The Mother’s Force
“Whatever one gets from the Mother, comes from myself also — there is no difference. So, too, if I give anything, it is by the Mother’s Force that it goes to the sadhak.”
— SRI AUROBINDO
Q. How can we open to The Mother’s Force and feel the Presence of Her Force every moment? How can we be one with the Mother’s Force every moment?
What is Mother’s Force?
A. You often speak of the Mother’s Force. What is it?
Sri Aurobindo: It is the Divine Force which works to remove the ignorance and change the nature into the divine nature. 18 June 1933
Why do I feel that it is I who do this thing or that? For is it not true that it is the Mother’s force which does everything in us?
Sri Aurobindo: When I speak of the Mother’s force, I do not speak of the force of Prakriti which carries on things in the Ignorance but of the higher Force of the Divine that descends from above to transform the nature. (4 August 1933)
The Mother’s Force is equal for all
When I look at the way the Mother deals with people, I feel that she does not love them equally in an outward way. Is this feeling true?
Sri Aurobindo: The Mother’s Force is working in all alike, according to their capacity they will receive it and it will work in them; if there is any difference, it is their own nature that makes it. 6 February 1933
Presence of The Mother’s Force
Whatever difficulties still remain, be sure that they will be surmounted. There is no need for the outer being to be nervous — the Mother’s Force and the devotion within you will be sufficient to overcome all that stands in the way. — Sri Aurobindo
A Special Force in Action
You seem to have written to X that there is a special force for the work and, if it is brought down, its action need not remain a separate thing from meditation. What is this special force for work?
It is the Mother’s force, naturally.
16 May 1936
The Mother’s Force Awakens the Inner Consciousness
When a sadhak does his work with the right attitude and calls down the Mother’s Force into him freely and directly, how does it act to remove his defects?
Sri Aurobindo: It acts by awakening the inner consciousness gradually or swiftly, by replacing the principle of ego-service by the principle of service of the Divine, by making him watch his actions and see his own defects and pushing him to rectify them, by establishing a connection between his consciousness and the Mother’s Consciousness, by preparing his nature to be taken up more and more by the Mother’s Consciousness and Force, by giving him experiences which make him ready for the major experiences of Yoga, by stimulating the growth of his psychic being, by opening him to the Mother as the universal Being etc. etc. Naturally it acts differently in different persons.
Rely on The Mother’s Force
- Why Silent Reliance on The Mother’s Force is Essential?
My mind is not yet quiet and that is why I am not getting any joy in my sadhana, any experience or realisation — nothing at all. This makes me very sad and unhappy. May the Mother bestow on me the flow of Peace and help me to open my closed heart-centre. The Mother: There has always been too much reliance on the action of your own mind and will — that is why you cannot progress. If you could once get the habit of silent reliance on the power of the Mother — not merely calling it in to support your own effort — the obstacle would diminish and eventually disappear. (14 July 1929)
2. Do not Rely on anything else, except the Mother’s Force You should not rely on anything else alone, however helpful it may seem, but chiefly, primarily, fundamentally on the Mother’s Force. The Sun and the Light may be a help, and will be if it is the true light and the true Sun, but cannot take the place of the Mother’s Force. (28 May 1930)
3. Always Allow the Mother’s Force to work in you, slowly or rapidly — Never Doubt or Distrust Q. If one gives full and constant consent to the Mother’s working, how can the attempt of other beings to enter into one succeed?
If you give consent to the Mother’s working alone, then it cannot.
It is not always an attempt. One receives the thoughts and feelings of the others without any attempt or intention of theirs, because they are in the atmosphere. (31 July 1933)
The depression has come upon you because you accepted the thought that you were not doing what you should and not using the chance Mother had given you. Such thoughts should never be indulged for they open the door to depression and depression opens the door to the old movements; they used to come formerly from the idea that you were unfit, now it is this idea that you are not doing all you ought to do. As a matter of fact you have been progressing with a surprising rapidity for the last days at a rate that we ourselves did not expect from you. But whether the progress is rapid or slow, the attitude should always be an entire faith and reliance on the Mother; just as you do not think that the progress was the result of your own effort or merit, but of your taking the right attitude of reliance and the Mother’s force working, so you should not think that any slowness or difficulty was due to your own demerit but only seek to keep this attitude of reliance and let the Mother’s Force work, — slowly or rapidly does not matter.
