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WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

28 November 1956

"When we have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge. Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar.

"When we have passed beyond willings, then we shall have Power. Effort was the helper; Effort is the bar.

"When we have passed beyond enjoyings, then we shall have Bliss. Desire was the helper; Desire is the bar.

"When we have passed beyond individualising, then we shall be real Persons. Ego was the helper; Ego is the bar.

"When we have passed beyond humanity, then we shall be the Man. The Animal was the helper; the Animal is the bar."

Thoughts and Glimpses, Cent. Vol. 16, p. 377

Sweet Mother, what kind of a state is it in which one has passed beyond all enjoyings?

Well, it is a desireless state in which one lives--as Sri Aurobindo explains later--in an Ananda which has no cause, which does not depend on any circumstances, inner or outer, which is a permanent state, independent of the circumstances of life, causeless. One is in Ananda because one is in Ananda. And in fact it is simply because one has become aware of the divine Reality.

But one cannot feel the Ananda unless one has become desireless. If one has desires, all one feels is just pleasures and enjoyments, but that is not Ananda. Ananda has an altogether different nature and can only manifest in the being when the desires are abolished. So long as one is a being of desire, one cannot feel the Ananda; even were a force of Ananda to descend, it would immediately be falsified by the presence of desires.

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 08, pp. 367-69