Section Four

HELPERS ON THE WAY

   REASON FOR FORMING THE ASHRAM

There was no Ashram at first, only a few people came to live near Sri Aurobindo and practise Yoga. It was only some time after the Mother came from Japan that it took the form of the Ashram, more from the wish of the Sadhaks who desired to entrust their whole inner and outer life to the Mother than from any intention or plan of hers or of Sri Aurobindo.

The facts are: In the meantime, the Mother, after a long stay in France and Japan, returned to Pondicherry on the 24th April, 1920. The number of disciples then showed a tendency to increase rather rapidly. When the Ashram began to develop, it fell to the Mother (to organise it; Sri Aurobindo soon retired into seclusion and the whole material and spiritual charge of it devolved on her.

Q: On what date in 1926 did Mother take up the full charge of the Ashram?

A: Mother does not at all remember the correct date. It may have been a few days after 15th August. She took up the work completely when I retired.

16-5-1936

THE ASHRAM PRECINCTS

What are the Ashram precincts? Every house in which the Sadhaks of the Ashram live is in the Ashram precincts. People have a queer way of talking of the houses in this compound as

the Ashram—it has no meaning. Or do they think that the Mother's influence or mine is shut up in a compound?

January, 1935

TWO ATMOSPHERES IN THE ASHRAM

There are two atmospheres in the Ashram, ours and that of the Sadhaks. When people with a little perceptiveness come from outside, they are struck by the deep calm and peace in the atmosphere and it is only when they mix much with the Sadhaks that this perception and influence fade away. The other atmosphere of dullness and unrest is created by the Sadhaks themselves — if they were open to the Mother as they should be, they would live in the calm and peace and not in unrest and dullness.

15-3-1937

THE ASHRAM EXTENSION

Q: If the Ashram expands very much and there are no houses available in the Pondicherry city, naturally the extension would be somewhere in the villages nearby?

A: There was some idea of that years ago, but circumstances took another turn and it did not materialise.

14-4-1935

NO EAGERNESS TO GET DISCIPLES

Your image of the Fishery is quite out of place. I fish for no one; people are not hauled or called here, they come of themselves by the psychic instinct. Especially I don't fish for big and famous or successful men. Such fellows may be mentally or vitally big, but they are usually quite contented with that kind of bigness and do not want spiritual things, or, if they do, their bigness stands in their way rather than helps them. The fishing for them

is X's idea — he wanted to catch hold of A, B, now C, etc., etc., but they would have been exceedingly troublesome Sadhaks if they ever really dreamed of anything of the kind. All these are ordinary ignorant ideas; the Spirit cares not a damn for fame, success or bigness in those who come to it. People have a strange idea that Mother and myself are eager to get people as disciples and if anyone goes away, it is a great blow, a terrible defeat, a dreadful catastrophe and cataclysm for us. Many even think that their being here is a great favour done to us for which we are not sufficiently grateful. All that is rubbish.

THE ASHRAM'S "PRESTIGE"

If the praise and blame of ignorant people is to be our standard, then we may say good-bye to the spiritual cause. If the Mother and I had cared for praise or blame we would have been crushed long ago. It is only recently that the Ashram has got "prestige" — before it was the target for an almost universal criticism, not to speak of the filthiest attacks.

TRUTH OF SPIRITUAL MOTHERHOOD—FALSEHOOD OF ALL

 RELIGIOUS FANATICISM

If you want the plain and simple truth, the plain truth is this that you have entered into a complete falsehood and have put yourself into the hands of a hostile Influence that lives by confusion and ignorance. You began by setting your own imperfect thinking power against a superior Truth and Knowledge. And by false and fantastic reasonings you have so clouded your mind that it has become entirely muddled and confused and incapable of understanding the plainest distinctions or discriminating between falsehood and Truth. This is evident in all you are saying and doing; it is not Truth and religion, but the false and inadequate ideas of your own confused, and weakened mind that you are trying to force upon others.

The letter you wrote to me shows a surprising inability to understand the plainest distinctions and the simplest truths. The one who was an instrument for giving birth to the physical body of X, was no doubt in her lifetime his material mother. But the relation which exists between the Mother here and X (and between the Mother and all who accept her), is a psychic and spiritual motherhood. It is a far greater relation than that of the physical mother to her child; it gives all that human motherhood can give, but in a much higher way, and it contains in itself infinitely more. It can therefore, because it is greater and more complete, take altogether the room of the physical relation and replace it both in the inward and the outward life. There is nothing here that can confuse anyone who has common sense and a straightforward intelligence. The physical fact cannot in the least stand in the way of the greater psychic and spiritual truth or prevent it from being true. X is perfectly right when he says that this is his true mother; for she has given him a new birth in an inner life and is creating him anew for a diviner existence.

