THE TEACHING OF SRI AUROBINDO AND RELIGION   SOME WORDS OF THE MOTHER   Many people say that the teaching of Sri Aurobindo is a new religion. Would you say that it is a religion ?       People who say that are fools who don't even know what they are talking about. You only have to read all that Sri Aurobindo has written to know that it is impossible to base a religion on his works, because he presents each problem, each question in all its aspects, showing the truth contained in each way of seeing things, and he explains that in order to attain the Truth you must realise a synthesis which goes beyond all mental notions and

BODY         The body carries within itself the sense of its divinity. There. This is what you must try to find again in yourself if you have lost it.         When a child tells you a beautiful dream in which he had many powers and all things were very beautiful, be very careful never to tell him, "Oh ! life is not like that", for you are doing something wrong. You must on the contrary tell him, "Life ought to be like that, and it will be like that"78       THE MOTHER   "Glorious Body" - Power of Transformation         Perfection is the true aim of all culture, the spiritual and psychic, the mental, the vital and it must be the aim of our physical culture also

How to Resist an Impulse         A desire, a passion is a very living thing and continues to live for a very long time, even independently of the being who... undergoes them, I might say, rather than creates them, because they are things that one undergoes, that rush upon you from outside like a storm that seizes you and carries you away, unless you keep very calm like that, very still, very quiet, as though one were clinging to something solid and immobile in oneself, allowing the storm to pass over when it begins to blows, but one must not stir, one must remain altogether immobile and know that these are passing storms. And when the storm has blown over, it passes

Rhythms of Time         [Mother reads from Sri Aurobindo's The Synthesis of Yoga, "The Four Aids". Then a sadhak asks a question:]         Q: Sweet Mother, here: "Last comes the instrumentality of Time, Kala; for in all things there is a cycle of their action and a period of the divine movement...." What is this period of the divine movement ?       For each thing it is different.       For each activity, each realisation, each movement, there is a definite period of time, which differs. There are countless periods of time which are entangled; but each thing is regulated by a kind of rhythm which is this thing's own rhythm.         You see, for

WORDS OF THE MOTHER         In most cases the use of medicines - within reasonable limits, that is, when one doesn't poison oneself by taking medicines - is simply to help the body to have confidence. It is the body which heals itself. When it wants to be cured, it is cured. And this is something very widely recognised now ; even the most traditional doctors tell you, "Yes, our medicines help, but it is not the medicines which cure, it is the body which decides to be cured." Very well, so when the body is told, "Take this", it says to itself, "Now I am going to get better", and because it says " I am going to get better", well, it is cured !         In almo

Receptivity on Birthdays         Q: I would like to know the true meaning of birthdays.       From the viewpoint of the inner nature, the individual is more receptive on his birthday from year to year, and thus it is an opportune moment to help him to make some new progress each year. *       Q: How should one spend... one's birthday ? . .. in finding out the purpose of life. *    Q: Today is my birthday. I want this day to be the beginning of a more spiritual life and therefore something has to be done. Please tell me what I must do.         It is not with the mind that one should decide what has to be done. It s

The Cause and Remedy of All Deformations         Q: If everything that is manifested in the physical world has its origin in the higher Truth, what is it that makes it ugly when it expresses itself? Why are there ugly things at all ?       Because there are forces that intervene between the origin and the manifestation.       If I ask you, "Do you know the truth of your being ?" What will you say ?... Do You know it ? Well, the same holds for everything. And yet you are already a sufficiently evolved thinking being who has passed through all kinds of refinements. You are no longer quite like, let us say, a lizard that runs on the wall; and

How to Prepare Oneself to Receive the Supermind!       Words of the Mother         Q: How is the Supermind going to act ? What should be done to receive it ? In what form will it manifest ?         ... in Sri Aurobindo's book On the Veda there is a note on a certain page, and in this note he answers these questions, I always tell people: if you were to take a little trouble to read what Sri Aurobindo has written, many of your questions would become useless, for Sri Aurobindo has already answered them.... Listen :         "The supramental world has to be formed or created in us by the Divine Will as the result of a constant expansion a

Creation and the Creator Are Not Separate         The Divine is all-powerful, he can do whatever he likes... And if you push your idea sufficiently far, you will see that if the Divine is truly all-powerful in this world and does always whatever he wants, well, I tell you, he is the greatest monster in the universe ! Because One who is all-powerful and makes the world such as it is, looking with a smile at people suffering and miserable, and finding that all right, I would call a monster. It was the kind of thing I used to think about when I was five. I used to tell myself: " It is not possible, what is taught there is not true !" Now, as you have a little

30 August 1967         For the last several nights I have been passing almost the whole night, many hours, in a place which must certainly belong to the subtle physical and where the material life gets reorganised. It is vast - vast - the crowd is innumerable, but these are individualities, not a crowd; that is to say, I have to deal with each one of them. And then, it is as though at the same time there are documents and writing tables but no walls around ! It is a curious place, a very curious place.         I have asked myself many a time whether it was the memory of physical forms that made me see this world in that way or whether it is really like that. At times