A Practical Guide To Integral Yoga

for desire itself arises from an unillumined vital being and its ignorance.

You can break moral rules only when you observe the divine Law.

MOTHER'S WORKING

The Mother deals with each one in a different way, according to their need and their nature, not according to any fixed mental rule. It would be absurd for her to do the same thing with everybody as if all were machines which had to be touched and handled in the same way. It does not at all mean that she has more affection for one than for another, or those she touches in a particular way are better sadhaks or less so. The sadhaks think in that way because they are full of ignorance and ego. Instead of thinking whether the Mother favours one more or the other less, comparing and watching what she does, they ought to be concerned at Pranam with only their own spiritual reception of her influence. Pranam is for that and not for these other things which have nothing to do with sadhana.

Jealousy and envy are things common to human nature, but these are the very things that a sadhak ought to throw out of himself. Otherwise why is he a sadhak

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at all ? He is supposed to be here for seeking the Divine —but in the seeking for the Divine jealousy, envy, anger, etc. have no place. They are movements of the ego and can only create obstacles to the union with the Divine.

It is much better to remember that one is seeking for the Divine and make that the whole governing idea and aim of the life. It is that which pleases the Mother more than anything else; these jealousies and envies and competitions for her favour can only displease and distress her.

Mother's seriousness [at Pranam] is due to some absorption in some work she is doing or very often to some strong attack of hostile forces in the atmosphere. It is a mistake to think that the Mother's not smiling means either displeasure or disapproval of something wrong in the sadhak.

If any one is in serious trouble in the Ashram, that falls on us and most on the Mother—so it is absurd to suppose that we can take pleasure in anyone suffering.

The danger of helping others is the danger of taking upon oneself their difficulties. If Mother can keep

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herself separated and help, this does not occur. But the tendency in helping is to take the person partially or completely in one's larger self. This is what the Mother has had to do with the sadhaks and the reason why she has sometimes to suffer.

All bad thoughts upon the Mother or throwing of impurities on her may affect her body as she has taken the sadhaks into her consciousness; nor can she send these things back to them as it might hurt them.

If the Mother were able to bring out the Divine personalities and Powers into her body and physical being as she was doing for several months without break some years ago, the brightest period in the history of the Ashram, things would be much more easy and all these dangerous attacks that now take place would be dealt with rapidly and would in fact be impossible. In those days when the Mother was either receiving the sadhaks for meditation or otherwise working and concentrating all night and day without sleep and with very irregular food, there was no ill-health and no fatigue in her and things were proceeding with a lightning swiftness. The power used was not that of the Supermind, but of the Overmind, but it was sufficient for what was being done. Afterwards because the lower vital and the physical of the sadhaks could not follow,

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the Mother had to push the Divine personalities and Powers through which she was doing the action behind a veil and came down into the physical human level and act according to its conditions and that means difficulties, struggles, illness, ignorance and inertia. But for the advance to be anything like general or swift in its process, the attitude of the sadhaks, not of a few only, must change. They must cling less to the conditions and feelings of the external physical consciousness and open themselves to the true consciousness of the Yogin and sadhak. If they did that, the inner eye would open and they would not be bewildered or alarmed if the Mother again manifested externally something of the Divine Personalities and Powers as she did before. They would not be asking her to be always on their level, but would be glad to be drawn swiftly or gradually up towards her. The difficulties would be ten times less and a larger, easier, securer movement possible.

Things are no longer what they were before when you were here. At that time the Mother was bringing down a rapid (collective as well as individual) transformation and creation into the mental, vital and physical planes from above, by the power of a supra-mental light and force acting through the higher illumined mind and the psychic being. For that purpose she was calling down beings of higher plane (like the one of which you speak) as an indispensable aid in that process.

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All went well enough so long as the work was on the mental, psychic and higher vital levels. But as soon as it began in the lower vital, it appeared at once that the lower vital and physical nature of human beings (at least of those here) were too small, obscure and full of rebellious impurity to admit of so great a working. One after another failed in the test and you were among the first to fall. The creation had to be postponed, the process changed and instead of doing all from above it became necessary to come down into the lower vital and inanimate nature for a long, slow, patient and difficult work of opening and change.

It is not by his own strength or good qualities that any one can attain the divine change; there are only two things that matter, the Mother's force at work and the Sadhak's will to open to it and trust in her working. Be sure that the Mother will always be with you to carry you upon the path. Difficulties come and difficulties go, but, she being with you, the victory is sure.

Always calls of this kind are coming to the Mother, sometimes a hundred close upon each other and always the answer is given. The occasions are of all kinds, but whatever the need that occasions the call, the Force is there to answer it. That is the principle of this action on the occult plane. It is not of the same kind as an ordinary human action and does not need a written or

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oral communication on the one who calls; an interchange of psychic communication is quite sufficient to set the Force at work. At the same time it is not an impersonal Force and the suggestion of a divine energy that is there ready to answer and satisfy anybody who calls it is not at all relevant here. It is something personal to the Mother and if she had not this power and this kind of action she would not be able to do her work.

The Mother has made an arrangement with a view to all the occult forces and the best possible conditions for the protection of the sadhaks from certain forces of death, diseases, etc. It cannot work perfectly because the sadhaks themselves have not the right attitude towards food and kindred vital physical things. But still there is a protection. If, however, the sadhaks go outside her formation, it must be on their own responsibility. But this arrangement is for the Ashram and not for those who are outside.

