FRENCH INSTITUTE AT PONDICHERRY

In any country the best education that can be given to children consists in teaching them what the true nature of their country is and its own qualities, the mission their nation has to fulfil in the world and its true place in the terrestrial concert. To that should be added a wide understanding of the role of other nations, but without the spirit of imitation and without ever losing sight of the genius of one's own country. France meant generosity of sentiment, newness and boldness of ideas and chivalry in action. It was that France which commanded the respect and admiration of all: it is by these virtues that she dominated the world.

A utilitarian, calculating, mercantile France is France no longer. These things do not agree with her true nature and in practising them she loses the nobility of her world position.

This is what the children of today must be made to know.  

4 April 1955

It is France that can connect Europe with India. There are great spiritual possibilities for France. She will play a big part in spite of her present bad condition. It is through France that  

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the spiritual message will reach Europe. That is why I chose France for my birth, although I am not French.§¹

Dear X,

In October 1961 I had written to Mother regarding my impending World Union tour in Africa. I had referred to the many new nations entering their freedom and independence. Did she have a message for these peoples? With the words “Will this help you?”, she gave me the following:

The true freedom is to be free from desire.

The true independence is to be independent from passion.

The true mastery is to be master of oneself.

That alone is the key to happiness; all the rest is passing illusion.

It is not in division but in unity that can be found the solution of human problems and the remedy to human miseries. 

October 1961 

Divine Mother,

Could we have a message from you to pass along to those in the United States who may be ready to aid in the fund-raising work we are doing?

Money is not meant to make money; money is meant to make the earth ready for the New Creation². 

15 June 1966  

¹The Mother's father was Turkish, her mother Egyptian. They emigrated from Egypt to France in 1877, one year before her birth.

 ²This message was originally given for a different occasion.  

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Those who serve the Truth cannot take one side or another.

Truth is above conflict and opposition.

In Truth, all countries unite in a common effort towards progress and realisation.  

8 June 1967  

Israel as a nation has the same right to exist as all the other nations.  

12 June 1967

How can you believe that the Grace works for one nation or against another? The Grace works for Truth and in the present conditions of the world, Truth and falsehood are both present everywhere, in all nations. It is the human mind which thinks: this one is right and that one is wrong ―  right and wrong are present everywhere.

The Truth is above all conflicts and all oppositions.  

13 June 1967

May I have a clarification from you on two points?  

(1) Does not the Grace work for whatever Truth there may be on both sides of a conflict?

Yes.

Or does it keep altogether aloof just because either side has falsehood also?

No. I said work ― it is a constant working.

(2) Do the present conflicts differ radically from a conflict like World War II, in which the Grace worked  

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definitively and decisively on one side at least on the whole?

You are mixing up two things, the working of the Grace and the result which is the inevitable consequence of the triumph of the Truth: they are quite different things on a different level.

The progressive victory of the Truth brings automatically certain results complex and often unexpected by the human mind which always wants clean cuts. It is only a total vision both in time and space that can understand.  

14 June 1967  

How is one to explain this age-old enmity between the Jews and the Arabs (although having a common ancestor) hating each other, generation on generation up to the impasse in which we have been living from some days back?

Perhaps the enmity exists only because they are neighbours!

Violence and enmity.. when brothers hate, they hate much more than others. Sri Aurobindo has said: “Hate is the indication of the possibility of a much greater love.”

Could we think that these two great peoples in conflict represent the symbolic Forces called to decide the fate of our civilisation?

It is not this conflict that will decide the future of our civilisation.

The Mussulmans and the Israelites represent the two religions where the faith in God is the most extreme. Only, the faith of the Israelites is a faith in an impersonal God and the faith of the Mussulmans is a faith in a personal God.

The Arabs have passionate natures. They live almost exclusively 

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in the vital, with its passions, its desires, while the Israelites live chiefly in the mind with a greater power of organisation and of realisation, which is quite exceptional. The Israelites are intellectuals with a remarkable will. They are not sentimental, that is to say they do not like weakness.

The Mussulmans are impulsive, the Israelites are rational.

June 1967 

Message for the Sri Aurobindo Society, Osaka, Japan

Japan was in the physical world the teacher of beauty.

She must not renounce her privilege.

Blessings.

16 October 1972

All countries are equal and essentially “one”.

Each of them represents an aspect of the One Supreme.

In the terrestrial manifestation they all have the same right to a free expression of themselves.

From the spiritual point of view, the importance of a country does not depend on its size or its power or its authority over other countries, but on its response to Truth and on the degree of Truth it is capable of manifesting. 

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