This is the wonder of the way of works that even enmity to God can be made an agency of salvation. Sometimes God draws and attaches us most swiftly to Him by wrestling with us as our fierce, invincible & irreconcilable enemy.

Sri Aurobindo

The right mix

It is well not to be too loosely playful in one's games or too grimly serious in one's life and works. We seek in both a playful freedom and a serious order.

Sri Aurobindo

Divine Grace.

We must learn to rely only on the Divine Grace and to call for its help in all circumstances; then it will work out constant miracles.

The real change.

This erring race of human beings dreams always of perfecting their environment by the machinery of government and society; but it is only by the perfection of the soul within that the outer environment can be perfected. What thou art within, that outside thee thou shalt enjoy; no machinery can rescue thee from the law of thy being.

Sri Aurobindo

Absence of personal desire.

One must progress constantly in the light and the peace which come from the absence of personal desire.

14:p.167

The Mother

Inculcate in them (children) the will to conquer the future

For the children, precisely because they are children, the best would be to inculcate in them the will to conquer the future; the will to look ahead always and move forward as rapidly as they can towards ... what will be. But not to drag along, like a millstone around their necks, the burden of a whole past weighing down on them. Only when you are already very high up in consciousness and knowledge is it good to look back in order to find the points when the future began to be outlined. When you can see the whole at a glance, when you have a very general vision, it's interesting to know that what will be realized ahead was already announced before; just as Sri Aurobindo said that "the divine life will manifest on earth because it is ALREADY buried in the depths of Matter." From this point of view it's interesting to look back or look at the very bottom (not in order to know what happened or to know what men have known – that's quite useless).

As for the child, he should be told, "There are marvels to be manifested, prepare yourself to receive them." Then, if they want something a little more concrete and easy to understand, they can be told, "Sri Aurobindo came to announce these things; when you are able to read him, you will understand." This awakens the interest and the desire to learn.[…]

It would be interesting to formulate or work out a new method of teaching for the children, taking them very young. Very young, it's easy. There must be people (oh, we would need remarkable teachers) who have, first, sufficient documentation on what is known, so as to be able to answer all questions; and at the same time, at least the knowledge, if not the experience (the experience would be better) of the true intuitive intellectual attitude, and ... naturally, the capacity would be still preferable, but at any rate the knowledge that the true way to know is mental silence: an attentive silence turned towards the truer Consciousness, and the capacity to receive what comes from there. The best would be to have that capacity; in any case, they should explain that it's the true thing – give a sort of demonstration – and that it works not only with regard to what must be learned, the whole field of knowledge, but also with regard to the whole field of what must be done: the capacity to receive the exact indication of HOW to do it. As one progresses, it turns into a very clear perception of what must be done, and the precise indication of WHEN it must be done. At the very least, as soon as the children have the capacity to reflect (it begins at seven, but around fourteen or fifteen it's very clear), they should be given some first hints at the age of seven, and a complete explanation at fourteen, of how to do it and that it's the only way enabling you to be in contact with the deeper truth of things; that all the rest is a more or less clumsy mental approximation of something you can know directly.

The conclusion is that the teachers themselves should have at least a sincere beginning of discipline and experience: the point is not to pile up books and just keep repeating them. That's not the way to be a teacher – the whole earth is like that, we can just let it be like that outside if it enjoys it! As for us, we aren't propagandists, we just want to show what can be done and try to prove that it MUST be done.

When you begin with very small children, it's wonderful! With them, there's so little you have to do: you just have to BE.

Never make a mistake.

Never get angry.

Always understand.

Understand and see clearly why this movement took place, why that impulse, what the child's inner constitution is, which point needs to be strengthened and brought to the fore. That's all you have to do, and then leave them: leave them free to blossom, just give them the opportunity to see many things, touch many things, do as many things as possible. It's great fun. And above all, do not try to impose on them something you think you know.

Never scold, always understand, and, if the child is capable, explain. If he isn't capable to receive an explanation, replace the false vibration by a true one (if you are yourself capable of it). But that ... that's asking of the teachers a perfection they rarely have.

But it would be very interesting to draw up a program for the teachers, and the real program for study, starting with the very small ones – they are so plastic and anything leaves such a deep imprint on them! If they were given a few drops of truth when they are very small, they would blossom out quite naturally as their being grows.

That would be a lovely work to do.

MOTHER’S AGENDA, 5 April 1967    

Spirituality and work.

There is no stage of the sadhana in which works are impossible, no passage in the path where there is no foothold and action has to be renounced as incompatible with concentration on the Divine. The foothold is there always; the foothold is the reliance on the Divine, the opening of the being, the will, the energies to the Divine, the surrender to the Divine. All work done in that spirit can be made a means for the sadhana. It may be necessary for an individual here and there to plunge into meditation for a time and suspend work for that time or make it subordinate; but that can only be an individual case and a temporary retirement. Moreover, a complete cessation of work and entire withdrawal into oneself is seldom advisable; it may encourage a too one-sided and visionary condition in which one lives in a sort of mid-world of purely subjective experiences without a firm hold on either external reality or on the highest Reality and without the right use of the subjective experience to create a firm link and then a unification between the highest Reality and the external realisation in life.
Work can be of two kinds - the work that is a field of experience used for the sadhana, for a progressive harmonisation and transformation of the being and its activities, and work that is a realised expression of the Divine. But the time for the latter can be only when the Realisation has been fully brought down into the earth-consciousness; till then all work must be a field of endeavour and a school of experience.

- Sri Aurobindo [SABCL, 23:531]