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<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:center;line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<b><span
style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mother's</font></span><font size="4">&nbsp; Playground</span>
</font></font></b></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'><span lang=AR-SA
dir=RTL><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:
none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>ON the last occasion I spoke to you of a phenomenon
that used to happen in the playground, a phenomenon remarkable and
extraordinary. This time I am going to speak to you of the playground itself as
a great phenomenon created by the Mother.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.25pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>You may remember, we once
saw a play in our Theatre staged by our students. It was about the adventure of
a few young people leaving their home and going out wandering. In the end they
came to a house and one of them casually opened a side-door in the building and
all entered and found themselves in a fairyland. They were surprised,
astonished: they found they had left the old world and come to a new unfamiliar
enchanting fairyland.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.0pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>The same experience one
has when one opens the gate of the playground and enters it. At least we used
to experience in that way in the early days. As soon as we stepped into the
playground, a new atmosphere enveloped us, a new life full of joy, happiness
and delight and freedom. When we used to put on our group uniform, we felt
quite different from what we were normally. Old people with their blue shorts
in our group, really old people – they felt very young, youthful and trotting
about as if they had left their age behind with all their cares. And the
younger people, the youngest ones, they were so eager to join the group, to
put on the green uniform. So many among them after putting on their green
shorts rushed to me and said enthusiastically: &quot;Today I have got my
uniform and I will join the group&quot;: so</p>
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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 13 
<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

</div>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:
none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>happy, so free, so full of delight and delightful
they were.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:.15in;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Now a word about the
organisation or grouping in the playground. Naturally some attention had to be
paid in view of the difference of age and sex and capacity; but the principle,
the general principle that lay behind the organisation and on which the Mother
insisted was: no difference of age, specially no difference of sex; all human
beings are fundamentally of the same nature: Particularly in the competitions
of physical education that were arranged from time to time, the groups were
more or less all mixed up, the green and the red and the blue and all the other
colours made a blend as it were. Now-a-days it is somewhat different, but in
those early days it was otherwise; only capacity was the chief consideration
for distinction and difference, and that too in it general and very superficial
way. I also, an aged person, I do not say old, I ran and did the exercises with
young people, very young people and girls also – not for any fun and joke but
very seriously. It was to show by example that in your mind, in your consciousness
there should be no feeling of difference, no sense of inferiority or
superiority from the point of view of age and sex – and even capacity, to an
extent.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.0pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>In the very early days
when .we were rather very few in number, somewhere about fifty, we used to
address each other by our names, mere names, there was no dÄdÄ or didi tagged
on: Nolini, Pavitra, Sahana, Lalita, that was all, pure and simple. So when
people from outside came they found it a little queer: &quot;They have no
respect here for age, no' respect for elderly people, no consideration for the
women, they call each, other merely by the name.&quot; But in reality, whatever
it seemed like from outside, the consciousness, the attitude behind was different.
And yet there were some people who felt it and appreciated it. Thus when some
one in the Ashram called me by my name or an elderly woman by hers, evidently
the feeling behind was full of respect and consideration, even love. Only the
form of address</p>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 14</span><b><i><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

</div>

</i></b>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:
none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>was like that, bare and without qualification. Even
someone from outside saw the thing and judged it correctly. He wrote an article
on the Ashram and mentioned this custom in the Ashram: it is very strange that
youngsters called old people by their mere names but it sounds so nice and
appropriate when the thing comes from their lips.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:.15in;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Thus the principles that
guided the organisation of physical education are as you know now: there is to
be, first, no difference between boys and girls, all should undergo the same
exercises and the same programme. This was and is even now, I think, compulsory
for the younger groups – the green and the red and even little beyond. But it
has been often asked, the bodies are different specially with regard to sex, is
it not natural to provide different programmes? But in reality the bodies have
become different because of the consciousness that insisted on the difference
during milleniums of growth and evolution. It is only now, in this age, that
things have begun to change a little. Some of you may remember, the elderly
ones, how difficult it was for the Mother to make the girls put on shorts and
shirts for the playground exercises. She had to begin gently and gradually. In the beginning the girls learnt to put on trousers, with trousers they used
to do marching and exercises. Even today in the outside world, in many places
in India specially, we see women, girls marching and doing the parade in saree.
Our women-police even today are on duty with saree. The tradition was very
strong and in this respect, we here claim to be the pioneers of this new
development of physical freedom of women to be equal to that of men. This was
the lesson taught by the Mother.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.8pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Long ago, some twenty-five
years ago, a well-known leader of India, a great educationist came and saw our
playground activities and made the remark: &quot;I have travelled all over
India, visited various educational institutions, seen women doing gymnastics
but it is the first time that I see here in the Ashram girls doing vaulting,
especially on parallel bars, I<b><i><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

