Everyday Struggles of Human Nature

Is blaming oneself a good method of progressing?

Blaming oneself? No, not necessarily. It may be useful, it is indeed useful from time to time in order to get out of the illusion of one’s own perfection. But one wastes much energy in self-criticism. It is much better to use this same energy in making progress, a concrete progress, something more useful. For example, if you have thoughts which are unpleasant, ugly, vulgar and disturbing, and you say, “Ah, ah, how intolerable I am, I still have such thoughts, what a nuisance it is!”, it would be much better to use this very energy simply to do this (gesture) and drive away the thoughts.

And this is only the first step. The second is to try to have other thoughts, to take interest in something else: either read or reflect, but in any case try to fill your mind with something more interesting, to use your energy in constructing rather than in destroying.

It is of course necessary from time to time to recognise one’s faults; it is altogether indispensable. But to dwell too much upon them is not necessary. What is necessary is to use all one’s energy in order to build up the qualities one wants to have and do what one wants to do. This is much more important.

When one is bored, Mother, does that mean one does not progress?

At that time, yes, certainly without a doubt; not only does one not progress, but one misses an opportunity for progressing. There was a concurrence of circumstances which seemed to you dull, boring, stupid and you were in their midst; well, if you get bored, it means that you yourself are as boring as the circumstances! And that is a clear proof that you are simply not in a state of progress. There is nothing more contrary to the very reason of existence than this passing wave of boredom. If you make a little effort within yourself at that time, if you tell yourself: “Wait a bit, what is it that I should learn? What does all that bring to me so that I may learn something? What progress should I make in overcoming myself? What is the weakness that I must overcome? What is the inertia that I must conquer?” If you say that to yourself, you will see the next minute you are no longer bored. You will immediately get interested and you will make progress! This is a commonplace of consciousness.

That is a great error of the human vital – to want compliments for their own sake and to be depressed by their absence and imagine that it means there is no capacity. In this world one starts with ignorance and imperfection in whatever one does – one has to find out one’s mistakes and to learn, one has to commit errors and find out by correcting them the right way to do things. Nobody in the world has ever escaped from this law. So what one has to expect from others is not compliments all the time, but praise of what is right or well done and criticism of errors and mistakes. The more one can bear criticism and see one’s mistakes, the more likely one is to arrive at the fullness of one’s capacity. Especially when one is very young – before the age of maturity – one cannot easily do perfect work. What is called the juvenile work of poets and painters – work done in their early years is always imperfect, it is a promise and has qualities – but the real perfection and full use of their powers comes afterwards. They themselves know that very well, but they go on writing or painting because they know also that by doing so they will develop their powers.

As for comparison with others, one ought not to do that. Each one has his own lesson to learn, his own work to do and he must concern himself with that, not with the superior or inferior progress of others in comparison with himself. If he is behind today, he can be in full capacity hereafter and it is for that future perfection of his powers that he must labour. You are young and have everything yet to learn – your capacities are yet only in bud, you must wait and work for them to be in full bloom – and you must not mind if it takes months and years even to arrive at something satisfying and perfect. It will come in its proper time, and the work you do now is always a step towards it.

But learn to welcome criticism and the pointing out of imperfections – the more you do so, the more rapidly you will advance.

Mme. David-Neel who is a militant Buddhist and a great Buddhistic luminary—when she came to India she went to meet some of those great sages or gurus—I shan’t give you the names, but she went to one who looked at her and asked her… for they were speaking of yoga and personal effort and all that… he looked at her and asked her, “Are you indifferent to criticism?” Then she answered him with the classical expression, “Does one care about a dog’s barking?” But she added to me when telling me the story, very wittily: “Fortunately he did not ask me whether I was indifferent to compliments, because that is much more difficult!”

One of the commonest demands of the vital is for praise. It hates to be criticised and treated as if it were of little importance. But it must be always prepared for rebuffs and stand them with absolute calm; nor must it pay attention to compliments, forgetting that each movement of self-satisfaction is an offering at the altar of the lords of falsehood. The beings of the subtle world of the life-force, with which our vital is connected, live and flourish on the worship of their devotees, and that is why they are always inspiring new cults and religions so that their feasts of worship and adulation may never come to an end. So also your own vital being and the vital forces behind it thrive— that is to say, fatten their ignorance—by absorbing the flatteries given by others. But you must remember that the compliments paid by creatures on the same level of ignorance as oneself are really worth nothing, they are just as worthless as the criticisms levelled at one. No matter from what pretentious source they derive, they are futile and empty. Unfortunately, however, the vital craves even for the most rotten food and is so greedy that it will accept praise from even the very embodiments of incompetence.

How can one become indifferent to criticism?

By climbing somewhere up on the ladder—in one’s own consciousness— looking at things a little more vastly, a little more generally. For example, if at a particular moment there is something which holds you, grips you like that, holds you tight, close pressed, and you absolutely want it to happen, and you are fighting against a terrible obstacle, you see, something which is preventing it from happening; if simply just at that moment you begin to feel, to realise the myriads and myriads of years there were before this present moment, and the myriads and myriads of years there will be after this present moment, and what importance this little event has in relation to all that— there is no need to enter a spiritual consciousness or anything else, simply enter into relation with space and time, with all that is before, all that is after and all that is happening at the same time—if one is not an idiot, immediately he tells himself, “Oh, well, I am attaching importance to something which doesn’t have any.” Necessarily so, you see. It loses all its importance, immediately.

If you can visualise, you know, simply the immensity of the creation—I am not now speaking of rising to spiritual heights —simply the immensity of the creation in time and space, and this little event on which you are concentrated with an importance… as though it were something of some importance… immediately it does this (gesture) and it dissolves, if you do it sincerely. If, naturally, there is one part of yourself which tells you, “Ah, but for me it has an importance”, then, there, you have only to leave that part behind and keep your consciousness as it is. But if sincerely you want to see the true value of things, it is very easy.

