Insincerity

Can Be Changed

In Yoga

A Compilation from the Works of

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

Insincerity

Can Be Changed

In Yoga

© All writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

are copyright of Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

and have been reproduced here with their kind permission.

©2018 AuroPublications, Sri Aurobindo Society, Puducherry

www.aurosociety.org

Year of Publication 2018

Compilation done by Jamshed M. Mavalwalla

Proof reading done by Archana Udaykumar and Radhika Raheja

Cover done by Archana Udaykumar

Help in making e-book by Vivechana Saraf and Uttam Mondal

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

Preface

This book Insincerity Can Be Changed In Yoga is the third book on the virtue ‘SINCERITY’. The other two  books are Sincerity in Sadhana and How To Become Absolutely Sincere

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 subject. To give emphasis in certain quotations, the compiler has bold faced some words.

Jamshed M. Mavalwalla

Contents

I—What Is Insincerity

II—What Is Not Insincerity

III—Why Man Becomes Insincere

IV—The Problems One Can Have When One Is Insincere

V—It Is Wickedness When One Knows About One’s Insincerity and Still Persists

VI—Prayers to Develop Perfect Sincerity

VII—Examples of Insincerity

VIII—Insincerity Too Can Change in Yoga

IX—Other Quotations on Sincerity

X—Short Summary

I—What Is Insincerity

“It is insincerity of the being, in which one part wants the Divine and another part wants something else.” (CWM 14: 68)

“You speak of insincerity in your nature. If insincerity means the unwillingness of some part of the being to live according to the highest light one has or to equate the outer with the inner man, then this part is always insincere in all. The only way is to lay stress on the inner being and develop in it the psychic and spiritual consciousness till that comes down in it which pushes out the darkness from the outer man also.” (CWSA 29: 52)

“Sincere is simply an adjective meaning that the will must be a true will. If you simply think ‘I aspire’ and do things inconsistent with the aspiration, or follow your desires or open yourself to contrary influences, then it is not a sincere will.” (CWSA 29: 50)

“Q: But when one tries, if one makes a mistake unconsciously, how can one know?

A: If you are quite sincere, you know. Not to know one’s fault is always the sign of an insincerity somewhere. And generally, it is hidden in the vital. When the vital consents to collaborate (which is already a big step), when it decides that it too is going to work, to devote all its effort and all its energy to accomplish the work, even then there is underneath, well hidden somewhere, a sort of—how shall we call it?—an expectation that things will turn out well and the result will be favourable. And that veils the complete sincerity. For this expectation is an egoistic, personal thing, and this veils the full sincerity. Then you do not know.

But if one is altogether, absolutely sincere, as soon as what one is doing is not exactly what should be done, one feels it very clearly—not violently but very clearly, very precisely: ‘No, not this.’ And then if one has no attachment, immediately it stops, instantaneously it stops.” (CWM 5: 54)

“We speak of union and say we are working for it. But the spirit of quarrelling is in our midst. Shall we not conquer this insincerity?

I am here to ask you to do it. And the best way is to join in the service of the Divine.” (CWM 14: 266)

“He who wants to advance on the path of perfection must

never complain about the difficulties on the way, for each is an opportunity for a new progress. To complain is a sign of weakness and insincerity.” (CWM 14: 221)

“Q: I want to overcome a difficulty: it is that when I perceive faults or weaknesses in myself, something tries to justify them or to prevent me from attending to them.

A: This ‘something’ is the insincerity of an ignorant self-esteem which has not yet understood that it is nobler and loftier to recognise one’s faults in order to correct them, than to conceal them in the hope that they will not be noticed.

As for all psychological problems, here too sincerity, a total and uncompromising sincerity, is the true remedy.” (CWM 16: 364)

“If the vital is weak, its aspiration will be weak. And mark that weakness is an insincerity, a sort of excuse one gives oneself—not very, very consciously perhaps, but you must be told that the subconscient is a place full of insincerity. And the weakness which says, ‘I would like it so much, but I can’t’ is insincerity. Because, if one is sincere, what one cannot do today one will do tomorrow, and what one cannot do tomorrow one will do the day after, and so on, until one can do it. If you understand once for all that the entire universe (or, if you like, our earth, to concentrate the problem) is nothing other than the Divine who has forgotten Himself, where will you find a place for weakness there? Not in the Divine surely! Then, in forgetfulness. And if you struggle against forgetfulness you struggle against weakness, and to the extent you draw closer to the Divine your weakness disappears.

And that holds good not only for the mind, but also for the vital and even for the body. All suffering, all weaknesses, all incapabilities are, in the last analysis, insincerities.” (CWM 4: 252–253)

“All must be opened wide; it is insincerity to hold back any part of you or keep it shut to the Divine.” (CWSA 29: 108)

“Then only can the psychic being fully open when the sadhaka has got rid of the mixture of vital motives with his sadhana and is capable of a simple and sincere self-offering to the Mother. If there is any kind of egoistic turn or insincerity of motive, if the Yoga is done under a pressure of vital demands, or partly or wholly to satisfy some spiritual or other ambition, pride, vanity or seeking after power, position or influence over others or with any push towards satisfying any vital desire with the help of the Yogic force, then the psychic cannot open, or opens only partially or only at times and shuts again because it is veiled by the vital activities; the psychic fire fails in the strangling vital smoke. Also, if the mind takes the leading part in the Yoga and puts the inner soul into the background, or, if the bhakti or other movements of the sadhana take more of a vital than of a psychic form, there is the same inability.” (CWSA 30: 349)

“And there are people who tell me, ‘I don’t have the willpower.’ That means you are not sincere. For sincerity is an infinitely more powerful force than all the wills in the world. It can change anything whatever in the twinkling of an eye; it takes hold of it, grips it, pulls it out—and then it’s over.

But you close your eyes, you find excuses for yourself.” (CWM 8: 19)

“As long as there is within a person the possibility of an inner conflict, it means that there is still in him some insincerity.” (CWM 14: 68)

“Any inner conflict is the sign of a lack of sincerity.” (CWM 14: 69)

“All division in the being is an insincerity.

The greatest insincerity is to dig an abyss between your body and the truth of your being.

When an abyss separates the true being from the physical being, Nature fills it up immediately with all kinds of adverse suggestions, the most formidable of which is fear, and the most pernicious, doubt.

Allow nothing anywhere to deny the truth of your being—this is sincerity.” (CWM 14: 69)

“But all depends on your own standard and your own sincerity; and the more you are psychically ready the more you are led to the right source, the right master. The psychic and its faith are always sincere, but if in your exterior being there is insincerity and if you are seeking not spiritual life but personal powers, that can mislead you. It is that and not your faith that misleads you. Pure in itself, faith can get mixed up in the being with low movements and it is then that you are misled.” (CWM 3: 153)

“Q: When one recognises one’s faults, one can’t commit them again, can one?

A: If one is sincere, no. If you repeat the same errors several times, you may be sure you are not sincere somewhere. When one recognises one’s mistake and yet repeats it, it means that only a superficial part of the consciousness has recognised it and the rest is perfectly satisfied with it and generally justifies it. You may tell yourself without the risk of making a mistake: ‘If I repeat the same fault, I am not sincere.’ So try to be sincere.” (CWM 4: 156–157)

“So, what was so beautiful yesterday is no longer beautiful today. That joy you had within you, that confidence, the assurance that all will be well and the great Work will be accomplished, that certitude—all this, you see, has become veiled, has been replaced by a kind of doubt and, yes, by a discontent: ‘Things are not beautiful, the world is nasty, people are not pleasant.’ It goes sometimes to this length: ‘The food is not good, yesterday it was excellent.’ It is the same but today it is not good! This is the barometer! You may immediately tell yourself that an insincerity has crept in somewhere. It is very easy to know, you don’t need to be very learned, for, as Sri Aurobindo has said in Elements of Yoga: One knows whether one is happy or unhappy, one knows whether one is content or discontented, one doesn’t need to ask oneself, put complicated questions for this, one knows it! —Well, it is very simple.

The moment you feel unhappy, you may write beneath it:

‘I am not sincere!’ These two sentences go together:

‘I FEEL UNHAPPY.’

‘I AM NOT SINCERE.’

Now, what is it that is wrong? Then one begins to take a look, it is easy to find out...” (CWM 6: 215)

“To know that a thing should not be and yet continue to allow it to be is such a sign of weakness that it is not accepted in any serious discipline, it is a lack of will that verges on insincerity.” (CWM 3: 221)

“Q: Sweet Mother, to be pure means what?

A: To be pure, what does it mean? One is truly perfectly pure only when the whole being, in all its elements and all its movements, adheres fully, exclusively, to the divine Will. This indeed is total purity. It does not depend on any moral or social law, any mental convention of any kind. It depends exclusively on this: when all the elements and all the movements of the being adhere exclusively and totally to the divine Will.

