Page 18 - All India Magazine Feb-2025

one of those splendid sleeps there, lying in that armchair—a bliss-
ful kind of sleep. But if someone had watched this from outside,
without knowing anything, he would have said, "Just look! They
force this child to stay awake till 10 instead of letting her sleep."
But I'd be resting wonderfully!
So it depends on the child. And if he really feels sleepy, what
prevents him from sleeping? What's required is to give them a
peaceful atmosphere, as much peace as possible.
The Mother: Conversation with a Disciple, October 14, 1964

Knowledge by experience
You understand, none of my certitudes — none, without ex-
ception — have ever come through the mind. The intellectual com-
prehension of each of these experiences came much later. Little
by little, little by little, came the higher understanding of the in-
tellectual consciousness, long after the experience (I don't mean
philosophical knowledge — that's nothing but scholarly mumbo-
jumbo and leaves me cold). Since my earliest childhood, experi-
ences have come like that: something massive takes hold of you
and you don't need to believe or disbelieve, know or not know
— bam! There's nothing to say; you are facing a fact.
Once, during those last difficult years, Sri Aurobindo told me
that this was precisely what gave me my advantage and why (how
to put it?) there were greater possibilities that I would go right to
the end.
I still don't know. The day I do... it will probably be done. Be-
cause it will come in the same manner, like a massive fact: it will
be like that. And only much later will the understanding say, 'Ah!
So that's what it is!'
First it comes, afterwards we know it. ...
A book like that (sufficiently veiled, of course), written in the
simplest way possible (like I wrote 'The Science of Living,' I believe)

18 All India Magazine, February 2025