A collection of short prose pieces on the Mother and her four great Aspects - Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati, along with 'Letters on the Mother'.
Integral Yoga
This volume consists of two separate but related works: 'The Mother', a collection of short prose pieces on the Mother, and 'Letters on the Mother', a selection of letters by Sri Aurobindo in which he referred to the Mother in her transcendent, universal and individual aspects. In addition, the volume contains Sri Aurobindo's translations of selections from the Mother's 'Prières et Méditations' as well as his translation of 'Radha's Prayer'.
THEME/S
While working, I suddenly felt a pressure of weakness, a depression in the chest. When I became conscious of it, I opened myself and called the Mother's force. After a few minutes it disappeared. Was it the divine strength that supported me in some mysterious way, or was it the inherent strength of the body that awakened?
The inherent strength of the body does not do things like that. It is the Mother's force that does it, when one calls and opens oneself. Even people who never did Yoga and are conscious of nothing, get cured like that without knowing the reason or feeling the way in which it was done. The Force comes from above or in descending it envelops and comes from without inside or it comes out from inside after descending there. When you are conscious of the play of the Forces, then you feel the working.
5 May 1933
When I got up from sleep, I found that a cold had already entered my head. My consciousness brought down the Mother's Force and the cold disappeared. Formerly the consciousness used to say passively, "Let the Force work it out", but the effect was not the same. I want to know if the method adopted for the Force is quite the right way.
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It is quite the right way. It is very good that you are learning to use the Force.
27 August 1934
Every time I receive the Mother's touch at Pranam, I feel a sense of strong nourishment, even in the physical being. When she presses her fingers on the opening point of the spinal cord at the top of my head, I feel something subtle coming in which makes my inner being overflow with joy. This sense of nourishment (as if a new substance is being created within) is so strong that even when I am unwell and weak, it completely dominates with its sense of joy and security.
As you suffer from ill-health, Mother presses the nourishment of the divine strength and health into your physical being, renewing its substance with that.
4 November 1934
If we want the Mother to help someone outside with her Force, but we give her wrong information, does the help she sends miss its mark or does it go automatically where it should? Yesterday I suppose the Mother acted before X gave the wrong information about my uncle, but if she had been misinformed from the start, what would have happened?
Yes, Mother had worked before, but wrong information coming across the working creates a confusion so that it is no longer possible to say what is the result of the working. Of course if the wrong information came at the beginning, it would be still worse. It is very necessary that information given should be correct.
10 June 1935
I remember the Mother once saying that there is hardly a disease that cannot be cured by Yoga. I was surprised, much surprised, and thought, "What about cancer, then, the most deadly enemy of present civilisation? Can it be cured by Yoga?" What is your opinion?
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Of course it can, but on condition of faith or openness or both. Even a mental suggestion can cure cancer—with luck, of course, as is shown by the case of the woman operated on unsuccessfully for cancer, but the doctors lied and told her it had succeeded. Result, cancer symptoms all ceased and she died many years afterwards of another illness altogether.
11 October 1935
I had a heated but pleasant discussion with X about the action of the healing force. He argued: "Now that the healing force has arrived here, it is likely to operate in other parts of the world and any Tom, Dick and Harry can wield it even if not spiritually developed."
It may operate but not through every T, D and H, at first at least.
I contended that the healing force will act only if a man is open to the Mother in some way, through devotion, faith or some kind of rapport. I also said that most probably the healing force can act only if the healer is directly in physical contact with her. Certain conditions are necessary for cure. What do you say?
At first it will be no doubt like that if it is to be the true Force, but when once it is settled in the earth-consciousness a more general use of supraphysical force for healing may become possible.
It is not always necessary either that the rapport you speak of should be conscious. Coué for instance was in rapport with the Mother without knowing it—she told me of his getting something of the force and of the beginning of his work long before he was known to anyone (of course she did not know his name but she described him and his work in such a way that the identification was evident).
3 February 1936
X writes that her hip-joint pain is gone and wants me to thank the Mother for removing it. She calculates that her first letter to me mentioning the pain must have reached me on Thursday and her hip pain almost vanished miraculously at eight in the
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evening that day. But I did not write to the Mother about X's complaint until Friday. Could it be that when X's letter entered the Ashram atmosphere a response came?
Y spoke to the Mother about X's pain on the same day—so it is not necessary to suppose an automatic effect of the letter itself. But such an automatic effect does often take place either immediately after writing or when the letter enters the Mother's atmosphere.
17 April 1936
I generally rely in my practice on medicines impregnated with the Mother's force. X is now convinced that there is nothing of any medicine left after potentisation except Homeopathic philosophy (the Mother's force). What is your opinion?
I never have opinions—except for the purpose of writing or conversation. To the eye of the Yogin all opinions are true and all are false. It is only realities and results that matter. The Mother's force is a reality and the cure is a result—the medicine is perhaps a phenomenal link between the two.
2 June 1936
It was precisely out of solicitude for you because the suffering of insomnia and the spasms had been excessive that I proposed to you to take the help of treatment. It is a fact of my experience that when the resistance in the body is too strong and persistent, it can help to take some aid of physical means as an instrumentation for the Force to work more directly on the body itself; for the body then feels itself supported against the resistance from both sides, by means both physical as well as supraphysical. The Mother's force can work through both together.
1 September 1936
In the last two weeks there has been no improvement in my nervous trouble. I had the belief that the Mother's look and grace at the Sunday Pranam would ease my situation, but it has not. Shall I undergo medical treatment or rely solely on
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the Mother's grace and influence which I shall receive at the Sunday Pranam?
Sunday Pranams are not the only way of receiving Force, one can do it at any time by opening to receive in a quiet concentration. If you can do that, any illness can be cured either at once or, if it is chronic, in time. That should be done in any case. But where there is not the full openness, medical treatment can help as an auxiliary. If you like to consult X, he may be able to understand better your case than by second hand and you can see whether you would care to try any remedies he suggests.
28 March 1937
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