White Roses

07 February 1961

You ask me what you must do. It would be better to ask what you must be, because the circumstances and activities in life have not much importance. What is important is our way of reaching them.

Human nature is such that when you concentrate on your body you fall ill, when you concentrate on your heart and feelings you become unhappy, when you concentrate on the mind you get bewildered.

There are two ways of getting out of this precarious condition. One is very arduous; it is a severe and continuous tapasya. It is the way of the strong who are predestined for it.

The other is to find something worth concentrating upon that diverts your attention from your small personal self—The most effective is a big ideal, but there are innumerable things that enter into this category. Most commonly people choose marriage because it is the most easily available. To love somebody and to love children makes you busy and compels you to forget a little your own self. But it is rarely successful, because love is not a common thing.

Others turn to art, others to science, some choose a social or a political life, etc., etc.

But here also all depends on the sincerity and the endurance with which is followed the chosen path. Because here also there are difficulties and obstacles to surmount.

So, in life nothing comes without an effort and struggle.

And if you are not ready for the effort and struggle, then it is better to accept the fact that life will be dull and unsatisfactory and submit quietly to this fact.

The Mother, Mother's Agenda — 1961: February 7, 1961