Page 20 - All India Magazine Jun-2025

means of your higher parts; surely this has to be done persis-
tently, otherwise the physical would never learn and it would
take Nature's common round of ages before it learns by itself.
Indeed the round of Nature is intended to show it all possible
sorts of satisfactions and by exhausting them convince it that
none of them can really satisfy it and that what it is at bottom
seeking is a divine satisfaction. In Yoga we hasten this slow pro-
cess of Nature and insist on the physical consciousness seeing
the truth and learning to recognise and want it. But how to
show it the truth? Well, just as you bring a light into a dark
room. Illumine the darkness of your physical consciousness
with the intuition and aspiration of your more refined parts
and keep on doing so till it realises how futile and unsatisfac-
tory is its hunger for the low ordinary things, and turns sponta-
neously towards the truth. When it does turn, your whole life
will be changed — the experience is unmistakable.
When, as a child, I used to complain to my mother about
food or any such small matter she would always tell me to go
and do my work or pursue my studies instead of bothering
about trifles. She would ask me if I had the complacent idea
that I was born for comfort. "You are born to realise the highest
Ideal," she would say and send me packing. She was quite right,
though of course her notion of the highest Ideal was rather
poor by our standards. We are all born for the highest Ideal:
therefore, whenever in our Ashram some petty request for
more comfort and material happiness is refused, it is for your
own good and to make you fulfil what you are here for. The
refusal is actually a favour inasmuch as you are thereby consid-
ered worthy to stand before the highest Ideal and be shaped
according to it.
CWM 3: 130-31 The Mother

20 All India Magazine, June 2025