will happen, just to be concerned day by day with doing what we have to do. All the thinking, the pre-planning, the arranging — all that tends to create a lot of disorder.

To live almost minute by minute, to be like this (gesture upward), attentive only to the thing we have to do at the moment, and then, let the All-Consciousness decide. We can never know things even with the widest vision — we can only know things very partially, very partially. So our attention is drawn this way and that, and still other things are there too.

By giving a lot of importance to things that are dangerous and harmful, we only add strength to them.

(Mother enters into contemplation.)

When one is assailed by the vision of this disorder and that confusion there is only one thing to do — it is to enter into the consciousness where one sees only one Being, one Consciousness, one Power — there is nothing but a single Unity and all this is taking place within that Unity. And all our insignificant visions and insights and judgments — all that is nothing; it is microscopic compared with the Consciousness presiding over everything. And then, if one has the least sense of why separate individuals exist, one will see that it is only to allow aspiration to exist, the existence of aspiration, of this movement of self-giving and surrender, of trust and faith. And that is the reason for the development of individuals. And then for one to become that in total sincerity and intensity . . .

This is all that is needed. This is all that is needed. It is the only thing, the only thing that endures. All the rest — phantasmagoria.

And it is the only thing valid in every case: when you want to do something, when you cannot do something, when you move about, when your body can no longer move about — in every case, every case, only that, only that: to enter into conscious contact with the Supreme Consciousness, to be united with it, and . . . to wait. There you are!

It is then that you receive the exact indication of what you ought to do at every moment — to do or not to do, to act or to remain still. That’s all. And even to be or not to be. That is the only solution. More and more, more and more, the certitude is there: this is the only solution. All the rest is childishness.

“What Thou willest”

Is it enough to let oneself be filled with That? Is there nothing else to do?

I think, I think this is the only thing. All the time I am repeating, “What Thou willest, what Thou willest, what Thou willest. Let it be what Thou willest, let me do what Thou willest, let me be conscious of what Thou willest.”

And also, “Without Thee it is death; with Thee it is life.” By “death” I do not mean physical death; it may be so: it may be that if I lost contact now it would be the end. But that is impossible! I have the feeling that it is . . . that I am That, with all the obstructions that the present consciousness may still have, and that’s all. And then, when I see someone (Mother opens her hands as though to offer the person to the Light), whoever he may be: like this (same gesture).

(Silence)

All the time (it is amusing), all the time I have the feeling that I am a little baby who nestles, who nestles within (what to call it) a Divine Consciousness . . . which is all-embracing.

The pressure of the Consciousness

You know, I don’t believe in external decisions. I simply believe in one thing only — the force of the Consciousness which is exerting a pressure like this (crushing gesture). And the pressure goes on increasing . . . which means it is going to sift out people. [. . . ] But you know, I believe only in that — the pressure of the Consciousness. All the rest are the things that men do. They do them more or less well, and then that lives, and then that dies, and then that changes, and then that gets distorted, and then . . . All that they have done — it isn’t worth the trouble.

The power of execution must come from above, like this, imperative (gesture of descent). And for that, this (Mother points to her forehead), this must keep quiet. Not to say, “Oh, this shouldn’t be, oh, that shouldn’t be, oh, we should do . . .” Peace, peace, peace. He knows better than you what should be.

A Sketch of the Mother’s Life

The Mother was born in Paris on 21 February 1878. Mirra, as the child was named, was the daughter of Maurice Alfassa, a banker born in Adrianople, Turkey, and Mathilde Ismaloun, born in Alexandria, Egypt. Her parents emigrated from Egypt and settled in France a year before her birth. Mirra received her early education at home and then attended a small private school for girls. Around the age of fifteen, she joined the Academie Julian, an art studio, to study drawing and painting, and trained there for four years. An accomplished artist, several of her works were exhibited at a Paris Salon. She was also an excellent pianist and had already begun to write.

From the age of five the Mother began having spiritual experiences — during the day, when she felt force and light descend into her as she sat in a chair in her room, and at night in her dreams. About her early spiritual life, she has written: “Between 11 and 13 a series of psychic and spiritual experiences revealed to me not only the existence of God but man’s possibility of uniting with Him, of realising Him integrally in consciousness and action, of manifesting Him on earth in a life divine.”

In 1906 and 1907, while in her mid-twenties, the Mother voyaged to Tlemcen, Algeria, to study occultism with the Polish adept Max Theon and his wife. Also around this time, she founded her first group of spiritual seekers in Paris. Between 1911 and 1913 she gave a number of talks to various groups of this kind.

