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<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:center;line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal'><span style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><font size="4">On Discipline</font><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><i><span style='font-family:
"Arial Narrow";mso-bidi-font-family:"Arial Narrow"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;tab-stops:78.0pt;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>THE
MOTHER says: &quot;No big creation is possible without discipline&quot;. The
true and original meaning of discipline is to be a disciple. And a disciple is
one who learns, is ready to learn from a master. So the first requisite for a
disciple or a learner is to obey. Obedience then is the beginning and the very
basis of discipline. We know from ancient stories and legends how this
discipline of obedience was exacted from a disciple or learner. For knowledge
or learning was not considered at that time as a bundle of information to be
acquired or collected by the pupil. It is not a mass of dead materials that is
laid before the learner to possess and store; it is something living that the
teacher passed from his consciousness into that of his pupil, and for the free
passage of the knowledge from the master to the disciple, a passive, receptive
mentality' and absolute obedience is an indispensable condition – a <i><span
style='font-family:"Arial Narrow";mso-bidi-font-family:"Arial Narrow"'>sine </span>qua
non. </i>In the spiritual domain this was the procedure that was universally
accepted and followed, although always in the name of individual freedom and
free will protestant movements arose and flourished and traced their own way.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.5pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>But
obedience to a person is in the last analysis a symbol – symbol of obedience
to a principle. The person signifies and embodies a principle, a law to which
we render our obedience. In normal life it is these principles or laws that
demand our obedience. These laws or rules are meant for the welfare of
collective living and therefore individuals are expected to restrain or forego
their personal impulses, their so-called liberties in order to live together in
harmony. Discipline is meant exactly to control one's personal idiosyncracies,
place them under the yoke of the common collective law. All laws or rules that
make for a harmonious collective living, that is,
<span style='font-family:Arial'>
<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>
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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;'>Page – 281<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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social or national welfare, are limbs of discipline. By submitting himself to such a process of
self-abnegation the individual gains in self-control and self-mastery. But
there are rules and rules, laws and laws. For that depends on the ideal or the
purpose set before oneself. If the purpose is narrow,</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>limited, superficial, the
rules are necessarily likewise, and although effective in a particular field,
they have a restricting, even deadening effect on the consciousness of the
individual. If discipline means obedience, the obedience must be to a larger
and higher law, and the perfect discipline will come only from obedience to the
highest law.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.45pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>The
heart of discipline then is the effort to surmount oneself. Instead of a lower
self following the law of an inferior consciousness one is to rise to a higher
level of consciousness and a greater law of being. Discipline thus is only
another term for <i>tapasya, </i>replacing the lower law gradually by a
higher and higher law.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Mother speaks of three
lines of this higher law. First of all, the individual law which at its lowest and
its most common form is the law of selfishness. <span style='mso-bidi-font-weight:
bold'>It<b> </b></span>is the most elementary and superficial degree of
consciousness when the being is confined to its own little person, confined
mostly to its hungers and</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:3.1pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>desires,
to its sense of possession and appropriation. The human being starts with- this
addiction to selfishness but he moves towards a gradual enlargement and
rearrangement of this sense of personal value and importance. Therefore he is
given a family, a nation, a grouping more or less large in which he can find
other selves to meet and learn to live with harmoniously. A collective life
whether in a nation or in the family or in any other group formation demands a
control over the selfish impulses and egoistic urges. That is the discipline,
that is to say, the necessity of submitting the law of one's ego-self to the
law of collective selves, needed for the realisation of a collective ideal.
When you playa game you have to obey the rule of the game and you have to
dovetail your movements into the movements of your comrades, you cannot move as
you please but must integrate your gestures with those of others. Even so as a
member of a particular family or as a citizen of a particular country you have
to rearrange your personal habits and movements in accordance with a more<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;'>Page – 282<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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none;tab-stops:196.05pt;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>general
and wider plan of living. The extent of this obedience depends upon the ideal
that a particular collectivity pursues and the value of the obedience depends
on the ideal thus pursued. And the largest collectivity is of course the human
race, the humanity as a whole. The submission of the personal law to the law of
humanity in general is also a discipline demanded of man but there too the
value of the submission depends upon the exact nature of the humanity to which
one is asked to submit. For as I have said, there are degrees of consciousness
and levels of being mounting higher and higher in an increasing value in
respect of width and intensity and essential character. For along with the
widening of the consciousness there must be a heightening of it, a horizontal
movement of the being must be supported or accentuated by a vertical movement.
Even the widest consciousness, a consciousness one with the universe, as wide
as creation itself, can still have a core of ego-sense left behind, however
attenuated it may be; the ego-sense can be abolished only by a transcendence
even of the universal consciousness and rise into the supra-conscious. And this
brings us to the other line of discipline, the supreme discipline which means
obedience not merely, not even to the cosmic law but to the transcendent Divine
Law. Here the individual is absolutely, utterly, free from his little self, the
minor self-law, he is totally merged in the Divine, his being and living
becomes the Divine's own law of existence.<span style='mso-tab-count:1'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.0pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Discipline
then is the obedience of a learner to an ever-expanding and ever-ascending law
of consciousness and being, until the law of the supreme status is realised
which is the law of divine living: it is the utter submission or total
obedience to the Divine Himself, when one is identified with the Divine in
being and nature, where Law and Person are one and the same.<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;'>Page – 283<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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