Questions and Answers 1953 (CWM Vol.5)

Questions and Answers 1953

Collected Works of the Mother Volume 5

Talks by the Mother including comments on her Questions and Answers 1929. This volume is made up of talks given by the Mother in 1953 to the members of her French class. Held on Wednesday evenings at the Ashram Playground, the class was composed of sadhaks of the Ashram and students of its school. The Mother usually began by reading out a passage from one of her works and then invited questions. For most of the year she discussed her talks of 1929. She spoke only in French.

The Mother’s French classes cover the eight-year period from 1950 to 1958. The Wednesday classes of 1950-51 and 1953-58 comprise the “Questions and Answers” talks. Between June 1951 and March 1953 these classes were replaced by “translation classes” in which the Mother translated into French several of Sri Aurobindo’s works, including The Ideal of Human Unity, The Human Cycle, part of The Synthesis of Yoga and the last six chapters of The Life Divine. During this period, she continued to speak informally with the students, but what she said was not tape-recorded.

Book Details

Author: The Mother

Print Length: 438 pages

Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Book format: PDF, ePub, Kindle

Language: English

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18 March 1953

Rare significant moments: contact with the psychic
Families of beings: why people meet to collaborate
Visitor to the Ashram: external motives are pretexts for the psychic

25 March 1953

Using the Divine as a cloak to hide desires
Sincerity: difficult but effective
The true flame

1 April 1953

Ambition: a canker
Different personalities in our being
Signpost or psychic mirror

8 April 1953

Service to humanity and giving to the Divine
What do I call “myself”?
Desires and their formations
The power of thought, of prayer
Win your small victories

15 April 1953

Pulling the divine forces
Insincerity, its own punishment
Basis of equanimity

22 April 1953

Sleep and dreams: quietening the mind

29 April 1953

Organising one’s dream
Wounds in the vital being and illness
Symbolism of dreams
Personal dream-imagery
Foolishness and vanity
Religions, truth, consciousness

6 May 1953

Psychic memory
Rebirth: stories
Automatic writing, spirit-communication
Dreams
Contact with the Divine: the key to everything

13 May 1953

Pseudo-meditation
Escapism and changing the nature
True meditation, true humility
Will, concentration, effort; active surrender
Being perfect instruments; progress
Boredom

20 May 1953

Offering and surrender
Mistakes and insincerity
The flame of aspiration, self-giving
The physical being as a tool of another Power
Story of a Sufi mystic, a musician
Transformation of the body: three hundred years
Replacing body-organs by centres of energy
Collaboration in the Divine’s work
Living in the true consciousness; stepping back
Appendix: a talk of Sri Aurobindo

27 May 1953

Music: its origin and type
Inspiration and technique
Individualisation, separation, inconscience
The remedy: to become conscious again
All touch the same Thing
Understanding others: beyond words
Sources of music; genius
Indian and European music
Perceiving the Divine in everything
Explaining things: the entire universe needed
The Divine is the only existence
Value of art
Work and realisation

3 June 1953

Determinism and freedom
Formations from different planes
Prayer changes the determined course of things
Devices Nature uses to make us act
The Divine Grace and Karma
Aspiration and prayer have a magical power

10 June 1953

Attacks of adverse forces and man’s response
Cases of possession; refusal to change
The asura of falsehood: “Lord of the Nations”
Beings of the vital plane
Man will transform his earth
True function of the mind and vital
How to discern hostile attacks
Learning and understanding
Teaching: preparing courses,

17 June 1953

Function of the intellect
Cause of death
Growth in perfection

24 June 1953

Power of the vital
Cause and cure of fear
Body’s instinct
On laziness and work
Illness, its causes and cure
Concentrating to gain time
Work at school: organising the mind
Science and art

1 July 1953

Paradise, purgatory, eternal hell
Imagination, a form-maker
Power of good formations; healing
After death, where? Unifying the being
Spirits of death and of fire
Consenting to die

8 July 1953

Prayer and aspiration
Ill-will: a bad thought is a bad act
Cause and remedy of evil
Animals; vital origin of the insect species
Desire to devour, an expression of “love”
Instinct; the consciousness in Nature
Widening the consciousness

15 July 1953

Superstitions
Religious rules and hygiene
Discerning attacks by adverse forces
Sincere aspiration and trials
Mental conceptions imposed on the Divine
Hold of hostile forces upon money-power
Giving money for the Divine’s work
God and His creation

22 July 1953

Protection prevents illnesses, accidents
Fear brings illness, accidents
Mental, vital, physical fear
Taking every trial as a proof of the Grace
Illness: moral condition more important
Causes of illness; disequilibrium
Organic and functional imbalance
Equilibrium in all parts of the being necessary
Lack of receptivity — the grain of sand Inner causes of illness
External causes of illness
Attacks; black magic
Small vital entities in the earth-atmosphere
Origin of microbes: forces of disintegration
Epidemic in Japan
Vampires
Curing illness
Spiritual purification
Trust in life: children