There are other methods, you know. There is a Chinese sage who advises you to lie down upon events as one floats on one’s back upon the sea, imagining the immensity of the ocean and that you let yourself go floating upon this… upon the waves, you see, like something contemplating the skies and letting itself be carried away. In Chinese they call this Wu Weï. When you can do this all your troubles are gone. I knew an Irishman who used to lie flat on his back and look outside, as much as possible on an evening when stars were in the sky, he looked, contemplated the sky and imagined that he was floating in that immensity of countless luminous points.

And immediately all troubles are calmed.

There are many ways. But sincerely, you have only to… have the sense of relativity between your little person and the importance you give to the thingswhich concern you, and the universal immensity; this is enough. Naturally, there is another way, it is to free oneself from the earth consciousness and rise into a higher consciousness where these terrestrial things take their true place —which is quite small, you see.

But… indeed, once, very long ago, when I was still in Paris and used to see Mme. David-Neel almost every day, she, you see, was full of her own idea and told me, “You should not think of an action, it means attachment for the action; when you want to do something, it means that you are still tied to the things of this world.” Then I told her, “No, there is nothing easier. You have only to imagine everything that has been done before and all that will be done later and all that is happening now, and you will then realise that your action is a breath, like this, one second in eternity, and you can no longer be attached to it.” At that time I didn’t know the text of the Gita. I had not read it completely yet, you see …not this verse which I translate in my own way: “And detached from all fruit of action, act.” It is not like this, but still that’s what it means. This I did not know, but I said exactly what is said in the Gita.

What, however, is of genuine worth is the opinion of the Truth. When there is somebody who is in contactwith the Divine Truth and can express it, then the opinions given out are nomere compliments or criticisms but what the Divine thinks of you, the value it sets on your qualities, its unerring stamp on your efforts. It must be your desire to hold nothing in esteem except the word of the Truth; and in order thus to raise your standard you must keep Agni, the soul’s flame of transformation, burning in you. It is noteworthy how, when Agni flares up, you immediately develop a loathing for the cheap praise which formerly used to gratify you so much, and understand clearly that your love of praise was a low movement of the untransformed nature. Agni makes you see what a vast vista of possible improvement stretches in front of you, by filling you with a keen sense of your present insufficiency. The encomium lavished on you by others so disgusts you that you feel almost bitter towards those whom you would have once considered your friends; whereas all criticism comes as a welcome fuel to your humble aspiration towards the Truth. No longer do you feel depressed or slighted by the hostility of others. For, at least, you are able to ignore it with the greatest ease; at the most, you appreciate it as one more testimony to your present unregenerate state, inciting you to surpass yourself by surrendering to the Divine.

A depression is always unreasonable as it leads nowhere. It is the most subtle enemy of the Yoga.

All depression and gloom is created by the hostile forces….

Depression is always the sign of an acute egoism.

…depression is the worst of all illnesses and we must reject it with as much energy as we use to get rid of a disease.

All depression is bad as it lowers the consciousness, spends the energy, opens to adverse forces.

Depression is a sign of weakness, of a bad will somewhere, and bad will in the sense of a refusal to receive help, and a kind of weakness that’s content to be weak. One becomes slack. The bad will is obvious, because there’s a part of your being which tells you at that moment, “Depression is bad.” You know that you shouldn’t get depressed; well, the reply of that part which is depressed is almost, “Shut up! I want my depression.” Try, you will see, you can try. It is always like that. Eh, it is not true? And then later one says again, “Afterwards, afterwards I shall see… for the moment I want it, and besides I have my reasons.” There you are. It is a kind of revolt, a weak revolt, the revolt of something weak in the being.

…those who do not know how to accept defeat, who get angry and bad-tempered when things do not go according to their wish, lose their energy more and more.

Also, if you slip into depression, you cut every source of energy—from above, from below, from everywhere. That is the best way of falling into inertia. You must absolutely refuse to be depressed.

…one is almost constantly in an ordinary vital state where the least unpleasant thing very spontaneously and easily brings you depression— depression if you are a weak person, revolt if you are a strong one. Every desire which is not satisfied, every impulse which meets an obstacle, every unpleasant contact with outside things, very easily and very spontaneously creates depression or revolt, for that is the normal state of things—normal in life as it is today.

…like a child who sulks, becomes low-spirited, sad, unhappy, misunderstood, abandoned, helpless; and then, refusing to collaborate, and as I just said, indulging in his depression, to show that he is not happy. It is specially in order to show that one is not satisfied that one becomes depressed. One can show it to Nature, one can show it (that depends on the case, you see), one can show it to the Divine, one can show it to the people around one, but it is always a kind of way of expressing one’s dissatisfaction. “I am not happy about what you demand”, but this means, “I am not happy. And I shall make you too see it, that I am not happy.

From where does the depression come?

It comes from disharmony in the being, from a lack of receptivity to the divine forces. When you cut yourself off from energy and light that sustain you, then there is this depression… it is doubt, gloominess, lack of confidence, a selfish turning back upon yourself that cuts you off from the light and divine energy and gives the attack this advantage.

How to avoid attacks of depression?

Do not pay attention to depression and act as if it was not there.

How can depressions be controlled?

Depression… and one is overpowered by depression only when one keeps the consciousness in the vital, when one remains there. The only thing to do is to get out of the vital and enter a deeper consciousness. Even the higher mind, the luminous, higher mind, the most lofty thoughts have the power to drive away depression. Even when one reaches just the highest domains of thought, usually the depression disappears. But in any case, if one seeks shelter in the psychic, then there is no longer any room for depression.

