Patience

in Sadhana

A Compilation from the Works of

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother
 Patience
in Sadhana

© All writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

are copyright of Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust
and have been reproduced here with their kind
permission.

©2019 AuroPublications, Sri Aurobindo Society,

Puducherry
www.aurosociety.org
Year of Publication 2019
Compilation done by Jamshed M. Mavalwalla
Proof reading done by Archana Udaykumar, Puja Narula
and Shivakumar
Cover designed by Kavita Dutta
Help in making e-book by Vivechana Saraf and Uttam
Mondal

The photograph of the flower on the cover has been

given the spiritual significance ‘PATIENCE’ by the Mother.

The botanical name of the flower is mimusops elengi.

(The Spiritual Significance of Flowers, Part I)
 Foreword

All over the world, there is a growing interest in

Spirituality and Yoga. There is a search for the true
meaning and purpose of life, for deeper solutions to the
problems which confront us all, and how we can
contribute to the evolutionary change and progress.

In this search, more and more persons are turning

to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother for guidance and
enlightenment. But in their voluminous literature, they do
not know where to find the answers they are looking for.

In this regard the Mother has said,

“It is not by books that Sri Aurobindo ought to be

studied but by subjects—what he has said on the
Divine, on Unity, on religion, on evolution, on
education, on self-perfection, on supermind, etc.,
etc.” (CWM 12: 206)

On another occasion she said:

“If you want to know what Sri Aurobindo has said

on a given subject, you must at least read all he
has written on that subject. You will then see that
he seems to have said the most contradictory
things. But when one has read everything and
understood a little, one sees that all the
 contradictions complement one another and are
organised and unified in an integral synthesis.”
(CWM 16: 309-310)

While there are several compilations which are now

available, many sincere spiritual seekers have felt the
need of Comprehensive Compilations from Sri Aurobindo
and the Mother on specific subjects, where the contents
are further organised into sub-topics, so that one can get
all that one is looking for at one place.

These books are an effort to fulfill this need and thus help
spiritual seekers in their journey and sadhana. We hope
these compilations will help us to get a greater mental
clarity about a subject so that we can channel our efforts
in the right direction. For Sri Aurobindo has written:

“It is always better to make an effort in the right

direction; even if one fails the effort bears some
result and is never lost.” (CWSA 29: 87)

We will be glad to get suggestions and feedback from the

readers.

Vijay

vi
 Preface

In the series of comprehensive compilations on the

virtues and qualities as prescribed by Sri Aurobindo and
the Mother necessary for doing Yoga we present the
ninth virtue in this book ‘PATIENCE in SADHANA’.

The quotations in this compilation are taken from the

volumes of the Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo (CWSA)
and the Collected Works of the Mother (CWM), Second
Edition. Each quotation is followed by the book title,
volume number and the page number it has been taken
from.

While the passages from Sri Aurobindo are in the original

English, most of the passages from the Mother (selections
from her talks and writings) are translations from the
original French. We must also bear in mind that the
excerpts have been taken out of their original context and
that a compilation, in its very nature, is likely to have a
personal and subjective approach. A sincere attempt,
however, has been made to be faithful to the vision of
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Those who would like to
go through the fuller text are advised to go through the
Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo (CWSA), and the
Collected Works of The Mother (CWM), Second Edition.
The section headings and sub headings have also been
provided by the compiler to bring clarity on the selected
virtue. Also, to emphasize in certain portions of the
quotations, the compiler has bold faced some words.
Jamshed M. Mavalwalla

viii
 Contents
Part – I ......................................................................................1
I—Patience in Yoga Is ... .............................................................2
II—What Is Not Patience .............................................................4
III—Only the Spirit Is Capable of Illimitable Patience .....................6
IV—In the Integral Yoga, There Must Be an Unshakable Patience 10
V—Why We Should Be Patient in Yoga ....................................... 20
VI—The Attitude of Patience Required in Yoga............................ 28
VII—Benefits of Patience in Yoga ............................................... 32
VIII—Patience Needed to Understand Sri Aurobindo’s Works ....... 36
IX—The Patience of Our Most Ancient Sages .............................. 39
X—The Divine Patience ............................................................. 44
XI—The Patience of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo ...................... 47
XII—The Nature Evolves with an Amazing Patience ..................... 54
XIII—Good Teachers Must Have Unfailing Patience ..................... 55
XIV—Children and Patience ....................................................... 60
XV—Even Cats Show Marvellous Patience to Educate Their Kittens
................................................................................................ 62
XVI—Examples of Areas Where Patience Is Needed .................... 65
XVII—Other Quotations on Patience ......................................... 105
Part II—Impatience ................................................................. 112
XVIII—Impatience Comes from................................................ 113
XIX—In Yoga Impatience Is … ................................................. 116
XX—Difference Between Aspiring Intensity and Impatience ....... 118
XXI—When There Is Impatience in Yoga .................................. 121
XXII—The Impatience and the Sadhana ................................... 132
XXIII—Curb the Mind’s Impatience .......................................... 142
XXIV—Anger Is a Violent Impatience ........................................ 143
XXV—Get Rid of Impatience .................................................... 144
XXVI—How the Impatience in Yoga Will Disappear .................... 145
XXVII—The Time of Impatience Is Gone .................................. 146
XXVIII—Other Quotations on Impatience ................................. 149
XXIX—Short Summary ............................................................. 151

x
Part – I
I—Patience in Yoga Is ...

1.
“Patience: the capacity to wait steadily for the Realisation
to come.” (CWM 14: 165)

2.
“Patience: indispensable for all realisation.” (CWM 14:
165)

3.
“The Deva nature is distinguished by an acme of
the sattwic habits and qualities; self-control,
sacrifice, the religious habit, cleanness and purity,
candour and straightforwardness, truth, calm and self-
denial, compassion to all beings, modesty, gentleness,
forgivingness, patience, steadfastness, a deep sweet
and serious freedom from all restlessness, levity and
inconstancy are its native attributes.” (CWSA 19: 471)

4.
“The most varied qualities met in the Indian conception of
the best, śreṣṭha the good and nobleman, ārya. In the
heart benevolence, beneficence, love, compassion,
altruism, long-suffering, liberality, kindliness, patience;
in the character courage, heroism, energy, loyalty,
continence ...” (CWSA 20: 164)
 I—Patience in Yoga Is ...
5.
“The psychological fact is that there are these four active
powers and tendencies of the Spirit [the Brahmana,
Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra] and its executive Shakti
within us and the predominance of one or the other in the
more well formed part of our personality gives us our
main tendencies, dominant qualities and capacities,
effective turn in action and life. ... The soul-powers which
make their appearance by a considerable development of
this temperament, personality, soul-type, are a mind of
light more and more open to all ideas and knowledge and
incomings of Truth; a hunger and passion for knowledge,
for its growth in ourselves, ... a power of this light in the
mind and will which makes all the life subject to reason
and its right and truth or to the spirit and spiritual right
and truth and subdues the lower members to their
greater law; a poise in the temperament turned
from the first to patience, steady musing and calm,
to reflection, to meditation, which dominates and
quiets the turmoil of the will and passions and
makes for high thinking and pure living, founds the
self-governed sattwic mind, grows into a more and more
mild, lofty, impersonalised and universalised personality.
This is the ideal character and soul-power of the
Brahmana, the priest of knowledge.” (CWSA 24:
743–744)

3
II—What Is Not Patience

1.
“Never mistake rashness for courage, nor indifference
for patience.” (CWM 14: 170)

2.
“It should not be thought, however, that we have a high
regard for a training which weakens the character by
depriving it of all its drive and vigour. When we put a
bridle on a wild horse, we do not want the bit to tear his
mouth and break his teeth. And if we want him to do his
work well, we must tighten the reins to guide him, but we
must not pull on them so hard that he can no longer
move forward.
Unfortunately there are only too many weak
characters who can, like sheep, be driven by a mere bark.
There are slavish and insensitive natures, lacking in
spirit and more forbearing than they should be.
Abu Otman al-Hiri was known for his
excessive patience. One day he was invited to a feast.
When he arrived, the host told him: ‘You must excuse
me, I cannot receive you. So please go back home, and
may Allah have mercy on you.’
Abu Otman went back home. No sooner was he
there than his friend appeared and invited him once
more.
 II—What Is Not Patience
Abu Otman followed his friend as far as his
doorstep, but there the friend stopped and again asked to
be excused. Abu Otman went away without a murmur.
A third time and a fourth the same scene was
repeated, but in the end his friend received him and said
to him before the whole company:
‘Abu Otman, I behaved in this way in order to test
your good temper. I admire your patience and
forbearance.’
‘Do not praise me,’ replied Abu Otman, ‘for dogs
practise the same virtue: they come when they are called
and go when they are sent away.’
Abu Otman was a man and not a dog. And it
could do no one any good that he should thus, of
his own accord, without dignity or good cause,
submit to the mockery of his friends.
Did then this man who was so meek have nothing
in him to control? Oh, yes he did! It was the most difficult
thing of all to control—the weakness of his character. And
it was because he did not know how to control himself
that everyone controlled him as they pleased.” (CWM 2:
176–177)

5
III—Only the Spirit Is Capable of Illimitable
Patience

1.
“To be equal, not to be overborne by any stress of desire,
is the first condition of real mastery, self-empire is its
basis. But a mere mental equality, however great it may
be, is hampered by the tendency of quiescence. It has to
preserve itself from desire by self-limitation in the will and
action. It is only the spirit which is capable of
sublime undisturbed rapidities of will as well as an
illimitable patience, equally just in a slow and
deliberate or a swift and violent, equally secure in a safely
lined and limited or a vast and enormous action. It can
accept the smallest work in the narrowest circle of
cosmos, but it can work too upon the whirl of chaos with
an understanding and creative force; and these things it
can do because by its detached and yet intimate
acceptance it carries into both an infinite calm,
knowledge, will and power.” (CWSA 24: 721)

2.
“As the state of being changes, the will and temperament
must necessarily be modified. Even from an early stage
the Yogin begins to subordinate his personal will
or it becomes naturally subordinate to the sense of
the supreme Will which is attracting him upward.
 III—Only the Spirit Is Capable of Illimitable Patience
Ignorantly, imperfectly, blunderingly it moves at first,
with many recoils and relapses into personal living and
personal action, but in time it becomes more in tune
with its Source and eventually the personal will
merges upward and all ways into the universal and
infinite and obeys implicitly the transcendent. Nor
does this change and ascension and expanding
mean any annihilation of the will-power working in the
individual, as the intellectual man might imagine; but
rather it increases it to an immense forcefulness
while giving it an infinite calm and an eternal
patience. The temperament also is delivered from all
leash of straining and desire, from all urge of passion and
pain of wilful self-delusion.” (CWSA 13: 124)

3.
“To feel hurt by what others do or think or say is always a
sign of weakness and proof that the whole being is not
exclusively turned towards the Divine, not under the
divine influence alone. And then, instead of bringing
with oneself the divine atmosphere made of love,
tolerance, understanding, patience, it is one’s ego
that throws itself out, in response to another’s ego, with
stiffness and hurt feelings, and the disharmony is
aggravated. The ego never understands that the Divine
has different workings in different people and that to
judge things from one’s own egoistic point of view is a

7
 III—Only the Spirit Is Capable of Illimitable Patience
great mistake bound to increase the confusion. What we
do with passion and intolerance cannot be divine,
because the Divine works only in peace and harmony.”
(CWM 14: 279)

4.
“It is true that anger and strife are in the nature of the
human vital and do not go easily; but what is important is
to have the will to change and the clear perception that
these things must go. If that will and perception are
there, then in the end they will go. The most important
help to it is, here also, for the psychic being to
grow within—for that brings a certain kindliness,
patience, charity towards all and one no longer regards
everything from the point of view of one’s own ego and
its pain or pleasure, likings and dislikings.” (CWSA 31:
275)

5.
“I have read your letter and I understand now what it is
that you find trying—but they do not seem to us such
serious things as to be rightly felt as a cause of
disturbance. They are the kind of inconveniences that one
always has when people live and work together. It arises
from a misunderstanding between two minds or two wills,
each pulling his own way and feeling hurt or vexed if the
other does not follow. This can only be cured by a

8
 III—Only the Spirit Is Capable of Illimitable Patience
change of consciousness—for when one goes into
a deeper consciousness, first, one sees the cause of
these things and is not troubled; one acquires an
understanding, patience and tolerance that makes
one free from vexation and other reactions.” (CWSA 31:
323)

9
IV—In the Integral Yoga, There Must Be an
Unshakable Patience

1.
“In all Yoga the first requisites are faith and
patience. The ardours of the heart and the violences of
the eager will that seek to take the kingdom of heaven by
storm can have miserable reactions if they disdain to
support their vehemence on these humbler and quieter
auxiliaries. And in the long and difficult integral Yoga
there must be an integral faith and an unshakable
patience.” (CWSA 23: 244)

2.
“It is best for each person to find his own path, but
for this the aspiration must be ardent, the will
unshakable, the patience unfailing.” (CWM 16: 322)

3.
“How can I get this psychic sincerity? Life is becoming
more and more boring. It will certainly take a long time to
get this sincerity, but how can I live without it?

Patience is one of the most essential conditions of

the spiritual life. One must know how to wait in order
to receive.” (CWM 17: 124)
 IV—In the Integral Yoga, There Must Be an Unshakable Patience
4.
“Askesis, tapasya, patience and faithfulness and
rectitude of knowledge and will are the things required
until a greater Power than our mental selves
directly intervenes to effect a more easy and rapid
transformation.” (CWSA 24: 739)

5.
“In psychological fact this method translates itself into the
progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and
all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and
incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly,
this is no short cut or easy sadhana. It requires a
colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an
unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of
which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid,—the
attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine,
the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the
whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and
become the higher Nature, and the eventual
transformation. In fact, however, the divine Strength,
often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself
for our weakness and supports us through all our failings
of faith, courage and patience.” (CWSA 23: 46)

6.
“The work here is not intended for showing one’s
capacity or having a position or as a means of physical
11
 IV—In the Integral Yoga, There Must Be an Unshakable Patience
nearness to the Mother, but as a field and an
opportunity for the Karmayoga part of the integral
Yoga—for learning to work in the true Yogic way—
dedication through service, practical selflessness,
obedience, scrupulousness, discipline, setting the Divine
and the Divine’s work first and oneself last, harmony,
patience, forbearance etc. When the workers learn these
things and cease to be egocentric, as most of you now
are, then will come the time for work in which capacity
can really be shown—although even then the showing of
capacity will be an incident and can never be the main
consideration or the object of divine work.” (CWSA 35:
750)

7.
“God has all time before him and does not need to be
always in a hurry. He is sure of his aim and success and
cares not if he break his work a hundred times to bring it
nearer perfection. Patience is our first great
necessary lesson, but not the dull slowness to move of
the timid, the sceptical, the weary, the slothful, the
unambitious or the weakling; a patience full of a calm
and gathering strength which watches and
prepares itself for the hour of swift great strokes,
few but enough to change destiny.” (CWSA 13: 209–
210)

12
 IV—In the Integral Yoga, There Must Be an Unshakable Patience
8.
“Cases differ, each has his own way of sadhana. But for
you what I would recommend is constant openness, a
quiet steady aspiration, no over-eagerness, a cheerful
trust and patience.” (CWSA 29: 275)

9.
“Aspiration and will of consecration calling down a greater
Force to do the work is a method which brings great
results, even if in some it takes a long time about it. That
is a great secret of sadhana, to know how to get things
done by the Power behind or above instead of doing all
by the mind’s effort. I don’t mean to say that the mind’s
effort is unnecessary or has no result—only if it tries to do
everything by itself, that becomes a laborious effort for all
except the spiritual athletes. Nor do I mean that the other
method is the longed-for short cut; the result may, as I
have said, take a long time. Patience and firm
resolution are necessary in every method of
sadhana.
Strength is all right for the strong—but aspiration
and the Grace answering to it are not altogether myths;
they are great realities of the spiritual life.” (CWSA 29:
215)

10.
“ ‘Often he (the sadhak) finds that even after he has won

13
 IV—In the Integral Yoga, There Must Be an Unshakable Patience
persistently his own personal battle, he has still to win it
over and over again...’

Yes. So?

Then does this mean that others profit by his sadhana?

You understand, it’s like that for everyone.

If there was only one, it could be like this: that he
alone could do it for all; but if everybody does it... you
understand...
You are fifty persons doing the Integral Yoga. If it is
only one of the fifty who is doing it, then he does it for all
the fifty. But if each one of the fifty is doing it, each doing
it for all the fifty, he does it actually for one person alone,
because all do it for all.

But the work is much longer?

One must widen oneself.

The work is more complicated, it is more
complete, it asks for a greater power, a greater
wideness, a greater patience, a greater tolerance,
a greater endurance; all these things are
necessary. But in fact, if each one does perfectly what
he has to do, it is no longer only one single person who
does the whole thing: not one single person who does it

14
 IV—In the Integral Yoga, There Must Be an Unshakable Patience
for all, but all now form only one person who does it for
the whole group.
This ought to form a kind of sufficient unity among
all those who are doing it, so that they no longer feel the
distinction. This is indeed the ideal way of doing it: that
they now form only one single body, one single
personality, working at once each for himself and for the
others without any distinction.
Truly speaking, it was the first question which came
up when I met Sri Aurobindo. I think I have already told
you this; I don’t remember now, but I spoke about it
recently. Should one do one’s yoga and reach the goal
and then later take up the work with others or should one
immediately let all those who have the same aspiration
come to him and go forward all together towards the
goal?
Because of my earlier work and all that I had tried,
I came to Sri Aurobindo with the question very precisely
formulated. For the two possibilities were there: either to
do an intensive individual sadhana by withdrawing from
the world, that is, by no longer having any contact with
others, or else to let the group be formed naturally and
spontaneously, not preventing it from being formed,
allowing it to form, and starting all together on the path.
Well, the decision was not at all a mental choice; it
came spontaneously. The circumstances were such that
there was no choice; that is, quite naturally,

15
 IV—In the Integral Yoga, There Must Be an Unshakable Patience
spontaneously, the group was formed in such a way that
it became an imperious necessity. And so once we have
started like that, it is finished, we have to go to the end
like that.” (CWM 7: 408–409)

11.
“It is true that a great patience and steadfastness
is needed. Be then firm and patient and fixed on the
aims of the sadhana, but not over-eager to have them at
once. A work has to be done in you and is being done;
help it to be done by keeping an attitude of firm faith and
confidence. Doubts rise in all, they are natural to the
human physical mind—reject them.” (CWSA 29: 111)

12.
“Each man has his defects—you and all others. So you
should not allow that to destroy the harmony that should
reign among workers. Remember that patience and
equanimity and good feeling for all are the first
needs of the sadhak.” (CWSA 35: 752)

13.
“No sadhak even if he had the capacity of the ancient
Rishis and Tapaswis or the strength of a Vivekananda can
hope to keep during the early years of his sadhana a
continuous good condition or union with the Divine or an
unbroken call or height of aspiration. It takes a long time

16
 IV—In the Integral Yoga, There Must Be an Unshakable Patience
to spiritualise the whole nature and until that is done,
variations must come. A constant trust and patience
must be cultivated—must be acquired—not least
when things go against—for when they are favourable,
trust and patience are easy.” (CWSA 29: 32)

14.
“All have had to pass through the ordeal and test through
which you are passing. We would have avoided it for you
if it had been possible, but since it has come we look to
you to persist and conquer. Patience, quiet
endurance, calm resolution to go through to the
end and triumph, these are the qualities now
required of you—the less spectacular but more
substantial of the warrior virtues.” (CWSA 31: 759–760)

15.
“That is sufficient to blow the rest of your Jeremiad into
smithereens; it proves that the force was and is there and
at work and it is only your sweating Herculean labour that
prevents you feeling it. Also it is the trickle that gives
assurance of the possibility of the downpour. One
has only to go on and by one’s patience deserve the
downpour or else, without deserving, stick on till one
gets it. In Yoga itself the experience that is a promise
and foretaste but gets shut off till the nature is ready for
the fulfilment is a phenomenon familiar to every Yogin

17
 IV—In the Integral Yoga, There Must Be an Unshakable Patience
when he looks back on his past experience.” (CWSA 29:
185) (CWSA 27: 460–461)

16.
“If imperfections were a bar, then no man could succeed
in Yoga; for all are imperfect, and I am not sure, from
what I have seen, that it is not those who have the
greatest power for Yoga who have too, very often, or
have had the greatest imperfections. You know, I
suppose, the comment of Socrates on his own character;
that could be said by many great Yogins of their own
initial human nature. Also, self-expression in some form
of art does not preclude serious imperfections and, of
itself, does not cure them. Here again my experience is
that men of this kind have great qualities, but also great
faults and defects as a weight in the other balance. In
Yoga the one thing that counts in the end is
sincerity and with it the patience to persist in the
path—many even without this patience go through, for—
again I speak from personal experience,—in spite of
revolt, impatience, depression, despondency, fatigue,
temporary loss of faith, a force greater than one’s outer
self, the force of the Spirit, the drive of the soul’s need,
pushes them through the cloud and the mist to the goal
before them. Imperfections can be stumbling blocks and
give one a bad fall for the moment, but not a permanent
bar. Obscurations due to some resistance in the nature

18
 IV—In the Integral Yoga, There Must Be an Unshakable Patience
can be more serious causes of delay, but they too do not
last for ever.” (CWSA 31: 661)

19
V—Why We Should Be Patient in Yoga

1.
“There are either of two possibilities then,—to get out of
it into Nirvana by the Buddhist or illusionist way or to get
inside oneself and find the Divine there since he is not
discoverable on the surface. For those who have made
the attempt, and there were not a few but hundreds and
thousands, have testified through the ages that he is
there and that is why there exists the Yoga. It takes long?
The Divine is concealed behind a thick veil of his
Maya and does not answer at once or at any early
stage to our call? Or he gives only a glimpse
uncertain and passing and then withdraws and
waits for us to be ready? ... It is positive that we have
to get inside, behind the veil, to find him,—it is only then
that we can see him outside and the intellect be not so
much convinced as forced to admit his presence by
experience—just as when a man sees what he has denied
and can no longer deny it. But for that the means
must be accepted and the persistence in the will
and patience in the labour.” (CWSA 28: 356)

