Page 6 - NAMAH-Jan-2025

more the mind is educated and has applied itself to various disciplines, the more it becomes
capable of proving that what it puts forward or what it says is true. One can prove the truth
of anything by reasoning, but that does not make it true. It remains an opinion, a prejudice, a
knowledge based on appearances which are themselves more than dubious.

So there seems to be only one way out and that is to go in search of one’s soul and to find it. It
is there, it does not make a point of hiding itself, it does not play with you just to make things
difficult; on the contrary, it makes great efforts to help you find it and to make itself heard.
Only, between your soul and your active consciousness there are two characters who are in
the habit of making a lot of noise, the mind and the vital. And because they make a lot of noise,
while the soul does not, or, rather, makes as little as possible, their noise prevents you from
hearing the voice of the soul.

When you want to know what your soul knows, you have to make an inner effort, to be very
attentive; and indeed, if you are attentive, behind the outer noise of the mind and the vital, you
can discern something very subtle, very quiet, very peaceful, which knows and says that it
knows. But the insistence of the others is so imperious, while that is so quiet, that you are very
easily misled into listening to the one that makes the most noise; most often you become aware
only afterwards that the other one was right. It does not impose itself, it does not compel you
to listen, for it is without violence.

When you hesitate, when you wonder what to do in this or that circumstance, there come the
desire, the preference both mental and vital, that press, insist, affirm and impose themselves,
and, with the best reasons in the world, build up a whole case for themselves. And if you are
not on the alert, if you don’t have a firm discipline, if you don’t have the habit of control, they
finally convince you that they are right. And as I was saying a little while ago, they make so
much noise that you do not even hear the tiny voice or the tiny, very quiet indication of the soul
which says, “Don’t do it.”

This “Don’t do it” comes often, but you discard it as something which has no power and follow
your impulsive destiny. But if you are truly sincere in your will to find and live the truth, then
you learn to listen better and better, you learn to discriminate more and more, and even if it
costs you an effort, even if it causes you pain, you learn to obey. And even if you have obeyed
only once, it is a powerful help, a considerable progress on the path towards the discrimination
between what is and what is not the soul. With this discrimination and the necessary sincerity
you are sure to reach the goal.

But you must not be in a hurry, you must not be impatient, you must be very persevering. You
do the wrong thing ten times for every time that you do the right thing. But when you do the
wrong thing you must not give up everything in despair, but tell yourself that the Grace will
never abandon you and that next time it will be better.

6