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The means to individuality*

“The limitations of the body are a mould; soul and mind have to pour themselves into them, break
them and constantly remould them in wider limits till the formula of agreement is found between
this finite and their own infinity.” 1

Sweet Mother, how should we understand: “the limitations of the body are a mould”?

If you did not have a body with a precise form, if you were not a formed individuality,
fully conscious and having its own qualities, you would all be fused into one another and
be indistinguishable. Even if we go only a little inwards, into the most material vital being,
there is such a mixture between the vibrations of different people that it is very difficult to
distinguish any of you. And if you did not have a body, it would be a sort of inextricable
pulp. Therefore, it is the form, this precise and apparently rigid form of the body, which
distinguishes you one from another. So this form serves as a mould. (Speaking to the child)
Do you know what a mould is? — Yes! One pours something inside, in a liquid or semi-
liquid form, and when it cools down one can break the mould and have the object in a
precise form. Well, the form of the body serves as a mould in which the vital and mental
forces can take a precise form, so that you can become an individual being separate from
others.

It is only gradually, very slowly, through the movements of life and a more or less careful and
thorough education that you begin to have sensations which are personal to you, feelings
and ideas which are personal to you. An individualised mind is something extremely rare,
which comes only after a long education; otherwise it is a kind of thought-current passing
through your brain and then through another’s and then through a multitude of other
brains, and all this is in perpetual movement and has no individuality. One thinks what
others are thinking, others think what still others are thinking, and everybody thinks like
that in a great mixture, because these are currents, vibrations of thought passing from one
to another. If you look at yourself attentively, you will very quickly become aware that
very few thoughts in you are personal. Where do you draw them from? — From what you
have heard, from what you have read, what you have been taught, and how many of these
thoughts you have are the result of your own experience, your own reflection, your purely
personal observation? — Not many.

Only those who have an intense intellectual life, who are in the habit of reflecting, observing,
putting ideas together, gradually form a mental individuality for themselves.

*Heading provided by the Editor
1 Sri Aurobindo. Birth Centenary Library, Volume 16. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust;
1971, p. 386.

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