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SOME EXPLANATIONS
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MOTHER'S SYMBOL
Q: I have been frequently thinking of the Mother's symbol of "Chakra" and its significance. I have understood it as follows: , Central circle — Transcendental power. Four inner petals — Four powers working from the Supermind to Overmind. Twelve outer petals — Division of four into twelve powers from Overmind to Intuition and mind. Do you think I have understood the significance correctly ?
A: Essentially (in general principle) the 12 powers are the vibrations that are necessary for the complete manifestation. These are the 12 seen from the beginning above the Mother's head. Thus there are really 12 rays from the sun not 7, 12 planets etc.
As to the exact interpretation of the detail of the powers, I see nothing against the arrangement you have made. It can stand very well. 15-4-1934
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MOTHER'S FLAG
About the blue flag. I presume you mean the flag with the white lotus. If so, it is the Mother's flag, for the white lotus is her symbol as the red lotus is mine. The blue of the flag is meant to be the colour of Krishna and so represents the spiritual or divine consciousness which it is her work to establish so that it may reign upon earth. This is the meaning of the flag being used as the Ashram flag, that our work is to bring down this consciousness and make it the leader of the world's life. 14-3-1949
Page - 359 CONQUERING THE POWERS OF THE LIFE FOR THE MOTHER
This Yoga does not mean a rejection of the powers of live, but an inner transformation and a change of the spirit in the life and the use of the powers. These powers are now used in an egoistic spirit and for undivine ends; they have to be used in a spirit of surrender to the Divine and for the purpose of the divine Work. That is what is meant by conquering them back for the Mother.
USE OF EXTERNAL MEANS AS AID TO YOGIC FORCE
Of course, one must use these external means and there one must be careful so as to have as many factors as possible on one's side and give as little handle as possible to the adverse forces. But no outward action can be for us sure of success unless behind it is the growing Yogic vision and Yogic power.
We have had ourselves serious difficulties from the outside, petitions made against us to the Minister of Colonies in Paris and a report demanded from the Governor here which if acted on would have put the Ashram in serious jeopardy.
We used outward means of a very slight and simple character i.e. getting the Mother's brother (Governor in French Equatorial Africa) to intervene with the Ministry (and also an eminent writer in France, a disciple), but for the most part I used a strong inner Force to determine the action of the Colonial Office, to get a favourable report from the Governor here, to turn the minds of some who were against us here and to nullify the enmity of others. In all these respects I succeeded and our position here is made stronger than before; especially a new and favourable Governor has come. Nevertheless we have to remain vigilant that the situation may not be again threatened. Also one disadvantage has resulted, that we have been asked not to buy or rent more houses but to build instead. This is difficult without land and much money; so we are for the moment unable to expand.
In certain respects, however, this is not a disadvantage, as I have been long wishing to put off further expansion and
Page - 360 consolidate the inward life of the Ashram in a more completely spiritual sense.
I give this as an example of how things have to be dealt with from the point Yogic point of view. 20-3-1935
PHYSICAL EXPANSION AND INNER PROGRESS
Q: Is having more houses by the Mother a sign of progress of her work ? A: It is a sign of physical expansion. The progress depends upon what is behind; if the inner progress is not there, the physical expansion is of no great use. 7-7-1933 COMMERCE AND SPIRITUAL PROFIT
If you give the money to the Mother, that can't be commercial; commerce implies personal profit, and here your profit is only spiritual. 2-4-1944 THE MOTHER AND THE EXPRESSION OF BEAUTY
Q: Pourquoi la Mère s'habille-t-elle avec des vêtements riches et beaux ? (Q: Why does the Mother put on rich and beautiful dresses ?) A: Avez-vous donc pour conception que le Divin doit être représenté sur terre par la pauvreté et la laideur ? (A: Is it your notion that the Divine should be represented on earth by poverty and ugliness ?)
Beauty is as much an expression of the Divine as Knowledge,
Page - 361 Power or Ananda. Does anyone ask why does the Mother want to manifest the divine consciousness by knowledge or by power and not by ignorance and weakness ? It would be a more absurd or meaningless question then the one put by the vital against her wearing artistic and beautiful dress. 27-2-1933
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Q: Does it make any difference to the Mother's consciousness whether she puts on the best saris or the old ones, whether she lives in a palace or in a forest ? What do these outer things add to the inner reality ? More probably they may be causing its diminution.
