September 1, 1914*       O MOTHER Divine, with what fervour, what ardent love I came to Thee in Thy deepest consciousness, in Thy high status of sublime love and perfect felicity, and I nestled so close into Thy arms and loved Thee with so intense a love that I became altogether Thyself. Then in the silence of our mute ecstasy a voice from yet profounder depths arose and the voice said, “Turn towards those who have need of thy love.” All the grades of consciousness appeared, all the successive worlds. Some were splendid and luminous, well ordered and clear; there knowledge was resplendent, expression was harmonious and vast, will was potent and invincible. Then the worlds d

July 12, 1918      *SUDDENLY, before Thee, all my pride fell. I understood how futile it was in Thy Presence to wish to surmount oneself, and I wept, wept abundantly and without constraint the sweetest tears of my life….* Ah yes, how refreshing, how calm and sweet were those tears I shed before Thee without shame or constraint! Was it not like a child in its father's arms? But what a Father! What sublimity, what magnificence, what immensity of comprehension! And what a power and plenitude in the response! Yes, my tears were like holy dew. Was it because it was not for my own sorrow that I wept? *Tears sweet and beneficent, tears that opened my heart without constraint

January 4, 1917       O LORD, Thou showerest upon me all Thy boons. Now that this being expects nothing, desires nothing from life any longer, life brings it its most precious treasures, those coveted by all men. In all the domains of my individual being Thou showerest Thy boons, in the mind, the psychic and even the physical. Thou hast placed me amidst abundance, and abundance seems to me as natural as scarcity and does not bring me a greater joy, for often in poverty the spiritual life was more intense and conscious for me; but I see this abundance very clearly, and my individual being on whom Thou heapest Thy boons thus, prostrates itself before Thee in inexpressible gratitude

February 1, 1914 *       I TURN towards Thee who art everywhere and within all and outside all, intimate essence of all and remote from all, centre of condensation for all energies, creator of conscious individualities: I turn towards Thee and salute Thee, O liberator of the worlds, and, identified with Thy divine love, I contemplate the earth and its creatures, this mass of substance put into forms perpetually destroyed and renewed, this swarming mass of aggregates which are dissolved as soon as constituted, of beings who imagine that they are conscient and permanent individualities and who are as ephemeral as a breath, always alike or almost the same, in their diversity,

March 1, 1914       IT is in one's own self that all the obstacles lie, it is in one's own self that all the difficulties are found, it is in one's own self that there is all the darkness and ignorance. Were we to travel throughout the earth, were we to go and bury ourselves in some solitude, break with all our habits, lead the most ascetic life, yet if some bond of illusion held back our consciousness far from Thy absolute Consciousness, if some egoistic attachment cut us off from the integral communion with Thy divine Love, we would be no nearer Thee despite all outer circumstances. Can any circumstances be considered more or less favourable? I doubt it; it is the idea

April 1, 1914       I feel we have entered the very heart of Thy sanctuary and grown aware of Thy very will. A great joy, a deep peace reign in me, and yet all my inner constructions have vanished like a vain dream and I find myself now, before Thy immensity, without a frame or system, like a being not yet individualised. All the past in its external form seems ridiculously arbitrary to me, and yet I know it was useful in its own time.     But now all is changed: a new stage has begun. Page - 114 April 2, 1914       Every day, when I want to write, I am interrupted, as though the new period opening now before us were a period of expansion rathe

May 2, 1914       BEYOND all human conceptions, even the most marvellous, beyond all human feelings, even the most sublime, beyond the most magnificent aspirations and the purest flights, beyond Love, Knowledge and the Oneness of Being, I would enter into constant communion with Thee, O Lord. Free from all shackles I shall be Thyself; it will be Thou who wilt see the world through this body; it will be Thou who wilt act in the world through this instrument.     In me is the calm serenity of perfect certitude. Page - 132 May 3, 1914       O DIVINE Love, supreme Knowledge, perfect Oneness, at every moment of the day I call to Thee so as to be n

APPENDIX FOUR LETTERS BY Sri Aurobindo I have said that the Divine does the Sadhana first for the world and then gives what is brought down to others. There can be no Sadhana without realisations and experiences. The Prayers are a record of Mother’s experiences. 4 January 1939 * In some of the Mother’s Prayers which are addressed to “divin Maître” I find the words: “avec notre divine Mère”. How can the Mother and “divin Maître” have a “divine Mère”? It is as if the Mother was not the “divine Mère” and there was some other Mother and the “divin Maître” was not the Transcendent and had also a “divine Mère”! Or is it that all these are addressed to something impersonal?

December 4, 1914       AFTER long days of silence, entirely occupied by outer work, it is at last given to me to resume these pages and continue with Thee, Lord, this conversation which is so sweet to me....     But Thou hast broken all my habits, for Thou wouldst prepare me for liberation from every mental form. Certain mental forms, more particularly powerful or adapted to the temperament, are sure guides to supreme experiences. But once the experiences are over, Thou wouldst have them free in themselves from bondage to any mental form, however high or pure it may be, so as to be capable of expression in the new, most true form, that is, the one most suitable to

November 3, 1914       FOR quite a long time, Lord, my pen had fallen silent.... Yet hast Thou given me hours of unforgettable illumination, hours in which the union between the most divine Consciousness and the most material grew perfect, hours when the identification of the individual being with the universal Mother and of the universal Mother with Thee was so complete that the individual consciousness could perceive simultaneously its own existence, the life of the entire universe and Thy eternity beyond all change. Beatitude was at its height in an ineffable and infinite peace, the consciousness luminous and immeasurable, complex and yet one, existence all-powe