Our body's cells must hold the Immortal's flame.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/19-november-1968#p1</ref></center>
=Helpful Practices=
You must sleep well…As soon as you feel tired, let yourself drift into sleep, don't resist. That's important…. It's in a sort of stillness of the cells' consciousness that they assimilate the new force. So when it comes, don't resist. Generally, it doesn't last very long: fifteen minutes, twenty minutes. A period of assimilation. You know, the atmosphere is charged, charged, increasingly charged. So if suddenly you feel something pulling, don't resist, let yourself go.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/06/november-15-1965#p16</ref>
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The inner transformation cannot be brought about by physical means either of a positive or a negative nature. On the contrary, the physical change itself can only be brought about by a descent of the greater supramental consciousness into the cells of the body.
Till then at least the body and its supporting energies have to be maintained in part by the ordinary means, food, sleep, etc. Food has to be taken in the right spirit, with the right consciousness; sleep has to be gradually transformed into the Yogic repose.
A premature and excessive physical austerity (tapasyā) may endanger the process of the sadhana by establishing a disturbance and abnormality of the forces in the different parts of the system. A great energy may pour into the mental and vital parts, but the nerves and the body may be overstrained and lose the strength to support the play of these higher energies. This is the reason why an extreme physical austerity is not included here as a substantive part of the sadhana.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/food#p65</ref>
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It's no use if the thought does it, if the psychic consciousness, EVEN THE PHYSICAL CONSCIOUSNESS, does it: it must be the cells that do it. So the one who does it in the thought says, "Here, I give myself to the Divine, I am ready for anything, I am in a state of perfect equality, and still I am ill! So what am I to believe?" …there should instantaneously be, wherever a disorder has occurred for some reason or other, this: "Lord—Lord, this is You; Lord, we are You; Lord, You are here"—everything flies away. A sensation, an attitude—instantaneously, hup! it's over. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/06/november-23-1965#p21</ref>
That's too much—"agitation" is too much, it's rather a lack of rest. Not agitation really, but something that lacks the rest of certainty. I constantly catch my cells being like that. Naturally I react, but for them it's a very normal state: always straining after the next moment, never the quietude of the present moment…from moment to moment. As soon as the Consciousness comes (''gesture of descent'') and concentrates, as soon as I bring the Consciousness into the present moment, everything becomes quiet, immobile, eternal. But if I am not CONSTANTLY attentive, the other condition [of restlessness] comes almost as a subconsciousness: it's always there. And VERY tiring—it must be one of the most important sources of fatigue in mankind. Especially here (''Mother touches her forehead and temples''), it's very tiring. Only when you can live in the eternity of the present minute does it all stop—everything becomes white, immobile, calm, everything is fine.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/04/july-20-1963#p44</ref>
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One—the most important, naturally—is the way we could call "spiritual," which is that of the contact with the Consciousness—Love-Consciousness-Power, that is; these three aspects: supreme Love-Consciousness-Power. And the contact, the identification: to make all the material cells capable of receiving Him and expressing Him—of BEING That. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/08/march-4-1967#p14</ref>
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You must always try to keep the quietude, not allow depressing or disturbing thoughts or feelings to enter you or take hold of your mind or your speech…And if the mind keeps its quietude and receptivity to higher forces only, it can then easily pass on that quietude and receptivity to the body consciousness and even to the material cells of the body. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/illness-and-health#p62</ref>
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You can be at once in the state of aspiration, of willing, which calls down something—exactly the will to open oneself and receive, and the aspiration which calls down the force you want to receive—and ''at the same time'' be in that state of complete inner stillness which allows full penetration, for it is in this immobility that one can be penetrated, that one becomes permeable by the Force. Well, the two can be simultaneous without the one disturbing the other, or can alternate so closely that they can hardly be distinguished. But one can be like that, like a great flame rising in aspiration, and at the same time as though this flame formed a vase, a large vase, opening and receiving all that comes down.
And the two can go together. And when one succeeds in having the two together, one can have them constantly, whatever one may be doing. Only there may be a slight, very slight displacement of consciousness, almost imperceptible, which becomes aware of the flame first and then of the vase of receptivity—of what seeks to be filled and the flame that rises to call down what must fill the vase—a very slight pendular movement and so close that it gives the impression that one has the two at the same time.