A: Outer things are the expression of something in the inner reality. A fine sari or a palace are expressions of the principle of beauty in things and that is their main value. The Divine Consciousness is not bound by these things and has no attachment, but it is also not bound to abstain from them if beauty in things is part of its intended action. The Mother, when the Ashram was still unformed, was wearing patched cotton saris; when she took up the work, it was necessary to change her habits, so she did so. 22-10-1935
LIVING IN THE SUPERMIND AND INTEREST IN THE WORLD
Q: Is it at all possible for the Mother or anyone living above the Overmind or even in the silence to take any interest in the world, since the world would be felt from there as a mere speck ?
A: It all depends upon what basis one lives in the silence or above. A speck can be of as much interest to the Divine Consciousness as an infinity. 8-8-1934
Page - 362 LIGHT - HEARTEDNESS AND YOGIC CHEERFULNESS
As for light-heartedness and insouciance — a light don't-care attitude is the thing we would recommend to anybody. The Mother spoke of cheerfulness, and if she used the word light-hearted, it was not in the sense of anything lightly or frivolously gay and careless — although a deeper and finer gaiety can have its place as an element of the Yogic character. What she meant was a glad equanimity even in the face of difficulties and there is nothing in that contrary to Yogic teaching or to her own practice. The vital nature on the surface (the depths of the true vital are different) is attached on the one side to a superficial mirth and enjoyment, on the other to sorrow and despair and gloom and tragedy, — for these are for it the cherished lights and shades of life; but a bright or wide and free peace or an ānandamaya intensity or, best, a fusing of both in one is the true poise of both the soul and the mind — and of the true vital also — in Yoga. It is perfectly possible for a quite human Sadhak to get to such a poise, it is not necessary to be divine before one can attain it.
TRUE LOVE AND JEALOUSY
Only one thing I must note so that no wrong idea may linger in your understanding. You seem to say in one passage of a letter that the Mother had said to you that jealousy is inevitable in true love in ordinary life, and if it is not there when one sees the other loving elsewhere, then they don't love each other ! You must have strangely misheard and misunderstood the Mother. It is just the opposite of what the Mother has always said and thought and the very contrary of all her knowledge and experience. It is the idea of the ordinary mind about jealousy and love, not hers. She remembers very well having told you just the opposite that, even in ordinary life, one is not jealous if one has the true love. Jealousy is the common movement of the human egoistic lower vital with its grasping possessive instinct and it cannot be anything else. I thought it better to make this clear so that there might be no misleading impression that such movements of the
Page - 363 lower vital nature have any sanction or support in the truth of the soul; they belong to the vital Ignorance, they are fruits of the vital ego. 1-2-1933
ERROR OF EXTOLLING VITAL LOVE
Whatever may be the glamour of a vital love, once it falls away and one gets to a higher level, it should be seen to have been not the great thing one imagined. To keep this exaggerated estimate of it is to hold the consciousness back from the pull towards the greater thing with which that cannot for a moment compare. If one keeps a fervour like that for an inferior past it must make it more difficult to develop the entire person for a higher future. It is indeed not the Mother's wish that anybody should look back in a spirit of enthusiastic appreciation to the old vital love. It was indeed "so little" in any true estimate of things. It is not at all a question of comparison or of extolling the vital passion of one at the expense of that of the other. It is the whole thing that must dwindle in its proportions and recede into the shadowy constructions of the past that have no longer any importance. 1934
DECEPTIVE IDEA OF REMOVING SEX - HUNGER BY INDULGENCE
The Mother has already told you the truth about this idea. The idea that by fully indulging the sex-hunger it will be finished and disappear for ever is a deceptive pretence held out by the vital to the mind in order to get a sanction for its desire; it has no other raison d’être or truth or justification. If an occasional indulgence keeps the sex-desire simmering, a full indulgence would only sink you in its mire. This hunger like other hungers does not cease by temporary satiation; it revives itself after a temporary abeyance and wants again indulgence. Neither sops nor gorgings are the right treatment for it. It can only go by a radical psychic
Page - 364 rejection or a full spiritual opening with the increasing descent of a consciousness that does not want it and has a truer Ananda. 23-4-1937
THE MOTHER'S APPROVAL OF RIGHT EXPRESSION
Why should you think the Mother does not approve of expression, — provided it is the right expression of the right thing, — or suppose that silence and true expression are contradictory ? The truest expression comes out of an absolute inner silence. The spiritual silence is not a mere emptiness; nor is it indispensable to abstain from all activity in order to find it.