Depression may come from two causes: either from a want of vital satisfaction or from a considerable nervous fatigue in the body. Depression arising from physical fatigue is set right fairly easily: one has but to take rest. One goes to bed and sleeps until one feels well again, or else one rests, dreams, lies down. The want of vital satisfaction comes up rather easily and usually one must face it with one’s reason, must ferret out the cause of the depression, what has brought about the lack of satisfaction in the vital; and then one looks at it straight in the face and asks oneself whether that indeed has anything to do with one’s inner aspiration or whether it is simply quite an ordinary movement. Generally one discovers that it has nothing to do with the inner aspiration and one can quite easily overcome it and resume one’s normal movement. If that is not enough, then one must go deeper and deeper until one touches the psychic reality. Then one has only to put this psychic reality in contact with the movement of depression, and instantaneously it will vanish into thin air.

We may take the example of someone who has frequent depressions. When things are not exactly as he would like them to be, he becomes depressed. So, to begin with, he must become aware of his depression—not only of the depression but of the causes of depression, why he gets depressed so easily. Then, once he has become conscious, he must master the depressions, must stop being depressed even when the cause of depression is there—he must master his depression, stop it from coming. And finally, after this work has been done for a sufficiently long time, the nature loses the habit of having depressions and no longer reacts in the same way, the nature is changed.

How to face Depression?

A smile acts upon difficulties as the sun upon clouds—it disperses them.

Another remarkable sign of the conversion of your vital, owing to Agni’s influence, is that you face your difficulties and obstacles with a smile. You do not sit any more in sackcloth and ashes, lamenting over your mistakes and feeling utterly crestfallen because you are not at the moment quite up to the mark. You simply chase away depression with a smile. A hundred mistakes do not matter to you: with a smile you recognise that you have erred and with a smile you resolve not to repeat the folly in the future. All depression and gloom is created by the hostile forces who are never so pleased as when throwing on you a melancholy mood. Humility is indeed one thing and depression quite another, the former a divine movement and the latter a very crude expression of the dark forces. Therefore, face your troubles joyously, oppose with invariable cheerfulness the obstacles that beset the road to transformation. The best means of routing the enemy is to laugh in his face! You may grapple and tussle for days and he may still show an undiminished vigour; but just once laugh at him and lo! he takes to his heels. A laugh of self-confidence and of faith in the Divine is the most shattering strength possible—it disrupts the enemy’s front, spreads havoc in his ranks and carries you triumphantly onwards.

To yield to depression when things go wrong is the worst way of meeting the difficulty. There must be some desire or demand within you, conscious or subconscious, that gets excited and revolts against its not being satisfied. The best way is to be conscious of it, face it calmly and steadily throw it out.

If the lower vital (not the mind only) could permanently make up its mind that all desire and demand are contrary to the Truth and no longer call for them, these things would lose very soon their force of return.

…desire is the most obscure and the most obscuring movement of the lower nature. Desires are motions of weakness and ignorance and they try to keep you chained to your weakness and to your ignorance. Men have the impression that their desires are born within; they feel as if they come out of themselves or arise within themselves; but it is a false impression. Desires are waves of the vast sea of the obscure lower nature and they pass from one person to another. Men do not generate a desire in themselves, but are invaded by these waves; whoever is open and without defence is caught in them and tossed about. Desire by engrossing and possessing him makes him incapable of any discrimination and gives him the impression that it is part of his nature to manifest it. In reality, it has nothing to do with his true nature. It is the same with all the lower impulses, jealousy or envy, hatred or violence. These too are movements that seize you, waves that overwhelm and invade; they deform, they do not belong to the true character or the true nature; they are no intrinsic or inseparable part of yourself, but come out of the sea of surrounding obscurity in which move the forces of the lower nature. These desires, these passions have no personality, there is nothing in them or their action that is peculiar to you; they manifest in the same way in everyone. The obscure movements of the mind too, the doubts and errors and difficulties that cloud the personality and diminish its expansion and fulfilment, come from the same source. They are passing waves and they catch anyone who is ready to be caught and utilised as their blind instrument. And yet each goes on believing that these movements are part of himself and a precious product of his own free personality. Even we find people clinging to them and their disabilities as the very sign or essence of what they call their freedom.

To know if it is a need or desire, you must look at yourself very closely and ask yourself, “What will happen if I cannot get the thing?” Then if the immediate answer is, “Oh it will be very bad”, you may be sure that it is a matter of desire. It is same for everything. For every problem you draw back, look at yourself and ask. “Let us see, am I going to have the thing?” If at that moment something in you jumps up with joy, you may be certain there is a desire. On the other hand, if something tells you, “Oh, I am not going to get it”, and you feel very depressed, then again it is a desire.

If you have a strong desire for something you cannot get, you project your desire outside yourself. It goes off like a tiny personality separated from you and roams about in the world. It will take a little round, more or less large, and return to you, perhaps when you have forgotten it. People who have a kind of passion, who want something,—that goes out from them like a little being, like a little flame into the surroundings. This little being has its destiny. It roams about in the world, tossed around by other things perhaps. You have forgotten it, but it will never forget that it must bring about that particular result…. For days you tell yourself: “How much I would like to go to that place, to Japan, for instance, and see so many things”, and your desire goes out from you; but because desires are very fugitive things, you have forgotten completely this desire you had thrown out with such a force. There are many reasons for your thinking about something else. And after ten years or more, or less, it comes back to you like a dish served up piping hot. Yes, like a piping-hot dish, well arranged. You say: “This does not interest me any longer.” It does not interest you ten or twenty years later. It was a small formation and it has gone and done its work as it could…. It is impossible to have desires without their being realised, even if it be quite a tiny desire. The formation has done what it could; it took a lot of trouble, it has worked hard, and after years it returns. It is like a servant you have sent out and who has done his best. When he returns you tell him: “What have you done?”—“Why? But, sir, it was because you wanted it!”

Sweet Mother, is desire contagious?

