Chapter 15To a sadhak of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

Sri Aurobindo told me one day that if men knew this and were convinced of it, they would all want to do yoga.

9 February 1972

* Human consciousness is so corrupted that men prefer the mis-eries of the ego and its ignorance to the luminous joy that comes from a sincere surrender to the Divine. So great is their blindness that they refuse even to try the experiment and would rather be subject to the miseries of their ego than make the effort needed to get rid of them.

So completely blind are they that they would not hesitate to make the Divine a slave of their ego, if such a thing were possible, in order to avoid giving themselves to the Divine.

10 February 1972

* Supreme Lord, teach us to be silent, that in the silence we may receive Your force and understand Your will.

11 February 1972

* We want to be true servitors of the Divine.

“Supreme Lord, Perfect Consciousness, You alone know truly what we are, what we can do, what progress we must make to be capable and worthy of serving You as we would. Make us conscious of our possibilities, but also of our difficulties so that we may overcome them in order to serve You faithfully.”

The supreme happiness is to be true servitors of the Divine.

14 February 1972

* For those who want always to progress, there are three major ways of progressing:

(1) To widen the field of one’s consciousness.

(2) To understand ever better and more completely what one knows.

(3) To find the Divine and surrender more and more to his Will.

In other words, this means: (1) To constantly enrich the possibilities of the instrument. (2) To ceaselessly perfect the functioning of this instrument. (3) To make this instrument increasingly receptive and obedient to the Divine.

To learn to understand and do more and more things. To purify oneself of all that prevents one from being totally sur-rendered to the Divine. To make one’s consciousness more and more receptive to the Divine Influence.

One could say: to widen oneself more and more, to deepen oneself more and more, to surrender oneself more and more completely.

15 February 1972

* What is commonly called faithfulness is a scrupulous compliance with the promises one has made. But the only true and binding faithfulness is faithfulness to the Divine — and that is the faithfulness we all ought to acquire through sincere and sustained effort.

When the whole being, in all its parts and all its activities, can say to the Divine in all sincerity:

“Whatever You will, whatever You will”, then one is well on the way to the true faithfulness.

17 February 1972

* Life on earth is essentially a field for progress. But how brief life is for all the progress that has to be made!

To waste one’s time seeking the satisfaction of one’s petty desires is sheer folly. True happiness is possible only when one has found the Divine.

19 February 1972

* Supreme Lord, Perfection that we must become, Perfection that we must manifest.

This body lives by You alone and goes on repeating to You:

“Whatever You will, whatever You will”

until the day when it shall automatically know what You will because its consciousness will be totally united with Yours.

23 February 1972

* Grant that I may become conscious of Your Presence.

9 March 1972

* Lord, we implore You, grant that nothing in us may reject Your Presence and that we may become what You want us to be; grant that all in us may conform to Your Will.

12 March 1972

* Lord, give us the silence of Your contemplation, the silence rich with Your effective Presence.

13 March 1972

* Grant that our silence may be filled with Your Presence and that we may be fully conscious of it.

Grant that we may know that You are our life, our consciousness and our being, and that without You everything is merely illusion.

14 March 1972

* Grant that we may identify ourselves with Your Eternal Consciousness so that we may know truly what Immortality is.

16 March 1972

* To prepare for immortality, the consciousness of the body must first identify itself with the Eternal Consciousness.

17 March 1972

* A fifteen-year-old girl asked: “What is Truth?”

I answered: “The Will of the Supreme Lord.” It is a subject for contemplative meditation.

18 March 1972

* This truth that man has vainly sought to know will be the birthright of the new race, the race of tomorrow, the superman.

To live according to Truth will be his birthright. Let us do our best to prepare the coming of the New Being. The mind must fall silent and be replaced by the Truth- Consciousness — the consciousness of details harmonised with the consciousness of the whole.

19 March 1972

Note on the Texts The fourteen correspondences in this volume were first brought out separately in books and journals published by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Most of them appeared either in the Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, a bi-lingual quarterly in French and English, or in Mother India, a monthly in English. The correspondences were first published together in English in 1987 in the first edition of this volume. They were first published together in French in 1994 under the title Quelques R´eponses de la M`ere–1.

Twelve of these correspondences were written wholly or partly in French; two were written entirely in English. The original translations of material in French were revised for publication in 1987 in the first edition.