When the pressure of the Mother's Force works upon the consciousness, then in the plane on which it happens to be working, a great activity of different forces is set in play, e.g. if it is the mind, various mental forces, if it is the vital, various vital forces. It is not safe to take all these for true things, to be accepted without question and followed as commands of the Mother. No voice

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heard within can prevail against her word and no intimation that comes through your mind can be accepted as binding unless it is confirmed by her.

It is the emanation of the Mother that is with each sadhak all the time. In former days when she was spending the night in a trance and not working in the Ashram, she brought back with her the knowledge of all that was happening to everybody. Nowadays she has no time for that.

The Emanation is not a deputy, but the Mother herself. She is not bound to her body, but can put herself out (emanate) in any way she likes. What emanates, suits itself to the nature of the personal relation she has with the sadhak which is different with each, but that does not prevent it from being herself.

Mother's contact is there all the day and the night also. If one keeps the right contact with her inwardly all day, the Pranam will bear its right fruit, for you will be in the right condition to receive. I mean the inner contact in which one either feels one with her or in contact with her or aware of her presence or at the very least turned towards her always.

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OCCULTISM

Occult forces are the forces that can only be known by going behind the veil of apparent phenomena— especially the forces of the subtle physical and supra-physical planes.

Such a seeking for occult powers is looked on with dis favour for the most part by spiritual teachers in India, because it belongs to the inferior planes and usually pushes the seeker on a path which may lead him very far from the Divine. Especially a contact with the forces and beings of the astral (or, as we term it, the vital) plane is attended with great dangers. The beings of this plane are often hostile to the true aim of spiritual life and establish contact with the seeker and offer him powers and occult experiences only in order that they may lead him away from the spiritual path or else that they may establish their own control over him or take possession of him for their own purpose. Often, representing themselves as divine powers, they mislead, give erring suggestions and impulsions and pervert the inner life. This is one of the chief dangers of the spiritual life and to be on one's guard against it is a necessity for the seeker if he wishes to arrive at his goal. It is true that many supraphysical or supernormal powers come with the expansion of the consciousness in Yoga but these powers are not sought after, they come naturally, and they have not the astral character. Also, they have to be used on purely spiritual lines,

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that is by the Divine Will and the Divine Force, as an instrument, but never as an instrumentation of the forces and beings of the vital plane.

Our object is not to get powers, but to ascend towards the divine Truth-Consciousness and bring its Truth down into the lower members. With the Truth all the necessary powers will come, not as one's own, but as the Divine's. The contact with the Truth cannot grow through rajasic mental and vital self-assertion, but only through psychic purity and surrender.

The Mother :

To talk about occult things is of little value ; one must experience them. It is a system of knowledge organised around some principles; it follows a precise process and if you reproduce exactly the same conditions, you get always the same results. It is also a progressive knowledge. Only this study deals with realities which do not belong to the most material world.

As we possess a physical body, so we possess also other more subtle bodies with their own senses, but more refined, more precise, much more powerful than our physical senses. Naturally, as our education is not accustomed to deal with this domain, these senses are usually not developed and the worlds where they function

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escape our ordinary consciousness; yet children spontaneously live a great deal in this domain. It is only with an intensive mental development that these capacities fade away in children and often end by disappearing altogether.

In all ages, there were upon earth isolated individuals or small groups ; they used to practise this type of science. They sought for especially gifted souls and gave them the necessary training. Usually these groups lived a more or less secret or hidden life because ordinary people are very intolerant of this kind of capacities and activities which pass their understanding and frighten them.

In all the domains of human activity, there are charlatans and imposters. But the fraud practised by them should not throw discredit upon a true science which they falsely boast they possess. That is why in the great epochs when this science flourished, when there were recognised schools where it was practised, whoever wanted to undertake this study, before being admitted, was made to go through, for a long time, sometimes even for years, a twofold discipline of a very strict nature, that of self-development and self-mastery. In this way the height and nobility of the candidate's aspiration was proved.

Occult science, in one of its aspects, is something of chemistry applied to the play of forces, the building of worlds and individual forms in inner dimensions. As in the chemistry of Matter, the handling of certain substances

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is not without danger, even so in the occult worlds the handling of certain forces and contact with them involve risks which can prove harmless only if one keeps a cool head and unshakable calm.

In any case, at all times it has been recommended that one should take up these studies only under a sure guide who can point out the path to follow, put you on guard against dangers, whether illusory or not and give protection when needed.

Occult knowledge without the spiritual discipline is, if it falls into impure hands, a dangerous instrument for one who uses it as well as for others. Spiritual knowledge without the occult science lacks in precision and certainty in its objective effects : it is all-powerful only in the subjective world. The two, when combined whether for external or for internal action, are irresistible and become an instrument fit for the manifestation of the Supramental Power.

OCCULT HISTORY OF MAN

The Mother :

At the beginning of creation, four individual formations —the first personalities—made their appearance. They were : (i) a Being of Light or Consciousness, (2) a Being of Truth or Reality, (3) a Being of Love or Ananda and (4) a Being of Life. And the first law of creation was

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freedom of decision. These Beings were manifestations in the free movement of the Divine; they themselves moved free, according to their individualised conscious will. Soon, however, they stood out no longer on the Divine, but moved out of him, away and separate; they sought to fulfil their individualised will and destiny. The first fruit, the inevitable reaction of freedom was precisely a separation from the Divine, each one encircled within its ego, limited and bound to its own fund of potency : individualism means limitation and the Four Independents lapsed into their opposites : Light changed to Darkness, i.e. Consciousness to Unconsciousness, Truth changed to Falsehood, Delight changed to Pain and Suffering, and Life changed to Death. That is how the four undivine principles, the Powers of the Undivine came to rule and fashion the material creation.

