4 December 1957 “In fact we see that the principles of creation are permanent and unchanging: each type of being re- mains itself and does not try nor has any need to become other than itself; granting that some types of existence disappear and others come into being, it is because the Consciousness-Force in the universe with- draws its life-delight from those that perish and turns to create others for its pleasure. But each type of life, while it lasts, has its own pattern and remains faith- ful with whatever minor variations to that pattern: it is bound to its own consciousness and cannot get away from it into other-consciousness; lim

5 June 1957 Do you have any questions? No  Sweet Mother, should one ask questions which don’t come spontaneously? What do you mean by a question that doesn’t come spontaneously?   For, usually, in class, we often feel that if we don’t ask questions you won’t tell us anything, so we think and think, and we have to ask questions! It depends on what you find! If the question is interesting…Because you make an effort to find it, it doesn’t mean that it is necessarily bad.           Do you have a question of this kind? No. Then…                                                                                (Long silence) In

7 May 1958 “In the earliest stages of evolutionary Nature we are met by the dumb secrecy of her inconscience; there is no revelation of any significance or purpose in her works, no hint of any other principles of being than that first formulation which is her immediate preoccu- pation and seems to be for ever her only business: for in her primal works Matter alone appears, the sole dumb and stark cosmic reality. A Witness of creation, if there had been one conscious but uninstructed, would only have seen appearing out of a vast abyss of an apparent non-existence an Energy busy with the creation of Matter, a material world and material ob-

6 August 1958 Sweet Mother, what is the effect and value of collective prayer? We have already spoken about this, about collective prayers, the use that has been made of them. I believe that it has even been published in the Bulletin. Besides, there are different kinds of collective prayer, just as there are different kinds of collectivities. There is the anonymous mass, the crowd, formed by chance circumstances, without any inner coordination, impelled by the force of circumstance, as for instance when a king or a person who attracts public attention is in a critical situation, either ill or the victim of an accident, and the people gather to obtain news and

1 January 1958 O Nature, material Mother,  Thou hast said that thou wilt collaborate  and there is no limit  to the splendour of this collaboration. New Year Message, 1 January 1958   * Sweet Mother, will you explain the message for this year? It is already written! The explanation has already been written, it is ready for the Bulletin of February 21. ¹ There is nothing to explain. It is an experience, something that happened, and when it happened I noted it down, and as it turned out, it occurred just at the moment when I remembered that I had to write something for the year – which was next year at that time, that is, the year which

4 September 1957  Today I received a question about a phrase I used on the fourteenth of August, the eve of Sri Aurobindo’s birthday. And this question seemed interesting to me because it was about one of those rather cryptic phrases, that are almost ambiguous through simplification, and which was intended to be like that, so that each one might understand it according to his own plane of consciousness. I have already spoken to you several times of this possibility of understanding the same words on different planes; and these words were intentionally expressed with a simplification, a deliberate vagueness, precisely so that they would serve as a vehicle for the complexity o

September September 2, 1964 Satprem prepares to start the tape recorder, Mother stops him: There would be too many things to say. It's a sort of WORLD being worked out. (silence) It's still too complicated, it's impossible to say anything. Better to work. Page 187

April 8, 1964 (This was to be the last conversation before Satprem's departure for France, from where he would return in July.) Mother looks tired, she goes into a long contemplation. Will you continue [the Tantric discipline] there? Yes.... I must say that in my outer consciousness, I don't Page 108 know anything at all. I don't understand anything You don't understand? I understand nothing whatsoever. (Mother laughs) I simply know that there is "something else," and then I do what I have to do [japa, meditation], but what's happening, where I am, where I'm going, what I'm doing - I have no idea: I understand nothing at all. I have no perception of where

October 24, 1964 Mother comments again on her declaration: "I possess no powers." Oh, it has caused a general upheaval in the atmosphere! I have even received thoughts of this kind: "So then, Sri Aurobindo deceived us!" They're furious, furious. They haven't understood.... But anyway, it's going on in the subconscient. Page 254 No, no! They DELIBERATELY hadn't understood it before my declaration, because Sri Aurobindo never said we would work miracles! They deliberately hadn't understood. So, naturally, they're furious. But it may be better not to insist outwardly by publishing this. [[Satprem had suggested that some extracts from the last conversation be published i

October 21, 1964 On the 18th, I had an interesting experience. It was the doctor's birthday and I gave him a meditation, and after the meditation, he asked me to write for him what I had seen during the meditation. I had no intention of doing so, but an hour later, that is, at lunch time ... To be clear, I should tell the whole story from the beginning. Before the meditation, I told him, "You will let me know when you have finished - I don't want to let you know." So I finished what I had to do, then I took a look and said to myself, "Let's see now, let's try." And I simply made a formation and put it on him, saying, "Now, it's over." Then I didn't move, I stayed very quiet. It t