Chapter 35Surrender to the Mother and the Working of · Her Force

or destroyed, at the obstacles to the sadhana etc. I may say that

5 June 1936

*

The suggestion that the pressure of sadhana is unbearable has got fixed in my mind, particularly after reading in two places that those whose nerves are weak are better off living outside the Ashram. One place is in one of your letters, and another in the Conversations, where the Mother says: “You must have a strong body and strong nerves. . . . If you have to bear the pressure of the Divine Descent, you must be very strong and powerful, otherwise you would be shaken to pieces.”3 Are these things applicable to me?

These things refer to beginners who are not open and have not a fit Adhar, yet want to do the sadhana.

Your body is not weak and you have considerable vital strength. Moreover you have the openness to the Force and the habit of receiving it, and there is no reason why there should be any upsetting by the Force. It is not the Force, but the suggestion of these vital Forces that produces the upsetting.

7 September 1936

* The feeling of the vibration of the Mother’s force around the head is more than a mental idea or even a mental realisation, it is an experience. This vibration is indeed the action of the Mother’s Force which is first felt above the head or around it, then afterwards within the head. The pressure means that it is working to open the mind and its centres so that it may enter. The mind-centres are in the head, one at the top and above it, another between the eyes, a third in the throat. That is why you feel the vibration around the head and sometimes up to the neck, but not below. It is so usually, for it is only after enveloping and entering the mind that it goes below to the emotional and 3 The Mother, Conversations 1929–1931 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2003 ), p. 11.