Into the heart of this Darkness and Falsehood and Pain and Death, a seed was sown, a grain that is to be the epitome and symbol of material creation and in and through which the Divine will claim back all the elements gone astray, the prodigal ones who will return to recognise and fulfil the Divine. That was Earth. And the earth, in her turn, in her labour towards the Divine Fulfilment, out of her bosom, threw up a being who would again symbolise and epitomises the earth and material creation. That is Man. For, man came with the soul in him, the Psychic Being, the Divine Flame, the spark of consciousness in the midst of universal unconsciousness,

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a miniature of the original Divine Light-Truth-Love-Life.

PHILOSOPHY

The Divine is not bound by human philosophies—it is free in its play and free in its essence.

Logic is the worst enemy of Truth, as self-righteousness is the worst enemy of virtue; for the one cannot see its own errors nor the other its own imperfections.

Philosophy is only a play of phrases and mental ideas —a mental gymnastic without any reference to experience. Spiritual knowledge is as much impossible without experience as scientific knowledge.

Philosophy is of little help in getting true knowledge, which must come from experience and actual realisation. It serves as a mental exercise—it makes the mind supple and clear; it gives ideas to the mind that there is some thing higher than itself to which it should aspire; thus it serves as a sort of springing board.

The Mother :

The mistake is to look at things through the dimensions of the human consciousness. It is dangerous to try to explain or understand them with the limited

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mental intelligence. That is the reason why philosophy has always failed to unveil the secret of things; it is because it has tried to fit the universe into the size of the human mind.

THE PROBLEM OF WOMAN

The Mother :

No law can liberate women unless they liberate themselves. What makes them slaves is :—

(1)Attraction towards the male and his strength,

(2)Desire for home life and its security,

(3)Attachment to motherhood.

If they get free from these three slaveries, they will truly be the equal of men.

Men also have three slaveries :—

(1)Spirit of possession, attachment to power and domination,

(2)Desire for sexual relation with woman,

(3)Attachments to the small comforts of married life. If they get rid of these three slaveries, they can truly

become the equal of women.

Man feels himself superior and wants to dominate, the woman feels oppressed and revolts, openly or secretly; and the eternal quarrel between the sexes continues from age to age, identical in essence, innumerable in its forms and shades.

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It is well understood that man throws the whole blame upon the woman, as woman in the same way throws the entire blame upon man. In truth the blame should be equally distributed between the two and neither should boast as being superior to the other. Moreover, as long as this notion of superiority and inferiority is not eliminated, nothing or nobody can put an end to the misunderstanding that divides the human race into two opposite camps and the problem will not be solved. In their mutual relations, man and woman are, at once and towards each other, quite despotic masters and somewhat pitiable slaves.

Yes, slaves; for so long as you have desires and preferences and attachments, you are a slave of these things and of those persons on whom you depend for their fulfilment.

That is why no law can liberate women unless they free themselves : men too, likewise, cannot, in spite of all their habits of domination, cease to be slaves unless they are freed from all their inner slavery.

This state of secret conflict, often not admitted, but always present in the subconscious, even in the best cases, seems inevitable, unless human beings rise above their ordinary consciousness to identify themselves with the perfect consciousness, to be unified with the supreme Reality. For when you attain this higher consciousness you perceive that the difference between man and woman reduces itself to a difference purely physical.

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We dream of a world in which all these oppositions will at last disappear, where a being will be able to live and prosper who will be the harmonious synthesis of all that is best in human production, identifying conception and execution, vision and creation in one single consciousness and action.

In any case until the appearance of a new conception and a new consciousness compelling Nature to create a new race which will have no need any more to submit to the necessity of animal procreation and will not be under the compulsion of being cut into two complementary sexes, the best that can be done for the progress of the present human race is to treat the two sexes on a footing of perfect equality, to give both one and the same education and training and to teach them to find, through a constant contact with a Divine Reality which is above all sexual differentiation, the source of all possibilities and all harmonies.

And perhaps India, the land of contrasts, will also be the land of new realisations, even as she was the cradle of their conception.

READING

To read what will help the Yoga or what will be useful for the work or what will develop the capacities for the divine purpose. Not to read worthless stuff or for mere entertainment or for a dilettante intellectual curiosity

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which is of the nature of a mental dram-drinking. When one is established in the highest consciousness, one can read nothing or everything; it makes no difference.

It is not by reading books that the mind is cultured —it is by trying to think and see things clearly that it comes. Reading is a quite secondary thing. One may read thousands of books, yet remain narrow and foolish.

You may have all the mental knowledge in the world and yet be impotent to face vital difficulties. Courage, faith, sincerity towards the Light, rejection of opposite suggestions and adverse voices are there the true help. Then only can knowledge itself be at all effective.

It is not reading that brings the contact with the Divine, it is the will and aspiration in the being that brings it.

What is written for X is not meant for you. He has got into a movement of consciousness in which reading is no longer necessary and would rather interfere with his consciousness. There is no objection to your reading provided it does not interfere with your meditation......