29 July 1953

Events on different planes
“India is free”: Mother’s pre-vision
Events can be changed; a premonitory dream
Degrees of change possible; intervention
To understand truly
Individual initiative
Project yourself on a screen, then observe
Know thyself; learning, self-discovery
The very reason for existence

5 August 1953

Progress of the psychic being; rebirth
Progress of those not conscious of their psychic
Manifestation and progress
Inspiration; receptivity; exchange
Progress of mind, vital, physical
Mind justifies everything; the psychic knows
Will and impulse; “The last time I am doing it”
Impulse and its expression in action
Incarnation of the psychic being
Psychic growth; Karma

12 August 1953

Knowing people through self-identification
Methods of knowledge; concentration
Widening the consciousness; progress
Self-identification; Paris theatre story
Knowing the Divine by identification
Concentration, one-pointedness
In Nature all possibilities exist

19 August 1953

Aspiration in trees and animals
The Presence in all things
Stones can accumulate forces; their use
Exchange: giving and taking
The more one gives, the more one grows
Instinct to destroy and spoil: adverse forces
Being a true hero
Faith in the Grace and return to the Light

26 August 1953

Source of Love
True love and its deformations
Love of animals for men
Intelligence and psychic consciousness
Love in flowers, crystals, animals

2 September 1953

Religion and the spiritual life
Castes
Evolutionary movement; old civilisations
Nature’s play; her collaboration required

9 September 1953

Divine Force chooses its instrument
Progress of the mind and vital
Converting the vital
Contact with the psychic; heroes
The vital, an all-powerful instrument
Depression; the vital as source of troubles
The vital’s power

16 September 1953

Receptivity of the body
Fixity in physical world
After death: a musician’s hands
The psychic being and rebirth
Progress and battle; Titanic forces
Yogic force prevents rigidity of the body
Growth of consciousness: rebirth
Consciousness and memory
Resistance and receptivity
You are all in a sea of tremendous vibrations

23 September 1953

Physical world: symbol of universal movements
Illness in animals
The universe: a serpent biting its tail
The earth: symbol of the universe
The “Evil Persona”
Mother’s experience of the luminous earth

30 September 1953

Earth-memory
The rule of the Overmind and the Supermind
Sri Aurobindo’s yoga begins where others end
Men with realisation often fixed and unplastic
Children as malleable stuff for transformation
To be a child all one’s life
Children and other people in the Ashram
Remembrance and memory

7 October 1953

Consciousness of a complete cure
Mental, vital, physical, spiritual aspiration
Body-consciousness
Body’s sure instinct
Trust in life
Dynamic faith
Why are some children here in the Ashram
Learning to know others by identity
Responsible people: governments, teachers
Supermind’s action: transformation
To know oneself: one’s field of work
Solidarity; individual and collective progress
Descent of hostile vital forces and its effect

14 October 1953

“Formateurs” or form-makers
Intermediary beings, evil and disorder
Why wickedness if “All is He”?
Identification with the Divine: no problems
Collective suggestions; the fear of death
Remedies for the fear of death
The psychic being, immortality and death
Fear attracts the thing feared
Fear is contagious; the mystic’s remedy

21 October 1953

Artists; stained-glass windows
Expressing the Divine in art
Relation with the Divine
On the Ramayana and Mahabharata
Japanese gardens
Buddhism of the South and the North
Ravana and Sita; the Asura’s choice
Sense of beauty; artistic taste varies
To know true beauty rise above all form

28 October 1953

True art; realisation of divine beauty
Evolution moves in spirals; modern art
Universal progress; spherical spirals
Nature’s plan
Art and commercialism; fatuity
The “mushroom species” and true art
Art in India
Nature’s huge cauldron

4 November 1953

On the “sphere with spirals”
Sacrifice
Feeling the Divine Presence
Man is a moralist, not the Divine
Bargaining and sacrifice
True raison d’etre of life

11 November 1953

The aim to be achieved
The seventh creation: that of Equilibrium
The eternal word
Generosity and avarice
Money: a force; the middle path

18 November 1953

Rebirth and the psychic being
Nature’s progress: constant and slow changes
Justice, determinism, and Divine Grace
Man learns through past experiments
Grace and faith
The idea of indispensable needs

25 November 1953

Smiling at an enemy
Trust and receptivity; bargaining
Sincerity and the Divine’s help
The story of creation
World of freedom of choice
The Asuras; their conversion
Stalin and Hitler
Ravana; dissolution of the Asuras

9 December 1953

Spiritual ego
Entities behind the forces of Nature
Radha’s prayer; all is divine
Suffering and bliss; vibrations and reactions
One is surrounded by what one thinks about
The sacrifice of the Divine Mother
Questions on Savitri

16 December 1953

Methods of identification and self-finding
Aim of life
The psychic guides, organises circumstances
Rest in action; quiet faith
Knowing how to wait

23 December 1953

Knowledge and the mind
Concentration; its power
Uneducated people with gift of vision
Illness: disequilibrium
Mind and body; mental formations that cure
Accidents: there is a moment of choice
Character and averting danger
Grace and accidents
Bringers of bad luck

30 December 1953

Destructiveness in children
Psychic being choosing its next birth
Wickedness in children
Consciousness of parents at the moment of conception
Tamas and the need of excitement
Education in the Ashram school
Ashram children
“Let your acts speak for you.”

