The Mother

Faculty of Vision and Spiritual Progress

Q: Some people see light etc. around the Mother but I do not. What is the obstruction in me?

A: It is not an obstruction―it is simply a question of the growth of the inner senses. It has no indispensable connection with spiritual progress. There are some very far on the path who

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have very little of this kind of vision if any―on the other hand sometimes it develops enormously in mere beginners who have as yet had only very elementary spiritual experiences.

1-12-1933

Q: X told me, "I was in constant touch with the Divine Mother long before I entered Pondicherry. I saw her not only in meditation or vision but before my wide-awake eyes, in a concrete form. I often used to converse with her, specially during my difficult periods when she would come and tell me what to do. Only, I did not know till I visited this place that the Divine Mother was no other than the Ashram Mother and had cast herself into a physical mould." Well, I am too pragmagtic to believe all such things, specially her claim of seeing Mother with the naked eyes, which would mean an advanced Sadhana.

A: But there is nothing improbable in it. It means simply that she externalised her inner vision and experience so as to see through the physical eyes also, but it was the inner vision that saw and the inner hearing that heard, not the physical sight or hearing. That is common enough. It does not indicate an "advanced" Sadhana, whatever that phrase may mean, but only a special faculty.

2-7-1936

These things [seeing and conversing with the Devata of one's worship] are extremely common among those who practise Yoga everywhere. In the Ashram the Sadhaks are too intelligent, sceptical and matter of fact to have much of that kind of experience. Even those who might develop it are deprived by the outward-mindedness and physical-mindedness that dominates the atmosphere.

2-7-1936

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It is quite usual at a certain stage of the Sadhana for people who have the faculty to see or hear the Devata of their worship and to receive constant directions from him or her with regard either to action or to Sadhana. Defects and difficulties may remain, but that does not prevent the direct guidance from being a fact. The necessity of the Guru in such cases is to see that it is the right experience, the right voice or vision―for it is possible for a false guidance to come as it did with X and Y.

8-7-1936