Pre-vision: the power of projecting one's consciousness into the future.

 I do not like these showy miracles - they most often fail pitifully under the pressure of the Force. The first effect is a dangerous swelling of the ego. In front of all that, there is only one attitude to take - do your best and leave the result to the Lord.

 In the lives of many saints we read that with full trust the devotee refused to eat unless the Lord appeared and took t. And the Lord did appear and eat and work like human beings. Is there any truth in such stories?

 A psychological truth because anybody can become for you the Lord if so you decide. The subjective point of view is much more widely prevailing than is generally admitted.

 I have gone through the papers you sent me.

 The historicity of the papers seems to be true. The founder must surely have been acquainted with the Kaballah and with some mystics of Asia Minor. The original appears to have been written in Latin with adjuncts of Hebrew words (probably taken from the Kaballah). But the Osiris-Isis it looks to me like a more recent addition which came in something like 50 or 60 years ago.

 The whole thing is from its origin a very well-made, a very strong and elaborate it mental formation, powerfully designed to Catch hold of certain vital elements and forces (both outside and inside the individuals) to rule and use them and through the vital to exercise a partial power over the physical.

 Formations of this kind are numerous; they translate upon earth into secret societies. I have met it many of the kind, more or less ancient, more or less powerfully organised, but all of a similar type. They are not, in their nature, spiritual. If there is any spirituality in them, it comes it not from the formation itself but from the presence, in the society, of one or several personalities with a spiritual character and achievement.

(A sadhak wrote that devotees were performing ceremonies much like the worship of deities in front of the photographs of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Stating that for proper worship there should be a bija-mantra [seed-mantra] to invoke the deity, he asked whether there was such a mantra for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Mother replied:)

 I always advise to let the mantra rise from the depth of the heart as a sincere aspiration.

 Astrology

 Do not fear for your life - the astrologers do not always say the truth.

 7 November 1939

 The stars have no decisive influence. It is only if one does not believe in the Divine that one unnecessarily suffers by believing that they determine one's life.

 I have known many astrologers both in Europe and India. So far, nobody has been able to read the future correctly. There are three reasons for the failure. First, the astrologers do not know how to read the future properly. Secondly, the horoscope is always incorrectly made - unless a man is a mathematical genius. And even for such a person it is very difficult to make a correct horoscope. Thirdly, when people say that the stars in this or that house at the time of birth rule your life, they are quite wrong. The stars under which you are born are only ``tape-recorders'' of physical conditions. They do not rule the future of the soul. There is something beyond, which rules the stars themselves and everything else. The soul belongs to this Supreme Being. And if it is doing Yoga, then all the more it should never believe in the power of the stars or in any other power.

 An astrologer who predicts a catastrophe for you is like a joker. Many jokers say things like, ``Today you will break your neck!'' But in spite of the joke nothing happens.

 Only a great Yogi can tell you your future correctly. But even then there is the Supreme Will which alone controls and decides everything.

 8 September 1961

 X who has been studying astrology has prepared my horoscope. I send it to you to see. Do you think the indications he has given in it for my future have any value?

 The horoscope is sufficiently vague and favourable to be taken in consideration as the base of a mental conception for your future.

 The most important factor in a horoscope is the intuitive faculty of the astrologer.

 6 May 1964

 Why do you believe in what the astrologers say? It is the belief that brings the trouble.

 Sri Aurobindo says that a man becomes what he thinks he is.

 1965

 Horoscopes have no importance for those who take up yoga, because the influence that works through yoga is much more powerful than the influence of the stars.

 Palmistry

 Palmistry is a very interesting art, but it depends for its exactitude and truthfulness almost entirely upon the real ability of the one who practises it. Moreover, it relates only to the material destiny and this destiny can be altered by the intervention of the higher forces.

 3 January 1951

  This morning after Pranam, Thou blest me with four flowers of Sincerity. I feel that there is special significance in it, but I am unable to find out the same. May I know it?

 When I picked up the flowers to give you, I felt that several were coming and I willed: "Let it be the number of the states of the being in which the Sincerity (in the consecration to the Divine) will be definitively established.'' Four means integrality: the four states of being, mental, psychic, vital, physical.

 27 December 1933