In the Ashram atmosphere there are premonitions: “On this occasion of Mother’s birthday, something great and high that has never yet descended on the earth is to come down.” Is this true?
Let us hope so. There are some others who are feeling like that, so it may be true — at least for those who feel it.
Only two days ago I felt a great working all around as a preparatory stage for the great event of the 21st February.[1] Then what is meant by these two days of constant darkness? This has brought me down to the most material consciousness. How am I to prepare myself now for the grand descent?
Let the descent come when it can, 20th or 22nd or any other day of the month or year. On the 21st only offer yourself to the Divine Mother and consecrate everything.
I wonder why the lower resistance is greater now, especially when the Darshan is approaching?
It is often so. One has to learn not to submit to the resistance.
Yesterday during the Darshan, I felt as if you had put a strong Force on my lower vital. I became conscious of it immediately. Is this correct?
It is correct.
After the Darshan people experience love, Ananda, exaltation — which last for a while. But is it not something greater and deeper to feel one’s desires, attachments and ego fading away after the Darshan?
Yes, certainly.
On the 21st, the vital resisted in the beginning, but afterwards received what you and the Mother offered me during the Darshan. Was it not a willing acceptance by the vital?
Yes, but the acceptance must be made permanent.
When will I be able to live, not in an impersonal sense, but in the Mother’s manifested physical form?
I do not know how you are going to live in the manifested physical form. To live in the Mother’s consciousness down to the physical with the manifested form as the centre of this unity is possible. Perhaps you mean that? But how are you going to do that if the other parts are left to remain as they are? They will go on pulling you out of the true consciousness as they do now. And how are they to be changed if the Mother’s Force is not there in them to change them?
There are not many Mothers, there is One in many forms. The transcendental is only one aspect of the Mother. I don’t know what is meant by the embodied aspect of the transcendental Mother. There is the embodied aspect of the One Mother — what she manifests through it depends on herself.
You have written: “But obviously the impersonal is not enough — for surrender to that may be limited in result to the inner experience without any transformation of the outer being.” I do not understand.
It is rather surprising that you should be unable to understand such a simple and familiar statement; for that has been always the whole reason of this Yoga that to follow after the Impersonal only brings inner experience or at the most mukti — without the action of the Integral Divine there is no change of the whole nature. If it were not so the Mother would not be here, and I would not be here — if a realisation of the Impersonal were sufficient.
In our terminology how do you name the Purushottama and the Parashakti? Are they the Supreme and the Mahashakti as spoken of in your book The Mother?
Yes.
When I start writing to you, there comes a greater pressure, a deeper concentration of the higher Force. Why so?
I suppose it is because in the act of writing or rather beginning to write you enter into contact with the Mother and the Force.
It is simply a fact that happens — the Force comes when you begin to write.
How is it you never write to me anything unless I ask for it or make some statement about it?
I never do to anybody unless he gives me the occasion. A sadhak must become conscious and lay himself before the light, see and reject and change. It is not the right method for us to interfere and lecture and point out this and point out that. That is the school master method — it does not work in the spiritual change.
The disciples here are not pupils and the gurus here are not school teachers.
You often use words like “please” etc. In India at least, a Guru, not to speak of an Avatar, does not speak this way to his disciples!
They were not in the habit of writing English.
Since you and the Mother are supposed to know all that happens in us, then why do you want us to write to you about it?
It is necessary for you to be conscious and to put your self-observation before us; it is on that that we can act. A mere action on our own observation without any corresponding consciousness on the part of the sadhak would lead to nothing.
I think I know as much about the dualities, weaknesses, ignorance of human nature as you do and a good deal more. The idea that the Mother or I are spiritually great but ignorant of everything practical seems to be common in the Ashram. It is an error to suppose that to be on a high spiritual plane makes one ignorant or unobservant of the world or of human nature. If I know nothing of human nature or do not consider it, I am obviously unfit to be anybody’s guide in the work of transformation, for nobody can transform human nature if he does not know what human nature is, does not see its workings or, even if he sees, does not take them into consideration at all. If I think that the human plane is like the plane or planes of infinite Light, Power, Ananda, infallible Will Force, then I must be either a stark lunatic or a gibbering imbecile or a fool so abysmally idiotic as to be worth keeping in a museum as an exhibit.
You wrote, “Openness is not reckoned merely by visions.” Quite so. But to have the fusion of the Sun and Moon on each side of the body, and to feel the Mother’s presence all around, is it not an exceptional experience and vision?
Why should it be exceptional to see the Sun and Moon on each side or to feel the Mother’s presence everywhere around? There are plenty of sadhaks who have had these or equivalent experiences. What would be exceptional is to feel the Mother’s presence like that always. But occasional experiences like these many have had.
Just before approaching the Mother for Pranam, I feel a rapid and powerful heart-beating. But it ceases the moment I am with her. Why so?
Many people have felt that at times — some excitement of the vital, difficult to say why.
Today during the common meditation of the Mother I could receive her help easily and spontaneously. But after the meditation I had to use effort. Does it not mean that something in me is quieted by her very physical presence?
It is not by the physical presence but by the Mother’s concentration at the time of Meditation which brings that quiet to those who can receive it.
If a sadhak has a profound, self-existent and dynamic love for the Mother, he always remembers her. Even if he happens to forget her in the initial stage, something from within automatically reminds him.
Yes. In the full development, even this is not necessary — for it ceases to be necessary to remember the Divine, since one is always conscious of Her.
[1] The Mother’s birthday, one of the Darshan days at the Ashram.
