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things. All the time one does things automatically, by force of habit, one does not watch
oneself. And so, when one lives in a particular society, one automatically does what is
normally done in that society. And if somebody begins to watch himself acting, watch
himself feeling and thinking, he looks like a kind of phenomenal monster compared with
the environment he lives in.

Therefore, individuality is not at all the rule, it is an exception, and if you do not have that
sort of bag, a particular form which is your outer body and your appearance, you could
hardly be distinguished from one another.

Individuality is a conquest. And, as Sri Aurobindo says here, this first conquest is only a
first stage, and once you have realised within you something like a personal independent
and conscious being, then what you have to do is to break the form and go farther. For
example, if you want to progress mentally, you must break all your mental forms, all your
mental constructions to be able to make new ones. So, to begin with, a tremendous labour
is required to individualise oneself, and afterwards one must demolish all that has been
done in order to progress. But as you do not watch yourself doing things and as it is the
custom — not everywhere, of course; let us say here — the custom to work, to read, to
develop yourself, to try to do something, to form yourself a little, you do it quite naturally
and without even watching yourself, as I said.

And only when these external forms come into a mutual friction you begin to feel that you
are different from others. Otherwise you are this person or that, according to the name you
bear. It is only when there is a friction, when something does not go smoothly, that you
become aware of a difference, then you see that you are different, otherwise you are not
aware of it and you are not different. In fact, you are very, very little different from one
another.

How many things in your life are done at least essentially in the same way as others. For
instance, sleeping, moving and eating, and all sorts of things like that. Never have you
asked yourselves why you do a thing in one way and not another. You wouldn’t be able to
say. If I asked you, why do you act in this way and not that? you wouldn’t know what to
say. But it is quite simply because you were born in certain conditions and it is the habit to
be like that in these conditions. Otherwise, if you had been born in another age and other
conditions, you would act altogether differently without even realising the difference, it
would appear absolutely natural to you.... For instance — a very, very small instance — in
most Western countries and even in some Eastern ones, people sew like this, from right
to left; in Japan they sew from left to right. Well, it seems quite natural to you to sew from
right to left, doesn’t it? That is how you have been taught and you don’t think about it,
you sew in that way. If you go to Japan and they see you sewing, it makes them laugh, for
they are in the habit of sewing differently. It is the same thing with writing. You write like
this, from left to right, but there are people who write from top to bottom, and others who

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