2.
“It is certain that an ardent aspiration for the Divine helps
to progress, but patience is also needed. For it is a
very big change that has to be made and, although
 V—Why We Should Be Patient in Yoga
there can be moments of great rapidity, it is never all the
time like that. Old things try to stick as much as possible;
the new that come have to develop and the
consciousness takes time to assimilate them and make
them normal to the nature.
Keep this firm faith in your mind that the thing
needed is being done and will be done fully. There can be
no doubt about that.” (CWSA 29: 110)

3.
“I believe that for the effect to be lasting—not a
miraculous effect that comes, dazzles and goes away—it
must really be the effect of a transformation. One
must be very, very patient—we have to deal with a
consciousness very slow, very heavy, very
obstinate, which is not able to advance rapidly,
which clings to what it has, to what has appeared
to it as truth; even if it is quite a tiny truth, it clings to
that and does not want to move. Then to cure that,
one must have very much patience—much
patience.
The whole thing is to hold on, to endure, to endure.
Sri Aurobindo has said this many times in many
forms: Endure and you’ll conquer... bear—bear and you’ll
vanquish.
Triumph comes to the most enduring.” (CWM 11: 3)

21
 V—Why We Should Be Patient in Yoga
4.
“It should be noted that the result of the Yogic processes
is not, except in rare cases, immediate and one must
apply them with patience till they give a result which is
sometimes long in coming if there is much resistance in
the outer nature.” (CWSA 29: 304)

5.
“Also without establishing in oneself calm, sincerity,
peace, patience and perseverance this Yoga cannot
be done, for many difficulties have to be faced and
it takes years and years to overcome them definitely
and altogether.” (CWSA 35: 597)

6.
“When there is full faith and consecration, there comes
also a receptivity to the Force which makes one do the
right thing and take the right means and then
circumstances adapt themselves and the result is visible.
To arrive at this condition the important thing is a
persistent aspiration, call and self-offering, and a will to
reject all in oneself or around that stands in the way.
Difficulties there will always be at the beginning
and for as long a time as is necessary for the
change; but they are bound to disappear if they
are met by a settled faith, will and patience.”
(CWSA 29: 234)

22
 V—Why We Should Be Patient in Yoga
7.
“Do not grieve. Always the same battle must be won
several times, especially when it is waged against the
hostile forces. That is why one must be armed with
patience and keep faith in the final victory.” (CWM 16:
184)

8.
“It must be remembered however that this Yoga is not
easy and cannot be done without the rising of
many obstacles and much lapse of time—so if you
take it up it must be with a firm resolve to carry it
through to the end with a whole-hearted sincerity, faith,
patience and courage.” (CWSA 35: 547) (CWSA 30: 455)

9.
“This path has neither the same aim nor the same
method as the ordinary Yoga, it aims at a realisation of
which their results are only component parts; it may be
said to begin its capital experiences where these end and
its object is one that they would consider impossible.
Much of it is virgin ground in which the paths have
yet to be cut and built. The obstacles and
difficulties in the way of success are formidable
and demand either a strength and patience or a
faith and unquestioning reliance on the Guru who is the
pathfinder and leader.” (CWSA 35: 529)

23
 V—Why We Should Be Patient in Yoga
10.
“You say after several years you have not changed your
nature. I only wish the external nature were so easy to
transform that it could be done in a few years. You forget
also that the real problem—to get rid of the pervading
ego in this nature—is a task you have seriously tackled
only a short time ago. And it is not in a few months that
that can be done. Even the best sadhaks find after many
experiences and large changes on the higher planes that
here much remains to be done. How do you expect to get
rid of it at once unlike everybody else? A Yoga like this
needs patience, because it means a change both of
the radical motives and of each part and detail of
the nature. It will not do to say, ‘Yesterday I determined
this time to give myself entirely to the Mother, and look it
is not done, on the contrary all the old opposite things
turn up once more; so there is nothing to do but to
proclaim myself unfit and give up the Yoga.’ Of course
when you come to the point where you make a resolution
of that kind, immediately all that stands in the way does
rise up—it invariably happens. The thing to be done is to
stand back, observe and reject, not to allow these things
to get hold of you, to keep your central will separate from
them and call in the Mother’s Force to meet them.”
(CWSA 32: 200–201)

11.
“Mother, here it is said: ‘He who chooses the Infinite has
24
 V—Why We Should Be Patient in Yoga
been chosen by the Infinite.’

It is a magnificent sentence!
And it is absolutely true. There is in Thoughts and
Glimpses also a sentence like this where I think he uses
the word ‘God’ instead of the Infinite. But the idea is the
same—that it is God who has chosen you, the Divine who
has chosen you. And that is why you run after Him!
And this is what gives—that’s what he says, doesn’t
he?—this is what gives that kind of confidence, of
certitude, precisely, that one is predestined; and if one is
predestined, even if there are mountains of difficulties,
what can that matter since one is sure to succeed! This
gives you an indomitable courage to face all difficulties
and a patience that stands all trials: you are sure to
succeed.” (CWM 7: 338–339)

12.
“All the call for faith, sincerity, surrender is only an
invitation to make that cooperation more easily possible.
If the physical mind ceases to judge all things including
those that it does not know or are beyond it, like the
deeper things of the spirit, then it becomes easier for it to
receive the Light and know by illumination and experience
the things that it does not yet know. ‘If the mental and
vital will place themselves in the Divine Hand without
reservation, then it is easier for the Power to work and

25
 V—Why We Should Be Patient in Yoga
produce ‘tangible’ effects. If there is resistance, then
it is natural that it should take more time and the
work should be done from within or as it might
appear underground so as to prepare the nature
and undermine the resistance. It seems to me that
the demand for patience is not so terribly
unreasonable.” (CWSA 31: 32–33)

13.
“Certainly, it is not necessary for you to become ‘good’ in
order that the Mother may give you her love. Her love is
always there and the imperfections of human nature do
not count against that love. The only thing is that you
must become aware of it always there. For that it is
necessary for the psychic to come in front—for the
psychic knows, while the mind, vital and physical look
only at surface appearances and misinterpret them. It is
that for which the Mother’s force is working, and
whenever the psychic comes near the surface, you have
felt love and nearness coming up. But it needs time to
prepare the other parts so that they also may
know and feel. Therefore the patience is necessary
and the confidence that through all the delays and
difficulties of the sadhana the Mother is leading
you and will surely lead you home to her.” (CWSA
32: 481)

26
 V—Why We Should Be Patient in Yoga
14.
“It is of course said that the success will come sooner or
later,—it is for that reason that patience is indispensable.
But these are not Himalayan conditions—it is not putting
an impossible price on what is asked for.” (CWSA 35:
131)

15.
“Everything will come in its time; keep a confident
patience and all will be all right.” (CWM 14: 166)

27
VI—The Attitude of Patience Required in Yoga

1.
“You must arm yourself with an endless patience
and endurance. You do a thing once, ten times, a
hundred times, a thousand times if necessary, but you do
it till it gets done. And not done only here and there, but
everywhere and everywhere at the same time. This is the
great problem one sets oneself. That is why, to those
who come to tell me very light-heartedly, ‘I want to do
yoga’, I reply, ‘Think it over, one may do the yoga for a
number of years without noticing the least result. But if
you want to do it, you must persist and persist with such
a will that you should be ready to do it for ten lifetimes, a
hundred lifetimes if necessary, in order to succeed.’ I do
not say it will be like that, but the attitude must be like
that.” (CWM 4: 251)

2.
“Work as if the ideal had to be fulfilled swiftly and in thy
lifetime; persevere as if thou knewest it not to be
unless purchased by a thousand years yet of
labour. That which thou darest not expect till the fifth
millennium, may bloom out with tomorrow’s dawning and
that which thou hopest and lustest after now, may have
been fixed for thee in thy hundredth advent. [On
Thoughts and Aphorisms]
 VI—The Attitude of Patience Required in Yoga
This is exactly the attitude we should all have
towards transformation: as much energy and
ardour as if we were certain of achieving it in our
present life, as much patience and endurance as if
we needed centuries to realise it.” (CWM 10: 301)

3.
“Each man of us has a million lives yet to fulfil upon
earth. Why then this haste and clamour and impatience?
Stride swiftly, for the goal is far; rest not unduly, for thy
Master is waiting for thee at the end of thy journey. [On
Thoughts and Aphorisms]

Here again, as always, Sri Aurobindo sees every aspect of

the question and while preaching calm and patience to
the restless, he rouses and preaches energy to the
indolent. In the union of opposites lies true wisdom and
total effectiveness.” (CWM 10: 301–302)

4.
“The ideal attitude of the sadhaka towards Time is to
have an endless patience as if he had all eternity for his
fulfilment and yet to develop the energy that shall realise
now and with an ever-increasing mastery and pressure of
rapidity till it reaches the miraculous instantaneousness of
the supreme divine Transformation.” (CWSA 23: 68)

29
 VI—The Attitude of Patience Required in Yoga
5.
“The six years of which you speak have been spent by
you mainly in struggling with sex and doubt and vital
difficulties—many take more than that time about it.
What I have been wanting you to do now is to get the
right positive attitude within at the centre free from these
things. Its basis must be what I have said, ‘I want the
Divine and the Divine only; since I want and need,
I shall surely arrive, however long it takes, and till
I do, I shall persist and endure with patience and
courage.’ I do not mean by that that you should have no
activity but prayer and concentration; few can do that;
but whatever is done should be done in that spirit.”
(CWSA 31: 730)

6.
“That the constant fire of aspiration has to be lit is true;
but this fire is the psychic fire and it is lit or burns up and
increases as the psychic grows within and for the psychic
to grow quietude is needful. That is why we have been
working for the psychic to grow in you and for the
quietude also to grow and that is why we want you to
wait on the Mother’s working in full patience and
confidence. To be always remembering the Mother and
always with the equal unwavering fire with in means itself
a considerable progress in sadhana and it must be
prepared by various means such as the experiences you

30
 VI—The Attitude of Patience Required in Yoga
have been having. Keep steadfast in confidence therefore
and all that has to be done will be done.” (CWSA 30:
368–369)

7.
“I seek a scepticism that shall question everything but
shall have the patience to deny nothing that may
possibly be true.” (CWSA 12: 62)

8.
“The certitude of the Victory gives an infinite
patience with the maximum of energy.” (CWM 15: 82)

31
VII—Benefits of Patience in Yoga

1.
“Skilful hands, a clear vision, a concentrated attention, an
untiring patience, and what one does is well done.”
(CWM 14: 308)

2.
“To one who has the aspiration for the Divine, the
difficulty which is always before him is the door by which
he will attain God in his own individual manner: it is his
particular path towards the Divine Realisation.
There is also the fact that if somebody has a
hundred difficulties it means he will have a
tremendous realisation—provided, of course, there
are in him patience and endurance and he keeps
the aspiring flame of Agni burning against those
defects.
And remember: the Grace of the Divine is generally
proportioned to your difficulties.” (CWM 3: 143)

3.
“With patience any difficulty can be overcome.” (CWM
14: 166)

4.
“In this Yoga all depends on whether one can open to the
 VII—Benefits of Patience in Yoga
Influence or not. If there is a sincerity in the aspiration
and a patient will to arrive at the higher
consciousness in spite of all obstacles, then the
opening in one form or another is sure to arrive.”
(CWSA 29: 107)

5.
“Vital patience: indispensable for all progress.”
(CWM 14: 354)

6.
“Human beings could be classified under four principal
categories according to the attitude they take in life:
( 1 ) Those who live for themselves. They consider
everything in relation to themselves and act accordingly.
The vast majority of men are like this.
(2) Those who give their love to another human
being and live for him. As for the result, everything
naturally depends on the person one chooses to love.
(3) Those who consecrate their life to the service of
humanity through some activity done not for personal
satisfaction but truly to be useful to others without
calculation and without expecting any personal gain from
their work.
(4) Those who give themselves entirely to the
Divine and live only for Him and through Him. This
implies making the effort required to find the Divine, to

33
 VII—Benefits of Patience in Yoga
be conscious of His Will and to work exclusively to serve
Him.
In the first three categories, one is naturally subject
to the ordinary law of suffering, disappointment and
sorrow. It is only in the last category—if one has chosen
it in all sincerity and pursued it with an unfailing
patience—that one finds the certitude of total
fulfilment and a constant luminous peace.” (CWM
16: 428–429)

7.
“Do not be over-eager for experience,—for experiences
you can always get, having once broken the barrier
between the physical mind and the subtle planes. What
you have to aspire for most is the improved quality
of the recipient consciousness in you—discrimination
in the mind, ... enduring patience, absence of pride
and the sense of greatness—and more especially, the
development of the psychic being in you—surrender, self-
giving, psychic humility, devotion. It is a consciousness
made up of these things, cast in this mould that
can bear without breaking, stumbling or deviation into
error the rush of lights, powers and experiences from the
supraphysical planes.” (CWSA 30: 33)

8.
“Accomplishment is without any doubt the fruit of
patience.” (CWM 14: 165)
34
 VII—Benefits of Patience in Yoga
9.
“With patience, strength, courage and a calm and
indomitable energy we shall prepare ourselves to
receive the Supramental Force.” (CWM 15: 92)

35
VIII—Patience Needed to Understand
Sri Aurobindo’s Works

1.
“But if we go back to the beginning, then it becomes
extremely practical, concrete and very encouraging.... For
we say this: in order to have the idea of the impossible,
that something is ‘impossible’, you must attempt it. For
example, if at this moment you feel that what I am
telling you is impossible to understand (laughing),
this means that you are trying to understand it;
and if you try to understand it, this means it is
within your consciousness, otherwise you could
not try to understand it—just as I am in your
consciousness, just as my words are in your
consciousness, just as what Sri Aurobindo has
written is also in your consciousness, otherwise
you would have no contact with it. But for the
moment it is impossible to understand, for want of
a few small cells in the brain, nothing else, it is very
simple. And as these cells develop through
attention, concentration and effort, when you have
listened attentively and made an effort to understand,
well, after a few hours or a few days or a few
months, new convolutions will be formed in your
brain, and all this will become quite natural. You will
wonder how there could have been a time when you did
 VIII—Patience Needed to Understand Sri Aurobindo’s Works
not understand: ‘It is so simple!’ But so long as these
convolutions are not there, you may make an
effort, you may even give yourself a headache, but
you will not understand.
It is very encouraging because, fundamentally, the
only thing necessary is to want it and to have the
necessary patience. What is incomprehensible for you
today will be quite clear in a short time. And note that it
is not necessary that you should give yourself a headache
every day and at every minute by trying to understand!
One very simple thing is enough: to listen as well as you
can, to have a sort of will or aspiration or, you
might even say, desire to understand, and then
that’s all. You make a little opening in your
consciousness to let the thing enter; and your
aspiration makes this opening, like a tiny notch
inside, a little hole somewhere in what is shut up, and
then you let the thing enter. It will work. And it will
build up in your brain the elements necessary to
express itself. You no longer need to think about it. You
try to understand something else, you work, study,
reflect, think about all sorts of things; and then after a
few months—or perhaps a year, perhaps less,
perhaps more—you open the book once again and
read the same sentence, and it seems as clear as
crystal to you! Simply because what was necessary for

37
 VIII—Patience Needed to Understand Sri Aurobindo’s Works
understanding has been built up in your brain.” (CWM 8:
385–386)

2.
“I always tell people: if you were to take a little
trouble to read what Sri Aurobindo has written,
many of your questions would become useless, for
Sri Aurobindo has already answered them.
However, people probably have neither the time nor
the patience nor the will, nor all that is needed,
and they don’t read. The books are published, they are
even, I believe, generously distributed, but few read
them.” (CWM 8: 204)

3.
“In reality, you should take this reading [The Life Divine]
as an opportunity to develop the philosophical mind in
yourself and the capacity to arrange ideas in a logical
order and establish an argument on a sound basis. You
must take this like dumb-bell exercises for developing
muscles: these are dumb-bell exercises for the mind to
develop one’s brain. And you must not jump to hasty
conclusions. If we wait with patience, at the end
of the chapter he will tell us—and tell us on a basis of
irrefutable argument—why he has come to the
conclusion he arrives at.” (CWM 9: 250)

38
IX—The Patience of Our Most Ancient Sages

1.
“It is by Vidya, the Knowledge of the Oneness, that we
know God; without it Avidya, the relative and multiple
consciousness, is a night of darkness and a disorder of
Ignorance. Yet if we exclude the field of that Ignorance, if
we get rid of Avidya as if it were a thing non-existent and
unreal, then Knowledge itself becomes a sort of obscurity
and a source of imperfection. We become as men blinded
by a light so that we can no longer see the field which
that light illumines.
Such is the teaching, calm, wise and clear, of our
most ancient sages. They had the patience and the
strength to find and to know; they had also the clarity
and humility to admit the limitation of our knowledge.
They perceived the borders where it has to pass
into something beyond itself. It was a later
impatience of heart and mind, vehement attraction to an
ultimate bliss or high masterfulness of pure experience
and trenchant intelligence which sought the One to deny
the Many and because it had received the breath of the
heights scorned or recoiled from the secret of the depths.
But the steady eye of the ancient wisdom
perceived that to know God really, it must know
Him everywhere equally and without distinction,
considering and valuing but not mastered by the
 IX—The Patience of Our Most Ancient Sages
oppositions through which He shines.” (CWSA 21:
3940)

2.
“The body is the obscure burden that he cannot bear; its
obstinate material grossness is the obsession that drives
him for deliverance to the life of the ascetic. To get rid of
it he has even gone so far as to deny its existence and
the reality of the material universe. Most of the religions
have put their curse upon Matter and have made the
refusal or the resigned temporary endurance of the
physical life the test of religious truth and of spirituality.
The older creeds, more patient, more broodingly
profound, not touched with the torture and the feverish
impatience of the soul under the burden of the Iron
Age, did not make this formidable division; they
acknowledged Earth the Mother and Heaven the
Father and accorded to them an equal love and
reverence; but their ancient mysteries are obscure and
unfathomable to our gaze who, whether our view of
things be materialistic or spiritual, are alike content to cut
the Gordian knot of the problem of existence with one
decisive blow and to accept an escape into an eternal
bliss or an end in an eternal annihilation or an eternal
quietude.” (CWSA 21: 246)

3.
“The discord deepens with the appearance of Mind; for
40
 IX—The Patience of Our Most Ancient Sages
Mind has its own quarrel with both Life and Matter: it is at
constant war with their limitations, in constant subjection
to and revolt against the grossness and inertia of the one
and the passions and sufferings of the other; and the
battle seems to turn eventually, though not very surely,
towards a partial and costly victory for the Mind in which
it conquers, represses or even slays the vital cravings,
impairs the physical force and disturbs the balance of the
body in the interests of a greater mental activity and a
higher moral being. It is in this struggle that the
impatience of Life, the disgust of the body and the
recoil from both towards a pure mental and moral
existence take their rise.” (CWSA 22: 246-247)

4.
“That equation can only be found if we recognise the
purport of our whole complex human nature in its right
place in the cosmic movement; what is needed is to
give its full legitimate value to each part of our
composite being and many-sided aspiration and find
out the key of their unity as well as their difference.
The finding must be by a synthesis or an integration and,
since development is clearly the law of the human soul, it
is most likely to be discovered by an evolutionary
synthesis. A synthesis of this kind was attempted
in the ancient Indian culture. It accepted four
legitimate motives of human living,—man’s vital

41
 IX—The Patience of Our Most Ancient Sages
interests and needs, his desires, his ethical and religious
aspiration, his ultimate spiritual aim and destiny,—in
other words, the claims of his vital, physical and
emotional being, the claims of his ethical and
religious being governed by a knowledge of the
law of God and Nature and man, and the claims of
his spiritual longing for the Beyond for which he
seeks satisfaction by an ultimate release from an
ignorant mundane existence. It provided for a period
of education and preparation based on this idea of life, a
period of normal living to satisfy human desires and
interests under the moderating rule of the ethical and
religious part in us, a period of withdrawal and spiritual
preparation, and a last period of renunciation of life and
release into the spirit. Evidently, if applied as a universal
rule, this prescribed norm, this delineation of the curve of
our journey, would miss the fact that it is impossible for
all to trace out the whole circle of development in a single
short lifetime; but it was modified by the theory of a
complete evolution pursued through a long succession of
rebirths before one could be fit for a spiritual liberation.”
(CWSA 22: 703–704)

5.
“This view I base upon my constant experience of the
Upanishads; for I have always found in the end that the
writers thought clearly & connectedly & with a perfect

42
 IX—The Patience of Our Most Ancient Sages
grasp of their subject & my own haste, ignorance &
immaturity of spiritual experience has always been
convicted in the end of the sole responsibility for any
defect imputed by the presumption of the logical
understanding to the revealed Scripture. The text has to
be studied with a great patience, a great passivity,
waiting for experience, waiting for light & then
waiting for still more light.” (CWSA 17: 367)

43
X—The Divine Patience

1.
“If it is the divine Will, why is it not each victory, why only
the final Victory?