There should be no "desire" to be a "great" writer. If there is a genuine inspiration or coming of power to

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write then it can be done, but to use it as a means of service for the Divine is the proper spirit.....

It depends upon what kind of 'literary man' you want to be, ordinary or yogic.

A literary man is one who loves literature and literary activity for its own sake. A yogic 'literary' man is not a literary man at all, but one who writes only what the inner will and Word wants to express. He is a channel and an instrument of something greater than his own literary personality......

It is the same with the work—it has a value of moral training, discipline, obedience, acceptance of work for the Mother. The spiritual value and result come afterwards when the consciousness in the vital opens upward. So with the mental work. It is a preparation......

RELIGION

Religion is always imperfect because it is a mixture of man's spirituality with his endeavours that come in in trying to sublimate ignorantly his lower nature.

Religions at the best modify only the surface of the nature. Moreover, they degenerate very soon into a routine of ceremonial habitual worship and fixed dogmas.

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Religion in fact is not knowledge, but a faith and aspiration; it is justified indeed both by an imprecise intuitive knowledge of large spiritual truths and by the subjective experience of souls that have risen beyond the ordinary life, but in itself it only gives us the hope and faith by which we may be induced to aspire to the intimate possession of the hidden tracts and larger realities of the Spirit. That we turn always the few distinct truths and the symbols or the particular discipline of a religion into hard and fast dogmas, is a sign that as yet we are only infants in the spiritual knowledge and are yet far from the science of the Infinite.

Going for pilgrimage to holy places has nothing to do with the Truth; it is a religious exercise for the people of ordinary consciousness.

The Mother :

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, to which humanity gives the name of God, which the human mind cannot reach and yet tries to reach. Religion may be divine in its ultimate origin but in its actual nature it is not divine but human. The religions made by man are many and most of them have been made in the same way. We know

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how the Christian religion came into existence. It was certainly not Jesus who made what is known as Christianity, but some learned and very clever men put their heads together and built it up into the thing we see. There was nothing divine in the way in which it was formed, and there is nothing divine either in the way in which it functions.

Buddha discovered a way out of earthly suffering and misery. He saw a Truth which he endeavoured to express and communicate to the disciples and followers who gathered around him. But even before he was dead, his teaching had already begun to be twisted and distorted. After his disappearance Buddhism as a full-fledged religion reared its head, founded upon what the Buddha is supposed to have said and on the supposed significance of these reported sayings. Later on the disciples could not agree on what the Master had said and there grew up a host of sects and sub-sects in the body of the parent-religion, each of them claiming to be the only, the original, the undefiled doctrine of the Buddha. The same fate overtook the teaching of the Christ. All religions have each the same story to tell. The Teacher comes and reveals the Truth but men seize upon it, trade upon it, make an almost political organisation out of it.

The first and principal 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

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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.

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 would 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. For some natures religion has a use and it is even necessary to them; for, through external forms, like the ceremonies of the Church, it offers a kind of support and help to their inner spiritual aspiration. For them religion is not an obstacle; an obstacle for those who can go farther. All countries and all religions are built up out of a mass of traditions. You will then perceive what a mockery it is to say, "Because I am brought up in this religion, therefore it is the only true religion : because I am born in this country, therefore it is the best of all countries."

Things have an inner value and become real to you, only when you have acquired them by the exercise of your free choice, not when they have been imposed upon you. Then only you can say with an inner truth, "This is my family, this my country, this my religion".

Each of us has been born in many different countries, belonged to many different nations, followed many

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different religions. Why must we accept the last one as the best ?

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. There can be no such imposition in your relation with the Divine. Truth is self-evident and has not to be imposed upon the world. It does not feel the need of being accepted by men; for it is self-existent. But one who is founding a religion needs to have many followers. The greatness of spiritual truth is not in numbers. The average man is drawn towards those who make great pretensions and those who make great pretensions need to proclaim loudly and to advertise; for otherwise they would not attract great numbers of people.

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 its clinging 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 all in what you want to realise. Turn from your dead past and look straight towards the future. Your religion, country, family he there; it is the DIVINE alone.

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Visiting of Holy Places, Temples, Churches, etc. :

The Mother :

People of ordinary consciousness take to the thing through a kind of superstition; one thinks, "if I go to the temple or to the Church once a week, for example, if I say my prayers regularly, something good will happen to me." It is a superstition spread all over the world, but it has no spiritual value.......

I have been to holy places. I have seen monuments considered as very highly religious, in France, Japan and elsewhere; they were not- always the same kind of temples or churches nor were they the same gods but the impression they left on me, my experiences of them were everywhere almost the same, with but slight differences. For instance, in a most famous and most beautiful place of worship, I saw within its holy of holies a huge black Spider that had spread its net all around, caught within it and absorbed all the energies emanating from the devotion of the people, their prayers and all that. It was not a very pleasant spectacle. Now if I had gone and told them : you think it is God you are praying to ! it is only a formidable vital Spider that is sucking your force. Surely it would not have been very charitable on my part. But everywhere it is almost the same thing. There is a vital Force presiding. And vital beings feed upon the vibrations of human emotion. Very few are they, a microscopic number, who go to the temples and

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churches and holy places with the true religious feeling, not to pray or beg something of God, but to offer themselves, to express gratitude, to aspire, to surrender. These when they are there, get some touch of the Divine just for the moment. But all others go only out of superstition, egoism, self-interest and create the atmosphere as it is found and it is that you usually breathe in when you go to a holy place......

