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SADHANA THROUGH WORK FOR THE MOTHER
WORK FOR THE MOTHER AND SADHANA
Work for the Mother done with the right concentration on her is
as much a Sadhana as meditation and inner experiences.
Those who do work for the Mother in all sincerity are prepared
by the work itself for the right consciousness even if they do not sit down for
meditation or follow any particular practice of Yoga. It is not necessary to
tell you how to meditate; whatever is needful will come of itself, if in your
work and at all times you are sincere and keep yourself open to the
Mother.
NECESSITY OF WORK IN INTEGRAL YOGA
To go entirely inside in order to have experiences and to
neglect the work, the external consciousness, is to be unbalanced, one-sided in
the Sadhana ― for our Yoga is integral; so also to throw oneself outward and
live in the external being alone is to be unbalanced, one-sided in the Sadhana. One must have the same consciousness in inner experience and outward action and
make both full of the Mother.
It is not well to spend the whole time or the greater part of
the time in meditation unless one is very strong in mind ― for one gets into the
habit of living in an inner world entirely and losing touch with external
realities ― this brings in a one-sided inharmonious movement and may lead to
disturbance of balance. To do both meditation and work and dedicate both to the
Mother is the best thing.
6-8-1933
Page - 199
It is not our experience that by
meditation alone it is possible to change the nature, nor has retirement from
outward activity and work much profited those who have tried it; in many cases
it has been harmful. A certain amount of concentration, an inner aspiration in
the heart and an opening of the consciousness to the Mother's presence there and
to the descent from above are needed. But without action, without work the
nature does not really change; it is there and by contact with men that there is
the test of the change in the nature. As for the work one does, there is no
higher or lower work; all work is the same provided it is offered to the Mother
and done for her and in her power.
6-10-1934
This happens when the work is always associated with the
Mother's thought, done as an offering to her, with the call to do it through
you. All ideas of ego, all association of egoistic feelings with the work must
disappear. One begins to feel the Mother's force doing the work; the psychic
grows through a certain inner attitude behind the work and the ādhāra becomes
open both to the psychic intuitions and influences from within and to the
descent from above. Then the result of meditation can come through the work
itself.
Q: X says that he cannot feel your presence during work as he
can during meditation. He does not understand how work can help him.
A: He has to learn to consecrate his work and feel the Mother's
power working through it. A purely sedentary subjective realisation is only a
half realisation.
23-1-1934
The Mother does not think that it is good to give up all work
and only read and meditate. Work is part of the Yoga and it
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gives the best
opportunity for calling down the Presence, the Light and the Power into the
vital and its activities; it increases also the field and the opportunity of
surrender.
It is not enough to remember that the work is the Mother's ― and the
results also. You must learn to feel the Mother's forces behind you and to open
to the inspiration and the guidance. Always to remember by an effort of the
mind is too difficult; but if you get into the consciousness in which you feel
always the Mother's force in you or supporting you, that is the true thing.
The
Mother does not usually give specific advice such as you ask for in regard to
the Insurance Company. You must learn to get the true inspiration in the mind's
silence.
18-8-1932
Q: Will those who live in peace and Samata but do no work for
the Mother or do little work get transformation ?
A: No, they do not get transformed at all.
7-5-1933
TWO STAGES OF UNION WITH THE MOTHER'S FORCE
The feeling that all one does is from the Divine, that all
action is the Mother's is a necessary step in experience, but one cannot remain
in it ― one has to go farther. Those can remain in it who do not want to change
the nature, but only to have the experience of the Truth behind it. Your action
is according to universal Nature and in that again it is according to your
individual nature, and all Nature is a force put out by the Divine Mother for
the action of the universe. But as things are it is an action of the Ignorance
and the ego; while what we want is an action of the divine Truth unveiled and undeformed by the Ignorance and the ego.
Page - 201
So when you feel that your actions are all done by the force
(Shakti) of the Mother, that is the true experience. But the will of the Mother
is that all you do should be done not by her force in Nature as now, but her own
direct force in the Truth of her nature, the higher divine Nature. So also it
was correct, what you thought afterwards, that unless there is this change, the
I experience that all you do is done by her will cannot be altogether true. So it will not be permanent till then. For if it were permanent now, it might
keep you in the lower action as it does many and prevent or retard the change. What you need as a permanent experience now is that of the Mother's Force
working in you in all things to change this ignorant consciousness and nature
into her divine consciousness and nature.
