At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo

26 October 1932

MYSELF: Sweet Mother, shake me up again and again until I am able to succeed in this matter. I have experienced many times that for the first few days after a new experience I always happen to be very wakeful about what I experience, but slowly, if I am not sufficiently earnest about keeping what I gain, it gets lost behind the veil of inferior, ordinary or clouded movements of vision. So I pray shake me up each time (whatever way you like) so that I may be able to keep these things present in my consciousness until they are removed.

Now kindly tell me afresh about my tea or food with others. I have found out that I am quite fond of tea; only, I was not admitting it. May I know what I should do if anybody offers tea or asks me to take food?

SRI AUROBINDO: AS to taking tea or food with others, you must always remember that to be governed by these ideas is not at all an ideal condition, but if you have the impulse and are not able easily and naturally to reject it, you can take on condition you scrupulously inform the Mother both of the act and of the movement and state of mind accompanying it. Also often the desire may not be yours, but may come on you from outside, imposed on you silently with conscious suggestions by others; you must learn to see when it is like that and then you must reject it. Your aspiration must be for an inner change so that there will be no longer any need to indulge in the desires, because they will no longer have a hold on you. You must learn to watch yourself and know what is the true nature and source of the movement in you and report them carefully — as in fact you had begun to do when you first had the psychic opening and could see the movements in you or many of them at least very clearly.

(26.10.32)