The Mother
with Letters on the Mother

Reliance on the Mother's Force

My mind is not yet quiet and that is why I am not getting any joy in my sadhana, any experience or realisation—nothing at all. This makes me very sad and unhappy. May the Mother bestow on me the flow of Peace and help me to open my closed heart-centre.

There has always been too much reliance on the action of your own mind and will—that is why you cannot progress. If you could once get the habit of silent reliance on the power of the Mother—not merely calling it in to support your own effort—the obstacle would diminish and eventually disappear.

14 July 1929

You should not rely on anything else alone, however helpful it may seem, but chiefly, primarily, fundamentally on the Mother's Force. The Sun and the Light may be a help, and will be if it is the true light and the true Sun, but cannot take the place of the Mother's Force.

28 May 1930

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There is no aspiration in me, no capacity to follow something higher. I feel dullness inside. But I do feel quiet from the pressure on my head. I must be patient and keep faith—then you will make me conscious.

Quietude first; with it confidence in the Mother's Force that is working on you. When the physical mind is obliged to be quiet, it has this impression of inactivity and dullness at first. When it opens more and more to the Force, that impression will disappear.

12 November 1932

If one gives full and constant consent to the Mother's working, how can the attempt of other beings to enter into one succeed?

If you give consent to the Mother's working alone, then it cannot.

It is not always an attempt. One receives the thoughts and feelings of the others without any attempt or intention of theirs, because they are in the atmosphere.

31 July 1933

The depression has come upon you because you accepted the thought that you were not doing what you should and not using the chance Mother had given you. Such thoughts should never be indulged for they open the door to depression and depression opens the door to the old movements; they used to come formerly from the idea that you were unfit, now it is this idea that you are not doing all you ought to do. As a matter of fact you have been progressing with a surprising rapidity for the last days at a rate that we ourselves did not expect from you. But whether the progress is rapid or slow, the attitude should always be an entire faith and reliance on the Mother; just as you do not think that the progress was the result of your own effort or merit, but of your taking the right attitude of reliance and the Mother's force working, so you should not think that any slowness or difficulty was due to your own demerit but only

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seek to keep this attitude of reliance and let the Mother's Force work,—slowly or rapidly does not matter.

The dream was again one of these experiences of test or ordeal on the vital plane which you have been having—here it was the test of temptation by power, comfort, riches, attractive things, as it was formerly the test by fear, difficulty, trouble. The evidence of all these tests is that your inner being is perfectly ready and free to go unwaveringly to the goal. There is nothing there that is wrong or defective.

Keep the reliance steady in your heart and do not allow self-distrust, depression or sadness to invade you from outside.

14 November 1935

How can I do Yoga when I know nothing about your Yoga? I do not even know what to do.

There are two ways of doing Yoga, one by knowledge and one's own efforts, the other by reliance on the Mother. In the last way one has to offer one's mind and heart and all to the Mother for her Force to work on it, call her in all difficulties, have faith and bhakti. At first it takes time, often a long time, for the consciousness to be prepared in this way and during that time many difficulties can come up, but if one perseveres a time comes when all is ready, the Mother's Force opens the consciousness fully to the Divine, then all that must develop develops within, spiritual experience comes and with it the knowledge and union with the Divine.

9 April 1937

You say after several years you have not changed your nature. I only wish the external nature were so easy to transform that it could be done in a few years. You forget also that the real problem—to get rid of the pervading ego in this nature—is a task you have seriously tackled only a short time ago. And it is not in a few months that that can be done. Even the best sadhaks find after many experiences and large changes on the

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higher planes that here much remains to be done. How do you expect to get rid of it at once unlike everybody else? A Yoga like this needs patience, because it means a change both of the radical motives and of each part and detail of the nature. It will not do to say, "Yesterday I determined this time to give myself entirely to the Mother, and look it is not done, on the contrary all the old opposite things turn up once more; so there is nothing to do but to proclaim myself unfit and give up the Yoga." Of course when you come to the point where you make a resolution of that kind, immediately all that stands in the way does rise up—it invariably happens. The thing to be done is to stand back, observe and reject, not to allow these things to get hold of you, to keep your central will separate from them and call in the Mother's Force to meet them. If one does get involved as often happens, then to get disinvolved as soon as possible and go forward again. That is what everybody, every Yogi does—to be depressed because one cannot do everything in a rush is quite contrary to the truth of the matter. A stumble does not mean that one is unfit, nor does prolonged difficulty mean that for oneself the thing is impossible.

The fact that you have to give up your ordinary work when you get depressed does not mean that you have not gained in steadiness—it only means that the steadiness you have gained is not a personal virtue but depends on your keeping the contact with the Mother—for it is her force that is behind it and behind all the progress you can make. Learn to rely on that Force more, to open to it more completely and to seek spiritual progress even not for your own sake but for the sake of the Divine—then you will go on more smoothly. Get the psychic opening in the most external physical consciousness. That and not despondency is the lesson you ought to draw from your present adverse experience.