No, this is not what it means. It means that finally the

Victory is certain. Whatever may be the course of events
and the ups and downs and the difficulties and the
different issues of the different conflicts, at the end of the
curve one is sure of the Victory, for the Divine is sure to
be victorious. It may take a longer or shorter time. I have
said—in English I used ‘finally: that finally no human will
can prevail against the divine Will. Finally means in spite
of everything... what we may call divine patience. In
spite of all divine patience, there is a given moment
when human will exhausts its strength and the divine Will
prevails.” (CWM 6: 458)

2.
“It is difficult afterwards because the faith, the surrender,
the courage requisite in this path are not easy to the ego-
clouded soul. The divine working is not the working which
the egoistic mind desires or approves; for it uses error in
order to arrive at truth, suffering in order to arrive at
bliss, imperfection in order to arrive at perfection. The
ego cannot see where it is being led; it revolts against the
 X—The Divine Patience
leading, loses confidence, loses courage. These failings
would not matter; for the divine Guide within is not
offended by our revolt, not discouraged by our want of
faith or repelled by our weakness; he has the entire
love of the mother and the entire patience of the
teacher. But by withdrawing our assent from the
guidance we lose the consciousness, though not all the
actuality—not, in any case, the eventuality—of its benefit.
And we withdraw our assent because we fail to
distinguish our higher Self from the lower through which
he is preparing his self-revelation.” (CWSA 23: 64)

3.
“For the inner Godhead never imposes herself, she
neither demands nor threatens; she offers and gives
herself, conceals and forgets herself in the heart of all
beings and things; she never accuses, she neither judges
nor curses nor condemns, but works unceasingly to
perfect without constraint, to mend without reproach, to
encourage without impatience, to enrich each one
with all the wealth he can receive; she is the mother
whose love bears fruit and nourishes, guards and
protects, counsels and consoles; because she
understands everything, she can endure everything,
excuse and pardon everything, hope and prepare for
everything; bearing everything within herself, she owns
nothing that does not belong to all, and because she

45
 X—The Divine Patience
reigns over all, she is the servant of all; that is why all,
great and small, who want to be kings with her and gods
in her, become, like her, not despots but servitors among
their brethren.” (CWM 2: 42–43)

4.
“Always she [Mahasaraswati] holds in her nature
and can give to those whom she has chosen the
intimate and precise knowledge, the subtlety and
patience, the accuracy of intuitive mind and conscious
hand and discerning eye of the perfect worker. This
Power is the strong, the tireless, the careful and efficient
builder, organiser, administrator, technician, artisan and
classifier of the worlds. When she takes up the
transformation and new-building of the nature,
her action is laborious and minute and often seems
to our impatience slow and interminable, but it is
persistent, integral and flawless.” (CWSA 32: 22)

46
XI—The Patience of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo

1.
“I do not find that Mother is a rigid disciplinarian. On the
contrary, I have seen with what a constant leniency,
tolerant patience and kindness she has met the huge
mass of indiscipline, disobedience, self-assertion, revolt
that has surrounded her, even abuse to her very face and
violent letters overwhelming her with the worst kind of
vituperation [bitter and abusive language]. A rigid
disciplinarian would not have treated these things like
that.” (CWSA 32: 579)

2.
“A disciple complained that people took Mother’s time
with questions often useless, while less and less time was
left for her to attend to apparently more important work.
Mother commented:

It has to be like that, since it is like that.

It is perhaps a lesson (it is an indication), but it has
a purpose. The lesson that I have to understand, I am
trying to understand. I am learning to be patient, oh!
such a patience.... Always there are revolts,
insults, all that. For me it is absolutely zero and
sometimes it is even amusing. When I am in my own
condition, the true condition of compassion, it
 XI—The Patience of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo
changes nothing, it does not raise even a small
ripple on the surface, nothing.
The question was put to me yesterday; I was asked
if insult, the feeling of being insulted, and what is called
in English ‘self-respect’ (something corresponding a little
to amour-propre in French) had any place in the sadhana.
Of course, there is no place for it, it is well understood!
But I have seen the movement, it was very clear, I have
seen that without ego, when the ego is not there, there
cannot be this sort of ruffle in the being. Because I went
back far into the past to a time when I still used to feel it
(many years ago), but now, it is no longer something
foreign even, it is something impossible. The whole being,
and even (it is strange), even the physical constitution
does not understand what that means.” (CWM 11: 54)

3.
“It is perfectly true that the egoistic sense of possession
and the habit of falsehood are too common among the
sadhaks. You should train yourself however to look at
these things in those around you, even when they touch
you close, without being disturbed or unquiet. What you
must arrive at (of course it cannot be done at once but
takes time) is a complete equanimity which sees things
and people as they are but is not shaken, angered or
grieved by them. We ourselves know what an
obstacle all this egoism and falsehood are to our

48
 XI—The Patience of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo
work, but are not impatient because we know also
that they are part of human nature and have so
much hold that it is difficult for the sadhak to get
rid of them even when his mind really wishes to do
so. They are with many sadhaks habits stronger than
their will. When there is not a strong will to get rid of
them or when the sadhak is not fully conscious, then it is
all the more difficult. It is only a strong and always
increasing awakening of the whole consciousness
which can avail and it is that which we try to bring
in all without yielding to impatience because of
the slowness with which it comes or the imperfect
effort of the sadhaks to overcome these defects of
their nature.” (CWSA 35: 802)

4.
“It is strange also that you should conclude that she puts
no value on you. From the first the Mother has had a
special kindness for you; she has appreciated and
supported you so steadily that people have accused her
of blind partiality towards you just as they accuse her
with regard to X. When you were in trouble and
difficulty with suggestions and revolts, she was
love and patience itself and helped and supported
you through all. Afterwards since your sadhana opened,
we have been watching solicitously over it,—I have
been spending time daily writing answers, giving

49
 XI—The Patience of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo
you knowledge of what you should know, trying to
lead you forward with love and care. Why should all
this have been done, if we put no value on you?” (CWSA
32: 390)

5.
“Each one has his own way of doing sadhana and his
own approach to the Divine and need not trouble himself
about how the others do it; their success or unsuccess,
their difficulties, their delusions, their egoism and vanity
are in her care; she has an infinite patience, but that
does not mean that she approves of their defects
or supports them in all they say or do. The Mother
takes no sides in any quarrel or antagonism or dispute,
but her silence does not mean that she approves what
they may say or do when it is improper.” (CWSA 32: 398)

6.
“But the Mother is not blind; she knows very well the
nature of all the sadhaks, their faults as well as
their merits; she knows too what human nature is
and how these things come and that the human
way of dealing with them is not the true way and
changes nothing. It is why she has patience and
love and charity for all, not for some alone, who are
sincere in their work or their sadhana.” (CWSA 32: 390)

50
 XI—The Patience of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo
7.
“I am overwhelmed at the patience and compassion with
which you put up with our insincerities, disobediences
and loosenesses.

Human nature is like that in its very grain; so if we are

not patient, there would be little hope of its changing. But
there is something else in the human being which is
sincere and can be a force for the change. The difficulty
in people like X is to get at that something (it is so
covered up) and get it to act.” (CWSA 32: 120–121)

8.
“I am well aware that this change is not easy; the
dynamic will towards it does not come at once and is
difficult to fix and, even afterwards, the sadhaka often
feels helpless against the force of habit. Knowing this,
the Mother and myself have shown and are still
showing sufficient patience in giving time for the
true spirit to come up and form and act effectively
in the external being of those around us. But if in
anyone this part not only becomes obstinate, self-
assertive or aggressive, but is supported and justified by
the mind and will and tries to spread itself in the
atmosphere, then it is a different and very serious
matter.” (CWSA 31: 151)

51
 XI—The Patience of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo
9.
“So what the Mother said was not something unfounded
and a mere idea of hers. But it was simply a suggestion
to help you. How did your mind come to the conclusion
that it was a command to be followed on pain of
displeasure, spiritual hanging or rejection and exile? The
habit of mental constructions, that is all. Fear? But the
fear itself is a mental construction which could
have no real foundation if you had remembered
the constant indulgence and patience the Mother
has always shown to you.” (CWSA 32: 121–122)

10.
“Something of this battle had been going on in this body
these last days.... It was really very interesting.... There
was outside, coming from outside, an attempt to submit
the body to experiences in order to compel it to
recognise: ‘No, what has always been will always be; you
may try, but it is an illusion’, and so something happened,
quite a little disorganisation in the body, and then the
body answered with its attitude: a peace like this (gesture
of immobility), and its attitude (gesture of hands open):
‘It is as Thou willest, Lord, as Thou willest.’... Like a flash
everything disappears! And this has happened several
times, at least a dozen times in a day. Then—then the
body begins to feel: ’There it is!’... It has this delight, this

52
 XI—The Patience of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo
delight of... having lived the Marvel. It is not as it was, it
is no more as it was—it is no more as it was.
One has still to fight on, one must have patience,
courage, will, confidence—but it is no more ‘like that’; it is
the old thing that seeks to cling—hideous! hideous. But...
it is no more like that, no more like that.” (CWM 11: 230–
231)

53
XII—The Nature Evolves with an Amazing Patience

1.
“ ‘What, this mass of electrons, gases, chemical elements,
this heap of mud and water and stones and inert metals,
how are you going to get life in that? Will the metal walk?
can the stone live? will you take mud and water and
make out of it a body that can move, feel, act, desire?’
But life came in spite of the impossibility and living forms
were developed—plant and tree and living bodies were
built out of the protoplasm and molecule; some
ingenious force or being evolved slowly out of that
through millions of years with an amazing
patience, using chemical and biological elements alike,
gene and gland and heart and brain and nerve and cell
and living tissue and the animal walked and bounded and
man arose evolving through tens of thousands, perhaps
millions of years in the body of an erect two-footed
animal.” (CWSA 28: 264)
XIII—Good Teachers Must Have Unfailing Patience

1.
“To be a good teacher one must have the insight and
knowledge of a Guru with an unfailing patience.”
(CWM 12: 370)

2.
“The idea of progress belongs to the intelligent will which
is active only in very few who are in contact with their
psychic being; later on, in those who are mentally more
developed and begin to understand the need to develop
and control themselves.
I said that the remedy is to raise the consciousness
to a higher level. But, naturally, one must start with
the level of the consciousness of the captains and
instructors themselves.
First of all, they should have a clear conception of
what they want to obtain from those for whom they are
responsible; and not only that, but they should also have
realised in themselves the qualities which they demand
from others. Over and above these qualities, they
should have developed in their character and
action a great deal of patience, endurance, kindness,
understanding and impartiality. They should have no likes
or dislikes, no attractions or repulsions.
That is why the new group of captains must really
 XIII—Good Teachers Must Have Unfailing Patience
be an elite group in order to set a good example to the
pupils and students, if we want them in their turn to
adopt the true attitude.” (CWM 12: 353)

3.
For the teachers and instructors
“But if one is truly eager to do one’s best, it is by doing
the work that one progresses and learns to do it better
and better.
Criticism is seldom useful, it discourages more than
it helps. And all goodwill deserves encouragement, for
with patience and endurance, there is no progress
which cannot be made.
The main thing is to keep the certitude that
whatever may have been accomplished, one can always
do better if one wants to.
The ideal to attain is an unflinching equality of
soul and conduct, a patience that never fails and, of
course, the absence of any preference or desire.” (CWM
12: 358–359)

4.
“But as a general and absolute rule, the teachers and
especially the physical education instructors must be a
constant living example of the qualities demanded from
the students; discipline, regularity, good manners,
courage, endurance, patience in effort, are taught

56
 XIII—Good Teachers Must Have Unfailing Patience
much more by example than by words. And as an
absolute rule: never to do in front of a child what you
forbid him to do.” (CWM 12: 361–362)

5.
“The students cannot learn their lessons, even when
they have their books.

One must have a lot of patience with young

children, and repeat the same thing to them
several times, explaining it to them in various
ways. It is only gradually that it enters their mind.”
(CWM 12: 136) (CWM 16: 197)

6.
“Sweet Mother, during our tournaments there are many
who play in a very bad spirit. They try to hurt others in
order to win. And we have noticed that even the little
ones are learning to do this. How could it be avoided?

With children it is above all ignorance and bad example

which cause the harm. So it would be good if, before they
begin their games, all the group-leaders, the captains, call
together all those they are in charge of and tell them,
explain to them exactly what Sri Aurobindo says here,
with detailed explanations like those we have given in the
two little books The Code of Sportsmanship and The Ideal

57
 XIII—Good Teachers Must Have Unfailing Patience
Child [or What a Child Should Always Remember]. These
things must be repeated often to the children. And then,
you must warn them against bad company, bad friends,
as I told you in another class.
And above all, set them the right example....
Be yourself what you would like them to be. Give
them the example of disinterestedness, patience,
self-control, constant good humour, the overcoming of
one’s little personal dislikes, a sort of constant goodwill,
an understanding of others’ difficulties; and that equality
of temper which makes children free from fear, for what
makes children deceitful and untruthful, and even
cunning, is the fear of being punished. If they feel secure,
they will hide nothing and you will then be able to help
them to be loyal and honest. Of all things the most
important is good example. Sri Aurobindo speaks of that,
of the invariable good humour one must have in all
circumstances, this self-forgetfulness: not to throw one’s
own little troubles on others; when one is tired or
uncomfortable, not to become unpleasant,
impatient. This asks for quite some perfection, a self-
control which is a great step on the path of realisation. If
one fulfilled the conditions needed to be a true leader,
even if only a leader of a small group of children, well,
one would already be far advanced in the discipline
needed for the accomplishment of the yoga.” (CWM 9:
81)

58
 XIII—Good Teachers Must Have Unfailing Patience
7.
“But I tell you—for it is a fact—that I have never asked
anyone educated here to give lessons without seeing that
this would be for him the best way of disciplining himself,
of learning better what he is to teach and of reaching an
inner perfection he would never have if he were not a
teacher and had not this opportunity of disciplining
himself, which is exceptionally severe. Those who
succeed as teachers here—I don’t mean an outer,
artificial and superficial success, but becoming truly good
teachers—this means that they are capable of making an
inner progress of impersonalisation, of eliminating their
egoism, controlling their movements, capable of a
clear-sightedness, an understanding of others and
a never-failing patience.
If you go through that discipline and succeed, well,
you have not wasted your time here.” (CWM 8: 354)

59
XIV—Children and Patience

1.
“What qualities are necessary for one to be called ‘a true
child of the Ashram’?

Sincerity, courage, discipline, endurance, absolute faith in

the Divine work and unassailable trust in the Divine
Grace. All this must be accompanied by a sustained,
ardent and persevering aspiration, and by a limitless
patience.” (CWM 13: 113)

2.
“Sweet Mother,
I come back to the same question. What do You
mean exactly by ‘categories of children’?
Do these categories correspond only to their
character or also to their interests?

The categories of character. In assessing the possibilities

of a child, ordinary moral notions are not of much use.
Natures that are rebellious, undisciplined, obstinate, often
conceal qualities that no one has known how to use.
Indolent natures may also have a great potential
for calm and patience.
It is a whole world to discover and easy solutions
are not much use. The teacher must be even more hard-
 XIV—Children and Patience
working than the student in order to learn how to discern
and make the best possible use of different characters.”
(CWM 12: 373)

3.
“A child should never be scolded. I am accused of
speaking ill of parents! But I have seen them at work, you
see, and I know that ninety per cent of parents snub a
child who comes spontaneously to confess a
mistake: ‘You are very naughty. Go away, I am busy’—
instead of listening to the child with patience and
explaining to him where his fault lies, how he ought
to have acted. And the child, who had come with good
intentions, goes away quite hurt, with the feeling: ‘Why
am I treated thus?’ Then the child sees his parents are
not perfect—which is obviously true of them today—he
sees that they are wrong and says to himself: ‘Why does
he scold me, he is like me’!” (CWM 4: 28)

4.
Prayer Given to the Children of Dortoir Boarding

“We all want to be the true children of our Divine Mother.

But for that, sweet Mother, give us patience and
courage, obedience, goodwill, generosity and
unselfishness, and all the necessary virtues.” (CWM 12:
127)

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XV—Even Cats Show Marvellous Patience to
Educate Their Kittens

1.
“I had a puss, the first time it had its kittens it did not
want to move from there. It did not eat, did not satisfy
any call of nature. It remained there, stuck to her kittens,
shielding them, feeding them; it was so afraid that
something would happen to them. And that was quite
unthought out, spontaneous. It refused to move, so
frightened it was that some harm might come to them—
just through instinct. And then, when they were
bigger, the trouble it took to educate them—it was
marvellous. And what patience! And how it taught
them to jump from wall to wall, to catch their food; how,
with what care, it repeated once, ten times, a hundred
times if necessary. It was never tired until the little one
had done what it wanted. An extraordinary education. It
taught them how to skirt houses following the edge of
walls, how to walk so as not to fall, what had to be done
when there was much space between one wall and
another, in order to cross over. The little ones were
quite afraid when they saw the gap and refused to
jump because they were frightened (it was not too
far for them, but there was the gap and they did not
dare) and then the mother jumped, it went over to
the other side, it called them: come, come along.
XV—Even Cats Show Marvellous Patience to Educate Their Kittens
They did not move, they were trembling. It jumped
back and then gave them a speech, it gave them
little blows with its paw and licked them, and yet
they did not move. It jumped. I saw it do this for
over half an hour. But after half an hour it found that
they had learnt enough, so it went behind the one it
evidently considered the most ready, the most capable,
and gave it a hard knock with its head. Then the little
one, instinctively, jumped. Once it had jumped, it jumped
again and again and again....
There are few mothers who have this patience.” (CWM
5: 242–243)

2.
“Sweet Mother, what kind of love do parents have for
their children?

What kind? A human love, don’t they? Like all human

loves: frightfully mixed, with all sorts of things. The need
of possession, a formidable egoism. At first, I must tell
you that a wonderful picture has been painted... many
books written, wonderful things said about a mother’s
love for her children. I assure you that except for the
capacity of speaking about the subject in flowery phrases,
the love of the higher animals like the... well, the
mammals for their children is exactly of the same
nature: the same devotion, the same self-forgetfulness,

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XV—Even Cats Show Marvellous Patience to Educate Their Kittens
the same self-denial, the same care for education, the
same patience, the same... I have seen absolutely
marvellous things, and if they had been written down and
applied to a woman instead of to a cat, superb novels
would have been made, people would have said: ‘What a
person! How marvellously devoted are these women in
their maternal love!’ Exactly the same thing. Only, cats
could not use flowery language. That’s all.” (CWM 6: 106)

3.
“You had promised that the bullocks would not be
beaten, but we have been told by more than one eye-
witness that they have been beaten by yourself and the
servants, and badly beaten too. We strongly disapprove,
we are entirely against this kind of maltreatment. It is
not by beating, but by patience and a persistent will
without getting into a nervous irritation that work can
be taught to animals. They are far more intelligent
than you believe.” (CWSA 35: 795)

64
XVI—Examples of Areas Where Patience Is Needed

1. Once you have decided to do the Yoga and

you are conscious that the goal is worth the
trouble of a constant and sustained effort,
you may begin
2. One must have plenty of patience for the
work may be undone many times, you will
have do it again until finally it is no longer
undone

“Once you have decided upon this, once you are quite
conscious that it is so and that the goal is worth the
trouble of a constant and sustained effort, you may
begin. Otherwise, after a time you will fall flat; you will
get discouraged, you will tell yourself, ‘Oh! It is very
difficult—I do it and then it is undone, I do it again and it
is once again undone, and then I do it again and it is
perpetually undone.... Then what? When will I get there?’
One must have plenty of patience. The work may
be undone a hundred times, you will do it again a
hundred and one times; it may be undone a
thousand times, you will re-do it a thousand and
one times, until finally it is no longer undone.”
(CWM 4: 335)
 XVI—Examples of Areas Where Patience Is Needed
3. It is true that if one does yoga in the world
and in worldly circumstances, it is more
difficult, but it is also more complete
4. Because, every minute one must face
problems which do not present themselves to
someone who has left everything and gone
into solitude
5. In life one meets with all sorts of difficulties,
beginning with the incomprehension of those
around you with whom you have to deal
6. One must be ready to face all difficulties and
be armed with patience
7. In yoga one should no longer care for what
people think or say; it is an absolutely
indispensable starting-point

“This does not mean, however, that one is obliged to get

out of the conditions of one’s life: it is the inner attitude
which must be totally changed. One may do what one is
in the habit of doing, but do it with quite a different
attitude. I don’t say it is necessary to give up everything
in life and go away into solitude, to an ashram
necessarily, to do yoga. Now, it is true that if one does
yoga in the world and in worldly circumstances, it
is more difficult, but it is also more complete.
Because, every minute one must face problems which do
not present themselves to someone who has left

66
 XVI—Examples of Areas Where Patience Is Needed
everything and gone into solitude; for such a one these
problems are reduced to a minimum—while in life one
meets all sorts of difficulties, beginning with the
incomprehension of those around you with whom
you have to deal; one must be ready for that, be
armed with patience, and a great indifference. But in
yoga one should no longer care for what people think or
say; it is an absolutely indispensable starting-point. You
must be absolutely immune to what the world may say or
think of you and to the way it treats you. People’s
understanding must be something quite immaterial to you
and should not even slightly touch you. That is why it is
generally much more difficult to remain in one’s usual
surroundings and do yoga than to leave everything and
go into solitude; it is much more difficult, but we are not
here to do easy things—easy things we leave to those
who do not think of transformation.” (CWM 4: 377–378)

8. The work of unification around our psychic

centre requires much time and so we must
arm ourselves with patience and endurance
a. If we truly want to progress we must reject
from us or eliminate in us whatever
contradicts the truth of our existence,
whatever is opposed to it

67
 XVI—Examples of Areas Where Patience Is Needed
b. All the parts, all the elements of our being
has to be organised into a homogeneous
whole around our psychic centre

“For if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity

of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we
are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon
earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant
manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever
contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is
opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts,
all the elements of our being can be organised into
a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre.
This work of unification requires much time to be
brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order
to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with
patience and endurance, with a determination to
prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of
our endeavour.” (CWM 12: 3–4)

9. The answer to dark periods returned again

and again after bright periods of sadhana is
patience in the endeavour
10. Till the whole being is not unified
around the central psychic Presence patience
in the endeavour is required

68
 XVI—Examples of Areas Where Patience Is Needed
11. Unifying around psychic Presence is a
personal task that each individual must do for
himself
12. The effectivity of the action to unify
around psychic Presence is in measure of the
receptivity and the conscious appeal

“Mother,
I can’t say why I feel too dull to call you; that is for
you to reply. Such dull periods come after the bright
periods when everything seems to call you and be
dedicated to you. In these dull periods, nothing but tamas
seems to rule. Generally they pass after a few days.

