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= How to Expand or Widen? =
For the growth of the mind one can adopt various methods like - identifying oneself with something vast, doing many different things, unfolding oneself etc. The easiest way is to identify yourself with something vast. For instance, when you feel that you are shut up in a completely narrow and limited thought, will, consciousness, when you feel as though you were in a shell, then if you begin thinking about something very vast, as for example, the immensity of the waters of an ocean, and if really you can think of this ocean and how it stretches out far, far, far, far, in all directions, like this (Mother stretches out her arms), how, compared with you, it is so far, so far that you cannot see the other shore, you cannot reach its end anywhere, neither behind nor in front nor to the right or left... it is wide, wide, wide, wide... you think of this and then you feel that you are floating on this sea, like that, and that there are no limits... This is very easy. Then you can widen your consciousness a little.
(The Mother, 29 September 1954)
 
<ref>The Mother. (2003). 29 September 1954. In Questions and answers (1954).
http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/29-september-1954#p35</ref>
By studying different subjects, learning different languages and traveling can help to expand and widen. It is like the people who cultivate their intelligence, who learn, read, think, compare, study. These people's minds widen and they are much vaster and more understanding than those who live without mental education, with a few petty ideas which sometimes are even contradictory in their consciousness and govern them totally because these are the only ones they have and they think these are unique ideas which should guide their life; these people are altogether narrow and limited whereas those who are trained and have studied—this at least widens their minds and they can see, compare ideas and see that all possible ideas are there in the world and that it is a pettiness, an absurdity to be attached to a limited number of ideas and consider them the exclusive expression of truth.
(The Mother, 23 February 1955)
<ref>The Mother. (2003). 23 February 1955. In Questions and answers (1955).
http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/23-february-1955#p6</ref>
When one is hurt or faces something unpleasant, just visualising the tiny person one is in this tiny earth; all unpleasantness is swept away...if you.. realise your little person which is a second in eternity, not even a second, you know, imperceptible, a fragment of a second in eternity, that the whole world has unrolled before this and will unroll yet, indefinitely—before, behind—and that... well, then suddenly you see the utter ridiculousness of the importance you attach to what happened to you... Truly you feel... to what an extent it is absurd to attach any importance to one's life, to oneself, and to what happen to you. And in the space of three minutes, if you do this properly, all unpleasantness is swept away. Even a very deep pain can be swept away. Simply a concentration like this, and to place oneself in infinity and eternity. Everything goes away. One comes out of it cleansed. One can get rid of all attachments and even, I say, of the deepest sorrows—of everything, in this way—if one knows how to do it in the right way. It immediately takes you out of your little ego. There we are.
(The Mother, 29 September 1954)
<ref>The Mother. (2003). 29 September 1954. In Questions and answers (1954).
http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/8-february-1973#p2</ref>
Universalisation of consciousness can be achieved through aspiration, surrender, oneness and love. But there must be enough aspiration and adhesion in the being to make the expansion of the being, the expansion of consciousness possible... one is so small that it is already quite filled up with all the ordinary little human movements. <ref> The Mother. (2003). 27 June 1956. In Questions and answers 1956. http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/27-june-1956#p40</ref>
True surrender enlarges you; it increases your capacity; it gives you a greater measure in quality and in quantity which you could not have had by yourself. This new greater measure of quality and quantity is different from anything you could attain before: you enter into another world, into a wideness which you could not have entered if you did not surrender. It is as when a drop of water falls into the sea; if it still kept there its separate identity, it would remain a little drop of water and nothing more, a little drop crushed by all the immensity around, because it has not surrendered.
(The Mother, 4 August 1929)