Ah, yes, very contagious, my child. It is even much more contagious than illness. If someone next to you has a desire, immediately it enters you; and in fact it is mainly in this way that it is caught. It passes from one to another… Terribly contagious, in such a powerful way that one is not even aware that it is a contagion. Suddenly one feels something springing up in oneself; someone has gently put it inside. Of course, one could say, “Why aren’t people with desires quarantined?” Then we should have to quarantine everybody (Mother laughs).

Q: Where does desire come from?

The Buddha said that it comes from ignorance. It is more or less that. It is something in the being which fancies that it needs something else in order to be satisfied. And the proof that it is ignorance is that when one has satisfied it, one no longer cares for it, at least ninety-nine and a half times out of a hundred.

Overcoming a Desire brings Greater Joy than satisfying it: an example

The Buddha has said that there is a greater joy in overcoming a desire than in satisfying it. It is an experience everybody can have and one that is truly very interesting, very interesting.

There was someone who was invited—it happened in Paris—invited to a first-night (a first-night means a first performance) of an opera of Massenet’s. I think… I don’t remember now whose it was. The subject was fine, the play was fine, and the music not displeasing; it was the first time and this person was invited to the box of the Minister of Fine Arts who always has a box for all the first nights at the government theatres. This Minister of Fine Arts was a simple person, an old countryside man, who had not lived much in Paris, who was quite new in his ministry and took a truly childlike joy in seeing new things. Yet he was a polite man and as he had invited a lady he gave her the front seat and himself sat at the back. But he felt very unhappy because he could not see everything. He leaned forward like this, trying to see something without showing it too much. Now, the lady who was in front noticed this. She too was very interested and was finding it very fine, and it was not that she did not like it, she liked it very much and was enjoying the show; but she saw how very unhappy that poor minister looked, not being able to see. So quite casually, you see, she pushed back her chair, went back a little, as though she was thinking of something else, and drew back so well that he came forward and could now see the whole scene. Well, this person, when she drew back and gave up all desire to see the show, was filled with a sense of inner joy, a liberation from all attachment to things and a kind of peace, content to have done something for somebody instead of having satisfied herself, to the extent that the evening brought her infinitely greater pleasure than if she had listened to the opera. This is a true experience, it is not a little story read in a book, and it was precisely at the time this person was studying Buddhist discipline, and it was in conformity with the saying of the Buddha that she tried this experiment.

And truly this was so concrete an experience, you know, so real that… ah, two seconds later, you see, the play, the music, the actors, the scene, the pictures and all that were gone like absolutely secondary things, completely unimportant, while this joy of having mastered something in oneself and done something not simply selfish, this joy filled all the being with an incomparable serenity—a delightful experience… Well, it is not just an individual, personal experience. All those who want to try can have it.

To conquer a desire brings more joy than to satisfy it.

How to conquer or overcome the Desires?

What is the most effective way of overcoming desires and attachments: to cut them off all at one stroke, even at the risk of breaking down, or to advance slowly and surely by eliminating them carefully one by one?

Both these ways are equally ineffective. The normal result of both these methods is that you deceive yourself, you delude yourself that you have overcome your desires, whereas at best you are merely sitting on them—they remain repressed in the subconscient until they explode there and cause an upheaval in the whole being.

It is from within that you must become master of your lower nature by establishing your consciousness firmly in a domain that is free of all desire and attachment because it is under the influence of the divine Light and Force. It is a long and exacting labour which must be undertaken with an unfailing sincerity and a tireless perseverance.

In any case, you should never pretend to be more perfect than you are, and still less should you be satisfied with false appearances.

Desire is a psychological movement, and it can attach itself to a “true need” as well as to things that are not true needs. One must approach even true needs without desire. If one does not get them, one must feel nothing.

The first condition for getting rid of desire is… to become conscious with the true consciousness….

No one can easily get rid of desires. What has first to be done is to exteriorize them, to push them out, on the surface and get the inner parts quiet and clear. Afterwards they can be thrown out and replaced by true thing, a happy and luminous will one with the Divine’s.

Yielding to desire is not the way of getting rid of them. There is no end to desires – each one which is satisfied is at once replaced by another one and they go on clamouring more and more.

It is only by conquering the desires that you can get rid of them, by coming out of this consciousness of the lower nature and rising to a higher consciousness.

In order to be cured, my child, not only is it necessary to stop all these unseemly practices completely, but it is necessary to get rid of all these unhealthy desires from your thought and sensation, for it is desires that irritate the organs and make them ill. You must ruthlessly clean up everything and your will is not strong enough for that; invoke my will, call it sincerely and it will be there to help you. You are right when you say that with my help you will surely be able to conquer. That is true, but you must sincerely want this help and let it work within you and in all circumstances.

It is always said that it is desire which creates difficulties, and indeed it is like that. Desire may simply be something added to the vibration of will. The Will—when it is the one Will, the supreme Will expressing itself—is direct, immediate, there are no possible obstacles; and so everything that delays, hinders, causes complication or even failure is necessarily an admixture of desire.

When you have a desire you are governed by the thing you desire; it takes possession of your mind and your life, and you become a slave.

If one is not master of one’s desires, one cannot be master of one’s thoughts.

Desire always takes a long time to get rid of entirely. But, if you can once get it out of the nature and realise it as a force coming from outside and putting its claws into the vital and physical, it will be easier to get rid of the invader. You are too accustomed to feel it as part of yourself or planted in you—that makes it more difficult for you to deal with its movements and dismiss its ancient control over you.