Now, there are stages, there are degrees. For example, insincerity, which is one of the greatest impurities, always arises from the fact that a movement or a set of movements, an element of the being or a number of elements, want to follow their own will and not be the expression of the divine Will. So this produces in the being either a revolt or a falsehood. I don’t mean that one tells lies, but I mean that one is in a state of falsehood, of insincerity. And then, the consequences are more or less serious and more or less extensive according to the gravity of the movement itself and its importance. But these, if one sees from the point of view of purity, these are the real impurities.” (CWM 6: 438–439)

“There are crass insincerities which everybody understands and which, I believe, it is not necessary to dwell upon, as for example, saying one thing and thinking another, pretending that you are doing one thing and doing another, expressing a wish which is not your real wish. I am not even speaking of the absolutely glaring lie which consists in saying something different from the fact, but even that diplomatic way of acting which consists in doing things with the idea of obtaining a certain result, in saying something and expecting it to have a certain effect; every combination of this kind which naturally makes you contradict yourself, is a kind of insincerity gross enough for everybody to easily recognise.” (CWM 8: 398–399)

“But there are others [insincerities] more subtle which are difficult to discern. For instance, so long as you have sympathies and antipathies, quite naturally and as it were spontaneously you will have a favourable perception of what is sympathetic to you and an unfavourable perception of what—or whom—you dislike. And there too the lack of sincerity will be flagrant. However, you may deceive yourself and not perceive that you are being insincere. Then in that case, you have, as it were, the collaboration of mental insincerity. For it is true that there are insincerities of slightly different types according to the state of being or the parts of the being. Only, the origin of these insincerities is always a similar movement arising from desire and the seeking of personal ends—from egoism, from the combination of all the limitations arising from egoism and all the deformations arising from desire.” (CWM 8:399)

II—What Is Not Insincerity

“There is no insincerity in asking me again and again for the right condition—the feeling of connection and the true consciousness and the psychic state. It is most important that you should have them and become able to keep them. It is indeed the one thing needful for you.” (CWSA 28: 101)

“If your whole life and every part of your being has already been gathered up and entirely consecrated to the Divine, then you are on the perfect way and there is obviously no need of any change in your way of life or your sadhana. But this can be said of very few in the Ashram. But that does not mean that all the people in the Ashram except a few are insincere and that all our work on them has been thrown away. What it means is that for our work to be fully done, for the decisive realisations and the complete inner and outer change, the entire gathering up and turning of the whole life and nature is indispensable and that if it is only partially done, it is a defect in the sadhana and stands in the way of a full working and decisive and total change of the consciousness.” (CWSA 27: 712–713)

“You know well enough by this time that the whole being is not one block so that if one part changes, all changes miraculously at the same time. Something of the old things may be there submerged and rise up again if the pressure and fixed resolution to get rid of them slackens. I do not know to what you refer when you speak of the statement that ‘Light and Darkness, truth and falsehood cannot dwell together’, but certainly it can only mean that in the spiritual endeavour one cannot allow them to dwell together,—the Light, the Truth must be kept, the Darkness, the falsehood or error pushed out altogether. It certainly did not mean that in the human being there can be either only all light or only all darkness and whoever has any weakness in him has no light and no sincere aspiration and no truth in his nature. If that were so, Yoga would be impossible. All the sadhaks in this Asram would be convicted of insincerity and of having no true sadhana—for who is there in whom there is no obscurity and no movement of ignorance?” (CWSA 31: 246–247)

“But the duration of the meditation is only relatively important; its length simply shows how far you are accustomed to this activity.

Of course, this may increase a great deal, but there is always a limit; and when the limit is reached one must stop, that’s all. It is not an insincerity, it is an incapacity. What becomes insincere is if you pretend to meditate when you are no longer meditating or you say prayers like many people who go to the temple or to church, perform ceremonies and repeat their prayers as one repeats a more or less well-learnt lesson. Then it is no longer either prayer or meditation, it is simply a profession. It is not interesting.” (CWM 8: 228)

“Q: I begin to meditate and pray ardently and fervently, my aspiration is intense and my prayer full of devotion; and then, after a certain length of time—sometimes short, sometimes long—the aspiration becomes mechanical and the prayer purely verbal. What should I do?

A: This is not an individual case, it is extremely common. I have already said this a number of times, but still it was in passing—that people who claim to meditate for hours every day and spend their whole day praying, to me it seems that three-fourths of the time it must be absolutely mechanical; that is to say, it loses all its sincerity. For human nature is not made for that and the human mind is not built that way.

In order to concentrate and meditate one must do an exercise which I could call the ‘mental muscle-building’ of concentration. One must really make an effort—as one makes a muscular effort, for instance, to lift a weight—if you want the concentration to be sincere and not artificial.

The same thing for the urge of prayer: suddenly a flame is lit, you feel an enthusiastic elan, a great fervour, and express it in words which, to be true, must be spontaneous. This must come from the heart, directly, with ardour, without passing through the head. That is a prayer. If there are just words jostling in your head, it is no longer a prayer. Well, if you don’t throw more fuel into the flame, after a time it dies out. If you do not give your muscles time to relax, if you don’t slacken the movement, your muscles lose the capacity of taking strains. So it is quite natural, and even indispensable, for the intensity of the movement to cease after a certain time.” (CWM 8: 227)

III—Why Man Becomes Insincere

“Q: You say that it is necessary to establish ‘homogeneity in our being’?

A: Don’t you know what a homogeneous thing is, made up of all similar parts? That means the whole being must be under the same influence, same consciousness, same tendency, same will. We are formed of all kinds of different pieces. They become active one after another. According to the part that is active, one is quite another person, becomes almost another personality. For instance, one had an aspiration at first, felt that everything existed only for the Divine, then something happens, somebody comes along, one has to do something, and everything disappears. One tries to recall the experience, not even the memory of the experience remains. One is completely under another influence, one wonders how this could have happened. ... I am speaking about something which has happened to all of you: you have had an experience, and for some time you have felt, understood that this experience was the only thing that was important, that had an absolute value—half an hour later you try to recall it, it is like a smoke that vanishes. The experience has disappeared. And yet half an hour ago it was there and so powerful.... It is because one is made of all kinds of different things. The body is like a bag with pebbles and pearls all mixed up, and it is only the bag which keeps all that together. This is not a homogeneous, uniform consciousness but a heterogeneous one.

You can be a different person at different moments in your life. I know people who took decisions, had a strong will, knew what they wanted and prepared to do it. Then there was a little reversal in the being; another part came up and spoilt all the work in ten minutes. What had been accomplished in two months was all undone. When the first part comes back it is in dismay, it says: ‘What!...’ Then the whole work has to be started again, slowly. Hence it is evident that it is very important to become aware of the psychic being; one must have a kind of signpost or a mirror in which all things are reflected and show themselves as they truly are. And then, according to what they are, one puts them in one place or another; one begins to explain, to organise. That takes time. The same part comes back three or four times and every part that comes up says: ‘Put me in the first place; what the others do is not important, not at all important, it is I who will decide, for I am the most important.’ I am sure that if you look at yourself, you will see that there’s not one among you who has not had the experience. You want to become conscious, to have goodwill, you have understood, your aspiration is shining—all is brilliant, illuminated; but all of a sudden something happens, a useless conversation, some unfortunate reading, and that upsets everything. Then one thinks that it was an illusion one lived in, that all things were seen from a certain angle.

This is life. One stumbles and falls at the first occasion. One tells oneself: ‘Oh! One can’t always be so serious’, and when the other part returns, once again, one repents bitterly: ‘I was a fool, I have wasted my time, now I must begin again....’ At times there is one part that’s ill-humoured, in revolt, full of worries, and another which is progressive, full of surrender. All that, one after the other.

There is but one remedy: that signpost must always be there, a mirror well placed in one’s feelings, impulses, all one’s sensations. One sees them in this mirror. There are some which are not very beautiful or pleasant to look at; there are others which are beautiful, pleasant, and must be kept. This one does a hundred times a day if necessary. And it is very interesting. One draws a kind of big circle around the psychic mirror and arranges all the elements around it. If there is something that is not all right, it casts a sort of grey shadow upon the mirror: this element must be shifted, organised. It must be spoken to, made to understand, one must come out of that darkness. If you do that, you never get bored. When people are not kind, when one has a cold in the head, when one doesn’t know one’s lessons, and so on, one begins to look into this mirror. It is very interesting, one sees the canker. ‘I thought I was sincere!—not at all’.” (CWM 5: 8-10)

“Q: The complete unification of the whole being around the psychic centre is the essential condition to realise a perfect sincerity.

A: I have observed that people were insincere simply because one part of the being says one thing and another part says another thing. It is that which constitutes insincerity.

Q: But it is very difficult to have a state of consciousness that is permanent, to have always the same consciousness ruling all the time.

A: But that is true so long as one is not unified, my child. As for me it has always been the same thing (Mother makes a gesture of a straight line) for years and years. It comes from there, it is the psychic consciousness, and it is CONSTANT.” (CWM 11: 290)

“Q: I feel that my nature is becoming more complicated, less sincere. Why is that?

A: As the mind develops, the simple and pure sincerity of the child disappears. It must be replaced with a more conscious, more spiritual sincerity—the psychic sincerity.” (CWM 17: 124)

“This is what is at the root of all the misunderstandings and reservations. You already know, and I mention it only to remind you, that an experiment made in a spirit of reserve and doubt is not an experiment, and that outer circumstances will always conspire to justify these doubts, and this for a reason which is very easy to understand: doubt veils the consciousness and the subconscious sincerity, and into the action some small factors creep in which may seem unimportant, but which are just sufficient to alter all the factors of the problem and to bring about the result that one had anticipated by doubting.” (CWM 16: 41)

“Q: Why does insincerity get such a sanction from society?

