Order and Discipline 1 You must become conscious of yourself, conscious in every detail. You must organise what you call yourself around the psychic centre, the divine centre of your being so that you can possess a single, cohesive, fully conscious being: as this centre is wholly consecrated to the Divine, if all the elements are organised harmoniously around it, they too get consecrated to the Divine. Thus, when the Divine wills it, when the time comes, when the work of individualisation is complete, then the Divine permits you to let your ego melt in Him, so that you may exist for the Divine alone. But it is the Divine that takes the decision. You should have d

Cling to Truth THE Life Divine is the life of Truth. It is based on Truth, it is Truth, body and substance – Truth absolute, pure and simple. But it may be asked as we are actually in the ignorant and half-ignorant consciousness, in a world of almost total falsehood, is it not necessary, is it not inescapable for us to accept the falsehood for the moment, in order to be able to work in the world and succeed? We have to live in an environment and move in it; if we try to go against it openly, how can we do it practically? As individuals we are infinitesimal particles and the mass of the whole will bear us down each one of us and crush us out of existence. Truth is all righ

On Food I BELIEVE the primitive man was very near to the animal. He lived more by instinct than by intelligence. He ate when he was hungry without any kind of fixed rule. He might have had his own tastes and preferences, we do not know much about it; but we know that he lived much more physically, much less mentally or even vitally than now. Originally very material in nature, much like the animal, man in he course of his progress through centuries or millenniums became more and more mental, more and more vital. And as he grew more mental and more vital, refinement became possible, the intelligence increased, but the possibility too of perversion and deformation. It is one thing

Go Through IT is said one must be free from human love if one is to enjoy Divine Love. But to be free is usually taken to mean to reject, to reject naturally by force, that is to say, to coerce, to repress and suppress. "But who can coerce a force of Nature?" the Gita asks. Indeed a force of Nature like human passion cannot be dominated or obliterated by force; it is sure to come back with a redoubled vigour. Nor can such an elemental feeling be overlooked, side-tracked or by-passed. This way also the element is sure to come back and catch you from behind. The best way to tackle the thing is, as the Mother says, to go through it. To go through means to stand and face it and no

True Professor THE Mother says a professor, a true professor, must be truly a yogi. That is to say, a teacher, even a schoolteacher, one imparting what is called secular education, has to be nothing less than a yogi. The Indian term for teacher is 'guru' and 'guru' meant a teacher both spiritual and secular. This distinction of the two words is made by the modern spirit, it did not belong to the ancient culture. The secular knowledge was also considered a necessary part of the spiritual knowledge, that which prepared for it and led towards it. The 'apara vidya' or the 'vedangas' were but limbs of the supreme knowledge 'para vidya' and 'veda'. A teacher has to be a yogi d

Opening to the Divine You are to open yourself to the Divine and receive Him. Usually you open yourself in all directions to everything and everybody in the world. You open your surface being and receive there all sorts of influences from all quarters. So inside you there-comes about what we can call a hotch-potch of all contrary and contradictory movements: and that creates difficulties without number. Now instead of that, live away from the surface, from the outside and open up to the Divine and receive nothing hut the Divine force. If you can do that all difficulties practically disappear. But, of course, the trouble is there. Unless one is alchemically conditioned,

The Surrender of an Inner Warrior IT means the vital when it is converted. The converted vital is for the Divine like a warrior. The vital in man is the region of power and it is that which drives him to fight, to fight and conquer. It is the most difficult element to deal with: for it is this capacity to fight that also produces in the vital the spirit of revolt and independence, the will to follow its own will. But when the vital understands and is converted, if it is truly surrendered to the Divine Will, then its fighting capacity turns against anti-divine forces, the forces of obscurity that prevent the transformation: the powers of the vital are strong

The Stress of the Spirit THE universe is a close-knit pattern in which each part, each point is inextricably linked with every other part and point. Each element acts and reacts upon every other: the karma of one is echoed and re-echoed in the karma of all others. An inevitable, inescapable mutuality rules the behaviour of the constituent entities of a whole; in other words, there is only one Force, one Presence that permeates all, even constitutes the All. The material universe makes one single block of reality, homogeneous and indivisible. Modern knowledge has proved the fact to the hilt. It is one continuous extension like the ocean's rippling wet sheet. If you

Value of Religious Exercises What is the value of religious exercises (such as Japa etc.) ? THESE things, if they help you, are all right; if they do not, naturally they are of no use. The value is quite relative. It is worth only the effect it has on you or the measure of your belief in it. If it is an aid to your concentration, then, as I say, it is wel­come. The ordinary consciousness takes to the thing through a kind of superstition; one thinks, "If I go to the temple or to the church once a week, for example, if I say my prayers regularly, something good will happen to me." It is a superstition spread all over the world, but it has no spiritual value.

How to Become Indifferent to Criticism? IN one's own consciousness one must look at things from a wider, more general standpoint. If at any moment something holds you, holds you tight and you have to face it, if you are compelled to wrestle with a formidable obstacle and at that time you begin to feel that before this moment thousands and thousands of years have passed and after that moment yet more thousands and thousands of years will pass, you immediately see the inconsequence of this little point of time; you need not enter into a high spiritual condition, you have simply to contact Time and Space, with all that is before and all that is after and