India - the Mother

November 2, 1955

Mother, you said that the Vedic age was like a promise. A promise to whom?

To the Earth and to men....

They used a symbolic language [in the Veda]. Some say it was because they wanted it to be an initiation to be understood only by initiates. But it may also have been quite a spontaneous expression, without a precise intention to veil, but which could be understood only by those who had had the experience. Because, quite evidently, it's something that isn't mental but came spontaneously—as if from the heart and from aspiration —the quite spontaneous expression of an experience or a knowledge. And naturally, a expression that was poetic, with its own rhythm, its own beauty, and which could be accessible only to those who had had an identical experience. So it was veiled of itself, there was no need to add a veil on it....

Some sentences seem quite banal and ordinary, with things apparently put in an almost childish way ... But if you have the experience, you see that they contain a power of realization and a truth of expression that give you the key to the experience itself.

Questions and Answers (1955): 2 November 1955