A: Because society is obsessed with success.” (15: 299)

“That is why we insist so much on sincerity in the Yoga—and that means to have all the being consciously turned towards the one Truth, the one Divine. But that for human nature is one of the most difficult of tasks, much more difficult than a rigid asceticism or a fervent piety. Religion itself does not give this complete harmonised sincerity—it is only the psychic being and the one-souled spiritual aspiration that can give it.” (CWSA 29: 54)

“All the time they do things they should not do, and I am not speaking of satisfying desires and all that, I am speaking simply of the life of each moment, the movement of each instant; because one is in a state of total ignorance, one does exactly the opposite of what one should do to get the result one wants. One tries to follow some aim, whatever it may be—it may be a selfish aim, it may be a disinterested aim, it may be a material aim, it may be a spiritual aim, but one wants to get somewhere—and one does just the opposite of what is necessary to go there, all the time. And if you are simply just a little attentive and are able to look at yourself at any minute, whatever be the thing you have to do, stop for half a second and look at yourself and ask, ‘Do I know what I have to do?’ If you are sincere you will see that you don’t know it at all. You do it automatically, instinctively, by habit or else with some kind of impulse, you see; but to know: ‘Is this what must be done? Is it in this way that it ought to be done?’ —I don’t think once in a thousand times you can answer.” (CWM 6: 450)

“Q: X once said to the Mother that if the sincerity was perfect there would be transformation in a day; to this the Mother replied ‘Yes’. I do not understand how that could be possible—a long process of conversion of consciousness compressed into one day’s work. Perhaps the Mother said yes to emphasise the importance of sincerity.

A: By sincerity Mother meant being open to no influence but the Divine’s only. Now, if the whole being were sincere in that sense even to every cell of the body, what could prevent the most rapid transformation? People cannot be like that, however much the enlightened part of them may want to, because of the nature of the Ignorance out of which the ordinary Prakriti has been built—hence the necessity of a long and laborious working.” (CWSA 32: 164)

“As soon as we think of the result we begin to bargain and that takes away all sincerity from the effort. You make an effort to progress because you feel within you the need, the imperative need to make an effort and progress; and this effort is the gift you offer to the Divine Consciousness in you, the Divine Consciousness in the Universe, it is your way of expressing your gratitude, offering your self; and whether this results in progress or not is of no importance. You will progress when it is decided that the time has come to progress and not because you desire it.” (CWM 9: 316–317)

“For example, what happens quite often: to say, ‘I want to make progress, and I want to get rid of my defects’ and, at the same time, to cherish one’s defects in the consciousness and take great care to hide them so that nobody intervenes and sends them off. This indeed is a very common phenomenon. This is already the second degree. The first degree, you see, is when someone claims, for example, to have a very great aspiration and to want the spiritual life and, at the same time, does completely... how to put it?... shamelessly, things which are most contradictory to the spiritual life. This is indeed a degree of sincerity, rather of insincerity, which is most obvious.

But there is a second degree which I have just described to you, which is like this: there is one part of the being which has an aspiration and says, even thinks, even feels that it would very much like to get rid of defects, imperfections; and then, at the same time, other parts which hide these defects and imperfections very carefully so as not to be compelled to expose them and get over them. This is very common.

And finally, if we go far enough, if we push the description far enough, so long as there is a part of the being which contradicts the central aspiration for the Divine, one is not perfectly sincere. That is to say, a perfect sincerity is something extremely rare. And most commonly, very very frequently, when there are things in one’s nature which one does not like, one takes the greatest care to hide them from oneself, one finds favourable explanations or simply makes a little movement, like this (gesture). You have noticed that when things move like this you can’t see them clearly. Well, where the defect is seated, there is a kind of vibration which does this, and so your sight is not clear, you no longer see your defects. And this is automatic. Well, all these are insincerities.” (CWM 6: 397–398)

“Sweet Mother,

As I told you before, X has no desire at all to work. You

asked him to work eight hours a day, but he promised only to work four hours. Gradually he has reduced his hours, and now he has given up almost all work. But we cannot do without him unless we have someone to replace him. Meanwhile, I hope that by Your Grace he will feel that he should work with more sincerity.

A: It is more difficult to give sincerity to someone who has none than to cure a dying man.” (CWM 17: 341)

“Your mind is driven by passion and to support the passion it gives a twist which prevents you from seeing the truth of things. Guard against the twist, be conscious of the passion.

Action perverted by such a twist looks like insincerity. Be always on your guard against this persistent defect. This is my gift for the New Year.” (CWM 14: 341)

“The best human knowledge is a half knowledge and the highest human virtue a thing of mixed quality and, even when most sincerely absolute in standard, sufficiently relative in practice.” (CWSA 19: 545)

“A true, sincere, spontaneous life like the one in the supramental world, is a springing forth of things from the action of the conscious will, a power over substance which makes it harmonise with what we decide should be. And one who has the power and the knowledge can obtain what he wants, whereas one who does not have them has no artificial means of getting what he desires.

In ordinary life, everything is artificial. According to the chance of birth or circumstance, you have a higher or lower position or a more or less comfortable life, not because it is the spontaneous, natural, sincere expression of your way of being and your inner need, but because chance circumstances in life have brought you in contact with these things. An absolutely worthless man may be in a very high position and a man with a marvellous ability to create and organize may find himself toiling in an absolutely limited and inferior situation, whereas he would be a completely useful person if the world were sincere.

This artificiality, this insincerity, this complete lack of truth became so shockingly apparent to me that... one wonders how, in so false a world, we can have any true evaluations.” (CWM 9: 277)

“A dull laziness, slowness, procrastination, looseness,

want of vigour or of sincerity mark his [the tamasic man] action.” (CWSA 19: 502)

“Who can stand before Thee, Lord, and say in all sincerity, ‘I have never made a mistake’? How many times in a day we commit faults against Thy work, and always Thy Grace comes to efface them!” (CWM 14: 83)

IV—The Problems One Can Have When One Is Insincere

“Q: Mother, is there really any suffering in our yoga? When people suffer, are they suffering because of the difficulties?

A: No. Usually they suffer because of a lack of sincerity.” (CWM 17: 147)

“The thing in you which enjoys the suffering and wants it is part of the human vital—it is these things that we describe as the insincerity and perverse twist of the vital; it cries out against sorrow and trouble and accuses the Divine and life and everybody else of torturing it, but for the most part the sorrow and the trouble come and remain because the perverse something in the vital wants them! That element in the vital has to be got rid of altogether.” (CWSA 31: 178)

“Q: Somebody told me that it is not necessary to surrender or be sincere—we only have to open. Is it true?

A: Certainly not. Who told you such nonsense?

Without sincerity the path of yoga is dangerous; without surrender it is impossible.” (CWM 17: 149)

“Sweet Mother,

As I told You a few days ago, X does not want to work any more. He has already dropped almost all his work and deals only with a small part of the accounts, and even in that work he makes a lot of mistakes. Sweet Mother, may I humbly ask you to tell him to work six hours and not leave in the morning when I go upstairs?

It is strange: instead of throwing themselves headlong into Your work, people are holding themselves back more and more. The work of the departments goes on increasing and there is disorder everywhere. Only Your Grace can overcome the forces of laziness and insincerity in us and bring order out of this disorder. I pray for the intervention of Your Grace!

A: Insincerity seems to be an incurable defect which nullifies the working of the Grace in a being. It is certainly insincerity which has necessitated the violent intervention of Kali in the world.

I cannot possibly give orders to an insincere person because he will respond hypocritically, and that increases even further the darkness he is engulfed in.

One must either have nothing to do with insincere people or else take them as they are.

Blessings.” (CWM 17: 343)

“Those who are sincere, I can help and turn easily towards the Divine. But where there is insincerity I can do very little.” (CWM 14: 68) (CWM 14: 226)

“There are insincere and hypocritical people everywhere in the world. So much the worse for them. These shut the door completely to all progress. That is all.” (CWM 5: 29-30)

“Sweet Mother,

X told me this morning, ‘Do you see the plaster work done by Y? How nice it is! The work we have done

is not so nice.’ I replied: ‘I know at least one reason. It is because you are not with the workmen all the time. This

morning you were missing from your post from 9:30 to 10:30.’ X said, ‘But Y also takes off sometimes.’

I told you already that if someone refuses to be conscientious in his work, what can I do? It is true that the work suffers, but he suffers still more, for no amount of meditation can replace sincerity in the service of the Divine.” (CWM 16: 27)

“The Grace works for the realisation of your aspiration and everything is arranged to gain the most prompt, the quickest realization—so there is nothing to fear.

Fear comes with insincerity. If you want a comfortable life, agreeable circumstances, etc., you are putting conditions and restrictions, and then you can fear.

But it has no business in the sadhana!” (CWM 15: 181)

“Q: Does not perfection consist in pleasing the Divine and no one else?

A: Yes, if you like, but when one is not absolutely sincere, one deceives oneself very easily, and if one feels comfortable, one says: ‘Oh, I am sure that I please the Divine’.” (CWM 4: 17)

“If you are not sincere, what happens is that your own consciousness is veiled. Take, for example, a man who tells lies; his consciousness gets veiled and after a while, he can no longer distinguish falsehood from truth. He sees images and calls them truth. One who is wicked loses his aspiration, loses his capacity of realisation, loses all possibility of understanding, feeling and realising. That is the punishment.

One puts veils, obstacles between oneself and the Divine. That is how one punishes oneself. The Divine does not withdraw; one makes oneself incapable of receiving him. The Divine does not distribute in this way rewards and punishments, it is not at all like that.

When one is insincere, when one has bad will, when one is a traitor, one punishes oneself instantaneously. Insincere people lose even the little bit of consciousness that would make them know that they are wicked; they become as though unconscious. They end up by not knowing anything at all any longer.” (CWM 5: 21–22)

“Insincerity leads on the path to ruin.” (CWM 14: 67)

“Q: Likewise, can you name our saddest failure? On what grounds do you regard it as so tragic?

