15 January 1951 “It is only by observing these movements (of our being) with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the tribunal of our highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, that we can hope to educate in us a discernment which does not err.” “The Science of Living”, On Education * One must be clearly aware of the origin of one's movements because there are contradictory velleities in the being – some pushing you here, others pushing you there, and that obviously creates a chaos in life. If you observe yourself, you will see that as soon as you do something which disturbs you a little, the mind immediatel

1 March 1951 “There is a plane of divine consciousness in which all is known absolutely, and the whole plan of things foreseen and predetermined. That way of seeing lives in the highest reaches of the Supramental; it is the Su- preme's own vision. But when we do not possess that consciousness, it is useless to speak in terms that hold good only in that region and are not our present ef- fective way of seeing things. For at a lower level of consciousness nothing is realised or fixed beforehand; all is in the process of making. Here there are no settled facts, there is only the play of possibilities; out of the clash of

24 February 1951              The other day I said that most of the time people do not have their psychic being within them. I would like to explain this in greater detail...You must remember that the inner beings are not in the third dimension. If you open up your body you will find only the viscera of the body which are in the third dimension. The inner beings are in another dimension, and when I say that some men do not have their psychic being within them, I do not mean that it is not at the centre of their being, but that their outer consciousness is so small, so limited, so obscure that it is not able to keep a contact, not only conscious but intimate, with the psychi

30 December 1950 “We are not aiming at success – our aim is perfec- tion. “We are not seeking fame or reputation; we want to prepare ourselves for a Divine manifestation.” “Tournaments”, On Education * What is perfection? Some people put perfection at the apex. It is generally thought that perfection is the maximum one can do. But I say that perfection is not the apex, it is not an extreme. There is no extreme – whatever you may do, there is always the possibility of something better, and it is exactly this possibility of something better which is the very meaning of progress.  Since there is no extreme, how can we attain perfection?

Questions And Answers 1950-51 21 December 1950 “O Consciousness, immobile and serene, Thou watch- est at the confines of the world like a sphinx of eter- nity. And yet to some Thou confidest Thy secret. These can become Thy sovereign will which chooses without preference, executes without desire.”   Prayers and Meditations, 10 November 1914  * This immobile Consciousness is the “Mother of Dreams”,¹ the sphinx of eternity who keeps vigil on the confines of the world like an enigma to be solved. This enigma is the problem of our life, the very raison d’être of the universe. The problem of our life is to realise the Divine or ra

5 May 1951 “If you want to be a true doer of divine works, your first aim must be to be totally free from all desire and self-regarding ego.” Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, p. 15 * Sometimes we go to the bazaar to buy our things. Is that good ?                               One cannot make general rules. This depends on the spirit in which you make your purchases. It is said that you should have no desires – if this is not a desire, it is all right. You understand, there is no movement, no action which in itself is good or bad; it depends absolutely on the spirit in which it is done. If, for instance, you are in a state of total indifference abou

22 March 1951                                               You say that “time is relative”. What does that mean ?                              The sense of the length of time depends upon your consciousness. If you are in the ordinary human consciousness, time is measured by the number of years you expect to live. So, what requires, let us say, fifty years to be realised, seems terribly long, for you think, “Fifty years... where will I be in fifty years?” Even without your being clearly aware of it, it is there in your consciousness. But if simply you look from the point of view of a mental consciousness, of something which lasts like a written work, for instance – a

28 December 1950 Mother reads out her article “Correct Judgment” (On Education). After examining various ele ments  that falsify our judgment, Mother adds this commentary: The sense organs are under the influence of the psychological state of the individual because something comes in between the eye's perception and the brain's reception. It is very subtle; the brain receives the eye's perceptions through the nerves; there is no reasoning, it is so to say instantaneous, but there is a short passage between the eye's perception and the cell which is to respond and evaluate it in the brain. And it is this evaluation of the brain which is under the influence

4 January 1951 Mother reads out her article “Transformation” (On  Education), then comments on it: We want an integral transformation, the transformation of the body and all its activities.  Formerly, when one spoke of transformation one meant solely the transformation of the inner consciousness. One tried to discover in oneself this deep consciousness and rejected the body and its activities like an encumbrance and a useless thing, in order to attend only to the inner movement. Sri Aurobindo declared that this was not enough; the Truth demanded that the material world should also participate in this transformation and become an expression of the deeper Truth.

January 2, 1915       EVERY idea, however powerful and profound it may be, repeated too often, expressed too constantly, becomes stale, insipid, worthless.... The highest concepts thus lose their freshness after a time and the intelligence which delighted in transcendental speculations suddenly feels an imperious need to abandon all reasonings and all its philosophy and contemplate life with the marvelling gaze of a child, so as no longer to remember anything of its past knowledge, were it even a sovereignly divine one....     It is true to say that the divisions of time are purely arbitrary, that the date assigned to the renewal of the year varies according to the latitude,