This is a proof that your whole being is not unified around

the central psychic Presence.
This is a personal task that each individual must do
for himself. The help is always there but the effectivity of
its action is in measure of the receptivity and the
conscious appeal.
After all, it is a question of patience in the
endeavour.
With love and blessings.” (CWM 17: 311–312)

13. The small beginnings are of the greatest

importance and have to be allowed with
great patience to develop

69
 XVI—Examples of Areas Where Patience Is Needed
a. Examples of small beginnings
b. The neutral quietness is the first step towards
the peace
c. The small current or thrill of inner delight the
first trickling can lead to the ocean of Ananda
d. The play of lights or colours is the key of the
doors of the inner vision and experience
e. The descents that stiffen the body into a
concentrated stillness is the first touch which
can lead to the presence of the Divine

“The Yogin who has experience knows that the small

beginnings are of the greatest importance and
have to be cherished and allowed with great
patience to develop. He knows for instance that the
neutral quiet so dissatisfying to the vital eagerness of the
sadhak is the first step towards the peace that passeth all
understanding, the small current or thrill of inner delight
the first trickling in of the ocean of Ananda, the play of
lights or colours the key of the doors of the inner vision
and experience, the descents that stiffen the body into a
concentrated stillness the first touch of something at the
end of which is the presence of the Divine.” (CWSA 30:
14–15)

70
 XVI—Examples of Areas Where Patience Is Needed
14. Patience will required to bring the
quietude for those who are accustomed to a
very active movement of their thought and
will
15. The purification and the self-giving take
a long time to accomplish and one must have
the patience

“Those who are accustomed to a very active

movement of their thought and will in all they do,
find it difficult to still the activity and adopt the
quietude of mental self-giving. This does not mean
that they cannot do the Yoga or cannot arrive at self-
giving—only the purification and the self-giving take
a long time to accomplish and one must have the
patience and steady perseverance and resolution to go
through.” (CWSA 29: 83)

16. When one begins to control the thought

coming into your mind one must begin with
an unshakable patience

a. This is because the human mind is a public

place open on all sides, and in this public
place, things come, go, cross from all
directions

71
 XVI—Examples of Areas Where Patience Is Needed
b. You will see to what a degree you have to be
watchful
c. Keep an extremely clear vision of the ideas
which conform to your aspirations and those
which do not
d. You must police at every minute that public
place where roads from all sides meet, so
that all passers-by do not rush in
e. Even if you make sincere efforts, it is not in a
day, not in a month, not in a year that you
will reach the end of all these difficulties
f. When one begins with an unshakable
patience then one must say that even if it
takes a hundred years, even if it takes several
lives, one wants to accomplish and shall
accomplish

“Mentally, it is still worse. The human mind is a public

place open on all sides, and in this public place, things
come, go, cross from all directions; and some settle there
and these are not always the best. And there, to obtain
control over that multitude is the most difficult of all
controls. Try to control the thought coming into your
mind, you will see. Simply, you will see to what a degree
you have to be watchful, like a sentinel, with the eyes of
the mind wide open, and then keep an extremely clear
vision of the ideas which conform to your aspirations and

72
 XVI—Examples of Areas Where Patience Is Needed
those which do not. And you must police at every minute
that public place where roads from all sides meet, so that
all passers-by do not rush in. It is a big job. Then, don’t
forget that even if you make sincere efforts, it is not in a
day, not in a month, not in a year that you will reach the
end of all these difficulties. When one begins, one must
begin with an unshakable patience. One must say, ‘Even
if it takes fifty years, even if it takes a hundred years,
even if it takes several lives, what I want to accomplish, I
shall accomplish’.” (CWM 4: 334–335)

17. The possibilities, which can become fine

capacities if properly developed, will take a
lot of time, effort and patience to change
them into realisations

“I have been feeling unhappy for some time; it seems

that You have written to someone about my faults and he
is telling everybody. I don’t understand how this can help
me. At the moment nothing interests me, and I feel as if I
am entering into the dark side of my nature.

It was Sri Aurobindo who wrote that we are aware of

the ‘serious failings’ in your nature. Did you by any
chance imagine that you have none? If you were more
ready to recognise them, we would have less need to
refer to them. In any case I take the opportunity to tell
you one thing: you certainly have possibilities,
73
 XVI—Examples of Areas Where Patience Is Needed
which can become fine capacities if properly
developed—but for the moment they are no more than
possibilities and it would be good to bear in mind
that it will take a lot of time, effort and patience to
change them into realisations.” (CWM 17: 166–167)

18. The movements of the lower

consciousness requires great will to get out
of them and so one has to arm oneself with
patience
a. A great vigilance is required to avoid falling
into the movements of the lower
consciousness

“How far I have drifted from the spiritual life, from the
true attitude! This business of human love assumes such
great proportions that afterwards it becomes difficult to
extricate oneself from it. Why is it like this?

A great vigilance is required to avoid falling into the

movements of the lower consciousness; and a still greater
will is needed to get out of them. So arm yourself with
patience and a strong will.” (CWM 17: 134)

19. With training and patience you can

acquire a body with which you can get along
in life

74
 XVI—Examples of Areas Where Patience Is Needed
“With training and patience you can acquire a body
with which you can get along in life. Nowadays,
people recognise the value of a healthy and balanced
life.” (CWM 4: 56)

20. Imaginations can be got rid of in time, if

one faces them with calm resolution,
detachment and patience

a. The first necessity is not to allow yourself to

be upset by this difficulty of a restless mind
full of imaginations
b. These imaginations come easily to the human
mind, but they can be got rid of in time
c. It is simply a habit that has taken hold of the
mind it can be dissolved and cease to recur
d. They are not creations of your own mind,
they are foreign matter thrown on it from
outside

e. The physical mind which they attack has to

learn to see and feel them as something
foreign and refuse to accept them
f. You will receive my help and the Mother’s.
Keep yourself inwardly confident and open,
all will be done

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 XVI—Examples of Areas Where Patience Is Needed
“The first necessity is not to allow yourself to be upset by
this difficulty [of a restless mind full of imaginations]. It is
one that often occurs, for these imaginations come
easily to the human mind, but they can be got rid
of in time, and even in a comparatively short time
if one faces them with calm resolution,
detachment and patience. It is simply a habit that has
taken hold of the mind —it can be dissolved and cease to
recur.
It will help if you can cease to regard them as
creations of your own mind—they are not, they are
foreign matter thrown on it from outside. The physical
mind which they attack has to learn to see and feel them
as something foreign and refuse to accept them. Then
they will go. For that you will receive my help and the
Mother’s. Keep yourself inwardly confident and open, all
will be done.” (CWSA 31: 21–22)

21. Rebellious and unmanageable desires

and impulses in men are like wild horses
which can be controlled with a little effort
and patience

a. To break the rebellious and unmanageable

desires need a bridle and the best bridle is
the one you put on them yourself, the one
called self-control

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“A wild horse can be tamed but one never puts a bridle
on a tiger. Why is that? Because in the tiger there is a
wicked, cruel and incorrigible force, so that we cannot
expect anything good from him and have to destroy him
to prevent him from doing harm.
But the wild horse, on the other hand, however
unmanageable and skittish he may be to begin with, can
be controlled with a little effort and patience. In
time he learns to obey and even to love us, and in the
end he will of his own accord offer his mouth to the bit
that is given to him.
In men too there are rebellious and
unmanageable desires and impulses, but these
things are rarely uncontrollable like the tiger. They are
more often like the wild horse: to be broken in they
need a bridle; and the best bridle is the one you put
on them yourself, the one called self-control.”
(CWM 2: 173)

22. To train the vital being is the most

difficult part to train and requires great
patience

a. The vital being in us is the seat of impulses

and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of
dynamic energy and desperate depression, of
passions and revolt

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b. The vital can set in motion everything, build
up and realise
c. The vital can also destroy and mar everything
d. It is a long labour requiring great patience,
and it demands a perfect sincerity

“The vital being in us is the seat of impulses and

desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy
and desperate depression, of passions and revolt. It can
set in motion everything, build up and realise, it can also
destroy and mar everything. It seems to be, in the
human being, the most difficult part to train. It is a
long labour requiring great patience, and it demands
a perfect sincerity, for without sincerity one will deceive
oneself from the very first step, and all endeavour for
progress will go in vain.” (CWM 4: 49)

23. To await for the inner inspiration or

moved by the light that comes from above
needs patience

a. For inner inspiration you must will and will

with persistence, and never lose patience
b. If necessary, repeat the same thing a
thousand times, knowing that perhaps the
thousandth time you will realise the result

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“You must be attentive, silent, must await the inner
inspiration, not do anything from external reactions, you
must be moved by the light that comes from above,
constantly, regularly, must act only under the inspiration
of that light and nothing else. Never to think, never to
question, never to ask ‘Should I do this or that?’, but to
know, to see, to hear. To act with an inner certitude
without questioning and without doubting, because the
decision does not come from you, it comes from above.
Well, this may come very soon or one may have to wait
perhaps a long time—that depends upon one’s previous
preparation, upon many things. Till then you must will
and will with persistence, and above all never lose
patience or courage. If necessary, repeat the same thing
a thousand times, knowing that perhaps the thousandth
time you will realise the result.” (CWM 4: 94–95)

24. It is necessary to have a great patience

when one is in physical consciousness and its
principal difficulty is externalisation and this
covering up of the active experience

“It is inevitable that in the course of the sadhana all sorts

of conditions should come through which one is led
towards the fullness of the true consciousness. You are
now, as are most, in the physical consciousness
and its principal difficulty is externalisation and

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this covering up of the active experience so that one
does not know what is going on inside or feels as if
nothing were going on. When that happens, it means that
something has come up, some part or layer of the
physical, which needs to be worked on and, when that
has been done,—it may take longer or shorter,—the
conscious active inner experience recommences. ... Also
what you describe as taking place in the head, must be
the working of the Force there,—it sometimes gives the
impression of a headache. There must be a working in
the physical mind to get rid of some difficulty or else to
prepare it better for the admission of what comes from
above.
It is necessary to have a great patience—so as to
go through these conditions and not get apprehensive or
restless—and a confidence that all difficulties will be
overcome.” (CWSA 31: 406–407)

25. Change in the habit of the physical

nature and that needs a long patient work of
detail

“Determination is needed and a firm patience, not to be

discouraged by this or that failure. It is a change in the
habit of the physical nature and that needs a long
patient work of detail.” (CWSA 29: 110)

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26. The change of the old habitual
movements of the nature cannot be done in a
single stroke and patience is necessary
because it takes time

a. The inner consciousness has to grow in such

a way that finally it occupies the outer being
also and renders these things impossible
b. Keep the will and the faith and in quietude
and patience let the Mother work all out in
you

“The change of the old habitual movements of the

nature cannot be done in a single stroke; the inner
consciousness has to grow in such a way that finally it
occupies the outer being also and renders these things
impossible. What I have written to you about these things
and the attitude to be taken is the knowledge that we
have and the truth of the human nature and of sadhana
confirmed by our and by all spiritual experience. It is your
outer being that has these reactions and not your inner
nature. You have only to trust in the Mother and follow
what I say and these difficulties will be worked out of the
outer being and return no more; but patience is
necessary because it takes time, not in you alone,
but in all. Do not allow such thoughts as the idea ‘what
is the use of spiritual experiences, since my nature is not

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changed’ etc., for these are thoughts of the mind’s
ignorance. Recover the attitude and the resolution that
you had taken and were developing. Keep the will and
the faith and in quietude and patience let the Mother
work all out in you.” (CWSA 32: 296)

“It is not in a day that one can overcome one’s own

nature. But with patience and enduring will the Victory is
sure to come.” (CWM 14: 166)

27. Patience, patience is required to feel Thy

Power and Thy Force in the body because one
must be ready

“Yes, many times, several times, the body has asked the
question, ‘Why do I not feel Thy Power and Thy Force in
me?’ And the reply has always been a smiling one—one
puts it into words, but it is without words—the reply is
always: ‘Patience, patience, for that to happen you must
be ready.” (CWM 10: 228)

28. The difficulties in the nature always rise

again and again till you overcome them; they
must be faced with both strength and
patience

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a. All who enter the spiritual path have to face
the difficulties and ordeals of the path, those
which rise from their own nature and those
which come in from outside
b. You must train yourself to overcome this
reaction of depression, calling in the Mother’s
force to aid you

“All who enter the spiritual path have to face the

difficulties and ordeals of the path, those which rise from
their own nature and those which come in from outside.
The difficulties in the nature always rise again and
again till you overcome them; they must be faced
with both strength and patience. But the vital part is
prone to depression when ordeals and difficulties rise.
This is not peculiar to you, but comes to all sadhaks—it
does not imply an unfitness for the sadhana or justify
hopelessness. But you must train yourself to overcome
this reaction of depression, calling in the Mother’s force to
aid you.” (CWSA 31: 635)

29. The first necessary form of surrender is

trust and confidence and patience in difficulty
30. If trust and patience fail when
aspiration is quiescent, that would mean that
the sadhak is relying solely on his own effort

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“The effort demanded of the sadhak is that of aspiration,
rejection and surrender. If these three are done the rest
is to come of itself by the Grace of the Mother and the
working of her force in you. But of the three the most
important is surrender of which the first necessary
form is trust and confidence and patience in
difficulty. There is no rule that trust and confidence can
only remain if aspiration is there. On the contrary, when
even aspiration is not there because of the pressure of
inertia, trust and confidence and patience can remain. If
trust and patience fail when aspiration is
quiescent, that would mean that the sadhak is
relying solely on his own effort—it would mean, ‘Oh,
my aspiration has failed, so there is no hope for me. My
aspiration fails, so what can Mother do?’ On the contrary,
the sadhak should feel, ‘Nevermind, my aspiration will
come back again. Meanwhile I know that the Mother is
with me even when I do not feel her; she will carry me
even through the darkest period.’ That is the fully right
attitude you must have. To those who have it depression
can do nothing; even if it comes it has to return baffled.”
(CWSA 32: 139–140) (CWSA 31: 676)

31. The transformation of the external being

is the most difficult part of the Yoga and it
demands patience

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“The defects of which you speak are common to all
human nature and the external being of every sadhak is
full of them; to become aware of them is necessary for
the transformation, but it must be done with a quiet mind
and with the faith and surrender to the Divine and
assured aspiration to the higher consciousness which are
proper to the psychic being. The transformation of the
external being is the most difficult part of the Yoga
and it demands faith, patience, quietude and firm
determination. It is in that spirit that you have to throw
these depressions aside and go steadily on with the
Yoga.” (CWSA 31: 207)

32. The external being in every one is

always, a difficult animal to handle and it has
to be dealt with by patience

“Do not allow yourself to admit any movement of vital

depression, still less a depressed condition. As for the
external being, it is always, not only in you but in
everyone, a difficult animal to handle. It has to be
dealt with by patience and a quiet and cheerful
perseverance; never get depressed by its resistance, for
that only makes it sensitive and aggrieved and difficult, or
else discouraged. Give it rather the encouragement of
sunlight and a quiet pressure, and one day you will find it
opening entirely to the Grace.” (CWSA 31: 187)

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33. With Patience explain to the black spot
which comes from the ego its mistake that it
may disappear

a. The little black spot which comes from the

ego clouds your judgment
b. You will see that it is a tiny thing curled back
upon itself; you will have the impression of
being in front of something hard which
resists or is black
c. If you truly want to know, you must draw
back a step and look
d. Then with patience, from the height of your
consciousness, you must explain to this thing
its mistake, and in the end it will disappear

e. If you persevere, you will see that all of a

sudden you are relieved of a mass of
meanness and ugliness and obscurity which
was preventing you from flowering in the
light

“You will notice then that the little black spot comes
from the ego which is full of preferences; generally it
does what it likes; the things it likes are called good and
those it does not are called bad—this clouds your
judgment. It is difficult to judge under these conditions.
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If you truly want to know, you must draw back a
step and look, and you will know then that it is this
small movement of the ego which is the cause of the
uneasiness. You will see that it is a tiny thing curled back
upon itself; you will have the impression of being in front
of something hard which resists or is black. Then with
patience, from the height of your consciousness,
you must explain to this thing its mistake, and in
the end it will disappear. I do not say that you will
succeed all at once the very first day, but if you try
sincerely, you will always end with success. And if you
persevere, you will see that all of a sudden you are
relieved of a mass of meanness and ugliness and
obscurity which was preventing you from flowering in the
light. It is those things which make you shrivel up,
prevent you from widening yourself, opening out in a
light where you have the impression of being very
comfortable.” (CWM 4: 88)

34. We must meet all adverse circumstances

with patience

“Yes, those who live in their ego live constantly in an ugly

drama. If people were a little less selfish things would not
be so bad.
Meanwhile we must meet all these adverse
circumstances with patience, endurance and

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equanimity.” (CWM 14: 258)

35. If you have the patience to wait, the

mind can change and realise a certain truth in
the higher consciousness

“If one realises a certain truth in the higher

consciousness but the mind resists, should the mind be
forced to accept this new truth?

If you succeed in forcing it, very well. But it is not so

easy. It is not enough to decide to force it for this to
happen! It revolts. And it is not the only one to revolt.
Then what are you going to do with this mind in revolt?
Leave it to do what it likes? Exhaust all that? It is not a
very fine procedure!
The functioning is not the same with everyone.
There are people who have a great light in the mind (or
think they have it!), they know things, they know how the
world and others ought to behave and, moreover, they
are sure that they, they are very far on the road, but
when they begin to act they are more stupid than the
little street urchin. Why? Because it is not the mind which
has decided, and even if it has decided, it is not the
mind which has executed; what has executed does
not recognise at all the authority of the mind, but
tells it: ‘Leave me alone, don’t bother me! I act according

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to my own inspiration!’ Then, what are you going to do?
Try to give a lesson to your mind? You may always try,
but it is not sure that you will succeed. It is not an easy
problem.... Human nature is very unstable; after
having thought in one way, it thinks in another;
after having felt in one way, it feels in another, and so
on; nothing lasts: the good not longer than the bad;
the bad, a little longer than the good! But anyway, this
does not last indefinitely. So, if you have the patience
to wait, surely it will change!” (CWM 4: 177–178)

36. To overcome the satisfactions of

ordinary life and completely consecrate
yourself to the Divine can be done by much
patience

37. If one wants to consecrate to the Divine

then there is no question of personal
incapacity, since the Mother’s help and
protection is always there

“My dear child,

I understand your difficulty very well. It is very
common and can only be solved with much
endurance in the will and much patience.
For on the one hand you want to consecrate
yourself to the Divine and take your place in the divine
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life in the making.
On the other hand you want the satisfactions
of ordinary life and the pleasures of the vital—
without considering, however, that these pleasures can
only be obtained through much struggle and effort and
that always they go hand in hand with worry and
suffering.
On the first path, there is no question of personal
incapacity, since our help and protection are always
there. Indeed, you must open yourself to this help and
protection and learn to use them to conquer the
adversary who is trying to draw you towards the lower
animal consciousness.
Love from your mother who never leaves you.”
(CWM 16: 136)

38. When one wants to make a complete

offering to the Mother one must have an
obstinate will and a great patience

a. But once one has taken the resolution to

completely offer to the Mother, the divine
help will be there to support and to help
b. This help is felt inwardly in the heart

“Sweet Mother,
How can one remember at every moment that
whatever one does is for You? Particularly when one
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wants to make a complete offering, how should one
proceed, never forgetting that it is for the Divine?

To achieve that, one must have an obstinate will and a

great patience. But once one has taken the resolution
to do it, the divine help will be there to support and to
help. This help is felt inwardly in the heart.” (CWM 16:
398)

39. The Divine Wisdom and Power can

liberate the true Person in us and attain to a
divine manhood if we yield to its workings
with patience

“But our more difficult problem is to liberate the true

Person and attain to a divine manhood which shall
be the pure vessel of a divine force and the perfect
instrument of a divine action. Step after step has to be
firmly taken; difficulty after difficulty has to be entirely
experienced and entirely mastered. Only the Divine
Wisdom and Power can do this for us and it will do
all if we yield to it in an entire faith and follow and
assent to its workings with a constant courage and
patience.” (CWSA 23: 247)

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40. To get into contact with the inner being
and change the outer consciousness from the
inner is the work of the sadhana and it is sure
to come with patience

“It is not really on the capacity of the outer nature that

success depends, (for the outer nature all self-exceeding
seems impossibly difficult), but on the inner being and to
the inner being all is possible. One has only to get into
contact with the inner being and change the outer
view and consciousness from the inner—that is the
work of the sadhana and it is sure to come with
sincerity, aspiration and patience.” (CWSA 29: 31–
32) (CWSA 35: 131–132)

41. Adopt more patient course by which the

doors of the inner being will automatically
swing open

a. More patient course is developing the sattwic

qualities and building up the inner meditative
quietude
b. It is possible by strenuous meditation to open
doors to the inner being and it may lead to
conditions of sadhana which may be very
turbid, chaotic, beset with unnecessary
dangers

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c. It is necessary to keep the sattwic quietude,
patience, vigilance
d. To hurry nothing, to force nothing, not to be
led away by any strong lure or call of the
intermediate stage
e. For there are many vehement pulls from the
forces of the inner planes which it is not safe
to follow

“You did quite right in first developing the sattwic

qualities and building up the inner meditative quietude. It
is possible by strenuous meditation or by certain methods
of tense endeavour to open doors on to the inner being
or even break down some of the walls between the inner
and outer self before finishing or even undertaking this
preliminary self-discipline, but it is not always wise to do
it as that may lead to conditions of sadhana which may
be very turbid, chaotic, beset with unnecessary dangers.
By adopting the more patient course you have
arrived at a point at which the doors of the inner
being have begun almost automatically to swing
open. Now both processes can go on side by side, but it
is necessary to keep the sattwic quietude,
patience, vigilance,—to hurry nothing, to force
nothing, not to be led away by any strong lure or call of
the intermediate stage which is now beginning before you
are sure that it is the right call. For there are many

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vehement pulls from the forces of the inner planes which
it is not safe to follow.” (CWSA 30: 257–258)

42. To grow into a divine life the wrappings

and disguises of our outer being must be
extricated with patience

a. In the growth into a divine life the spirit must

be our first preoccupation

b. Until we have built up in ourselves an inner

life of the spirit, it is obvious that no outer
divine living can become possible

“In the growth into a divine life the spirit must be our first
preoccupation; until we have revealed and evolved it in
our self out of its mental, vital, physical wrappings and
disguises, extricated it with patience from our own body,
as the Upanishad puts it, until we have built up in
ourselves an inner life of the spirit, it is obvious that no
outer divine living can become possible. Unless, indeed, it
is a mental or vital godhead that we perceive and would
be,—but even then the individual mental being or the
being of power and vital force and desire in us must grow
into a form of that godhead before our life can be divine
in that inferior sense, the life of the infra spiritual
superman, mental demi-god or vital Titan, Deva or
Asura.” (CWSA 22: 1058)
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43. Where there is great complexity which
takes in many sides and reconcile many
conflicting conclusions as in Upanishads then
we must follow it with patience

