One of the greatest enigmas is the fact that the Divine is seated within us and yet concealed behind a thick veil. So how do we discover the Divine?. Here are some answers from the Mother to questions from disciples.
Q. How can one understand the Divine?
By being Him, my child. And that is the only way: by identity. As Sri Aurobindo says, “We know the Divine and become the Divine, because we are That already in our secret nature.” It is because He is the very essence of our being that we can become Him and, consequently, understand Him; otherwise it would be quite impossible.
Q. How can we find the Divine within ourselves?
Well, it is precisely what I have just said.
What do you mean exactly?… By what method?
First of all, you must begin to seek Him, and then that must be the most important thing in life. The will must be constant, the aspiration constant, the preoccupation constant, and it must be the only thing you truly want. Then you will find Him.
But of course, if in one’s life one thinks of Him for five minutes and is busy with other things for three-quarters of an hour, there is not much chance of success. Anyway, it will take many lifetimes.
It must not be a pastime. It must be the exclusive preoccupation of one’s being, the very reason of one’s existence.
In her Questions and Answers of June 26, 1957, the Mother remarks at length on the presumptuousness of judging another’s consciousness:
“…so long as it is not the divine Presence you address when you speak to someone, it means you are not conscious of it in yourself. And then it’s terribly presumptuous to judge what state the other person is in. What do you know about it? If you yourself are not conscious of the Divine in the other being, what right have you to say whether he is conscious of it or not? On what basis? Your small outer intelligence? But it knows nothing! It is quite incapable of perceiving anything whatever.
“Unless your vision is constantly the vision of the Divine in all things, you have not only no right but no capacity to judge the state which others are in. And to pronounce a judgment on someone without having this vision spontaneously, effortlessly, is precisely an example of the mental presumptuousness of which Sri Aurobindo always spoke. … And it so happens that one who has the vision, the consciousness, who is capable of seeing the truth in all things, never feels the need to judge anything whatever. For he understands everything and knows everything. Therefore, once and for all, you must tell yourselves that the moment you begin to judge things, people, circumstances, you are in the most total human ignorance.
“In short, one could put it like this: when one understands, one no longer judges and when one judges, it means that one doesn’t know.”
One of the commonest demands of the vital is for praise. It hates to be criticised and treated as if it were of little importance. But it must be always prepared for rebuffs and stand them with absolute calm; nor must it pay attention to compliments, forgetting that each movement of self-satisfaction is an offering at the altar of the lords of falsehood. The beings of the subtle world of the life-force, with which our vital is connected, live and flourish on the worship of their devotees, and that is why they are always inspiring new cults and religions so that their feasts of worship and adulation may never come to an end. So also your own vital being and the vital forces behind it thrive – that is to say, fatten their ignorance – by absorbing the flatteries given by others. But you must remember that the compliments paid by creatures on the same level of ignorance as oneself are really worth nothing, they are just as worthless as the criticisms levelled at one. No matter from what pretentious source they derive, they are futile and empty. Unfortunately, however, the vital craves even for the most rotten food and is so greedy that it will accept praise from even the very embodiments of incompetence. I am reminded of the annual opening of the Arts Exhibition in Paris, when the President of the Republic inspects the pictures, eloquently discovering that one is a landscape and another a portrait, and making platitudinous comments with the air of a most intimate soul-searching knowledge of Painting. The painters know very well how inept the remarks are and yet miss no chance of quoting the testimony of the President to their genius. For such indeed is the vital in mankind, ravenously fame-hungry.
What, however, is of genuine worth is the opinion of the Truth. When there is somebody who is in contact with the Divine Truth and can express it, then the opinions given out are no mere compliments or criticisms but what the Divine thinks of you, the value it sets on your qualities, its unerring stamp on your efforts. It must be your desire to hold nothing in esteem except the word of the Truth; and in order thus to raise your standard you must keep Agni, the soul’s flame of transformation, burning in you. It is noteworthy how, when Agni flares up, you immediately develop a loathing for the cheap praise which formerly used to gratify you so much, and understand clearly that your love of praise was a low movement of the untransformed nature. Agni makes you see what a vast vista of possible improvement stretches in front of you, by filling you with a keen sense of your present insufficiency. The encomium lavished on you by others so disgusts you that you feel almost bitter towards those whom you would have once considered your friends; whereas all criticism comes as a welcome fuel to your humble aspiration towards the Truth. No longer do you feel depressed or slighted by the hostility of others. For, at least, you are able to ignore it with the greatest ease; at the most, you appreciate it as one more testimony to your present unregenerate state, inciting you to surpass yourself by surrendering to the Divine.