THE MOTHER'S APPRECIATION OF INDIAN MUSIC
What can be stranger than this idea of yours that the Mother likes only European music and does not like or appreciate Indian music — that she only pretends to do it or that she tolerates it so as not to discourage people ! Remember that it is the Mother who has always praised and supported your music and put her force behind you so that your music might develop into spiritual perfection and beauty. In your poetry it was I that supported you most, in detail; the Mother could only do it with a general force because she could not read the original (though she found them in translations very beautiful), but in music it has been just the other way round. You surely are not going to say that all that was unfelt ? And the development of X ? That too was Indian music, not European. And then when I write to you in praise of your music, do you think it is only my opinion that I am transmitting ? Most often it is her words that I use to express our common feeling. 20-12-1932
THE MOTHER'S MUSIC
The Mother's music has often been recognised by X as Indian
Page - 365 of this or that rāga. The Mother plays whatever comes through her — she does not usually play any precisely composed music whether European or Indian — the latter in fact she has never learned. 11-9-1934
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The Mother has played music from her childhood upwards — so it is no trouble to her to sing or play several times. 15-9-1933
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It is not necessary to have technical knowledge in order to feel what is behind the music. Mother, of course, does not play for the sake of a technical musical effect, but to bring down something from the higher planes and that anyone can receive who is open. 15-9-1933
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It is not by knowledge of music that the understanding [of the Mother's music] comes; nor is it by effort of the mind — it is by becoming inwardly silent, opening within and getting the spontaneous feeling of what is in the music. 1932
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Yes. All that is very true. It is a prayer or an invocation that Mother makes in the music. 1-6-1935
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Q: Is it true that when the Mother plays on the organ
Page - 366 she calls down the Gods of the higher planes to help us ? A: Not consciously. 9 -2-1934
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Q: Does it mean that the Gods are attracted to her music and come down ? A: They may be. 10-2-1934
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Q: Does the Mother bring out something while playing ? A: If she did not bring something, why should she play at all ? 19-4-1934
MUSIC AND MAHALAKSHMI
Q: I was so deeply moved on hearing the songs of X and Y at today's music that the question came to my mind whether it is the Mahalakshmi aspect of the Mother that is working these days. A: On the music days it is always the Mahalakshmi aspect that is prominent. 25-12-1933
A THRILLING EXPERIENCE
Q: When I heard the Mother reading out "Prières et Méditations" my body was thrilled. How ? A: When an intense Power is put out, it will naturally give a thrill to those who receive it.
Page - 367 ART AND TRADITION
The Mother finds the pictures of X hideous and monstrous, she would not dignify them with the name of art. But it is not because they depart from tradition. The Mother does not believe in tradition — she considers that Art should always develop new forms — but still these must be according to a truth of Beauty which is universal and eternal — something of the Divine. As for your picture, she finds it expressive. She felt at once what it meant — so the criticism of Y does not stand. 8-12-1933
IMPORTANCE OF CONTACTING RIGHT INFLUENCES IN ART
The Mother had told you once that in your human figures you did not seem to be in contact with the right Influence and you had said that you felt the contact with an eternal Beauty in Nature but had not the same contact with regard to the human figure. It will be better then, now that you are practising Yoga and to be in contact with right Influences only is very important, to avoid dealing with the human face and figure at present. In Yoga what may seem to the mind a detail may yet open the door to things that have strong effects on the consciousness, disturb its harmony or interfere with the sources of inspiration, vision and experience. 1933
KNOWLEDGE OF FRENCH AND CLOSENESS TO THE MOTHER
Q: Is it right to say that those who know French will be able to serve the Mother better in the years to come ? A: It is mostly that it brings a certain closeness to one side of the Mother. 3-5-1945
Page - 368 IDENTIFICATION WITH THE MOTHER'S CONSCIOUSNESS THROUGH READING HER BOOKS
Q: When I read the Mother's "Prayers" and "Conversations" I often feel as if I come in contact with her consciousness. This makes me think whether it is possible by reading her books to make one's consciousness so intense as to identify it with hers and as a result to elevate the vital and other parts also.