“What a magnificent exterminating sweep do we hear for

instance in that old renowned sentence, brahma satyaṁ
jagan mithyā, the Eternal alone is true, the universe is a
lie, and how these four victorious words seem to settle
the whole business of God and man and world and life at
once and for ever in their uncompromising antithesis of
affirmation and negation. But after all perhaps when we
come to think more at large about the matter, we may
find that Nature and Existence are not of the same mind
as man in this respect, that there is here a great
complexity which we must follow with patience
and that those ways of thinking have most chance of a
fruitful truth-yielding, which like the inspired thinking of
the Upanishads take in many sides at once and reconcile
many conflicting conclusions. One can hew material for a
hundred philosophies out of the Upanishads as if from
some bottomless Titans’ quarry and yet no more exhaust
it than one can exhaust the opulent bosom of our mother
Earth or the riches of our father Ether.” (CWSA 13: 308)

44. Instead of suicide face your difficulties

with fortitude and patience

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a. Suicide is a weak and unmanly evasion and it
is found to be useless
b. Since the same misery continues after death
c. One has to come back to earth and face the
same difficulties under worse conditions
d. The Gita has never said that suicide can
under any circumstances lead to Nirvana

e. The death spoken of in Gita is a natural or a

Yogic death with the mind concentrated with
faith and absorption in the Divine

“I must remind you of your promise not to yield to sorrow

and despair and to face your difficulties with
fortitude and patience. Suicide is not only a weak and
unmanly evasion, but it is worse than useless since the
same misery continues after death intensified in the
consciousness which can think of nothing else and one
has to come back to earth and face the same difficulties
under worse conditions. The Gita has never said that
suicide can under any circumstances lead to Nirvana; the
death spoken of is a natural or a Yogic death with the
mind concentrated with faith and absorption in the
Divine.” (CWSA 31: 750)

45. To recover your true inner vital self you

must have steadfast patience, cheerfulness

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a. Then when you are back to your right walk
and stature the hostile forces wait a little and
strike again
b. The whole thing repeats itself with a
mechanical regularity

c. It takes time, steadfast endeavour, long

continued aspiration and a calm perseverance
to get anywhere in Yoga
d. Equanimity, steadfast patience, cheerfulness
is required to recover your true inner vital
self and get rid of this intruder
e. If you give the hostile forces its rein, it is
extremely difficult to get on to anywhere
f. The hostile forcesmust go, its going is much
more urgently required

“Then when you are back to your right walk and stature
they [hostile forces] wait a little and strike again and the
whole thing repeats itself with a mechanical regularity. It
takes time, steadfast endeavour, long continued
aspiration and a calm perseverance to get anywhere in
Yoga; that time you do not give yourself because of these
recurrent swingings away from the right attitude. It is not
vanity or intellectual questioning that is the real
obstacle—they are only impedimenta,—but they could
well be overcome or one could pass beyond in spite of
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them if this part of the vital were not there or were not so
strong to intervene. If I have many times urged upon you
equanimity, steadfast patience, cheerfulness or
whatever is contrary to this spirit, it is because I wanted
you to recover your true inner vital self and get rid
of this intruder. If you give it rein, it is extremely difficult
to get on to anywhere. It must go,—its going is much
more urgently required than the going of the intellectual
doubt.” (CWSA 31: 775)

46. If you can acquire and keep patience

and fortitude the hold hostile forces have will
progressively disappear

“The cure may take time because your nervous system

has been long subjected to these [hostile forces]
influences and, when they are evicted, they return with
violence to re-establish their hold. But if you can
acquire and keep patience and fortitude and the
right consciousness and right attitude with regard to
these things, the hold they have will progressively
disappear.” (CWSA 31: 804)

47. To become a conscious and perfect

instrument cannot be done in a day so not to
become anxious or uneasy

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a. You can be a conscious and perfect
instrument only when you are no longer
acting in obedience to the ignorant push of
the lower nature
b. You can be a perfect instrument when you
surrender to the Mother and aware of her
higher Force acting within you

c. One has to act in so far as one has to aspire,

offer oneself, assent to the Mother’s working,
reject all else, more and more surrender
d. All else will be done in time so there is no
need for anxiety or depression or impatience

“You can be a conscious and perfect instrument only

when you are no longer acting in obedience to the
ignorant push of the lower nature, but in surrender to the
Mother and aware of her higher Force acting within you.
So here too your intuition was perfectly true.
But all this cannot be done in a day. So you are
once more right in not being anxious or uneasy. One
must be vigilant, but not anxious and uneasy, ... The
Mother’s Force will act and bring the result in its own
time—provided one offers all to her and aspires and is
vigilant, calling and remembering her at all times,
rejecting quietly all that stands in the way of the action of
her transforming Force. Your second view of this was
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more from the right angle of vision than the first. To say
that it is not I who have to act, so I need not mind, is to
say too much—one has to act in so far as one has to
aspire, offer oneself, assent to the Mother’s
working, reject all else, more and more surrender.
All else will be done in time; there is no need for
anxiety or depression or impatience.” (CWSA 32:
243)

48. The phrase ‘Leaving the result to the

Divine’ implies dependence on the Divine
Grace and equanimity and patience in the
persistent aspiration

“Everything should be for the sake of the Divine, this

[aspiration for the Divine’s Presence] also. As for leaving
the result to the Divine, it depends on what you mean
by the phrase. If it implies dependence on the Divine
Grace and equanimity and patience in the
persistent aspiration, then it is all right. But it must not
be extended to cover slackness and indifference in the
aspiration and endeavour.” (CWSA 29: 171)

49. Aspire, await with patience for the result

“Surrender everything, reject all other desires or

interests, call on the divine Shakti to open the vital nature

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and bring down calm, peace, light, Ananda into all the
centres. Aspire, await with faith and patience the
result. All depends on a complete sincerity and an
integral consecration and aspiration.” (CWSA 29: 76)

50. If you want to learn to see and have

visions, then it is a very long, very slow
discipline and there are very few people who
have the necessary patience and endurance
to go to the end of the training

“I must tell you that this kind of capacity may come

spontaneously, without effort—one may be a born
clairvoyant. They are not necessarily very intelligent
people, their vital consciousness may be mediocre, but
they are born clairvoyant. It is not a sign of a great
development—it comes from something else, from a
capacity of the parents, of past lives, etc. But if you are
not born clairvoyant, and if you do not carry in you the
other extreme, I mean a psychic being wholly conscious
and fully developed which leads its own independent life
in the body, and you want to learn to see and have
visions, then it is a very long, very slow discipline
and there are very few people who have the
necessary patience and endurance to go to the end
of the training.
It is interesting but it is not essential, one can do

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without it. It is the same as with dreams. But if you can
develop this capacity, it can make your life more rich, it
can make your consciousness progress more quickly.”
(CWM 4: 125–126)

51. For subtle things like seeing or hearing

through a wall or seeing at a distance you
must practise for months with patience, with
a kind of obstinacy

“But for more subtle things, the method is to make for

yourself an exact image of what you want, to come into
contact with the corresponding vibration, and then to
concentrate and do exercises—such as to practise seeing
through an object or hearing through a sound, or seeing
at a distance. For example, once, for a long time, for
several months, I was confined to bed and I found it
rather boring—I wanted to see. I was in a room and at
one end there was another little room and at the end of
the little room there was a kind of bridge; in the middle of
the garden the bridge became a staircase leading down
into a very big and very beautiful studio, standing in the
middle of the garden. I wanted to go and see what was
happening in the studio, for I was feeling bored in my
room. So I would remain very quiet, close my eyes and
send out my consciousness, little by little, little by little,
little by little. And day after day—I chose a fixed time and

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 XVI—Examples of Areas Where Patience Is Needed
did the exercise regularly. At first you make use of your
imagination and then it becomes a fact. After some time I
really had the physical sensation that my vision was
moving; I followed it and then I could see things
downstairs which I knew nothing about. I would check
afterwards. In the evening I would ask, ‘Was this like
that? And was that like this?’
But for each one of these things you must
practise for months with patience, with a kind of
obstinacy. You take the senses one by one, hearing,
sight, and you can even arrive at subtle realities of taste,
smell and touch.” (CWM 10: 132–133)

52. In occultism you may try for years

together and not have the least experience
for you need an infinite patience to learn
occultism

“[In occultism] And then, you must also have an

infinite patience; because just as it takes many years
to learn how to handle the different chemical substances,
just as you have to work for long periods without getting
any visible results when you want to discover the least
thing that’s new, so in occultism you may try for
years together and not have the least experience.”
(CWM 6: 192)

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 XVI—Examples of Areas Where Patience Is Needed
53. One must have much patience and a
very wide and very complex vision to
understand how things happen in Nature

“O Nature, material Mother,

Thou hast said that thou wilt collaborate
and there is no limit
to the splendour of this collaboration.
New Year Message, 1 January 1958

Sweet Mother, will you explain the message for this year?
...
I will tell you only one thing: you should not misinterpret
the meaning of this experience and imagine that from
now on everything is going to take place without any
difficulties and always in a manner that favours our
personal desires. It is not on this plane. ...
It is something much deeper: Nature, in her play of
forces, has accepted the new Force which has manifested
and included it in her movements. And as always, the
movements of Nature are on a scale which is infinitely
beyond the human scale and not visible to an ordinary
human consciousness. It is an inner, psychological
possibility which has come into the world rather than a
spectacular change in earthly events. ... One must have
much patience and a very wide and very complex
vision to understand how things happen.” (CWM 9:
245–246)
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XVII—Other Quotations on Patience

1.
If everything is not in its place then it will cost you
much trouble and patience to find your way in this
muddle and put everything right

“Everything is clean when each thing is in its place. And

your books at school, your clothes and toys at home
should each have a place which is really its own and
which no other thing can claim. Otherwise, battles will
follow and your books will get torn, your clothes stained
and your toys lost. Then it will cost you much trouble and
patience to find your way in this muddle and put
everything right. Whereas it is so convenient when things
are kept in order.” (CWM 2: 234)

2.
“The more intense the experiences that come, the higher
the forces that descend, the greater become the
possibilities of deviation and error. For the very intensity
and the very height of the force excites and aggrandises
the movements of the lower nature and raises up in it all
the opposing elements in their full force, but often in the
disguise of truth, wearing a mask of plausible
justification. There is needed a great patience, calm,
sobriety, balance, an impersonal detachment and
 XVII—Other Quotations on Patience
sincerity free from all taint of ego or personal human
desire. There must be no attachment to any idea of one’s
own, to any experience, to any kind of imagination,
mental building or vital demand; the light of
discrimination must always play to detect these things,
however fair or plausible they may seem. Otherwise the
Truth will have no chance of establishing itself in its purity
in the nature.” (CWSA 29: 422–423)
“As a help in the beginning Dilip suggests that I should
write long letters to friends, translate others’ poems and
writings, read a lot of books etc. And Amal says I should
write essays and criticism of poems and of others’
writings. Please tell me if these are the right ways to
begin.

Of course you can do all that. If you can really do it it will

at least be a lesson in work and application and
patience, if nothing else.” (CWSA 27: 589–590)

3.
“I hope that you will soon acquire the faith and
patience for which you aspire and that the oscillations
cease. For me the path of Yoga has always been a battle
as well as a journey, a thing of ups and downs, of light
followed by darkness followed by a greater light—but
nobody is better pleased than myself when a disciple can
arrive out of all that to the smooth and clear path which

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 XVII—Other Quotations on Patience
the human physical mind quite rightly yearns for.” (CWSA
35: 372)

4.
“It is always the pragmatic man who has no value for
metaphysical thought or for the inner life except when
they help him to his one demand, a dharma, a law of life
in the world or, if need be, of leaving the world; for that
too is a decisive action which he can understand. But to
live and act in the world, yet be above it, this is a
‘mingled’ and confusing word the sense of which
he has no patience to grasp.” (CWSA 19: 27)

5.
The tamasic man is ordinarily slow to act, dilatory in his
steps, easily depressed, ready soon to give up his
task if it taxes his strength, his diligence or his
patience.” (CWSA 19: 502)

“With patience one arrives always.” (CWM 14: 166)

6.
“Admit,—for it is true,—that this age of which materialism
was the portentous offspring and in which it had figured
first as petulant rebel and aggressive thinker, then as a
grave and strenuous preceptor of mankind, has been by
no means a period of mere error, calamity and

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 XVII—Other Quotations on Patience
degeneration, but rather a most powerful creative epoch
of humanity. Examine impartially its results. Not only has
it immensely widened and filled in the knowledge of the
race and accustomed it to a great patience of
research, scrupulosity, accuracy,—if it has done that
only in one large sphere of inquiry, it has still prepared
for the extension of the same curiosity, intellectual
rectitude, power for knowledge to other and higher fields,
...” (CWSA 13: 185)

7.
“If you have the love for me you speak of ... you will
listen to what I say and renew and carry out your
promise to go through with your quest to the end
with patience and courage.” (CWSA 31: 751–752)

8.
“Mother,
Since X has taken over the mill the flour is not
good, so the bread does not rise properly and it remains
hard. But people are saying that I have given orders to
reduce the size of the bread for the sake of economy! X is
reported to have said that I am standing in his way,
otherwise he would have got control over the Bakery. As
far as I know myself, I am not keen about being a
departmental head; I have had enough taste of it. At the
same time I do not want to run away from a task given to

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 XVII—Other Quotations on Patience
me. If I have to continue, please show me some way of
being more useful. If you have someone else in view, I
won’t mind in the least to step aside.

I wanted you to look after the money, because it

was the only way to be sure that the money would come
to me.
But the organisation of the working of that section
can be given to others provided they agree to collaborate.
I ask you a little more time and patience and
expect things to take a more definite form.
As for the displeasure of people they always
grumble and complain. We have not to give it any
importance.” (CWM 17: 288–289)

9.
“ ‘Violence is never a good way to bring victory to a cause
such as yours. How can you hope to win justice with
injustice, harmony with hatred?’
‘I know. This opinion is shared by nearly all of us.
As for me, I have a very particular aversion to bloody
actions; they horrify me. Each time we immolated a new
victim, I felt a pang of regret, as if by that very act we
were moving away from our goal.
‘But what are we to do when we are driven by
events and when we are faced with adversaries who will
not shrink even from mass slaughter in the hope of

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 XVII—Other Quotations on Patience
overcoming us? But that they can never do. Though we
may perish to the last man, we shall not falter in the
sacred task that has fallen to us, we shall not betray the
holy cause which we have sworn in our heart of hearts to
serve to the last breath.’
These few words had been spoken with sombre
determination, while the face of this obscure hero was
marked with such noble mysticism that I would not have
been astonished to see the martyr’s crown of thorns
encircling his brow.
‘But as you were telling us in the beginning,’ I
replied, ‘since you have yourselves been forced to
recognise that this open struggle, this struggle of
desperate men, although certainly not without an intrepid
greatness, is at the same time vain and foolish in its
recklessness, you should renounce it for a time, fade into
the shadows, prepare yourselves in silence, gather your
strength, form yourselves into groups, become more and
more united, so as to conquer on the auspicious day,
helped by the organising intelligence, the all-powerful
lever which, unlike violence, can never be defeated.
‘Put no more weapons in the hands of your
adversaries, be irreproachable before them, set them an
example of courageous patience, of uprightness and
justice; then your triumph will be near at hand, for right
will be on your side, integral right, in the means as in the
goal’.” (CWM 2: 16 17)

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 XVII—Other Quotations on Patience
10.
In the story ‘The Virtues’ by the Mother virtue Patience
comes as follows.

“And around Charity thronged a shining escort,

Kindness, Patience, Gentleness, Solicitude, and many
others.” (CWM 2: 6)

111
Part II—Impatience
XVIII—Impatience Comes from

1.
“The impatience and restless disquietude come
from the vital which brings that even into the
aspiration.” (CWSA 29: 60)

2.
“It is the psychic that gives the true aspiration—if the
vital is purified and subjected to the psychic, then the
vital gives intensity—but if it [vital] is unpurified it
brings in a rajasic intensity with impatience and
reactions of depression and disappointment. As for the
calm and equality needed, it must come down from above
through the mind.” (CWSA 29: 60)

3.
“… one finds that certainly impatience has been
created to counteract inertia …” (CWM 11: 196)

4.
“As a matter of fact, during this period, I have studied
and observed this phenomenon: how the vibration of
desire is added to the vibration of Will emitted by the
Supreme—in our little everyday actions. And with the
vision from above, if we take care to maintain the
consciousness of this vision from above, we can see how
 XVIII—Impatience Comes from
this vibration emitted was exactly the vibration emitted by
the Supreme, but instead of obtaining the immediate
result expected by the surface consciousness, it was
meant to set off a whole series of vibrations and to
achieve another, more distant and more complete result.
I am not speaking of great things or of actions on a
terrestrial scale, I am speaking of the very small things in
life: for example, saying to someone, ‘Give me this’, and
instead of giving it, that someone does not understand
and gives something else. So if we do not take care to
preserve an overall vision, a certain vibration may occur,
for example a vibration of impatience or of dissatisfaction,
together with the impression that the vibration from the
Lord is not understood and not received. Well, this little
added vibration of impatience or, in fact, of not
understanding what is happening, this impression of a
lack of receptivity or response, is of the same quality
as desire—it cannot be called a desire, but it is the
same kind of vibration—this is what comes to
complicate things. If we have the complete, exact vision,
we know that ‘Give me this’ will produce something other
than the immediate result and that this other thing will
bring in something else which is exactly what should be. I
do not know if I am making myself clear, it is rather
complicated! But this gave me the key to the difference in
quality between the vibration of Will and the vibration of
desire, and at the same time the possibility of eliminating

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 XVIII—Impatience Comes from
this vibration of desire by a wider and more total vision—
wider, more total and far-seeing, that is to say, the vision
of a greater whole.” (CWM 10: 175–176)

5.
“The narrowness etc. of which you complain are normal
to the physical nature. It is the same thing acting in a
different way which makes X rebellious to advice and full
of irritation and bad temper when her mistakes are shown
to her. The physical nature of almost everybody is
like that, intolerant, easily irritated, lacking in
patience when dealing with others. But this physical
nature can be replaced and changed by the psychic
nature and you have had the experience of what this
psychic nature is and how it acts.” (CWSA 31: 385)

115
XIX—In Yoga Impatience Is …

1.
“The true Power is always quiet. Restlessness, agitation,
impatience are the sure signs of weakness and
imperfection.” (CWM 14: 137)

2.
“Impatience is always a mistake, it does not help but
hinders. A quiet happy faith and confidence is the best
foundation for sadhana; for the rest a constant opening
wide of oneself to receive with an aspiration which may
be intense, but must always be calm and steady. Full
Yogic realisation does not come all at once, it comes after
a long preparation of the Adhara which may take a long
time.” (CWSA 29: 111–112)

3.
“Therefore there must be a constant insistence on one
main idea, the self-surrender to the Master of our being,
God within us and in the world, the supreme Self, the
universal Spirit. The buddhi dwelling always in this master
idea must discourage all its own lesser insistences and
preferences and teach the whole being that the ego
whether it puts forth its claim through the reason, the
personal will, the heart or the desire-soul in the prana,
has no just claim of any kind and all grief, revolt,
 XIX—In Yoga Impatience Is …
impatience, trouble is a violence against the
Master of the being.” (CWSA 24: 723)

4.
“A certain amount of purification is necessary before
there can be any realisation of the Divine and that is what
has been going on in you. It is after all not a very long
time since the real purification began and it is never an
easy work. So the impatience may be natural, but it
is not exactly reasonable.” (CWSA 29: 46)

5.
“I am weary of the childish impatience which cries
& blasphemes and denies the ideal because the
Golden Mountains cannot be reached in our little
day or in a few momentary centuries.” (CWSA 12:
464)

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XX—Difference Between Aspiring Intensity and
Impatience

1.
“One has only to be patient.
Sri Aurobindo also has written this: Aspire
intensely, but without impatience.... The difference
between intensity and impatience is very subtle—it
is all a difference in vibration. It is subtle, but it
makes all the difference.” (CWM 10: 200)

2.
“That [fiery aspiration] is all right, that is the psychic
aspiration, the psychic fire. Where the vital comes in
is in the impatience for result and dissatisfaction if
the result is not immediate. That must cease.” (CWSA 29:
60)

3.
“The physical consciousness is always in everybody in
its own nature a little inert and in it a constant strong
aspiration is not natural, it has to be created. But first
there must be the opening, a purification, a fixed
quietude, otherwise the physical vital will turn the
strong aspiration into over-eagerness and
impatience or rather it will try to give it that turn. Do
not therefore be troubled if the state of the nature seems
 XX—Difference Between Aspiring Intensity and Impatience
to you to be too neutral and quiet, not enough aspiration
and movement in it. This is a passage necessary for the
progress and the rest will come.” (CWSA 29: 62)

4.
“When that veiling activity is there, much work has to be
carried on behind the mobile screen of the mind and the
sadhak thinks nothing is happening when really much
preparation is being done. If you want a more swift and
visible progress, it can only be by bringing your psychic to
the front through a constant self-offering. Aspire
intensely, but without impatience.” (CWSA 29: 139)

5.
“At first the peace and calm are not continuous, they
come and go, and it usually takes a long time to get
them settled in the nature. It is better therefore to
avoid impatience and to go on steadily with what is
being done. If you wish to have something beyond the
peace and calm, let it be the full opening of the inner
being and the consciousness of the Divine Power working
in you. Aspire for that sincerely and with a great
intensity but without impatience and it will come.”
(CWSA 30: 45)

6.
“The aspiration must be intense, calm and strong and not

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 XX—Difference Between Aspiring Intensity and Impatience
restless and impatient, then alone aspiration can be
stable.” (CWSA 29: 60)

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XXI—When There Is Impatience in Yoga

1.
“But it [opening] may take a long or a short time
according to the prepared or unprepared condition of the
mind, heart and body; so if one has not the necessary
patience, the effort may be abandoned owing to
the difficulty of the beginning.” (CWSA 29: 107)

2.
“The bhakta looks for it [grace], but he is ready to wait in
perfect reliance, even if need be all his life, knowing that
it will come, never varying in his love and surrender
because it does not come now or soon. That is the spirit
of so many songs of the devotees, which you have sung
yourself; I heard one such song from you in a record
some time ago and a very beautiful song it was and
beautifully sung—‘Even if I have not won thee, O Lord,
still I adore.’ What prevents you from having that, is
the restless element of vital impatience and ever
recurring or persisting disappointment at not having what
you want from the Divine. It is the idea, ‘I wish so much
for it, surely I ought to have it; why is it withheld from
me?’ But wanting, however strongly, is not a passport to
getting; there is something more to it than that. Our
experience is that too much vital eagerness and
insistence often blocks the way, it makes a sort of
 XXI—When There Is Impatience in Yoga
obstructing mass or a whirl of restlessness and
disturbance which leaves no quiet space for the
Divine to get in or for the thing wished for to come.
Often it does come, but when the impatience has
been definitely renounced and one waits, quietly
open, for whatever may be (or for the time not be)
given. But so often when you are preparing for a greater
progress in the true devotion the habit of this vital
element stands up and takes hold and interrupts the
progress made.” (CWSA 29: 473–474)

3.
“As in the world, so in ourselves, we cannot see God
because of his workings and, especially, because he
works in us through our nature and not by a succession
of arbitrary miracles. Man demands miracles that he
may have faith; he wishes to be dazzled in order
that he may see. And this impatience, this ignorance
may turn into a great danger and disaster if, in our revolt
against the divine leading, we call in another distorting
Force more satisfying to our impulses and desires and ask
it to guide us and give it the Divine Name.” (CWSA 23:
64)

4.
“It is difficult to acquire or to practise this faith
and steadfastness on the rough and narrow path of

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 XXI—When There Is Impatience in Yoga
Yoga because of the impatience of both heart and
mind and the eager but soon faltering will of our rajasic
nature. The vital nature of man hungers always for the
fruit of its labour and, if the fruit appears to be denied or
long delayed, he loses faith in the ideal and in the
guidance. For his mind judges always by the appearance
of things, since that is the first ingrained habit of the
intellectual reason in which he so inordinately trusts.”
(CWSA 23: 244)

5.
“Here it is written: ‘No snatching or clutching at
realisation.’
What does that mean—‘snatching and clutching at
realisation’, Sweet Mother?