If the Upanishads were no more than philosophical speculations, it would be enough in commenting upon them to state the general thought of a passage and develop its implications in modern language and its bearing upon the ideas we now hold, for if they only expressed in their ancient language general conclusions of psychological experience, which are still easily accessible and familiar, nothing would be gained by any minute emphasis on the wording of our Vedantic texts. But these great writings are not the record of ideas; they are a record of experiences; and those experiences, psychological and spiritual, are a& remote from the superficial psychology of ordinary men as are the experiments and conclusions of Science from the ordinary observation of the peasant driving his plough through a soil only superficially known or the sailor of old guiding his bark by the few stars important to his rudimentary navigation. Every word in the Upanishads arises out of a depth of psychological experience and observation we no longer possess and is a key to spiritual truths which we can no longer attain except by discipline of a painful difficulty. Therefore each word, as we proceed, must be given its due importance. We must consider its place in the thought and discover the ideas of which it was the spoken symbol.
The opening phrase of the Kena Upanishad, keneṣitam patati preṣitam manaḥ, is an example of this constant necessity. The sage is describing not the mind in its entirety, but that action of it which he has found the most characteristic and important, that which, besides, leads up directly to the question of the secret source of all mental .action, its president and impelling power. The central idea and common experience of this action is expressed by the word patati, falls. Motion forward and settling upon an object are the very nature of mind when it acts.
Our modern conception of mind is different; while acknowledging its action of movement and forward attention, we are apt to regard its essential and common action to be rather receptivity of objects than research of objects. The scientific explanation of mental activity helps to confirm this notion. Fixing its eye on the nervous system and the brain, the physical channels of thought, Physiology insists on the double action of the afferent and the efferent nerves as constituting the action of thought. An object falls on the sense-organs, —instead of mind falling on the object, — the afferent nerves carry the impact to the brain cells, their matter undergoes modification, the trans-filaments respond to the shock, a message — the will of the cell-republic — returns through the efferent nerves and that action of perception, — whether of an object or the idea of an object or the idea of an idea, which is the essence of thinking — is accomplished. What else the mind does is merely the internal modification of the grey matter of the brain and the ceaseless activity of its filaments with the store of perceptions and ideas already amassed by these miraculous bits of organised matter. These movements of the bodily machine are all according to Physiology. But it has been necessary to…. The theory of thought-waves or vibrations created by those animalcular.-.in order to account for the results of thought.
However widely and submissively (though) this theory has been received by a hypnotised world, the Vedantist is bound to challenge it. His research has fixed not only on the physiological action, the movement of the bodily machine, but on the psychological action, its movement of the force that holds the machine, — not only on what the mind does, but on what it omits to do. His observation supported by that careful analysis and isolation in experiment of the separate mental constituents, has led him to a quite different conclusion. He upholds the wisdom of the sage in the phrase patati manaḥ. An image falls on the eye, — admittedly, the mere falling of an image on the eye will not constitute mental perception, — the mind has to give it attention; for it is not the eye that sees, it is the mind that sees through the eye as an instrument, just as it is not the telescope that sees an otherwise invisible sun, but the astronomer behind the telescope who sees. Therefore, physical reception of images is not sight; physical reception of sounds is not hearing. For how many sights and sounds besiege us, fall on our retina, touch the tympanum of the ear, yet are to our waking thought non-existent! If the body were really a self-sufficient machine, this could not happen. The impact must be admitted, the message must rush through the afferent nerve, the cells must receive the shock, the modification, the response must occur. A self-sufficient machine has no choice of action or non-action; unless it is out of order, it must do its work. But here we see there is a choice, a selection, an ample power of refusal. The practical researches of the Yogins have shown besides that the power of refusal can be (is) absolute, that something in us has a sovereign and many-sided faculty of selection or total prohibition of perception or thought, can even determine how if at all it shall respond, can even see without the eye and hear without the ear. Even European hypnotism points to similar phenomena. The matter cannot be settled by the rough and. ready conclusions of impatient physiology eager to take a short cut to Truth and interpret the world in the light of its first astonished discoveries.
