Questions and Answers 1954 (CWM Vol.6)

Questions and Answers 1954

Collected Works of the Mother Volume 6

This volume comprises talks given by the Mother in 1954 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 essays or a French translation of one of Sri Aurobindo’s writings; she then commented on the passage or invited questions. During this year she discussed several of her essays on education and three small books by Sri Aurobindo: Elements of Yoga, The Mother, and Bases of Yoga. 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: 484 pages

Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Book format: PDF, ePub, Kindle

Language: English

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27 January 1954

Does the body express one’s character?
Children and the psychic
The power of observation

3 February 1954

The senses and super-sense
Children can be moulded
Keeping things in order
The shadow

10 February 1954

Study a variety of subjects
Memory
Memory of past lives
Getting rid of unpleasant thoughts

17 February 1954

Experience expressed in different ways
Origin of the psychic being
Progress in sports
Everything is not for the best

24 February 1954

The manifestation is progressive
Depression
Psychic contact
Liberation and humanity
ABC of the transformation of the body

3 March 1954

Occultism
A French scientist’s experiment

10 March 1954

Death
Death and determinism
Fear
The domain of death
Stones falling on Sri Aurobindo’s house

17 March 1954

Ascetic practices
Two kinds of submission
The Kali of Virampatnam
Kali
Cruelty
Rodin

24 March 1954

Dreams and the condition of the stomach
Tobacco and alcohol
Nervousness
The centres and the Kundalini
Control of the senses

31 March 1954

Three sources of vital energy
Educating the senses
A child brought up by a wolf

7 April 1954

Communication without words
Uneven progress
Words and the Word

14 April 1954

Love
Can a person love another truly?
Parental love

21 April 1954

Physical transformation
Activity and passivity
The body: most capable of perfection

28 April 1954

Aspiration and receptivity
Resistance
Purusha and Prakriti: not masculine and feminine

5 May 1954

Faith, trust, confidence
Insincerity and unconsciousness

12 May 1954

The Purusha
Surrender
Distinguishing between influences
Perfect sincerity

19 May 1954

Affection and love
Psychic vision Divine
Love and receptivity
Get out of the ego

26 May 1954

Symbolic dreams
Psychic sorrow
Dreams: one is rarely conscious

2 June 1954

Learning how to live
Work, studies and sadhana
Waste of the Energy and Consciousness

9 June 1954

Dreams do not transform the nature
Eating habits in the Ashram
The earth and the psychic being
Mother’s awareness of people

16 June 1954

Influences: Divine and other
Adverse forces
The four great Asuras
Aspiration arranges circumstances
Wanting only the Divine

23 June 1954

Meat-eating
Story of Mother’s vegetable garden
Faithfulness
Conscious sleep

30 June 1954

Occultism
Religion and vital beings
Mother’s knowledge of what happens in the
Ashram
Asking questions to Mother
“Drawing” on Mother

7 July 1954

The inner warrior
Grace and the Falsehood
Opening from below
Surrender and inertia
Exclusive receptivity
Grace and receptivity

14 July 1954

The Divine and the Shakti
Personal effort
Speaking and thinking
Doubt
Self-giving, consecration and surrender
Mother’s use of flowers
Ornaments and protection

21 July 1954

Mistakes
Success
Asuras
Mental arrogance
Difficulty turned into opportunity
Mother’s use of flowers
Conversion of men governed by adverse forces

28 July 1954

Money
Ego and individuality
The shadow

4 August 1954

Servant and worker
Justification of weakness
Play of the Divine
Why are you here in the Ashram?

11 August 1954

Division and creation
The gods and human formations
People carry their desires around them

18 August 1954

Mahalakshmi
Maheshwari
Mahasaraswati
Determinism and freedom
Suffering and knowledge
Aspects of the Mother

25 August 1954

Ananda aspect of the Mother
Changing conditions in the Ashram
Ascetic discipline
Mother’s body

8 September 1954

Hostile forces
Substance
Concentration
Changing the centre of thought
Peace

15 September 1954

Parts of the being
Thoughts and impulses
The subconscient
Precise vocabulary
The Grace and difficulties

22 September 1954

The supramental creation
Rajasic eagerness
Silence from above
Aspiration and rejection
Effort, individuality and ego
Aspiration and desire

29 September 1954

The right spirit
The Divine comes first
Finding the Divine
Mistakes
Rejecting impulses
Making the consciousness vast
Firm resolution

6 October 1954

What happens is for the best
Blaming oneself
Experiences
The vital desire-soul
Creating a spiritual atmosphere
Thought and Truth

13 October 1954

The witness position
The silent Self
Experience of “All is Divine”
Illness is remembered by the body
Personal conflicts and the divine Will

