The Mother's brief statements on various aspects of spiritual life including some conversations.
Part One consists primarily of brief written statements by the Mother on various aspects of spiritual life. Written between the early 1930s 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. There are also 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. These reports are identified by the symbol § placed at the end. Part Two consists of thirty-two conversations not included elsewhere in the Collected Works. The first six conversations are the earliest recorded conversations of the 1950s' period. About three-fourths of these conversations were spoken in French and appear here in English translation.
One can say with equal exactitude that all is divine and that nothing is divine. Everything depends upon the angle from which one looks at the problem.
Similarly one can say that the Divine is perpetually becoming and also that he is immutable for all eternity.
To deny and to affirm the existence of God are both equally true; but each is true only partially. It is by rising above both affirmation and negation that one can approach the truth.
One can say further that whatever happens in the world is the result of the divine will and also that this will has to be expressed and manifested in a world that contradicts or deforms it. In practice, these two attitudes lead in the one case to peaceful submission to whatever happens, and in the other, on the contrary, to a ceaseless struggle to bring about the victory of what should be. In order to live the truth, one must know how to rise above the two attitudes and combine them.
April 1954
Keep your conviction if it helps you to build your life, but know also that it is only one conviction and that others are as good and true as yours.
Tolerance is full of a sense of superiority; it should be replaced by a total understanding.
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The Truth is not linear but global; it is not successive but simultaneous.Therefore it cannot be expressed in words: it has to be lived.
To acquire a perfect and total consciousness of the world as it is in all its details, one must have, at the outset, no personal reaction to any of these details, no spiritual preference even as to what they ought to be. In other words, a total acceptance with a perfect indifference and neutrality is the indispensable condition for a knowledge by integral identity. If there be a single detail, however small, which escapes the neutrality, that detail escapes also the identification. Therefore, the absence of all personal reaction, for whatever end it may be, even the most exalted, is a primary necessity for a total knowledge.
One can thus say, paradoxically, that we can know a thing only when we are not interested in it, or rather, more exactly, when we are not personally concerned with it.
Every time a god has taken a body, it has always been with the intention of transforming the earth and creating a new world. But till today, he has always had to give up his body without completing his work. And it has always been said that the earth was not ready and that men had not fulfilled the conditions necessary for the work to be achieved.
But it is the imperfection of the incarnate god that makes the perfection of those around him indispensable. If the incarnate god embodied the perfection necessary for the required progress, then this progress would not be conditioned by the state of the surrounding material world. And yet without any doubt, interdependence is absolute in this world of extreme objectification; therefore a certain degree of perfection in the manifestation as
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a whole is indispensable for a higher degree of perfection to be realised in the incarnate divine being. It is the necessity of a certain perfection in the environment that compels human beings to progress; it is the inadequacy of this progress, whatever it may be, that drives the divine being to intensify his endeavour for progress in his body. Thus the two movements of progress are simultaneous and complete each other.
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