India - the Mother

January 24, 1958

(From a series of comments on a Buddhist scripture, the Dhammapada.)

When I read those ancient texts, I have the impression that from the inner standpoint, from the standpoint of true life, well, we have terribly regressed, and that for the sake of acquiring a few ingenious mechanisms and a few incitements to physical laziness, some instruments or machines that save our efforts in life, we have renounced the reality of the inner life....

It's quite unfortunate that one should abandon one thing to get another. When I tell you about the inner life, I am not opposed to modern inventions, far from it, but how artificial and foolish those inventions have made us! How we have lost the sense of true beauty, how we clutter our lives with useless needs!

The time may have come to continue the ascent in the curve of the spiral, and with all that this knowledge of matter has brought to us, we will be able to give our spiritual progress a more solid base. Armed with what we have learned about the secrets of material Nature, we will then be able to join the two extremes and find again the supreme Reality at the centre of the atom.

Questions and Answers (1929 - 1931): Vigilance