346. Honour the garb of the ascetic, but look also at the wearer, lest hypocrisy occupy the holy places and inward saintliness become a legend.

        347. The many strive after competence or riches, the few embrace poverty as a bride; but, for thyself, strive after and embrace God only. Let Him choose for thee a king's palace or the bowl of the beggar.

        348. What is vice but an enslaving habit and virtue but a human opinion? See God and do His will; walk in whatever path He shall trace for thy goings.

This is perfect! True saintliness is to want and realise what the Divine wants for you, and true wisdom is to unite with Him so that you can clearly know what He wants of you and for you. All the rest is nothing but human convention and theory.

20 February 1970
- The Mother

349. In the world's conflicts espouse not the party of the rich for their riches, nor of the poor for their poverty, of the king for his power and majesty nor of the people for their hope and fervour, but be on God's side always. Unless indeed He has commanded thee to war against Him! then do that with thy whole heart and strength and rapture.

        350. How shall I know God's will with me? I have to put egoism out of me, hunting it from every lair and burrow, and bathe my purified and naked soul in His infinite workings; then He himself will reveal it to me.

        351. Only the soul that is naked and unashamed can be pure and innocent, even as Adam was in the primal garden of humanity.

What is meant by the soul that is naked and unashamed? Isn't the soul always pure?

Yes, that is what Sri Aurobindo says. The soul does not wear any disguise, it shows itself as it is and cares nothing for men's judgments, because it is the faithful servant of the Divine whose abode it is.

23 February 1970
- The Mother

352. Boast not thy riches, neither seek men's praise for thy poverty and self-denial; both these things are the coarse or the fine food of egoism.

        353. Altruism is good for man, but less good when it is a form of supreme self-indulgence and lives by pampering the selfishness of others.

        354. By altruism thou canst save thy soul, but see that thou save it not by indulging in his perdition thy brother.

        355. Self-denial is a mighty instrument for purification; it is not an end in itself nor a final law of living. Not to mortify thyself but to satisfy God in the world must be thy object.

        356. It is easy to distinguish the evil worked by sin and vice, but the trained eye sees also the evil done by self—righteous or self-regarding virtue.

Step by step and from every angle, Sri Aurobindo shows us how the Truth is above and beyond all contraries and opposites, beyond divisions—in a radiant and total Unity.

25 February 1970
- The Mother

357. The Brahmin first ruled by the book and the ritual, the Kshatriya next by the sword and the buckler; now the Vaishya governs us by machinery and the dollar, and the Sudra, the liberated serf, presses in with his doctrine of the kingdom of associated labour. But neither priest, king, merchant nor labourer is the true governor of humanity; the despotism of the tool and the mattock will fail like all the preceding despotisms. Only when egoism dies and God in man governs his own human universality, can this earth support a happy and contented race of beings.

There is nothing to say. Everything is clearly explainedonly the divine government can be a true government.

26 February 1970
- The Mother

358. Men run after pleasure and clasp feverishly that burning bride to their tormented bosoms; meanwhile a divine and faultless bliss stands behind them waiting to be seen and claimed and captured.

        359. Men hunt after petty successes and trivial masteries from which they fall back into exhaustion and weakness; meanwhile all the infinite force of God in the universe waits vainly to place itself at their disposal.

        360. Men burrow after little details of knowledge and group them into bounded and ephemeral thought-systems; meanwhile all infinite wisdom laughs above their heads and shakes wide the glory of her iridescent pinions.

        361. Men seek laboriously to satisfy and complement the little bounded being made of the mental impressions they have grouped about a mean and grovelling ego; meanwhile the spaceless and timeless Soul is denied its joyous and splendid manifestation.

This state of things must change for the supramental consciousness to reign on earth. But although the supramental consciousness has been at work on earth for more than a year, has anything changed in this miserable condition?

28 February 1970

Since the supramental consciousness is at work on earth, won't these miserable conditions change in spite of everything?

Naturally, the first effect will be a change of consciousness, first among the most receptive, and then in a greater number of people.

A change in the general conditions of collective life can only come later, perhaps long after individual reactions have been transformed. The first noticeable result is a heightening of the general confusion, because the old principles have lost their authority, and men (except for a very few) are not ready to obey the Divine Command, because they are incapable of perceiving it.

1 Match 1970
- The Mother