Where the image is not seen, the sound is not heard, it is because the mind does not settle on its object — na patati. But we must first go farther and inquire what it is that works in the afferent and efferent nerves and ensures the attention of the nerves. It is not, we have seen, mere physical shock, a simple vibration of the bodily matter in the nerve. For, if it were, attention to every impact would be automatically and inevitably assured. The Vedantins say that the nerve system is an immensely intricate organised apparatus for the action of life in the body; what moves in them is prāṇa, the life principle, materialised, aerial (vāyavya) in its nature and therefore invisible to the eye, but sufficiently capable of self-adaptation both to the life of matter and the life of mind to form the meeting-place or bridge of the two principles. But action of this life-principle is not sufficient in itself to create thought, for if it were mind could be organised in vegetable as readily as in animal life. It is only when prana has developed a sufficient intensity of movement to form a medium for the rapid activities of mind and mind, at last possessed of a physical instrument, has poured itself into the life-movement and taken possession of it, that thought becomes possible. That which moves in the nerve system is the life-current penetrated and provided with the habitual movement of mind. When the movement of mind is involved in the life-movement, as it usually is in all forms, there is no response of mental knowledge to any contact or impression. For just as even in the metal there is life, so even in the metal there is mind; but it is latent, involved, its action secret, — unconscious, as we say, and confined to a passive reception into matter of the mind-forms created by these impacts. This will become clearer as we penetrate deeper into the mysteries of mind; we shall see that even though the clod, stone and tree do not think, they have in them the secret matrix of mind and in that matrix forms are stored which can be translated into mental symbols, into perception, idea and word. But it is only as the life-currents gain in intensity and rapidity and subtlety, making the body of things less durable but more capable of work, that mind-action becomes increasingly possible and once manifested more and more minutely and intricately effective. For body and life here are the pratiṣṭhā, the basis of mind. A point, however, comes at which mind has got in life all that it needs for its higher development, and from that time it goes on enlarging itself and its activities out of all proportions to the farther organisation of its bodily and vital instruments or even without any such farther organisation in the lower man.
But even in the highest forms here in this material world, matter being the basis, life an intermediary and mind the third result, the normal rule is that matter and life (where life is expressed) shall always be active, mind only exceptionally active in the body. In other words, the ordinary action of mind is subconscious and receptive, as in the stone, clod and tree. The image that touches the eye, the sound that touches the ear is immediately taken in by the mind-informed life, the mind-informed and life-informed matter and becomes a part of the experience of Brahman in that system. Not only does it create a vibration in body, a stream of movement in life but also an impression in mind. This is inevitable, because mind, life and matter are one. Where one is, the others are, manifest or latent, involved or evolved, supraliminal active or subliminally active. The sword which has struck in the battle, retains in itself the mental impression of the stroke, the striker and the stricken and that ancient event can be read centuries afterwards by the Yogin who has trained himself to translate its mind-forms into the active language of mind. Thus every thing that occurs around us leaves on us its secret stamp and impression. That this is so, the recent discoveries of European psychology have begun to prove and from the ordinary point of view, it is one of the most amazing and stupendous facts of existence; but from the Vedantist’s it is the most simple, natural and inevitable. This survival of all experience in a mighty and lasting record, is not confined to such impressions as are conveyed to the brain through the senses, but extends to all that can in any way come to the mind, — to distant events, to past states of existence and old occurrences in which our present senses had no part, to the experiences garnered in dream and in dreamless sleep, to the activities that take place during the apparent unconsciousness or disturbed consciousness of slumber, delirium, anaesthesia and trance. Unconsciousness is an error: cessation of awareness is a delusion.
