Question of The Month

“Mahasaraswati is the Mother’s Power of Work and her spirit of perfection and order. The youngest of the Four, she is the most skilled in executive faculty and the nearest to physical Nature.... Always she holds in her nature and can give to those whom she has chosen the intimate and precise knowledge, the subtlety and patience, the accuracy of intuitive mind and conscious hand and discerning eye of the perfect worker.”

(Sri Aurobindo in “The Mother”)

Q : Sri Aurobindo speaks of a ‘ conscious hand’; what does that mean ?

What! I have told you this I don’t know how many times, I have explained it hundreds of times and you still ask this question? I have told you that no matter what you want to do, the first thing is to put consciousness in the cells of your hand. If you want to play, if you want to work, if you want to do anything at all with your hand, unless you push consciousness into the cells of your hand you will never do anything good- how many times have I told you? And this is felt. You feel it. You can acquire it. All sorts of exercises may be done to make the hand conscious and there comes a moment when it becomes so conscious that you can never leave it to do things; it does them by itself without your little mind having to intervene.

(“Collected Works of The Mother- Centenary Edition- Volume 4”, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1972. Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram)