9 February 1955 This talk is based upon Bases of Yoga, Chapter 4,  “Desire – Food - Sex”. Sweet Mother, here we have: “The Sun and the Light may be a help, and will be…”? Obviously it is someone who had written an experience in which he was in contact with a sun and a light, and he wanted to take the support of these as a help in the sadhana. It is the answer to an experience. Sweet Mother, is desire contagious? Ah, yes, very contagious, my child. It is even much more contagious than illness. If someone next to you has a desire, immediately it enters you; and in fact it is mainly in this way that it is caught. It passes from one to another… T

23 November 1955 Mother reads from {The Synthesis of Yoga}, “The Four Aids”. I did not understand the last part very well. Which last part, my child? “... the sadhak of the integral Yoga will not be satis- fied until he has included all other names and forms of Deity in his own conception”. Yes. Why? It says what it means. What is it that you don't understand there? What don't you understand? I don't understand the meaning. (Silence) But my child... You are told: there is only one reality and all that is is only a multiple expression of a single reality. Therefore, all the divine manifestations, all the forms it has ta

14 December 1955 Mother reads from (The Synthesis of Yoga), “Self-Consecration”. Sweet Mother, I haven't understood this paragraph very well. Which paragraph? “The powers of this world and their actual activities, it is felt, either do not belong to God at all or are for some obscure and puzzling cause, Maya or another, a dark contradiction of the divine Truth.” It is a certain attitude which produces this. He says it earlier, doesn't he? He explains it. There is an attitude in which all material things appear to be not only not the expression of the Divine but incapable of becoming that and essentially opposed to the spiritual

8 June 1955 Mother reads from Sri Aurobindo's Lights on Yoga, “The Goal”. Now then! We shall have impromptu, improvised questions, not prepared ones. (To a child) You have any? Sweet Mother, here it is written: “This liberation, per- fection, fullness too must not be pursued for our own sake, but for the sake of the Divine.” But isn't the sadhana we do done for ourselves? But he stresses precisely that. It is simply in order to stress the point. It means that all this perfection which we are going to acquire is not for a personal and selfish end, it is in order to be able to manifest the Divine, it is put at the service of the Divine. We do not pu

30 November 1955        Mother reads from {The Synthesis of Yoga},  “The Four Aids”. How is Time a friend? It depends on how you look at it. Everything depends on the relation you have with it. If you take it as a friend, it becomes a friend. If you consider it as an enemy, it becomes your enemy. But that's not what you are asking. What you are asking is how one feels when it is an enemy and how when it is a friend. Well, when you become impatient and tell yourself, “Oh, I must succeed in doing this and why don't I succeed in doing it?” and when you don't succeed immediately in doing it and fall into despair, then it is your enemy. But when you tell

19 January 1955 This talk is based upon  Bases of Yoga, Chapter 3,  “In Difficulty”. Sweet Mother, what is the work of the higher mind?            Work? What exactly do you want to know? What it ought to do? Or what should one…? Its role. The role of the higher mind? It ought to receive inspirations from above, ought to transmit them in the form of ideas to the most material mind, so that the latter may execute things, make formations. It serves as an intermediary between the higher power and the active mind. The higher mind is a mind of idea-formation and at the same time… (The noise of the wind drowns Mother's voice for a moment.) That'

Ten Order   Men in ancient India had a very poetic idea about the earth and the world – an idea intended to express order.  The land inhabited by men was called Jambu Dvipa and it was surrounded by a sea of salt. Then came a ring of land and then a sea of milk. Another ring of land, and a sea of butter. More land, and a sea of curds. Land again, and a sea of wine. More land, and after that a sea of sugar. Still more land, and at last, the seventh and final ring of pure water: the sweet, the sweetest of all seas!  If you look at a map of the world like the ones we now use in schools, you will not find the sea of sugar, or the sea of milk,

4 June 1912 What improvements can we bring to our meetings?   We said one day with regard to the numerous groups that form and disappear almost immediately, that this phenomenon of rapid decay is a result of the conventional and arbitrary factors which enter into the organisation of these groups. In fact, they are founded upon an ideal prototype originating from one or several minds – a formula which is sometimes very beautiful in theory, but which takes no account of the individuals who with their difficulties and weaknesses must form the living cells of the group. In my opinion, it is impossible to give an arbitrary form to any being,

On Dreams At first sight one might think that the subject of dreams is an altogether secondary one; this activity generally seems to have very little importance compared to the activity of our waking state. However, if we examine the question a little more closely, we shall see that this is not at all the case. To begin with, we should remember that more than one third of our existence is spent in sleeping and that, consequently, the time devoted to physical sleep well deserves our attention. I say physical sleep, for it would be wrong to think that our whole being sleeps when our bodies are asleep. A study based on certain experiments con

Three Cheerfulness One afternoon, in a large town in a rainy country, I saw seven or eight vehicles full of children. That morning, they had been taken into the country to play in the fields, but the bad weather had made them return home early in the rain.  And yet they were singing, laughing and waving merrily to the passers-by.  They had kept their cheerfulness in this gloomy weather. If one of them had felt sad, the songs of the others would have cheered him. And for the people hurrying by, who heard the children's laughter, it seemed that the sky had brightened for a moment.  Amir was a prince of Khorasan, and he lived i