At the age of thirty-six the Mother sailed to Pondicherry, India, to meet Sri Aurobindo. When she saw him on 29 March 1914, she immediately recognised him as the master who for many years had inwardly guided her spiritual evolution. She remained in Pondicherry for eleven months, but was then obliged by the outbreak of the First World War to return to France. A year later, she went to Japan where she lived for nearly four years.

On 24 April 1920 the Mother returned to Pondicherry and resumed her collaboration with Sri Aurobindo. With her coming, the number of disciples around him gradually increased. This informal community of about two dozen persons eventually became the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. From its inception in November 1926, Sri Aurobindo entrusted the full material and spiritual welfare of his disciples to the Mother, for he considered her not a disciple but his spiritual equal and his collaborator in a common spiritual work. Under her guidance, which covered a span of nearly fifty years, the Ashram grew into a large, multi-facetted community which today numbers around 1200 people. There are, in addition, more than 400 students in the Ashram school and hundreds of others (former students and devotees) who live nearby, participate in Ashram activities and are part of the larger Ashram community.

In 1943 the Mother started a small school for the children of families accepted into the Ashram. This school gradually expanded to become the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, which was inaugurated on 6 January 1952. The Mother also founded the international township Auroville, located ten kilometres from Pondicherry. Inaugurated on 28 February 1968, Auroville currently has a population of about 3500 persons from India and abroad.

The Mother participated in the daily activities of the Ashram until the age of eighty-four. In March 1962 she retired to her rooms, but from there continued, during the next decade, to guide the Ashram and receive people regularly. On 17 November 1973, at the age of ninety-five, the Mother left her body.

On her ninetieth birthday, the Mother summarised her life and work in this way:

The reminiscences will be short.

I came to India to meet Sri Aurobindo. I remained in India to live with Sri Aurobindo. When he left his body, I continued to live here in order to do his work which is, by serving the Truth and enlightening mankind, to hasten the rule of the Divine’s Love upon earth.

Note on the Text

Almost all the passages that comprise The Sunlit Path have been selected from the Mother’s conversations; in addition, there are a handful of written texts. Most of these conversations and writings were spoken or written in French and appear here in translation.

The revised edition

The present edition (2024) is a revised one, but the changes are minor. The revised edition has the same scope, focus and basic arrangement as the first. The differences between the two editions are as follows:

Number of passages. The revised edition is slightly enlarged. It contains four passages not in the first edition — namely, the first four passages in Chapter 4. One passage in the first edition has been omitted in the revised edition. Otherwise, the passages are the same in both editions.

Arrangement of passages. The arrangement of passages in the two editions is almost the same, with one significant exception. In Chapter 3 of the first edition, “Morality, Religion, Yoga”, the passages on morality and religion have been shifted to the end of the revised edition, where they appear in Chapters 37 and 38. The remaining passages in Chapter 3, those on Yoga, now appear in Chapter 4 of the revised edition (to which four new passages have been added). In addition, a few passages have been repositioned within the chapters in which they occur.

Number of chapters. The revised edition has more than twice as many chapters as the first. The first edition had 21 chapters; the revised edition has 47. New chapters were made by dividing the chapters of the first edition into more specific subjects.

Revised translation. The translation of passages in French is a revised one. In the first edition, the translations were those found in the first edition of the Collected Works of the Mother. In the present edition, those translations have been revised to make them more clear, fluent and readable.

Three periods of conversations

The conversations in this book cover a span of more than four decades (1929-1973) and are of various kinds. The early conversations of 1929 and 1930-1931 were spoken in English to a small gathering of Ashram members. The conversations of the period 1950-1958 were spoken in French to a large gathering of Ashram members and students of its school who met at the Ashram Playground. The conversations after 1958 were spoken in French (with one exception) to an Ashram member who met regularly with the Mother in her room.

References to the text passages

All the passages in this book have been selected from the following volumes of the Collected Works of the Mother, published by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry:

Volume            Title

3                      Questions and Answers 1929-1931
4                      Questions and Answers 1950-1951
5                      Questions and Answers 1953
6                      Questions and Answers 1954
7                      Questions and Answers 1955
8                      Questions and Answers 1956
9                      Questions and Answers 1957-1958
10                    On Thoughts and Aphorisms
11                    Notes on the Way
13                    Words of the Mother I
15                    Words of the Mother III

All but five passages in this book have been taken from the Mother’s conversations. The five written statements are comments she made on aphorisms of Sri Aurobindo. They appear in On Thoughts and Aphorisms, Collected Works Volume 10, pages 55-59 and 95-96.

Ninety percent of the passages were originally spoken (and in five cases written) in French. The ten percent spoken in English are published in Collected Works Volume 3 on pages 1-180 and in Volume 15 on pages 398-402. The ninety percent in French appear here in English translation. As noted above, the translations in the present edition are revised versions of those in the Collected Works.