Insincerity. Because insincerity leads to ruin.” (CWM 13: 359)

“In the hour of God cleanse thy soul of all self-deceit and

hypocrisy and vain self-attering that thou mayst look straight into thy spirit and hear that which summons it. All insincerity of nature, once thy defence against the eye of the Master and the light of the ideal, becomes now a gap in thy armour and invites the blow. Even if thou conquer for the moment, it is the worse for thee, for the blow shall come afterwards and cast thee down in the midst of thy triumph.” (CWSA 12: 146)

“Desire, for example, insistence on one’s likes and conveniences, all movements of hypocrisy and insincerity and falsehood, are great obstacles standing in the way of the Divine’s protection.” (CWM 13: 121)

“The one thing that one has to be careful about is to see that they are genuine and sincere and that depends on one’s own sincerity, for if one is not sincere, if one is more concerned with the ego or being a big Yogi or becoming a superman than with meeting the Divine or getting the Divine Consciousness which enables one to live in or with the Divine, then a flood of pseudos or mixtures comes in, one is led into the mazes of the intermediate zone or spins in the grooves of one’s own formations. There is the truth of the whole matter.” (CWSA 30: 38–39)

“What I mean by subtle methods is psychological, non-mechanical processes—e.g. concentration in the heart, surrender, self-purification, working out by inner means the change of the consciousness. This does not mean that there is no outer change,—the outer change is necessary but as a part of the inner change. If there is impurity and insincerity within, the outer change will not be effective; but if there is a sincere inner working, the outer change will help it and accelerate the process.” (CWSA 30: 42)

“Those who fall into insanity have lost the true touch and got into the wrong contact. It is due either to some impurity and unspiritual desire with which the seeker enters into the way or some insincerity, egoism and false attitude or to some weakness in the brain or nervous system which cannot bear the Power it has called down into it.

The safest way is to follow the guidance of someone who has himself attained to mastery in the path. Only that guidance should be implicitly and sincerely followed; one’s own mind and its ideas and fancies must not be allowed to interfere. It goes without saying that it must be a true guidance, not the leading of a tyro or an impostor.” (CWSA 31: 810)

“For if, anywhere in the being, in the mind or the vital, there is some insincerity which is tolerated, well, then the experience is completely falsified and deformed. But I am speaking of the best instances, where the being is sincere, under control, and where it functions most favourably: the formulation in words which are understandable by the human mind is necessarily, inevitably, a restriction, a diminution of the power of action of the experience.” (CWM 8: 342)

“Q: What is the fundamental virtue to be cultivated in order to prepare for the spiritual life?”

A: I have said this many times, but this is an opportunity to repeat it: it is sincerity.

A sincerity which must become total and absolute, for sincerity alone is your protection on the spiritual path. If you are not sincere, at the very next step you are sure to fall and break your head. All kinds of forces, wills, influences, entities are there, on the look-out for the least little rift in this sincerity and they immediately rush in through that rift and begin to throw you into confusion.

Therefore, before doing anything, beginning anything, trying anything, be sure first of all that you are not only as sincere as you can be, but have the intention

of becoming still more so.

For that is your only protection.

Q: Can this effort to cultivate this initial virtue be a collective one?

A: Certainly it can. And this is what used to be attempted long ago in the schools of initiation. Even now, in more or less secret societies or very small groups, the collectivity seeks to be sufficiently united and to make a collective effort sufficiently complete for the result to be a group result instead of an individual one.

But naturally, that complicates the problem terribly.... Each time they meet, they try to create a collective entity; but for a virtue to be collectively realised, a tremendous effort is required. However, it is not impossible.” (CWM 8: 247–248)

“You need not be very far on the path to be able to recognise it; you must listen to the still, small peaceful voice which speaks in the silence of your heart.

I forgot one thing: to hear it you must be absolutely sincere, for if you are not sincere, you will begin by deceiving yourself and you will hear nothing at all except the voice of your ego and then you will commit with assurance (thinking that it is the real small voice) the most awful stupidities. But if you are sincere, the way is sure. It is not even a voice, not even a sensation, it is something extremely subtle—a slight indication. When everything goes well, that is, when you do nothing contrary to the divine Will, you will not perhaps have any definite impression, everything will seem to you normal.” (CWM 4: 87–88)

“For everything—I would repeat it to you eternally if I had the time—for everything, one must be absolutely sincere. If you are not sincere, you will begin by deceiving yourself and all your experiences will be worth nothing at all. But if you are sincere and by discipline (for it is not easy) you succeed in entering this mental memory of the world, you will make discoveries which are really worth the trouble.” (CWM 4: 112)

“The argument of weakness is an excuse. The Grace is there to give the supreme strength to whoever takes the resolution.

That means an insincerity, it does not mean a weakness. And insincerity is always an open door for the adversary. That means there is some secret sympathy with what is perverse. And that is what is serious.

In the case of ignorance which is to be enlightened, it is enough, as I said, to light the lamp. In the case of conscious relapse, what is necessary is a cauterisation.” (CWM 9: 307)

“Ah, it is very difficult to be sincere.... That is why the blows multiply and sometimes become terrible, because that’s the only thing which breaks your stupidity. This is the justification of calamities. Only when you are in an acutely painful situation and indeed before something that affects you deeply, then that makes the stupidity melt away a little. ...

Why doesn’t the blow come all at once?

Because that would kill you. For if the blow is strong enough to cure you, it would simply crush you, it would reduce you to pulp. It is only by proceeding little by little, little by little, very gradually, that you can continue to exist. Naturally this depends on the inner strength, the inner sincerity, and on the capacity for progress, for profiting by experience and, as I said a while ago, on not forgetting [it is the grace which pulled you out of difficulty]. If one is lucky enough not to forget, then one goes much faster.” (CWM 6: 323–324)

“If you are not sincere, you may have wonderful experiences, but these have no value either for you or for others. You should distrust your thought a good deal, for the mind is a wonderful constructor and it can give you wonderful experiences solely by its work of formation; but these experiences have no value. It is hence preferable not to know beforehand what is going to happen. For even with a great will to be sincere, the mind fabricates so much and so well that it can present to you a wonderful picture or even play for you a splendid comedy without your being aware of it, by its sheer power of formation, and it is very difficult to find out. Hence one essential condition for having true experiences: leave this machine in quietness; the less it moves, the better it is, and beware of everything it imagines for you.” (CWM 4: 135)

“Q: In Bases of Yoga one reads: ‘It is with the Mother who is always with you and in you that you converse.’ Could you tell me briefly how a sadhak converses with the Mother?

A: One hears the voice or the thought speaking inwardly and one answers inwardly. Only it is not always safe for the sadhak if there is any insincerity of ego, desire, vanity, ambition in him—for then he may construct a voice or thought in his mind and ascribe it to the Mother and it will say to him pleasing and flattering things which mislead him. Or he may mistake some other Voice for the Mother’s.” (CWSA 32: 292)

“Often people receive such a stimulus, the psychic being opens, but the rest of the nature is only silenced for a time and does not sincerely concur, so that afterwards resistances arise and the sadhak falls away from the path, —which it is very injurious spiritually and otherwise to abandon once it has been begun.” (CWSA 35: 573)

“The defects mentioned are more or less common in various degrees in almost every sadhaka, though there are some who are not touched by them. They can be got rid of if the requisite sincerity is there. But if they occupy the central parts of the being and vitiate the attitude, then the sadhaka will give a constant open or covert support to them, his mind will always be ready to give disguises and justifications and try to elude the search-light of the self-critical faculty and the protest of the psychic being. That means failure of the Yoga at least for this existence.” (CWSA 36: 379)

“First condition, know how to keep silent. And not only keep your tongue quiet, but silence your mind, keep the head silent. If you wish to have a true, sincere experience upon which you can build, you must know how to be silent, otherwise you have nothing but what you fabricate yourself, which is equivalent to zero. All that one can say is, ‘Heavens, what a fashioner my mind is!’ ” (CWM 4: 231)

V—It Is Wickedness When One Knows About One’s Insincerity and Still Persists

“Q: Sweet Mother, can it happen that a person is very insincere but unconscious of his insincerity?

A: I think in a case like this, he is no longer insincere, he is wicked; for if one knows that one is insincere and persists in one’s insincerity, it is wickedness, isn’t it? It means that one has bad intentions, otherwise why would one persist in one’s insincerity?

Q: I said: if one is unconscious.

A: Then how can one be conscious and unconscious at once? It is just this that is impossible. If one is conscious of one’s insincerity, one can’t be unconscious of it. It is impossible. The two can’t exist simultaneously.

Q: But if one is insincere and doesn’t know where this insincerity lies?

A: Oh! One doesn’t know?... That is because one is not sufficiently sincere and doesn’t look at oneself. For, I guarantee this, if you are conscious that you are insincere, you know where it lies. Otherwise you could not be aware of your insincerity. For instance, in a certain circumstance one knows, knows that one should do this: ‘I should do this’; and at the same time one does not wish to do it, eh! And so, within oneself one finds a means, a sort of way of deceiving oneself and not doing it, because one does not want to do it—ah, that happens very often! (Laughter) And then, if at that moment, the moment when you are doing this little inner work to find an excuse for not doing what you don’t want to do, if at that moment you become aware that you are insincere and still continue to do it, this means that you are perverse. If you ask me, this is what I call being wicked, bad. But if you realise that you are insincere, this means that you are conscious that you are insincere, and how can you say ‘I am not conscious of my insincerity’?... Ninety times out of a hundred one does it without knowing. That indeed is the misery. It is that one deceives oneself with such facility, finds good tricks for not doing what one doesn’t want to do, or the contrary: for doing what one wishes to do when one knows very well one shouldn’t do it—it is the same thing. So you give yourself good reasons, and, unhappily, as I said, most men are so unconscious that they do it without even realising it. They think they are very sincere: ‘No, sincerely, I thought I had to do it’ —like that, quite innocently. But that’s because they are not sincere, not at all because they are quite unconscious. But if one is just a little conscious of what is happening within, one perceives very well the little trick one has played and how one has found—has somewhere been so cleverly unearthing, an excellent excuse for doing what one wanted to do. Even when one knows very well one ought not to do it. It is these two, you see: a play between unconsciousness and insincerity, insincerity and unconsciousness, in this way. But if you tell me, ‘I am conscious of my insincerity’, then naturally at that moment this fact faces you: Have you decided to remain in the darkness or do you want to progress? There, the problem comes up. If you are conscious of your insincerity, you have only one thing to do: that is to put a red-hot iron on it and make yourself sincere. That is the feeling. You must take a red-hot iron: it burns well, and then... ouch!... that’s the way.

