Mother's Agenda

 

Vol. 8

 

Institut de Recherches Evolutives

142 blvd du Montparnasse

F-75014 Paris

 

 

January 4, 1967

About a European visitor

My impression was that she should let herself unwind, that her stay here would be good if she could open out, as a flower does, like that, relaxed.

She is very tense towards life (Mother clenches her two fists and stiffens): it's "something to keep an eye on" and "beware of"! So if she could ... After all, it's such a great thing when you can say, "Oh, I can have trust, there REALLY is something concrete like a Grace, I can have trust."

That would be a great progress.

(Mother gives a flower called "Radha")

Radha[1] is surrender.[2] So we'll say, "Surrender to divine solicitude brings the victory."

@

January 9, 1967

Are you tired?

No ... I can't say "tired," I don't feel tired.... I am very ... very deep within.

I feel I am there (gesture above the head), and usually it's not like that. Since this morning I've had the feeling of being there (same gesture), and it's extremely strong there, as if something were being done. I feel work is being done (at night also).

I don't know if it's an effect of your experience, but I have great difficulty being in physical things: in words, gestures, all outward things. A great difficulty.

It began yesterday, with the sense of a very widespread action taking place.

 

@

January 11, 1967

... In the afternoon, the lists [of appointments] have lengthened to such a point that I have no time left. Before, I used to start my daily work (the mail to be signed and so on) at 3:30, then it became four, and now it's quarter to five. There was a time when I finished at four, so I did the translation of Savitri (that was a very, very long time ago); later I finished at 4:30, so I still had time to take something, eat a little; now I finish after five, so (laughing) that settles it!

It MUST be like that since it is like that.

It's perhaps a lesson (it's an indication), but there is a purpose to it.[3]

As for me, I try to understand the lesson I have to understand. I am learning to be very patient....

Yes!

Oh, a patience ... People constantly bring revolt, abuse, all that. To me it's an absolute zero, sometimes it's even amusing; sometimes I find it funny. But when I find it funny is not when I am in my best state, because when I am in my own state – the true state of compassion – it doesn't change anything, it doesn't even cause a small ripple on the surface, nothing. When it's funny is when it makes me start working on people who have done one thing or another. When something is working, then I find it amusing.

Yesterday I was asked the question; I was asked whether abuse, the feeling of being abused, and what in English is called self-respect (which is somewhat akin to self-esteem), have a place in the sadhana. Naturally, they don't, that goes without saying! But I saw the movement, it was extremely clear: I saw that without ego, when the ego isn't there, there CANNOT be that sort of ruffling in the being. Because I went back far into the past, to the time when I still felt that (years ago), but now it's not even something alien – it's something impossible. The whole being, even, strangely, even the physical constitution, doesn't understand what it means. It's the same thing when materially there is a knock (Mother shows a scratch on her elbow), like this, for instance: it's no longer felt the way an injury is felt. It's no longer felt that way. More often than not, there's nothing at all, it goes absolutely unnoticed in the midst of the whole; but when there is something, it's only a sense – a very ... sweet, very intimate sense – of a help trying to make itself felt, a lesson to be learned. But not the way it's done mentally, always with a stiffening; that's not it: it's instantly a sort of offering in the being, which gives itself in order to learn. I am speaking of all the cells. It's very interesting. Of course, if we mentalize it, we should say it's the sense or awareness of the divine Presence in all things, and that the mode – the mode of contact – comes from the state in which we are.

This is the body's experience.

And the only perception when there is some clash or other in individuals, some shock or other, is always a clear vision of the ego – the ego manifesting itself. They say, "It's the other's fault." I wouldn't say, "Oh, so-and-so was angry" or "Oh, so-and-so ..." No, it's his ego; not even his ego: THE EGO, the ego principle – the ego principle still interfering. That's very interesting, because for me the ego has become a sort of impersonal entity, while for everyone, it's the acute sense of his personality! Instead of that, it's a sort of way of being (which we may call terrestrial, or human), a sort of way of being in greater or lesser quantity here or there or there, and which gives each one the illusion of his personality. It's very interesting.

Yes, but the trouble is, others don't learn their lesson, so ... So they invade you.

Oh, if they learned their lesson, everything would change very soon!

So the result is that you are invaded, submerged.

Can't be!

All your time is swallowed up, all your...

I can't be submerged! (laughing) I'm too big!