It is the same with the truth about
the instrument. It is true that each thing is an instrument of the cosmic
Shakti, therefore of the Mother. But the aim of the Sadhana is to become a conscious and perfect instrument instead of one that is unconscious and therefore
imperfect. One can be a conscious and perfect instrument only when one is no
longer acting in obedience to the ignorant push of the lower nature but in
surrender to the Mother and aware of her higher Force acting within oneself. So here too your intuition was perfectly true.
But all this cannot be done in a
day. So you are once more right in not being anxious or uneasy. One must be
vigilant, but not anxious and uneasy. The Mother's Force will act and bring the
result in its own time, provided one offers all to her and aspires and is
vigilant, calling and remembering her at all times, rejecting quietly all that
stands in the way of the action of her transforming Force.
Your second view of
this was more from the right angle vision than the first. To say, "it is not I
who have to act, so I need not mind", is to say too much ― one has to act in so
far as one has to aspire, offer oneself, assent to the Mother's working,
reject all else, more and more surrender. All else will be done in time, there
is no need for anxiety or depression or impatience.
13-7-1935
Page - 202
At first one must put one's will in union with the Mother's will knowing that it is an instrument only and that it is the Mother's will behind that alone can give the result. Afterwards when one becomes conscious
fully of the Mother's force working within, then the personal will is replaced
by the divine.
15-7-1935
There should be not only a general attitude, but each work
should be offered to the Mother so as to keep the attitude a living one all the
time. There should be at the time of work no meditation, for that would withdraw
the attention from the work, but there should be the constant memory of the One
to whom you offer it. This is only a first process; for when you can have
constantly the feeling of a calm being within concentrated in the sense of the
Divine Presence while the surface mind does the work, or when you can begin to
feel always that it is the Mother's force that is doing the work and you are
only a channel or an instrument, then in place of memory there will have begun
the automatic constant realisation of Yoga, divine union, in works.
Everybody is in the Mother, but one must become conscious of
that, not of the work only.
1-4- 1935
Q: Is it true that one should feel that it is the Divine
Presence which moves one and does everything for one ? Would it be possible to
feel it without a union with the Divine Mother ?
A: No - that is itself a union with her ― to feel the Divine
Presence above or in you and moving you.
14-7- 1933
Page - 203
Q:
Today I felt as if someone else than myself was carrying out my actions.
Of course I was there, but in the background. Was it not the Mother's
Force trying to take me into itself integrally ?
A: It is too much to say that. What you say amounts only
to some glimpse of the cosmic Force behind all the actions.
2-6-1934
Q:
How can the will be made one with the Mother's Will ?
A: The will can be made one with the Mother's by establishing a
constant contact of the consciousness with hers.
24-6-1933
Q: What
is meant by "establishing a constant contact of the
consciousness" with the Modher which you say is necessary for union
with her Will ? Does it mean mental contact or psychic ?
A: It means the whole — with the psychic as the base.
25-6-1933
Q:
My psychological analysis indicates that it is no always possible for us,
Sadhaks, to let the Mother work in us spontaneously. For often something
in us keeps of and closes the doors against her. I think the best course
would be to develop our will - power, so that something might be always there to
help us reopen the doors. I mean here the will not of the vital or mental
kind but the true will-power. Would you kindly enlighten me as to how to
develop it ?
Page - 204
A: The only way to do it is (1) to become
aware of a conscious Force behind that uses the mind etc. (2) to
learn by practice to direct that Force towards its object. I don't suppose
you will find it easy to do either of these things at once — one must first
learn to live more deeply in the inner consciousness than you have done
hitherto.
16-7-1934
CONDITIONS
FOR FOLLOWING THE MOTHER'S WILL
The conditions for following the Mother's Will are to turn to her for Light
and Truth and Strength, and aspire that no other force shall influence or lead
you, to make no demands or conditions in the vital, to keep a quiet mind ready
to receive the Truth, but not insisting on its own ideas and formations, —
finally, to keep the psychic awake and in front, so that you may be in a
constant contact and know truly what her will is; for the mind and vital
can mistake other impulsions and suggestions for the Divine Will, but the
psychic once awakened makes no mistake.
