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WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Wanting perfection

22 September 1954

You have said that one must know that without the divine Grace one is nothing. Then why make such a great effort to know that one is nothing?

Why make such a great effort? In what sense? You want to [old p. 331]make this effort for a personal reason? Is it for your personal satisfaction that you want to make this effort? It is like those [new p. 331]people who say, "But if it is not I who work and if it is not my work, how can I work?" It is the same thing, and yet it is like that. If you feel like that, it means that you still need, need very much, your ego and that if your ego were suddenly taken away from you, you could no longer do anything. If you need a personal motive in order to do something, it means that you are still entirely in your ego, you understand. So long as it is necessary, one has to remain in it. Only, you must not then think that you can go fast. It takes a very long time, sometimes several lives, sometimes a great number of lives. If you need personal reasons for doing things, you have only to wait till you grow out of it and understand that it is not for a personal reason that you must do things.

For example, it is not for a personal reason that you must want perfection, it is not for a personal reason that you must want union with the Divine, it is not for a personal reason that you must want the supramental transformation. If it is for your own good and for a personal reason, well, follow your path; I tell you, you will get there--after a certain number of lives. You see, there is a state in which one can't even understand how one can exist without a personal reason. So long as it is like that... If perchance I were suddenly to take away from you your personal consciousness and reason, you would exist no longer. So you must wait quietly till you can realise within yourself that this is not the true cause of things.

Is there nothing to be done but to wait?

Eh? Nothing to be done but wait? For me!... It is I who mark time waiting for you to be ready! (Mother laughs.)

It is a very delicate problem, because for a very long time if someone does not feel, does not have this personal aspiration to perfect himself, the personal aspiration to enter into contact [old p. 332]with the Divine, the personal aspiration to realise the supramental consciousness, well, he says as you were just saying, [new p. 332]"Then what's the use of doing anything? The only thing is to remain quiet." Well, as long as it is like that, and as long as you have not developed in yourself enough consciousness for it to be otherwise, there is nothing to say and nothing to do. I have only to wait.