Book Sample

Questions and Answers 1953

18 March 1953

“We are conscious of only an insigniﬁcant portion of our being.”

Questions and Answers 1929 – 1931 (7 April 1929)

What are these insignificant parts of our being?

Almost all of them.

There are very few things which are not insignificant; all your ordinary reactions, ordinary thoughts, sensations, actions, movements, — all this is very insignificant. It is only at times, when there is a flash of the higher consciousness through the psychic, an opening into something else, a contact with the psychic being (which may last for a second), at that moment, it is not insignificant. Otherwise, all the rest is repeated in millions and millions of copies. Your way of seeing, acting, all your reactions, thoughts, feelings, all that is ordinary. And you believe you are extraordinary, particularly when you are seized by extraordinary sensations and feelings, those that you consider extraordinary — you believe you are lifted higher, nearing something superhuman; but you are quite mistaken. It is nothing but an ordinary state, deplorably ordinary. You must enter deeper, try to see within yourself if you want to find something which is not insignificant.

You have said that in a previous life we were together; but if we had not done Yoga, couldn’t we have met all the same?

Not necessarily.

I remember the circumstances in which I said that; it was to a lady who had come here and asked me how it was that she had come here…. This is true in a general way; when those born scattered over the world at great distances from one another are driven by circumstances or by an impulsion to come and gather here, it is almost always because they have met in one life or another (not all in the same life) and because their psychic being has felt that they belonged to the same family; so they have taken an inner vow to continue to act together and collaborate. That is why even though they are born far from one another, there is something which compels them to come together; it is the psychic being, the psychic consciousness that is behind. And only to the extent the psychic consciousness is strong enough to order and organise the circumstances or the life, that is, strong enough not to allow itself to be opposed by outside forces, outside life movements, can people meet.

It is profoundly true in reality; there are large “families of beings” who work for the same cause, who have gathered in more or less large numbers and who come in groups as it were. It is as though at certain times there were awakenings in the psychic world, as though lots of little sleeping children were being called to wake up: “It is time, quick, quick, go down!” And they hurry down. And sometimes they do not drop at the same place, they are dispersed, yet there is something within which troubles them, pushes them; for one reason or another they are drawn close and that brings them together. But it is something deep in the being, something that is not at all on the surface; otherwise, even if people met they would not perhaps become aware of the bond. People meet and recognise each other only to the extent they become conscious of their psychic being, obey their psychic being, are guided by it; otherwise there is all that comes in to oppose it, all that veils, all that stupefies, all those obstacles to prevent you from finding yourself in your depths and being able to collaborate truly in the work. You are tossed about by the forces of Nature.

There is only one solution, to find your psychic being and once it is found to cling to it desperately, to let it guide you step by step whatever be the obstacle. That is the only solution.

All this I did not write but I explained it to that lady. She had put to me the question: “How did I happen to come here?” I told her that it was certainly not for reasons of the external consciousness, it was something in her inner being that had pushed her. Only the awakening was not strong enough to overcome all the rest and she returned to the ordinary life for very ordinary reasons of living.

Outwardly, it was a funny thing that had made her come here. She was a young woman like others, she had been betrothed but not married; the man had broken off. She was very unhappy, had wept much and that had spoiled her pretty face, dug wrinkles there. And when the heavy grief had gone, she was no longer so pretty. So she was extremely vexed; she consulted people whose profession it is to make you look pretty. They advised her paraffin injections in the face: “After that, you don’t have wrinkles any longer!” She was injected with grease; and instead of the desired effect, she had greasy lumps here and there. She was in despair, for she was uglier than ever. Then she met a charlatan who told her that in England there was no means of restoring her pretty face: “Go to India, there are great Yogis there who will do it for you!” That is why she had come here. The very first thing she told me was: “You see how my face is ruined, can you restore my pretty looks?” I said no! Then she started putting me questions on Yoga and she was moved. That day she told me: “I came to India to get rid of my wrinkles; now what you tell me interests me. But then why did I come? This is not the true motive that made me come here.” I explained to her that there was something other than her external being and that it was her psychic being which had led her here. External motives are simply pretexts used by the psychic to realise itself.

But she was quite a wonderful person! In the beginning she had taken an attitude of benevolence and goodwill towards everything and everybody, even the worst scamp; she saw only the good side. Then as she stayed on, her consciousness developed; after a time, she began to see people as they were. So, one day she told me: “Formerly, when I was unconscious, I thought that everybody was good, people seemed to be so nice! Why did you make me conscious?” I answered her: “Do not stop on the way. Go a little further.”

Once one has begun Yoga, it is better to go to the end.

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