WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Sweet Mother,

Why has the Divine made His path so difficult? He can make it easier if He wants, can't He?

First of all, one should know that the intellect, the mind, can understand nothing of the Divine, neither what He does nor how He does it and still less why He does it. To know something of the Divine, one has to rise above thought and enter into the psychic consciousness, the consciousness of the soul, or into the spiritual consciousness.

Those who have had the experience have always said that the difficulties and sufferings of the path are not real, but a creation of human ignorance, and that as soon as one gets out of this ignorance one also gets out of the difficulties, to say nothing of the inalienable state of bliss in which one dwells as soon as one is in conscious contact with the Divine.

So according to them, the question has no real basis and cannot be posed.

21 September 1959

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Sweet Mother,

You have written that to enter into conscious contact with one's psychic being, one must "aspire to know it and feel it, open oneself to receive its influence, and take great care... to follow it very scrupulously and sincerely". But, Sweet Mother, I don't know how to do this. I find it easier when I think of you, try to enter into contact with you and open to you.

This too is a way which is certainly as good as the other. [new p. 226]

There are many ways to attain self-realisation, and each one must choose the way that comes to him most naturally.

But each way has its demands in order to be truly effective.

In thinking of me, you must think not only of the outer person. but of what she represents, what stands behind her. For [old p. 228]you must never forget that the outer person is only the form and symbol of an eternal Reality, and through the physical appearance, it is to this higher Reality that you must turn. The physical being cannot become truly expressive of the eternal Reality until it is completely transformed by the supramental manifestation. And until then, it is through it that you must find the Truth.

22 September 1959

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 16, pp. 227-228