WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Mental control over impulses

15 September 1954

Sweet Mother, how can one obtain a mental control of these impulses by a struggle?

All educated people do it. Only the barbarian doesn't do it. This is the very substance of education, you know, for it is understood that if one lives in society--indeed even if one lives quite alone, but still much more so if one lives in society--one cannot do all that his impulses drive him to do. It is altogether impossible, you know. From the time you are quite young, the work of your educators is to teach you to control your impulses and obey only those which are in conformity with the laws under which you live or with the ideal you wish to follow or the customs of the environment in which you are. The value of this mental construction which will govern your impulses depends a great deal on the surroundings in which you live and the character of the parents or people who educate you. But whether it be good or bad, mediocre or excellent, it is always the result of a mental control over the impulses. When your parents tell you, "You should not do this", or when they say, "You have to do that", this is a beginning of education for the mind's control over the impulses. [new p. 318][old p. 318]

So the man of real merit or the more civilised man has a whole mental construction to which he must conform in order to be in harmony with the ideal of the environment in which he lives. But someone who does not conform at least to the smallest part of this construction would be considered a savage and would be thrown out of the society immediately. In fact, people who are criminals or half-mad are those who obey their impulses without any mental control. There isn't a single person among you who gives way without control to all the impulses that get hold of him. You have only to observe yourselves living, you spend your time saying,"No, this I can't do", or "This I can", or in restraining one movement or encouraging another. This is mental control.

I think it is only the savage who doesn't have it, one who lives in a jungle, you know, who is not in contact with anybody. And yet, even he should control himself, for something will go terribly wrong with him if he doesn't control himself. In his case too the mind must act to prevent him from doing things which will cause him serious trouble. This is the nature of the human being: to have a kind of mental activity in him which governs the rest of his being, more or less. And his level of civilisation depends exactly on the point this control has reached, and naturally, as I said, on the value of the controlling mental construction.