Page 22 - All India Magazine Feb-2025

seemed to me a vanity. And besides, it is a question of opinion...
CWM 6: 19
Suppleness and breadth
Once, very long ago, when Sri Aurobindo was telling me about
himself, that is, of his childhood, his education, I put the ques-
tion to him, I asked him, "Why am I, as an individual being, so
mediocre? I can do anything; all that I have tried to do I have done,
but never in a superior way: always like this (gesture to an average
level)." Then he answered me (at the time I took it as a kindness
or commiseration), "That's because it gives great suppleness — a
great suppleness and a vast scope; because those who have per-
fection are concentrated and specialised." As I said, I took it simply
like a caress to comfort a child. But now I realise that the most
important thing is not to have any fixity: nothing should be set,
definitive, like the sense of a perfection in the realisation — that
puts a total stop to the forward march. The sense of incapacity
(with the meaning I said of mediocrity, of something by no means
exceptional) leaves you in a sort of expectation (gesture of aspira-
tion upward) of something better. And then, the most important
thing is suppleness — suppleness, suppleness. Suppleness and
breadth: reject nothing as useless or bad or inferior — nothing;
set nothing up as really superior and beautiful — nothing. Remain
ever open, ever open.
The ideal is to have this suppleness and receptivity and surren-
der, that is, so total an acceptance of the Influence that no mat-
ter what comes the instrument adapts itself instantly to express
it naturally, spontaneously and effortlessly. With everything, of
course: with the plastic arts, with music, with writing.
The Mother: Conversation with a Disciple, February 18, 1967
Shy nature
The nature (of Mother) was rather shy, and as a matter of
fact, there wasn't much confidence in the personal capacity (al-

22 All India Magazine, February 2025