WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Psychic consciousness

22 September 1954

... for a very long time if someone does not feel, does not have this personal aspiration to perfect himself, the personal aspiration to enter into contact [old p. 332]with the Divine, the personal aspiration to realise the supramental consciousness, well, he says as you were just saying, [new p. 332]"Then what's the use of doing anything? The only thing is to remain quiet." Well, as long as it is like that, and as long as you have not developed in yourself enough consciousness for it to be otherwise, there is nothing to say and nothing to do. I have only to wait.

"Wait" means some lives?

Yes.

For some it can go faster; if suddenly something is reversed within them and they have an experience--even if it be only the experience of identification with the psychic--then all of a sudden they understand. Identification with the psychic means an identification with the divine Consciousness. So, immediately they understand; they understand and this even makes them laugh. One feels how foolish one was! (Mother laughs.)

This sense of one's own person becomes a kind of cage, a prison which shuts you in, prevents you from being true, from knowing truly, acting truly, understanding truly. It is as though someone had put you in a very hard shell and you were compelled to stay there.

This is the first sensation you have. Afterwards you begin to tap against the shell in order to break it. Sometimes it resists very long. But still, when you begin to feel this, that what you believed to be yourself, the person doing things and for whom they are done, the person who exists and makes you what you are, yes, when you pass from this to the consciousness that this is a prison preventing you from being truly yourself, then you have made great progress, and there is hope. You feel yourself stifled, crushed, absolutely shut up in a prison without air, without light, without an opening, and then you begin pushing from inside, pushing, pushing, pushing so that it may break.

And the day it breaks, the day it opens, suddenly, you enter [old p. 333]the psychic consciousness. And then you understand. And then, [new p. 333]truly, if you have a sense of humour, you laugh; you realise your stupidity.