I have purposely made the experiment a little everywhere. Almost everywhere it is but a web of adverse vital forces that use everything for their food. The bigger the congregation, the more portentous the vital deity. Besides, in the invisible world it is only the vital beings that like to be worshipped. When they can have a troop of people adoring them, they reach the very height of satisfaction.........

But if you take a truly divine being, that is not the thing he likes or appreciates. He does not like to be worshipped; worship does not give him special pleasure. But if he sees anywhere a fine intuitive sense, a good feeling, a movement of unselfishness or spiritual enthusiasm, he considers that as infinitely more valuable than prayers and Pujas. He feels neither flattered nor satisfied nor glorified by your Puja..........

From this standpoint it is good that for a time humanity should come out of the religious atmosphere, full of fear and blind superstitious submission by which the adverse forces have profited so monstrously. The age of negation, of atheism and positivism is from this view quite indispensable

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for man's liberation from sheer ignorance. It is only when you have come out of this, this abject submission to the evil forces of the Vital that you can rise to truly spiritual heights and then become their collaborators and right instruments for the forces of the Truth and Consciousness and Power. The superstitions of the lower levels you must leave far behind to rise high.

SPIRITUAL FORCE

All I can do is to send you the Force that if received would help you to change your condition; it is what I have always done. But it cannot act effectively—or at least not at once—if the doors are shut against it.

The outward touch is helpful; but the inward is still more helpful when one is accustomed to receive it with a certain concreteness—and the outward touch is not always fully possible, while the inward can be there all the time.

Certainly, my force is not limited to the Ashram and its conditions. As you know it is being largely used for helping the right development of the war and of change in the human world. It is also used for individual purposes outside the scope of the Ashram and the practice of Yoga; but that, of course, is silently done and mainly by a

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spiritual action. The Ashram, however, remains at the centre of the work and without the practice of Yoga the work would not exist and could not have any meaning, or fruition.

It is not very advisable to discuss either myself or the Ashram or spiritual things with hostile minds or unbelievers. These discussions usually bring on the sadhak a stress of the opposing atmosphere and cannot be helpful to his progress. Reserve is the best attitude; one need not be concerned to dispel their bad will or their ignorance.

The Mother or myself send a force. If there is no openness, the force may be thrown back or return (unless we put a great force which is not advisable to do) as from an obstruction or resistance; if there is some openness, the result may be partial or slow; if there is the full openness or receptivity, then the result may be immediate. Of course, there are things that cannot be removed all at once, being an old part of the nature, but with receptivity these also can be more effectively and rapidly dealt with. Some people are so open that even by writing they get free before the letter reaches us.

The Yoga-force is always tangible and concrete in the way I have described and has tangible results. But it is

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invisible—not like a blow given or the rush of a motor car knocking somebody down which the physical senses can at once perceive. How is the mere physical mind to know that it is there and working ? By its results ? but how can it know that the results were that of the Yogic force and not of something else ? One of the two things it must be. Either it must allow the consciousness to go inside, to become aware of inner things, to believe in the experience of the invisible and the supraphysical, and then by experience, by the opening of new capacities, it becomes conscious of these forces and can see, follow and use their workings just as the Scientist uses the unseen forces of Nature.

If you have spiritual force, it can act on people thousands of miles away who do not know and never will know that you are acting on them or that they are being acted upon—they only know that there is a force enabling them to do things and may very well suppose it is their own great energy and genius.

Spiritual force has its own concreteness; it can take a form of which one is aware and can send it quite concretely on whatever object one chooses.

I believe that all Yogins who have these powers do use them whenever they find that they are called on from within to do so. They may refrain if they think the use in a particular case is contrary to the Divine Will, or see

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that preventing one evil may be opening the door to worse or for any other valid reason, but not from any general prohibitory rule. What is forbidden to anyone with a strong spiritual sense is to be a miracle-monger, performing extraordinary things for show, for gain, for fame, out of vanity or pride. It is forbidden to use powers from mere vital motives, to make an Asuric ostentation of them or to turn them into a support for arrogance,, conceit, ambition or any other of the amiable weaknesses to which human nature is prone. It is because half-baked Yogins so often fall into these traps of the hostile forces that the use of Yogic powers is something discouraged as harmful to the user.

I affirm again to you most strongly that this is the Mother's war. You should not think of it as a fight for certain nations against others or even for India; it is a struggle for an ideal that has to establish itself on earth in the life of humanity, for a Truth that has yet to realise itself fully and against a darkness and falsehood that are trying to overwhelm the earth and mankind in the immediate future. It is the forces behind the battle that have to be seen and not this or that superficial circumstance.

Even if I knew that the Allies would misuse their victory or bungle the peace or partially at least spoil the opportunities open to the human world by that victory,.

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I would still put my force behind them. At any rate things could not be one-hundredth part as bad as they would be under Hitler. The ways of the Lord would still be open and to keep them open is what matters.

Yoga develops power, it develops it even when we do not desire or consciously aim at it; and power is always a double-edged weapon which can be used to hurt or destroy as well as to help and save. Be it also noted that all destruction is not evil.

SUICIDE

Sadhana has to be done in the body, it cannot be done by the soul without the body. When the body drops, the soul goes wandering in other worlds—and finally it comes back to another life and another body. All the difficulties it had not solved meet it again in the new life. So what is the use of leaving the body ?

Moreover, if one throws away the body willfully, one suffers much in the other worlds and when one is born again, it is in worse, not in better conditions. The only sensible thing is to face the difficulties in this life and this body and conquer them.

Suicide is an absurd solution; he is quite mistaken in thinking that it will give him peace. He will only carry

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his difficulties with him into a more miserable condition of existence beyond and bring them back to another life on earth.

The Mother :

There are men who say, "How unhappy I am in this body", and think of death as an escape. But after death you have the same vital surroundings and are in danger from the same forces that are the cause of your misery in this fife. The dissolution of the body forces you out into the open spaces of the vital world. And you have no longer a defence; there is not the physical body any longer to rush back to for safety.

It is here upon earth, in the body itself, that you must acquire a complete knowledge and learn to use a full and complete power. Only when you have done that will you be free to move about with entire security in all the worlds.

SUPERMIND

Supermind is between the Sachchidananda and the lower creation. Supermind alone contains the self-determining Truth of the Divine Consciousness and is necessary for Truth creation. One can of course realise Sachchidananda in relation to the mind, life and body also

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—but then it is something stable, supporting by its presence the lower Prakriti, but not transforming it. The Supermind alone can transform the lower nature.

All truths below the Supermind are either partial or relative or otherwise deficient and unable to transform the earthly life; they can only at most modify and influence it. The Supermind is the vast Truth-consciousness of which the ancient seekers spoke; there have been glimpses of it till now, sometimes an indirect influence or pressure, but it has not been brought down into the consciousness of the earth and fixed there. To so bring it down is the aim of our Yoga.

The Vedic Rishis never attained to the Supermind for the earth or perhaps did not even make the attempt. They tried to rise individually to the Supramental plane, but they did not bring it down and make it a permanent part of the earth-consciousness.

Our Yoga is a double movement of ascent and descent; one rises to higher and higher levels of consciousness, but at the same time one brings down their power not only into mind and life, but in the end even into the body. And the highest of these levels, the one at which it aims is the Supermind. Only when that can be brought down is a divine transformation possible in the earth-consciousness.

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The Indian' systems did not distinguish between two quite different powers and levels of consciousness, one which we can call Overmind and the other the true Supermind or Divine Gnosis. That is the reason why they got confused about Maya, and took it for the supreme creative power. In so stopping short at what was still a half-light they lost the secret of transformation, and concluded that the one thing to do was to get beyond it into some immovable and inactive silence of the Supreme.

Overmind stands at the top of the lower hemisphere, and you have to pass through and beyond Overmind, if you would reach Supermind, while still above and beyond Supermind are the worlds of Sachchidananda.

But the last conversion is the supramental, for once there—once the nature is supramentalised, we are beyond the Ignorance and conversion of consciousness is no longer heeded, though a farther divine progression, even an infinite development is still possible.

In the Supramental consciousness there are no problems—the problem is created by the division set up by the Mind. The Supramental sees the Truth as a single whole and everything falls into its place in that whole.

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Our aim is to bring the secret forces out and unwalled into the open, so that instead of getting some shadows or lightnings of themselves out through the veil or being wholly obstructed, they may pour down and flow in rivers.

One cannot get into the true Supermind unless one has first objectified the over mind truth in life, speech, action, external knowledge and not only experienced it in meditation and inner experience.

It is quite impossible for the Supramental to take up the body before there has been the full supramental change in the mind and vital. Some people always expect some kind of miracle—they do not understand that it is a concentrated evolution, swift but following the law of creation that has to take place. A miracle can be a moment's wonder. A change according to the Divine Law can alone endure. The effect of the Supramental descent will create greater possibilities of advancing quickly in the sadhana than now.

The human physical is always full of dark, low and obscure forces. When the Supramental comes down fully into the material consciousness, it will create the right conditions there. The oneness will be created, the constant presence and sense of contact will be felt in the

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material and there will be all the actual physical contact that is needed.

Physical tamas in its roots can be removed only by the descent and the transformation, but physical exercise and regular activity of the body can always prevent a tamasic condition from prevailing in the body.

It is the supramental Power that transforms mind, life and body—not the Sachchidananda consciousness which supports impartially everything. But it is by having experience of the Sachchidananda, pure existence-consciousness-bliss, that the ascent to the supramental and the descent of the supramental become possible.

Nothing permanent can be done without the real Supramental Force. But the result of its descent would be that in human life intuition would become a greater and more developed force than it now is and the other intermediate powers between mind and Supermind would become also more common and develop an organised action.

Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in this world of Matter.

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Its possession would enable the human being to rise beyond the normalities of his present thinking, feeling and being into those highest powers of the mind in its self exceeding. Thus there will be built up, first, even in the Ignorance itself, the possibility of a human ascent towards a divine living.

Once the Supermind has descended upon a God-seeker and has the direction of his existence, all relations with the Divine will be his : the trinity of God-knowledge, divine works and devotion to God will open within him and move towards an utter self-giving and surrender of his whole being and nature. He will live in God and with God,-possess God, even plunge in him forgetting all separate personality, but not losing it in self-extinction.

This world is, no doubt, based ostensibly upon Matter, but its summit is Spirit and the ascent towards Spirit must be the aim and justification of its existence and the pointer to its meaning and purpose. Therefore, if super-mind exists, if it descends, if it becomes the ruling principle, all that seems impossible to mind becomes not only possible but inevitable.

