The Mother on Yoga |
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The Mother: The indispensable basis of our Yoga is sincerity, honesty, unselfishness, disinterested consecration to the work to be done, nobility of character and straightforwardness. They who do not practise these elementary virtues are not Sri Aurobindo’s disciples. |
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Q. Mother, I would like to ask you a question. How to silence the mind? The Mother: Before silencing the mind you will have to know how to concentrate. Do you know how to concentrate? |
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The Mother: It is your psychic being. (Pause) The soft, tender voice is your psychic being. It is always undemanding, very quiet, almost inaudible. But that is the right voice, the right guide. |
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Q. Are there any signs which indicate that one is ready for the path, especially if one has no spiritual teacher? The Mother: Yes, the most important indication is a perfect equality of soul in all circumstances. It is an absolutely indispensable basis; something very quiet, calm, peaceful, the feeling of a great force. Not the quietness that comes from inertia but the sensation of a concentrated power which keeps you always steady, whatever happens, even in circumstances which may appear to you the most terrible in your life. That is the first sign. |
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The Mother: What is it that gives you the impression that you are an individual?... When you were ten, you were very different from what you were when you were born, and now you are very different from what you were at ten, aren't you? The form grows within certain limits and there is a similarity, but even so, it is quite different from what it was at your birth; you may almost say, “It was not I.” |
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The Mother: You must be able, if you are ready to follow the Divine order, to take up whatever work you are given, even a stupendous work, and leave it the next day with the same quietness with which you took it up and not feel that the responsibility is yours. There should be no attachment – to any object or any mode of life. You must be absolutely free. |
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The Mother: Those who can put their ideas into order and can also organise their character and can finally control their movements. And then, if you make progress, you succeed in governing your physical life; you begin to have a control over your physical movements. If you take life in that way, truly it becomes interesting. |
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The Mother: Everyone possesses in a large measure, and the exceptional individual in an increasing degree of precision, two opposite tendencies of character, in almost equal proportions, which are like the light and the shadow of the same thing. In this way life seems to endow everyone not only with the possibility of expressing an ideal, but also with contrary elements representing in a concrete manner the battle he has to wage and the victory he has to win for the realisation to become possible. Consequently, all life is an education pursued more or less consciously, more or less willingly. |
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The Mother:
I am going to read a message. This message was written because it is foreseen that next year will be a difficult year and there will be many inner struggles and even outer ones perhaps. So I tell all of you what attitude you should take in these circumstances. In fact, I insist that the more difficult things are, the more you must remain quiet, and the more should you have an unshakable faith. Of all things this is the most important. |
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Q. How can one transform the vital? The Mother: The first step: will. Secondly, sincerity and aspiration. But will and aspiration are almost the same thing, one follows the other. Then, perseverance. Yes, perseverance is necessary in any process, and what is this process? First, there must be the ability to observe and discern, the ability to find the vital in oneself, else you will be hard put to it to say: This comes from the vital, this comes from the mind, this from the body. Everything will seem to you mixed and indistinct. After a very sustained observation, you will be able to distinguish between the different parts and recognise the origin of a movement. Quite a long time is necessary for this. |
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Q. How can one change into the divine Will? The Mother: Well, first you must want it. Afterwards you must have a great aspiration. And then you must continue to want it, and continue to aspire and not give way when difficulties come, and continue until you succeed. That's all. And then, a certain number of things are necessary, as for example not to be selfish, not to have a small narrow-mindedness, not to live with preferences, not to have desires, not to have mental opinions – many things. It is a fairly long process because you must change your ordinary nature. This is the first condition. |
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Q. How can one increase the receptivity of the body ? The Mother: It depends on the part. The method is almost the same for all parts of the being. To begin with, the first condition: to remain as quiet as possible. You may notice that in the different parts of your being, when something comes and you do not receive it, this produces a stiffening — there is something which hardens in the vital, the mind or the body. There is a stiffening and this hurts, one feels a mental, vital or physical pain. So, the first thing is to put one's will and relax this stiffening, as one does a twitching nerve or a cramped muscle; you must learn how to relax, be able to relieve this tension in whatever part of the being it may be. |
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Q. What do you mean by a “divine way of life”? The Mother: We always call “Divine” all that we are not but wish to be. All that seems to us infinitely superior, not only to all that we have done, but to all that we feel we can do; all that surpasses both our conception and our present possibilities, we call “Divine”. I say this, because I am quite convinced that if we go back some thousands of years, when men spoke of the Divine, they spoke perhaps of a state like that of the godheads of the Overmind; and now this mode of being of the Overmind godheads who, have governed the earth and formed many things on earth for a very long time, seems to us far inferior to what we conceive the Supermind to be. |
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The Mother: True maternity begins with the conscious creation of a being, with the willed shaping of a soul coming to develop and utilise a new body. The true domain of women is the spiritual. We forget it but too often. |
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