WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Developing intuition

A: Mother, now there is one question, another important question. You have often told us that it is only in the inner silence that we can find the true answer to a question. What is the best way to make the children discover how this silence is established? Is this how consciousness is substituted for knowledge?

(Long silence)

You see, in this system of classes where everyone is sitting down, the teacher is there and they have a limited time in which to do the work, it is not possible. It is only if you have absolute freedom that you can establish the silence when you need to be [old p. 424]silent. But when all the students are in class and the teacher is [new p. 422]in class... when the teacher is establishing the silence in himself, all the students... then it is not possible.

He can establish the silence at home, at night, the day before, to prepare himself for the next day, but you cannot... It cannot be an immediate rule. Naturally, when you are at the very top of the scale and you are used to keeping your mind absolutely silent, you cannot help it; but you have not reached that point, none of you. So it is better not to speak about it. So I think that during the... Especially with this system, classes with a fixed time, with a fixed number of students, with a fixed teacher, and a fixed subject... you must be active while you are there.

It must be... If the students want to practise meditation, concentration, to try to come into... it is to come into contact with the intuitive plane, it is--instead of receiving a purely mental reply which is like that--to receive a reply from above which is a little luminous and living. But that habit should be acquired at home.

Naturally, someone who has this habit, in the class--when the teacher asks the question, writes this question on the blackboard, "Who can answer?"--he can do this (Mother puts both hands to her forehead), receive, oh! and then say... But when we reach that point, it will be a great progress.

Otherwise, they bring out of the storeroom everything they have learnt. It is not very interesting, but at least it gives them some mental gymnastics. And the class system is a democratic system, eh? This is because... you must be able in a limited time, in a limited space... you have to teach the greatest possible number of people, so that everyone can benefit. This is the democratic spirit, absolutely. So this requires, this requires a kind of... equalisation. Well... you put them all on the same level and that is deplorable. But in the present state of the world, we can say, "This is still something necessary." Only the children of the rich would be able to afford... obviously, it is not pleasant to think [old p. 425]of. No, there will be a primary class problem for the whole population... for Auroville. And that will be an interesting [new p. 423]problem: how can we prepare the children, children taken from anywhere, who have no way of learning at home, whose parents are ignorant, who have no possibility of having any means to learn, nothing, nothing, nothing but the raw material, like that--how can we teach them to live? That will be an interesting problem.

A: With what we have done for next year, Mother, we shall achieve total respect for the child's personality, you know. Total, at every moment--he alone will count, not the group to which he belongs. Absolutely. And then, concerning the question I was asking you just now, the working conditions in the morning are rather different, since the work will be free. So, in these conditions, perhaps the children will be able to...

Yes, there, the morning work, like the work they do there, "Vers la Perfection" [Note: The name given by Mother to a group of classes based on the Free Progress System.]... They can very well do that: remain silent, concentrated for a moment, silence all that, everything that is noisy inside, like that, and wait. In the morning, they can do that. No, I mean, when you have an hour's class, or three-quarters of an hour's class with... all together with the teacher... you have to keep yourselves busy. It would be amusing if for three-quarters of an hour everyone could stay... (laughter).

One thing could be done once, at least once: you set a subject, like that, from the course of subjects, you set it and tell them, "For a quarter of an hour we shall remain silent, silent; no noise, no one should make any noise. We shall remain silent for a quarter of an hour. For a quarter of an hour try to remain completely silent, still and attentive, and then we shall see in a quarter of an hour what comes out of it." You can reduce it to five minutes to begin with, three minutes, two minutes, it doesn't [old p. 426]matter. A quarter of an hour [new p. 424]is a lot, but you should do... try that... see. Some of them will start to fidget. Very few children, perhaps, know how to keep still; or else they fall asleep--but it doesn't matter if they fall asleep. You could try that at least once, see what happens: "Let's see! Who will answer my question after ten minutes' silence? And not ten minutes which you will spend trying to get hold of everything you may know mentally about the subject, no, no--ten minutes during which you will be just like this, blank, still, silent, attentive... attentive and silent."

Now, if the teacher is a true teacher, during these ten minutes, he brings down from the domain of intuition the knowledge which he spreads over his class. And so you do some interesting work, and you will see the results. Then the teacher himself will begin to progress a little. You can try. Try, you will see!

A: We have tried that, Mother.

You see, for those who are sincere, sincere and very--how to put it?--very straight in their aspiration, there is a marvellous help, there is an absolutely living, active consciousness which is ready to... to respond to any attentive silence. You could do six years' work in six months, but there should... there should not be any pretension, there should not be anything which tries to imitate, there should be no wanting to put on airs. There should... you should be truly, absolutely honest, pure, sincere, conscious that... you exist only by what comes from above. Then... then... then you could advance with giant strides.

But don't do it daily, regularly, at a fixed time, because it becomes a habit and a bore. It should be... unexpected! Suddenly you say, "Ah! Supposing we did this"... when you feel a little like that yourself, a little ready. That would be very interesting.

You ask a question, a question that is as intelligent as you [new p. 425][old p. 427]can make it, not a dogmatic question, an academic question, no--a question that has a little life in it. That would be interesting.

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 12, pp. 423-27