A perfect perfection is only possible after supramentalisation; but a
relative good working is possible on the lower planes, if one is in contact with
the Divine and careful, vigilant and conscious in mind and vital and body.
That is a condition, besides, which is preparatory and almost indispensable for
the supreme liberation.
THE
BASIS OF DIVINE LIFE
To be entirely sincere means to desire the divine Truth only, to surrender
yourself more and more to the Divine Mother, to reject all personal demand and
desire other than this one aspiration, to offer every action in life to the
Divine and do it as the work given without bringing in the ego. This is
the basis of the divine life.
One cannot become altogether this at once, but if one aspires at all times
and calls in always the aid of the Divine Shakti with
Page - 205
a true heart and straightforward will, one grows more and more into this
consciousness.
TRUE
CONSCIOUSNESS OF KARMAYOGA
He should carry on his work and do all things else in the right
consciousness, offering all he does to the Mother and keeping in inner touch
with her. All work done in that spirit and with that consciousness becomes
Karmayoga and can be regarded as part of his Sadhana.
What you received and kept in the work is indeed the true basic consciousness
of Karmayoga — the calm consciousness from above supporting and the strength
from above doing the work, with that the Bhakti which feels it to be the
Mother's Consciousness present and working. You know now by experience
what is the secret of Karmayoga.
15-9-1936
RIGHT
ATTITUDE IN WORK
Not only in your inward concentration, but in your outwards acts and
movements you must take the right attitude. If you do that and put
everything under the Mother's guidance, you will find that difficulties begin to
diminish or are much more easily got over and things become steadily smoother.
In your work and acts you must do the same as in your concentration.
Open to the Mother, put them under her guidance, call in the peace, the
supporting Power, the protection and, in order that they may work, reject all
wrong influences that might come in their way by creating wrong, careless or
unconscious movements.
Follow this principle and your whole being will become one under one rule, in
the peace and sheltering Power and Light.
Page -206
The Truth for you is to feel the Divine in you, open to the Mother and work
for the Divine till you are aware of her in all your activities. There
must be the consciousness of the divine presence in your heart and the divine
guidance in your acts. This the psychic being can easily, swiftly, deeply
feel if it is fully awake; once the psychic has felt it, it can spread to
the mental and vital also.
Demands should not be made; what you receive freely from the Mother
helps you; what you demand or try to impose on her is bound to be empty of
her force.
The Mother deals with each person differently according to his true need
(not what he himself fancies to be his need) and his progress in the
Sadhana and his nature.
For you the most effective way to get the strength you need should be to do
the work consciously and scrupulously, allowing nothing to interfere with its
exact discharge. If you did that, opening yourself at the same time to the
Mother in your work, you would receive more constantly the grace and would come
to feel her power doing the work through you; you would thus be able to
live constantly with the sense of her presence. If, on the contrary, you
allow your fancies or desires to interfere with your work or are careless and
negligent, you interrupt the flow of her grace and give room for sorrow and
uneasiness and other foreign forces to enter into you. Yoga through work
is the easiest and most effective way to enter into the stream of this Sadhana.
8-3-1930
Even the most purely physical and mechanical work cannot be properly done if
one accepts incapacity, inertia and passivity. The remedy is not to
confine yourself to mechanical work, but to reject and throw off incapacity,
passivity and inertia and open yourself to the Mother's force. If vanity,
ambition and self-conceit stand in your way, cast them from you. You will
not get
Page -207
rid of these things by merely waiting for them to disappear. If you
merely wait for things to happen, there is no reason why they should happen at
all. If it is incapacity and weakness that oppose, still, as one opens
oneself truly and more and more to the Mother's force, the strength and capacity
necessary for the work will be given and will grow in the ādhāra.
The advantage of being in the true consciousness is that you have the right
awareness and its will being in harmony with the Mother's will, you can call in
the Mother's Force to make the change. Those who live in the mind and the
vital are not so well able to do this; they are obliged to use mostly
their personal effort and as the awareness and will and force of the mind and
vital are divided and imperfect, the work done is imperfect and not definitive.