It is for this reason that the phenomenon on which the sage lays stress as the one thing important and effective in mental action and in the waking state here, is not its receptiveness, but its outgoing force—patati. In sense-activity we can distinguish three kinds of action — first, when the impact is received subconsciously and there is no message by the mind in the life current to the brain, — even if the life current itself carry the message — secondly, when the mind, aware of an impact, that is to say, falls on its object, but merely with the sensory part of itself and not with the understanding part; thirdly, when it falls on the object with both the sensory and understanding parts of itself. In the first case, there is no act of mental knowledge, no attention of eye or mind, as when we pass, absorbed in thought, through a scene of Nature, yet have seen nothing, been aware of nothing. In the second there is an act of sensory knowledge. The mind in the eye attends and observes, however slightly; the thing is perceived but not conceived or only partly conceived, as when the maidservant going about her work, listens to the Hebrew of her master, hearing all, but distinguishing and understanding nothing, not really attending except through the ear alone. In the third there is true mental perception and conception or the attempt at perception and conception, and only the last movement comes within the description given by the sage — iṣitam preṣitam patati manas. But we must observe that in all these cases somebody is attending, something is both aware and understands. The man, unconscious under an anaesthetic drug in an operation, can in hypnosis when his deeper faculties are released, remember and relate accurately everything that occurred to him in his state of supposed unconsciousness. The maidservant, thrown into an abnormal condition, can remember every word of her master’s Hebrew discourse and repeat in perfect order and without a single error sentences in the language she did not understand. And, it may surely be predicted, one day we shall find that the thing our minds strove so hard to attend to and fathom, this passage in a new language, that new and unclassed phenomenon, was perfectly perceived, perfectly understood, automatically, infallibly, by something within us which either could not or did not convey its knowledge to the mind. We were only trying to make operative on the level of mind, a knowledge we already in some recess of our being perfectly possessed.
In this fact appears all the significance of the sage’s sentence about the mind.
We bring to seekers Mother’s words enjoining upon us to place our trust, faith in the Divine alone.
“There are disciplines which make it a rule (we don’t like rules, for they are always arbitrary and artificial) that one should receive absolutely nothing from anybody except the Divine or the Guru who represents the Divine. Some people would not receive even a fruit from anybody because it does not come from the Guru. That is an exaggeration – this depends on circumstances, on conditions, and it also depends very much on the attitude one takes oneself, it depends on many things, it would take very long to explain- but there is one thing you must learn, never to rely on anyone or anything whatever except the Divine. For if you lean upon anyone for support, that support will break, you may be sure of that. From the minute you start doing yoga (I always speak of those who do yoga, I do not speak about ordinary life), for those who do yoga, to depend upon someone else is like wanting to transform that person into a representative of the Divine Force; now you may be sure there is not one in a hundred millions who can carry the weight: he will break immediately. So never take the attitude of hoping for support, help, comfort from anyone except the Divine. That is absolute; I have never, not once, met anyone who tried to cling to something to find a support there (someone doing yoga or who has been put into touch with yoga) and who was not deceived – it breaks, it stops, one loses one’s support. Then one says, “Life is difficult” – it is not difficult but one must know what one is doing. Never seek a support elsewhere than in the Divine. Never seek satisfaction elsewhere than in the Divine. Never seek the satisfaction of your needs in anyone else except the Divine – never, for anything at all. All your needs can be satisfied only by the Divine. All your weaknesses can be borne and healed only by the Divine. He alone is capable of giving you what you need in everything, always, and if you try to find any satisfaction or support or help or joy or… heaven knows what, in anyone else, you will always fall on your nose one day, and that always hurts, sometimes even hurts very much.”.
CWM 5th May 1951
Life has a purpose.
This purpose is to find and to serve the Divine.
The Divine is not far. He is in ourselves, deep inside and above the feelings and the thoughts. With the Divine is peace and certitude and even the solution of all difficulties.
Hand over your problems to the Divine and He will pull you out of all difficulties.
