Chapter 14The Mother’s Presence · Feeling the Mother’s Presence

of the forces working there? I suppose the universal or “everywhere” includes the physical plane. If so, does the Mother know all the happenings and events on the physical plane?

Including what Lloyd George had today for breakfast or what Roosevelt said to his wife about their servants? Why should the Mother “know” in the human way all such happenings on the physical plane? Her business in her embodiment is to know the working of the universal forces and use them for her work; for the rest she knows what she needs to know, sometimes with her inner self, sometimes with her physical mind. All knowledge is available in her universal self to her, but she brings forward only what is meant to be brought forward so that the work may be done.

13 August 1933

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I had a dream in which I was walking alone in the desert. Was the meaning of the dream that this sadhana is very dry and difficult?

No. It is perhaps how some part of the vital or physical consciousness figured it. But the path is not a desert nor are you alone, since the Mother is with you.

2 November 1933

*

My vital does not seem to have devotion for the Mother. Instead of loving her, it gets mixed with undivine forces. Protect me from these vital obstructions. I wish to feel that I am lying in the Mother’s lap.

therefore does not believe in the Mother’s presence. You have to call down the Mother’s Force into it to remove its doubts and desires.

11 November 1933

* quiet within and do with that quietude what has to be done. You will become more and more aware of her constant Presence, will feel her action behind yours and the burden of your work will no longer be heavy on you.

21 April 1935

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You have written: “Always behave as if the Mother was looking at you; because she is, indeed, always present.” On the other hand, you wrote to me recently that it was not physically possible for her to be present everywhere. When I asked the Mother about this, she said that she could be present in many places. How to reconcile these contradictory statements?

If by physically you mean corporeally, in her visible tangible material body, it is obvious that it cannot be. When you asked Mother the question she did not understand you to mean that — she said she could be present everywhere, and she meant, of course, in her consciousness. It is the consciousness and not the body that is the being, the person; the body is only a support and instrument for the action of the consciousness. Mother can be personally present in her consciousness. The universal presence of course is always there and the universal and personal are two aspects of the same being.

25 August 1936

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Sometimes the thought comes to me: “Outwardly and inwardly, I am very far from the Mother.” Why does it come?

It is the feeling of the physical or outward being which is by its ignorance unable to feel the Mother’s nearness.

How can I convince myself of the falsity of this thought and drive it away?

of mind and vital that do not see or feel it. That is a knowledge which the mind ought to hold firmly.

29 April 1937 Live always as if you were under the very eye of the Supreme and of the Divine Mother. Do nothing, try to think and feel nothing that would be unworthy of the Divine Presence.

16 April 1930

* The constant presence of the Mother comes by practice; the Divine Grace is essential for success in the sadhana, but it is the practice that prepares the descent of the Grace.

You have to learn to go inward, ceasing to live in external things only, quiet the mind and aspire to become aware of the Mother’s workings in you.

2 July 1930

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How and when can one feel the Mother’s concrete presence all the time?

It is a matter, first, of the constant activity of the psychic and secondly of the conversion of the physical and its openness to inner supraphysical experience. Apart from the vital and its disturbances the physical is the chief difficulty in establishing a continuity of Yogic consciousness and experience. If the physical is thoroughly transformed — opened and conscious — then stability and continuity become easy.

16 October 1933

* It is quite necessary to realise the Mother in her formless presence and not only in her form.

December 1933

* But I do not see why you call the feeling sentimental or think that your sense of the presence of the Mother in the heart-beats etc. was unreal. It was your psychic being that suggested it to you and the response showed that the consciousness was ready. Mother felt that something was happening in you and felt that it was the beginning of a realisation — she was encouraging it and