The dream was again one of these experiences of test or ordeal on the vital plane which you have been having — here it was the test of temptation by power, comfort, riches, attractive things, as it was formerly the test by fear, difficulty, trouble. The evidence of all these tests is that your inner being is perfectly ready and free to go unwaveringly to the goal. There is nothing there that is wrong or defective.
Keep the reliance steady in your heart and do not allow self-distrust, depression or sadness to invade you from outside. 14 November 1935 ***
4. Have faith and Bhakti on Her Force
Q. How can I do Yoga when I know nothing about your Yoga? I do not even know what to do.
Sri Aurobindo: There are two ways of doing Yoga, one by knowledge and one’s own efforts, the other by reliance on the Mother. In the last way one has to offer one’s mind and heart and all to the Mother for her Force to work on it, call her in all difficulties, have faith and bhakti. At first it takes time, often a long time, for the consciousness to be prepared in this way and during that time many difficulties can come up, but if one perseveres a time comes when all is ready, the Mother’s Force opens the consciousness fully to the Divine, then all that must develop develops within, spiritual experience comes and with it the knowledge and union with the Divine. (9 April 1937)
***
You say after several years you have not changed your nature. I only wish the external nature were so easy to transform that it could be done in a few years. You forget also that the real problem — to get rid of the pervading ego in this nature — is a task you have seriously tackled only a short time ago. And it is not in a few months that that can be done. Even the best sadhaks find after many experiences and large changes on the higher planes that here much remains to be done. How do you expect to get rid of it at once unlike everybody else?
A Yoga like this needs patience, because it means a change both of the radical motives and of each part and detail of the nature. It will not do to say, “Yesterday I determined this time to give myself entirely to the Mother, and look it is not done, on the contrary all the old opposite things turn up once more; so there is nothing to do but to proclaim myself unfit and give up the Yoga.” Of course when you come to the point where you make a resolution of that kind, immediately all that stands in the way does rise up — it invariably happens. The thing to be done is to stand back, observe and reject, not to allow these things to get hold of you, to keep your central will separate from them and call in the Mother’s Force to meet them. If one does get involved as often happens, then to get disinvolved as soon as possible and go forward again. That is what everybody, every Yogi does — to be depressed because one cannot do everything in a rush is quite contrary to the truth of the matter.
A stumble does not mean that one is unfit, nor does prolonged difficulty mean that for oneself the thing is impossible. The fact that you have to give up your ordinary work when you get depressed does not mean that you have not gained in steadiness — it only means that the steadiness you have gained is not a personal virtue but depends on your keeping the contact with the Mother — for it is her force that is behind it and behind all the progress you can make.
Learn to rely on that Force more, to open to it more completely and to seek spiritual progress even not for your own sake but for the sake of the Divine — then you will go on more smoothly. Get the psychic opening in the most external physical consciousness. That and not despondency is the lesson you ought to draw from your present adverse experience.
5. Only in Quietude and Confidence in The Mother’s Force Q.
There is no aspiration in me, no capacity to follow something higher. I feel dullness inside. But I do feel quiet from the pressure on my head. I must be patient and keep faith — then you will make me conscious. Quietude first; with it confidence in the Mother’s Force that is working on you. When the physical mind is obliged to be quiet, it has this impression of inactivity and dullness at first. When it opens more and more to the Force, that impression will disappear. (12 November 1932)
Understanding The Mother’s Force
Should one try to put out the Mother’s Force during work, if one is conscious of it?
Sri Aurobindo: It is the Mother’s Force that has to work through the sadhak, not the sadhak who has to work through the Mother’s Force.
Q. Is it always necessary for us to understand what the Mother’s Force is doing in us for the progress of our Yoga?
A: Plenty of people progress rapidly without understanding what the Force is doing―they simply observe and describe and say “I leave all to the Mother.” Eventually knowledge and understanding come.
17–7–1933 — Sri Aurobindo
How The Mother’s Force works
- Psychically Open to the Mother’s Force
If one remains in full confidence in the Mother and psychically open, then the Mother’s force will do all and one has only to give consent and keep oneself open and aspire. — Sri Aurobindo
2. Force acting on the Vital and Physical Disciple:
Yesterday I worked with great vigour and after I saw Mother in the evening I felt that there was no physical tiredness at all and that I could work for twelve hours more.
Sri Aurobindo: It is the Mother’s energy that comes down into the vital and physical for those who are open.