No snatching, no...? Clutching.

You know what ‘clutching” means? (The child expresses

the meaning by a gesture. Mother laughs.)
All right, it means... Does he say one should not or
one cannot?

One should not, Sweet Mother.

That means one must not try to do it, because it does not
obey this kind of movement. These people try to

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 XXI—When There Is Impatience in Yoga
progress through violence. They have no patience,
they have no persistence; and when a desire arises in
them they must realise it immediately.
Now, they want to have something—let us say a
change in their character or a change in the
circumstances or a set of things—and then, they want it
at once; and as this usually does not happen all at
once, they pull it down from above. This is what he
calls ‘clutching’. They seize it, pull it towards themselves.
But in this way one has neither the real thing nor
the true movement; one mixes violence with one’s
aspiration and this always produces some confusion
somewhere, and moreover one cannot have the true
thing, one can only have an imitation of the true
thing; because this is not how it comes, not by
pulling it as though one were pulling it by the tail; it will
not come. Clutching! One clutches the rope when one
wants to climb up. That’s how it is when one pulls! That’s
exactly the movement one should not have once one
holds the rope. That’s all.” (CWM 6: 420–421)

6.
“You must not get into the habit of going to bed late like
that.
It is not good—you will quickly spoil your eyesight,
and that would be the end of your beautiful embroideries.
The nerves also get tired and then one no longer has the

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 XXI—When There Is Impatience in Yoga
sure hand or the precise movement, one loses one’s
patience and calm and the work one does is no longer
neat and trim; everything becomes an approximation and
one has to give up all hope of achieving any kind of
perfection. I don’t think this is the result you want to
obtain!” (CWM 16: 83)

7.
“During the spraying of solignum the mason got a jet of it
in his eyes.

Precaution, much precaution should be taken so that such

a thing may not happen. Do you realise our responsibility
and WHAT IT MEANS if something serious happens?
The lack of precaution is a part of the
movement of hurry and impatience.” (CWM 16: 16)

8.
“It is not possible to get peace of mind if you
indulge in vital ego and the turbulent play of the vital
mind, revolt, demand and impatience. Abhiman,
revolt, violent insistence on the satisfaction of claims and
wishes are foreign to the spirit of the Yoga, they can only
bring disturbance and trouble.” (CWSA 29: 239)

9.
“But to expect and demand it [realisation] so soon
and get fed up because it does not come and
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 XXI—When There Is Impatience in Yoga
declare Yoga impossible except for two or three in
the ages would betoken in the eyes of any
experienced Yogi or sadhaka a rather rash and
abnormal impatience. Most would say that a slow
development is the best one can hope for in the first
years and only when the nature is ready and fully
concentrated towards the Divine can the definitive
experience come.” (CWSA 29: 112) (CWSA 35: 241)

10.
“It is an impatience and restlessness in the vital
which makes it feel as if it were no use staying
here because things are not moving forward.
Sadhana is a thing which takes time and needs patience.
There are often periods of quiescence in which a working
is going on behind of which the mind is not aware—all
seems then to be inert and dull; but if one has patience
and confidence, the consciousness passes through
these periods to new openings and things which
seemed to be impossible to effect at that time, get
done. The impulse to rush away is always a mistake—
perseverance in the path is the one rule to cling to and
with that finally all obstacles are overcome.” (CWSA 29:
111)

11.
“For some time I have been thinking about ceasing to
write to you. Today I was overcome by vital problems.
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 XXI—When There Is Impatience in Yoga
Finally at 4.30 I sent the letter I had written earlier. Why
should the idea of not writing or not sending the letter
cause so much difficulty?

It is because the idea came from a wrong source and was

an attempt of the wrong forces to enter and disturb. It
was not so much the idea in itself, but the idea as an
expression of dissatisfaction and impatience.
Immediately the hostiles took hold of it as a line of
entry for all the old movements once associated with this
kind of dissatisfaction and impatience. Moreover these
letters of yours and my answers have been a strong
means of canalising our help and making it habitually
available to you and effective—not by the words
themselves alone but by the forces behind them.” (CWSA
35: 453)

12.
“But everything that brings down the
consciousness is an obstacle in one’s progress. If
you have a desire it creates an obstacle in your progress;
... and there are hundreds of these things every day.
For example, every movement of impatience,
every movement of anger, every movement of violence,
every tendency to dissimulation, every deformation of the
truth, whether big or small, ... all this is constantly in
the way. All this, every one of these movements, big or

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 XXI—When There Is Impatience in Yoga
small, passing or lasting, all are like so many stones to
build the wall to prevent yourself from progressing.”
(CWM 7: 294)

13.
“Balance is indispensable, the path that carefully avoids
opposite extremes is indispensable, too much haste is
dangerous, impatience prevents you from
advancing; and at the same time, inertia puts a drag on
your feet.” (CWM 8: 285)

14.
“I want to live the divine life; if it is impossible in this life
I shall doubtless do it in another life.
There is no need at all to think of other lives; you
must strive to realise the Divine in this life itself, and you
will do it. But you must not be impatient. It is your
impatience that is causing your depression.” (CWM
17: 114)

15.
“The one thing you have to avoid is losing patience;
for that only prolongs the vital trouble. There is no
reason for it. When the vital is to be changed
(fundamentally) it always gives constant trouble like this
until one can seat oneself fixedly in the calm of the inner

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 XXI—When There Is Impatience in Yoga
consciousness and keep the vital movements quite on the
surface.” (CWSA 31: 138)

16.
“I have a severe pain in my throat, neck and the back of
my head. The attacks are intolerable and I am losing
patience.

You must not lose patience, this does not hasten

the cure. On the contrary, you must keep a peaceful
faith that you are going to be cured.” (CWM 15: 148)

17.
“It is the fact that people who are grateful and
cheerful and ready to go step by step, even by
slow steps, if need be, do actually march faster
and more surely than those who are impatient and
in haste and at each step despair or murmur.”
(CWSA 29: 112) (CWSA 35: 241)

18.
“This synthesis with its spiritual insight, largeness of view,
symmetry, completeness did much to raise the tone of
human life; but eventually it collapsed: its place was
occupied by an exaggeration of the impulse of
renunciation which destroyed the symmetry of the system
and cut it into two movements of life in opposition to

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 XXI—When There Is Impatience in Yoga
each other, the normal life of interests and desires with
an ethical and religious colouring and the abnormal or
supernormal inner life founded on renunciation. The old
synthesis in fact contained in itself the seed of this
exaggeration and could not but lapse into it: for if we
regard the escape from life as our desirable end, if we
omit to hold up any high offer of life-fulfilment, if life has
not a divine significance in it, the impatience of the
human intellect and will must end by driving at a
short cut and getting rid as much as possible of
any more tedious and dilatory processes; if it cannot
do that or if it is incapable of following the short cut, it is
left with the ego and its satisfactions but with nothing
greater to be achieved here. Life is split into the spiritual
and the mundane and there can only be an abrupt
transition, not a harmony or reconciliation of these parts
of our nature.” (CWSA 22: 703–704)

19.
“Only by the light and power of the highest can the lower
be perfectly guided, uplifted and accomplished. The lower
life of man is in form undivine, though in it there is the
secret of the divine, and it can only be divinised by
finding the higher law and the spiritual illumination. On
the other hand, the impatience which condemns or
despairs of life or discourages its growth because it is
at present undivine and is not in harmony with the

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 XXI—When There Is Impatience in Yoga
spiritual life, is an equal ignorance, andham tamah.”
(CWSA 25: 180)

20.
“Do not admit these suggestions of despair or
impatience. Give time for the Mother’s force to act.”
(CWSA 32: 299)

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XXII—The Impatience and the Sadhana

1.
“By the sadhana the vital must be quieted down; it must
receive from the self above its quiet goodwill and equality
to all things and from the psychic its general kindness or
love. This will come, but it may take time to come. You
must get rid of all inner as well as all outer
movements of anger, impatience or dislike. If things
go wrong or are done wrongly, you will simply say, ‘The
Mother knows’ and go on quietly doing or getting things
done as well as you can without friction.” (CWSA 31: 312)

2.
“A third cause comes in the period of transformation,—
one part of the nature changes and one feels for a time
as if there had been a complete and permanent change.
But one is disappointed to find it cease and a period of
barrenness or lowered consciousness follows. This is
because another part of the consciousness comes up for
change and a period of preparation and veiled working
follows which seems to be one of unenlightenment or
worse. These things alarm, disappoint or perplex the
eagerness and impatience of the sadhak; but if one takes
them quietly and knows how to use them or adopt the
right attitude, one can make these unenlightened periods
also a part of the conscious sadhana. So the Vedic Rishis
 XXII—The Impatience and the Sadhana
speak of the alternation of ‘Day and Night both suckling
the divine Child’.” (CWSA 30: 59)

3.
“There are always pauses of preparation and
assimilation between two movements. You must
not regard these with fretfulness or impatience as
if they were untoward gaps in the sadhana. Besides, the
Force rises up lifting part of the nature on a higher level
and then comes down to a lower layer to raise it; this
motion of ascent and descent is often extremely trying
because the mind partial to an ascent in a straight line
and the vital eager for rapid fulfilment cannot understand
or follow this intricate movement and are apt to be
distressed by it or resent it. But the transformation of the
whole nature is not an easy thing to accomplish and the
Force that does it knows better than our mental
ignorance or our vital impatience.” (CWSA 30: 63–64)

4.
“My dear little smile,
You must not lose patience or courage;
everything will turn out all right.
The condition you were in while embroidering the
‘Silence’ flower cannot return as it was before, for in this
world things never repeat themselves in exactly the same
way—everything changes and progresses. But the state

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 XXII—The Impatience and the Sadhana
of mental peace you have known is nothing compared to
the one—much deeper and completer—which you will
come to know.
You must keep your aspiration intact and your will
to conquer all obstacles; you must have an unshakable
faith in the divine grace and the sure victory.
Sri Aurobindo is working for your transformation—
how can there be doubt that he will triumph!” (CWM 16:
59)

5.
“Free yourself from all exaggerated self-depreciation and
the habit of getting depressed by the sense of sin,
difficulty or failure. These feelings do not really help, on
the contrary, they are an immense obstacle and hamper
the progress. They belong to the religious, not to the
Yogic mentality. The Yogin should look on all the
defects of the nature as movements of the lower
prakriti common to all and reject them calmly,
firmly and persistently with full confidence in the
Divine Power—without weakness or depression or
negligence and without excitement, impatience or
violence.” (CWSA 31: 763)

6.
“You can also tell him that there are two stages in the
Yoga, one of preparation and one of the actual intensive

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 XXII—The Impatience and the Sadhana
sadhana. It is the first that he can undertake. In this
stage aspiration in the heart with prayer, bhakti,
meditation, a will to offer the life to the Divine are the
important things. Purification of the nature is the first aim
to be achieved. There should be no over-eagerness
for experiences but such as come should be
observed and, if helpful to the right attitude and true
development, accepted. All that flatters the ego or feeds
it should be rejected. There should be no impatience
if the progress is slow or difficulties many—all
should be done in a calm patience—and full reliance
on the Divine Mother. This period tests the capacity of the
sadhak and the sincerity of his aspiration towards the
Divine.” (CWSA 35: 551)

7.
“The difficulty of the physical nature comes
inevitably in the course of the development of the
sadhana. Its obstruction, its inertia, its absence of
aspiration or movement have to show themselves before
they can be got rid of—otherwise it will always remain
undetected, hampering even the best sadhana and
preventing its completeness. This coming up of the
physical nature lasts longer or less according to the
circumstances, but there is none who does not go
through it. What is necessary is not to get troubled
or anxious or impatient, for that only makes it last

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 XXII—The Impatience and the Sadhana
more, but to put entire confidence in the Mother and
quietly persist in faith, patience and steady will for the
complete change. It is so that the Mother’s force can best
work in the being.” (CWSA 31: 389–390)

8.
“This complete self-surrender must be the chief mainstay
of the sadhaka because it is the only way, apart from
complete quiescence and indifference to all action,—and
that has to be avoided,—by which the absolute calm and
peace can come. The persistence of trouble, aśānti, the
length of time taken for this purification and
perfection, itself must not be allowed to become a
reason for discouragement and impatience. It comes
because there is still something in the nature which
responds to it, and the recurrence of trouble serves to
bring out the presence of the defect, put the sadhaka
upon his guard and bring about a more enlightened and
consistent action of the will to get rid of it.” (CWSA 23:
723)

9.
“To give oneself is the secret of sadhana, not to demand
and acquire. The more one gives oneself, the more
the power to receive will grow. But for that all
impatience and revolt must go; all suggestions of not
getting, not being helped, not being loved, going away, of

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 XXII—The Impatience and the Sadhana
abandoning life or the spiritual endeavour must be
rejected.” (CWSA 29: 345) (CWSA 32: 482)

10.
“One has then to persist, to put always the will on the
side of the Divine, rejecting what has to be rejected,
opening oneself to the true Light and the true Force,
calling it down quietly, steadfastly, without tiring,
without depression or impatience, until one feels the
Divine Force at work and the obstacles beginning to give
way.” (CWSA 29: 86)

11.
“There is a stage in the sadhana in which the inner
being begins to awake. Often the first result is the
condition made up of the following elements:
(1) A sort of witness attitude, ...
(2) A state of neutral equanimity in which there is
neither joy nor sorrow, only quietude.
(3) A sense of being something separate from all
that happens, ...
(4) An absence of attachment to things, people or
events.
It seems as if this condition were trying to come in
you; but it is still imperfect. For instance in this condition
(1) there should be no disgust or impatience or
anger when people talk, only indifference and an inner
peace and silence.” (CWSA 30: 241–242)
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 XXII—The Impatience and the Sadhana
12.
“To control speech is to stand back from the speech
impulse and observe it, not to say whatever the impulse
makes you say but only to speak what one really needs to
say or chooses to say, not to speak in haste or anger
or impatience or lightly, not to talk at random or say
what is harmful. It does not necessarily mean to speak
very little, though that is often helpful.” (CWSA 31: 85)

13.
“There is a stage in the transformation when the
Power is pressing on the outer being, especially the
vital, and bringing down the higher consciousness. But
the natural movements of the vital (anger, restlessness
and impatience) are frequently breaking out and
disturbing the work. Do not be shaken by that but
remain as separate as possible from these
movements and let the Force work.” (CWSA 31: 119)

14.
“Turn from these dark thoughts and look to the
Mother only, not with impatience for the result and
desire, but with trust and confidence and let her
workings bring you quietude and the renewal of
the progress towards the psychic opening and
realisation. That will bring surely and without doubt the

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 XXII—The Impatience and the Sadhana
fuller faith and the love which you seek.” (CWSA 29: 34–
35)

15.
“The physical consciousness has to become balanced,
filled with the light and force from above, conscious and
responsive. That cannot be done in a day—so go on
steadily and dismiss both discouragement and
impatience.” (CWSA 31: 371)

16.
“Prāyopaveśana [fasting for a long time] would be quite
the wrong movement, it would be a sort of Satyagraha
against the Divine. In essence it is an attempt to force
the Divine to do what one wants instead of trusting
to him to do what is best according to his own divine will
and wisdom; it is a culminating act of vital
impatience and disappointed desire, while the true
movement is a pure aspiration and an ardent surrender.”
(CWSA 29: 473)

17.
“You must not yield to impatience and let it bring
thoughts of the old kind that cannot possibly help the
working but must impede it. These thoughts that
come are not true. Those who left, left because they
mingled their own ego with the sadhana —ambition,

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 XXII—The Impatience and the Sadhana
vanity and other wrong movements—and wanted to use
the force that sadhana gave them for these things,—or
they had to go because the pull of the old life, family,
home, action in the world outside was too strong for
them. Also the idea that Mother is leading all others
happily along and they are becoming perfect and only
you are left out, is the usual delusion that comes when
one allows despondency to rise. Almost all have these
difficulties to overcome and these difficulties rise again
and again till the inner being is sufficiently developed to
make them impossible.” (CWSA 32: 295–296)

18.
“The whole thing is to keep yourself open to the
Mother. The preparation of the nature for the decisive
experiences always takes time and should be a
continuous self-opening without discouragement
or impatience for immediate results.” (CWSA 32:
159)

19.
“What is there in you is the capacity for response to these
suggestions [of unfitness for Yoga] that still remains
owing to the stamp of the past habit on the physical,
especially the subconscient physical. I have explained to
you what happens—that these things when rejected by
the mind and vital descend into the subconscient or else

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 XXII—The Impatience and the Sadhana
go out into the environmental consciousness and from
there they can return when pushed by the hostile forces.
It is in these two ways that the hostiles try to recover
their hold. But the rising from the subconscient is not so
important except for its long persistence—it comes up in
dream or it is, in the waking consciousness, fragmentary.
But when it comes from the environmental consciousness
then it can be a strong attack and it is evidently that
which is taking place now. I think what lends force to
these attacks and tends to upset you, is a feeling
of impatience somewhere that things are not
going forward, progress of a definite kind is not
being made and that these things are not done with
already for ever. A period of apparent halt is not
necessarily an adverse thing, it can be a preparation for a
fresh progress of a more decisive character—that often
happens in the sadhana—but you have to keep vigilantly
the advance gained in spite of attacks.” (CWSA 31: 779)

141
XXIII—Curb the Mind’s Impatience

1.
“It is necessary to curb the mind’s impatience a
little. Knowledge is progressive—if it tries to leap up to
the top at once, it may make a hasty construction which
it will have afterwards to undo. The knowledge and
experience must come by degrees and step by step.”
(CWSA 31: 24)

2.
“For so long as the mind is attached either by wish
or predilection, passion or impulse, prejudgment or
impatience, so long as it clings to anything & limits its
pure & all-comprehensive wideness of potential
knowledge, the wideness of Varuna in it, it cannot
attain to the self-effulgent nature of Truth, it can
only grope after & grasp portions of Truth, not Truth in
itself & in its nature.” (CWSA 14: 70)
XXIV—Anger Is a Violent Impatience

1.
“The mind’s view of people and things must necessarily
be either limited and defective or erroneous—to go on
judging by it is now a waste of time. Wait for the new
consciousness to develop and show you all in a new and
true light. Then the tendency to anger which arises
from this mind and is a violent impatience directed
against things the mind and vital do not like, would
have no ground to rise at all—or if it rose without cause
could be more easily rejected. Rely for the sadhana on
the Mother’s grace and her Force, yourself remembering
always to keep only two things, quietude and confidence.
For things and people, leave them to the Mother also; as
you have difficulties in your nature, so they have too; but
to deal with them needs insight, sympathy, patience.”
(CWSA 31: 269)

2.
“All pessimism is to that extent a denial of the Spirit, of
its fullness and power, an impatience with the ways
of God in the world, an insufficient faith in the divine
Wisdom and Will that created the world and for ever
guide it.” (CWSA 25: 179)
XXV—Get Rid of Impatience

1.
“You must get rid of all inner as well as all outer
movements of anger, impatience and dislike. If things
go wrong or are done wrongly, you will simply say, ‘The
Mother knows’ and go on quietly doing or getting things
done as well as you can without friction.” (CWM 14: 264)
XXVI—How the Impatience in Yoga Will Disappear

1.
“Impatience and over eagerness for the result at once
are natural to the human vital; it is by firm confidence
in the Mother that they will disappear. The love,
the belief in her as the Divine to whom your life is
given,—oppose with that every contrary feeling and then
those contrary feelings will after a time no longer be able
to come to you.” (CWSA 29: 111)

2.
“It is quite natural that the unsteadiness of the physical
mind should interfere with the settling of full and constant
quietude and faith—it always does with everybody, but
that does not mean that this quietude and faith will not or
cannot settle in the nature. All that I meant was that you
should try to get a constant will for that quietude, so that
when the restlessness or unsteadiness come across, your
will to quiet might meet it or soon reappear and dispel
the disturbance. That would make the elimination of the
restlessness or impatience easier; but in any case the
Mother’s force is there working behind the variations of
the surface consciousness and it will bring you through
them.” (CWSA 31: 33)
XXVII—The Time of Impatience Is Gone

1.
“There is a background (it is that particularly), a
background of unconscious negation which is behind
everything, everything, everything, still; it is still there
everywhere—you eat, you breathe, you receive this
negation.... It is still a colossal work to transform all that.
But when one is, ... in the other state, it appears so
natural, so simple, that you ask yourself why it is not like
that, why it appears so difficult; and then, as soon as you
are on the other side, it is... (Mother holds her head
within her hands). The mixture is still there, without
doubt.
Indeed, the ordinary state, the old state is
consciously (that is to say, it is a conscious perception)
that of death and suffering.
And then in the other state, death and suffering
appear as things absolutely... unreal. There!
Here, take it (Mother gives a flower of
transformation).
No impatience.
A trustful patience.
In truth, everything is for each one as good as it
can be. All the time it is the old movements that get
impatient.... That is to say, when one sees the all, one
finds that certainly impatience has been created to
 XXVII—The Time of Impatience Is Gone
counteract inertia—but now it is done with, that
time has gone.” (CWM 11: 196)

2.
“Whether the thing to be done takes a thousand years or
only a year according to the human computation, does
not matter at all, if you are one with the Divine
Consciousness; for then you leave outside you the things
of the human nature and you enter into the infinity and
eternity of the Divine Nature. Then you escape from this
feeling of a great eagerness of hurry with which men are
obsessed, because they want to see things done.
Agitation, haste, restlessness lead nowhere. It is foam on
the sea; it is a great fuss that stops with itself. Men have
a feeling that if they are not all the time running about
and bursting into fits of feverish activity, they are doing
nothing. It is an illusion to think that all these so-called
movements change things. It is merely taking a cup and
beating the water in it; the water is moved about, but it is
not changed for all your beating. This illusion of action is
one of the greatest illusions of human nature. It hurts
progress because it brings on you the necessity of
rushing always into some excited movement. If you could
only perceive the illusion and see how useless it all is,
how it changes nothing! Nowhere can you achieve
anything by it. Those who are thus rushing about are the
tools of forces that make them dance for their own

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 XXVII—The Time of Impatience Is Gone
amusement. And they are not forces of the best quality
either.” (CWM 3: 66–67)

148
XXVIII—Other Quotations on Impatience

1.
“The psychic yearning brings no reaction of
impatience, dissatisfaction or disturbance.” (CWSA
30: 377)

2.
“In true courage there is no impatience and no
rashness.” (CWM 14: 170)

3.
“My heart is at peace, my mind is free from impatience,
and in all things I rely on Thy will with the smiling
confidence of a child.” (CWM 15: 211)

4.
“Impatience does not help—intensity of aspiration
does. The use of keeping the consciousness uplifted is
that it then remains ready for the inflow from above when
that comes. To get as early as possible to the highest
range one must keep the consciousness steadily turned
towards it and maintain the call. First one has to establish
the permanent opening—or get it to establish itself, then
the ascension and frequent, afterwards constant descent.
It is only afterwards that one can have the ease.” (CWSA
27: 12)
 XXVIII—Other Quotations on Impatience
5.
“The idea you have given is a very vast one, but if the
epic faculty develops in you there is no reason why
you should not carry it out. Only there must be no
impatience. Milton waited twenty years before he
started the epic he had dreamt of. Also from the
point of view and kind of style in which you want to write
it, you will have not only to get the access to the
inspiration of the overhead poetry but to be quite open to
the flow of that consciousness—otherwise you would only
do small poems in it like Amal’s, such a vast work would
be impossible. At present go on with your development—
you have the epic flow but not as yet the epic building,
that must come in small things before you can do it in
large ones. It will come in time, but time is
necessary.” (CWSA 27: 618)

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XXIX—Short Summary

Part I

I—Patience in Yoga Is ...