But still, materially you're overburdened.

I have noticed that if I resist, things go wrong. If I have a sense of fluidity, there aren't any clashes any longer. It's the same thing as with this scratch (Mother shows her elbow). You see, if you stiffen up and things resist, you give yourself a knock. It's like people who know how to fall: they fall without hurting themselves. With people who don't know how to fall, the slightest tumble and they break something. It's the same thing. We must learn to be ... perfect oneness. To correct, straighten things out, is still to resist.

So what's going to happen [if the invasion goes on]?... It'll be amusing, we'll see! (Mother laughs) The others aren't in the same state, so maybe they'll feel hurt, but I can't help it! (Mother laughs)

We should always laugh, always. The Lord laughs. He laughs, and His laughter is so good, so good, so full of love! A laughter that envelops you in an extraordinary sweetness.

This, too, men have distorted – (laughing) they've distorted everything!

January 14, 1967

(As she comes into her room, Mother stops in front of a tray of flowers that has just been brought and takes in her hand a strange new variety of hibiscus, gray-mauve with a bright red pistil.)

Oh, this is really my joy!

What's this flower? ... (Mother takes the hibiscus) It has a strange color.

Yes, I've never seen it.

It's strange, with this red dot here.

Very strange.

It gives me a strange sensation.... How can I explain it? Oddly, it's something between deceit and perversion, yet it's divine! How do you like that!

You mean there's something false in the flower's appearance?

No, it's not the outside: it's inside.

Inside the flower?

It's inside, it's ... What could we call it?... (Mother laughs) "The divine principle of duplicity."

Not very reassuring, this flower.

Yes, that's right. We might say, "The charm of deceitful beauty."

Yes, it's something like that!

We have much to learn from life.... Flowers know much better than we do. It's spontaneous, not thought out, not willed: it's divine vibrations that express themselves spontaneously. And this is ... There's the English word alluring. Well, we could call it "the all-powerful divine Charm of a ... perfidious beauty." Naturally, that's on the vital-physical plane. It's not up above, but there [on the vital-physical plane].

*^**

(After the work, towards the end, Mother suddenly seems to recollect something.)

Two nights ago, I was complaining that my nights were always spent in an obscure toil in the subconscient and that, after all ... (laughing) it was "no great fun"! That's how it was – a whim. I said, "I would really like to have at night the full consciousness I have when I am awake. Something is missing; what's missing is ..." And I was trying to define that "something" which was the precise expression of what the physical creation has contributed to the immense Manifestation, something which is specific to the physical consciousness as nowhere else, in no other domain. So that was the problem: If it [the "something" contributed by the physical consciousness] can't be had in sleep, it means that when we lose our body, we'll lose a degree of precision, doesn't it?

Before going to sleep I was in that frame of mind, and at night there was a series of experiences to show all the various states of consciousness of the various states of being. When I got up in the morning, there was a very keen observation of the difference contributed by the physical. I saw how that difference could carry on in the new physical state once it had shed its false side. And then, for ... I don't know, certainly two hours, there was a concrete Presence of what I call "the supreme Lord" (but we can call it any name, it doesn't matter at all: Truth, Consciousness, whatever we like – all words don't matter at all, it's something beyond all that). A concrete presence, there, like this (Mother clenches her two fists as if to express a palpable solidity), in all the cells, the whole being. I went on doing all the absolutely trifling and tiny little things – like washing, customary things, eating, too, speaking – and it stayed there. And it seemed to be to tell me, "This is how it will be." A joy, a power, a blossoming – extraordinary, to such a point that I wondered how it was that this [body] didn't change.... It's because THE STATE DIDN'T LAST LONG ENOUGH. It lasted only about two hours (more or less); afterwards, back came the everyday routine, everybody with their problems, and so forth (Mother makes the familiar gesture of the "truckload" being dumped). But I am not accusing anything of having made the state go away: it went away because this [body] isn't yet capable of holding it, that's all. That is to say, at the time, while it was there, there was an intimation that I had to write a note.... That's what I wanted to tell you. I had to write a note. (Mother breaks off abruptly, then speaks as if words were being dictated to her:)

"Because of the necessities of the transformation, this body may enter a state of trance that will appear cataleptic....