This is one of the things one discovers gradually as the body becomes ready for transformations. It is quite a remarkable instrument in the see that it can experience two contraries at the same time. There is a certain state of body-consciousness which brings things together, totalises things that in other states of consciousness alternate or even in certain others oppose each other… Then you begin to grasp the totality of movements in the cells. It is something much more concrete naturally, but much more perfect in the body than in any other part of the being. This means that if things continue in this way, it will be proved that the physical, material instrument is the most perfect of all. That is why perhaps it is the most difficult to transform, to perfect. But of all, it is the one most capable of perfection. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/21-april-1954#p26,p27,p29</ref>
==Japa and Mantra==
On the material level, japa is very good for that. When your head is tired and you are a little weary of forever contradicting that pessimism, you just have to repeat your japa, and automatically you make contact. To make contact. That's something the cells value a lot. A lot. It's a very good way, because it's a way that isn't mental, it's a mechanical way, it's a question of vibration.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/05/october-10-1964#p48</ref>
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...when I repeat the mantra, it's repeated by that famous physical mind, which is so stupid (the mantra is the only thing that can keep a rein on it), and now it has become so identified that the mantra is its whole life, it is like a pulsation of its being; but then when I come to the invocation (there is a series of invocations: each one has its own effect on the body), when I come to "Manifest Your Love," I see a sort of twinkling of a golden light, which represents an intense joy in all the cells. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/05/november-21-1964#p28</ref>
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For the moment, of all the formulas or mantras, the one that acts most directly on this body, that seizes all the cells and immediately does this (vibrating motion) is the Sanskrit mantra: OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/01/september-16-1958#p44</ref>
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So the first sound of my mantra is the call to that, the evocation. With the second sound, the body's cells make their' surrender,' they give themselves. And with the third sound comes the identification of this [the body] with That, which produces the divine life. These are my three sounds.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/01/october-11-1960#p17</ref>
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It's a sort of spinelessness (gesture of groveling) which accepts a general, impersonal law: you paddle about in illness. And in response to that, there is inside, every minute, the sense of the true attitude, which in the cells is expressed with great simplicity: "There is the Lord, who is the all-powerful Master." Something like that. "It depends entirely on Him. If a surrender is to be made, it's to Him." I make sentences, but for the cells it's not sentences. It's a tiny little movement that expresses itself by repeating the mantra; then the mantra is full—full of force—and there is instantly the surrender: "May Your Will be done," and a tranquillity—a luminous tranquillity. And one sees that there was absolutely no imperative need to be ill or for the disequilibrium to occur.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/09/june-15-1968#p17</ref>
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The words are the same, however, the original sound is the same, but it's all constantly evolving towards a more comprehensive realization and a more and more complete STATE. So when I want to obtain a certain result, I reproduce a certain type of this state. For example, if something in the body is not functioning right (it can't really be called an illness, but when something's out of order), or if I wish to do some specific work on a specific person for a specific reason, then I go back to a certain state of repetition of my mantra, which acts directly on the body's cells. And then the same phenomenon is reproduced—exactly the same extraordinary vibration which I recognized when the supramental world descended. It comes in and vibrates like a pulsation in the cells.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/01/october-11-1960#p19</ref>
==For Dealing with Illness==
...to call the light, a light of equilibrium, a light of peace, quietude and balance, and to push it into all the cells of the body, enjoining them not to be afraid, because that again is another condition.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/11-may-1955#p12</ref>
===By Faith===
The healing by faith in the cells is an actual fact and a law of Nature and has been demonstrated often enough even apart from Yoga. The way to get faith and everything else is to insist on having them and refuse to flag or despair or give up until one has them…The difficulty of the endeavour is a known thing, but the difficult is not the impossible—it is the difficult that has always been accomplished and the conquest of difficulties makes up all that is valuable in the earth's history. In the spiritual endeavour also it shall be so.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/faith#p58</ref>
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And the last stage, when the cells have faith in the divine Presence and in the sovereign divine Will, when they have this trust that all is for the good, then ecstasy comes—the cells open, like this, become luminous and ecstatic. [Based on Aphorism 93 - 93-Pain is the touch of our Mother teaching us how to hear and grow in rapture. She has tree stages of her schooling, endurance first, next equality of soul, last ecstasy.] <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-93#p6</ref>
===By Will===
Wake up in yourself a will to conquer. Not a mere will in the mind but a will in the very cells of your body. Without that you can't do anything; you may take a hundred medicines but they won't cure you unless you have a will to overcome the physical illness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/will-to-conquer-illness#p1</ref>
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We could say that the cure for all physical disorders lies in the cells becoming convinced—conscious and convinced—that they are an expression of the Divine, or even that they are divine in their essence.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/12/october-16-1971#p63</ref>
===By Peace===
The peace and spontaneous knowledge are in the psychic being and from there they spread to mind and vital and physical. It is in the outer physical consciousness that the difficulty still tries to persist and brings the restlessness sometimes into the physical mind, sometimes into the nerves, sometimes in the shape of bodily trouble into the body. But all these things can and must go. Even the illnesses can go entirely with the growth of peace and power in the nerves and physical cells—stomach pains, weakness of the eyes and everything else.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/levels-of-the-physical-being#p70</ref>
=Impediments to the Transformation=