The idea of a spiritual motherhood is not an invention of this Ashram; it is an eternal truth which has been recognised for ages past both in Europe and in Asia. The distinction I have drawn between the physical relation and the psychic and spiritual relation, is also not a new invention; it is an idea known and understood everywhere and found to be perfectly plain and simple by all. It is the present confused state of your mind which prevents you from understanding what men have found natural and intelligible everywhere.

As for X and Y, you have no claim over them and no right to control their thoughts and actions. X is of an age to choose and decide; he can think and act for himself and has no need of you to think and act for him. You are not his guardian, nor Y's; you are not even the head of the family. On what ground do you claim to decide where he shall go or where he shall stay ? Your pretension to have the responsibility for him or her before God is an arrogant and grotesque absurdity. Each one is responsible for himself before God unless he freely chooses to place the responsibility upon another in whom he trusts. No one has the right to impose himself on others as a religious or spiritual guide

"against their free will. You have no claim at all to dictate to X or Y either in their inner or their outer life. It is again the con­fusion and incoherence of your mind in its present state that prevents you from recognising these plain and simple facts.

Again, you say that you ask only for the Truth and yet you speak like a narrow and ignorant fanatic who refuses to believe in anything but the religion in which he was born. All fanaticism is false, because it is a contradiction of the very nature of God and of Truth. Truth cannot be shut up in a single book, Bible or Veda or Koran, or in a single religion. The Divine Being is eternal and universal and infinite and cannot be the sole property of the Mussulmans or of the Semitic religions only, — those that happened to be in a line from the Bible and to have Jewish or Arabian prophets for their founders. Hindus and Confucians and Taoists and all others have as much right to enter into relation with God and find the Truth in their own way. All religions have some truth in them, but none has the whole truth; all are created in time and finally decline and perish. Mahomed himself never pretended that the Koran was the last message of God and there would be no other. God and Truth outlast these religions and manifest themselves anew in whatever way or form the Divine Wisdom chooses. You cannot shut up God in the limitations of your own narrow brain or dictate to the Divine Power and Consciousness how or where or through whom it shall manifest; you cannot put up your puny barriers against the divine Omnipotence. These again are simple truths which are now being recognised all over the world; only the childish in mind or those who vegetate in some formula of the past deny them.

You have insisted on my writing and asked for the Truth and I have answered. But if you want to be a Mussulman, no one prevents you. If the Truth I, bring is too great for you to understand or to bear, you are free to go and live in a half-truth or in your own ignorance. I am not here to convert anyone; I do not preach to the world to come to me and I call no one. I am here to establish the divine life and the divine consciousness in those who of themselves feel the call to come to me and cleave to it and in no others. I am not asking you and the Mother is

not asking you to accept us. You can go any day and live either the worldly life or a religious life according to your own preference. But as you are free, so also are others free to stay here and follow their own way. You are not entitled to try to make yourself a centre of disturbance and an obstacle to their peace and their spiritual progress.

In answering you I am answering the ideas which have been put in you by the Power of darkness and ignorance that is just now using you for its own purpose. This Power is very obviously not the divine Power. It is a Power of Falsehood" that is making you do and say extravagant things which are not Islamic but a caricature of Islamic faith and action; its intention is to make not only Islam but all spirituality and religion ridiculous through you. It hopes to disturb the divine work upon earth, even if it can only do it a little. It is trying to spoil your brain and destroy your intelligence, to make you say and do foolish and extravagant things and turn you into an object of sorrow and pity for your friends and well-wishers and a laughing-stock to others. If you have any respect for yourself or for God or religion, if you truly hope for the Truth and Light, if you wish for the awakening and the salvation of your soul, you must stop speaking and doing these extravagant things and you must throw away the Influence that is now driving you.