For a moment it hurts a little, afterwards one is left in peace.” (CWM 6: 125–127)

VI—Prayers to Develop Perfect Sincerity

“O Lord, give me a perfect sincerity.

O Lord, let me be perfectly yours for ever.” (CWM 15: 210)

“Lord, give me the strength of a total and perfect sincerity that I may be worthy of Thy Realisation.” (CWM 15: 212)

“I aspire to be delivered from all egoistic weakness and all unconscious insincerity.” (CWM 15: 212)

“Lord, give me perfect sincerity, that sincerity which will lead me straight to Thee.” (CWM 15: 213)

“My Lord, every day, in all circumstances, let me repeat with the full sincerity of my heart, ‘May Thy Will be done and not mine.’ (CWM 15: 211)

“O Lord, Thou hast decided to test the quality of our faith and to pass our sincerity on Thy touchstone. Grant that we come out greater and purer from the ordeal.” (CWM 15: 170)

(Message for the inauguration of Sri Aurobindo Nilaya, Santiniketan)

“To open a centre is not sufficient in itself. It must be the pure hearth of a perfect sincerity in a total consecration to the Divine.

Let the flame of this sincerity rise high above the falsities and deceptions of the world.

With blessings.” (CWM 15: 204)

VII—Examples of Insincerity

“Sweet Mother,

From time to time I see articles in Bengali and Hindi where the teachings of Sri Aurobindo have been wrongly presented. Can nothing be done to stop these things?

A: Obviously these incidents are regrettable and they are part of a whole series of things that are happening in the Ashram because everyone seems to be doing just as he pleases without any check.

Sincerity and honesty of consciousness are sadly lacking.

My blessings.” (CWM 17: 339)

“Sweet Mother,

When I came to You this evening for ‘Prosperity’ I felt a sort of uneasiness—as if I had done something wrong—instead of feeling joy at seeing You. One ought to be eager to receive Your blessings, but why do I not have that feeling?

A: There must still be some insincerity in your being, hidden in a dark corner, something that does not want to change and is afraid of the Light.” (CWM 16: 262)

“If you become disciplined and obedient I am willing to give you another chance.

But do not try to be deceitful... At the least sign of insincerity, I shall have to send you away.” (CWM 12: 155)

“It is not necessary to wait for the others to become sincere in order to become sincere yourself.” (CWM 14: 71)

“I do not believe that sadhana in the cave is easy—only there the insincerity remains hidden, while in life and action it is revealed. You can look like a Yogi in a cave, but in life the humbugging is more difficult, because you have to behave like a Yogi.” (CWM 14: 47)

If one does not understand the warning of the Mother it shows that there is no sincerity in their attitude

“This year, because it is dangerously bad, the consequences came in full. Now all I can do is to make the best out of the situation; but it has become a big fight.

This is what I meant when I spoke, but very few people understood what I meant by ‘Be careful.’ I meant: ‘Do always the best you can and make as far as possible no spiritual mistake.’ On the contrary, most of them started fearing and that in itself is already a big spiritual mistake. Instead of being more vigilant and more faithful, most of them at once opened the door to the hostile suggestions and aggravated the situation. Some went even so far as to blame me for having spoken, not understanding that if I cannot warn the people here and advise them to keep firm in the right attitude, it means that they are not true sadhaks and have no sincerity in their attitude.” (CWM 15: 25)

One sees a tiny vision and one adds little bit and this is a mental sincerity

“This question generally comes from those who have the habit of rearranging a little what they see. They see a tiny thing, perhaps, in a flash, and then willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously they arrange things, they add a little bit, add to it another, they give a little explanation, make the thing coherent and when it has become something that can stand on its own legs, they say, ‘I had this vision’, but it is not at all what they saw .... This is a kind of mental insincerity. It is spontaneous—when the mind sees one thing here, another thing there, yet a third elsewhere, this is very unpleasant for it. It fills up the holes, it says, ‘This leads to that’, ‘That is the cause of this’, and so on, and the mind is very happy because this is logical. What the mind adds in between the points of the vision may happen, by chance, to be true, but it may also be false.

Ask yourself rather whether you have a mind which keeps quiet, which is wholly sincere and objective, which says exactly what it has seen or whether you have one of those minds bubbling with activity which, as soon as it has seen something, adds to it its grain of salt, automatically, and makes out of it a big story; and so you are quite convinced that you have seen all that, but in fact you have not seen it at all. It is in this that one can say that visions are not sincere. But that is not the fault of the vision! What you have seen, you have seen; it is the fault of the interpretation or simply of the narration which was embellished.” (CWM 4: 109)

An egoistic faith tainted with ambition is not sincere and true

“Q: Mother, what does “an egoistic faith... tainted by ambition” mean?

A: Yes, for instance, if one wants to become somebody very important, to have a high position or attract the admiration of people around him, to become a great sadhak, a great sannyasi, a great yogi, etc., somebody quite important, that is called having a faith full of ambition. You have the faith that this may happen, you have faith in the Divine, but it is for your own small personal vainglory; and this is no longer something pure, sincere and true. It is something that’s entirely for personal profit. Naturally, there is no question in this of any self-giving; it is a hoarding of forces.” (CWM 6: 237)

“Q: ‘If behind your devotion and surrender you make a cover for your desires, egoistic demands ...’ Does this mean ‘you use devotion and surrender as a means of fulfilling your desires and demands’?

A: Yes, practically it means that. I put it in that way so as to avoid suggesting that the devotion is altogether insincere and meant only as a cover.” (CWSA 35: 109–110)

“Yes, but human reason is a very convenient and accommodating instrument and works only in the circle set for it by interest, partiality and prejudice. The politicians reason wrongly or insincerely and have power to enforce the results of their reasoning, so make a mess of the world’s affairs, ...” (CWSA 35: 199)

VIII—Insincerity Too Can Change in Yoga

“The existence of imperfections, even many and serious imperfections, cannot be a permanent bar to progress in the Yoga. ... The only bar that can be—but need not be, for this too can change—is insincerity, and this does not exist in you. 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.” (CWSA 31: 661)

“Q: I feel sincerely that I want the Divine and nothing else. But when I am in contact with other people, when I am busy with things without any value, I naturally forget the Divine, my one goal. Is it insincerity? If not, then what does it mean?

A: Yes. It is insincerity of the being, in which one part wants the Divine and another part wants something else.

It is through ignorance and stupidity that the being is insincere. But with a persevering will and an absolute confidence in the Divine Grace, one can cure this insincerity.” (CWM 14: 68)

“There is such a contradiction between the brutal fact of your daily way of life and the picture I have before myself of what each one of you ought to be, a picture I keep there with all the power of my consciousness so that you may realise it—and that is yourself, that, yes, is yourself! It is not this ignorant being, stupid and insincere—sometimes dishonest—who is the ... whom you call yourself.

... I passed my time observing, I registered everything, I learnt all I could, I did not stop learning. Well, I can still feel surprised. Suddenly I find myself looking at such twisted, insincere and obscure movements that I tell myself, ‘It is not possible. Can such a thing exist?’ Indeed, things which still come to me, day after day, ‘It is not possible! In the world things happen in this way?’ ” (CWM 6: 166)

“Evidently there is one difficulty: in your conscious being something does not want the difficulty, wishes sincerely to overcome it, but there are numberless movements in other parts of your consciousness of which you are not conscious. You say, ’I want to be cured of that’; unfortunately it is not sufficient to say ‘I want’, there are other parts of the consciousness which hide themselves so that you may not be busy with them, and when your attention is turned away these parts try to assert themselves. That is why I say and shall always repeat, Be perfectly sincere; do not try to deceive yourself, do not say, ‘I have done all that I could.’ If you do not succeed, it means that you do not do all that you can. For, if you truly do ‘all’ that you can, you will surely succeed. If you have any defect which you want to get rid of and which still persists, and you say, ‘I have done all that I could’, you may be sure that you have not done all that you should have. If you had, you would have triumphed, for the difficulties that come to you are exactly in proportion to your strength—nothing can happen to you which does not belong to your consciousness, and all that belongs to your consciousness you are able to master.” (CWM 4: 73–74)

“You will notice, besides, as you gradually advance, that what you believed to be complete is not so, what you considered to be sincere is not so, and then you will progress little by little; but to succeed you must have as total a will for progress as possible. If you have this will and if an impulse seizes you with violence, keep the will firm, your being must not vacillate; you must expect these things to come, but when they come, tell yourself, ‘Well, they come from below, I do not want them to recur, they are not mine.’ This is not the same thing as saying, ‘Let it go, since it is Nature’.” (CWM 4: 77–78)

IX—Other Quotations on Sincerity

“To walk through life armoured against all fear, peril and disaster, only two things are needed, two that go always together—the Grace of the Divine Mother and on your side an inner state made up of faith, sincerity and surrender.” (CWSA 32: 8)

“Let your sincerity and surrender be genuine and entire. When you give yourself, give completely, without demand, without condition, without reservation so that all in you shall belong to the Divine Mother and nothing be left to the ego or given to any other power.” (CWSA 32: 8)

Go beyond all human representations and approach the Supreme directly with the utmost sincerity you are capable of

“Q: Last night, at three in the morning, sleepy, exasperated, I called you. A few seconds later, three times, I felt a strong force paralyzing me and trying to plunge me into unconsciousness. I struggled hard against it because I felt it as an adverse force which wanted to take away my subtle body. The third time, with one eye open I saw part of the dark blue robe of a tall person who was waiting to take me away; it seemed as if an emanation of X was at his side.