-Mother
The secret of spiritual pursuit is to offer all of oneself to the Divine. It is through a sustained consecration that we grow into the image of the Divine. For those drawn to the Integral Yoga it is to the Mother that Sri Aurobindo enjoins us to give ourself. Nirodbaran, in the talk of December 10, 1938 between Sri Aurobindo and his attendants after the accident seventeen days earlier, said to him: “The Mother’s coming must have greatly helped you in your work and in your sadhana.” Sri Aurobindo answered enthusiastically: “Of course, of course. All my realisations — Nirvana and others — would have remained theoretical, as it were, so far as the outer world was concerned. It is the Mother who showed the way to a practical form. Without her no organised manifestation would have been possible. She has been doing this kind of work from her very childhood.” No wonder that at the end of a letter to Basu Sri Aurobindo added: “One of the two great steps in this yoga is to take refuge in the Mother” — the other great step being, as Sri Aurobindo afterwards clarified to Nirodbaran: “Aspiration of the sadhak for the divine life.”
A dispassionate study of oneself is an indispensable step towards self-knowledge. Know thyself the ancients enjoined. Yoga is essentially a psychological practice. We reproduce below a talk by the Mother on the subject of Thought and self-observation.
“Since we want to learn to think better in order to live better, since we want to know how to think in order to recover our place and status in life as feminine counterparts and to become in fact the helpful, inspiring and balancing elements that we are potentially, it seems indispensable to me that we should first of all enquire into what thought is.
Thought…It is a very vast subject, the vastest of all, perhaps…Therefore I do not intend to tell you exactly and completely what it is. But by a process of analysis, we shall try to form as precise an idea of it as it is possible for us to do.
It seems to me that we must first of all distinguish two very different kinds, or I might say qualities, of thought: thoughts in us which are the result, the fruit, as it were, of our sensations, and thoughts which, like living beings, come to us – from where?… most often we do not know – thoughts that we perceive mentally before they express themselves in our outer being as sensations.
If you have observed yourselves even a little, you must have noticed that the contact with what is not yourselves is established first of all through the medium of your senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell, etc. The impact felt in this way, whether slight or violent, pleasant or unpleasant, arouses a feeling in you – like or dislike, attraction or repulsion – which very quickly turns into an idea, an opinion you form about the object, whatever it may be, that has determined the contact.
An example: you go out and as you step out of your house you see that it is raining and at the same time you feel the damp cold seizing you; the sensation is unpleasant, you feel a dislike for the rain and inwardly, almost mechanically, you say to yourself, “This rain is really a nuisance, especially as I have to go out! Not to mention that I am going to get dreadfully dirty; Paris is very dirty in rainy weather, especially now that all the streets have been dug up” (and so on)…
All these and many other similar thoughts about the simple fact that it is raining come to assail your mind; and if nothing else, outwardly or inwardly, comes to attract your attention, for a long while, almost without your noticing it, your brain may produce minute, trivial thoughts about this small, insignificant sensation…
This is how most human lives are spent; this is what human beings most often call thinking ─ a mental activity that is almost mechanical, unreflecting, out of our control, a reflex. All thoughts concerning material life and its many needs are of the same quality.
Here we face the first difficulty to be overcome; if we want to be able to truly think, that is, to receive, formulate and form valid and viable thoughts, we must first of all empty our brain of all this vague and unruly mental agitation. And this is certainly not the easiest part of our task. We are dominated by this irrational cerebral activity, we do not dominate it.
Only one method is worth recommending: meditation. But as I was telling you last time, there are many ways of meditating; some are very effective, others less so.
Each one should find his own by successive trial and error. However, one thing can be recommended to everyone: reflection, that is to say, concentration, self-observation in solitude and silence, a close and strict analysis of the multitude of insignificant little thoughts which constantly assail us.
During the few moments you devote each day to this preliminary exercise of meditation, avoid, if possible, the complacent contemplation of your sensations, your feelings, your states of mind.
We all have an inexhaustible fund of self-indulgence, and very often we treat all these little inner movements with the greatest respect and give them an importance which they certainly do not have, even relative to our own evolution.
