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WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

The three fundamental obstacles

9 June 1954

Sri Aurobindo wrote that one of the "three fundamental obstacles" which stand in the way of transformation is "Egoism--the mind clinging to its own ideas, the vital preferring its own desires to a true surrender, the physical adhering to its own habits."

"The mind clinging to its own ideas"! See, how many times I have told you this! "The vital preferring its own desires"! And then the mind becomes the accomplice of the vital and gives admirable explanations for keeping the desires by reasoning, explaining, giving justifications also, and all these things are very useful to it. I have heard people say that the best way to get rid of desires is to satisfy them. They make a theory of it. You continue to satisfy your desires and then, naturally, you have others, for desires--well, one replaces another very easily, and you continue to satisfy the new ones under the idea that you are going to get cured. That will take you at least a hundred lives!

And then, finally, habits!... There is a charming phrase here--I appreciated it fully--in which Sri Aurobindo is asked, "What is meant by `the physical adhering to its own habits'?" What are the habits which the physical must throw off? It is this terrible, frightful preference for the food you were used to when you were very young, the food you ate in the country where you were born and about which you feel when you no longer get it that you have not anything at all to eat, that you are miserable.

I don't know, I believe there won't be a dozen people here who have come to the Ashram and eaten the food of the Ashram without saying, "Oh! I am not used to this food. It is very difficult." And how many, how many hundreds of people who prepare their own food because they cannot eat the food of the Ashram! (Mother slams the book down on the stool.) And then, they justify this! So it is here that these ideas begin to come, and they say, "My health! I can't digest well!" All this is only in their head. There is not a word of truth in it. NOT ONE WORD OF TRUTH. It is a perpetual lie in which everybody lives, and in this matter, indeed, I may tell you what I think, you have not advanced any farther than the mass of human beings.

I make an exception for the very, very, very rare ones who are not like that. They could be counted on one's fingers. And all, all justify this, all, all--"Oh, my poor children! They are [new p. 159][old p. 159]not used to eating this food. How shall we manage? They will die because of this change of food!" Well, I, indeed, can give a remedy for that. You take a boat, take a train and go round the world several times, you are obliged to eat in each country the food of that country, and after you have done this several times, you will understand your stupidity... It is a stupidity. A frightful tamas.One is tied up there like this (Mother makes a movement with her hands) to one's gastric habits.