</i></b>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 15</span><b><i><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

</div>

</i></b>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:
none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>have never seen it anywhere else.&quot; Of course, it
goes without saying, circus-girls are different. In other words people used to
consider vaulting as a specially masculine virtue and along with it many other
physical games and exercises. Today it is being gradually found that this is a
superstition and the judgment is wrong. The Wimbledon women champions will
bear witness. The most important thing is that you have to change the attitude,
you have to change consciousness. Of course, there are difficulties on the
way, the force of habit, the force of atavism, all that means an extra dose of
your consciousnes's or a new consciousness. What is done here and what is done
elsewhere, in this respect of freedom being given to women and freedom being
given to the younger generation, there is a difference. I will come to it.
Mother was repeating so often: the freedom, the liberty you enjoy here is
extraordinary, exceptional, there is almost no limit to your freedom. That is
to say, it is dangerous, because the unlimited use of freedom means also misuse
of freedom. But the Mother took the risk, for that is the only way towards a
radical solution, not merely a half-way compromise. Only when you are free,
when you are completely, absolutely free, you choose between the good and the
bad, and you choose the good of your own will, then the good has a real
importance for <span style='mso-bidi-font-style:italic'>you, </span>for your
consciousness and for your development. Otherwise when you accept and follow
the good through compulsion, through fear or social decency or for your own
sake in order to be good, through vanity – that is to say, in order to be good
you observe certain rules, and you feel you are virtuous, you are dutiful, then
it is not the true way, not the true attitude and consciousness. The true
consciousness is that you do the right thing not because it is your duty to do
it, not because it is worthy to do it and it is expected of you to do it, but
because your nature impels you towards it. The flower blooms spontaneously
without any sense of duty. It possesses no sense of duty because its nature is
to do so, to be beautiful. Human</p>
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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 16 </span><b><i>

<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>
<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

</div>

</i></b>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:
none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>being also could be like that, spontaneous and
natural in its action and behaviour. When you do a great thing, you do not feel
that you are doing something marvellous or that you are exercising or
stretching your power. You do not do a thing because it is your duty to do it
but because it is your nature to do so, you cannot but do it. I give an example
here. You are students of English and English grammar. Now, tell me, what is
the difference between these two statements? &quot;I have to do the thing&quot;
and &quot;I am to do the thing&quot;... &quot;I have to do the thing&quot;
means 'I am obliged to, I am compelled to, I cannot do otherwise.' &quot;I am
to do&quot; means I am doing it, it is for me to do it, I will do it, that is
to say it is my nature to do it.' Something of that kind is taught in the Gita
– the ideal of kartavyam karma and niskÄma karma or one's Swadharma. Kartavya
is usually translated as duty but it is not correct. Kartavya is one's Dharma
or the spontaneous expression of one's nature, what one is to do, not what one
has to do. Mother gave this infinite freedom to her children because that was
the only way of creating a new nature and she showed also the difference
between the right use of freedom and its wrong use. The wrong use is found in
all the movements of freedom outside in the normal life, either in the student
movement or the women's emancipation movement. Now when women are fighting for
freedom for themselves they consider themselves as women fighting for freedom
against men. &quot;We are women, you are men, you enjoy privileges, rights, we
are denied them, we want them, we claim them.&quot; In the youth movement also
the young people say: all the powers the old people enjoy, positions and
emoluments, that will not do, we want to share these also along with the old.
Mother said, &quot;No, it is not the right attitude.&quot; You must change your
position, your point of view. Going out for a quarrel, for a fight means that
you consider yourselves different beings, with different powers, capacities,
constitutions etc., etc. First of all you must consider yourselves, all, both
the parties, </p>
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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 17 </span><b><i>

<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>
<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

