Often I hear from devotees, "My prayer is always answered, most of the time at once. Sometimes the answer is delayed, but occasionally I get into a familiar situation. Mother grants me some unheard of rewards, more than I have been thinking of. I am overjoyed. Then one after another difficulties crop up. I am afraid of losing what has come. I pray. Things take a positive turn. A couple of days later again fresh difficulties arise. Each time difficulties arise I pray. Things change. What has come is so far out of my way that I am unable to remain calm. Constantly new problems arise.

He is a small landholder owning six acres of dry land. After years of hard work, he had earned this property. Along with that, his status had also grown in the village. He was one of the important leaders of the village though he was only middle aged. He took an active part in politics too. Any government scheme that came to the village would seek his cooperation for implementation. With the progress of the nation, his village too received the benefits of education, roads, electricity, bank aid, and the cooperative movement. He was also an important beneficiary of all these schemes.

Walter, a 65 year old American businessman, first came to India in 1972 to visit his son and daughter-in-law who had come a year earlier to join the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

"Slowly a feeling of frustration begins to develop in me. Within myself I feel confident. I have faith in Mother too. Still, if nothing moves for weeks and months and years, the faith gives way. I am afraid I have to settle down as a teacher in a Polytechnic for life. If that is so, it will be a misfortune. That will bring down to dust all the high hopes with which I entered the Engineering College, worked hard, maintained it to achieve First Class all five years without fail. Also your silence is intriguing to me.

An American devotee of Mother returned to the USA after living in the Ashram for three years and met an old school friend. His friend Marc was a salesman for a large computer company. They sat together to exchange their experiences over the last three years. Marc told a sad tale of how he had been the best salesman in the company in the previous year, but now he was the worst. Everything in his life was going wrong. He was unable to sell even half as much as before. He lost interest in his job. His wife was unhappy and he was constantly weighed down by a heavy depression.

When I went to the shop where I generally buy my stationery, the owner of the shop asked me if I could suggest the name of a good hostel where he could put his ten year old son. He said his son was dull and might not complete SSLC. I did not approve of a parent putting his child in a hostel, while he himself lived in the same town. He said, "I have worked hard all my life and earned enough. Of the three children, he is the only son but he is always playful. He never thinks of studying.

He is a tall majestic figure with white hair, grey with age, and he is clad in sparkling white clothes. A man of austere habits and deeply versed in Tamil spiritual literature, he is a bachelor whose face shines with energy and purity. He speaks forcefully as per the tradition of scholars in Saivism and Tamil. He migrated from his native district into our town and settled down to a single life. At a young age, having come under the influence of a realised soul of his place, he shunned family life and the search for material rewards in life.

He was an only child who had inherited some lands and a house and had settled as a graduate teacher in his native place. He had more than one ambition, but was not a dynamic man. As he was comfortably settled, though not on a grand scale, he never ventured to try anything new. His one real hope was an acre and a half of lands suitable for conversion into plots. In the mid 50's the craze for plots was unknown. It was a time when not even one of the present score of colonies in that town had sprung up.

It was 10 o'clock in the morning. A friend of mine who was an officer in an erstwhile British-owned company walked into my house. He was in a kind of despair. He announced with suppressed fear that his boss had come and wanted to meet me. A minute later the boss came in. The boss was in a curious state of mind and his manners were odd. He was polite, deferential, interested, curious but also felt strange about something which I could not guess. My friend would not even sit down. He was virtually trembling and was taking notes of our talk.

Many people who run an establishment, institution or an industry generally used to discuss their work with us and often asked whether Mother gave any guidelines for such a work. As these are people in worldly life of family or business (though the money involved is sometimes lakhs or even crores) and Mother's consciousness is of great power^[i], a deeply felt prayer releases on their work Himalayan energies and in no time any existing problem is wiped away.