23-10-1929

LAW OF DEALING WITH SADHAKS

The Mother and myself deal with all according to the law of the Divine. We receive alike rich and poor, those who are high­born or low-born according to human standards, and extend to them an equal love and protection. Their progress in Sadhana is our main concern — for they have come here for that, not to satisfy their palates or their bellies, not to make ordinary vital demands or to quarrel about position or place or comforts. That progress depends on how they answer to the Mother's love or protection — whether they receive the forces she pours on all alike, whether they use or misuse what she gives them. But the,

Page – 484

Mother has no intention or obligation to deal with all outwardly in the same way — the demand that she should do so is absurd and imbecile — and if she did it, she would prove false to the truth of things and the law of the Divine. Each Sadhak has to be dealt with according to his nature, his capacities, his real needs (not his claims or desires) and according to what is best for his spiritual welfare. As to how it is to be done, we refuse to be dictated to by the ignorance of those of the Sadhaks who consider that the Mother must act according to their standards or their ideas of equality or justice or the demands of their vital or the notions they have brought with them from the outside world. We act according to the Light within us and for the Truth that we are striving to establish in this earthly Nature.

11-12-1933

Each one has his own way of doing Sadhana and his own approach to the Divine -and need not trouble himself about how the others do it; their success or unsuccess, their difficulties, their delusions, their egoism and vanity are in her care; she has an infinite patience, but that does not mean that she approves of their defects or supports them in all they say or do. The Mother takes no sides in any quarrel or antagonism or dispute, but her silence does not mean that she approves what they may say or do when it is improper. The Ashram or the spiritual life is not a stage in which some are to be prominent or take a leading part or a field of competition in which one has a claim or can rightly consider himself superior to others. These things are the inventions of the ordinary human attitude to the world and the tendency is to carry it over into the life of Sadhana, but that is not the spiritual truth of things. The Mother tolerates all; she does not forbid any criticism of the Sadhaks by each other nor does she give these criticisms any value. It is only when the Sadhaks see the futility of all these things from the spiritual level that there can be any hope that they will cease.

In all these things there is nothing that ought to drive a man from the spiritual life or make him go away from his Guru. It seems to me that it is only the Guru who can decide whether one

Page – 485

is fit or not; to accept the adverse opinion of someone else on that point seems to me absurd and to act on it an offence against one's own soul; to judge oneself unfit and act on that is most perilous, for this judgment may be merely a fit of depression or a vital disturbance raising the self-depreciation of the tamasic ego. If I did not see that you could progress in the Sadhana or had not seen any progress, I would not have persistently asked you to continue nor would I be now writing to you letter after letter (I write to no one else) to meet your difficulties.

P.S. As for your other bête noire, for the dislike of whom you want to leave the Ashram, do you think the Mother is so dull, unseeing as to take people and their Sadhana at their own valuation? that she cannot see their defects as well as whatever merits they have ? that she is ignorant of the movements of their lower nature? or that they can dupe and influence and lead her?

CHILDISH ABHIMAN

It is very silly and childish to have abhimāna; for it means that you expect everyone including the Mother and myself to act always according to your ideas and do what you want us to do and never do anything which will not please you! It is for the Mother to do whatever she finds to be right or necessary; you must understand that; otherwise you will always be making yourself miserable for nothing.

28-4-1932

THE INITIAL DEMAND

What you say about those whom we receive — that if one part of them sincerely desires the Divine we give them their chance — is quite true. If we demanded more at the beginning, exceedingly few would be able even to commence this journey towards the Divine.

24-4-1935

OVERWHELMING COMPASSION

Q: I am overwhelmed at the patience and compassion with which you put up with our insincerities, disobediences and loosenesses.

A: Human nature is like that in its very grain; so if we are not patient, there would be little hope of its changing. But there is something else in the human being which is sincere and can be a force for the change. The difficulty in people like X is to get at that something (it is so covered up) and get it to act.

8-7-1934

SOLE DUTY TO SADHAKS

It is no question of fault or punishment — if we have to condemn and punish people for their faults and deal with the Sadhaks like a tribunal of justice, no Sadhana could be possible. I do not see how your reproach against us is justifiable. Our sole duty to the Sadhaks is to take them towards their spiritual realisation — we cannot behave like the head of a family intervening in domestic quarrels, supporting one, putting our weight against the other! However often X may stumble, we have to take him by the hand, lift him up again and get him to move once more towards the Divine. We have always done the same with you.

29-3-1933

THE REAL NEED

The psychic being is more than a spark at this stage of its evolution. It is a flame. Even if the flame is covered by mist or smoke, the mist or smoke can be dissipated. To do that and to open to the higher consciousness is what is wanted, not to become a Sri Aurobindo or equal to the Mother. But if we are the Divine, what is the harm of evolving into a portion of the Divine, living

in the divine Consciousness even if in a lesser degree?

10-2-1935

COMPARISON WITH SADHAKS

I did not mean anyone here could replace or equal myself and the Mother...but certainly it is possible for X, Y and Z to change, to throw off their present personalities or limitations and come nearer to us than they are now — if they have the sincere will and make the endeavour.

