Chapter IX   CIVILISATION AND CULTURE         Nature starts from Matter, develops out of it its hidden Life, releases out of involution in life all the crude material of Mind and, when she is ready, turns Mind upon itself and upon Life and Matter in a great mental effort to understand all three in their phenomena, their obvious action, their secret laws, their normal and abnormal possibilities and powers so that they may be turned to the richest account, used in the best and most harmonious way, elevated to their highest as well as extended to their widest potential aims by the action of that faculty which man alone of terrestrial creatures clearly possesses, the intelligent will.

Chapter XVII   RELIGION AS THE LAW OF LIFE         Since the infinite, the absolute and transcendent, the universal, the One is the secret summit of existence and to reach the spiritual consciousness and the Divine the ultimate goal and aim of our being and therefore of the whole development of the individual and the collectivity in all its parts and all its activities, reason cannot be the last and highest guide; culture, as it is understood ordinarily, cannot be the directing light or find out the regulating and harmonising principle of all our life and action. For reason stops short of the Divine and only compromises with the problems of life, and culture in order to attain the

     Part Three       The Mother's Comments of 1954         Comments on Chapter 1 A few days before this class, Mother told the children that she would proceed differently with the new book they were to study, Sri Aurobindo's The Mother. She herself (not the children as previously) would read out passages from the book. Each child was asked to read beforehand the chapter to be taken up in class and to prepare a question based upon it.                    The following talk is based upon Chapter 1 of The Mother.                Sweet Mother, it is written here: "A... submission... of the inner Warrior who fights against obscurity and fa

Comments on Chapter 3 "The more complete your faith, sincerity and surrender, the more will grace and protection be with you. And when the grace and protection of the Divine Mother are with you, what is there that can touch you or whom need you fear? A little of it even will carry you through all difficulties, obstacles and dangers; surrounded by its full presence you can go securely on your way because it is hers, careless of all menace, unaffected by any hostility however powerful, whether from this world or from worlds invisible. Its touch can turn difficulties into opportunities, failure into success and weakness into unfaltering strength. For the grace of the Divine Moth

      6 The four Powers of the Mother are four of her outstanding Personalities, portions and embodiments of her divinity through whom she acts on her creatures, orders and harmonises her creations in the worlds and directs the working out of her thousand forces. For the Mother is one but she comes before us with differing aspects; many are her powers and personalities, many her emanations and Vibhutis that do her work in the universe. The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the con

-021_Comments on chapter 6 (Continuted)      Comments on Chapter 6       (Continued)         Sweet Mother, I didn't understand this: "This is the power of Mahalakshmi and there is no aspect of the Divine Shakti more attractive to the heart of embodied beings." That means men. It is another way of saying human beings upon the earth, beings upon earth. There are also... it means animals also. She is very, very loving towards animals and animals love her very much; even the most ferocious ones become very gentle with her, and that is why instead of using the words "human beings", he has used "embodied beings", beings with a body upon earth.         (Silence)             

-014_Comments on chapter 6(continuted)       Comments on Chapter 6       (Continued)   Mother reads the passage about Mahakali from The Mother by Sri Aurobindo.         Are the stories told about the image of Mahakali true?   What stories? Hundreds of stories are told, my child. Which stories are you speaking of? Which Mahakali? The images made of her, the statues? This is the human way of seeing things. She is not like that.       I believe I have already told you once that there are the original beings in their higher reality and these are of a particular kind; then, as they manifest in more and more material regions, nearer and nearer the earth, they assume differe

4   Money is the visible sign of a universal force, and this force in its manifestation on earth works on the vital and physical planes and is indispensable to the fullness of the outer life. In its origin and its true action it belongs to the Divine. But like other powers of the Divine it is delegated here and in the ignorance of the lower Nature can be usurped for the uses of the ego or held by Asuric influences and perverted to their purpose. This is indeed one of the three forces — power, wealth, sex — that have the strongest attraction for the human ego and the Asura and are most generally misheld and misused by those who retain them. The seekers or keepers of wealth are more often

      NOTE ON THE TEXTS         Part One: The Mother by Sri Aurobindo The Mother consists of six chapters or sections. The first section, written in 1927, was published as a Darshan message on 21 February of that year. The second, third, fourth and fifth sections were written separately as letters to disciples. The sixth section, which includes the descriptions of the four aspects of the Mother, was, like the first, "written independently and not as a letter". These six sections were first published together as a book in 1928. Since then the book has gone through numerous editions. The present text is taken from the 1999 edition.         Part Two: The Mot

          Sweet Mother, what is the difference between a servant and a worker?   I don't think there is much difference; it is almost the same thing. Perhaps the attitude is not quite the same, but there is not much of a difference. In "servant" there seems to be something more: it is the joy of serving. The worker — he has only the joy of the work. But the work that is done as a service brings still greater joy.             What does "self-love" mean?   I think self-love is a pleasant word for vanity. Self-love means that one loves oneself more than anything else; and what he implies by this, you see, are exactly those reactions of a vanity which is vexed when