The Mother's Answers on The Foundation

I did not understand very well "the real meaning of activity and passivity in sadhana".
You don't know what activity and passivity are? Do you know what the two words mean?

Yes.
Yes! So, what does it mean when you are active?

When I work.
Work? Good! And when are you passive, when you sleep? (Laughter)

When I am lazy, I cannot do...
No, my child, not necessarily. Passivity is not laziness. An active movement is one in which you throw your force out, that is, when something comes out from you—in a movement, a thought, a feeling—something which goes out from you to others or into the world. Passivity is when you remain just yourself like this, open, and receive what comes from outside. It does not at all depend on whether one moves or sits still. It is not that at all. To be active is to throw out the consciousness or force or movement from within outwards. To be passive is to remain immobile and receive what comes from outside. So it is said here... I don't know what is written... (Mother turns the pages of the book.) It is very clear! "Activity in aspiration", that means that your aspiration goes out from you and rises to the Divine—in the tapasya, the discipline you undertake and when there are forces contrary to your sadhana you reject them. This is a movement of activity.

Now, if you want to get true inspiration, inner guidance, the guide, and if you want to have the force, to receive the force which will guide you and make you act as you should, then you do not move any longer, that is—I don't mean not move physically but nothing must come out from you any more and, on the contrary, you remain as though you were quiet still, but open, and wait for the Force to enter, and then open yourself as wide as possible to take in all that comes into you. And it is this movement: instead of out-going vibration there is a kind of calm quietude, but completely open, as though you were opening all your pores in this way to the force which must descend into you and transform your action and consciousness.
Receptivity is the result of a fine passivity.

But Mother, to be able to become passive an effort has to be made, hasn't it?
Not necessarily, that depends upon people. An effort? One must, yes, one must want it. But is the will an effort?... Naturally, one must think about it, want it. But the two things can go together, you see, there is a moment when the two—aspiration and passivity—can be not only alternate but simultaneous. You can be at once in the state of aspiration, of willing, which calls down something—exactly the will to open oneself and receive—and at the same time be in that state of complete inner stillness which allows full penetration, for it is in this immobility that one can be penetrated, that one becomes permeable by the Force. Well, the two can be simultaneous without the one disturbing the other, or can alternate so closely that they can hardly be distinguished. But one can be like that, like a great flame rising in aspiration, and at the same time as though this flame formed a vase, a large vase, opening and receiving all that comes down.

And the two can go together. And when one succeeds in having the two together, one can have them constantly, whatever one may be doing. Only there may be a slight, very slight displacement of consciousness, almost imperceptible, which becomes aware of the flame first and then of the vase of receptivity—of what seeks to be filled and the flame that rises to call down what must fill the vase— a very slight pendular movement and so close that it gives the impression that one has the two at the same time.

(Silence)

This is one of the things one discovers gradually as the body becomes ready for transformation. It is quite a remarkable instrument in the sense that it can experience two contraries at the same time. There is a certain state of body-consciousness which brings things together, totalises things that in other states of consciousness alternate or even in certain others oppose each other. But if one has reached up there, in the vital and the mind, a development sufficient for harmonising opposites (that of course, is quite indispensable), when one has succeeded in doing this, there are moments when it alternates, you see, one thing comes after the other, while what is remarkable in the consciousness of the body is that it can feel ("feel", can we say "feel"?—"experience"—the word "aware" expresses it best) all things simultaneously, as though you were hot and cold at once, as though you were active and passive at once, and everything becomes like that. Then you begin to grasp the totality of movements in the cells. It is something much more concrete naturally, but much more perfect in the body than in any other part of the being. This means that if things continue in this way, it will be proved that the physical, material instrument is the most perfect of all. That is why perhaps it is the most difficult to transform, to perfect. But of all, it is the one most capable of perfection.
That's enough for today, isn't it?
So, my children, if we go at this rate, we shall finish the book in three or four lessons, and we must already think about what we shall take up next...

The Mother, Sweet Mother.
Ah! you want to take up The Mother? Good, we shall read The Mother. That is decided.
Good night!

21 April 1954
- The Mother