Then I knew it was Sri Aurobindo speaking, because he started taking on his ironic tone, and he said:

"Above all, no doctors! This body must be left in peace.[4] Do not hasten, either, to announce my death (Mother laughs) and to give the government the right to intervene. Keep me carefully sheltered from all injuries[5] that may come from outside – infection, poisoning, etc. – and have UNTIRING patience: it may last days, perhaps weeks, perhaps even longer, and you will have to wait patiently for me to come naturally out of that state once the work of transformation is accomplished."

I didn't have the time to write it down. But Sri Aurobindo himself said to me, "On Saturday, when you see Satprem."

It's interesting.

So it's something that's going to take place.

It looks like that.... Because it came when I was fully in that state, but I was conscious that this [body] needed ... it takes TIME, that's the problem. Instantaneous things are miraculous and don't have the power of duration: they don't correspond to the STATE – the vibratory state of something lasting. So then, this intimation came, and when it came the experience was over, everything stopped.

But now I know what it is. And it has left in the being a sort of certitude, but a certitude so full of joy, oh! ...

There we are.

But Mother, these "instructions" should be given ...

... Should be known by everyone.

Everyone.

Which means by those who are near me, who look after me, even by people like the doctors, who might take it into their heads to go and inform the government, for instance!

Because this intimation was very ... imperative, it was an imperative necessity – which to me seems to prove that it will happen. "Because of the necessities of the transformation ..." That was when the experience was there and I became aware of all that needed to be changed for this body to be capable of holding the thing constantly, for it to be there all the time. So that came. And I wanted to write it down, but didn't have the time, I was already terribly late; then came very clearly from Sri Aurobindo, "On Saturday, when Satprem is here."

I forgot to tell you at first!

You'll have to make it into a note and give it to those you think it should be given to.

Yes, first to the "trustees" [the heads of the Ashram's administration], because they are the ones who have authority here; then it will have to be translated into English and distributed.[6] You understand, no one should take it into his head to go and tell the government – because they're so silly, they might go shouting about.

Yes, of course. They may go and inform the government or...

So the government will come and say, "But you can't keep this, you have to bury it." That would be lovely! It would be a fine mess!

There will have to be some wisdom in the disciples.

Excuse me?

A little wisdom in the disciples.

Yes ... yes.

Nobody should say anything except, "Mother has gone into trance." That's all, quite simply. "She is in trance."

But if they are prepared for the idea beforehand, they might be more reasonable?...

@

January 18, 1967

(Satprem asks Mother what he should do with the text of the "instructions" of January 14 which Mother gave in the event of her going into a long period of trance.)

I am going to keep it. When I receive the command to circulate it, I'll circulate it.

(silence)

I have seen rather clearly that that trance depended on the ratio between two aspects, the proportion between two aspects: that of the individual transformation (that is, the transformation of this body), and that of the general, collective and impersonal work.

If a certain balance is kept, that state [of prolonged trance] may be dispensed with, but then the same work which would have been done in a few weeks or months (I don't know) will extend over years – years and years. So it's a question of patience – patience isn't lacking. But it's not only a question of patience, it's a question of proportion: there must be a certain balance between the two, between the outside pressure of the external work (not "external," the collective work), and the pressure on the body for its transformation. If wisdom is still there, that is, if the instrument is constantly and infallibly capable of doing exactly what is expected of it (to put it into words: the supreme Lord's precise will), then the trance might not be necessary. It would only be if out of ignorance there is a resistance in the execution.

That's how I feel.

This possibility of transformation in trance was announced to the body some ... yes, about sixty years ago now, and periodically afterwards. And there has always been a prayer: "No, may it not be necessary: it's the method of laziness." It's the method of inertia. Now all those preferences, all that is gone. There is only an increasingly alerted, awakened consciousness, but awakened to the point of being alerted to the possibility of unconscious resistances, with the will for them to disappear. All depends on the plasticity, the receptivity.

You understand, even if this body is told, "You will have to last a hundred or two hundred years for the work to be done without trance," it says, "It's all the same to me." All it wants is to be conscious. All it wants is, "Lord, to be conscious of Your consciousness," nothing else. That's its sole, exclusive will: "To be conscious of Your consciousness," that is, to consciously become You in another mode. But it isn't in a hurry, because it has no reason to be in a hurry.

You said just before (if I understood right) that that "state" may last for years. Were you referring to the state of trance?

No, that's not possible.

It's not possible.

No, it isn't.