1. Patience is the capacity to wait steadily for the

Realisation to come
2. Patience is indispensable for all realisation
3. Patience is one of the native attributes of the Deva
nature
4. Patience is one of the qualities in the Indian
conception of the best, śreṣṭha, the good and nobleman,
ārya
5. One of the dominant qualities of soul type of
Brahmin is Patience
a. Soul-power of the Brahmana has a poise turned
from the patience to meditation, which dominates and
quiets the turmoil of the will and passions and makes for
high thinking and pure living

II—What Is Not Patience

1. Indifference is not patience

2. Excessive patience without dignity or good cause
and submit to the mockery of his friends is not a virtue
3. They are weak characters who can, like sheep, be
 XXIX—Short Summary
driven by a mere bark, lacking in spirit and more
forbearing than they should be

III—Only the Spirit Is Capable of Illimitable

Patience

1. It is only the spirit which is capable of an illimitable

patience
2. The spirit has illimitable patience because it is
detached and yet intimate acceptance the spirit carries
into both an infinite calm and power
3. When the personal will merges with the supreme
Will it increases the will to an immense forcefulness while
giving it an eternal patience
a. Generally the personal will is naturally
subordinate to the senses
b. The Yogin begins to subordinate his personal
will as the supreme Will is attracting him upwards
c. In time the personal will merges with the
supreme Will and obeys implicitly the transcendent
d. In this change there is no annihilation of the
will power
e. This change increases the will to an immense
forcefulness while giving it an eternal patience
f. This temperament delivers one from all
leashes of straining and desire
4. One of the things that the divine atmosphere is

152
 XXIX—Short Summary
made up of is patience
5. When the psychic being grows within, it brings
patience
6. When the psychic being grows, then one no longer
regards everything from the point of view of one’s own
ego
7. When one goes into a deeper consciousness one
acquires patience and tolerance

IV—In the Integral Yoga, There Must Be an

Unshakable Patience

1. In all Yoga, the first requisite is patience

2. In the long and difficult Integral Yoga there must be an
unshakable patience
3. The ardours of the heart and the violences of the
eager will seek to take the kingdom of heaven by storm
and can have miserable reactions
4. Patience is the essential conditions of the spiritual life
5. Patience is required until a greater Power than our
mental self directly intervenes to effect a more easy and
rapid transformation
6. Sadhana of surrender requires above all an unflinching
patience
a. The three stages of surrender are
b. The attempt of the ego to enter into contact
with the Divine

153
 XXIX—Short Summary
c. The wide, full and laborious preparation of the
whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and
become the higher Nature
d. And the eventual transformation
7. For learning to work in the true Yogic way, one of the
many qualities required is patience
8. Patience is our first great necessary lesson in Yoga
9. Patience is full of a calm and gathering strength which
watches and prepares itself for the hour of swift great
strokes, few but enough to change destiny
a. God has all time before him and does not
need to be always in a hurry
b. God is sure of his aim and success and cares
not if he has to break his work a hundred times to bring it
to nearer perfection
10. In sadhana there must be no over-eagerness and a
cheerful trust and patience
11. Patience and firm resolution are necessary in every
method of sadhana
a. Aspiration and will of consecration calling
down a greater Force to do the work is a method which
brings great results, but it takes a long time
12. Integral Yoga asks for a greater wideness, a greater
patience because after winning one’s personal battle he
has to win it for others
13. It is true that a great patience is needed in sadhana
14. Not to be over-eager to have realisation at once

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 XXIX—Short Summary
15. A work has to be done in you and is being done; help
it to be done by keeping an attitude of firm faith and
confidence
16. Patience and equanimity and good feeling for all are
the first needs of the sadhak
17. A constant trust and patience must be cultivated and
must be acquired especially when things go against
18. Even if the sadhak has the capacity of the ancient
Rishis or the strength of a Vivekananda, one cannot hope
to keep during the early years of his sadhana a
continuous union with the Divine or height of aspiration
19. All have had to pass through the ordeal and test
20. The qualities required in Yoga are patience quiet
endurance, calm resolution to go through to the end and
triumph
21. It is the descent of the trickle that gives assurance of
the possibility of the downpour
22. One has only to go on and by one’s patience and
deserve the downpour
23. Without deserving, one must stick on till one gets the
downpour
23. In Yoga the experience is a promise and foretaste but
gets shut off till the nature is ready for the fulfilment
24. Regardless of all imperfections, in Yoga what counts
in the end is sincerity and with it the patience to persist in
the path
a. If imperfections were a bar, then no man

155
 XXIX—Short Summary
could succeed in Yoga; for all are imperfect
b. Those who have the greatest power for Yoga
very often have had the greatest imperfections
c. This is because a force greater than one’s
outer self, the force of the Spirit, the drive of the soul’s
need, pushes them through the cloud
d. Imperfections can be stumbling blocks and
give one a bad fall for the moment, but not a permanent
bar
e. Obscurations due to some resistance in the
nature can be more serious causes of delay, but they too
do not last for ever

V—Why We Should Be Patient in Yoga

1. The Divine is concealed behind a thick veil and does

not answer at once or in early stage to our call
2. Or the Divine gives only a glimpse and then
withdraws and waits for us to be ready
3. The means to find the Divine must be accepted and
there must be persistence in the will and the patience in
the labour
4. It is a very big change that has to be made in Yoga
so patience is needed
5. Old things try to stick as much as possible
6. The new that has to come, has to develop and the
consciousness takes time to assimilate them and make

156
 XXIX—Short Summary
them normal to the nature
7. Keep firm faith in your mind that the thing needed
is being done and will be done fully
8. One must be very patient because we have to deal
with a consciousness which is very slow, very heavy, very
obstinate
9. Our consciousness is not able to advance rapidly
and clings to what it has, to what has appeared to it as
truth
10. The effect to be lasting must really be the effect of
a transformation
11. Sri Aurobindo says that endure and you’ll conquer,
bear and you’ll vanquish
12. Triumph comes to the most enduring
13. The result of the Yogic processes is not, except in
rare cases, immediate and one must apply them with
patience
14. Patience is required because the result of Yoga is
sometimes long in coming if there is much resistance in
the outer nature
15. Without establishing in oneself patience and
perseverance, this Yoga cannot be done
16. For many difficulties have to be faced and it takes
years and years to overcome them definitely and
altogether
17. Difficulties will always be there at the beginning and
for as long a time as is necessary for the change

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 XXIX—Short Summary
18. Difficulties are bound to disappear if they are met
by patience
19. The same battle with the hostile forces must be
won several times
20. That is why one must be armed with patience
21. This Yoga is not easy and cannot be done without
the rising of many obstacles and much lapse of time
22. So if you take it up it must be with a firm resolve to
carry it through to the end with patience and courage
23. In Integral Yoga the way is a virgin ground in which
the paths have yet to be cut and built
24. The obstacles and difficulties in the way of success
are formidable and demand patience
25. The aim and the method of Integral Yoga is not the
same as ordinary Yoga
26. The results of other Yoga’s are component part of
Integral Yoga
27. The end result of other Yoga’s is the beginning of
Integral Yoga
28. Integral Yoga needs patience, because it means a
change both of the radical motives and of each part and
detail of the nature
29. When you come to the point where you make a
resolution to give myself entirely to the Mother
immediately all that stands in the way does rise up
30. The thing to be done is to stand back, observe and
reject, and not allow these things to get hold of you

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 XXIX—Short Summary
31. Keep your central will separate from them and call
in the Mother’s Force to meet them
32. To know that it is the Divine who has chosen you
and that is why you run after Him should give you
confidence that one is predestined
33. If one is predestined, then even if there are
mountains of difficulties, what can that matter since one
is sure to succeed
34. This gives an indomitable courage to face all
difficulties and a patience that stands all trials
35. If there is resistance, then it is natural that it should
take more time
36. Then the work should be done from within so as to
prepare the nature and undermine the resistance
37. The demand for patience is not so terribly
unreasonable
38. The Mother’s love is always there and the
imperfections of human nature do not count against that
love
39. The only thing is that you must become aware of it
40. To be aware of the Mother’s love, the psychic must
come in front
41. The psychic knows about the Mother’s love while
the mind, vital and physical does not know
42. The Mother’s force is working to bring the psychic
to come in front
43. It needs time to prepare the other parts so that

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they also may know and feel the Mother’s force
44. Therefore the patience is necessary
45. We should have the confidence that through all the
delays and difficulties of the sadhana the Mother is
leading you and will surely lead you home to her
46. The success will come sooner or later, it is for that
reason the patience is indispensable
47. To have patience is not a Himalayan condition or
impossibility
48. Everything will come in its time so keep a confident
patience

VI—The Attitude of Patience Required in Yoga

1. In Yoga you must arm yourself with an endless

patience and endurance
2. You do a thing thousand times if necessary, but you
do it till it gets done
3. One may do the yoga for a number of years without
noticing the least result
4. If you want to do Yoga you must persist and persist
with such a will that you should be ready to do it for ten
lifetimes, a hundred lifetimes if necessary, in order to
succeed
5. It may not be like that, but the attitude must be like
that
6. The attitude we should all have towards

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transformation in the Integral Yoga
7. Have as much energy and ardour as if we were
certain of achieving it in our present life
8. The patience we must have as if we are ready if
centuries are needed to realise it
9. Persevere as if one knows that one has to labour
for thousand years
10. That which one aspires may have been fixed for
thee in thy hundredth attempt
11. Sri Aurobindo while preaching calm and patience
also preaches energy to stride swiftly
12. For the goal is far and not to rest unduly, for thy
Master is waiting for you at the end of thy journey
13. The ideal attitude of the sadhaka is to have an
endless patience as if he had all eternity for his fulfilment
14. Yet to develop the energy that shall realise now
15. The right positive attitude is that I want the Divine
and the Divine only
16. Since I want and need the Divine, I shall surely
arrive, however long it takes
17. Till I do arrive I shall persist and endure with
patience and courage
18. Sri Aurobindo wants us to wait on the Mother’s
working in full patience and confidence
19. Have the patience to deny nothing that may
possibly be true
20. The certitude of the Victory gives an infinite

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patience

VII—Benefits of Patience in Yoga

1. With untiring patience what one does is well done

2. If somebody has a hundred difficulties and has
patience and endurance then he will have tremendous
realisations
3. With patience any difficulty can be overcome
4. If there is a patient will to arrive at the higher
consciousness in spite of all obstacles, then the opening
in one form or another is sure to arrive
5. Vital patience is indispensable for all progress
6. If one gives oneself entirely to the Divine and live
only for Him pursuing it with an unfailing patience then
one finds the certitude of total fulfilment and a constant
luminous peace
7. Enduring patience is one of the components of the
improved quality of the recipient consciousness in us
8. This recipient consciousness can bear without
breaking when there is the rush of lights, powers and
experiences from the supraphysical planes
9. Accomplishment is without any doubt the fruit of
patience
10. With patience we shall prepare ourselves to receive
the Supramental Force

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VIII—Patience Needed to Understand
Sri Aurobindo’s Works

1. If you feel impossible to understand when making

an effort to understand means it is within your
consciousness, otherwise you could not try to understand
it
2. Just as the Mother and Sri Aurobindo is in your
consciousness, just as what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother
has written is also in your consciousness, otherwise you
would have no contact with it
3. But for the moment it is impossible to understand,
for want of a few small cells in the brain
4. These cells develop through attention,
concentration and effort
5. When you have made an effort to understand, after
a few hours or a few days or a few months, new
convolutions will be formed in your brain
6. So long as these convolutions are not there, you
may make an effort but you will not understand
7. The only thing necessary is to want to understand
and to have the necessary patience
8. One should have will or aspiration or desire to
understand
9. Aspiration makes an opening in our consciousness
to let the thing enter
10. This will build up in the brain the elements

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necessary to express itself
11. Then after some period you open the book once
again and read the same sentence, and it seems as clear
as crystal to you
12. If one reads Sri Aurobindo many of our questions
would become useless, for Sri Aurobindo has already
answered them
13. People probably have neither the time nor the
patience nor the will, to read Sri Aurobindo
14. Reading Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine should be
taken as an opportunity to develop the philosophical mind
and the capacity to arrange ideas in a logical order and
establish an argument on a sound basis
15. While reading The Life Divine one must not jump to
hasty conclusions
16. If we wait with patience, at the end of the chapter
Sri Aurobindo will tell us why he has come to the
conclusion he arrives at

IX—The Patience of Our Most Ancient Sages

1. Our most ancient sages had the patience to find

and to know for they perceived the borders where it has
to pass into something beyond itself
2. The steady eye of the ancient wisdom perceived
that to know God really, it must know Him everywhere
equally and without distinction, considering and valuing

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but not mastered by the oppositions through which He
shines
3. The older creeds were more patient for they did not
make the formidable division of matter and spirit
4. They acknowledged Earth and Heaven and
accorded them an equal love and reverence
5. These ancient mysteries are obscure to us and we
view things to be materialistic or spiritual and accept an
escape into an eternal bliss or an end in an eternal
annihilation or an eternal quietude
6. The discord of Mind with Life and Matter slays the
vital cravings and impairs the physical force in the
interests of a greater mental activity and a higher moral
being
7. It is in this struggle that the impatience of Life, the
disgust of the body and the recoil from both towards a
pure mental and moral existence take their rise
8. What is needed is to give its full legitimate value to
each part of our composite being and find out the key of
their unity
9. This can be discovered by an evolutionary synthesis
10. A synthesis of this kind was attempted in the
ancient Indian culture which accepted four legitimate
motives of human living
11. The four motives are man’s vital interests and
needs, his desires, his ethical and religious aspiration, his
ultimate spiritual aim and destiny

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12. The text of the Upanishads has to be studied with a
great patience, waiting for experience, waiting for light
13. The writers of Upanishads have thought clearly and
connectedly and with a perfect grasp of their subject
14. But our own haste and immaturity of spiritual
experience has always been convicted in the end for any
defect imputed by the presumption of the logical
understanding to the revealed Scripture

X—The Divine Patience

1. The Divine Patience is that the Divine allows the

course of events and all the ups and downs
2. The Divine Patience is that the Divine allows the
difficulties and the different issues of the different
conflicts
3. But at the end of the curve one is sure of the Divine
Victory
4. There is a given moment when human will exhausts
its strength and the divine Will prevails and that is the
Divine Patience
5. The divine Guide within has the entire love of the
mother and the entire patience of the teacher
6. The divine uses error in order to arrive at truth,
suffering in order to arrive at bliss, imperfection in order
to arrive at perfection
7. The ego cannot see where it is being led; it revolts

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against the leading, loses confidence, loses courage
8. These failings for the divine Guide within is not
offended by our revolt, not discouraged by our want of
faith or repelled by our weakness
9. We fail to distinguish our higher Self from the lower
through which he is preparing his self-revelation
10. The inner Godhead never imposes herself but
encourages without impatience
11. The inner Godhead is the mother whose love bears
fruit and nourishes, guards and protects, counsels and
consoles
12. She understands everything, she can endure
everything, excuse and pardon everything, hope and
prepare for everything
13. Mahasaraswati can give patience to those whom
she has chosen
14. When Mahasaraswati takes up the transformation
and new-building of the nature, her action is laborious
and minute and often seems to our impatience slow and
interminable

XI—The Patience of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo

1. The Mother meets the huge mass of indiscipline,

disobedience, self-assertion, revolt with patience
2. People took Mother’s time with questions, often
useless

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3. With patience the Mother bears all the revolts and
insults
4. The Mother in her true condition of compassion
does not raise even a small ripple on the surface
5. The egoistic sense of possession and the habit of
falsehood are too common among the sadhaks
6. This egoism and falsehood is an obstacle to
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s work
7. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are not impatient
because they know that this are part of human nature
and have so much hold that it is difficult for the sadhak to
get rid of them even when his mind really wishes to do so
8. It is only a strong and always increasing awakening
of the whole consciousness which can avail
9. It is this which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are
trying to bring in all without yielding to impatience
because of the slowness with which it comes or the
imperfect effort of the sadhaks to overcome these defects
of their nature
10. When the sadhak is in trouble and difficulty with
suggestions and revolts, the Mother has been love and
patient and helped and supported through all
11. Sri Aurobindo have been spending time daily writing
answers, giving knowledge of what one should know,
trying to lead the sadhak forward with love and care
12. The Mother has an infinite patience, but that does
not mean that she approves of their defects or supports

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them in all they say or do
13. The Mother knows very well the nature of all the
sadhaks, their faults as well as their merits
14. The Mother knows what human nature is and how
these things come
15. This is why the Mother has patience and love for all
16. Human nature has insincerities, disobediences and
looseness in its very grain
17. If Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were not patient,
there would be little hope of its changing the human
nature
18. But there is something else in the human being
which is sincere and can be a force for the change
19. Sri Aurobindo is well aware that the change in Yoga
is not easy
20. The dynamic will towards change does not come at
once; the sadhaka often feels helpless against the force
of habit
21. Knowing this the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have
shown sufficient patience in giving time for the true spirit
to come up and form and act effectively in the external
being
22. If you had remembered the patience the Mother
has always shown to you then these mental constructions
of fear would not have come
23. Experience of the Mother’s body requires patience

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XII—The Nature Evolves with an Amazing Patience

1 The Nature evolves through millions of years with

an amazing patience

XIII—Good Teachers Must Have Unfailing Patience

1. To be a good teacher one must have unfailing

patience
2. The captains and instructors should have developed
in their character and action a great deal of patience
3. The captains and instructors should also have
realised in themselves the qualities which they demand
from others
4. With patience and endurance, there is no progress
which cannot be made
5. One of the ideal to attain for the teachers and
instructors is patience that never fails
6. As a general and absolute rule, the teachers and
physical education instructors must be a constant living
example of the qualities demanded from the students
7. The quality of patience is taught much more by
example than by words
8. The other qualities are discipline, regularity, good
manners, courage, endurance
9. One must have a lot of patience with young children
10. With young children one has to repeat the same

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thing several times, explaining it in various ways
11. Only gradually the lessons enters young children’s
mind
15. Before children begin their games, the group-
leaders, the captains, tell them, explain to them exactly
what Sri Aurobindo has said with detailed explanations in
the two little books The Code of Sportsmanship and The
Ideal Child [or What a Child Should Always Remember]
16. Above all, set them the right example—be yourself
what you would like them to be of patience
17. Not to become unpleasant, impatient
18. Those who succeed as teachers here are capable of
never-failing patience

XIV—Children and Patience

1. A limitless patience is one of the qualities necessary

to be called a true child of the Ashram
2. Indolent natures of children may also have a
concealed quality of great potential for calm and patience
3. When a child who comes spontaneously to confess
a mistake, listen to the child with patience and explain
him where his fault lies
4. Prayer given to the children of Dortoir Boarding
5. We all want to be the true children of our Divine
Mother and for that, sweet Mother, give us patience and
courage

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 XXIX—Short Summary
XV—Even Cats Show Marvellous Patience to
Educate Their Kittens

1. The trouble that cat takes to educate the kittens

with patience is marvellous
2. The cat would jump from wall to wall with what
care and repeat it a hundred times if necessary
3. The cat is never tired until the little ones had
learned what it wanted
4. The love of the higher animals like the mammals for
their children is exactly of the same nature as humans
and has the same patience
5. It is not by beating, but by patience that work can
be taught to animals

