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around it some trees. It was a fine place, very quiet, very silent. I lay on the grass, like this,
flat on my stomach, my elbows in the grass, and then suddenly all the life of that Nature,
all the life of that region between the subtle-physical and the most material vital, which is
very living in plants and in Nature, all that region became all at once, suddenly, without
any transition, absolutely living, intense, conscious, marvellous; and this was the result,
wasn’t it?, of six months of work which had given nothing. I had not noticed anything; but
just a little condition like that and the result was there! It is like the chick in the egg, yes! It
is there for a very long time and yet one sees nothing at all. And one wonders whether there
is indeed a chick in the egg; and then, suddenly “Tick!”, there is a tiny hole, you know, and
then everything bursts and out comes the chick! It is quite ready, but it took all that time to
be formed; that’s how it is. When you want to prepare something within you, that is how
it is, it is like the chick in the egg. You need a very long time, and this without having the
least result, never getting discouraged, and continuing your effort, absolutely regularly, as
though you had eternity before you and, moreover, as though you were quite disinterested
about the result. You do the work because you do it. And then, suddenly, one day, it bursts
and you see before you the full result of your work.

But you understand, don’t you? One speaks like this, very easily, of becoming conscious
of one’s nights, having control over one’s sleep-activities and all sorts of things of this kind,
but you need to do many such little works like the one I have just described to you. Many
of these are needed to obtain this result. When one is accomplished, you realise that there
is another missing, and when this is done, you realise there is still another, and so on, until
one fine day you can do what I said, and you go from one plane to another, like that, putting
all to rest, until you come out of all activity and enter the supreme rest, consciously. It is
worth the trouble.

— The Mother*

*The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother, Volume 6. Cent. ed. Pondicherry:Sri Aurobindo
Ashram Trust; 1979, pp. 184-8.

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