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WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

20 July 1955

Mother, is there any difference in the experience when one attains the Impersonal by his own effort and when he attains it by surrendering to the Mother?

(Long silenc)

Yes, there is a difference.

(Silence)

There would not be a difference, perhaps, if the goal to be reached was the impersonal Divine and if one wanted to be identified and united with the impersonal Divine and dissolve in that. I think that in this case there wouldn't be any difference. But if the aspiration is to realise what is beyond, we said, what Sri Aurobindo has called the supramental Reality, then here there's a difference, not only a difference in the path, for that's quite evident (it depends on different temperaments, besides), but if someone can truly know what surrender is and total trust, then it is infinitely easier, three-fourths of the worry and difficulties are over.

Now it is true that it can be said that one may find a very special difficulty in this surrender. This is true, that's why I said that it depends absolutely on the temperament. But it's not only [old p. 251]that. If you like it may be compared to the difference between [new p. 247]something linear which terminates in a point and a spherical path which terminates in a totality; a totality, that is, nothing would be excluded from the totality. Each one, individually, can reach the Origin and the utmost of his being; the origin and the utmost of his being are one with the Eternal, Infinite and Supreme. Therefore, if you reach this origin, you reach the Supreme. But you reach there by a line (don't take my words for an adequate description, you know, it's only to make myself understood). It is a linear realisation which ends in a point, and this point is united with the Supreme--your utmost possibility. By the other path it is a realisation which may be called spherical, because that gives best the idea of something containing all, and the realisation is no longer a point but a totality from which nothing is excluded.

I can't speak of the "whole" and the "part", because there's no division any longer. It's not like that, it's not that. But it is the quality of the approach, so to say, which is different. It is like saying that a perfect identification with one drop of water would make you know what the ocean is and what a perfect identification not only with the ocean but with all possible oceans. And yet with a perfect identification with one drop of water one could know the ocean in its essence, and in the other way one could know the ocean not only in its essence but in its totality. Something like that... I am trying to express it... It is very difficult but it's like that, there is something, there is a difference... It could be said that all that was individualised preserves at once the virtue of individuality and what might be called in a certain sense the limitations necessary to this individuality, when one relies only on his personal strength. In the other case one can benefit by the virtues of individuality without being under its limitations. This is almost philosophy, so it's no longer very clear. But (laughing) that's all I can say.