WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Freedom

After all, what is freedom? To go about doing whatever you like? But do you know what is "you"? Do you know what is your own will? Do you know what comes from you and what comes from elsewhere? Well, if you had a strong will I could have allowed you to work. But it is not like that; it is only impulses that move you and they are also not your own. They come from outside and make you do all sorts of stupid things. You fall into the hands of the Rakshasas. First they make you do stupid things and then they laugh. If you have a strong will, if your will, your impulses and all else are centred around the psychic, then and then alone can you have some taste of liberty and freedom; otherwise you are a slave.

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 15, p. 026