Here is the Mother's
Answer:
"To read my
books is not difficult because they are written in
the simplest language, almost the spoken language. To
get help from them, it is enough to read with
attention and concentration and an attitude of inner
good-will, with a desire to receive and live what is
taught.
To read what Sri
Aurobindo writes is more difficult because the
expression is highly intellectual and the language
far more literary and philosophic. The brain needs a
preparation to really be able to understand and
generally this preparation takes time, unless one is
specially gifted with an innate intuitive faculty.
In any case, I
always advise reading a little at a time, keeping the
mind as quiet as one can, without making an effort to
understand, but keeping the head as silent as
possible and letting the force contained in what one
reads enter deep inside. This force, received in calm
and silence, will do its work of illumining and will
create in the brain, if necessary, the cells required
for understanding. Thus, when one re-reads the same
thing some months later, one finds that the thought
expressed has become much clearer and closer and even
at times quite familiar.
It is preferable to
read regularly, a little every day and at a fixed
hour if possible; this facilitates the brain's
receptivity. "
*
"In a general
and almost absolute way, if you truly wish to profit
from those (Sri Aurobindo's) readings the best method
is this: having gathered your consciousness and
focussed your attention on what you are reading, you
must establish a minimum of mental tranquility - the
best thing would be to obtain perfect silence - and
achieve a state of immobility of the mind, immobility
of the brain, I might say, so that the attention
becomes as still and immobile as a mirror, like the
surface of absolutely still water. Then what one has
read passes through the surface and penetrates deep
into the being where it is received with a minimum of
distortion. Afterwards - sometimes long afterwards -
it wells up again from the depths and manifests in
the brain with its full power of comprehension, not
as knowledge acquired from outside, but as a light
one carries within. "
-The
Mother
