Changes

===Surrender of the Cells (Mother’s Experience)===

Most of the time, it's a sort of laziness, something unwilling to make an effort, to make a resolve: it prefers to leave the responsibility to others. In English I would call it the remnant, the residue of the Inconscient. 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>

The constant call which might find a material expression in saying the mantra, but it's not even that: it's the SENSE, the sense of the call, of the aspiration—it's above all a call. A call. You know, when the mind wants to make sentences, it says, "Lord, take possession of Your kingdom." For certain things, I remember, when there are certain disorders, something wrong (and with the perception of a consciousness that has become very sharp, you can see when that disorder is the natural origin of an illness, for example, or of something very serious), with the call, the concentration and the response ... [the disorder is dissolved]. It's almost a surrender, because it's an uncalculating self-giving: the damaged spot opens to the Influence, not with an idea of getting cured, but like this (''gesture like a flower opening out''), simply like this, unconditionally—that is the most potent gesture. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/08/december-20-1967#p25</ref>

==Persistence==

...you receive your japa along with the power to do it—but you have to learn how to do it, right? For a long while you don't fully succeed; all sorts of things happen—you forget it right in the middle or fall asleep or grow tired, get a headache, all sorts of things; or even outer circumstances interfere and disturb you. Well, here it's the same: you tell yourself, "I'll do it," and you will do it, even if.... You have to go at it just like a mule: everything blocks the way but you keep going. You said you'd do it and you will do it. There are no results—I don't care. Everything is against me—I don't care. I said I'd do it and I will... I said I'd do it and I will. And you keep on going like that. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/03/september-5-1962#p82</ref>