PART THREE The New Year Initiation 1944 0 Lord, the world implores Thee to prevent it from falling back always into the same stupidities. Grant that the mistakes recognised may never be renewed. Grant, lastly, that its actions may be the exact and sincere expression of its proclaimed ideals. – THE MOTHER 1 THIS is the New Year Prayer the Mother has formulated for our sake. This is the turn She would have us give to our sadhana for the year. What is the special import of this new orientation? It is, one may say, to direct our efforts towards an objective expression, towards an application to life on the material plane. One starts

Consciousness as Energy 1 A LIVE wire – through which an electric current, say of several thousand volts, is passing – looks quite innocent, motionless, inactive, almost inert. The appearance, needless to say, is deceptive. Even so the still life of a Yogin. Action does not consist merely in mechanical motion visible to the eye: intra-atomic movements that are subtle, invisible, hard to detect even by the most sensitive instruments, possess a tremen­dous potency, even to unimaginable degrees. Likewise in man, the extent of muscular flexions does not give the measure or potential of his activity. One cannot say that the first-line infantryman who rushes and cha

The Soul of a Nation A NATION is a living personality; it has a soul, even like a human individual. The soul of a nation is also a psychic being, that is to say, a conscious being, a formation out of the Divine Consciousness and in direct contact with it, a power and aspect of Mahashakti. A nation is not merely the sum total of the individuals that compose it, but a collective personality of which the individuals are as it were cells, like the cells of a living and conscious organism. The psychic being or soul of a nation is indeed conscious; it knows its raison d'être, its life purpose, its destiny, the role it has to play in the divine scheme as the divine instrument.

The Freedom and the Force of the Spirit THE first thing that has to be learnt in life is that circums­tances are not all in all: however powerful and overwhelming they may appear to be at a given moment, man can always react against them. If there is not an immediate success externally as desired, the will thus exerted does not go in vain. First of all, it declares and asserts the independence and autonomy of the inner man: something within is found and established which is not touched by the environment, which lives by its own authentic truth and reality and is ever contented and happy. It is in reference to such a poise of consciousness that the

How to Feel that we Belong to the Divine How to feel that we belong to the Divine and that the Divine is acting in us ? NOT with the head, although one can always begin by it; for the light touches the head first. One must feel with one's sensation, that is, sense it in a flaming aspiration that seeks to realise. For example, as it may happen sometimes to an athlete: supposing you are trying to lift a heavy weight and are intensely concentrated upon it. Suddenly you feel without your knowing it how, that another Force is lifting it up, some­thing has taken hold of your hands and is making them do the impossible. The body seems to be inexistent at

Total Transformation Demands Total Rejection To a positive side in the sadhana, there must also be a negative one. Realisation or experience, on one side, must be accompanied by rejection of things that oppose it, on the other. People wonder' why a beautiful experience fades away too soon or does not repeat itself easily, why a happy condition does not continue long but is followed almost inevitably by a condition of despond. The reason is very simple. The experience or realisation is not a total one, that is to say, it belongs to a part only of the nature and is not shared by other parts. The sadhak is not of one piece: the whole of his natu

The Divine Truth – Its Name and Form THE divine truth at the heart of things, people have called by all kinds of names, everyone presenting it from his own angle of experience. But always it is the one Reality. There are millions of ways leading towards it; but one thing is certain, you can find it, whatever the way you follow, what-ever the form you give it: the result is the same, the final experience is identical. If all have touched the thing, they touch the same thing always. And the proof that they have touched the thing is that it is the same for all; if it is not the same thing, then they have not touched it. You can give it any name you like: a name is only a wor

Here or Otherwhere A QUESTION is often asked of us whether it is possible to do Yoga while remaining in the world. Some declare outright that it is not possible: world and Yoga are, like oil and water, absolutely different things, they do not go together. World means, to put it plainly, earning money and raising family. Well, these two are the very opposite of Yoga, for they involve, at their best, desire and attachment and, at their worst, dishonesty and deceit, lust and libertinage. There is the other school, on the contrary, that pronounces that a Yogic life must be lived in the world if it is not your intention to leave that world altogether and seek and

The Central Consciousness VERY often this was the experience: union with the Supreme is established, but as soon as the consciousness was about to settle and merge in the bliss of the union, it was called back and had to turn to the outside world to the ordinary affairs of ordinary consciousness. As if I was given to understand that it was not for me to forget and reject the life of the physical world and pass into the Beyond, but to maintain the contact, the closest contact, between this world and the Beyond and hold both together in one consciousness. The process is some-what like this: you withdraw the consciousness from the world outside and turn inward; you with

Fatigue and Work FATIGUE, it is said, comes from overwork. The cure for fatigue is therefore rest, that is, do-nothing. But the truth of the matter is that most often fatigue is due not to too much work, but rather too little work, in other words, laziness or boredom. In fact, fatigue need not come too soon or too easily, provided one knows how to set about his work. If you are interested in your work, you can continue for a very long time without fatigue; and precisely one of the means of recovering from fatigue is not to sit down and slip into lethargy and tamas, but to take up a work that rouses your interest. Work done in joy and quiet enthusiasm is tonic: it is dynamic