A: It is possible to intensely identify oneself with the Mother's consciousness through what you read — in that case the result you speak of could come. It could also have an effect on the vital up to a certain point. 21-8-1935
THE GURU, THE DIVINE AND THE AVATAR
I have only now had time to go through the three letters you sent me. X can of course have the Conversations. As to what your other friend asks, it is quite possible for him to receive where he is without coming here if he has the adoration of the Mother in his heart and an intense call.
About the question of the Avatar, I do not think it is useful to press in the matter. It has become very much the tendency, especially in Bengal, to regard the Guru as the Avatar. To every disciple the Guru is the Divine, but in a special sense — for the Guru is supposed to live in the divine consciousness, to have attained union and when he gives to the disciple, it is the Divine that gives and what he gives is the consciousness of the Divine who is within the Guru. But that and Avatarhood are two different things. It is mostly in East Bengal recently that those have come who were acclaimed as Avatars; those who came had each of them the idea of a work to be done for the world and the sense of a Divine Power working through them, which shows that there was a pressure for manifestation there and something came in each case, for something of the Divine Power always comes
Page - 369 when it is called, but it does not look as if there was anywhere the complete descent. It is this that may have created the idea that the Avatar was born there. It has always been said of the Advent that is to come now that there would be many in whom it would seem that it had come, but the real Avatar would work behind a veil until the destined hour came.
I do not gather from what is quoted as said by your Guru that he claimed to be the Avatar. It seems to me that he claimed to be a Power preparing the way for the work of the Divine Mother and even to indicate that all that he meant would be manifested not only by his own followers but by other groups (sampradāya), consisting evidently of those who had not had him for Guru but had some other Head and Teacher. This is also confirmed by the saying that some other one than his disciples might be the means of his prakāśa — that is to say, would be the means of carrying on his work and aiding the manifestation of the Mother. If this meant proclaiming him as the Avatar, I do not see how it can agree with the other saying that after his leaving of the body the Avatar would come to the Ashram he had created.
I do not quite know what is meant by ayoni-sambhava. An incarnation is always through a human mother, though there have been one or two cases in which a virgin birth has been proclaimed (Christ, Buddha). The only other meaning — unless we suppose an unprecedented miracle — might be a descent such as sometimes happens, the Godhead manifesting in somebody who at birth was a Vibhuti, not at once the full incarnation. But in the absence of a clear statement from your Guru himself, these are only speculations.
I have written this much as an answer to your question, but I doubt whether it is necessary or advisable to write anything of it to your friends. They have their own feeling about the matter; it seems to me better not to challenge or disturb it. 25-8-1935
THE MOTHER'S SPEAKING OF PAST BIRTHS
The Mother only speaks to people about their past births when Page - 370 she sees definitely some scene or memory of their past in concentration, but this happens rarely nowadays. 30-6-1933
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Mother does not usually look into past lives; only when things come of themselves from the past she looks. 24-7-1934 MEETING THE DEAD
When Mother said that it was not good to try to meet the dead, she was speaking from a spiritual standpoint which is not usually known or regarded by the spiritists. 25-8-1936 HELP TO DEPARTED SOULS
Q: Is there any indication you have received to tell you that my brother's soul really wanted at the end to come to Mother's Light and the Master's ? A: Mother cannot say particularly because so many people come to her in the night for the passage to the other side whom she has not known in the body. Your brother may very well have been one of them and in view of X's account, there is little doubt that he must have been.
DANGER OF WEAK SYMPATHY
Q: I have observed that a sensitive disposition becomes very prone to easy admission of vital forces from persons who are full of them, especially when an attitude of emotional sympathy is taken towards them out of a philanthropic desire to help them in their difficulties.