10-8-1935

Even the Overmind is for all but the Mother and myself either unrealised or only an influence, mostly subjective.

24-3-1934

WORK FOR SADHAKS AND WORK FOR THE MOTHER

Is it beneath your dignity to do work for the Sadhaks? It is an entirely egoistic attitude and improper for a Sadhak. All the people in the D.R.¹, in the Building Service, in the Stores, in the carpentry department, in the Atelier and Smithy, are all the time doing work for the Sadhaks, the Mother herself is doing work for the Sadhaks all day; in writing this answer I am spending my time doing work for a Sadhak. Would you think it proper for the D.R. and Kitchen workers to say, "We are not going to cook for Sadhaks or serve them; it is beneath our dignity. We will consent only to cook food for the Mother alone." Do you want me to stop writing answers to your letter on the ground that I am doing work for a Sadhak and I will write only letters to the Mother and nobody else?

What was X doing in the kitchen so many years if not preparing the food of the Sadhaks? And what was Y doing in the granary if not work for the Sadhaks? All these ideas are perfectly idiotic. All work given by the Mother is work for the Mother.

November, 1938

¹The Dining Room.

SOME RELIEF FROM ENORMOUS WORK

The books and letters are not going to be discontinued — but I shall have to take one day off in the week (Sunday). The volume of the correspondence is becoming enormous and it takes me all the night and a good part of the day — apart from the work done separately by the Mother who has also to work the greater part of the night in addition to her day's work. It is this that makes the Pranam later and later, for we do not finish till 7.30 or after. Also much work falls in arrears and piles up and many things that have their importance have had to be discontinued. Some relief is necessary.

19-12-1933

A GREAT LONGING

I feel a great longing that the Sadhaks should be free of all these strifes and doubts; for so long as the present state of things continues with fires of this kind raging all around and the atmosphere in a turmoil, the work I am trying to do (certainly not for my own sake or for any personal reason) will always remain under the stroke of jeopardy and I do not know how the descent I am labouring for is to fulfil itself. In fact, the Mother and I have to give nine-tenths of our energy to smoothing down things, to keeping the Sadhaks tolerably contented etc. etc. etc. One-tenth and in the Mother's case not even that can go to the real work; it is not enough.

September, 1934

NO PREVISING

Q: I thought that it is not possible to have spiritual experiences, especially major ones, without your pre­viously having knowledge about it.

A: Previously? My God, we would have to spend all our time

prevising the Sadhaks' experiences. Do you think Mother has nothing else to do? As for myself, I never previse anything, I only vise and revise.

18-10-1936

RECEIVING HELP THROUGH WRITING

Q: You and the Mother are supposed to know what is going on in us, how and what we are aspiring for, how our nature is reacting to help and guidance. What is then the necessity of writing to you all that?

A: It is necessary for you to be conscious and to put your self-observation before us; it is on that that we can act. A mere action on our observation without any corresponding consciousness in that part of the Sadhak would lead to nothing.

7-1-1936

It is an undoubted fact proved by hundreds of instances that for many the exact statement of their difficulties to us is the best and often, though not always, an immediate, even an instantaneous means of release. This has often been seen by Sadhaks not only here, but far away, and not only for inner difficulties, but for illness and outer pressure of unfavourable circumstances. But for that a certain attitude is necessary — either a strong faith in the mind and vital or a habit of reception and response in the inner being. Where this habit has been established, I have seen it to be almost unfailingly effective, even when the faith was uncertain or the outer expression in the mind vague, ignorant or in its form mistaken or inaccurate. Moreover, this method succeeds most when the writer can write as a witness of his own movements and state them with an exact and almost impartial precision, as a phenomenon of his nature or the movement of a force affecting him from which he seeks release. On the other hand, if in writing his vital gets seized by the thing he is writing of and takes up the pen for him, — expressing and often supporting doubt, revolt,