XVI—Examples of Areas Where Patience Is Needed

1. Once you have decided to do the Yoga and you are

conscious that the goal is worth the trouble of a constant
and sustained effort, you may begin
2. One must have plenty of patience for the work may
be undone many times, you will have to do it again until
finally it is no longer undone
3. It is true that if one does yoga in the world and in
worldly circumstances, it is more difficult, but it is also
more complete
4. Because, every minute one must face problems

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which do not present themselves to someone who has
left everything and gone into solitude
5. In life one meets with all sorts of difficulties,
beginning with the incomprehension of those around you
with whom you have to deal
6. One must be ready to face all difficulties and be
armed with patience
7. In yoga one should no longer care for what people
think or say; it is an absolutely indispensable starting
point
8. The work of unification around our psychic centre
requires much time and so we must arm ourselves with
patience and endurance
a. If we truly want to progress we must reject
from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth
of our existence, whatever is opposed to it
b. All the parts, all the elements of our being has
to be organised into a homogeneous whole around our
psychic centre
9. The answer to dark periods returned again and
again after bright periods of sadhana is patience in the
endeavour
10. Till the whole being is not unified around the central
psychic Presence patience in the endeavour is required
11. Unifying around psychic Presence is a personal task
that each individual must do for himself
12. The effectivity of the action to unify around psychic

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Presence is in measure of the receptivity and the
conscious appeal
13. The small beginnings are of the greatest importance
and have to be allowed with great patience to develop
a. Examples of small beginnings
b. The neutral quietness is the first step towards
the peace
c. The small current or thrill of inner delight the first
trickling can lead to the ocean of Ananda
d. The play of lights or colours is the key of the
doors of the inner vision and experience
e. The descents that stiffen the body into a
concentrated stillness is the first touch which can lead to
the presence of the Divine
14. Patience will required to bring the quietude for
those who are accustomed to a very active movement of
their thought and will
15. The purification and the self-giving take a long time
to accomplish and one must have the patience
16. When one begins to control the thought coming
into your mind one must begin with an unshakable
patience
a. This is because the human mind is a public
place open on all sides, and in this public place, things
come, go, cross from all directions
b. You will see to what a degree you have to be
watchful

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c. Keep an extremely clear vision of the ideas
which conform to your aspirations and those which do not
d. You must police at every minute that public
place where roads from all sides meet, so that all
passers-by do not rush in
e. Even if you make sincere efforts, it is not in a
day, not in a month, not in a year that you will reach the
end of all these difficulties
f. When one begins with an unshakable patience
then one must say that even if it takes a hundred years,
even if it takes several lives, one wants to accomplish and
shall accomplish
17. The possibilities, which can become fine capacities
if properly developed, will take a lot of time, effort and
patience to change them into realisations
18. The movements of the lower consciousness requires
great will to get out of them and so one has to arm
oneself with patience
a. A great vigilance is required to avoid falling
into the movements of the lower consciousness
19. With training and patience you can acquire a body
with which you can get along in life
20. Imaginations can be got rid of in time, if one faces
them with calm resolution, detachment and patience
a. The first necessity is not to allow yourself to
be upset by this difficulty of a restless mind full of
imaginations

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b. These imaginations come easily to the human
mind, but they can be got rid of in time
c. It is simply a habit that has taken hold of the
mind it can be dissolved and cease to recur
d. They are not creations of your own mind, they
are foreign matter thrown on it from outside
e. The physical mind which they attack has to
learn to see and feel them as something foreign and
refuse to accept them
f. You will receive my help and the Mother’s.
Keep yourself inwardly confident and open, all will be
done
21. Rebellious and unmanageable desires and impulses
in men are like wild horses which can be controlled with a
little effort and patience
a. To break the rebellious and unmanageable
desires need a bridle and the best bridle is the one you
put on them yourself, the one called self-control
22. To train the vital being is the most difficult part to
train and requires great patience
a. The vital being in us is the seat of impulses
and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic
energy and desperate depression, of passions and revolt
b. The vital can set in motion everything, build
up and realise
c. The vital can also destroy and mar everything
d. It is a long labour requiring great patience,

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and it demands a perfect sincerity
23. To await for the inner inspiration or moved by the
light that comes from above needs patience
a. For inner inspiration you must will and will
with persistence, and never lose patience
b. If necessary, repeat the same thing a
thousand times, knowing that perhaps the thousandth
time you will realise the result
24. It is necessary to have a great patience when one is
in physical consciousness and its principal difficulty is
externalisation and this covering up of the active
experience
25. Change in the habit of the physical nature and that
needs a long patient work of detail
26. The change of the old habitual movements of the
nature cannot be done in a single stroke and patience is
necessary because it takes time
a. The inner consciousness has to grow in such a
way that finally it occupies the outer being also and
renders these things impossible
b. Keep the will and the faith and in quietude and
patience let the Mother work all out in you
27. Patience, patience is required to feel Thy Power and
Thy Force in the body because one must be ready
28. The difficulties in the nature always rise again and
again till you overcome them; they must be faced with
both strength and patience

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 XXIX—Short Summary
a. All who enter the spiritual path have to face
the difficulties and ordeals of the path, those which rise
from their own nature and those which come in from
outside
b. You must train yourself to overcome this
reaction of depression, calling in the Mother’s force to aid
you
29. The first necessary form of surrender is trust and
confidence and patience in difficulty
30. If trust and patience fail when aspiration is
quiescent, that would mean that the sadhak is relying
solely on his own effort
31. The transformation of the external being is the
most difficult part of the Yoga and it demands patience
32. The external being in every one is always, a difficult
animal to handle and it has to be dealt with by patience
33. With Patience explain to the black spot which
comes from the ego its mistake that it may disappear
a. The little black spot which comes from the
ego clouds your judgment
b. You will see that it is a tiny thing curled back
upon itself; you will have the impression of being in front
of something hard which resists or is black
c. If you truly want to know, you must draw
back a step and look
d. Then with patience, from the height of your
consciousness, you must explain to this thing its mistake,

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and in the end it will disappear
e. If you persevere, you will see that all of a
sudden you are relieved of a mass of meanness and
ugliness and obscurity which was preventing you from
flowering in the light
34. We must meet all adverse circumstances with
patience
35. If you have the patience to wait, the mind can
change and realise a certain truth in the higher
consciousness
36. To overcome the satisfactions of ordinary life and
completely consecrate yourself to the Divine can be done
by much patience
37. If one wants to consecrate to the Divine then there
is no question of personal incapacity, since the Mother’s
help and protection is always there
38. When one wants to make a complete offering to the
Mother one must have an obstinate will and a great
patience
a. But once one has taken the resolution to
completely offer to the Mother, the divine help will be
there to support and to help
b. This help is felt inwardly in the heart
39. The Divine Wisdom and Power can liberate the true
Person in us and attain to a divine manhood if we yield to
its workings with patience
40. To get into contact with the inner being and change

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the outer consciousness from the inner is the work of the
sadhana and it is sure to come with patience
41. Adopt more patient course by which the doors of
the inner being will automatically swing open
a. More patient course is developing the sattwic
qualities and building up the inner meditative quietude
b. It is possible by strenuous meditation to open
doors to the inner being and it may lead to conditions of
sadhana which may be very turbid, chaotic, beset with
unnecessary dangers
c. It is necessary to keep the sattwic quietude,
patience, vigilance
d. To hurry nothing, to force nothing, not to be
led away by any strong lure or call of the intermediate
stage
e. For there are many vehement pulls from the
forces of the inner planes which it is not safe to follow
42. To grow into a divine life the wrappings and
disguises of our outer being must be extricated with
patience
a. In the growth into a divine life the spirit must
be our first preoccupation
b. Until we have built up in ourselves an inner
life of the spirit, it is obvious that no outer divine living
can become possible
43. Where there is great complexity which takes in
many sides and reconcile many conflicting conclusions as

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in Upanishads then we must follow it with patience
44. Instead of suicide face your difficulties with
fortitude and patience
a. Suicide is a weak and unmanly evasion and it
is found to be useless
b. Since the same misery continues after death
c. One has to come back to earth and face the
same difficulties under worse conditions
d. The Gita has never said that suicide can under
any circumstances lead to Nirvana
e. The death spoken of in Gita is a natural or a
Yogic death with the mind concentrated with faith and
absorption in the Divine
45. To recover your true inner vital self you must have
steadfast patience, cheerfulness
a. Then when you are back to your right walk
and stature the hostile forces wait a little and strike again
b. The whole thing repeats itself with a
mechanical regularity
c. It takes time, steadfast endeavour, long
continued aspiration and a calm perseverance to get
anywhere in Yoga
d. Equanimity, steadfast patience, cheerfulness
is required to recover your true inner vital self and get rid
of this intruder
e. If you give the hostile forces its rein, it is
extremely difficult to get on to anywhere

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f. The hostile forcesmust go, its going is much
more urgently required
46. If you can acquire and keep patience and fortitude
the hold hostile forces have will progressively disappear
47. To become a conscious and perfect instrument
cannot be done in a day so not to become anxious or
uneasy
a. You can be a conscious and perfect
instrument only when you are no longer acting in
obedience to the ignorant push of the lower nature
b. You can be a perfect instrument when you
surrender to the Mother and aware of her higher Force
acting within you
c. One has to act in so far as one has to aspire,
offer oneself, assent to the Mother’s working, reject all
else, more and more surrender
d. All else will be done in time so there is no
need for anxiety or depression or impatience
48. The phrase ‘Leaving the result to the Divine’ implies
dependence on the Divine Grace and equanimity and
patience in the persistent aspiration
49. Aspire, await with patience for the result
50. If you want to learn to see and have visions, then it
is a very long, very slow discipline and there are very few
people who have the necessary patience and endurance
to go to the end of the training
51. For subtle things like seeing or hearing through a

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wall or seeing at a distance you must practise for months
with patience, with a kind of obstinacy
52. In occultism you may try for years together and not
have the least experience for you need an infinite
patience to learn occultism
53. One must have much patience and a very wide and
very complex vision to understand how things happen in
Nature

XVII—Other Quotations on Patience

a. The pragmatic man has no patience to grasp

that one has to live and act in the world and yet be above
the world
b. The tamasic man is ready soon to give up his
task if it taxes his patience
c. With patience one arrives always

Part II—Impatience

XVIII—Impatience Comes from

1. The impatience comes from the vital

2. If the vital is unpurified, it brings in a rajasic
intensity with impatience
3. Impatience has been created to counteract inertia
4. The vibration of impatience is of the same quality as

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desire
5. The physical nature of almost everybody lacks in
patience when dealing with others

XIX—In Yoga Impatience Is …

1. Impatience is the sure sign of weakness and

imperfection
2. Impatience is always a mistake
3. Impatience does not help but hinders
4. Yogic realisation does not come all at once; it
comes after a long preparation of the Adhara which may
take a long time
5. A quiet happy faith and confidence is the best
foundation for sadhana
6. All impatience is a violence against the Master of
the being
7. Impatience may be natural to human beings, but it
is not exactly reasonable
8. The childish impatience cries and denies the ideal
because the Golden Mountains cannot be reached in our
little day

XX—Difference Between Aspiring Intensity and

Impatience

1. Difference between aspiring intensity and

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 XXIX—Short Summary
impatience is very subtle
2. It is a difference in vibration
3. This subtle difference makes all the difference
4. Fiery aspiration is the psychic aspiration, the
psychic fire
5. In aspiration if the vital comes in, then the
impatience for result comes in
6. The physical vital will turn the strong aspiration into
over-eagerness and impatience
7. So first there must be the opening, a purification, a
fixed quietude
8. Aspire intensely, but without impatience
9. Aspire with a great intensity but without impatience
10. The aspiration must be intense, calm and strong
and not restless and impatient, then alone aspiration can
be stable

XXI—When There Is Impatience in Yoga

1. If one has not the necessary patience, the effort

may be abandoned owing to the difficulty of the
beginning
2. The restless element of vital impatience prevents us
to wait for the grace in perfect reliance
3. Too much vital eagerness often blocks the way; it
makes a sort of obstructing mass
4. Too much vital eagerness makes a whirl of

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restlessness and disturbance which leaves no quiet space
for the Divine to get in
5. The bhakta is ready to wait for grace in perfect
reliance, even if need be all his life
6. The bhakta knows that grace will come so never
varies his love and surrender
7. Wanting grace, however strongly, is not a passport
to getting grace there is something more to it than that
8. The Divine comes in when the impatience has been
definitely renounced and one waits, quietly open
9. Impatience is when man demands miracles that he
may have faith and wishes to be dazzled in order that he
may see
10. This impatience may turn into a great danger and
disaster for we call in another distorting Force more
satisfying to our impulses and desires and ask it to guide
us
11. We cannot see God because of his workings and,
especially, because he works in us through our nature
and not by a succession of arbitrary miracles
12. Because of the impatience of heart and mind it is
difficult to practise faith and steadfastness in Yoga
13. The vital nature of man hungers for the fruit of its
labour and if the fruit denied or long delayed, he loses
faith in the ideal
14. The mind judges always by the appearance of
things, since that is the first ingrained habit of the

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intellectual reason in which he trusts
15. Those who try to snatch or clutch at realisation try
to progress through violence and have no patience
16. Those who have no patience want to realise at
once; and as this usually does not happen all at once,
they pull it down from above
17. This way one has neither the real thing nor the true
movement
18. One can only have an imitation of the true thing
because this is not how realisation comes
19. If the nerves are tired then one loses one’s patience
20. With losing patience work can no longer be neat
and trim, everything becomes an approximation
21. Then one cannot achieve any kind of perfection
22. One must not get into the habit of going to bed late
for the nerves also get tired
23. The lack of precaution in any work is a part of the
movement of hurry and impatience
24. If there is lack of precaution then something serious
may happen
25. It is not possible to get peace of mind if you indulge
in demand and impatience
26. To expect and demand realisation soon and get fed
up because it does not come and declare Yoga impossible
would be a rash and abnormal impatience
27. A slow development is the best one can hope for in
the first years and only when the nature is ready and fully

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concentrated towards the Divine can the definitive
experience come
28. It is an impatience and restlessness in the vital
which makes it feel as if it were no use staying here
because things are not moving forward
29. If one has patience and confidence, the
consciousness passes through these periods to new
openings and things which seemed to be impossible to
effect at that time, get done
30. The impulse to rush away is always a mistake
31. Sadhana is a thing which takes time and needs
patience
32. There are often periods of quiescence in which a
working is going on behind of which the mind is not
aware
33. The hostiles forces can take hold if there is an
expression of dissatisfaction and impatience
34. Every movement of impatience is an obstacle in
one’s progress
35. Impatience is one of the stone to build a wall to
prevent yourself from progressing
36. Impatience prevents you from advancing
37. Too much haste is dangerous
38. Impatience can cause depression
39. You must strive to realise the Divine in this life itself
40. But you must not be impatient
41. Losing patience only prolongs the vital trouble

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42. When the vital is to be changed it always gives
trouble of losing patience
43. One has to sit fixed in the calm of the inner
consciousness and keep the vital movements quite on the
surface
44. Losing patience in illness does not hasten the cure
45. You must keep a peaceful faith that you are going
to be cured
46. People who are grateful and cheerful and ready to
go step by step actually march faster and more surely
than those who are impatient and in haste and at each
step despair or murmur
47. It is the impatience of the human intellect and will
that brought in the impulse of renunciation
48. This impatience destroyed the synthesis with its
spiritual insight and brought in two movements the
normal life of interests and desires and the abnormal or
supernormal inner life founded on renunciation
49. The impatience condemns life and discourages life’s
growth because it is at present undivine
50. This idea is ignorance
51. Only by the light and power of the highest can the
lower be perfectly guided, uplifted and accomplished
52. The lower life can only be divinised by finding the
higher law and the spiritual illumination
53. Do not admit suggestions of impatience but give
time for the Mother’s force to act

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XXII—The Impatience and the Sadhana

1. You must get rid of all inner as well as all outer

movements of impatience
2. In transformation one part of the nature changes
and one feels as if there had been a complete and
permanent change
3. Then one is disappointed to find a period of lowered
consciousness
4. This is because another part of the consciousness
comes up for change and a period of preparation follows
5. These things alarm, disappoint or perplex the
eagerness and impatience of the sadhak
6. If one takes them quietly and adopts the right
attitude, one can make these unenlightened periods also
a part of the conscious sadhana
7. Do not regard the pauses in Yoga with impatience
as these pauses are of preparation and assimilation
8. Besides the Force rises up lifting part of the nature
on a higher level
9. Then the Force comes down to a lower layer to
raise the lower layer
10. This motion of ascent and descent is often
extremely trying to the mind because the mind wants the
ascent in a straight line
11. The vital is eager for rapid fulfilment and cannot
understand or follow this intricate movement

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12. The transformation of the whole nature is not an
easy thing to accomplish
13. The Force knows better than our mental ignorance
or our vital impatience
14. One should not lose patience if the experience of
mental peace does not come back
15. The same experience never repeats in exactly the
same way for everything changes and progresses
16. But the state of mental peace you have known is
nothing compared to the one which you will come to
know
17. Later you will have much deeper and completer
experience
18. You must keep your aspiration intact and your will
to conquer all obstacles
19. To reject all the defects of the lower prakriti without
impatience
20. Free yourself from all exaggerated self-depreciation
and the habit of getting depressed by the sense of sin,
difficulty or failure
21. These feelings are an immense obstacle and
hamper the progress
22. They belong to the religious, not to the Yogic
mentality
23. The Yogin should look on all the defects of the
nature as movements of the lower prakriti common to all
and reject them calmly, firmly and persistently with full

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confidence in the Divine Power
24. There should be no over-eagerness for experiences
but such as come should be observed
25. There should be no impatience if the progress is
slow or difficulties many; all should be done in a calm
patience
26. There are two stages in the Yoga, one of
preparation and one of the actual intensive sadhana
27. In the first stage aspiration in the heart with prayer,
bhakti, meditation, a will to offer the life to the Divine are
the important things
28. All that flatters the ego or feeds it should be
rejected
29. This period tests the capacity of the sadhak and the
sincerity of his aspiration towards the Divine
30. To rid of the difficulty of the physical nature one
has not to become impatient for that only makes it last
more
31. Put entire confidence in the Mother and quietly
persist in faith, patience and steady will for the complete
change
32. The difficulty of the physical nature comes
inevitably in the course of the development of the
sadhana
33. There is none who does not go through it
34. What is necessary is not to get troubled or
impatient, for that only makes it last more

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35. Put entire confidence in the Mother and quietly
persist in faith, patience and steady will for the complete
change
36. The persistence of trouble, the length of time taken
for purification and perfection must not be allowed to
become a reason for impatience
37. The trouble comes because there is still something
in the nature which responds to the trouble
38. The recurrence of trouble serves to bring out the
presence of the defect
39. The recurrence of trouble puts the sadhaka upon
his guard and bring about a more enlightened and
consistent action of the will to get rid of it
40. To give oneself is the secret of sadhana, not to
demand and acquire
41. The more one gives oneself, the more the power to
receive will grow but for that all impatience must go
42. All suggestions of not getting, not being helped,
must be rejected
43. When you call the true Light and the true Force, call
it down quietly without impatience
44. When the inner being begins to awake, there
should be no impatience
45. To control speech is not to speak in haste or anger
or impatience
46. To control speech is to stand back from the speech
impulse and observe it

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47. To control speech is not to say whatever the
impulse makes you say but only to speak what one really
needs to say or chooses to say
48. There is a stage in the transformation when the
Power is pressing on the outer being
49. The natural movements of the vital like impatience
is frequently breaking out and disturbing the work
50. Do not be shaken by impatience but remain as
separate as possible from these movements and let the
Force work
51. Look to the Mother not with impatience for the
result and desire, but with trust and confidence and let
her workings bring you quietude and the renewal of the
progress
52. For the physical consciousness to become balanced,
filled with the light and force from above, cannot be done
in a day, so dismiss impatience
53. To force the Divine to do what one wants is a
culminating act of vital impatience
54. Instead we must trust the Divine to do what is best
according to his own divine will and wisdom
55. You must not yield to impatience for that cannot
possibly help the working but must impede it
56. Keep yourself open to the Mother without
impatience for immediate results
57. Things rejected by the mind and vital descend into
the subconscient or else go out into the environmental

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consciousness
58. Impatience lends force to the hostile forces to push
rejected things back from the environmental
consciousness

XXIII—Curb the Mind’s Impatience

1. It is necessary to curb the mind’s impatience

2. Knowledge is progressive
3. If the mind tries to leap up to the top at once, it
may make a hasty construction which it will have
afterwards to undo
4. The knowledge and experience must come by
degrees and step by step
5. So long as the mind is attached to impatience, it
cannot attain to the self-effulgent nature of Truth

XXIV—Anger Is a Violent Impatience

1. The tendency to get angery is a violent impatience

directed against things the mind and vital do not like
2. All pessimism is an impatience with the ways of God
in the world

XXV—Get Rid of Impatience

1. You must get rid of all inner as well as all outer

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 XXIX—Short Summary
movements of anger and impatience
2. If things go wrong or are done wrongly, you will
simply say, ‘The Mother knows’ and go on quietly doing
or getting things done as well as you can without friction

XXVI—How the Impatience in Yoga Will Disappear

1. Impatience and over-eagerness for the result at

once are natural to the human vital
2. It is by firm confidence in the Mother that
impatience will disappear
3. It is by the love, the belief in her as the Divine to
whom your life is given that impatience will disappear
4. Try to get a constant will for that quietude, so that
when restlessness arises, your will to be quiet might meet
it and dispel the disturbance
5. This would make the elimination of the restlessness
or impatience easier
6. The Mother’s force works behind the variations of
the surface consciousness and it will bring you through
them

XXVII—The Time of Impatience Is Gone

1. In the ordinary state there is unconscious negation

where there is a conscious perception of death and
suffering

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 XXIX—Short Summary
2. In the other state, death and suffering appear as
absolutely unreal
3. It is this ordinary state that gets impatient
4. Impatience has been created to counteract inertia
5. But now impatience is to be done with, that time
has gone
6. If you are one with the Divine Consciousness, then
you leave outside you the things of the human nature
and you enter into the infinity and eternity of the Divine
Nature
7. Then you escape from this feeling of a great
eagerness of hurry with which men are obsessed,
because they want to see things done

XXVIII—Other Quotations on Impatience

a. The psychic yearning brings no reaction of

impatience
b. In true courage there is no impatience and no
rashness
c. Impatience does not help, intensity of aspiration
does

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