3 May 1951 “Money is the visible sign of a universal force, and this force in its manifestation on earth works on the vital and physical planes and is indispensable to the fullness of the outer life. In its origin and its true action it belongs to the Divine. But like other powers of the Divine it is delegated here and in the ignorance of the lower Nature can be usurped for the uses of the ego or held by Asuric influences and perverted to their purpose. This is indeed one of the three forces – power, wealth, sex – that have the strongest attrac- tion for the human ego and the Asura and are most generally misheld and misused

12 April 1951 What is the difference between Japanese art and the art of other countries, like those of Europe, for example?                              The art of Japan is a kind of directly mental expression in physical life. The Japanese use the vital world very little. Their art is extremely mentalised; their life is extremely mentalised. It expresses in detail quite precise mental formations. Only, in the physical, they have spontaneously the sense of beauty. For example, a thing one sees very rarely in Europe but constantly, daily in Japan: very simple people, men of the working class or even peasants go for rest or enjoyment to a place where they can

10 February 1951 “You must be able, if you are ready to follow the Di- vine 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.” Questions and Answers 1929 (14 April) * I would like someone to tell me what he understands by “be absolutely free”, for it is a very important question. I shall tell you why.  Most people confuse liberty with licence. For the ordinary mind, to be free is to h

28 April 1951 “But so long as the lower nature is active the personal effort of the Sadhaka remains necessary.”                Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, p. 6 *                              Outwardly, one believes in one's own personality and one's own effort. So long as you believe in personal effort, you must make a personal effort. There is one part of the being which is not at all conscious of being a part of the Divine. The whole of the outer being is convinced that it is something separate, independent and related only to itself. This part of the being must necessarily make a personal effort. It can't be told, “The Divine does the sadhana for you”,

12 March 1951 In the vital world, forces exist: do mental forms exist in the mental world? Yes, there is a concrete mental world and there are mental forms which do not resemble vital forces but have their own law. There are many, innumerable mental forms. They are almost indestructible; one can only say that they change forms and relations, it is something very fluid, and moving all the time. “...You can understand only what you already know in your own inner self. What strikes you in a book is what you have already experienced deep within you... The knowledge that seems to come to you from out- side is only an occasion for bringing out t

* The Mother- April 1950

11 May 1951                Mother reads the passage about Mahakali (pp. 28-30) from The Mother by Sri Aurobindo. Are the stories told about the image of Mahakali true ?                              What stories ? Hundreds of stories are told, my child. Which stories are you speaking of? Which Mahakali ? The images made of her, the statues ? This is the human way of seeing things. She is not like that. I believe I have already told you once that there are the original beings in their higher reality and these are of a particular kind; then, as they manifest in more and more material regions, nearer and nearer the earth, they assume different forms an

26 April 1951 “...Reject too the false and indolent expectation that the divine Power will do even the surrender for you. The Supreme demands your surrender to her, but does not impose it: you are free at every moment, till the irrevocable transformation comes, to deny and to reject the Divine or to recall your self-giving, if you are willing to suffer the spiritual consequence.” Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, p. 4 * What does an “irrevocable transformation” mean ?                              The transformation is irrevocable when your consciousness is transformed in such a way that you can no longer go back to your o

8 March 1951 “The true remembrance of past births may indeed be part of an integral knowledge; but it cannot be got by that way of imaginative fancies. If it is on one side an objective knowledge, on the other it depends largely on personal and subjective experience, and here there is much chance of invention, distortion or false build- ing. To reach the truth of these things, your experi- encing consciousness must be pure and limpid, free from any mental interference or any vital interference, liberated from your personal notions and feelings and from your mind's habit of interpreting or explaining in its own way.” Q

8 February 1951 “The outer being is like a crust. In ordinary people the crust is so hard and thick that they are not con- scious of the Divine within them. If once, even for a moment only, the inner being has said, `I am here and I am yours', then it is as though a bridge has been built and little by little the crust becomes thinner and thinner until the two parts are wholly joined and the inner and the outer become one.” Questions and Answers 1929 (14 April) * Have you ever thought of unifying your being? Have you been disturbed, sometimes, to see that now you are one person, at other times another, at one time you want t