The rejection of desire is essentially the rejection of the element of craving, putting that out from the consciousness itself as a foreign element not belonging to the true self and the inner nature. But refusal to indulge the suggestions of desire is also a part of the rejection; to abstain from the action suggested, if it is not the right action, must be included in the Yogic discipline. It is only when this is done in the wrong way, by a mental ascetic principle or a hard moral rule, that it can be called suppression.[p.264] The difference between suppression and an inward essential rejection is the difference between mental or moral control and a spiritual purification. When one lives in the true consciousness one feels the desires outside oneself, entering from outside, from the universal lower Prakriti, into the mind and the vital parts. In the ordinary human condition this is not felt; men become aware of the desire only when it is there, when it has come inside and found a lodging or a habitual harbourage and so they think it is their own and a part of themselves. The first condition for getting rid of desire is, therefore, to become conscious with the true consciousness; for then it becomes much easier to dismiss it than when one has to struggle with it as if it were a constituent part of oneself to be thrown out from the being. It is easier to cast off an accretion than to excise what is felt as a parcel of our substance.

It happens only when you have decided: “Well, this time, I am going to try not to do it, and I shall not do it, I shall apply all my strength and I shall not do it.” Even if you have just a little success, it is much. Not a big success, but just a small success, a very partial success: you do not carry out what you yearn to do; but the yearning, the desire, the passion is still there and that produces whirls within, but outside you resist, “I shall not do it, I shall not move; even if I have to bind myself hand and foot, I shall not do it.” It is a partial success— but it is a great victory because, due to this, next time you will be able to do a little more. That is to say, instead of holding all the violent passions within yourself, you can begin calming them a little; and you will calm them slowly at first, with difficulty. They will remain long, they will come back, they will trouble you, vex you, produce in you a great disgust, all that, but if you resist well and say: “No, I shall carry out nothing; whatever the cost, I shall not carry out anything; I will stay like a rock”, then little by little, little by little, that thins out, thins out and you begin to learn the second attitude: “Now I want my consciousness to be above those things. There will still be many battles but if my consciousness stands above that, little by little there will come a time when this will return no longer.” And then there is a time when you feel that you are absolutely free: you do not even perceive it, and then that is all. It may take a long time, it may come soon: that depends on the strength of character, on the sincerity of the aspiration. But even for people who have just a little sincerity, if they subject themselves to this process, they succeed. It takes time. They succeed in the first item: in not expressing. All forces upon earth tend towards self- expression. These forces come with the object of manifesting themselves and if you place a barrier and refuse to express them, they may try to beat against the barrier for a time, but in the end, they will tire themselves out and not being manifested, they will withdraw and leave you quiet.

So you must never say: “I shall first purify my thought, purify my body, purify my vital and then later I shall purify my action.” That is the normal order, but it never succeeds. The effective order is to begin from the outside: “The very first thing is that I do not do it, and afterwards, I desire it no longer and next I close my doors completely to all impulses: they no longer exist for me, I am now outside all that.” This is the true order, the order that is effective. First, not to do it. And then you will no longer have desire for anything and after that it will go out of your consciousness completely.

Genuine enquiry is a legitimate path to knowledge but skeptical or cynical doubting destroys faith and confidence. Why do we doubt? How to deal with the habit of this corrosive doubting?

Doubt is not a sport to indulge in with impunity; it is a poison which drop by drop corrodes the soul.

We must decide to get rid of all doubts, they are among the worst enemies of our progress.

Doubt is the best arm used by the ego to protect itself from extinction.

… it is easier to doubt than to know, the human mind is accustomed to doubt everything; that is its first movement, and of course that is why it knows nothing.

In fact, so long as there is any doubt or hesitation, so long as one asks oneself the question of whether one has or hasn’t realised this eternal soul in oneself, it proves that the true contact has not taken place. For, when the phenomenon occurs, it brings with it an inexpressible something, so new and so definitive, that doubt and questioning are no longer possible.

This is what is at the root of all the misunderstandings and reservations. You already know, and I mention it only to remind you, that an experiment made in a spirit of reserve and doubt is not an experiment, and that outer circumstances will always conspire to justify these doubts, and this for a reason which is very easy to understand: doubt veils the consciousness and the subconscious sincerity, and into the action some small factors creep in which may seem unimportant, but which are just sufficient to alter all the factors of the problem and to bring about the result that one had anticipated by doubting.

Q: One knows that something is true but still doubts. Why does one doubt the truth?

The usual answer, it is because one is foolish! (Laughter)

But the truth is that the physical mind is truly completely stupid! You can prove it very easily. It is constructed probably as a kind of control, and in order to make sure that things are done as they ought to be. I think that this is its normal work…. But it has made it a habit to doubt everything.

I think I have already told you about the small experiment I made one day. I removed my control and left the control to the physical mind—it is the physical mind which doubts. So I made the following experiment: I went into a room, then came out of the room and closed the door. I had decided to close the door; and when I came to another room, this mind, the material mind, the physical mind, you see, said, “Are you sure you have locked the door?” Now, I did not control, you know… I said, “Very well, I obey it!” I went back to see. I observed that the door was closed. I came back. As soon as I couldn’t see the door any longer, it told me, “Have you verified properly?” So I went back again…. And this went on till I decided: “Come now, that’s enough, isn’t it? Closed or not, I am not going back any more to see!” This could have gone on the whole day. It is made like that. It stops being like that only when a higher mind, the rational mind tells it, “Keep quiet!” Otherwise it goes on indefinitely…. So, if by ill-luck you are centred there, in this mind, even the things you know higher up as quite true, even things of which you have a physical proof—like that of the closed door, it doubts, it will doubt, because it is built of doubt. It will always say, “Are you quite sure this is true?… Isn’t it an idea of yours?… You don’t suppose it is like that?” And it will go on until one teaches it to keep quiet and be silent.

Is Doubt a sign of superiority?

Men believe that doubt is a sign of superiority, whereas it is really a sign of inferiority.

Scepticism and doubt are two of the greatest obstacles to progress; they add presumptuousness to ignorance.