It is only in the Supermind that Awareness, Will, Force are always one movement
and automatically effective.
Q:
I am always in touch with the Mother during work. Not only do I remember
her but the contact with her remains during work. Her Force constantly
flows into the Adhara and the work is done automatically, but swiftly,
perfectly, unhesitatingly — without personal anxieties and responsibilities; instead, there is confidence, sureness, strength, calmness. I feel that if
I can do work in this attitude, it will be perfect, flawless, the work of the
Mother's child, not of an egoistic man. Kindly let me know if I am
correct.
A: Yes, it is a very good progress and the first step towards
the right use of the Power for action.
Q:
I have read both in "The Synthesis of Yoga" and
Page - 208
the Mother's "Conversations"
that every act and movement, thought and word should be an offering. Even
if this is a strictly mental effort without the heart's devotion, as it may be
at first, it is sure to lead to devotion, provided the effort is sincere.
This discipline is quite possible in acts of a more or less mechanical nature
like walking or eating, but where the work involves mental concentration, as in
reading or writing, it seems well-nigh impossible. If the consciousness
has to be busy with the remembrance, the attention will get divided and the work
will not be properly done.
A: It is because people live in the surface mind and are
identified with it. When one lives more inwardly, it is only the surface
consciousness that is occupied and one stands behind it in another which is
silent and self-offered.
Q:
Does this consciousness come only by aspiration or can one have it by following
a mental discipline ?
A: One starts by a mental effort. Afterwards it is an
inner consciousness that is formed which need not be always thinking of the
Mother.
Q:
There are two ways of making an offering to the Mother: one is to offer an
act at her feet as one might offer a flower; the other is to withdraw
one's personality altogether and to feel as if she is doing all the actions
which one performs. In the first way there is duality between the worker
and her; but in the second there is a close intimacy and union.
Which of these two ways is better for the Sadhana ?
A: There is no need to ask which is the better as they are not
mutually exclusive. It is the mind that regards them as opposites.
Page - 209
The psychic being can offer the act while the nature is passive to the Force
(the ego being expunged or having withdrawn) and feels the Mother's Force
doing the act and her Presence in it.
5-11-1938
Q:
When one works, one aspires for the Mother's Force to take up one's activity in
due course. What should one aspire for when one is not working ?
A: For the Mother's power to work and bring down by the proper
stages the higher consciousness. Also for the system to be more and more
fit — quiet, egoless, surrendered.
NEED
OF MASTERY IN WORK.
Mother does not disapprove of your writing a book — what she does not like
is your being so lost in it that you can do nothing else. You must be
master of what you do and not possessed by it. She quite agrees to your
finishing and offering the book on your birthday if that can be done. But
you must not be carried away — you must keep your full contact with higher
things.
1-5-1934
CONDITIONS
OF PERFECT SERVICE
Efface the stamp of ego from the heart and let the love of the Mother take
its place. Cast from the mind all insistence on your personal ideas and
judgments, then you will have the wisdom to understand her. Let there be
no obsession of self-will, ego-drive in the action, love of personal authority,
attachment to personal preference, then the Mother's force will be able to act
clearly in you and you will get the inexhaustible energy for which you ask and
your service will be perfect.
27-11-1940
Page - 210
Yes, that is the most important thing — to get over ego, anger, personal
dislikes, self-regarding sensitiveness, etc. Work is not only for work's
sake, but as a field of Sadhana, for getting rid of the lower personality and
its reactions and acquiring a full surrender to the Divine. As for the
work itself, it must be done according to the organisation arranged or
sanctioned by the Mother. You must always remember that it is her work and
not personally yours.
23-3-1935
I can only repeat what I have already written whenever these circumstances
and feelings come to you. To leave your work is not a solution — it is
through work that one can detect and progressively get rid of the feelings and
movements that are contrary to the Yogic ideal — those of the ego.
Work should be done for the Mother and not for oneself, — that is how one
encourages the growth of the psychic being and overcomes the ego. The test
is to do the work given by the Mother without abhimāna or insistence
or personal choice or prestige, — not getting hurt by anything that touches
the pride, amour-propre or personal preference.