— — — — — —
Disciple: I told you that I could work peacefully at the Granary, but alas, I am unable to do so. As I sit quietly doing my work, X comes and starts talking about many things and creates a disturbance in me. I pray that you will help me.
Sri Aurobindo: You must be able to find the Mother in work and action as well as in concentration and silence. It is quite possible even if there is the silence within you and no restless movement, to move and act and do all that is needful. It is in fact when all within is silent, free from desire and with no restless movement that the Mother’s force can act best and do things in the right way. You should aspire to the Mother for the right force to act and do work and find her in the work and action. (31 May 1933)
3. Mother’s Force acts best when free from desire and any restless movement
Sri Aurobindo: You must be able to find the Mother in work and action as well as in concentration and silence. It is quite possible even if there is the silence within you and no restless movement, to move and act and do all that is needful. It is in fact when all within is silent, free from desire and with no restless movement that the Mother’s force can act best and do things in the right way. You should aspire to the Mother for the right force to act and do work and find her in the work and action.
Sri Aurobindo: It is only when work and action are done in that way, without insistence on one’s personal ideas and personal feelings but only for the Divine’s sake without thought of self that work becomes fully a sadhana and the internal and the external nature can arrive at a harmony. It makes it more possible for the inner being to take up and enlighten the outer action and grow conscious of the Mother’s force behind it guiding it in its works. (3 January 1937)
Sri Aurobindo: Efface the stamp of ego from the heart and let the love of the Mother take its place. Cast from the mind all insistence on your personal ideas and judgments, then you will have the wisdom to understand her. Let there be no obsession of self-will, ego-drive in the action, love of personal authority, attachment to personal preference, then the Mother’s force will be able to act clearly in you and you will get the inexhaustible energy for which you ask and your service will be perfect.
27 November 1940
4. If there is a total surrender to the Mother’s Force, there is no fatigue
Disciple: When I do any work for myself or do any work as my own, I get tired. But my mind realises now that this tiredness comes because I have not offered the work to my Divine Parents.
Sri Aurobindo: If there is the full surrender in the work and you feel it is the Mother’s and that the Mother’s force is working in you, then fatigue does not come.
Sri Aurobindo: Surrender means to be entirely in the Mother’s hands, and not to resist in any way by egoism or otherwise her Light, Knowledge, Will, the working of her Force etc.
Disciple: During the work, is it good to go on thinking: “It is the Mother who does the work through us”?
Sri Aurobindo: If it is work, you can always do that, provided you realise that it depends on the instrument whether the Mother’s force works fully or not.
Disciple: But if we think it is the Mother who is working through us, wrong movements may hide in the disguise of the Mother?
Sri Aurobindo: If you think all your actions come from the Mother, then of course it will have that effect — the actions come from Prakriti. Work is a different matter, for it is the Mother’s work you are doing.
Disciple: Today I felt as if someone other than myself was carrying out my actions. Of course I was there, but in the background. Was it not the Mother’s Force trying to take me into itself integrally?
Sri Aurobindo: It is too much to say that. What you say amounts only to some glimpse of the cosmic Force behind all the actions.
Sri Aurobindo: Everybody is in the Mother, but one must become conscious of that, not of the work only.
There are two ways of making an offering to the Mother: one is to offer an act at her feet as one might offer a flower; the other is to withdraw one’s personality and feel as though she were doing all the actions. Which of these ways is better for the sadhana?
There is no need to ask which is the better as they are not mutually exclusive. It is the mind that regards them as opposites. The psychic being can offer the act while the nature is passive to the Force (the ego being expunged or having withdrawn) and feels the Mother’s Force doing the act and her Presence in it. (5 November 1938)
5. Remove All kinds of Illnesses by Opening to The Mother’s Force
The feeling of illness is at first only a suggestion . . . . If necessary, make a counter suggestion, “No, I shall be well; I am and shall be alright.” And in any case call the Mother’s force to throw out the suggestion and the illness it is bringing.
6. Become a conscious and perfect instrument of the Mother’s force
Sri Aurobindo: The feeling that all one does is from the Divine, that all action is the Mother’s is a necessary step in experience, but one cannot remain in it — one has to go farther. Those can remain in it who do not want to change the nature, but only to have the experience of the Truth behind it.