No sadhak can reach the supermind by his own efforts and the effort to do it by personal tapasya has been the

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source of many mishaps. One has to go quietly stage by stage until the being is ready and even then it is only the Grace that can bring the real supramental change.

The Divine Force can act on any plane—it is not limited to the supramental Force. The Supramental is only one aspect of the power of the Divine.

Q : It is nearly 30 years since you started the work of bringing down the Supramental !

A : 30 years too little or too many ? What would have satisfied your rational mind—3 years ? 3 months ? 3 weeks ? Considering that by ordinary evolution it could not have been done even at Nature's express speed in less than 3000 years, and would ordinarily have taken anything from 30,000 to 3,000,000, the transit of 30 years is perhaps not too slow.

It then becomes evident that the Overmind Power (in spite of its lights and splendours) is not sufficient to overcame the Ignorance because it is itself under the law of Division out of which came the Ignorance. One has to pass beyond and supramentalised Overmind so that mind and all the rest may undergo the final change.

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It is only here that the Supramental Light can act for the present—in the places outside there is no preparation to receive it.......It is not possible for a force like the Supramental to come down without making a large change in earth conditions.......It is first through the individuals that it becomes part of the earth-consciousness and afterwards it spreads from the first centres and takes up more and more of the global consciousness till it becomes an established force here.

As far as I can see, once the supramental is established in Matter, the transformation will be possible under much less troublesome conditions than now are there.

The supramental world has to be formed or created in us by the Divine Will as a result of a constant expansion and self-perfecting.

The Mother :

I do not see that the Supramental will act in the way you expect from it. Its action will be to effectuate the Divine's will upon the earth, whatever that may be. On men its action will be to turn their will consciously or unconsciously on their part towards the way in which the Divine's will wants to go.

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THOUGHTS AND GLIMPSES

Because thou hast mistaken the instrument for the worker and the master and because thou seekest to choose by the ignorance of thy desire thy own state and thy own profit and thy own utility, therefore thou hast suffering and anguish and hast many times to be thrust into the red hell of the furnace and hast many times to be reborn and reshaped and remembered until thou shalt have learned thy human lesson. And all these things are because they are in thy unfinished nature.

The upward movement is the means towards fulfilment of existence in the world; the downward movement is destruction, Hell, perdition.

Life is supernatural to Matter, Mind supernatural to Life, ideal being supernatural to mental being, infinite being supernatural to ideal being. So too man is supernatural to the animal, God is supernatural to man. Man too as soon as he has assured his natural existence, must insist on his upward movement towards God. The upward movement is towards Heaven, the downward movement towards Hell.

By yielding to Nature, we fall away both from Nature and from God; by transcending Nature we at once fulfil

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all the possibilities of Nature and rise towards God. The human touches first the divine and then becomes divine.

Not to be immersed, enmeshed and bound by Nature, not to hate and destroy her, is the first thing we must learn if we would be complete Yogins and proceed towards our divine perfection. Perfect and comprehensive Yoga avoids limitation by aspects and leads to entire divinity.

If thou keepest this limited human ego and thinkest thyself the superman, thou art but the fool of thy own pride, the plaything of thy own force and the instrument of thy own illusions.

If thou canst not be the slave of all mankind, thou art not fit to be its master.

Only to those who have a true humility will power be given.

TRANSFORMATION

If you desire this transformation, put yourself in the hands of the Mother and her Powers without cavil or resistance and let her do unhindered her work within

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you. Three things you must have, consciousness, plasticity, unreserved surrender. But be on your guard and do not try to understand and judge the Divine Mother by your little earthly mind that loves to subject even the things that are beyond it to its own norms and standards, its narrow reasonings and erring impressions, its bottomless aggressive ignorance and its petty self-confident knowledge. The human mind shut in the prison of its half-lit obscurity cannot follow the many-sided freedom of the steps of the Divine Shakti. Open rather your soul to her and be content to feel her with the psychic nature and see her with the psychic vision that alone make a straight response to the Truth. Then the Mother herself will enlighten by their psychic elements your mind and heart and life and physical consciousness and reveal to them too her ways and her nature.

Transformation effected by the sadhana cannot be complete unless it is a supramentalisation of the being. Psychicisation is not enough, it is only a beginning; spiritualisation and the descent of the higher consciousness is not enough, it is only a middle term; the ultimate achievement needs the action of the Supramental Consciousness and Force. Something less than that may very well be considered enough by the individual, but it is not enough for the earth-consciousness to take the definitive stride forward.

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If the transformation of the body is complete, that means no subjection to death—it does not mean that one will be bound to keep the same body for all time. One creates a new body for oneself when one wants to change, but how it will be done cannot be said now. The present method is by physical birth—some occultists suppose that a time will come when that will not be necessary—but the question must be left for the Supramental evolution to decide.

In the ordinary nature we live in the Ignorance and do not know the Divine. The forces of the ordinary nature are undivine Forces because they weave a veil of ego and desire and unconsciousness which conceals the Divine from us. To get into the higher and deeper consciousness which knows and lives consciously in the Divine, we have to get rid of the forces of the lower nature and open to the action of the Divine Shakti which will transform our consciousness into that of the Divine Nature.

Unless the external nature is transformed, one may go as high as possible and have the largest experiences, but the external mind remains an instrument of Ignorance.

There are different statuses of the divine consciousness. There are also different statuses of transformation.

