Page 31 - All India Magazine Feb-2025

a complete assurance that it had no reality. And very young (very
young, maybe around the age of thirteen or fourteen), every time
a blow came, I would tell my body, "But what's the use of being ill
since you'll just have to get well!" And that stayed until I was over
thirty: what's the use of being ill since you have to get well? And it
faded away only little by little, with that growing pessimism.
Now I have to undo all that work.
The Mother: Conversation with a Disciple, October 10, 1964

Sense of the sacred
Something the modern world has completely lost is the sense
of the sacred.
Ever since my childhood, I have spent my time veiling myself:
one veil over another veil over another veil, so as to remain invis-
ible. Because to see me without the true attitude is the great sin.
Anyway, 'sin' in the sense Sri Aurobindo defines it — meaning that
things are no longer in their place.
The Mother: Conversation with a Disciple, September 19, 1958

The Mother and food
I have never been interested in food! I have never liked eating.
When I was small, they had to think up all sorts of tricks to make
me eat, to me it was the most absurd and least interesting thing.
Well, I know the food of every country and have done a compara-
tive study (!) of all cuisines, and I can be anywhere without it dis-
turbing my body in the least.
It's not out of taste for food, it's out of taste for... (how can I
put it?) the expansion of consciousness, the elimination of limits,
and above all to prevent the slavery of habits—that's a horrible
thing. To be the slave of one's habits is disgusting. Even when I
was very small, that's how it was: no slavery. I was told, "But you
must do this, because that's the habit," and I used to answer in a

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