But the imperative need for the future evolution of humanity is that it must liberate itself from all the slaveries and attachments of the vital ego, and break all the chains that keep it tied down to its lower vital nature and prevent its ascension to the higher spiritual nature. In this liberation from its lower vital egoistic nature all the social institutions which it has created in the past and which still persist in the present will inevitably break down and disappear because there will be no necessity or justification left for their existence. 🐒 → 🦍 → 🚶🦋

But the imperative need for the future evolution of humanity is that it must liberate itself from all the slaveries and attachments of the vital ego, and break all the chains that keep it tied down to its lower vital nature and prevent its ascension to the higher spiritual nature. In this liberation from its lower vital egoistic nature all the social institutions which it has created in the past and which still persist in the present will inevitably break down and disappear because there will be no necessity or justification left for their existence. It is for this reason that the Mother remarked that the breakdown of the family system “was, and is still, an indispensable movement to bring humanity to a higher and broader realisation.” Mother had a son, André Morisset. She was the Mother of the ashram. And yet she wrote that she had never felt maternal.

I am not sure where and in what context She said that She never felt maternal. In fact She said something to this effect that a mother’s love for her child is the summit of the human love and yet it is still far from the true Divine Love. Here is what the Mother said about parental love which puts everything in perspective. 

‘Sweet Mother, what kind of love do parents have for their children?

What kind? A human love, don’t they? Like all human loves: frightfully mixed, with all sorts of things. The need of possession, a formidable egoism. At first, I must tell you that a wonderful picture has been painted… many books written, wonderful things said about a mother’s love for her children. I assure you that except for the capacity of speaking about the subject in flowery phrases, the love of the higher animals like the… well, the mammals for their children is exactly of the same nature: the same devotion, the same self-forgetfulness, the same self-denial, the same care for education, the same patience, the same… I have seen absolutely marvellous things, and if they had been written down and applied to a woman instead of to a cat, superb novels would have been made, people would have said: “What a person! How marvellously devoted are these women in their maternal love!” Exactly the same thing. Only, cats could not use flowery language. That’s all. They could not write books and make speeches, that is the only difference. But I have seen absolutely astonishing things. And that kind of self-giving and self-oblivion—as soon as there is the beginning of love, it comes. But men… I sincerely believe, from all that I have studied, that there is perhaps a greater purity in animals for they do not think, while human beings with their mental power, their capacity of reflecting, reasoning, analysing, studying, all that, oh! They spoil the most lovely movement. They begin to calculate, reason, doubt, organise.

Take, for instance, parents. At the risk of removing many illusions in your consciousness, I must tell you something about the source of a mother’s love for her child. It is because this child is made of her very own substance, and for quite a long time, relatively long, the material link, the link of substance, between mother and child is extremely close—it is as though a bit of her flesh had been taken out and put apart at a distance—and it is only much later that the tie between the two is completely cut. There is a kind of tie, of subtle sensation, such that the mother feels exactly what the child feels, as she would feel it in herself. That then is the material basis of the mother’s attachment for the child. It is a basis of material identity, nothing else but that. Feeling comes much later (it may come earlier, that depends on people), but I am speaking of the majority: feeling comes only long afterwards, and it is conditioned. There are all kinds of things… I could speak to you for hours on the subject. But still this must not be mixed up with love. It is a material identification which makes the mother feel intimately, feel quite concretely and tangibly what the child is feeling: if the child receives a shock, well, the mother feels it. This lasts at least for two months.

This is the basis.’

As to The Mother having a child and a very large family, well, it is a question of the consciousness with which one loves which She mentions in another conversation. 

‘In order to know how to love truly, should the nature be transformed?

The quality of the love is in proportion to the transformation of your consciousness.

I don’t understand.

It is childishly simple. If you have the consciousness of an animal, you will love like an animal. If you have the consciousness of an ordinary man, you will love like an ordinary man. If you have the consciousness of an elite being, you will love like an élite being, and if you have a god’s consciousness, you will love like a god. It is simple! That’s what I have said. And so, if by an effort for progress and inner transformation, by aspiration and growth, you pass from one consciousness to the other and your consciousness becomes vaster and vaster, well, the love you experience will be vaster and vaster. That is quite clear!

You take the purest water, water from the crystalline rocks, you collect it in a fairly large vase, and then, in this vase there is a little mud, or much, or a huge quantity of mud. And you could not say it is the same water which came down, yet it is the same, only you have mixed it with so many things in your vase that it no longer resembles it at all! Well, love in its essence is an absolutely pure, crystalline, perfect thing. In the human consciousness it gets mixed with a fairly considerable amount of mud. So it becomes more and more muddy in proportion to the amount of mud.’

So Her love for the children is naturally of another quality. There is hardly any human egoistic attachment about it, or the usual drama of expectations and wishes and fears that come naturally as part of our present human love. 

Having said that we have to differentiate between love in all its shades and the ‘family system’. The system is a social construct built around mutual interests and expectations. Its purpose is to provide stability and support. But the flip side is that it terribly limits the free expanse of the soul by tying it down to the all-absorbing interest of the family life. It even becomes a blind attachment which is harmful for the mother as well as the child. One could give several examples of the same as to how the family order came in the way of a higher quest and why some of the noted spiritual personalities rose above the family to fulfil their spiritual thirst rather than fulfilling their family duties. These include the Buddha, Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Aurobindo, Ma Anandamayee, Mirabai, and several others. While family systems have their advantage, they pose a challenge to the soul seeking to expand into wideness of love. It can and very often stifles the spiritual impulse. So the whole system has to become much more supple and wide to allow the greater spiritual evolution. Most importantly, love should not be divorced from wisdom and turn a blind eye to everything else save the little interests of the family.