How is it that after I had called you, Mother, I had this experience?

A: This is the disadvantage of placing oneself under the influence of several occult forces.

In the past, one was recommended, not without reason, to choose one spiritual master and to take great care not to see any others, to avoid a mixture of influences, which has serious disadvantages. So-called modern wisdom, which springs from ignorance, is open to all kinds of influences which are sometimes contradictory, and the result is a great confusion.

Now there is only one solution, to go beyond all human representations and approach the Supreme directly with the utmost sincerity you are capable of, and... await the result.

Blessings.” (CWM 15: 26)

The external union of mankind depends on man’s goodwill and sincerity

“The unity of humanity is an underlying and existing fact.

But the external union of mankind depends on man’s goodwill and sincerity.” (CWM 15: 66)

The material power to heal [in illness] demands a great sincerity in one’s goodwill

“The material power to heal [in illness] demands a great sincerity in one’s goodwill.” (CWM 15: 155)

The Mother asks who will collaborate in all sincerity to show to the world that man can become a true servitor of the Divine

“We want to show to the world that man can become a true servitor of the Divine.

Who will collaborate in all sincerity?” (CWM 15: 198)

“Bonne Fete!

May this new year be for you a year of progress in the perfection of work and of consecration, in sincerity, energy and peace.

With my blessings.” (CWM 15: 200)

We always come back to the same thing that in all religious ceremonies and occult initiations, medical sciences and physical culture there is an absolute necessity of a perfect sincerity

“In all religious and particularly in occult initiations, the ritual of the different ceremonies is prescribed in every detail; each word uttered, each gesture made has its importance and the least infraction of the rule, the least mistake committed can have disastrous consequences. It is the same with the material life, and if one were initiated into the true way of living, one would be able to transform physical existence.

If the body is considered as the tabernacle of the Lord, then medical science, for example, becomes the initiatory ritual for service of the temple and doctors of all categories are the priests who officiate in the different rituals of the worship. Thus, medicine is truly a priesthood and should be treated as such.

The same thing may be said of physical culture and of all the sciences dealing with the body and its working. And if the material universe is regarded as the external robe and manifestation of the Supreme, then it can be said, generally, that all the physical sciences are rituals of worship.

So we always come back to the same thing: the

absolute necessity of a perfect sincerity, a perfect honesty, and a sense of the dignity of what one does, so that one does it as it should be done.” (CWM 15: 354)

“Absolute sincerity is required.” (CWM 14: 67)

“It is again true that those who have a complete and living faith in the Divine and a perfect sincerity in their vision of the Divine everywhere and a pure sattwic nature need not trouble themselves about the hostile forces—for from them the forces of the Ignorance fall back and cannot take possession of their nature.” (CWSA 28: 462)

“Things that have long acted on the nature take some time to go altogether, but they are bound to go since you have the sincere desire and your psychic being is growing in your nature. Our help is there always with you.” (CWSA 29: 114)

“I have surely never said that you should not want the Divine Response. One does Yoga for that. What I have said is that you should not expect or insist on it at once or within an early time. It can come early or it can come late, but come it will if one is faithful in one’s call—for one has not only to be sincere but to be faithful through all.” (CWSA 29: 173)

“All the call for faith, sincerity, surrender is only an invitation to make that cooperation more easily possible.” (CWSA 31: 32)

“Be quiet always, calm, peaceful, and let the Force work in your consciousness through the transparency of a perfect sincerity.” (CWM 14: 136)

“In the beginning of the sadhana you need nothing more than just what you say, ‘concentration with faith, devotion and sincerity’ on a form of the Divine Being—you can add prayer or the name, if you like.” (CWSA 31: 63)

“You may have all the mental knowledge in the world and yet be impotent to face vital difficulties. Courage, faith, sincerity towards the Light, rejection of opposite suggestions and adverse voices are there the true help.” (CWSA 31: 126)

“If your psychic being asks for the Divine and your mind is sincere and calls for liberation from the lower nature and from all hostile forces and if you can call the Mother’s power into your heart and rely upon it more than on your own strength, this siege will in the end be driven away from you and strength and peace take its place.” (CWSA 31: 158)

“There is a great confusion of thought about these things—for the vital gets in the way and disturbs the right view of things. It is only what is done sincerely with a sound spiritual motive that is proper to Yoga. The rest cannot be claimed as the working of a spiritual force mysteriously advancing its ends by ways contrary to its own nature.” (CWSA 31: 348)

“It [the pleasure of sex] is the reason why the vital sex-difficulty is the hardest to get rid of—even those who have sincerely given up the more physical form are liable to the vital form of the impulse. But it is harmful because it allows a subtle infiltration of the forces that stand in the way of the sadhana. One must get rid of them if the vital is to become entirely pure and able to contain the divine love and Ananda.” (CWSA 31: 516)

“In the vital physical the ‘[sex] response’ lingers long after the mind and higher vital have turned from it. I have seen that in men who were mentally and emotionally quite sincere. A few get rid of it easily, but these are a small minority. But there must be no justification on the ‘what harm’ basis—that is an attempt of the lower vital to get the mind and higher vital to adhere. There is always room for harm so long as the sex-response is not eliminated in both, not in you only.” (CWSA 31: 518)

“All who cleave to the path steadfastly can be sure of their spiritual destiny. If anyone fails to reach it, it can only be for one of two reasons, either because they leave the path or because for some lure of ambition, vanity, desire etc. they go astray from the sincere dependence on the Divine.” (CWSA 31: 635)

“The peculiarity you note is pretty universal—it is one part of the being which believes and speaks the right and beautiful things; it is another which doubts and says just the opposite. I get communications for instance from X in which for several pages he writes wise and perfect things about the sadhana—suddenly without transition he drops into his physical mind and peevishly and complainingly says—well, things ignorant and quite incompatible with all that wisdom. X is not insincere when he does that—he is simply giving voice to two parts of his nature. Nobody can understand himself or human nature if he does not perceive the multipersonality of the human being. To get all parts into harmony, that is the difficult thing.” (CWSA 31: 646)

“Whatever is difficult can indeed be made easy by truth in the heart and sincerity and faith in the endeavour, even what is impossible can become possible. It is often found too that after some amount of practice and faithful endeavour, there comes an intervention from within and what might have taken long is decisively and quickly done.

Your prayer will surely be answered, for it is to that you are moving.” (CWSA 31: 697)

“For all these things, the way is detachment, to stand back; separate yourself from the desire, observe it, refuse sanction and put a quiet and persistent will for it to cease, calling on the Mother’s force at the same time to dissolve and eliminate the greed, desire, attachment, obscurity and inertia. If sincerely, persistently and rightly done, it will succeed in the end, even though it may take time.” (CWSA 31: 706)

“It is only in straightforwardness, sincerity and confidence that human society can progress.” (CWM 13: 178)

“Auroville is the effort towards peace, in sincerity and Truth.” (CWM 13: 191)

“Besides, each time there is a true change in the being, each time one overcomes a fault, one has the clear vision of a whole set of things which seemed quite natural and which now pass across the screen like a dark spot; you see the origin, the causes and the effects. If you have a precise, exact memory and have for a certain length of time, say a period of ten years, made sincere efforts to transform yourself, to consecrate yourself more and more, and if you could recollect what you were before, you would say, ‘It is not possible, I was not like that!’ And yet you were indeed like that.” (CWM 4: 102)

No human brain is capable of understanding a thing in its totality even the most sincere person does not see many subjects totally

“But I have noticed that even for altogether external, concrete facts where there is no question of evaluation, it is still the same thing. No human brain is capable of understanding a thing in its totality; even the most scholarly, the most learned, even the most sincere person does not see a subject—and especially many subjects—totally. He will say what he knows, what he understands, and all that he does not know, all that he does not understand is not there, and this absolutely changes everything.” (CWM 4: 111)

‘The description of the virtue Sincerity in the play ’ by the Mother.

“Sincerity reigned over the festival. She was dressed in a transparent robe, like clear water, and held in her hand a cube of purest crystal, through which things can be seen as they really are, far different from what they usually seem, for there their image is reflected without distortion.

