The Mother's brief written statements on various aspects of spiritual life including some spoken comments.
This volume consists primarily of brief written statements by the Mother on various aspects of spiritual life. Written between the late 1920s and the early 1970s, the statements have been compiled from her public messages, private notes, and correspondence with disciples. About two-thirds of them were written in English; the rest were written in French and appear here in English translation. The volume also contains a small number of spoken comments, most of them in English. Some are tape-recorded messages; others are reports by disciples that were later approved by the Mother for publication.
Be grateful for all ordeals, they are the shortest way to the Divine.
The joy one experiences in living for an ideal is the sure compensation for all the difficulties of the path.
Have faith in your destiny and your road will be lit.
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For each one and for the whole world anything becomes useful if it helps to find the Divine.
The grace and protection are always with you. When in any inner or outer difficulty or trouble, do not allow it to oppress you; take refuge with the Divine Force that protects.
If you do that always with faith and sincerity, you will find something opening in you which will always remain calm and peaceful in spite of all superficial disturbances.
3 February 1931
Those who are sincere I can help and turn easily towards the Divine. But where there is insincerity I can do very little. And as I have told you already, we have only to be patient and wait for things to become better. But surely I do not see why you should get disturbed and in what way your disturbance would help things to be better. You know by experience that there is only one way of getting out of confusion and obscurity; it is to remain very quiet and peaceful, firm in equanimity and to let the storm pass away. Rise above these petty quarrels and difficulties and wake up once more in the light and the power of my love which never leaves you.
All unpleasantness should be faced with the spirit of Samata.
24 November 1932
It is good to turn a difficulty into an occasion for a new progress.
13 March 1935
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Surely you could not believe that sadhana could be done without facing some difficulties. As your aspiration is sincere, whatever was in the subconscient standing in the way of the Divine Realisation, has come to the surface in order to be transformed. There is nothing there to make you sad or depressed—on the contrary you ought to rejoice at these occasions to make progress and never forget to lean for support and help on my love, force and blessings.
15 December 1936
If you keep your faith unshaken and your heart always open to me, then all difficulties, however great, will contribute to the greater perfection of your being.
19 April 1937
Try to withdraw from your outward circumstances which alone can be upset by such things and find the peace inside which remains always untouched.
14 November 1937
Always when one faces difficulties and overcomes them it begins a new spiritual opening and victory.
7 December 1937
When you want to make a progress, the difficulty you wished to conquer increases tenfold in importance and intensity in your consciousness. You have only to persevere. That is all; it will pass away.
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In spite of all difficulties I go on with the belief that if I hold on, the difficult times will go. If I accept defeat, then I shall go.
This is the right attitude. Stick to it and you shall conquer.
Sadhana is always difficult and everybody has conflicting elements in his nature and it is difficult to make the vital give up its ingrained habits.
That is no reason for giving up sadhana. One has to keep up the central aspiration which is always sincere and go on steadily in spite of temporary failures; and it is then inevitable that the change will come.
With my love and blessings.
3 May 1939
What do obstacles matter? We shall always go forward.
That doesn't matter! The difficulties are there for the pleasure of surmounting them.
Go forward, keep confident and all will be well.
I have always the same thing to say: quiet confidence and courage is the only way of getting out of difficulties.
Perfect mental balance: indispensable for facing the difficulties of life.
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To conquer the difficulties there is more power in a smile than in a sigh.
27 December 1941
Ordeals are there for everybody. It is the way in which one faces them that makes the difference. Some have a smile, some make a fuss.
Whenever things become difficult we must remain quiet and silent.
11 April 1954
Whatever is the difficulty, if we keep truly quiet the solution will come.
8 August 1954
The errors can become stepping-stones, the blind gropings can be changed into conquests.
8 December 1954
To keep steady one's aspiration and to look at oneself with an absolute sincerity are the sure means to overcome all obstacles.
10 May 1955
All difficulties are there to test the endurance of the faith.
13 June 1956
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Look life in the face from the soul's inner strength and become master of circumstances.
19 September 1956
May the Divine Mother give me the necessary force so that the following prayer of mine may become effective.
As a son of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, my greatest interest is in Truth. Let not the mountain of pride hidden in Nature distort in any way the movements of this Truth—the Glorious Sun. Lift me above smallness.
Do not let the view of the part hide the perception of the whole, and the details of one step obstruct the concentration on the Goal.
Blessings.
14 May 1963
I would like to pray to the Mother to kindly explain to me the meaning of the dramatising of everything by the vital nature.
What I meant is that life is always full of difficulties, hardships and sufferings; this is a common fact and each one has to face his own lot of them. The only way to face them properly is to endure and to put one's interest, hope and faith in the inner life and consciousness turned towards the Divine, aspiring for the Divine and capable of receiving the Divine's Force and Help. But often the vital being or some part of it takes a kind of perverse pleasure in giving a dramatic importance to each and every difficulty and thus cuts the contact with the inner being and the Divine's Force.
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This bad habit which is common to many people must be stopped and then each one can and will feel that he receives very concretely the help he needs to go through the ordeals of life.
2 February 1964
Our ordeals never exceed our capacity of resistance.*
The difficulties are for the strong, and help to make them stronger.
Persevere and you will conquer. You can be sure that my help, force and blessings are always with you.
With love.
12 July 1966
The ordeals are for everybody―it is the way of meeting them that differs according to individuals.
With love and blessings.
21 April 1967
The only way out of your difficulty is to find the psychic being and to live entirely in its consciousness.
Life upon earth as it is now is full of miseries and any sensitive heart is full of sorrow because of that. To get in contact with the Divine Consciousness and to live in its mercy, its strength and its light is the only truly effective way to get out of this difficulty and suffering and by uniting with the psychic we can obtain this condition.
My help and blessings are with you for this purpose.
6 April 1969
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All difficulties are solved by taking rest in the Divine's arms, for these arms are always opened with love to shelter us.
When everything goes wrong, one must know how to remember that God is all-powerful.
The Divine is present among us. When we remember Him always He gives us the strength to face all circumstances with perfect peace and equanimity. Become aware of the Presence and your difficulties will disappear.
7 November 1970
To live within, in constant aspiration towards the Divine—that renders us capable of regarding life with a smile and remaining in peace whatever the external circumstances.
Live within, do not be shaken by external circumstances.
26 July 1971
To live only for the Divine: this means to have overcome all the difficulties of the individual life.
He who lives to serve the Truth is not affected by outward circumstances.
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