</div>

</i></b>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:
none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>as human beings, not two different species. This is
being acknowledged to some extent now-a-days but it is not sufficient, Mother
says. If you are content to be human beings, just human beings, differences
will arise again and again and not only differences but serious differences. Human
nature is composed of these differences, and culture and civilisation meant
nothing more than a reconciliation, a compromise among these differences. And
the result has been that we have not gone very far for the solution. A deeper
truth is to be found, a higher truth and a more powerful truth. We must rise to
a new state, Mother spoke always of the truth - the truth of your soul. To the
truth of your soul, in the truth of your soul you are neither man nor woman,
neither young nor old – tvam kumÄra uta vÄ kumÄri, tvam jīrna... you are all
that in appearance, for you are something more or something else.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.0pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>You are to take your stand
on your soul, that was the lesson that the Mother was trying to impart in the
playground education. So long as you are in the normal consciousness imbedded
in your body-consciousness and view things from there, your life also will be
built in the pattern created by the body-consciousness. Life in that pattern
can proceed only through difference and distinction, contrast and contradiction,
conflict and battle. So long as you stick to your habitual position it will be
so; the remedy is a radical remedy; it is to reverse your position. You have to
stand not on your legs but on your head, then you will find the way to march
through not confrontation but co-operation, not through separation but union,
not through difference but identity. So long as you are mere human beings this
supreme soul-identity cannot come. You have to forget the differences... some
one asked the Mother in one of the playground talks of the Mother: how is it
possible for one to forget this fundamental difference that one is a man and
another a woman. Mother answered: &quot;How do you say so? Look here, when I
talk to Tara, do you think I am</p>
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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;mso-pagination:none;
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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 18 
<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

</div>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:
none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>always considering her as a woman and talking
accordingly.&quot; And she could have added: &quot;And when I answer you do
you think I am speaking to a masculine person?&quot; I may narrate here a
little incident concerning me personally. It was with regard to the question of
age. When someone informed Mother that they wanted to celebrate, perhaps it was
my eightieth birthday, in a magnificent manner, a gala celebration, Mother
roared out: &quot;No, no, you are spoiling my work. All the while I was trying
to make him forget his age and you are trying to insist on his age.&quot; Age
also is a thing to be forgotten. The birthday-celebration is not for recording
the progress in our age, how we are progressing year by year in our age, that
is, how we are getting old – No, it is to note the progress made in the inner
being and consciousness. Each birthday is to be a landmark of the forward march
of your consciousness, not the greyness of your head. The touch of your soul
will inspire you not merely to do the right inner movement, the enlightening of
your consciousness but also it will inspire you to do the right physical
movement, even lead you to the choice of the right kind of physical exercises
and do them in the right manner. The lesson to learn then is to get back to
your soul inside you, you will find there everything that is worth having:
freedom, joy, harmony and even untold capacity.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.5pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>People coming from outside
asked very often and ask even now what the Ashram is doing for the country, for
the world. It is confined to a few people only, is it worth doing? Mother
answered simply: I am doing something which is not done anywhere else in the
world, that is awakening the soul in my children, the soul that only can save
and nothing else. To the outsider we say, if you come here, come then with eyes
to see, look at, rather look into the soul of the people who are here. Do not
look at what they learn or what they do or what they speak but look inside
them, look what is there deep within. Even now I say: She is there within you,
her work is not arrested. The tempo of her work is as</p>
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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 19 </span><b>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>
<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

</div>

		</b>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:
none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>vigorous and as living as it could be and the impact
will be more and more clear and manifest.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.0pt;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>So I repeat: The soul is
neither boy nor girl nor old person; it has not the characteristics of the
body natural to man or rather to the animal. But this does not mean that it has
no body, it is something airy, nebulous, smoky etc. Not at all, the soul has a
body, its own as concrete and definite as the physical body, even it has a
material body although the matter is of a different kind. Have not the western
sages begun to speak of immaterial matter, that is to say, anti-matter? That
soul-body even now you are carrying within this material body of yours. You
can see it, sense it as definite and living as the external body. The Mother is
holding it in you, you come in contact with it through your contact with the
Mother. Love the Mother, be one with her, you will find and be this living soul
of yours.<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 20 </span><b><i>

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<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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