The enemy of faith is doubt and yet doubt too is a utility and necessity, because man in his ignorance and in his progressive labour towards knowledge needs to be visited by doubt, otherwise he would remain obstinate in an ignorant belief and limited knowledge and unable to escape from his errors. This utility and necessity of doubt does not altogether disappear when we enter on the path of Yoga.

…to help at the beginning, one can take as a guiding rule that all that brings with it or creates peace, faith, joy, harmony, wideness, unity and ascending growth comes from the Truth; while all that carries with it restlessness, doubt, scepticism, sorrow, discord, selfish narrowness, inertia, discouragement and despair comes straight from the falsehood.

In the human mind there is a morbid and deplorable habit of doubt, argument, scepticism. This is where human effort must be put in: the refusal to admit them, the refusal to listen to them and still more the refusal to follow them. No game is more dangerous than playing mentally with doubt and scepticism. They are not only enemies, they are terrible pitfalls, and once one falls into them, it becomes tremendously difficult to pull oneself out.

I have started writing about doubt, but even in doing so I am afflicted by the “doubt” whether any amount of writing or of anything else can ever persuade the eternal doubt in man which is the penalty of his native ignorance. In the first place, to write adequately would mean anything from 60 to 600 pages, but not even 6000 convincing pages would convince doubt. For doubt exists for its own sake; its very function is to doubt always and, even when convinced, to go on doubting still; it is only to persuade its entertainer to give it board and lodging that it pretends to be an honest truth-seeker. This is a lesson I have learnt from the experience both of my own mind and of the minds of others; the only way to get rid of doubt is to take discrimination as one’s detector of truth and falsehood and under its guard to open the door freely and courageously to experience.

As to doubts and argumentative answers to them, I have long given up the practice as I found it perfectly useless. Yoga is not a field for intellectual argument or dissertation. It is not by the exercise of the logical or the debating mind that one can arrive at a true understanding of yoga or follow it. A doubting spirit, “honest doubt” and the claim that the intellect shall be satisfied and be made the judge on every point is all very well in the field of mental action outside. But yoga is not a mental field, the consciousness which has to be established is not a mental, logical or debating consciousness – it is even laid down by yoga that unless and until the mind is stilled, including the intellectual or logical mind, and opens itself in quietude or silence to a higher and deeper consciousness, vision and knowledge, sadhana cannot reach its goal. For the same reason an unquestioning openness to the Guru is demanded in the Indian spiritual tradition; as for blame, criticism and attack on the Guru, it was considered reprehensible and the surest possible obstacle to sadhana.

If the spirit of doubt could be overcome by meeting it with arguments, there might be something in the demand for its removal by satisfaction through logic. But the spirit of doubt doubts for its own sake, for the sake of doubt; it simply uses the mind as its instrument for its particular dharma, and this not the least when that mind thinks it is seeking sincerely for a solution of its honest and irrepressible doubts. Mental positions always differ, moreover, and it is well-known that people can argue for ever without one convincing the other. To go on perpetually answering persistent and always recurring doubts such as for long have filled this Ashram and obstructed the sadhana, is merely to frustrate the aim of the yoga and go against its central principle with no spiritual or other gain whatever. If anybody gets over his fundamental doubts, it is by the growth of the psychic in him or by an enlargement of his consciousness, not otherwise. Questions which arise from the spirit of enquiry, not aggressive or self-assertive, but as a part of a hunger for knowledge can be answered, but the “spirit of doubt” is insatiable and unappeasable.

Q: X told me that it is very good to read Sri Aurobindo’s messages on doubt. “It is not at all necessary to read about doubt,” I answered him. “At this stage I don’t think it is possible to be free from all doubt,” he said.

It is not only quite possible to be free of all doubt, it is an absolutely indispensable condition; but before being able to state with assurance that one is free from doubt, one should wait for a few months at least, in order to make sure.

In any case this kind of discussion is quite useless—it does not help to overcome doubt.

…the mistakes that we have committed and the adversities that fell upon us had to be, because there was some necessity in them, some utility for our lives. But in truth these things cannot be explained mentally and should not be. For all that happened was necessary, not for any mental reason, but to lead us to something beyond what the mind imagines.

…it is not a question of being down-hearted or grieved or in despair if you have made a mistake, for every mistake can be corrected; from the moment you have found it is a mistake, there is an opportunity to work within you, to make progress and be very happy!

When one recognises one’s mistake and yet repeats it, it means that only a superficial part of the consciousness has recognised it and the rest is perfectly satisfied with it and generally justifies it. You may tell yourself without the risk of making a mistake: “If I repeat the same fault, I am not sincere.” So try to be sincere.

Sweet Mother, one day you said that if one makes mistakes knowing that one is making a mistake, one pushes the divine Grace away and builds a wall, a veritable wall between the Divine and oneself.

…if you make a mistake knowing that it is a mistake and committing it all the same, then you do that. If through ignorance you make a mistake because you don’t know that it is a mistake, you may have very unpleasant consequences but you won’t push away the Divine, because you have done the thing through ignorance. That’s not to say that the fault is not a fault! It is a fault all the same, but as I said, you are not in the state in which you push away the divine Grace. But if you know that it is a fault and commit it all the same, each time you do so you are pushing away the divine Grace, and you push it away a little farther.

Mother, there are mistakes… one knows they are mistakes, but still it is as though one were pushed into making them. Then?

Pushed by what? Ah, this is exactly what happens! It is the lower nature, the instincts of the subconscient which govern you and make you do things you should not do. And so it is a choice between your will and accepting submission. There is always a moment when one can decide. It goes to the point where as I said there is even a moment when one can decide to be ill or not to be ill. It even goes so far that a moment comes when one can decide to die or not to die. But for that one must have an extremely awakened consciousness because this speck is infinitesimal in time and like the hundredth part of a second, and because before it one can do nothing and after it one can do nothing; but at that moment one can. And if one is absolutely awake, one can, at that moment, take the decision.