The duration of that trance doesn't depend on outward conditions, on the preparation of the world, for instance?

I don't think so.

That's another possibility that came up in the past (but it's part of the vision of all possibilities – there are all kinds of possibilities). Once, there was that vision (I had it when Sri Aurobindo was here) of the whole town [of Pondicherry] engulfed by bombs, I think (I don't remember now,[7] but it wasn't lived: it was known as something that had happened), and the engulfing had caused a sort of burial very deep underground, in a grotto with a radiant atmosphere, so that the body had been preserved. Then I woke up two thousand years later. The experience started after those two thousand years: I saw how I had learned where I was and how I had come out of that grotto, how I had found out the number of years that had elapsed, and so on. All that happened one day and I told it to Sri Aurobindo. He said to me, "It's one of the innumerable possibilities that offers itself up in order to be manifested." He didn't attach more importance to it than that. All kinds of things come up as possibilities.

So you don't envisage the possibility of a long duration – that trance can't be very long?

I don't think that's materially possible.

And the purpose of that trance would basically be to fix the supramental vibration in the body?

To transform what's not receptive.

There are billions of elements in the body, so it's a mixture of receptivity and nonreceptivity. It's still mixed. And that mixture is why the appearance [Mother's physical appearance] remains what it is. So making everything receptive, in every element, is a work, you understand, a formidable work. If it had to be done in detail, it would be impossible, but through the pressure of the Force it can be done. So then, the trance would be made necessary precisely so it's done fast (relatively fast). This work is BEING DONE (I am myself conscious of it), but, you understand (laughing), it may stretch over hundreds of years! That's what Sri Aurobindo said: a state of consciousness has to be established in which the collective life of the cells can be preserved for as long as desired; in other words, the Lord's Will must be sufficiently active for the balance between all those elements to be kept for as long as necessary for all of them to change. And always, it has always been said that the most external form would be the last to change; that the whole internal, organic functioning would be changed before the external form, the appearance (it's only an appearance, of course); that the appearance would be the last to change.

It seems to me to be the legacy of primordial habits – the habits of Matter. This Matter, of course, comes from total unconsciousness, and throughout the ages and all the ways of being, it returns to total consciousness – it goes from one extreme to the other; well, what gives that need for trance is the habits of static immobility. It shouldn't be necessary. Only (how can I explain?...), logically, as things are, it depends on the balance between the body's capacity of receptivity and its external activity: it's obviously far more receptive when it is immobile, because its energies are turned to the transformation.

There is another thing that could help to change the course of events: it's that the vital is growing increasingly receptive and collaborative. This whole vital zone, which was the zone of revolt and deliberate opposition to the divine transformation, is growing increasingly collaborative, and with its collaboration (because this vital zone is the zone of movement, action, energy put to use), with its conscious collaboration, the methods of transformation may become different (it's something I have been studying these last few days). It may change the methods. But that's a whole world to be learned.

One should grow increasingly not only attentive but receptive, with a precision in details which would every second give one the knowledge of what should be done and how it should be done (not outwardly: inwardly). These cells should learn to have every second the attitude necessary for everything to unfold smoothly, keeping pace with the supreme Consciousness.

To replace the need for immobility and immobile rest by the power of inner concentration and peace – that peace which is perfectly independent of action, which can be there, unchanging, even in the midst of the most frantic actions.

Is that where you envisage the vital's intervention?

Yes.

I often wonder what the best possible attitude is for us. Is it better to be simply in a state of silence, open to the heights, a wide silence, or...

I think that's it.

But what's the alternative?

Or should one have, I don't know, a special concentration in the activity?

No, because the transformation is the only thing that doesn't call for the mind's intervention: the mind befuddles everything.

I clearly see what its use will be – why there has been the mind, why it exists, what its use will be – but that will come afterwards.

The mind will be transformed quite naturally, effortlessly; it's not the same as with this body. But for the moment, it can't be used as yet. It can be used only through aspiration, like this (gesture opened to the heights), a constant aspiration – the constancy of aspiration and receptivity to let the forces and the light come through.

There. So we'll meet again on Saturday.

I'll bring you the text of those "instructions."

Yes. There's no hurry – I don't think there is. It's better if it's ready, but ... The higher part of the consciousness is clearly in favor of the trance being unnecessary. And if the lower part becomes receptive enough in time, it won't be necessary. Or else, it will amount to very little. Just keep the text, that's all, keep it ready (Mother laughs).[8]

@

January 21, 1967

(Regarding the English translation of extracts from recent conversations published in the Ashram's Bulletin under the title "A Propos.")

