Chapter 9

Cure of Depression – II

… face your difficulties and obstacles with a smile. You do not sit any more in sackcloth and ashes, lamenting over your mistakes and feeling utterly crestfallen because you are not at the moment quite up to the mark. You simply chase away depression with a smile. A hundred mistakes do not matter to you: with a smile you recognise that you have erred and with a smile you resolve not to repeat the folly in the future. All depression and gloom is created by the hostile forces who are never so pleased as when throwing on you a melancholy mood. Humility is indeed one thing and depression quite another, the former a divine movement and the latter a very crude expression of the dark forces. Therefore, face your troubles joyously, oppose with invariable cheerfulness the obstacles that beset the road to transformation. The best means of routing the enemy is to laugh in his face! You may grapple and tussle for days and he may still show an undiminished vigour; but just once laugh at him and lo! he takes to his heels. A laugh of self-confidence and of faith in the Divine is the most shattering strength possible – it disrupts the enemy’s front, spreads havoc in his ranks and carries you triumphantly onwards.

You have said here: “To smile at an enemy is to disarm him.”¹ “Smile” means what? One ought not to smile at an enemy!

One ought not to!… What I have stated here is an experience. It is the record of an experience which I expressed in general terms. But if, at a particular moment, somebody comes along with the blackest intentions, if one smiles at him, he is completely disarmed, he can do nothing any longer. But one must smile sincerely. One must not just grin or simper and think one… (laughter) I take “smile” in a rather complete meaning. That is to say, if one can be sufficiently master of oneself and above things, in a much higher consciousness which can see from above – even that which appears the most terrible and most dramatic to the ordinary human consciousness makes you smile as at a childishness. And so, if one is in that consciousness in which one can smile at everything (for one understands the causes of everything, and one also sees the forces working in all things), if one can be in that consciousness and then smile at what happens, immediately things change. Only, this is not a little external and social smile: it must be the psychic being which smiles.

You can smile genuinely at an enemy if you are above all insult and offence. This is the primary condition for the yogic attitude.

… the most essential quality is perseverance, endurance, and a… what shall I call it? – a kind of inner good humour which helps you not to get discouraged, not to become sad, and to face all difficulties with a smile. There is an English word which expresses this very well – cheerfulness. If you can keep this within you, you fight much better, resist much better, in the light, these bad influences which try to hinder you from progressing.

My heart feels arid, sad and gloomy, Mother.

Why don’t you try to read something beautiful and interesting and turn your attention away from yourself? That is the best remedy.

If you can always smile at life, life also will always smile at you.

If one can smile eternally, one is eternally young.

Learn to smile always and in all circumstances; to smile at your sorrows as well as your joys, your sufferings as well as your hopes, for in a smile there is a sovereign power of self-mastery.

Generally speaking, man is an animal who takes himself terribly seriously. To know how to smile at oneself in all circumstances, to smile at one’s sorrows and disillusions, ambitions and sufferings, indignation and revolt – what a powerful weapon with which to overcome oneself!

Never grumble. All sorts of forces enter you when you grumble and they pull you down. Keep smiling. I seem always to be joking but it is not mere joking. It is a confidence born from the psychic. A smile expresses the faith that nothing can stand against the Divine and that everything will come out all right in the end.