Near to her, like two faithful guardians, stood Humility, at once respectful and proud, and Courage, lofty-browed, clear eyed, his lips firm and smiling, with a calm and resolute air.” (CWM 2: 5–6)

“One who strives in sincere quest for truth, who is ready,

if necessary, to sacrifice all he had thought until then to be true, in order to draw ever nearer to the integral truth that can be no other than the progressive knowledge of the whole universe in its infinite progression, enters gradually into relation with great masses of deeper, completer and more luminous thoughts.” (CWM 2: 28)

“That is why the sincere lover of knowledge also knows that the greatest sages are always the most modest and the most unknown. For one who has the knowledge and the capacity prefers silence and retirement where he is free to accomplish his work without being disturbed by anything, to the fanfares of glory which would throw him as fodder to men.” (CWM 2: 83–84)

“Only he who has perfect self-control can consecrate himself in all sincerity to the great work. For he alone knows that no contrary will, no unexpected impulse can ever again come to impede his action, to check his effort by setting him at variance with himself.” (2: 100–101)

“And I implore Thee, O Lord, in spite of the naıvete of this expression that is hardly intellectual, I implore Thee for more true light, true purity, sincerity and love, and all this for all, for the multitude constituting what I call my being, and for the multitude constituting the universal being; I implore Thee, though I know that it is perfectly useless to implore Thee, for we alone, in our ignorance and ill will, can stand in the way of Thy glorious and total manifestation, but something childlike within me finds a support in this mental attitude; I implore Thee that the peace of Thy reign may spread throughout the earth.” (CWM 1: 52)

“In beatitude I communed with Thy puissance dominating over darkness and error, shining like a marvelous and eternal dawn above the mud of hypocritical force and its apparent success. Everything has been brought to light, we have taken one more step towards the full light of sincerity, and this full light will be the first stage of Thy reign upon earth.” (CWM 1: 132)

“O LORD, because in an hour of cruel distress I said in the sincerity of my faith: ‘Thy Will be done’, Thou camest garbed in Thy raiment of glory. At Thy feet I prostrated myself, on Thy breast I found my refuge. Thou hast filled my being with Thy divine light and flooded it with Thy bliss. Thou hast reaffirmed Thy alliance and assured me of Thy constant presence.” (CWM 1: 373)

“Timidity is a form of vanity. When you are timid, it means that you attach much more importance to the opinion others have of you than to the sincerity of your action.” (CWM 14: 280)

“To know with the intellect is simply to understand and may be an effective starting-point, —or, too, it may not be, and it will not be if there is no sincerity in the knowledge, no urge towards inner realisation in the will, no power upon the soul, no call in the spirit: for that would mean that the brain has externally understood, but inwardly the soul has seen nothing.” (CWSA 19: 324–325)

“Q: I have been here for one and a half years but I know nothing of the sadhana. I meditate, but nothing happens in the meditation. I feel there is no love in me towards the Mother. What shall I do to feel this love?

A: Become truthful, pure, sincere, straightforward.” (CWSA 32: 462)

“Q: How to get pure and complete devotion?

A: Get quiet first—then from the quietude aspire and open yourself quietly and sincerely to the Mother.” (CWSA 32: 477–478)

“Q: I am still not able to maintain the right attitude in my own sadhana and yet I try to pose as an adviser and instructor.

A: Well, one can give good advice even when one does not follow it oneself—there is the old adage ‘Do what I preach and not what I practise.’ More seriously, there are different personalities in oneself and the one that is eager to advise and help may be quite sincere. I remember in days long past when I still had personal struggles and difficulties, people came to me from outside for advice etc. when I was in black depression and could not see my way out of a sense of hopelessness and failure, yet nothing of that came out and I spoke with an assured conviction. Was that insincerity? I think not, the one who spoke in me was quite sure of what he spoke. The turning of all oneself to the Divine is not an easy matter and one must not be discouraged if it takes time and other movements still intervene.” (CWSA 35: 52)

“One cannot dethrone reason unless the experience of

the higher regions is so absolute, so true, so complete, that it compels recognition. It is not a very frequent thing. So I always advise people to keep their reason. But there’s a point where it must cease having its superior rights—that’s to judge spiritual experience, because it cannot judge this, it does not understand it; but it must truly be a spiritual experience, not something which tries to imitate it; here an absolute sincerity is necessary. One must not deceive oneself through ambition, or indeed let oneself be deceived by any odd humbugs who come and tell you extraordinary stories in order to make you believe in their superiority.” (CWM 7: 174)

“One can hope for a social transformation, an economic transformation, a transformation of education; one can hope for all this long before the transformation of politics and of finance. I wrote this precisely to show people what the real state of the world is, and to give an indication of the way to get out of it. But when we are at the point of coming out, you will see that it is not so easy. Perhaps the first thing that will be transformed will be the scientific world, it is possible; because there a very great sincerity is required and a very persevering effort, and these already are qualities which open for you the door to a higher life....” (CWM 7: 298)

“One can know everything, but one must know the way. And the way is not learnt through books, it cannot be written in numbers. It is only by practising... And here then, it demands an abnegation, a consecration, a perseverance and an obstinacy—still more considerable than what the sincerest, most honest, most unselfish scientists have ever shown. But I must say that the scientific method of work is a marvellous discipline; and what is curious is that the method recommended by the Buddha for getting rid of desires and the illusion of the world is also one of the most marvellous disciplines ever known on the earth. They are at the two ends, they are both excellent; those who follow one or the other in all sincerity truly prepare themselves for yoga. A small click, somewhere, is enough to make them leave their fairly narrow point of view on one side or the other so as to be able to enter into an integrality which will lead them to the supreme Truth and mastery.” (CWM 7: 316)

“Q: Sweet Mother, what does a ‘candid’ faith mean?

A: Candid? It is simple, sincere and does not doubt. We speak mostly of the candour of a child, who has a simple faith without any doubts.” (CWM 6: 236)

When the external ritual is straightforward and sincere then it has its place in bhakti

“The inner bhakti is the main thing and without it the external becomes a form and mere ritual, but the external has its place and use when it is straightforward and sincere.” (CWSA 29: 355)

“That which to the Western mind is myth and imagination is here an actuality and a strand of the life of our inner being, what is there beautiful poetic idea and philosophic speculation is here a thing constantly realised and present to the experience. It is this turn of the Indian mind, its spiritual sincerity and psychic positivism, that makes the Veda and Upanishads and the later religious and religio philosophic poetry so powerful in inspiration and intimate and living in expression and image, and it has its less absorbing but still very sensible effect on the working of the poetic idea and imagination even in the more secular literature.” (CWSA 20: 327–328)

X—Short Summary

I—What Is Insincerity

1.      It is insincerity of the being, in which one part wants the Divine and the other part wants something else

2.      Insincerity means the unwillingness of some part of the being to live according to the highest light

3.      The part of outer man is always insincere

4.      If one does things inconsistent with one’s aspiration or follow your desires then one is not sincere

5.      Not to know one’s fault is always the sign of insincerity somewhere

6.      An expectation that things will turn out well veils the complete sincerity

7.      This expectation is an egoistic, personal thing, and this veils the full sincerity

8.      The spirit of quarrelling is insincerity

9.      To complain about the difficulties on the way is a sign of weakness and insincerity

10.      If one perceives faults or weaknesses in oneself and tries to justify them or prevents one from attending them then it is insincerity

11.      It is nobler and loftier to recognise one’s faults in order to correct them

12.      To recognise and correct one’s faults an uncompromising sincerity is the true remedy

13.      Weakness is an insincerity, a sort of excuse one gives oneself

14.      The weakness which says, ‘I would like it so much, but I can’t’ is insincerity

15.      Because, if one is sincere, what one cannot do today one will do tomorrow or will do the day after

16.      The entire universe is nothing other than the Divine who has forgotten Himself

17.      So there is no place for weakness, not in the Divine surely

18.      To the extent you draw closer to the Divine your weakness disappears

19.      All suffering, all weaknesses, all incapabilities are, in the last analysis, insincerities

20.      The subconscient is a place full of insincerity

21.      It is insincerity to hold back any part of you or keep it shut to the Divine

22.      Insincerity of motive in the Yoga is Yoga done under a pressure of vital demand, or to satisfy some ambition, pride, vanity or seeking after power, position over others or satisfying any vital desire with the help of the Yogic force

23.      If there is any kind of insincerity of motive in the Yoga then the psychic cannot open

24.      Those who say that they do not have will power means they are not sincere

25.      Sincerity is an infinitely more powerful force than all

the wills in the world

26.      Inner conflict means that there is still some insincerity

27.      All division in the being is an insincerity

28.      The greatest insincerity is to dig an abyss between your body and the truth of your being

29.      If there is insincerity in your exterior being then you are seeking not spiritual life but personal powers and that can mislead you

30.      If you repeat the same errors several times, you may be sure you are not sincere somewhere

31.      When one recognises one’s mistake and yet repeats it, it means that only a superficial part of the consciousness has recognised it

32.      If you feel unhappy immediately tell yourself that insincerity has crept in somewhere

33.      To know that a thing should not be and yet continue to allow it is due to lack of will that verges on insincerity

34.      Insincerity is one of the greatest impurities

35.      Insincerity arises from the movement to follow its own will and not be the expression of the divine Will

36.      Insincerity keeps one in a state of falsehood

37.      Crass insincerities which everybody understands are as follows

38.      Saying one thing and thinking another

39.      Pretending that you are doing one thing and doing

another

40.      Expressing a wish which is not your real wish

41.      Speaking absolutely glaring lie which consists in saying something different from the fact

42.      Diplomatic way of acting which consists in doing things with the idea of obtaining a certain result

43.      Saying something and expecting it to have a certain effect

44.      Subtle insincerity is as follows

45.      A favourable perception of what is sympathetic to you and an unfavourable perception of what you dislike

46.      The origin of these insincerities is always a similar movement arising from desire and from egoism

II—What Is Not Insincerity

1.      Asking the Divine again and again for the right condition, the feeling of connection, the true consciousness and the psychic state is not insincerity

2.      If your whole life and every part of your being is not entirely consecrated to the Divine that does not mean one is insincere

