The Mother
with Letters on the Mother

Studying Occultism with Max Théon

I should like to know something about Théon: what role has he played in this new manifestation of yours?

Théon was merely the Mother's guru in occultism—he had some idea of the aim to be achieved, but got much of it wrong. Moreover what was true came from his wife and was not originally his.

In your letter this morning you say, "There are some who get a complete control in sleep." This sentence evoked a doubt in me: "If ordinary people—Coué's patients, for example—could make their suggestions effective and cure themselves wonderfully, why is the will of people here so weak even when the Divine is here?" My answer was that those people had only a simple objective and not the aim of a complex change of consciousness; there was no pressure from above and no consequent resistance from below.

When I spoke of some, I was thinking not of people in the Asram but of occultists who make such things their main method. The Mother herself was taught to do it by a great occultist under whom she first practised these things. As to Coué, your answer was the right one. Coué's work was on the mental and vital level and to that there is only a very minor opposition from the vital world because it does not seriously endanger their rule.

31 October 1933