In five correspondences some part of the originally published material has been removed — namely the Mother’s brief words of encouragement or solicitude (unless they occur within a longer reply), her comments and decisions on mundane affairs (unless they indicate her viewpoint or way of working), and any replies of little general interest. In two of the series, hitherto unpublished material has been added.

The texts of this second edition (2003) are the same as those of the first edition, except for the correction of typographical errors and the revision of a few translations.

Details about the individual series follow.

Series One. Original in French. First published in French in February 1978 in Cahier No. 31 of the Centre d’ ´Etudes Sri Aurobindo (Paris). Subsequently published in French, with an English translation, in the Bulletin of August 1979. The same material is included in this volume.

Series Two. Original in French, excepting twenty-eight replies in English. First published in English translation in My Little Smile (1977). About sixty per cent of that material is included here. In addition, there are about twenty-five pages of new material, selected from the original manuscripts, which were published for the first time in 1980. The following replies of the Mother were written in English: the first six, eighth and tenth undated replies at the beginning of the series; the reply of 14 December 1931; the replies in 1932 of 9, 14 and 15 June; 25 June (except the final entry of that date); 27 June and 1 July; 20 July (first reply of that date); 21 July (except the second and final entries); 29 July (final paragraph only); 30 July; 6, 10, 15, 16 and 25 August; 5 and 26 September; 9 November and 3 December; and the reply of 1940 beginning “A year”.

Series Three. Original in French, excepting the two replies of 6 September 1936, which were written in English. About one quarter of the correspondence was published in the Bulletin issues of August and November 1974 and February 1975. The complete correspondence appeared in My Little Smile (1977). About thirty-five per cent of the whole is presented here.

Series Four. Original in English. The full correspondence, containing the replies of both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, was first published in the October and November 1977 issues of Mother India. About half the replies of the Mother are included in this volume.

Series Five. Original in French, excepting thirteen replies in English. A small part of the correspondence was published in Breath of Grace (1973), pages 94–105. A comprehensive selection, containing the replies of both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, was serialised in the Bulletin issues of February, April and August 1980. Of that material, about half the replies of the Mother are included in this volume. The following replies were written in English: 14 March and 22 August 1932, 6 and 9 March 1934, 13 September 1937, 10 April 1942, 12 December 1953, 23 March 1954, 26 January 1956, and at the end of the series the undated replies beginning “Your going away”, “You need not”, “Do not accept” and “Each time that” (except the phrase “Peace, peace, O my heart!”, the original of which is “Paix, paix, O mon coeur!”).

Series Six. Original in French. About twenty per cent of the correspondence appeared in English translation in the Sri Aurobindo Circle of 1955. The full correspondence first came out in 1964 — in French as Quelques r´eponses de la M`ere, and in English as Some Answers from the Mother. The same material is presented here. This series is not arranged in chronological order, as the others are, but is broadly divided into thirteen sections according to subject; this is the form in which it was published in 1964.

Series Seven. Original in English. About half the correspondence was published in Breath of Grace (1973), pages 182–94. The complete collection, containing the replies of both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, came out in the Bulletin issues of February, April and August 1981. Of that material, about half the replies of the Mother appear in the present volume.

Series Eight. Original in French. First published in French, with an English translation, in Mother India from February to August 1960. The same material, set in chronological order, appears here.

Series Nine. Original in French. About half these replies were published in the French original, with an English translation, in the Mother India issues of June, August, October and December 1960. Two other replies appeared in the Bulletin issues of August 1962 and February 1963. The rest of the material was first published in 1980 in the first edition of this volume.

Series Ten. Original in French. First published in the Bulletin from April 1973 to November 1975. About ten per cent of the letters — those specifically on education — were brought out in 1978 in On Education, Collected Works Volume 12, Part Two, Section VI. The present volume contains the entire correspondence. The first sentence of the Mother’s reply of 30 December 1964 was written in English.

Series Eleven. Original in French. First published in the Bulletin issues of November 1978 and February 1979.

Series Twelve. Original in French. First published in the Bulletin issues of August and November 1970.

Series Thirteen. Original in French. First published in the Bulletin issues of February and April 1971. The third paragraph of the Mother’s reply of 6 September 1969 was written in English, as were the words “self-fulfilment”, “to be successful” and “self-realisation” in the reply of 14 September 1969.

Series Fourteen. Original in French. First published in the Bulletin from April 1972 to February 1973.