It is a high and great ideal that is put before the Sadhak through work and
it is not possible to realise it suddenly, but to grow steadily into it is
spossible, if one keeps the aim always before one — to be a selfless and
perfectly tempered instrument for the work of the Divine Mother.
28-9-1935
THE
IMPERSONAL WORKER
To be impersonal generally is not to be ego-centric, not to regard things
from the point of view of how they affect oneself, but to see what things are in
themselves, to judge impartially, to do what is demanded by the purpose of
things or by the will of the Master of things, not by one's own personal point
of view or egoistic interest or ego-formed idea or feeling. In work it is
to
Page - 211
do what is best for the work, without regard to one's own prestige or
convenience, not to regard the work as one's own but as the Mother's, to do it
according to rule, discipline, impersonal arrangement, even if conditions are
not favourable to do the best according to the conditions, etc., etc. The
impersonal worker puts his best capacity, zeal, industry into the work, but not
his personal ambitions, vanity, passions. He has always something in view
that is greater than his little personality and his devotion or obedience to
that dictates his conduct.
29-6-1935
It would be dangerous to take every "inner prompting"
as if it were a prompting or initiation of action from the Mother. What
seems an inner prompting may come from anywhere, any force good or bad seeking
to fulfil itself.
One may have ego about the work even if the work itself comes from the
Mother. The ego of the instrument is one of the things against which there
must be special care in the Yoga.
When one is doing the work, usually the urge of the force hat works and the
preoccupation of doing it and getting it done or the pleasure of doing it are
sufficient and the mind does not think of anything else. Afterwards the
sense of "I did it" comes up. With some, however,
the ego is active during the work itself.
3-11-1935
Q:
If I work for the Mother alone, the interference of the ego would mean that it
comes from outside. For I can't do work only for the Mother along with my
ego.
A: Of course it is a way. But one has still to be careful
about the ego. Even people who sincerely think that they are doing only
the Mother's will are yet actuated by ego without knowing it.
4-4-1936
Page - 212
PROFIT
FROM DIFFICULTIES IN WORK
I am glad of your resolution. The greater the difficulties that rise in
the work the more one can profit by them in deepening the equality, if one takes
it in the right spirit. You must also keep yourself open to receive the
help towards that, for the help will always be coming from the Mother for the
change of the nature.
29-9-1935
Do not allow yourself to be grieved or discouraged. Human beings have
unfortunately the habit of being unkind to each other. But if you do your
work in all sincerity, the Mother will be satisfied and all the rest will come
afterwards.
You need not mind X's quick temper. Remind yourself always it is
Mother's work you are doing and if you do it as well as you can remembering her,
the Mother's Grace will be with you. That is the right spirit for the
worker, and if you do it in that spirit, a calm consecration will come.
1-3-1933
ACTION
FROM INNER COMMUNION WITH THE MOTHER
You must gather yourself within more firmly. If you disperse yourself
constantly, go out of the inner circle, you will constantly move about in the
pettinesses of the ordinary outer nature and under the influences to which it is
open. Learn to live within, to act always from within, from a constant
communion with the Mother. It may be difficult at first to do it always
and completely, but it can be done if one sticks to it — and it is at that
price, by learning to do that, that one can have the Siddhi in the Yoga.
5-6-1934
Page - 213
When things become confused outside, you must fix on your mind at once the
rule of not judging by appearances — refer all to the Mother's Light within
with the confidence that all will be clear.
The Mother says that if at any time you feel too much strain of work, you
must tell her at once so that she may see what to do.
16-9-1933
OPENNESS
TO THE MOTHER'S FORCE IN WORK AND
NEED OF REST
In the ordinary condition of the body if you oblige the body to do too much
work, it can do with the support of vital force. But as soon as the work
is done, the vital force withdraws and then the body feels fatigue. If
this is done too much and for too long a time, there may be a breakdown of
health and strength under the overstrain. Rest is then needed for
recovery.
If, however, the mind and the vital get the habit of opening to the Mother's
Force, they are then supported by the Force and may even be fully filled with it
— the Force does the work and the body feels no strain or fatigue before or
after. But even then, unless the body itself is open and can absorb and
keep the Force, sufficient rest in between the work |