Questions and Answers (1953)

15 April 1953

You have written: "Do not try to pull at the forces of the Divine."

Questions and Answers 1929-1931 (14 April 1929)

Can one pull the divine forces by violence?

Yes, if you call very strongly, if you aspire very strongly, you may pull down a large number of forces into you, but you will not be able to digest them, assimilate them. It is the same thing as with food; when you swallow all that you have at hand in one gulp, that causes indigestion, it chokes you. You cannot bear it. So if you want to go fast, if you hurry, you send a kind of call and pull towards you too great a number of forces, forces which otherwise would have come less quickly.

Just a little hidden ambition is enough to... There are people who do not do Yoga for the sake of Yoga but to obtain a result, to have powers, to know one thing or another.

But then that means they are not sincere? How is it then that the Divine responds?

You think that the Divine has a small human judgment! You must not project human ideas upon the Divine.

If you are not sincere, what happens is that your own consciousness is veiled. Take, for example, a man who tells lies; his consciousness gets veiled and after a while, he can no longer distinguish falsehood from truth. He sees images and calls them truth. One who is wicked loses his aspiration, loses his capacity of realisation, loses all possibility of understanding, feeling and realising. That is the punishment.

One puts veils, obstacles between oneself and the Divine.

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That is how one punishes oneself. The Divine does not withdraw; one makes oneself incapable of receiving him. The Divine does not distribute in this way rewards and punishments, it is not at all like that.

When one is insincere, when one has bad will, when one is a traitor, one punishes oneself instantaneously. Insincere people lose even the little bit of consciousness that would make them know that they are wicked; they become as though unconscious. They end up by not knowing anything at all any longer.

What is it that you call "the basis of equanimity in the external being"?

Questions and Answers 1929-1931 (14 April 1929)

It is good health, a solid body, well poised; when one does not have the nerves of a little girl that are shaken by the least thing; when one sleeps well, eats well.... When one is quite calm, well balanced, very quiet, one has a solid basis and can receive a large number of forces.

If anyone among you has received spiritual forces, forces of the Divine Ananda, for example, he knows from experience that unless he is in good health he cannot contain them, keep them. He begins to weep and cry, gets restless to expend what he has received. He must laugh and talk and gesticulate, otherwise he cannot keep them, he feels stifled. And so by laughing, weeping, moving about he throws out what he has received.

To be well balanced, to be able to absorb what one receives, one must be very quiet, very calm. One must have a solid basis, good health. One must have a very solid basis. That is very important.

What is the difference between outer equality and the equality of the soul?

The equality of the soul is a psychological thing. It is the power

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to bear all happenings, good or bad, without being sad, discouraged desperate, upset. Whatever happens, you remain serene, peaceful.

The other is the equality in the body. It is not psychological, it is something material; to have a physical poise, to receive forces without being troubled.

The two are equally necessary if one wants to progress on the path. And other things still. For example, a mental poise; such that all possible ideas, even the most contradictory, may come from all sides without one's being troubled. One can see them and put each in its place. That is mental poise.

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