Guidance on Education

STUDIES ELSEWHERE

No doubt from the exterior point of View, you will find in England all that you want for learning what human beings generally call knowledge, but from the point of View of Truth and Consciousness, you can find nowhere the atmosphere in which you are living here. Elsewhere you can meet with a religious or a philosophic spirit, but true spirituality, direct contact with the Divine, constant aspiration to realise Him in life, mind and action are in the world realised only by very rare and scattered individuals and not as a living fact behind any university teaching however advanced it may be.

Practically, as far as you are concerned, there will be a great risk of drifting away from the experience you have realised and then you cannot know what will happen to you.

That is all I wanted to say now it is left to you to choose and decide.

22 October 1952

Sweet Mother,

We see many people leaving the Ashram, either to seek a career or to study; and they are mostly those who have been here since childhood. There

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is a kind of uncertainty in our young people when they see others leave here and they say cautiously: "Who knows whether it won't be my turn some day!" I feel there is a force behind all this. What is it?

This uncertainty and these departures are due to the lower nature, which resists the influence of the yogic power and tries to slow down the divine action, not out of ill-will but in order to be sure that nothing is forgotten or neglected in the haste to reach the goal. Few are ready for a total consecration. Many children who have studied here need to come to grips with life before they can be ready for the divine work, and that is why they leave to undergo the test of ordinary life. 

11 November 1964

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(A student had nearly completed his course of studies. Uncertain whether to attend college in the United States or to remain at the Ashram to live and work, he asked the Mother to make the decision.)

If, on the contrary, you aspire at getting ready for the future and the new creation it prepares, remain here and prepare yourself for what is to come.

17 January 1969

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Sweet Mother,

Should those who are much attracted by the pleasures of ordinary life, such as cinemas, restaurants, social life, etc., come to study in our school? For, as a rule, one feels that this is why most of our students go out during the holidays, and everytime they come back they need quite a long time to readjust themselves here

Those who are strongly attached to ordinary life and its agitation should not come here, for they are out of their element and create disorder

But it is difficult to know this before they come, for most of them are very young, and their character is not yet well formed.

But as soon as they are caught in the frenzy of the world, it would be better, for themselves and for others, that they return to their parents and their habits.

Blessings.

*

Sweet Mother,

For the students who know that they will go away from here after their studies, is it not necessary for them to go out from time to time in order to be able to adjust themselves later to ordinary life?

There is no difficulty in adapting to ordinary life, it is bondage to which one is subjected from birth, for all carry it in themselves by atavism, and even those who are born to be freed need to struggle seriously

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and continuously to get rid of this atavism in order to be truly free.

Blessings.

*

Sweet Mother,

What do you expect of those students who are going to leave after their studies here? Surely there must he a great difference between them and ordinary people. What is the difference?

Often, as soon as they find themselves in the midst of ordinary life, many of them realise the difference and regret what they have lost. Few of them have the courage to give up the comforts they find in their ordinary surroundings, but even the others no longer face life with the same unconsciousness as those who have never been in contact with the Ashram.

Blessings.

18 November 1969

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