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WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Youth
11 January 1956

The definition of youth: we can say that youth is constant growth and perpetual progress--and the growth of capacities, possibilities, of the field of action and range of consciousness, and progress in the working out of details.

Naturally, someone told me, "So one is no longer young when one stops growing?" I said, "Of course, I don't imagine that one grows perpetually! But one can grow in another way than purely physically."

That is to say, in human life there are successive periods. As you go forward, something comes to an end in one form, and it changes its form.... Naturally, at present, we come to the top of the ladder and come down again; but that's really a shame, it shouldn't be like that, it's a bad habit. But when we have finished growing up, when we have reached a height we could consider as that which expresses us best, we can transform this force for growth into a force which will perfect our body, make it stronger and stronger, more and more healthy, with an ever greater power of resistance, and we shall practise physical training in order to become a model of physical beauty. And then, at the same time, we shall slowly begin and seek the perfection of character, of consciousness, knowledge, powers, and finally of the divine Realisation in its fullness of the marvellously good and true, and of His perfect Love.

There you are. And this must be continuous. And when a certain level of consciousness has been reached, when this consciousness has been realised in the material world and you have transformed the material world in the image of this consciousness, well, you will climb yet one more rung and go to another consciousness--and you will begin again. Voilà.

But this is not for lazy folk. It's for people who like progress. Not for those who come and say, "Oh! I have worked hard in my life, now I want to rest, will you please give me a place in the Ashram?" I tell them, "Not here. This is not a place for rest because you have worked hard, this is a place for working even harder than before." So, formerly, I used to send them to Ramana Maharshi:\note{A sage of South India who left his body in April 1950. He founded a traditional ashram for meditation and contemplation.} "Go there, you will enter into meditation and you will get rest." Now it is not possible, so I send them to the Himalayas; I tell them,"Go and sit before the eternal snows! That will do you good."

That's all, then.