Questions and Answers (1957-1958)
Ce volume comporte les réponses de la Mère aux questions des enfants de l’Ashram et des disciples, et ses commentaires sur deux œuvres de Sri Aurobindo, Aperçus et Pensées et La Manifestation supramentale sur la Terre, et sur les six derniers chapitres de La Vie Divine.
This volume contains the conversations of the Mother in 1957 and 1958 with the members of her Wednesday evening French class, held at the Ashram Playground. The class was composed of sadhaks of the Ashram and students of the Ashram’s school. The Mother usually began by reading out a passage from a French translation of one of Sri Aurobindo’s writings; she then commented on it or invited questions. For most of 1957 the Mother discussed the second part of 'Thoughts and Glimpses' and the essays in 'The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth'. From October 1957 to November 1958 she took up two of the final chapters of 'The Life Divine'. These conversations comprise the last of the Mother’s 'Wednesday classes', which began in 1950.
Entretiens - 1957-1958
1 October 1958
Sweet Mother, what is an ideal of moral perfection?
There are thousands of moral perfections. Everyone has his own ideal of moral perfection.
What is usually called moral perfection is to have all the qualities that are considered moral: to have no defects, never to make a mistake, never to err, to be always what one conceives to be the best, to have all the virtues—that is, to realise the highest mental conception: to take all the qualities—there are many, aren't there?—all the virtues, all that man has conceived to be the most beautiful, most noble, most true, and to live that integrally, to let all one's actions be guided by that, all the movements, all the reactions, all the feelings, all... That is living a moral ideal of perfection. It is the summit of man's mental evolution.
Not many people do it... but still... there have been some and there still are. This is what men usually take for the spiritual life. When they meet a man of this type, they say, "Oh! He is a great spiritual being." He may be a great saint, he may be a great sage but he is not a spiritual being.
And yet it is already very good and very difficult to realise this. And there comes a time in the inner evolution when it is very necessary to try to realise it. It is obviously infinitely higher than to be still guided by all one's impulses and ignorant outer reactions. It is to be already in a way the master of one's nature. It is even a stage through which one has to pass, for it is the stage when one begins to be the master of one's ego, when one is ready to let it fall away—it is still there but sufficiently weakened to be nearing its end. This is the last stage before crossing over to the other side, and certainly, if anyone imagines that he can go over to the other side without passing through this stage, he
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would risk making a great mistake, and of taking for perfect freedom a perfect weakness with regard to his lower nature.
It is almost impossible to pass from the mental being—even the most perfect and most remarkable—to the true spiritual life without having realised this ideal of moral perfection for a certain period of time, however brief it may be. Many people try to take a short-cut and want to assert their inner freedom before having overcome all the weaknesses of the outer nature; they are in great danger of deluding themselves. The true spiritual life, complete freedom, is something much higher than the highest moral realisations, but one must take care that this so called freedom is not an indulgence and a contempt for all rules.
One must go higher, always higher, higher; nothing less than what the highest of humanity has achieved.
One must be capable of being spontaneously all that humanity has conceived to be the highest, the most beautiful, the most perfect, the most disinterested, the most comprehensive, the best, before opening one's spiritual wings and looking at all that from above as something which still belongs to the individual self, in order to enter into true spirituality, that which has no limits, which lives in an integral way Infinity and Eternity.
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