The Mother

Reasons of the Mother's Temporary Retirement

There will always be doubts, upsettings and confusion of the physical mind and vital, so long as the vital approaches the Mother from the wrong standpoint,―e.g. if it insists on judging her by her response to its demands and ideas of what she ought to give it. Not to impose one's mind or vital will on the Divine but to receive the Divine's Will and follow it, is the true attitude of Sadhana. Not to say "This is my right, want, claim, need, requirement, why do I not get it?", but to give oneself, to surrender and to receive with joy whatever the Divine gives, not grieving or revolting, is the right way. Then what one receives

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will be the right thing for one. All this you know very well; why do you constantly allow your outer vital to forget it and drag you back towards the old wrong attitude?

As for the Mother drawing back from the old course, routine etc. of her action with regard to the Sadhaks, it was a sheer necessity of the work and the Sadhana. Everything had got into a wrong groove, was full of mixed movements and a mistaken attitude―and consequently things were going on in the same rajaso-tamasic round without any chance of issue―like a squirrel in a cage. The Mother's illness was an emphatic warning that this could not be allowed to go on any longer. A new basis of action and relations has to be built up in which no further sanction will ever seem to be given to the past mistaken movements of the Sadhaks which were standing in the way of the descent of the Truth into the physical (material) nature. The basis cannot be built in a day, but the Mother had to stand back, otherwise to build it at all would be impossible.

7-12-1931

It is not a fact that the Mother is retiring more and more or that she has any intention of going inside entirely like me. Your remarks about the privileged few are incomprehensible to me; we are not confiding in a few at the expense of others or telling them what is happening while keeping silent to you. This is an old complaint of yours and it has no foundation. If anybody claims to have the special confidence of the Mother, he is making an egoistic claim which is not justifiable. Your real point seems to be about the Mother's not taking up the soup and its accompaniments again. I have told you already why she was compelled by the experience of her illness to stand back from the old routine―which had become for most of the Sadhaks a sort of semi-ecclesiastical routine and nothing more. It was because of the mistaken attitude of the Sadhaks which had brought about an atmosphere full of movements contrary to the Yoga and likely to lead to disaster―as it had already begun to do. To resume the soup on the old footing would be to bring back the old conditions

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and end in a repetition of the same round of wrong movements and the same results. The Mother has been slowly and carefully taking steps to renew on another footing her control of things after her illness, but she can take no step which will allow the old dark movements to return―movements of some of which I think you yourself were beginning to take notice. The next step is for the Sadhaks themselves to take; they must make it possible (by their change of attitude, by their resolution to rise on the lower vital and physical plane into the true consciousness) for a union with the Mother on that plane in the right way and with the right result to become possible. More I cannot say just now; but I fully intend to be more explicit hereafter―so far as I can without special reference to individuals; for there are things personal to people's Yoga that can often be spoken of only to themselves and not to others.

As for your other questions I shall consider them in another letter. I will only say that what happens is for the "best" in this sense only that the end will be a divine victory in spite of all difficulties―that has been and always will be my seeing, my faith and my assurance―if you are willing to accept it from me. But that does not mean that your sadness and depression are necessary to the movement! The sooner they disappear never to recur again, the more joyously the Mother and I will advance on the steep road to the summits, and the easier it will be for you to realise what you want, the complete Bhakti and Ananda.

28-12-1931

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