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Contents

Questions and Answers 1955
5 January 1955
Attunement of the outer nature
Hostile forces try to delay transformation
Knowledge of the future and action
Coué’s system: autosuggestion
12 January 1955
Questioning and resistance increase difficulties
Right spirit in which to face difficulties
Depression and progress
Ego, individual and collective
Purification of experience
19 January 1955
The role of the higher mind
Hostile forces and progress
Catastrophes, their cause; resistance
Function of the hostile forces; boasting
Self-regarding vanity and hostile forces
Well-developed psychic being and outer nature
26 January 1955
Suicide, reasons for and effects of
Pleasure in loud noises; boredom
Cowardice and tamas
Story of animal-tamer; courage and fear
Animals and fear
Courage during war
True courage
2 February 1955
Right attitude
The body needed for sadhana
Progress possible only in the body; suicide
Experiences never identically repeated
9 February 1955
Desire is contagious; its source
Primitive form of love
True joy is desireless; the artist’s delight
Lady at the opera practising Buddhism
Psychic need; mind as an instrument
How the psychic being expresses itself
Distinguishing the parts of one’s being
The psychic guides the mind, vital and physical
Illness: body and mind connected
Ultra-modern painting; coloured photographs
Stained glass; Mother’s vision
16 February 1955
Losing something given by Mother
Using things well
Sadhak collecting soap-pieces
What things are truly indispensable
Nature’s harmonious arrangement
Riches a curse; philanthropy
Misuse of things creates misery
23 February 1955
The sense of taste; educating the senses
Fasting; drawing energy
The body and food
2 March 1955
Right spirit; aspiration and desire
Sleep and yogic repose; how to sleep
Remembering dreams
Concentration and outer activity
Mother opens the door inside everyone
Error of the lower vital
Sleep, a school for inner knowledge
Source of energy
9 March 1955
Psychic directly contacted through the physical
Transforming egoistic movements
Work of the psychic being
Contacting the psychic and the Divine
Experiences of different kinds
Ugly forms seen in meditation
Attacks of adverse forces
16 March 1955
Rejecting and transforming wrong movements
Destiny after death; reincarnation of the psychic
Light of Truth burns dark insincerities
Mental inconsistencies and contradictions
Ideas, a collective wealth; pure idea
Religions, partial realisation
23 March 1955
Procedure for rejection and transformation
Learning by heart; true understanding
Vibrations, movements of the species
A cat and a Russian peasant woman
A cat doing yoga
30 March 1955
Yoga-shakti
Energies of the earth; higher and lower
Illness; curing by yogic means
The true self and the psychic
Solving difficulties by different methods
6 April 1955
Freud’s psychoanalysis; the subliminal being
The psychic and the subliminal
True psychology
Changing the lower nature
Faith in different parts of the being
Psychic contact established in all in the Ashram
13 April 1955
Psychoanalysts with their torch-lights
The “underground super-ego”; dreams
Dreams, sleep, control of night-activities
Archetypes, Overmind and higher
Dream of someone dying, its meaning
Recurring dreams
Integral repose, entering Sachchidananda
Organising one’s life; concentration; repose
27 April 1955
Symbolic dreams and visions
Curing pain by various methods
Different states of consciousness
Seeing oneself dead in a dream
Exteriorisation
4 May 1955
Drawing on the universal vital forces
The inner physical
Receptivity to different kinds of forces
Progress and receptivity
11 May 1955
Immunity of the body to attacks
The subconscient; changing it
Illness; preventing it
Supramental nature in the body
Transforming pain into pleasure
Collective illness in the Ashram
18 May 1955
“The Problem of Woman”
Men and women
The Supreme Mother; the new creation
Gods and goddesses
A story of Creation; earth
Nature employs sex as a means for evolution
What is Nature? Matter on other planets
Psychic being only on earth; beings everywhere
Going to other worlds by occult means
The range of the senses
25 May 1955
Religion and reason
Reason: its true role and field
Reason, an obstacle to or minister of the Spirit
Developing the reason
Reason prepares the path
Learning how to live; the {\it élite}
Reason controls and organises life
Nature is infrarational, man has reason
1 June 1955
The aesthetic conscience
Beauty and form
The roots of our life
The sense of beauty
Educating the aesthetic sense; taste
Man who preached “the morality of Nature”
Mental constructions based on a revelation
Changing the world and humanity
Modern painting; art, old and new
8 June 1955
Working for the Divine and personal motives
The ideal attitude is a perfect consecration
The Divine manifesting on earth
Reversal of consciousness; knowing oneself
Integral progress; facing difficulties
People in the Ashram
The decision to do Yoga
Ashram children given exceptional freedom
15 June 1955
Dynamic realisation; transformation
The negative and positive side of experience
The image of the dry coconut fruit
Purusha, Prakriti, the Divine Mother
The Truth-Creation; Pralaya
We are in a transitional period
22 June 1955
Awakening the Yoga-shakti
The thousand-petalled lotus
Reading: how far a help for yoga
Simple and complicated combinations in men
29 June 1955
The true vital and true physical
Time and Space
The psychic’s memory of former lives
The psychic organises one’s life
The psychic’s knowledge and direction
6 July 1955
The psychic and the central being or jivatman
Unity and multiplicity in the Divine
Having experiences and the ego