depression, despair, it becomes a very different matter. Even here sometimes the expression acts as a purge; but also the statement of the condition may lend energy to the attack, at least for the moment, and may seem to enhance and prolong it, exhausting it by its own violence perhaps for the time and so bringing in the end a relief, but at a heavy cost of upheaval and turmoil — and the risk of the recurring decimal movement, because the release has come by temporary exhaustion of the attacking force, not by rejection and purification through the intervention of the Divine Force with the unquestioning assent and support of the Sadhak. There has been a confused fight, an intervention in a hurly-burly, not a clear alignment of forces — and the intervention of the helping force is not felt in the confusion and the whirl. This is what used to happen in your crises; the vital in you was deeply affected and began supporting and expressing the reasonings of the attacking force, — in place of a clear observation and expression of the difficulty by the vigilant mind laying the state of things in the light for the higher Light and Force to act upon it, there was a vehement statement of the case for the Opposition. Many Sadhaks (even "advanced") had made a habit of this kind of expression of their difficulties and some still do it; they cannot even yet understand that it is not the way. At one time it was a sort of gospel in the Ashram that this was the thing to be done, — I don't know on what ground, for it was never part of my teaching about the Yoga, — but experience has shown that it does not work; it lands one in the recurring decimal notation, an unending round of struggle. It is quite different from the movement of self-opening that succeeds, (here too not necessarily in a moment, but still sensibly and progressively) and of which those are thinking who insist on everything being opened to the Guru so that the help may be more effectively there.

17-12-1932

DIRECT COMMUNICATION

Q: X asked me if it would be possible to have direct communication with you and dispense with writing letters

to get your guidance. I replied that it would not be possible unless one has developed the power of telepathy and receives replies inwardly. But even then there would be the possibility of obscuration and distortion in reception unless there is complete psychicisation of consciousness. Even with complete psychicisation it would not be possible to know all from within, e.g. about the experiences of higher stages like Overmind and Supermind, because the psychic has no instrumentality to know about them. Communication through letters would, therefore, still be necessary. But perhaps a person in complete rapport with Mother might be able to dispense with the need of communicating through letters. But is even a person who has realised the Overmind capable of such complete rapport?

A: I think it would need the Supermind itself to establish such a complete rapport. The psychic can do much in that direction on condition it has a complete control. Overmind and Intuition could do it on their own plane, but here they have to descend into the physical consciousness and that interferes with its immense obscurity in addition to the distortions of mind and vital.

27-5-1934

ATTRIBUTION OF WRONG MOTIVES

You attribute too many motives — e.g. that the Mother tries to allure the vital by indulging it in the beginning. She has no such intention. She behaves naturally and simply with the being— whatever change there is is in the vital's impressions about her action rather than in the action itself — except in so far as there is a change necessitated by the change in the consciousness. Formerly you were writing from the higher mind mostly, but partly from the vital — the vital was often dissatisfied with my answers, so I ceased answering to it and wrote only what would help your higher mind and psychic. Now it is from the physical mind and vital that you often write and so my answers must be to them and they feel they are not given the answers they want

or in the tone of indulgence they would like. But to satisfy and indulge them would not be helpful to your Sadhana.

9-12-1935

MISINTERPRETATIONS AND WRONG CONCLUSIONS

I have always told you that you should not take what any Sadhak says or thinks as authoritative or coming from the Mother. Even when they say it is coming from me or her it cannot be accepted, for it is often an idea in their own minds that they think to be ours also or a misunderstanding of what we have said in a particular connection but which their minds apply to something with which it was not connected or to all things in general. No Sadhak whoever he may be can stand for us in our place or speak for us. Each must be taken as speaking on his own account his own thought or feeling.

3-6-1937

People often catch hold of something written by me or said by the Mother, give it an interpretation quite other than or far be­yond its true meaning and deduce from it a suddenly extreme and logical conclusion which is quite contrary to our knowledge and experience. It is natural, I suppose, and part of the game of the hostile forces; it is so much easier to come to vehement logical conclusions than to look at the Truth which is many-sided and whole.

May, 1933

TWO ELEMENTS IN SPIRITUAL SUCCESS

The help (I am not speaking of a divine intervention from above but of my help and the Mother's) will be there. It can be effective in spite of your physical mind, but it will be more effective if the steady working will of which I speak is there as its instrument. There are always two elements in spiritual success — one's

own steady will and endeavour and the Power that in one way or another helps and gives the result of the endeavour.

26-1-1934

RELIANCE IN PROTECTION

You have to develop the power and the habit of taking refuge in the protection of the Mother and myself. It is for this reason that the habit of criticising and judging by the outer mind or cherishing its preconceived ideas and formations must disappear. You should repeat always to yourself when it tries to rise, "Sri Aurobindo and the Mother know better than myself— they have the experience and knowledge which I have not—they must surely be acting for the best and in a greater light than that of ordinary human knowledge." If you can fix that idea in yourself so that it will remain even in clouded moments you will be able to face much more easily the suggestions of the Asuric Maya.

