Chapter 7518 January 1951

Isn’t loyalty limited by a feeling for something or someone? Isn’t sincerity something wider?

Yes, it is. Loyalty implies some kind of hierarchical relationship, so to say, with someone or something. There is a sort of interdependence. The usual idea is that loyalty means keeping one’s word, doing one’s duty scrupulously, etc.

Someone who lives all alone in a forest can practise total sincerity, but you can only practise loyalty in social life, in relation to other people. A person who is entirely consecrated in an act of inner devotion to the divine Presence, can be loyal to this Presence. This implies a relationship with something in front of you, or a relationship with the universal.

The German generals were loyal to Hitler, but they weren’t sincere with themselves.

This is a very complex problem. They might have been sincere in relation to their own ideal. You do not know.

I have known beings who were the most active instruments against the divine life, against the divine realisation. Well, to some extent, they were loyal to their own ideal and very sincere in their...1 These beings are called Asuras, but as I have just said, they were sincere in relation to their own ideal.

So sincerity is not enough?

I didn’t say they had an absolute sincerity. I simply said that they were very sincere. Perhaps, in some part of their being, there was something that did not try to know any more than it knew. It is quite probable.

1 Words missing in the transcription.

Some people think they have achieved absolute sincerity.

If you are sure you have achieved absolute sincerity, you can be sure that you are immersed in falsehood!

This talk is based upon the Mother’s essay “The Science of The psychic being is formed by the inner Truth and organised around it.

* The vital is the dynamism of action. It is the seat of the will, of impulses, desires, revolts, etc.

* The physical is the concrete domain that crystallises and de-fines the thoughts, the movements of the vital, etc. It is a solid foundation for action.

* Finding one’s psychic being implies a kind of conviction, a faith in the existence of this psychic being. One must become aware of it and then allow it to take up the direction of life and action; one must refer to it and make it one’s guide. One becomes aware of the movements of one’s being by referring more and more to the psychic being.

* Having an aim is not sufficient. One must have the will to attain it by trying always to trace all one’s movements back to their origin.

* Self-mastery means being conscious of oneself and one’s move-ments, doing what one has decided to do and not what others want one to do.

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“In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perception [of the psychic presence in us] and ultimately achieving this identification [with it]. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another — outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience — the help one needs to reach the goal.”

What is the difference between mechanical, religious and psychological methods? Religious methods are those adopted by the various religions. Not many religions speak of the inner Truth; for them, it is more a matter of coming into contact with their God. Heaven and hell: this is a roundabout way of saying...1

Psychological methods are those that deal with states of consciousness, that try to realise the inner self by withdrawing from all activity and attempting to create the conscious inner conditions of detachment, self-abstraction, concentration, higher Reality, renunciation of all the outer movements, etc. A psychological method is one which acts on the thoughts, feelings and actions.

Mechanical methods are those which are based on purely mechanical means — one can benefit from them by using them 1 Words missing in the transcription.

in a certain way. Take breath-control, for example: it acts more or less mechanically, but it is sometimes recommended to add to this a concentration of one’s thought, to repeat a word, as in Vivekananda’s teaching. This works up to a certain point, but then it fades away. These human attempts in various times and places have been more or less successful individually but they have never given a collective result.

The psychological method is far more difficult but far more effective: through your actions, to be in a state of inner will to express nothing in yourself but the Truth of your being, and to make everything dependent on that Truth. Of course, if you do nothing, it is easier, but it is also easier to deceive yourself. When you sit down in isolation, in complete silence and far away from everybody, and examine yourself with more or less indulgent eyes, you may imagine that you are realis-ing something wonderful. But when you are put to the test at every minute of your life, when you have the occasion to become aware of your imperfections, your infirmities, your little movements of bad will a hundred times a day, you soon lose the illusion of being...2 and so your efforts are more sincere.

That is why, instead of deciding that we would have an Ashram in a solitary forest where everything is very beautiful, very restful, instead of being aloof from the world and attending only to our own little selves, we are trying on the contrary to take up all the activities of life and make them as conscious as we can, and, in our contacts with other people, to become more clearly aware of all the inner movements.

Running away from difficulties is never a way of sur-mounting or overcoming them. If you flee from the enemy you won’t be able to defeat him and he has every chance of defeating you. That is why we are here in Pondicherry and not on some Himalayan peak. Although I admit that a 2 Words missing in the transcription.

Himalayan peak would be delightful — but perhaps not so effective.

Next time I shall speak about mental discipline, for I have quite a lot of things to say on this subject. It is a terrible stumbling-block: people think they have a superior intellect and on that basis judge things which they know nothing about. This is, if not the greatest, at least one of the greatest obstacles for mankind. For it so happens that mankind is, of all animals — pardon me, but we are still animals! — the only one who can make use of articulate language and turn out pages and pages of... He thinks he is so superior because he can write down and make others read what he thinks and feels. And from this eminence of mental greatness, of mental nobility, he dismisses as so much childishness things that are infinitely superior to him.

Does the psychic being identify itself with the inner Truth?

It organises itself around it and enters into contact with it. The psychic is moved by the Truth. The Truth is something eternally self-existent and dependent on nothing in time or space, whereas the psychic being is a being that grows, takes form, progresses, individualises itself more and more. In this way it becomes more and more capable of manifesting this Truth, the eternal Truth that is one and permanent. The psychic being is a progressive being, which means that the relation between the psychic being and the Truth is a progressive one. It is not possible to become aware of one’s psychic being without becoming aware at the same time of the inner Truth. All those who have had this experience — not a mental experience but an integral experience of contact with the psychic being, not a contact with the idea they have constructed of it, but a truly concrete contact — all say the same thing: from the very minute this contact takes place, one is absolutely conscious of the eternal Truth within oneself and one sees that it is the purpose of life and the guide of the world. One