Your action is according to universal Nature and in that again it is according to your individual nature, and all Nature is a force put out by the Divine Mother for the action of the universe. But as things are it is an action in the Ignorance and the ego; while what we want is an action of the divine Truth unveiled and undeformed by the Ignorance and the ego.
So when you feel that your actions are all done by the force of the Mother, that is a true experience. But the will of the Mother is that all you do should be done not by her force in Nature as now, but her own direct force in the Truth of her nature, the higher divine Nature.
If one is not yet conscious of her Force, should one put out one’s inner energy in work? How is the inner energy related to the outer energy?
The first stage is when one works with the outer energy, but there is an inner consciousness supporting it which relies wholly on the Mother.
The second is when there is an inner consciousness and force which uses the outer instruments — the outer energy being quiescent or else a part only of the inner — while this inner consciousness knows that the force is the Mother’s or feels the Mother’s presence in it: there are different experiences in this respect.
The third is when all is the Mother’s Force working.
10 April 1937
7. Conditions for the working of the Mother’s Force Disciple:
What is meant by being an instrument or being used by the Mother’s Force? When one acts on impulse, often it is a wrong movement — how can that be a case of being an instrument? When you wrote to X, “You are being used as an effective instrument”, did you write it as a temporary encouragement?
Sri Aurobindo: So long as one is not conscious of the Force working through one, one is moved by the Prakriti. The Prakriti may be used sometimes by the Divine for some work to be done, but that is not what is meant in the Yoga by being an “instrument”. I do not know to what you refer as regards X, — his poetry was inspired by us and he felt it and it certainly helped several people; to that extent he was an effective instrument for the work so long as he was in the right attitude. Naturally, it is for the work that one can be an instrument, not for things like sex which have nothing to do with the Yoga or the work. But the real instrumentality begins when the consciousness of the Force working begins within.
8. Only Cling to The Mother
The light and knowledge that Sri Aurobindo has given us infinitely surpasses all that has been taught previously. This must never be forgotten; and if you cling to me, you will get the necessary force and consciousness to resist any suggestions, expressed or otherwise.
9. Open to Mother’s Force for reaching Perfection
Open yourself more and more to the Divine’s force and your work will progress steadily towards perfection.
10. Do not allow anyone between you and The Mother’s Force
Let nothing and nobody come between you and the Mother’s force. It is on your admitting and keeping that force and responding to the true inspiration and not on any ideas the mind may form that success will depend. Even ideas or plans which might otherwise be useful, will fail if there is not behind them the true spirit and the true force and influence.
11. Never shut yourself in your own self-will, ideas and desires
All are not open to the Force. X never was in the least degree and there are others who shut themselves up in their own self-will or their own formations, ideas or desires. If there is no opening, the Force may act for a long time without response — and if there is an insufficient opening then the progress will be slow and chequered by great difficulties.
12. Reject all Vital excitement, desires, depressions
It is to be assumed that you are capable of the change since you are here in the presence and under the protection of the Mother. The pressure and help of the Mother’s Force is always there. Your rapidity of progress depends upon your keeping yourself open to it and rejecting calmly, quietly and steadily all suggestions and invasions of other forces. Especially the nervous excitement of the vital has to be rejected; a calm and quiet strength in the nervous being and the body is the only sound basis. It is there for you to receive, if you open yourself to it always.
13. Be Obedient to The Mother’s Force for Achieving Progress
If you want to get back your faith and keep it, you must first quiet your mind and make it open and obedient to the Mother’s force. If you have an excited mind at the mercy of every influence and impulse, you will remain a field of conflicting and contrary forces and cannot progress.
14. Handle all kinds of difficulties
Do not allow yourself to be troubled or discouraged by any difficulties, but quietly and simply open yourself to the Mother’s force and allow it to change you.
Sri Aurobindo: Whatever difficulties still remain, be sure that they will be surmounted. There is no need for the outer being to be nervous — the Mother’s Force and the devotion within you will be sufficient to overcome all that stands in the way.
15. Aspire Always for the Love and the Opening to The Mother
Hold fast and aspire always for the love and the opening. The inner heart is there and that will receive an answer to the aspiration and one day quickly open the outer and make it also receive. To call to the Mother always is the main thing and with that to aspire and assent to the light when it comes, to reject and detach oneself from desire and any dark movement. But if one cannot do these other things successfully, then call and still call.
Sri Aurobindo: — The Mother’s force is there with you even when you do not feel it. Trust to it, remain quiet and persevere.