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First is the psychic transformation, in which all is in contact with the Divine through the individual psychic consciousness. Next is the spiritual transformation in which all is merged in the Divine in the cosmic consciousness. Third is the supramental transformation in which all becomes supramentalised in the divine gnostic consciousness. It is only with the latter that there can begin the complete transformation of mind, life and body—in my sense of completeness.

The supramental transformation is not the same as the spiritual-mental. It is a change of mind, life and body which the mental or over mental-spiritual cannot achieve. All whom you mention were spirituals, but in different ways. Krishna's mind, for instance, was over-mentalised, Ramakrishna's intuitive, Chaitanya's spiritual-psychic, Buddha's illumined higher mental. All that is different from the supramental.

The earth-consciousness does not want to change, so it rejects what comes down to it from above—it has always done so. It is only if those who have taken this Yoga open themselves and are willing to change their lower nature that this unwillingness can disappear.

What stands in the way, of course, is always the vital ego with its ignorance and the pride of its ignorance, and the physical consciousness with its inertia which resents and resists any call to change and its indolence which does not like to take the trouble—it finds it more

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comfortable to go on its own way repeating always the same old movements and, at best, expecting everything to be done for it in some way at some time.

The first thing is to have the right inner attitude— the rest is the will to transform oneself and the vigilance to perceive and reject all that belongs to the ego and the tamasic persistence of the lower nature. Finally, to keep oneself always open to the Mother in every part of the being so that the process of transformation may find no hindrance.

This Yoga does not mean a rejection of the powers of life, but an inner transformation and a change of the spirit in the life and the use of the powers. These powers are now used in an egoistic spirit and for undivine ends ; they have to be used in a spirit of surrender to the Divine and for the purposes of the divine work. That is what is meant by conquering them back for the Mother.

The life and work developing here in the Ashram has to deal with the world problem and has therefore to meet, it could not avoid, the conflict with the working of the hostile Powers in the human being.

The boon that we have asked from the Supreme is the greatest that the Earth can ask from the Highest, the change that is most difficult to realise, the most exacting in its conditions. It is nothing less than the descent of the supreme Truth and Power into Matter, the

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supramental established in the material plane and consciousness and the material world and an integral transformation down to the very principle of Matter. Only a supreme Grace can effect this miracle.

A total surrender, an exclusive self-opening to the divine influence, a constant and integral choice of the Truth and rejection of the falsehood, these are the only conditions made. To be one with the Eternal is the object of Yoga; there is no other object. All other aims are included in this one divine perfection.

If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside ; for the body is the material basis, the body is the instrument which we have to use. A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material nature.

We want an integral transformation, the transformation of the body and all its activities. But there is a first step, absolutely indispensable, which has to be completed before anything else can be undertaken; it is the transformation of the consciousness. The starting-point, it goes without saying, is the aspiration towards this transformation and the will to realise it; without that nothing, can be done. But if to the aspiration is added an inner

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opening, a kind of receptivity, then one can enter at a bound into this transformed consciousness and remain there. It is a complete and absolute change, a revolution in the basic poise; it is somewhat like turning a ball inside out. In the changed consciousness everything appears not only new and different, but almost the reverse of what it looked like to the ordinary consciousness. In the transformed consciousness, you start from knowledge, and proceed from knowledge to knowledge. Yet it is only a beginning. Different parts and planes of the being are transformed slowly and gradually as the result of an inner transformation.

It is absolutely idle to think of transforming the body when other things that are so much easier to do—though, of course, none is easy—are not done. The inner must change before the outermost can follow. What has to be done with the body at first is to make it open to the Force, so as to receive strength against illness and fatigue —when they come, there must be the power to react and throw them off and to keep a constant flow of force into the body. If that is done, the rest of the bodily change can wait for its proper time.

The Mother :

Governments succeed governments, regimes follow regimes, centuries pass after centuries, but human

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misery remains lamentably the same. It will always be so, as long as man remains what he is, blind and ignorant, closed to all spiritual reality. A transformation, an illumination of the human consciousness alone can bring about a real amelioration in the condition of humanity. Thus even from the standpoint of human life, it follows logically that the first duty of man is to seek and possess the divine consciousness.

In the integral Yoga, the integral life down even to the smallest detail has to be transformed, to be divinised.

VIOLENCE—NON-VIOLENCE

There is a truth in Ahimsa, there is a truth in destruction also. I do not teach that you should go on killing everybody every day as a spiritual dharma. I say that destruction can be done when it is part of the divine work commanded by the Divine. Non-violence is better than violence as a rule, and still sometimes violence may be the right thing. I consider dharma as relative; unity with the Divine and action from the Divine Will, the highest way.

Destruction in itself is neither good nor evil. It is a fact of Nature, a necessity in the play of forces, as things are in this world.

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But the Gita, which strongly insists on a perfect and absolute samata, goes on to say, "Fight, destroy the adversary, conquer". If there is no kind of general action wanted, no loyalty to Truth as against Falsehood except for one's personal sadhana, no will for the Truth to conquer, then the samata of indifference will suffice. But here there is a work to be done, a Truth to be established against which immense forces are ranged, invisible forces which can use visible things and persons and actions for their instruments. If one is among the disciples, the seeker of this Truth, one has to take sides for the Truth, to stand against the forces that attack it and seek to stifle it. It is personal and egoistic feeling that has to be thrown away, hatred and vital ill-will have to be rejected. It is a principle of action that has to be seen in its right fight and proportions.

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