8 August 1956 Sweet Mother, Sri Aurobindo writes: “A psychic fire within must be lit into which all is thrown with the Divine Name upon it.” The Synthesis of Yoga, p.155 * Isn’t the psychic fire always lit? It is not always lit. Then how to light it? By aspiration. By the will for progress, by the urge towards perfection. Above all, it is the will for progress and self-purification which lights the fire. The will for progress. Those who have a strong will, when they turn it towards spiritual progress and purification, automatically light the fire within themselves. And each defect one wants to cure or each progress one want

16 May 1956 “In sum, it may be safely affirmed that no solution offered can be anything but provisional until a supra- mental Truth-Consciousness is reached by which the appearances of things are put in their place and their essence revealed and that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth- Consciousness is reached above us or born within us. For all else in us that is only outward, all that is not a spiritual sense or seeing, the construction

29 August 1956 I suppose most of you come on Fridays to listen to the reading of Wu Wei. If you have listened, you will remember that something's said there about being “spontaneous”, and that the true way of living the true life is to live spontaneously. What Lao Tse calls spontaneous is this: instead of being moved by a personal will — mental, vital or physical — one ought to stop all outer effort and let oneself be guided and moved by what the Chinese call Tao which they identify with the Godhead — or God or the Supreme Principle or the Origin of all things or the creative Truth, indeed all possible human notions of the Divine and the goal to be attained. To be

5 December 1956 Now we are going to read what should be done to realise what was expressed in the five preceding paragraphs: “Transform reason into ordered intuition; let all thyself be light. This is thy goal. ”Transform effort into an even and sovereign over- flowing of the soul-strength; let all thyself be conscious force. This is thy goal. “Transform enjoying into an even and objectless ecstasy; let all thyself be bliss. This is thy goal. “Transform the divided individual into the world- personality; let all thyself be the divine. This is thy goal. “Transform the animal into the Driver of the herds; let all thyself be Krishn

31 October 1956 Mother, someone has asked me to request you to explain one of your sentences. You have said some- where that one must bee divine before one can bear the pressure of Divine Love. It is in the “Diary”. Oh! you are repeating it a little freely! Well, what does he want to know? He is asking whether man must first become divine before Love can spread over the earth. I don't think this is what is meant. Surely what you mean is that Divine Love cannot manifest until man becomes divine. Is that what you mean? That is what we understand. Oh! that's how you understand it!... But I don't think this is what is meant. First

25 January 1956 “Life, not a remote silent or high-uplifted ecstatic Beyond — Life alone, is the field of our Yoga. The transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmen- tary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordi- nary human living into the divine way of life must be its central   purpose.” The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 82 * Sweet Mother, will “the divine way of life” be estab- lished on earth only when the Supermind descends? I think so. There seems to be no possibility of its happening other-wise. But it is a ve

18 January 1956 Sweet Mother, here Sri Aurobindo writes, “For all this first period he [the individual] has to work by means of the instruments of the lower Nature.” The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 79 * What is this work, and how is it accomplished? There is a positive side and a negative side to this work. The positive side is to increase one’s aspiration, develop one’s consciousness, unify one’s being, to go within in order to enter more and more into contact with one’s psychic being; to take up all the parts, all the movements, all the activities of one’s being and put them before this psychic consciousness so that they fall into thei

29 February 1956 On this evening, during the meditation which followed this conversation,there took place what Mother has called “the first Manifesta- tion of the Supramental Light-Force in the earth-atmosphere”. “The law of sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation. This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul submitting itself to For

5 September 1956 “A principle of dark and dull inertia is at its [life's] base; all are tied down by the body and its needs and desires to a trivial mind, petty desires and emotions, an insignificant repetition of small worthless function- ings, needs, cares, occupations, pains, pleasures that lead to nothing beyond themselves and bear the stamp of an ignorance that knows not its own why and whi- ther. This physical mind of inertia believes in no divi- nity other than its small earth-gods; it aspires perhaps to a greater fort, order, pleasure, but asks for no uplifting and no spiritual deliverance. At the centre we meet a stronger Will o

4 January 1956   “If we are to attempt an integral Yoga, it will be as well to start with an idea of the Divine that is itself ] integral. There should be an aspiration in the heart wide enough for a realisation without any narrow limits. Not only should we avoid a sectarian religious outlook, but also all one-sided philosophical concep- tions which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restrict- ing mental formula.”   Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 76     *            Sweet Mother, what does Sri Aurobindo mean by an integral idea of the Divine? Everyone forms an idea of the Divine for himself according