Page 16 - All India Magazine Feb-2025

this because very often I run into these two states of mind in my
activities (the grave and serious mind which sees hypocrisy and
vice, and the religious and yogic mind which sees the illusion that
prevents you from nearing the Divine)—and without being openly
criticised, I'm criticised ... I'll tell you about this one day ...
You're criticised?
Yes, but naturally without daring to criticize me openly. But
I'm aware of it. On the one hand, they see it as a kind of loose-
ness on my part (oh, not only for that — many things!). And on
the other hand, you know well enough; it applies to other things,
slightly different areas, it's not exactly the same, but in this area
they're also severe. I'm even told that there are some people who
shouldn't be in the Ashram.
The Mother: Conversation with a Disciple, November 8, 1960
The word God
I am intentionally not giving any definition. Because my life-
long feeling has been that it's a mere word, and a word behind
which people put a lot of very undesirable things.... It's that idea of
a god who claims to be "the one and only," as they say: "God is the
one and only." But they feel it and say it in the way Anatole France
put it (I think it was in The Revolt of Angels): this God who wants to
be the one and only and all alone. That was what had made me a
complete atheist, if I may say so, in my childhood; I refused to ac-
cept a being, whoever he was, who proclaimed himself to be the
one and only and almighty. Even if he were indeed the one and
only and almighty (laughing), he should have no right to proclaim
it! That's how it was in my mind. I could make an hour-long speech
on this, to show how in every religion they tackled the problem.
In any case, I have given what I find is the most objective defi-
nition. And as in the other day's "What is the Divine?", I have tried
to give a feeling of the Thing; here I wanted to fight against the
use of the word which, to me, is hollow, but dangerously so.

16 All India Magazine, February 2025