235. Altruism, duty, family, country, humanity are the prisons of the soul when they are not its instruments.

        236. Our country is God the Mother; speak not evil of her unless thou canst do it with love and tenderness.

        237. Men are false to their country for their own profit; yet they go on thinking they have a right to turn in horror from the matricide.

How can "altruism, duty, family, country, humanity" become true instruments of the soul?

The soul belongs to the Divine, and owes obedience and service to the Divine alone. If the Divine commands it to work for family, country or humanity, then it is all right and it can do so without being imprisoned.

If the command does not come from the Divine, to serve these things is only to obey social and moral conventions.

17 December 1969
- The Mother

238. Break the moulds of the past, but keep safe its gains and its spirit, or else thou hast no future.

        239. Revolutions hew the past to pieces and cast it into a cauldron, but what has emerged is the old Aeson with a new visage.

        240. The world has had only half a dozen successful revolutions and most even of these were very like failures; yet it is by great and noble failures that humanity advances.

        What does Sri Aurobindo mean by "great and noble" failures?

The greatness and nobleness of an event do not depend on material success, but on the feelings which inspire it and the goal which men have pursued.

It is not success that confers greatness but the motive of action and the nobleness of the feelings which inspire it.

18 December 1969
- The Mother

241. Atheism is a necessary protest against the wickedness of the Churches and the narrowness of creeds. God uses it as a stone to smash these soiled card-houses.

        242. How much hatred and stupidity men succeed in packing up decorously and labelling “Religion”!

Which is better: religion or atheism?

So long as religions exist, atheism will be indispensable to counter-balance them. Both must disappear to make way for a sincere and disinterested search for Truth and a total consecration to the object of this search.

21 December 1969
- The Mother

243. God guides best when He tempts worst, loves entirely when He punishes cruelly, helps perfectly when violently He opposes.

        244. If God did not take upon Himself the burden of tempting men, the world would very soon go to perdition.

        245. Suffer yourself to be tempted within so that you may exhaust in the struggle your downward propensities.

        246. If you leave it to God to purify, He will exhaust the evil in you subjectively; but if you insist on guiding yourself, you will fall into much outward sin and suffering.

        247. Call not everything evil which men call evil, but only that reject which God has rejected; call not everything good which men call good, but accept only what God has accepted.

If one gives oneself completely to the Divine, is it necessary to develop one's personal will, one's power of choice, etc.? Will these things not become obstacles?

Personal will and power of choice are necessary qualities for those who live in the ordinary ignorance and illusion.

True self-giving to the Divine of course means their surrender. But unfortunately, many people live in the illusion that they have entirely given themselves to the Divine, and yet preserve in themselves a very active "ego" which prevents them from clearly perceiving the Divine Will; if these people abandon their personal will and discernment, they are in danger of becoming incoherent and erratic.

You must first acquire a perfect sincerity in order to be sure of not deceiving yourself, and you must have clear evidence that it is truly the Divine Will which moves and guides you.

22 December 1969
- The Mother

248. Men in the world have two lights, duty and principle; but he who has passed over to God, has done with both and replaced them by God's will. If men abuse thee for this, care not, O divine instrument, but go on thy way like the wind or the sun fostering and destroying.

        249. Not to cull the praises of men has God made thee His own, but to do fearlessly His bidding.

        250. Accept the world as God's theatre; be thou the mask of the Actor and let Him act through thee. If men praise or hiss thee, know that they too are masks; and take God within for thy only critic and audience.

The first thing needed is to become conscious of the Divine Will, and in order to do that one must no longer have any desires or personal will.

The best way to achieve this is to direct one's whole aspiration towards the Divine Perfection, to give oneself to it without reserve and to rely on That alone for all satisfaction.

All the rest will follow as a result.

23 December 1969
- The Mother

251. If Krishna be alone on one side and the armed and organised world with its hosts and its shrapnel and its maxims on the other, yet prefer thy divine solitude. Care not if the world passes over thy body and its shrapnel tear thee to pieces and its cavalry trample thy limbs into shapeless mire by the wayside; for the mind was always a simulacrum and the body a carcass. The spirit liberated from its casings ranges and triumphs.

      This is to tell us that the only choice to be made is to unite with the Divine in spite of everything, even the opposition of the whole world, because the world only has an apparent strength in the mental and the physical, whereas the Divine possesses the eternal power of Truth.

26 December 1969
- The Mother