3.      What it means is that for Integral Yoga the entire gathering up and turning of the whole life and nature is indispensable

4.      If turning of the life and nature is partially done, it is a defect in the sadhana and stands in the way of total

change of the consciousness

5.      In the spiritual endeavour Truth and falsehood cannot be allowed to dwell together

6.      The Light, the Truth must be kept and the Darkness, the falsehood or error pushed out altogether

7.      If there are weakness that does not mean one is insincere

8.      For who is there in whom there is no obscurity and no movement of ignorance

9.      There is always a limit for doing meditation and when the limit is reached one must stop, that is not insincerity

10.      What becomes insincere is if you pretend to meditate when you are no longer meditating

11.      What becomes insincere is when you say prayers, perform ceremonies and repeat prayers as one repeats a more or less well-learnt lesson

12.      After sometime practicing meditation for a long time it loses its intensity and becomes mechanical

13.      It is quite natural, and even indispensable, for the intensity of the movement to cease after a certain time

III—Why Man Becomes Insincere

1.      Human beings are formed of all kinds of different pieces

2.      Each piece become active one after another

3.      According to the part that is active, one is quite another person, becomes almost another personality

4.      It is very important to become aware of the psychic being

5.      Psychic being acts as signpost or a mirror in which all things are reflected and show themselves as they truly are

6.      Then one arranges all the elements around the psychic being

7.      If there is something that is not all right, it casts a sort of grey shadow upon the mirror

8.      This element must be shifted, organised

9.      This element must be spoken to, made to understand and made to come out of that darkness

10.      People are insincere because one part of the being says one thing and another part says another thing

11.      As the mind develops, the simple and pure sincerity of the child disappears

12.      As the mind develops the mind must be replaced with a more conscious, more spiritual sincerity, the psychic sincerity

13.      Doubt veils the conscience and subconscious sincerity

14.      Sanction from the society for insincerity is because the society is obsessed with success

15.      For human nature sincerity is one of the most difficult task, much more difficult than a rigid asceticism

or a fervent piety

16.      Only the psychic being and the one-souled spiritual

aspiration can give sincerity

17.      All the time one does things they should not do, because one is in a state of total ignorance

18.      If you ask yourself that do I know what I have to do to reach your aim and if you are sincere you will see that you don’t know what you should do to reach your aim

19.      You do things automatically, instinctively, by habit or some kind of impulse

20.      Sincerity means to open to the Divine’s influence only

21.      If the whole being were sincere to every cell of the body, nothing could prevent the most rapid transformation

22.      People cannot be sincere to every cell of the body however much the enlightened part of them may want to

23.      Because of the nature of the Ignorance out of which the ordinary Prakriti has been built

24.      As soon as we think of the result we begin to bargain and that takes away all sincerity from the effort

25.      Insincerity is one wants to make progress and want to get rid of defects and, at the same time cherishes one’s defects in the consciousness and take great care to hide them so that nobody intervenes and sends them off

26.      A perfect sincerity is something extremely rare

27.      When there are things in one’s nature which one does not like, one takes the greatest care to hide them

from oneself, one finds favourable explanations

28.      You can’t see your defects clearly

29.      It is more difficult to give sincerity to someone who has none than to cure a dying man

30.      Your mind is driven by passion and it gives a twist which prevents you from seeing the truth, such a twist is insincerity

31.      The highest human virtue is of mixed quality and most sincerely absolute virtue is relative in practice

32.      Insincerity, the complete lack of truth is shockingly apparent to in the world

33.      The tamasic man’s action lacks sincerity

34.      Who can stand before Thee and say in all sincerity that one has never made a mistake?

IV—The Problems One Can Have When One Is Insincere

1.      People suffer in Yoga because of a lack of sincerity

2.      When there is insincerity the vital enjoys the suffering and wants the suffering

3.      That element in the vital has to be got rid of altogether

4.      Without sincerity the path of yoga is dangerous

5.      Insincerity nullifies the working of the Grace in a

being

6.      Insincerity seems to be an incurable defect

7.      One must either have nothing to do with insincere

people or else take them as they are

8.      Where there is insincerity the Mother can do very little to help

9.      Insincere people shut the door completely to all progress

10.      Due to insincerity in work the work suffers, but he suffers still more

11.      No amount of meditation can replace sincerity in the service of the Divine

12.      Fear comes with insincerity

13.      If you want a comfortable life, agreeable circumstances, you are putting conditions and restrictions, and then you can fear

14.      When one is not absolutely sincere, one deceives oneself very easily

15.      If you are not sincere your own consciousness is veiled

16.      A man who tells lies; his consciousness gets veiled and after a while, he can no longer distinguish falsehood from truth

17.      If one is not sincere one puts veils, obstacles between oneself and the Divine

18.      If one is not sincere; the Divine does not withdraw; one makes oneself incapable of receiving him

19.      Insincere people lose even the little bit of consciousness that would make them know that they are wicked; they become as though unconscious

20.      Insincerity leads on the path to ruin

21.      Insincerity is our saddest failure because insincerity leads to ruin

22.      In the hour of God all insincerity of nature becomes a gap in thy armour and invites the blow

23.      Insincerity is a great obstacles standing in the way of the Divine’s protection

24.      If one is not sincere, then a flood of pseudos or mixtures comes in, one is led into the mazes of the intermediate zone or spins in the grooves of one’s own formations

25.      If there is insincerity within, the outer change will not be effective

26.      Those who fall into insanity can be due to some insincerity

27.      If there is some insincerity in the mind or the vital then the experience is falsified and deformed

28.      If you are not sincere then all kinds of forces, influences, entities who are on the look-out for the least little rift in sincerity, immediately rush in through that rift and begin to throw you into confusion

29.      Before beginning anything, be sure that you are as sincere as you can be

30.      Also have the intention of becoming still more

sincere

31.      You must be absolutely sincere to listen to the still, small peaceful voice which speaks in the silence of your

heart

32.      If you are not sincere, you will deceive yourself and you will hear the voice of your ego and then you will commit the most awful stupidities

33.      If you are not sincere, you will begin by deceiving yourself and all your experiences will be worth nothing

34.      The argument of weakness is an excuse and means an insincerity

35.      Because Grace is there to give the supreme strength

36.      Insincerity is always an open door for the adversary

37.      Insincerity is in some secret sympathy with what is perverse

38.      It is very difficult to be sincere

39.      That is why the blows multiply and sometimes become terrible, because that’s the only thing which breaks your stupidity

40.      The justification of calamities is to make us sincere

41.      The strength of blows depends on the inner strength, the inner sincerity

42.      If you are not sincere, you may have wonderful experiences, but these have no value

43.      The mind is a wonderful constructor and it can give you wonderful experiences solely by its work of formation

44.      It is hence preferable not to know beforehand what is going to happen

45.      If there is any insincerity of ego, desire, vanity,

ambition then one may construct a voice and ascribe it to the Mother’s voice or may mistake some other Voice for the Mother’s

46.      Then it is not safe

47.      If the psychic being opens, but the rest of the nature does not sincerely concur then afterwards resistances arise and the sadhak falls away from the path

48.      Then it is very injurious spiritually and to abandon once psychic opening has begun

49.      If the defects occupy the central parts of the being and vitiate the attitude, then the sadhaka will give a constant support to defects

50.      His mind will always be ready to give justifications and try to elude the search-light of the self-critical faculty and the protest of the psychic being

51.      That means failure of the Yoga at least for this existence

52.      If you wish to have a true, sincere experience upon which you can build, you must know how to be silent

V—It Is Wickedness When One Knows About One’s Insincerity And Still Persists

1.      If one knows that one is insincere and persists in

one’s insincerity, it is wickedness

2.      It means that one has bad intentions, otherwise why would one persist in one’s insincerity

3.      If you are conscious that you are insincere, you

know where insincerity lies

4.      One knows that one should do a certain thing and at the same time one does not wish to do it, so, within oneself one finds a means to deceive oneself

5.      If one is conscious of what is happening within, one perceives the little trick one has played and how one has cleverly made an excellent excuse for doing what one wanted to do

6.      If one is conscious of one’s insincerity, one has decided to remain in the darkness or do not want to progress

7.      If one is conscious of one’s insincerity, one has only to put a red-hot iron on it and make yourself sincere

VI—Prayers to Develop Perfect Sincerity

VII—Examples of Insincerity

VIII—Insincerity Too Can Change in Yoga

1.      Bar to Progress in the Yoga is Insincerity

2.      Insincerity need not be a permanent bar for this too can change

3.      If imperfections were a bar, then no man could succeed in Yoga

4.      The existence of imperfections cannot be a permanent bar to progress in the Yoga

5.      It is through ignorance and stupidity that the being is insincere

6.      With a persevering will and an absolute confidence in the Divine Grace, one can cure insincerity

7.      There is a contradiction between the brutal fact of one’s daily way of life and the picture the Mother has of what each one ought to be

8.      The Mother keeps the picture of what each one ought to be with all the power of her consciousness so that one may realise it and that is your real self

9.      If you do not succeed in getting rid of the difficulty, it means that you do not do all that you can

10.      For, if you truly do ‘all’ that you can, you will surely succeed in getting rid of the difficulty

11.      For the difficulties that come to you are exactly in proportion to your strength

12.      As you gradually advance, you will notice that what you considered to be sincere is not so

13.      To succeed you must have as total a will for progress as possible

14.      If an impulse seizes you with violence, keep the will firm, your being must not vacillate

15.      When the impulse come, tell yourself that they come from below, I do not want them to recur, they are not mine

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