When one has enough self-control to be able to analyse coldly, to dissect these states of mind, to strip them of their brilliant or painful appearance, so as to perceive them as they are in all their childish insignificance, then one can profitably devote oneself to studying them. But this result can only be achieved gradually, after much reflection in a spirit of complete impartiality. I would like to make a short digression here to put you on your guard against a frequent confusion.
I have just said that we always look upon ourselves with great indulgence, and I think in fact that our defects very often appear to us to be full of charm and that we justify all our weaknesses. But to tell the truth, this is because we lack self-confidence. Does this surprise you?.. Yes, I repeat, we lack confidence, not in what we are at the present moment, not in our ephemeral and ever-changing outer being – this being always finds favour in our eyes – but we lack confidence in what we can become through effort, we have no faith in the integral and profound transformation which will be the work of our true self, of the eternal, the divine who is in all beings, if we surrender like children to its supremely luminous and far-seeing guidance. So let us not confuse complacency with confidence – and let us return to our subject.
When you are able by methodical and repeated effort to objectivise and keep at a distance all this flood of incoherent thoughts which assail us, you will notice a new phenomenon.
You will observe within yourself certain thoughts that are stronger and more tenacious than others, thoughts concerning social usages, customs, moral rules and even general laws that govern earth and man. They are your opinions on these subjects or at least those you profess and by which you try to act.
Look at one of these ideas, the one most familiar to you, look at it very carefully, concentrate, reflect in all sincerity, if possible leaving aside all bias, and ask yourself why you have this opinion on that subject rather than any other. The answer will almost invariably be the same, or nearly: Because it is the opinion prevalent in your environment, because it is considered good form to have it and therefore saves you from as many clashes, frictions, criticisms as possible. Or because this was the opinion of your father or mother, the opinion which moulded your childhood.
Or else because this opinion is the normal outcome of the education, religious or otherwise, you received in your youth. This thought is not your own thought.
For, to be your own thought, it would have to form part of a logical synthesis you had elaborated in the course of your existence, either by observation, experience and deduction, or by deep, abstract meditation and contemplation. This, then, is our second discovery.
Since we have goodwill and endeavour to be integrally sincere, that is, to make our actions conform to our thoughts, we are now convinced that we act according to mental laws we receive from outside, not after having maturely considered and analysed them, not by deliberately and consciously receiving them, but because unconsciously we are subjected to them through atavism, by our upbringing and education, and above all because we are dominated by a collective suggestion which is so powerful, so overwhelming, that very few succeed in avoiding it altogether. How far we are from the mental individuality we want to acquire!
We are products determined by all our past history, impelled by the blind and arbitrary will of our contemporaries.
It is a pitiful sight…But let us not be disheartened; the greater the ailment and the more pressing the remedy, the more energetically we must fight back. The method will always be the same: to reflect and reflect and reflect. We must take these ideas one after another and analyse them by appealing to all our common sense, all our reason, our highest sense of equity; we must weigh them in the balance of our acquired knowledge and accumulated experience, and then endeavour to reconcile them with one another, to establish harmony among them. It will often prove very difficult, for we have a regrettable tendency to let the most contradictory ideas dwell side by side in our minds.
We must put all of them in place, bring order into our inner chamber, and we must do this each day just as we tidy the rooms of our house. For I suppose that our mentality deserves at least as much care as our house. But, once again, for this work to be truly effective, we must strive to maintain in ourselves our highest, quietest, most sincere state of mind so as to make it our own.
Let us be transparent so that the light within us may fully illumine the thoughts we want to observe, analyse, classify. Let us be impartial and courageous so as to rise above our own little preferences and petty personal conveniences. Let us look at the thoughts in themselves, for themselves, without bias.
And little by little, if we persevere in our work of classification, we shall see order and light take up their abode in our minds. But we should never forget that this order is but confusion compared with the order that we must realise in the future, that this light is but darkness compared with the light that we shall be able to receive after some time.
Life is in perpetual evolution; if we want to have a living mentality, we must progress unceasingly.
Moreover, this is only a preliminary work. We are still very far from true thought, which brings us into relation with the infinite source of knowledge.
These are only exercises for training ourselves gradually to an individualising control of our thoughts. For control of the mental activity is indispensable to one who wants to meditate.
