WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

18 April 1956

... Do you even know what it means to exteriorise oneself? Not philosophically or psychologically, I mean occultly. Are you conscious in your exteriorisation, do you do it at will? Do you know how to leave your body and live in a more subtle body, and then again leave that body and live in another more subtle body and so on? Do you know how to do all that? Have you ever done it? No. Then we shall speak about it again another day.

It happens in dreams, Mother.

In dreams? Do you know where you are in your dreams?

A little.

A little? This is becoming interesting! And where do you go in your dreams?

Often in regions...

What regions?

Vital regions.

Oh! oh! You go into the vital world--and nothing unpleasant happens to you there?

Most often. [old p. 117]

Ah! and how do you get out of it? [new p. 116]

Rush back into the body!

Is that where your knowledge ends?

No. Sometimes there is a call and then one sees there is no need to rush back. But it doesn't last long.

It doesn't last. But do you go in and out at will?

Not at will.

Can you return to a place you have already been to several times before?

No, Mother.

You don't find the same place again several times?

Not at will.

Ah! but there are children who know how to do this, they continue their dreams. Every evening when they go to bed they return to the same place and continue their dream.

When I was a child I used to do that.

You are no longer a child, that's a pity!

Because I had no preoccupations then.

Well, become a child once more and you will know how to do it again.

Nothing is more interesting. It is a most pleasant way of [old p. 118]passing the nights. You begin a story, then, when it is time to wake up, you put a full stop to the last sentence and come back [new p. 117]into your body. And then the following night you start off again, re-open the page and resume your story during the whole time you are out; and then you arrange things well--they must be well arranged, it must be very beautiful. And when it is time to come back, you put a full stop once again and tell those things, "Stay very quiet till I return!" And you come back into your body. And you continue this every evening and write a book of wonderful fairy-tales--provided you remember them when you wake up.

But this depends on being in a quiet state during the day, doesn't it?

No, it depends on the candour of the child.

And on the trust he has in what happens to him, on the absence of the mind's critical sense, and a simplicity of heart, and a youthful and active energy--it depends on all that--on a kind of inner vital generosity: one must not be too egoistic, one must not be too miserly, nor too practical, too utilitarian--indeed there are all sorts of things one should not be... like children. And then, one must have a lively power of imagination, for--I seem to be telling you stupid things, but it is quite true--there is a world in which you are the supreme maker of forms: that is your own particular vital world. You are the supreme fashioner and you can make a marvel of your world if you know how to use it. If you have an artistic or poetic consciousness, if you love harmony, beauty, you will build there something marvellous which will tend to spring up into the material manifestation.

When I was small I used to call this "telling stories to oneself". It is not at all a telling with words, in one's head: it is a going away to this place which is fresh and pure, and... building up a wonderful story there. And if you know how to tell [old p. 119]yourself a story in this way, and if it is truly beautiful, truly harmonious, truly powerful and well co-ordinated, this story will be realised in your life--perhaps not exactly in the form in which you [new p. 118]created it, but as a more or less changed physical expression of what you made.

That may take years, perhaps, but your story will tend to organise your life.

But there are very few people who know how to tell a beautiful story; and then they always mix horrors in it, which they regret later.

If one could create a magnificent story without any horror in it, nothing but beauty, it would have a considerable influence on everyone's life. And this is what people don't know.

If one knew how to use this power, this creative power in the world of vital forms, if one knew how to use this while yet a child, a very small child... for it is then that one fashions his material destiny. But usually people around you, sometimes even your own little friends, but mostly parents and teachers, dabble in it and spoil everything for you, so well that very seldom does the thing succeed completely.

But otherwise, if it were done like that, with the spontaneous candour of a child, you could organise a wonderful life for yourself--I am speaking of the physical world.

The dreams of childhood are the realities of mature age.

—Collected Works of the Mother, First edition, Volume 08. pp. 116-19