Page - 371 A: That is very interesting — for it agrees with the Mother's constant insistence that to feel sympathy or any emotion of the weak philanthropic kind with those possessed by vital forces is most dangerous as it may bring an attack upon oneself which may take any form. One must do what is to be done but abstain from all such weakness. 11-10-1936
EFFECTIVE CHANNELISING OF THE MOTHER'S HELP
One can be a channel for the Mother's help, but the idea of oneself helping others comes in the way and so long as it is there one cannot be a truly effective channel. 17-4-1935
AN OCCULT EXPERIMENT OF THE MOTHER
X probably referred to an experience in which the Mother being in Algiers appeared to a circle of friends sitting in Paris and took up a pencil and wrote a few words on a paper. Having satisfied herself that it was possible she did not develop it any further. That was at a time when she was practising occultism with Théon in Algiers. Materialisation is possible but it does not happen easily — it demands a very rare and difficult concentration of forces or else an occult process with vital beings behind it such as materialises objects, like the stones that were daily thrown in the Guest House, when we were there. In neither case it is a miracle. But to do as you suggest, make it a common or everyday phenomenon, would be hardly practicable and spiritually not useful, as it is not a spiritual force which gives the power but an occult mental-vital force. It would turn the Yoga into a display of occultism, rather than a process of spiritual change. 20-10-1935
Page - 372 The Mother spent many years entering the occult worlds and learning all that was to be learnt there .... She sees things always when she goes into a trance. 8-7-1936
THE MOTHER SEEING OF NARAD
I am afraid I don't know much about Narad. Mother once saw him standing between the Overmind and Supermind where they join as if that was his highest station. But he has his action on the lower plane also — only I don't quite know what it is. In the Puranic tales pure love and Bhakti on the one hand and, on the other hand, a pleasure in making human beings quarrel seem to be his salient characteristics. 5-5-1935 THE MOTHER'S GOING TO OTHER PLANETS
Q: I have been wondering whether the Mother has been able to establish a direct connection with Mars or any other far off planet which is probably habitable and inhabited. A: A long time ago Mother was going everywhere in the subtle body but she found it of a very secondary interest. Our attention must be fixed on the earth because our work is here. Besides, the earth is a concentration of all the other worlds and one can touch them by touching something corresponding in the earth-atmosphere. 13-1-1934 FACULTY OF GETTING RIGHT PERCEPTIONS
X has reported Mother's observation correctly, but he does not
Page - 373 seem to have understood it. The Mother never meant that by merely willing one could know at once what was in someone else or that all one's impressions about him would be spontaneously and infallibly correct. What she meant was that there is a faculty or power (an occult or Yogic faculty) by which one may get the right perceptions and impressions, and if one has the will to do so, one can develop it. Not at once, not by easy method — tra la la and there you are: it may take years and one has to be careful and scrupulous about it. For these are intuitive perception and intuition is a thing that can be easily imitated by many other movements of consciousness that are much more fallible. Your impressions may be mental or vital and a mental or vital impression may have something to justify it or may not — but even in the first case there is no certainty at all that it will be correct; even if it is the same thing, it may be incorrectly caught — or caught with much mixture of error, twisted into falsehood, put in the wrong way, etc. And there may be no justification at all; it may be a mere wrong formation of your own mind or vital or of somebody else's wrong impression conveyed to you and accepted by you as your own. Your impressions may be the result of a want of affinity between you and the person, so that if he impresses you as null and neutral, it is because you cannot feel what is in him, it does not come home to you, or if you feel that he is in the wrong condition, it may be only because his vital intuitions rub yours the wrong way. There are lots of things like that which one must have the power to distinguish very carefully and exactly; until one knows one's own consciousness and its operations well, one cannot know the operations of the consciousness of others. But it is possible to develop a certain direct sight or a certain direct feeling or contact by which one can know, but only after much time and much careful, scrupulous and vigilant observation and self-training. Till then one can't go about saying that this is an advanced Sadhak or that one is not advanced and that other is no good at all. Even if one knows, it is not necessary always to air one's knowledge. 9-2-1935
Page - 374 TRICK OF REVERSING THE CONSCIOUSNESS
When the Mother said that it was just a trick of reversing the consciousness, she meant that: that instead of allowing always the external mind to interfere and assert its own ordinary customary point of view, it should turn itself round, admit that things may work from in outwards, and keep itself sufficiently quiet to see that developing and being done. For then an inner mind shows itself which is capable of following and being the instrurment of the invisible Forces. 2-8-1932
FEELING OF SHOCK IN EXTERIORISATION
A feeling like that of the shock and the stopping of the breath for a second and as if of falling down comes to many when the consciousness for a moment or a longer time exteriorises itself (goes up out of the body); the shock comes from the going up of the consciousness or from the return into the body. The Mother used to have that hundreds of times. It is not anything physical (the Doctor, as you say, found nothing). When this movement of the consciousness is more normal, the feeling will probably disappear. 1-10-1935
NUMERICAL HARMONIES IN THE MOTHER'S ACCOUNTS
Q: X showed me his account book today in which the total was Rs. 7 As. 7 Ps.7. It is also the 7th day of the 7th month of the year and after I decided to write to you about this I saw that the house where I was working had also number 7. Elsewhere one does not come across such a play of numbers. I think it occurs here because the numbers (perhaps the occult beings of numbers) feel at ease in our atmosphere, like the sparrows in the main Ashram Building, and like to play in such harmonies.