I cannot speak to you in detail today about meditation; I only say that in order to be genuine, to serve its full purpose, meditation must be disinterested, impersonal in the integral sense of the word. “
One thing is certain, that a simple life has never harmed anyone, while the same cannot be said for luxury and over-abundance. Most often, the things which are of no use to men are also which cause them harm.
In the reign of the famous Akbar, there lived at Agra a Jain saint name Banarasi Das. The Emperor summoned the saint to his palace and told him:
“Ask of me what you will, and because of your holy life, your wish shall be satisfied.”
“Parabrahman has given me more than I could wish for,” replied the saint.
“But ask all the same,” Akbar insisted.
“Then, Sire, I would ask that you do not call me again to your palace, for I want to devote my time to the divine work.”
“Let it be so,” said Akbar. “But I in my turn have a favour to ask you.”
“Speak, Sire.”
“Give me some good counsel that I many bear in mind and act upon.”
Banarasi Das thought for a moment and said:
“ See that your food is pure and clean, and take good care, especially at night, over your meat and drink.”
“I will not forget your advice,” said the Emperor.
In truth the advice was good, healthy food and drink make a healthy body, fit to be the temple of a pure mind and life.
But it so happened that the very day on which the saint visited the Emperor was a fast-day. And therefore Akbar would only have his meal several hours after midnight. The palace cooks had prepared the dishes in the evening and had placed them in plates of gold and silver, until the time of fasting should be over.
It was still dark when Akbar had them brought before him. Despite his haste to take some nourishment, he suddenly remembered the words of Banarasi Das: “Take care over your meat and drink.” So he examined the plate before him carefully and found that the food was covered with brown ants. In spite of all precautions, these ants had crept in and spoiled the Emperor’s meal.
Akbar had to send away the dishes, and this incident strongly impressed on his mind the useful advice he had received.
For you will understand that Banarasi Das had not intended to warn Akbar merely against brown ants, but against anything in his diet that might not be good for the health of his body or mind.
Many diseases come from and unhealthy diet.
One who knowingly sells unwholesome products is in fact making an attack on the lives of his fellow-citizens. And unwholesome products are not only those that are adulterated or spoilt but all those that may be in any way harmful to eat.
The Mother
2: 200
I would suggest that in your relations with others, – which seem always to have been full of disharmony, – when incidents occur, it would be much better for you not to take the standpoint that you are all in the right and they are all in the wrong. It would be wiser to be fair and just in reflection, seeing where you have gone astray, and even laying stress on your own fault and not on theirs. This would probably lead to more harmony in your relations with others; at any rate, it would be more conducive to your inner progress, which is more important than to be the top-dog in a quarrel. Neither is it well to cherish a spirit of self-justification and self-righteousness and a wish to conceal either from yourself or from the Mother your faults or your errors.
Sri Aurobindo
(Ref: Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol 25, P:240)
Each one has his own way of doing Sadhana and his own approach to the Divine and need not trouble himself about how the others do it; their success or unsuccess, their difficulties, their delusions, their egoism and vanity are in [the Mother’s] care; she has an infinite patience, but that does not mean that she approves of their defects or supports them in all they say or do. The Mother takes no sides in any quarrel or antagonism or dispute, but her silence does not mean that she approves what they may say or do when it is improper. . . . The Mother tolerates all; she does not forbid any criticism of the Sadhaks by each other nor does she give these criticisms any value. It is only when the Sadhaks see the futility of all these things from the spiritual level that there can be any hope that they will cease.
Sri Aurobindo
(Ref: Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol 26, P:485)
I see no reason therefore why you should care so much if anybody is not behaving well with you. I have told you already that people in the Ashram – it is true even of those who have inner experiences and some opening – are not yet free in their outer selves from ego and wrong ideas and wrong movements. It is no use getting distressed or depressed by that. What you must do is to be turned only to the Mother and relying on her go forward quietly with your work and Sadhana until the time when the Sadhaks are sufficiently awakened and changed to feel the need of greater harmony and union with each other. Let only your spiritual change and progress matter for you and for that trust wholly in the Mother’s force and her grace which is with you – do not let things or people disturb you, – for compared with the truth within and the journey to the full Light of the Mother’s Consciousness these things have no importance.
