Our Many Selves

How to Will

Sweet Mother, how can we make our resolution very firm?

By wanting it to be very firm! (Laughter)

No, this seems like a joke… but it is absolutely true. One does not want it truly. There is always, if you… It is a lack of sincerity. If you look sincerely, you will see that you have decided that it will be like this, and then, beneath there is something which has not decided at all and is waiting for the second of hesitation in order to rush forward. If you are sincere, if you are sincere and get hold of the part which is hiding, waiting, not showing itself, which knows that there will come a second of indecision when it can rush out and make you do the thing you have decided not to do…

But if you really want it, nothing in the world can prevent you from doing what you want. It is because one doesn’t know how to will it. It is because one is divided in one’s will. If you are not divided in your will, I say that nothing, nobody in the world can make you change your will.

But one doesn’t know how to will it. In fact one doesn’t even want to. These are velleities: “Well, it is like this… It would be good if it were like that… yes, it would be better if it were like that… yes, it would be preferable if it were like that.” But this is not to will. And always there at the back, hidden somewhere in a corner of the brain, is something which is looking on and saying, “Oh, why should I want that? After all one can as well want the opposite.” And to try, you see… Not like that, just wait… But one can always find a thousand excuses to do the opposite. And ah, just a tiny little wavering is enough… pftt… the thing swoops down and there it is. But if one wills, if one really knows that this is the thing, and truly wants this, and if one is oneself entirely concentrated in the will, I say that there is nothing in the world that can prevent one from doing it, from doing it or being obliged to do it. It depends on what it is.

One wants. Yes, one wants, like this (gestures). One wants: “Yes, yes, it would be better if it were like that. Yes, it would be finer also, more elegant.”… But, eh, eh, after all one is a weak creature, isn’t that so? And then one can always put the blame upon something else: “It is the influence coming from outside, it is all kinds of circumstances.”

The breath has passed, you see. You don’t know… something… a moment of unconsciousness… “Oh, I was not conscious.” You are not conscious because you do not accept… And all this because one doesn’t know how to will.

To learn how to will is a very important thing. And to will truly, you must unify your being. In fact, to be a being, one must first unify oneself. If one is pulled by absolutely opposite tendencies, if one spends three-fourths of his life without being conscious of himself and the reasons why he does things, is one a real being? One does not exist. One is a mass of influences, movements, forces, actions, reactions, but one is not a being. One begins to become a being when he begins to have a will. And one can’t have a will unless he is unified.

And when you have a will, you will be able to say, say to the Divine: “I want what You want.” But not before that. Because in order to want what the Divine wants, you must have a will, otherwise you can will nothing at all. You would like to. You would like it very much. You would very much like to want what the Divine wants to do. You don’t possess a will to give to Him and to put at His service. Something like that, gelatinous, like jelly-fish… there… a mass of good wills—and I am considering the better side of things and forgetting the bad wills—a mass of good wills, half-conscious and fluctuating…

The Mother
Questions and Answers (1954): 29 September 1954