Page - 375 In government departments and other places they feel the atmosphere mechanical, heavy and rigorous and so they do not find any joy in such play.
A: I suppose your explanation is correct at least from the occult point of view. The Mother is always having these numerical view. The Mother is always having this numerical harmonies in her accounts. 7-7-1936
GIVING NAMES TO CATS
The Mother gave names for cats because they understand and answer; she has never given any for birds and does not wish to do it. Now even for cats she is not giving names. 28-4-1932
ACTION OF MEDICINES ON THE MOTHER'S BODY
Medicines have quite a different action on the Mother's body than they would have on yours or X's or anybody else's and the reaction is not usually favourable. Her physical consciousness is not the same as that of ordinary people — though even in ordinary people it is not so identical in all cases as "science" would have us believe. 1-2-1937
THE MOTHER'S VIEWS ON MEDICAL MATTERS
What the Mother says in the matter is what she said to Dr. X with his entire agreement — viz. reading from symptoms by the doctors is usually mere balancing between possibilities (of course except in clear and simple cases) and the conclusion is a guess. It may be a right guess and then it will be all right or it may be a wrong guess and then all will be wrong unless Nature is too strong for the doctor and overcomes the consequences of his
Page - 376 error — or at the least the treatment will be ineffective. On the contrary if one develops the diagnostic flair one can see at once what is the real thing among the possibilities and see what is to be done. That is what the most successful doctors have, they have this flashlight which shows them the true point. X agreed and said that the cause of the guessing was that there were whole sets of symptoms which could belong to any one of several diseases and to decide is a most delicate and subtle business, no amount of book knowledge or reasoning will ensure a right decision. A special insight is needed that looks through the symptoms and not merely at them. This last sentence, by the way, is my own, not X's. About development of intuition afterwards — no time tonight. 6-4-1937
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It is no use discussing these matters. The Mother's views are too far removed from the traditional nostrums to be understood by a medical mind, except those that have got out of the traditional groove or those who after long experience have seen things and can become devastatingly frank about the limitations of their own "science".
Ideas differ. Both the Mother and X were horrified at the idea of a child of four months being given a purgative. The leading Children's Doctor in France told the Mother no child under 12 months should be given a purgative, as it is likely to do great harm and may be dangerous. But here we understand it is the practice to dose children freely with purgatives from their day of birth almost. Perhaps that and over-administration of medicines is the cause of excessive infant mortality. 4-4-1937
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All "science" does not recommend castor oil for children — I think it is a nineteenth century fad which has prolonged itself. The Mother's "children's doctor" told her it should not be done — also in her own case when a child the doctors peremptorily
Page - 377 stopped it on the ground that it spoiled the stomach and liver. I suppose you will say doctors disagree ? They do ! 9-4-1937 *
Mother meant that wrong food and the poisons created by wrong assimilation were a great obstacle to the prolongation of life. 14-1-1935 *
Q: The Mother once said that there is hardly a disease that cannot be cured by Yoga. Can cancer be cured by it ? A: Of course it can, but on condition of faith or openness or both. Even a mental suggestion can cure cancer — with luck of course, as is shown by the case of the woman operated on unsuccessfully for cancer, but the doctors lied and told her it had succeeded. Result, cancer symptoms all ceased and she died many years afterwards of another illness altogether. 11-10-1935
MILLENNIUM WITHOUT HOSPITALS
Q: I dreamt that the Mother is building a very big hospital. Dream of a millennium in advance ? A: It would be more of a millenium if there were no need of a hospital at all and the doctors turned their injective prodding instruments into fountain pens — provided of course they did not make misuse of the pens also .... Q: Why furious about injective instruments, sir ? They are supposed to be very effective. Page - 378 A: That does not make an increase of hospitals, illnesses and injections the ideal of a millennium .... Q: But why the deuce are those instruments to be replaced by fountain pens ? A: I was simply adopting the saying of Isaiah the prophet, "the swords will be turned into ploughshares", but the doctor's instrument is not big enough for a ploughshare, so I substituted fountain pen. 19-7-1937
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