Sincerity is perhaps the most difficult of all things and perhaps it is also the most
effective.
If you have perfect sincerity, you are sure of victory. It is infinitely difficult. Sincerity
consists in making all the elements of the being, all the movements (whether outer or inner), all the parts of the being, all of them, have one single will to belong to the
Divine, to live only for the Divine, to will only what the Divine wills, to express only
the divine Will, to have no other source of energy than that of the Divine.
And you find that there is not a day, not an hour, not a minute when you do not need
to intensify, rectify your sincerity — a total refusal to deceive the Divine. The first
thing is not to deceive oneself. One knows one cannot deceive the Divine; even the
cleverest of the Asuras cannot deceive the Divine. But even when one has
understood that, one sees that quite often in one’s life, in the course of the day, one
tries to deceive oneself without even knowing it, spontaneously and almost
automatically. One always gives favourable explanations for all that one does, for
one’s words, for one’s acts. That is what happens first. I am not speaking of obvious
things like quarrelling and saying, “It is the other one’s fault”, I am speaking of the
very tiny things of daily life.
I know a child who knocked against a door and he gave a good kick to the door! It is
the same thing. It is always the other one who is in the wrong, who has committed
the mistake. Even when you have passed the stage of the child, when you have a
little reason, you still give the stupidest of all excuses: “If he had not done that, I
wouldn’t have done this.” But it should be just the other way round.
This is what I call being sincere. When you are with someone, if you are sincere,
instantaneously your way of reacting should be to do the right thing, even when you
are with someone who does not do it. Take the most common example of someone
who gets angry: instead of saying things that hurt, you say nothing, you keep calm
and quiet, you do not catch the contagion of the anger. You have only to look at
yourself to see if this is easy. It is quite an elementary thing, a very small beginning
to know whether you are sincere. And I am not speaking of those who catch every
contagion, even that of coarse joking nor of those who commit the same stupidity as
the others.
I tell you: if you look at yourself with sharp eyes, you will catch in yourself
insincerities by the hundred, even though you are trying to be sincere in your general
attitude. You will see how difficult it is.
I tell you: If you are sincere in all the elements of your being, to the very cells of your
body and if your whole being integrally wants the Divine, you are sure of victory but
for nothing less than that. That is what I call being sincere.
I am not speaking of glaring things like obeying your impulses, your caprices and
then saying: “I do not belong to myself any more, I belong to the Divine; it is the
Divine who is doing everything in me, who is acting in me”, that indeed is crude
enough. I am speaking of more refined people, a little more noble, who put on a
pretty cloak to cover their desires.
How many things in the course of the day, how many thoughts, sensations, gestures
are turned exclusively towards the Divine in an aspiration? How many? I believe if
you have a single one in the whole day, you may mark that in red letters.
When I say, “If you are sincere, you are sure of victory”, I mean true sincerity: to be
constantly the true flame that burns like an offering. That intense joy of existing only
by the Divine and for the Divine and feeling that without Him nothing exists, that life
has no longer any meaning, nothing has any purpose, nothing has any value,
nothing has any interest, unless it is this call, this aspiration, this opening to the
supreme Truth, to all that we call the Divine (because you must use some word or
other), the only reason for the existence of the universe. Remove that and everything
disappears.
The Mother
Questions and Answers 1953