24 October 1956 I have something here, I don't know if it will take us very far, but still it will make a good change. All these last few weeks the subject was always progress: how to progress, what hindered progress, how to use the supramental Force, etc. This is going on, I have a whole packet still! But we may change the subject for once. Someone has asked me a question about death: what happens after death and how one takes a new body. Needless to say, it is a subject which could fill volumes, no two cases are alike: practically  everything is possible in the life after death as everything is possible on earth when one is in a physical body, and all statements when

22 February 1956 Sweet Mother, I don’t understand “the strong immo- bility of an immortal spirit”. The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 95 * What is it you don’t understand? That an immortal spirit has a strong immobility? It says what it means. An immortal spirit is necessarily immobile and strong, by the very fact of its being immortal. But then Sri Aurobindo says about the Gita: “Not the mind’s control of vital impulse is its rule, but the strong immobility of an immortal spirit.” Yes. But this is a conclusion, my child; you must read the beginning of the sentence if you want to understand.…Ah! (Turning to a disciple) Give me the light and th

15 February 1956 Sweet Mother, Sri Aurobindo speaks of “this executive world-Nature”. Is there an executive Nature on the other planes also? On the other planes, what do you mean? In the mind and higher up. The earth-Nature contains not only matter — the physical and its different planes — but also the vital and the mind; all this is part of the earth-Nature. And after that there is no Nature, that is to say, there is no longer this distinction. That belongs essentially to the material world as it is described here.¹ But, as Sri Aurobindo says, this is not “all the true truth”. He has simply given a summary of what is explained in the G

18 July 1956 I would like an explanation, Sweet Mother. In Prayers and Meditations there is a sentence: “And the hours s, fading away like unlived dreams.” 19 January 1917 * This is an experience. Do you know what an unlived dream is?... I did not take the word “dream” in the sense of dreams at night; I took the word dream to mean something one has built up in the best and most clear-sighted part of one’s being, something which is an ideal one would like to see realised, something higher, more beautiful, more noble, more wonderful than all that has been created, and one has a power of imagination or creation somewhere in one’s consciousness and one builds some

-00_Publisher^s Note.htm Publisher's Note This volume contains the talks Mother gave to the students, teachers and sadhaks of the Ashram in her "Wednesday classes" of 1956. This year Mother usually began by reading from her French translations of two of Sri Aurobindo's works. For most of the year the book was The Synthesis of Yoga (Part One, "The Yoga of Divine Works"). On November 21 she took up Thoughts and Glimpses. After the reading Mother answered questions on the text or on other subjects. These questions were either asked on the spot or submitted to her beforehand in writing. The talks, conducted in French, were tape-recorded at the time.

7 November 1956 “The Shakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works, breaks up our present psy- chological formations, shatters every wall, widens, libe- rates… she frees the consciousness from confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and enter into worlds or other regions of this world and act there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself, and begins to contain what before contained it; it achieves the cosmic consciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins to know inwardly and directly and not m

1 August 1956 Sweet Mother, does the worship offered to the god- dess Durga and to Kali have any spiritual value? That depends on who offers the worship. It is not that which is of importance for the spiritual value. For the integrality and the complete truth of the Yoga it is important not to limit one’s aspiration to one form or another. But from the spiritual point of view, whatever the object of worship, if the movement is perfectly sincere, if the self-giving is integral and absolute, the spiritual result can be the same; for, whatever object you take, through it ― sometimes in spite of it, despite it ― you always reach the supreme Reality, in the measure and

25 July 1956  “It may be said that a complete act of divine love and worship has in it three parts that are the expressions of a single whole, ― a practical worship of the Divine in the act, a symbol of worship in the form of the act expressing some vision and seeking or some relation with the Divine, an inner adoration and longing for oneness or feeling of oneness in the heart and soul and spirit.” The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 152-53 * I have not understood the first two parts very well. There is a purely physical form of the act, like those forms in cults in which a particular gesture, a particular movement is meant to express the co

10 October 1956 Some days ago, during the Translation Class¹  I found a sage in The Life Divine which, I thought, might interest you this evening. Sri Aurobindo is speaking of the movement of Nature and he explains how from matter which seems inert came life, then how from life mind emerged and also how from mind will emerge the supermind or the spiritual life; and he gives a kind of brief survey of the time it takes. I am going to read this sage to you and shall tell you later what connection it has with our present situation: “The first obscure material movement of the evolu- tionary Force is marked by an aeonic graduality; the movement of life-progress procee

20 June 1956 Sweet Mother, here Sri Aurobindo writes: “And yet there is in the heart or behind it a profounder mystic light” The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 140 * What is this mystic light? It is love. But after that, Sri Aurobindo continues: “which, if not what we call intuition ― for that, though not of the mind, yet descends through the mind ― has yet a direct touch upon Truth and is nearer to the Divine than the human intellect in its pride of knowledge.” Is there a relation between this mystic light and intuition? It is not intuition. It is knowledge through love, light through love, understanding through love. Sri