The Mother
with Letters on the Mother

Personal Effort and the Mother's Help

The Mother's help is always there for those who are willing to receive it. But you must be conscious of your vital nature, and the vital nature must consent to change. It is no use merely observing that it is unwilling and that, when thwarted, it creates depression in you. Always the vital nature is not at first willing and always when it is thwarted or asked to change, it creates this depression by its revolt or refusal of consent. You have to insist till it recognises the truth and is willing to be transformed and to accept the Mother's help and grace. If the mind is sincere and the psychic aspiration complete and true, the vital can always be made to change.

15 July 1932

As for the feeling of people that there must be something bad in you, it does not arise merely from your relations with X. The Mother and I do not speak of "good" and "bad" in this way; we look only at what helps or hinders the sadhana. There is nothing in you that is not in many other sadhaks. What makes people hesitate to help you is your subjection to vital moods—all this weeping, self-starvation, uncertain temper; your unsteadiness—for today you accept help, tomorrow you reject it; your want of

Page 301

trust in others—which you have often expressed in your letters; your quickness to take offence, your readiness to suspect people's motives, especially in their behaviour towards you. Others have these faults, but they try to control them. You, when a mood like these comes upon you, seem to yield to it and let it have free course.

If you want to get on in your sadhana and if you want people to feel comfortable with you and ready to help you, you must get rid of these vital moods and defects—you must put a control on yourself and try to change. The Mother's Force is there to help you, but there must be your active consent and cooperation, your own steady will and endeavour.

1 November 1933

I cannot do anything myself so long as the inertia in me is so strong. May I ask, what does the Mother mean to do with the inertia in me?

If Mother's "doing" with the inertia were sufficient, it would have been done long ago and also the supramental down in you. The question is not what the Mother is going to do with it but what you are going to do with it.

29 November 1936

These ideas are wrong suggestions that you must throw away. There is no reason why you should be able to do nothing in this life or all should be postponed to another. It is in this life that you have been called and are to reach the Divine. The Mother has not left you to yourself. But I think it is advisable that you should spend some time daily in concentration to keep the conscious connection and also write more often; if not every day, yet every second or third day.

17 December 1936

It is not that I want you to do all by your own strength; the Mother's force is there. I should like you however to persist in meditation and the endeavour to be quiet within; even if at

Page 302

present there is no definite self-understanding or experience, this is the way to open the nature to them; we will try to do the rest for you.

20 December 1936