The Mother
with Letters on the Mother

The Mother and the Lower Prakriti

The higher Prakriti is the true nature of the Divine, so it can show Light and Ananda to people who are trying to reach the highest Truth; it is a help to sadhaks. But the lower Prakriti is impure and blind and can only show a limited Truth and a brief Ananda.

Everything comes from the Divine; but the lower Prakriti is the power of the Ignorance—it is not therefore a power of Truth, but only of mixed truth and falsehood. The Mother here stands not for the Power of the Ignorance, but for the Power that has

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come down to bring down the Truth and rise up to the Truth out of the Ignorance.

12 April 1933

In the past I committed one grand mistake—a total subordination of the consciousness of the Purusha to that of the Prakriti alone. There was not that strong drive of the Will to make the Purusha consciousness dynamic and living.

In order to get the dynamic realisation it is not enough to rescue the Purusha from subjection to Prakriti; we must transfer the allegiance of the Purusha from the lower Prakriti with its play of ignorant Forces to the Supreme Divine Shakti, the Mother.

Sometimes when I feel the necessity of standing apart from the play of Prakriti, I also have the counteracting feeling that this would mean a belittlement of the Mother.

It is a mistake to identify the Mother with the lower Prakriti and its mechanism of forces. Prakriti here is a mechanism only which has been put forth for the working of the evolutionary Ignorance. As the ignorant mental, vital or physical being is not itself the Divine, although it comes from the Divine—so the mechanism of Prakriti is not the Divine Mother. No doubt something of her is there in and behind this mechanism maintaining it for its evolutionary purpose—but what she is in herself is not a Shakti of Avidya, but the Divine Consciousness, Power, Light, Para Prakriti to whom we turn for the release and the divine fulfilment.

26 April 1933

X told me that whatever we do, it is the Divine who acts through us. But it seems to me that the Divine cannot be behind all we do, because we do not always do the right thing. Is there any truth in what X says?

There is this much truth that the cosmic Force works out everything and the Cosmic Spirit (Virat Purusha) supports her action. But this cosmic Force is a Power that works under the conditions

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of the Ignorance,—it appears as the lower nature and the lower nature makes you do wrong things. The Divine allows the play of these Forces so long as you do not yourself want anything better. But if you are a sadhak, then you do not accept the play of the lower nature, you turn to the Divine Mother instead, and ask her to work through you instead of the lower Nature. It is only when you have turned entirely in every part of your being to the Divine Mother and to her alone that the Divine will do all actions through you.

27 May 1933

How can I know that the Mother is working in me? I believe that everything is done by the Mother, the good things and the bad, but X believes that very few things are done according to her will. How can I know what is divine and what is undivine?

Why should the Mother do bad things in you? It is Nature that acts for that, not the will of the Mother. You can at least know that anger, jealousy, envy, restlessness, despair, indolence etc. are not divine things and that purity, peace, harmony, zeal, unselfishness etc., are good things and help the growth to the Divine.

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