It is a dangerous illness: laziness.

Tiredness shows lack of will for progress. When you feel tired or fatigued that is lack of will for progress.

Fire is always burning in you.

Fatigue comes from doing without interest the things you do.

Whatever you do you can find interest in it, provided you take it as the means of progressing; you must try to do better and better what you are doing, the will for progress must always be there and then you take interest in what you do, whatever it is. The most insignificant occupation can prove interesting if you take it that way.

Mother, how can one get rid of laziness?

Laziness comes from weakness, or from lack of interest. For curing the first—one must become strong.

For curing the second—one must do something interesting.

When you feel tired, don’t overstrain yourself but rest – doing only your ordinary work; restlessly doing something or other all the time is not the way to cure it. To be quiet without and within is what is needed when there is this sense of fatigue. There is always strength near you which you can call in and will remove these things, but you must learn to be quiet in order to receive it.

Overstraining brings inertia up. Everybody has inertia in his nature: the question is of its greater or less operation.

If too much work is done the quality of the work deteriorates in spite of the zest of the worker.

If you overstrain yourself by too prolonged work or a restless working, that disturbs or weakens the nervous system, the vital-physical, and lays one open to the action of the wrong forces. To work but quietly so as to have a steady progress is the right way.

Sweet Mother, do we have a right to ask questions if we don’t practise what you say?

You always have the right to do anything! (Laughter) You may ask all the questions you like. Practise? Fundamentally, it is up to each one to choose, isn’t it?—whether he wants to practise or not, whether he considers it useful or not. That is something which cannot be imposed; it must be done freely. But one may always ask questions.

Well, I am going to ask a question: “Why don’t people practise?” Do you know why they don’t practise? (Mother asks others in turn.) And you? And you?… Bah! Do you know?

Perhaps because one is lazy!

That is one of the main reasons. And so one conceals one’s laziness behind fine reasons, the first of which says, “I can’t, I don’t know” or else, “I have tried and not succeeded” or “I don’t know where to begin!” Any reason whatever, isn’t that true? The first that comes to you. Or else, one doesn’t practise because one doesn’t find it worthwhile to make the effort—that is part of the laziness also, it asks for too much effort! But one can’t live without effort! If one were to refuse to make any effort, one would not even be able to stand on one’s legs or walk or even eat.

There is never any reason for jealousy. It is a very low and ignorant movement.

Jealousy comes from a narrowness of the mind and a weakness of the heart. It is a great pity that so many are attacked by it.

Jealousy with its escort of slanders is the output of the weak and the small.

It deserves more pity than anger, and must leave us perfectly indifferent to it, enjoying the bliss of our unshakable certitude.

How can one get rid of, or rather correct, jealousy and laziness?

It is selfishness that makes one jealous; it is weakness that makes one lazy.

In either case the only truly effective remedy is conscious union with the Divine. Indeed, as soon as one becomes conscious of the Divine and is united with Him, one learns to love with the true love: the love that loves for the joy of loving and has no need to be loved in return; one also learns to draw Force from the inexhaustible source and one knows by experience that by using this Force in the service of the Divine one receives from Him all that one has spent and much more.

All the remedies suggested by the mind, even the most enlightened mind, are only palliatives and not a true cure.

Jealousy is only an ugly form of self-love. That is what people do not understand—they even think that demands and jealousy and wounded vanity are signs of love or at least natural attendants of it.

Jealousy should not be there if there is no ground for it, for then it is absurd and meaningless—but also when there is reason for it according to common standards, it should not be there, for it is a sentiment lacking in nobility and quite un-yogic.

We tend to judge others, mostly harshly, based on outer appearances. Why it is important to cultivate the non-judgemental attitude?

How Judgement clouds understanding

Unless your vision is constantly the vision of the Divine in all things, you have not only no right but no capacity to judge the state which others are in. And to pronounce a judgment on someone without having this vision spontaneously, effortlessly, is precisely an example of the mental presumptuousness of which Sri Aurobindo always spoke…. And it so happens that one who has the vision, the consciousness, who is capable of seeing the truth in all things, never feels the need to judge anything whatever. For he understands everything and knows everything. Therefore, once and for all, you must tell yourselves that the moment you begin to judge things, people, circumstances, you are in the most total human ignorance.

In short, one could put it like this: when one understands, one no longer judges and when one judges, it means that one doesn’t know.

Judging people is one of the first things which must be totally swept away from the consciousness before you can take even a step on the supramental path, because that is not a material progress or a bodily progress, it is only a very little progress of thought, mental progress. And unless you have swept your mind clean of all its ignorance, you cannot hope to take a step on the supramental path.

All those who have truly and sincerely had the experience of the divine Presence, all those who have truly been in contact with the Divine, have always said the same thing: that sometimes, even often, it is in what is most decried by men, most despised by men, most condemned by human “wisdom”, that one can see the divine light shining.

They are not mere words, they are living experiences.

All these ideas of good and evil, good and bad, higher, lower, all these notions belong to the ignorance of the human mind, and if one really wants to come into contact with the divine life, one must liberate oneself totally from this ignorance, one must rise to a region of consciousness where these things have no reality. The feeling of superiority and inferiority completely disappears, it is replaced by something else which is of a very different nature—a sort of capacity for filtering appearances, penetrating behind masks, shifting the point of view.

Before deciding that something is wrong in others or in circumstances, you must be quite sure of the correctness of your judgment—and what judgment is correct so long as one lives in the ordinary consciousness that is based on ignorance and filled with falsehood?

Only the Truth-Consciousness can judge. So it is better, in all circumstances, to leave the judgment to the Divine.

You have no right to judge a man unless you are capable of doing what he does better than himself.

Be severe to yourself before being severe to others.

It is one of the highest virtues—not to poke your nose in the affairs of others.

