25 January 1956 “Life, not a remote silent or high-uplifted ecstatic Beyond — Life alone, is the field of our Yoga. The transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmen- tary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordi- nary human living into the divine way of life must be its central   purpose.” The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 82 * Sweet Mother, will “the divine way of life” be estab- lished on earth only when the Supermind descends? I think so. There seems to be no possibility of its happening other-wise. But it is a ve

18 January 1956 Sweet Mother, here Sri Aurobindo writes, “For all this first period he [the individual] has to work by means of the instruments of the lower Nature.” The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 79 * What is this work, and how is it accomplished? There is a positive side and a negative side to this work. The positive side is to increase one’s aspiration, develop one’s consciousness, unify one’s being, to go within in order to enter more and more into contact with one’s psychic being; to take up all the parts, all the movements, all the activities of one’s being and put them before this psychic consciousness so that they fall into thei

29 February 1956 On this evening, during the meditation which followed this conversation,there took place what Mother has called “the first Manifesta- tion of the Supramental Light-Force in the earth-atmosphere”. “The law of sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation. This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul submitting itself to For

5 September 1956 “A principle of dark and dull inertia is at its [life's] base; all are tied down by the body and its needs and desires to a trivial mind, petty desires and emotions, an insignificant repetition of small worthless function- ings, needs, cares, occupations, pains, pleasures that lead to nothing beyond themselves and bear the stamp of an ignorance that knows not its own why and whi- ther. This physical mind of inertia believes in no divi- nity other than its small earth-gods; it aspires perhaps to a greater fort, order, pleasure, but asks for no uplifting and no spiritual deliverance. At the centre we meet a stronger Will o

4 January 1956   “If we are to attempt an integral Yoga, it will be as well to start with an idea of the Divine that is itself ] integral. There should be an aspiration in the heart wide enough for a realisation without any narrow limits. Not only should we avoid a sectarian religious outlook, but also all one-sided philosophical concep- tions which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restrict- ing mental formula.”   Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 76     *            Sweet Mother, what does Sri Aurobindo mean by an integral idea of the Divine? Everyone forms an idea of the Divine for himself according

26 September 1956 “All or most of the works of life are at present or seem to be actuated or vitiated by the soul of desire; even those that are ethical or religious, even those that wear the guise of altruism, philanthropy, self-sacrifice, self- denial are shot through and through with the threads of its making. This soul of desire is a separative soul of ego and all its instincts are for a separative self-affir- mation; it pushes always, openly or under more or less shining masks, for its own growth, for possession, for enjoyment, for conquest and empire.” The Synthesis of Yoga, A. 164 * Sweet Mother what is the “soul of desir

25 April 1956 “Beyond the limited human conception of God, he will pas s to the one divine Eternal….” The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 121 * What man calls God is a limited consciousness of God, not the full consciousness of God; so he will go beyond this limited consciousness of God and towards the true Divine. Sri Aurobindo means that man has a limited knowledge, a limited consciousness and perception and experience of God,  not the full experience of the Divine, and that he must pass beyond this knowledge and perception in order to go to the vaster and truer perception. Sweet Mother, the justification of earthly existence… Yes, the justification of

8 February 1956 Sweet Mother, I have not understood this: “At best we have only the poor relative freedom which by us is ignorantly called free will. But that is at bottom illu- sory, since it is the modes of Nature that express them- selves through our personal will; it is force of Nature, grasping us, ungrasped by us that determines what we shall will or how we shall will it. Nature, not an inde- pendent ego, chooses what object we shall seek, whe- ther by reasoned will or unreflecting impulse, at any moment of our existence.” The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 88 * Not understood? What do you mean, “not understood”? It’s a fact,

12 September 1956 Sweet Mother, do we have a right to ask questions if we don't practise what you say? You always have the right to do anything! (Laughter) You may ask all the questions you like. Practise? Fundamentally, it is up to each one to choose, isn't it? — whether he wants to practise or not, whether he considers it useful or not. That is something which cannot be imposed; it must be done freely. But one may always ask questions. Well, I am going to ask a question: “Why don't people practise?” Do you know why they don't practise?  (Mother asks others in turn.) And you? And you?...Bah! Do you} know? Perhaps because one is lazy! That is on

27 June 1956 Last week I spoke to you about birth: how souls enter a body; and I told you that the body is formed in a very unsatisfactory way for almost everyone ―exceptions are so rare that one can hardly speak of them. I told you that due to this obscure birth one arrives with a whole physical baggage of things which generally have to be got rid of, if one truly wants to progress, and someone has quoted my own sentence which runs like this: “You are brought here by force, the environment is imposed on you by force, the laws of atavism of the milieu by force…”  And now the person who wrote to me has asked me who does all that. Of course I could have been more e