Mental, vital and physical exteriorisation
Imagination has a formative power
The function of the imagination
The universe is progressive
13 July 1955
Cosmic spirit and cosmic consciousness
The wall of ignorance; unity and separation
Aspiration to understand, to know, to be
The Divine is in the essence of one’s being
Oneness and multiplicity through division
Realising desires through the imaginaton
Realising things by self-giving to Divine Grace
20 July 1955
The Impersonal Divine
Escaping from the influence of others
Surrender to the Divine brings perfect freedom
“The Divine gives Himself”: its meaning
The Impersonal Divine; Nirvana
The principle of the inner dimensions
The paths of aspiration and surrender
Linear and spherical paths and realisations
27 July 1955
Concentration on the heart-centre
Rising beyond the mind
Mistaking vital feelings for the psychic
“To dry up the heart”
Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate
Knowing what one’s consciousness is
Assimilation and dispersion
Mother’s work at the Balcony Darshan and in the Playground
The March Past and the Marching
Heroism in the First World War
3 August 1955
Nothing is impossible in principle
Psychic contact and psychic influence
Occult powers; adverse influences; magic
Magic, occultism and Yogic powers
Hypnotism and its effects
10 August 1955
How to meditate
17 August 1955
Vertical ascent and horizontal opening
Liberation of the psychic being
Images for discovery of the psychic being
Sadhana to contact the psychic being
24 August 1955
Concentrating on photographs of Mother
Self-awareness; kinds of meditation
Concentration and meditation
Poetry is the sensuousness of the spirit
Beauty and truth in poetry
Inspiration and men of genius
Silence; inner state and in things
Living withdrawn from the surface existence
31 August 1955
Choosing the work in sadhana
Education; learning through experience
Never make rules
True rest is an ascent into the Light
Reading “Classics Illustrated”
Vulgarisation of everything in modern times
7 September 1955
Work, a school of experience
Life as an illusion: Buddha and Shankara
Action expressing an inner realisation
Avatars of Vishnu and Shiva; Buddha
Taking interest in things; vulgarity
Modern world: perversion and vulgarity
Cinema as an instrument of education
14 September 1955
Politics and finance
“The Great Secret”; its purpose
World politics; America and Russia
The evolutionary curve
The Divine working during war
India’s role in the world
21 September 1955
Literature and the taste for forms
The characters of “The Great Secret”
How literature helps us to progress
Reading to learn; cheap, vulgar books
The commercial mentality
How to choose one’s books
Learning to enrich one’s possibilities
The attitude and general condition of men
5 October 1955
Science and Ignorance
Knowledge, science and the Buddha
Knowing by identification
Discipline in science and in Buddhism
Progress in the mental field and beyond it
12 October 1955
The problem of transformation
Evolution; man and superman
Awakening need of a higher good
Sri Aurobindo and earth’s history
Setting foot on the new path
The transformation of animality
The true reality of the universe
Evolution; man, superman, the new race
Mutual attitude of man and superman
19 October 1955
The rhythms of time
The lotus of knowledge and perfection
Potential knowledge
The teguments of the soul
Shastra and the Guru’s direct teaching
“He who chooses the Infinite…”
26 October 1955
The Divine and the universal Teacher
The power of the Word
The Creative Word; the mantra
Sound, music in other worlds
The domains of pure form, colour and ideas
2 November 1955
The first movement in Yoga
Interiorisation; finding one’s soul
The Vedic Age
An incident about Vivekananda
The imaged language of the Vedas
The Vedic Rishis; involutionary beings
Involution and evolution
9 November 1955
Personal effort; egoistic mind
Man is like a public square; Nature’s work
Ego needed for formation of individual
Adverse forces needed to make man sincere
Determinisms of different planes; miracles
16 November 1955
The significance of numbers
Numbers; astrology; true knowledge
“Divine’s Love” flowers for Kali puja
Is personal effort egoistic?
Desire, aspiration and progress
Determining one’s approach to the Divine
Liberation is obtained through austerities
An Old Chaldean Legend
23 November 1955
One reality, multiple manifestations
Integral Yoga: approach by all paths
The supreme man and the divine man
Miracles and the logic of events
30 November 1955
Time as a friend or enemy; forces of Nature
Rain and snow in Algeria
Stopping rain at the Ashram
Work for integral perfection
Ashram criticised by ignorant outsiders
Mme. David-Neel
False idea of superiority
How can one become indifferent to criticism?
Acting without attachment to results
7 December 1955
Emotional impulse of self-giving
A young dancer in France
The heart has wings, not the head
Only joy can conquer the Adversary
14 December 1955
Rejection of life as illusion in the old Yogas
Fighting the adverse forces
Universal and individual being
Three stages in Integral Yoga
How to feel the Divine Presence constantly
21 December 1955
Integral Yoga and collective sadhana
The formation of the Ashram
Yoga of transformation: collective work
Ashram children and yoga
Miraculous interventions in human history
Capacities and difficulties in human nature
Intensification of difficulties
28 December 1955
Aspiration in different parts of the being
Enthusiasm and gratitude
Aspiration is in all beings
Unlimited power of good; evil has a limit
Progress in the parts of the being
The physical being and progress
Significance of a dream
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