…the only thing which is very important for the moment is the change of consciousness. And don’t think that this is so easy. If you observe yourself attentively, you will perceive that you think, feel, experience and construct like a human animal, that is, like an infrarational being who is three-fourths subconscious, through almost the whole of your day. It is possible that at certain moments you escape from this; but you still need an effort to escape from it. It may happen spontaneously, as by grace, at certain moments; but most of the time you have to make an effort to be able to catch something which is not purely this. At any time whatever of your day, if you take just a small step backwards and observe yourself, you will catch yourself, you will see that. … if I said all of a sudden, here, now, “Look at yourself!” like that, without warning you beforehand, what was it, there in the field of your consciousness? If you catch that, you will see; certainly at least ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it is the animal that’s there; an animal which is a little improved, you know, not altogether a dog, not altogether a monkey, but still not very far from that.
There are many things which men have transformed into marvellous virtues, which I have found in animals as spontaneous movements and they at least have the advantage of not being proud and not having any vanity. They did things spontaneously which, surely, were very remarkable – very remarkable in devotion, abnegation, foresight, educative sense. They did them spontaneously and without writing books on them and boasting about them as something marvellous. Therefore much is needed to come out of the animal, much more than one would think.
-The Mother