Sri Aurobindo
(Ref: Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol 25, P:255)
If you want to have knowledge or see all as brothers or have peace, you must think less of yourself, your desires, feelings, people’s treatment of you, and think more of the Divine – living for the Divine, not for yourself.
Sri Aurobindo
(Ref: Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol 23, P:825)
I would ask you not to let resentment or anything else rise or dictate your conduct. Put these things aside and see that peace within and the seeking of the Divine are the one thing important – these clashes being only spurts of the ego. Turn yourself in the one direction, but for the rest keep a quiet goodwill to all.
Sri Aurobindo
(Ref: Letters on Yoga, P:824)
I suggest that everyone of you should try – oh! not for long, just for one hour a day – to say nothing but the absolutely indispensable words. Not one more, not one less.
Take one hour of your life, the one which is most convenient for you, and during that time observe yourself closely and say only the absolutely indispensable words.
At the outset, the first difficulty will be to know what is absolutely indispensable and what is not. It is already a study in itself and every day you will do better.
Next, you will see that so long as one says nothing, it is not difficult to remain absolutely silent, but as soon as you begin to speak, always or almost always you say two or three or ten or twenty useless words which it was not at all necessary to say.
Mother
(Ref: Mother’s Collected Works, Volume 3: page 259)
You are with someone. This person tells you something, you tell him the contrary (as it usually happens, simply through a spirit of contradiction) and you begin arguing. Naturally, you will never come to any point, except a quarrel if you are ill-natured. But instead of doing that, instead of remaining in your own ideas or your own words, if you tell yourself: “Wait a little, I am going to try and see why he said that to me. Yes, why did he tell me that?” And you concentrate: “Why, why, why?” You stand there, just like that, trying. The other person continues speaking, doesn’t he? – and is very happy too, for you don’t contradict him any longer! He talks profusely and is sure he has convinced you. Then you concentrate more and more on what he is saying, and with the feeling that gradually, through his words, you are entering his mind. When you enter his head, suddenly you enter into his way of thinking, and next, just imagine, you understand why he is speaking to you thus! And then, if you have a fairly swift intelligence and put what you have just come to understand alongside what you had known before, you have the two ways together, and so can find the truth reconciling both. And here you have truly made progress. And this is the best way of widening one’s thought.
If you are beginning an argument, keep quiet immediately, instantaneously. You must be silent, say nothing at all, and then try to see the thing as the other person sees it – that won’t make you forget your own way of seeing it, not at all! but you will be able to put both of them together. And you will truly have made progress, a real progress.
Mother
(Ref: Mother’s Collected Works, Volume 5: page 221)
In human life the cause of all difficulties, all discords, all moral sufferings, is the presence in everyone of the ego with its desires, its likes and dislikes. Even in a disinterested work which consists in helping others, until one has learned to overcome the ego and its demands, until one can force it to keep calm and quiet in one corner, the ego reacts to everything that displeases it, starts an inner storm that rises to the surface and spoils all the work.
This work of overcoming the ego is long, slow and difficult; it demands constant alertness and sustained effort. This effort is easier for some and more difficult for others…
As long as I was physically present among you all, my presence was helping you to achieve this mastery over the ego and so it was not necessary for me to speak to you about it individually very often.
But now this effort must become the basis of each individual’s existence, more especially for those of you who have a responsible position and have to take care of others. The leaders must always set the example, the leaders must always practise the virtues they demand from those who are in their care; they must be understanding, patient, enduring, full of sympathy and warm and friendly goodwill, not out of egoism in order to win friends for themselves, but out of generosity so that they may understand and help others.
To forget oneself, one’s own likings and preferences, is indispensable in order to be a true leader.
That is what I am asking of you now, so that you can face your responsibilities as you should. And then you will find that where you used to feel disorder and disunity, they have vanished, and harmony, peace and joy have taken their place.
26 August 1972 Mother
(Ref: Collected Works of the Mother, Vol 13, P: 169-170)
