WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

22 September 1954

Mother, you said one day that before being able to identify oneself with the Divine, one must first become an individual.

Yes, well, that's it, exactly. You are in the period of becoming an individual. And so long as one is in this period of becoming an individual, well, one must wait until this period passes, that is, till you have become a conscious individual. Perfectly. It is that.

Mother, you said there are very few, one in a million perhaps, who are really conscious.

Oh, if you take humanity at large, certainly! And the great mass of mankind will never become individuals, it will always be an amorphous mass, all intermingled, like that (gesture). To become an individual is what Sri Aurobindo calls becoming truly a mental man. Well, if you have read The Human Cycle, you will see that already it is not so easy to become a truly mental man who thinks by himself, is free from all outer influences, who has an individuality, who exists, has his reality; even that is not so easy.

But, by a kind of Grace, it can happen that before becoming an individual, if someone has within himself an aspiration, if he feels the need to awaken to something which would want more, want something better, which feels how very small it is to be an individual, something which really seeks beyond the ordinary limits, well, even before becoming an individual, he may suddenly have the experience of a contact with his psychic which opens all the doors for him. They close again later, but once they have opened you never forget it. The remembrance [old p. 334]remains very vividly; and this helps. It should happen to you here.