20 October 1954

Stand back
Asking questions to Mother
Seeing images in meditation
Berlioz
Music
Mother’s organ music
Destiny

3 November 1954

Body opening to the Divine
Concentration in the heart
The army of the Divine
The knot of the ego
Strengthening one’s will

10 November 1954

Inner experience: the basis of action
Keeping open to the Force
Faith through aspiration
The Mother’s symbol
The mind and vital seize experience
Degrees of sincerity
Becoming conscious of the Divine Force

17 November 1954

Impersonal and personal Divine
Looking at oneself
Faith and trust
Abhimana
Physical suffering

24 November 1954

Aspiration mixed with desire
Willing and desiring
Children and desires
Supermind and the higher ranges of mind
Stages in the supramental manifestation

8 December 1954

Cosmic consciousness
“Clutching”
The central will of the being
Knowledge by identity

15 December 1954

Many witnesses inside oneself
Children in the Ashram
Trance and the waking consciousness
Ascetic methods
Education: spontaneous effort
Spiritual experience

22 December 1954

Possession by hostile forces
Purity and morality
Faith in the final success
Drawing back from the path

29 December 1954

Difficulties and the world
The experience the psychic being wants
After death
Ignorance

31 December 1954

1955-1956: fourteen difficult months
Human will and the divine Will
Difficulties and the Divine

Book Sample

Questions and Answers 1954

27 January 1954

This talk is based upon Mother’s essay “Physical Education”.

Mother, does a person’s body-formation express his character?

No. Even the character itself is not a simple affair, that is, the character of a person is not the expression of his true being but the result of many things. For example, atavism may be expressed, that is, what comes from the father, the mother, from both together which may have a different result; from the antecedents — the past history, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, etc., and then from the environment in which people have lived when they were very young and had no independence at all. That has a considerable effect on the character. And this character affects the physical formation. So, just by seeing somebody one cannot quite say what his true nature is. One may describe his tendencies, know his difficulties, his possibilities, but it is only with the growth of the consciousness and as the development becomes voluntary and organised that the body can begin to express the true character of the person.

And when the body has been deformed by illness?

That may be an accident, you know. Accidents are due to many things; in fact they are the result of a conflict of the forces in Nature, a conflict between the forces of growth and progress and the forces of destruction. When there is an accident, an accident that has lasting results, it is always the result of a more or less partial victory of the adverse forces, that is, of the forces of disintegration, disorganisation. It depends.

There are teachings, like that of theosophy for instance, which take Karma in an altogether superficial and human sense and tell you: “Oh! You have met with this accident because in a former life you did something bad, so that comes back upon you in the form of an accident.” This is not true, not at all true. This is but human justice, it is neither the justice of Nature nor the justice of the Divine.

Naturally the formation of the body is very important in this sense that if, for instance, one is constantly under the influence of a depression, of pessimism, discouragement, a lack of faith and of trust in life, all this enters, so to say, into one’s substance, and then some people, when there is the possibility of an accident, never miss it. Every time there is a chance of something happening to them, they catch it, be it an illness or an accident. You have a whole field of observation here — it is always the same people who meet with accidents. Others do the same things, have as many chances of having an accident, but they are not touched. If you observe their character you will see that the former have a tendency to pessimism and more or less expect something unpleasant to happen to them — and it happens. Or else they are afraid. We know that fear always brings what one fears. If you fear an accident, this acts like a magnet drawing the accident towards you. In this sense, it may be said that it is the result of character. And the same thing holds for illness. There are people who can move about among the sick and in places where there are epidemics and never catch a disease. There are others — it is enough for them to spend an hour with a sick person, they catch the illness. That too depends on what they are within themselves.

And for children, is it also the same thing?

One cannot say. It is a moral question. The problem should not be judged from a moral point of view, one should not say that those who always enjoy good health and to whom nothing happens are “good children” and those who meet with accidents and suffer catastrophes are “bad”. That is not correct. For, as I was saying, the logic of Nature is not human logic and its sense of justice (if it has any) is not a human sense. For it there is very little of what we call good and bad. It could rather be said that there is what is constructive and what is destructive, what is progressive and what is retrogressive. That indeed is very important. And then there are those who are luminous, sunny, happy, smiling and those who are gloomy, dull, misanthropic, dissatisfied, who live in grey shadows. It is the latter who catch all the unpleasant things. Those who are radiant (they may be radiant without it being a spiritual radiance, they may simply radiate good sense, balance, an inner confidence, the joy of living), those who carry in themselves the joy of living, these are in harmony with Nature and, being in harmony with Nature, generally avoid accidents, they are immune from diseases and their life develops pleasantly as far as it is possible in the world as it is.

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