The Mother and I will do all to get rid of the cloud which the physical mind presents against the permanent consciousness of your soul's connection with the Mother, — but let your thinking mind be firm in its will to be rid of it and to call the aid of our Force.

6-2-1936

THE INNER PRESENCE

Be cheerful and confident. Doubt and desire & Co. are there, no doubt, but the Divine is there also inside you. Open your eyes and look and look till the veil is rent and you see Him or Her!

30-12-1933

No — we do not put our picture inside anybody when we give

the first blessing. But if you go on looking inside, you will one day find the Mother there.

PRESSURE TO LIBERATE

We are sorry that you have suffered so much. It was not to hurt you that the Mother put the pressure, but to liberate. It has always been with a deep affection and sympathy with you in your struggles that she has tried to help you. I trust you will recover soon your ease of mind and peace. I will try to give you all the help possible.

23-1-1935

PERSONAL CONTACT AND RECEPTIVITY TO FORCE

It is not possible to accept the suggestion about joining with those who are in personal attendance upon me. They were not admitted as a help to their Sadhana but for practical reasons. In fact, here also there is some misconception. Continual personal contact does not necessarily bring out the action of the Force. Hriday had that personal contact with Sri Ramakrishna and the opportunity of personal service to him, but he received nothing except on one occasion and then he could not contain the force and the realisation which the Master had put into him. The feeling of losing himself which X had was on the special occasions of the Darshan and the Pranam to the Mother. That he had this response shows that he can answer to the Force, that he has the receptivity, as we say, and that is a great thing, for all do not have it and those who have it are not always conscious of its cause but only of its result. But he should reason less and rather try to keep himself open as he was in those moments. If I have written about Force, it is because both the Mother and myself have had many thousand experiences in which it acted and produced results of every kind. This idea of the Force has nothing to do with theory or reasoning but is felt constantly by every Yogi; it is part of his

normal Yogic consciousness and his constant spiritual activity.

18-5-1945

Q: Is it not likely that more outward nearness and familiarity with you or the Mother may mean less aspiration and less inner growth?

A: It depends on the person. Some profit, some do not. No general statement can be made.

18-8-1933

UNCONSCIOUS RECEPTION OF FORCE

It is not true that you have never received Force from us: you have received it to any extent; it can only be said that you were not conscious of it, but that happens with many. Certainly none of the Sadhaks receives or uses all the Force that the Mother sends, but that is a general fact and not peculiar to you.

29-5-1936

Q: X seems to think that the Mother is harder than you.

A: That is because the Mother's pressure for change is always strong — even when she does not put it as force, it is there by the very nature of the Divine Energy in her.

11-3-1937

ACTION OF FORCE ON THE SUBTLE BODY

As to the dream, it was not a dream but an experience of the inner being in a conscious dream state, svapna-samādhi. The numbness and the feeling of being about to lose consciousness are always due to the pressure or descent of a Force to which the

body is not accustomed, but feels strongly. Here it was not the physical body that was being directly pressed, but the subtle body, sūksma śarīra, in which the inner being more intimately dwells and in which it goes out in sleep or trance or in the moment of death. But the physical body in these vivid experiences feels as if it was itself that was having the experience; the numbness was the effect in it of the pressure. The pressure on the whole body would mean a pressure on the whole inner consciousness, perhaps for some modification or change which would make it more ready for knowledge or experience; the third or fourth rib would indicate a region which belongs to the vital nature, the domain of the life-force, some pressure for a change there.

The strength of the hand, the weight would not necessarily indicate that it was mine — for it was an experience not of the physical hand or in the physical body, but in the subtle realms of the being and there the Mother's touch and pressure might well be stronger and heavier than mine. The Mother does not remember the date, but one night about that period she was thinking strongly about her and putting a pressure for the removal of some obstacle to a spiritual opening. It is possible that this was what produced the experience. If it was myself, it must have been at a time when I was concentrating and sending the force to different people, but I remember nothing precise. I have often thought of her of course and sent a force to help her.

It is not necessary for us always to be physically conscious of the action, for it is often carried out when the mind is occupied with outward things or when we sleep. The Mother's sleep is not sleep but an inner consciousness in which she is in connection with people or working everywhere. At the time she is aware, but she does not carry all that always into her waking consciousness or in her memory. A call would come in the occupied waking mind as the thought of the person coming — in a more free or in a concentrated state as a communication from the person in question; in a deeper concentration or in sleep or trance she would see the person coming and speaking to her or she herself going there. Besides that, wherever the Force is working, the Presence is there.

28-9-1936