Men are always more able to criticise sharply the work of others and tell them how to do things or what not to do than skillful to avoid the same mistakes themselves. Often indeed one sees easily in others faults which are there in oneself but which one fails to see. These and other defects such as the last you mention are common to human nature and few escape them. The human mind is not really conscious of itself—that is why in yoga one has always to look and see what is in oneself and become more and more conscious.

When two persons quarrel, always both are in the wrong.

When you start a quarrel it is as if you were declaring war on the Divine’s work.

Before getting angry at the mistakes of others one should always remember one’s own mistakes.

As for ill-will, jealousy, quarrels and reproaches, one must sincerely be above all that and reply with a benevolent smile tothe bitterest words; and unless one is absolutely sure of himself and his reactions, it would be better, as a general rule, to keep silent.

One of the chief obstacles to the establishment of a progressive harmony is our eagerness to prove to an opponent that he is wrong and we are right.

As long as you are for some and against others, you are necessarily outside of the Truth.

Well, I have said already that quarrels, cuttings are not a part of sadhana: the clashes and friction you speak of are, just as in the outside world, rubbings of the vital ego. Antagonisms, antipathies, dislikes, quarrellings can no more be proclaimed as part of sadhana than sex-impulses or acts can be part of sadhana. Harmony, goodwill, forbearance, equanimity are necessary ideals in the relation of sadhak with sadhak. One is not bound to mix, but if one keeps to oneself, it should be for reasons of sadhana, not out of other motives: moreover, it should be without any sense of superiority or contempt for others…. If somebody finds that association with another for any reason raises undesirable vital feelings in him or her—he or she can certainly withdraw from that association as a matter of prudence until he or she gets over the weakness. But ostentation of avoidance or public cuttings are not included in the necessity and betray feelings that equally ought to be overcome.

Quarrels and clashes are a proof of the absence of the yogic poise and those who seriously wish to do yoga must learn to grow out of these things. It is easy enough not to clash when there is no cause for strife or dispute or quarrel; it is when there is cause and the other side is impossible and unreasonable that one gets the opportunity of rising above one’s vital nature.

As for your question, it is a sentimental part of the vital nature that quarrels with people and refuses to speak to them and it is the same part in a reaction against that mood that wants to speak and get the relation. So long as there is either of these movements the other also is possible. It is only when you get rid of this sentimentalism and turn all your purified feelings towards the Divine, that these fluctuations disappear and a calm goodwill to all takes their place.

There are always defects on both sides which lead to this disharmony. On your side you have… a tendency to too harsh judgment of others, a readiness to see and stress the faults, defects, weak side of others and not to see enough their good sides. This prevents the kindliness of outlook which should be there and gives an impression of harshness and critical severity and creates a tendency to contrariety and revolt, which even when it is not there in the minds of the others, acts through their subconscient and creates all these discordant movements. To take advantage of what is good in others, keeping one’s eye always on that, and to deal tactfully with their mistakes, faults and defects is the best way; it does not exclude firmness and maintenance of discipline, even severity when severity is due; but the latter should be rare and the others should not feel it as if it were a permanent attitude.

Selfishness and self-pity lead nowhere. You would do better to get rid of them—for it is these two narrow movements which prevent you from feeling the Divine’s help and love.

The nature of your difficulty indicates the nature of the victory you will gain, the victory you will exemplify in Yoga. Thus, if there is persistent selfishness, it points to a realisation of universality as your most prominent achievement in the future. And, when selfishness is there, you have also the power to reverse this very difficulty into its opposite, a victory of utter wideness.

But this very attitude of wanting to become identified with the Unmanifest and letting the world suffer, isn’t this selfishness?

Yes. And so what happens is very remarkable, the result is always the same: those who have done that, at the last minute, have received a sort of intimation that they had to return to the world and do their work. It is as though they reached the door and—“Ah! No, no, not yet—go back and work. When the world is ready, then this will be all right.”

Indeed this habit of escaping from the difficulty is a supreme selfishness. You are told, “Do this, and then, when all the others have done it, all will be well with the whole world”, but it is only a very small ´elite among men who are ready to be able to do it. And these precisely are those who can be the most useful to the earth, for they know more about things than others, they have overcome many difficulties and can be of help to others just where those others can’t. But the whole human mass, the immense human mass… For when some have succeeded—even a few hundred—one may tend to think it is “humanity”, but truly speaking it is only a kind of ´elite of humanity, it is a selection.

Could you give me your definitions of the following words?

Meanness and selfishness

Meanness is a weakness that calculates and demands from others the virtues one does not possess oneself.

Selfishness is to put oneself at the centre of the universe and to want everything to exist for one’s own satisfaction.

Selfishness means wanting everything for oneself, understanding nothing but oneself, caring for others only insofar as they are necessary or important to oneself.

Why is it [to be concentrated on the Divine] selfishness? Selfishness is to live for oneself and not for something greater than the self. To be concentrated on the Divine at all times is to get out of the personal self and its aims into something greater and serve the aims of that greater Existence. It is no more selfishness than to live for others always would be selfishness.

Pride: a great obstacle to progress.

It is not the soul but the ego and its pride that feel defeat and humiliation.

A spiritual humility within is very necessary, but I do not think an outward one is very advisable (absence of pride or arrogance or vanity is indispensable of course in one’s outer dealings with others)—it often creates pride, becomes formal or becomes ineffective after a time. I have seen people doing it to cure their pride, but I have not found it producing a lasting result.

The greatest obstacle to the contact with the Divine is pride and the sense of one’s personal worth, one’s personal capacities, personal power—the person becomes very big, so big that there is no place for the Divine.

Vanity: one of the most frequent forms of falsehood.

It is better to be than to seem to be.

Vanity is the most serious obstacle to true greatness.

A person who considers only his own opinion becomes more and more narrow.