Chapter 67The Mother’s Help in Difficulties · Difficulties and the Mother’s Help

Is one who has gone far on the path able to hear her voice?

There is no rule.

8 July 1933

* In Bases of Yoga one reads: “It is with the Mother who is always with you and in you that you converse.”1 Could you tell me briefly how a sadhak converses with the Mother?

One hears the voice or the thought speaking inwardly and one answers inwardly. Only it is not always safe for the sadhak if there is any insincerity of ego, desire, vanity, ambition in him — for then he may construct a voice or thought in his mind and ascribe it to the Mother and it will say to him pleasing and flattering things which mislead him. Or he may mistake some other Voice for the Mother’s.

2 July 1936 One who can have faith without visions and voices is much farther on the true inner path than one who needs them to have faith.

Visions and voices are not meant for creating faith; they are effective only if one has faith already.

Visions and voices are often indulged in unnecessarily by people. Sometimes they interpret them wrongly or give them too much value. Thus they nourish their egos. But this capacity is by no means a sign of progress.

entering the occult worlds and learning all that was to be learnt there. All that time she was making no progress? She sees things always when she goes into trance. Her capacity is a thing of no value? Because a great number of people don’t know how to 1 See the letter of 7 December 1933 on pages 311– 12. That letter was published, in a revised form, in Bases of Yoga in 1936. — Ed.

use these faculties or misuse them or give them excessive value or nourish their ego by them, does it follow that the faculties themselves have no Yogic use or value?

8 July 1936

* When I said, “But this capacity is by no means a sign of progress”, I meant that the capacity by itself is not a sign of spiritual progress. I forgot to write “by itself” and this changed the whole meaning.

Even by itself, it is a progress in the development of the consciousness though it may not carry with it any spiritualisation of the nature.

9 July 1936

* At a certain stage of the sadhana, everybody receives some occult opening or other: visions, voices, subtle smells or touches. I was told that each occult opening helps one, but none of them has helped me in my practical sadhana.

I do not know what you mean by practical sadhana. If one devel-ops the occult faculty and the occult experience and knowledge, these things can be of great use, therefore practical. In themselves they are a proof of opening of the inner consciousness and also that.

Those who have the faculty of vision may not use it properly or take full advantage of it. Take X. She claims that the Divine Mother comes to her and tells her how to solve her difficulties. But if the Mother ever tried to interfere with those defects and imperfections, I suppose X would not like it.

I don’t suppose she would — the supposition is rather gratuitous and assumes that she is false and insincere. Every sadhak has a good amount of defects and imperfections and the majority of them seem as unable to get rid of them as X.

9 July 1936