We are often confronted with a problem or a situation where we do not know what to do. It is as if we are standing in front of a closed door whose key is lost and we are not able to move forward.

In these moments, if we take a book of spiritual force and power, concentrate quietly and with a kind of seeking, an inner quest, ask for guidance, help or an answer and open the book at random, there we find exactly the answer we were seeking, as if it had been written just for us!

The Mother too sometimes in her classes with children, took a book of Sri Aurobindo, opened a page at random and read out a sentence from there. The Mother was once asked, “Can these sentences give one a sign or an indication? What should we do to get a true answer?” She explained in detail what actually happens and how it is possible to get the indication or the answer:

“Everybody can do it. It is done in this way: you concentrate. Now, it depends on what you want. If you have an inner problem and want the solution, you concentrate on this problem; if you want to know the condition you are in, which you are not aware of—if you want to get some light on the state you are in, you just come forward with simplicity and ask for the light. Or else, quite simply, if you are curious to know what the invisible knowledge has to tell you, you remain silent and still for a moment and then open the book. I always used to recommend taking a paper-knife, because it is thinner; while you are concentrated you insert it in the book and with the tip indicate something. Then, if you know how to concentrate, that is to say, if you really do it with an aspiration to have an answer, it always comes.

For, in books of this kind (Mother shows the book "The Synthesis of Yoga" by Sri Aurobindo), books of revelation, there is always an accumulation of forces—at least of higher mental forces, and most often of spiritual forces of the highest knowledge. Every book, on account of the words it contains, is like a small accumulator of these forces. People don't know this, for they don't know how to make use of it, but it is so. In the same way, in every picture, photograph, there is an accumulation, a small accumulation representative of the force of the person whose picture it is, of his nature and, if he has powers, of his powers. Now, when you are sincere and have an aspiration, you emanate a certain vibration, the vibration of your aspiration which goes and meets the corresponding force in the book, and it is a higher consciousness which gives you the answer.

And in a book there is potentially—not expressed, not manifest—the knowledge which is in the person who wrote the book. Thus, Sri Aurobindo represented a totality of comprehension and knowledge and power; and every one of his books is at once a symbol and a representation. Every one of his books contains symbolically, potentially, what is in him. Therefore, if you concentrate on the book, you can, through the book, go back to the source. And even, by passing through the book, you will be able to receive much more than what is just in the book.

Naturally, the value of the answer depends on the value of the spiritual force contained in the book. If you take a novel, it will tell you nothing at all. But if you take a book containing a condensation of forces—of knowledge or spiritual force or teaching power—you will receive your answer.”