... What they especially lack is the sense of a FORCE in the language.

What makes things very difficult is that, in fact, there is no one who has the experience I have. That's what is missing. You understand well only what you have experienced. If you try to understand all that mentally, you can't, it's not possible; a keen way of feeling has gone.

I read this "A Propos" to A. and Pavitra (you can't find people better disposed and more eager to understand), but all the subtlety was gone! – They didn't understand. They tried (they "understood," they were very interested), but I know, I saw their state of consciousness: there was something completely closed, because there is no equivalent in them. But what can be done?... Oh, I gave up very long ago the idea of being really understood – maybe in a few hundred years people will understand, that's all.

It doesn't matter.

*^**

(Then Mother shows two notes on Auroville.)

"At last a place where one will be able to think of nothing but the future."

"Auroville is doing well and growing more and more real. But its realization is not progressing in the habitual human way, and it is more visible to the inner consciousness than to the outer vision."

*^**

Soon afterwards

Something rather indefinable as yet is happening.

The body was in the habit of fulfilling its functions automatically, as something natural, which means that for it, the question of their importance or usefulness did not arise: it didn't have that mental, for instance, or vital vision of things, of what's "important" or "interesting" and what isn't. That didn't exist. But now that the cells are growing conscious, they seem to stand back (gesture): they look at themselves, they begin to watch themselves act, and they very much wonder, "What's the use of all this?" And then, an aspiration: "How, how should things truly be? What's our purpose, our usefulness, our basis? Yes, what should our basis and our 'standard' of life be?" To put it mentally again, we might say, "How will we be when we are divine? What will be the difference? What's the divine way of being?" And what speaks there is that whole kind of physical base entirely made up of thousands of small things absolutely indifferent in themselves, whose raison d'être lies only in their totality, like a support to another action, but which in themselves seem devoid of any meaning. And then, it's again the same thing: a sort of receptivity, of silent opening to let oneself be permeated, and a very subtle perception of a way of being that might be luminous, harmonious.

That way of being is still quite indefinable; but in this seeking there is a constant perception (which translates as a vision) of a multicolored light, with all the colors – all the colors not in layers but as though (stippling gesture) combined in dots, a combination of all the colors. Two years ago (a little more than two years, I forget), when I met the Tantrics, when I came into contact with them, I started seeing that light, and I thought it was the "Tantric light," the Tantric way of seeing the material world. But now I see it constantly, associated with everything, and it seems to be what we might call a "perception of true Matter." All possible colors are combined without being mixed together (same stippling gesture), and combined in luminous dots. Everything is as though made up of this. And it seems to be the true mode of being – I am not yet sure, but at any rate it's a far more conscious mode of being.

I see it all the time: with eyes open, eyes closed, all the time. It gives a strange perception (with regard to the body), a strange perception at the same time of subtlety, permeability (if I may call it that), of suppleness of form, and not exactly a removal but a considerable lessening of the rigidity of forms (the rigidity is removed, not the forms: a suppleness in the forms). As for the body, the first times it felt that in some part or the other, it felt ... when it happens it's a bit lost, with the sense of something eluding it. But if one remains very quiet and waits quietly, it's simply replaced by a sort of plasticity and fluidity that seems to be a new mode of the cells.

It might probably be what, on the material level, must take the place of the physical ego; that is to say, it seems the rigidity of the form must give place to this new way of being. Of course, the first contact is always very ... surprising. But the body is getting used to it little by little. What's a little difficult is the moment of transition from one way to the other. It's done very progressively, yet at the moment of transition there are a few seconds that are ... the least we can say is "unexpected."

In that way, all habits are undone. It's the same with all the functionings: blood circulation, digestion, breathing – all the functions. And at the moment of transition it's not that one abruptly takes the place of the other, but there is a state of fluidity between the two which is ... difficult. It's only because of that great Faith, a perfectly still, luminous, constant, immutable faith in the real existence of the supreme Lord – in the SOLE real existence of the Supreme – that everything goes on apparently as it is.

There are kinds of great waves of all ordinary movements, ordinary ways of being, ordinary habits: they are thrown back, come back again, try to engulf and are thrown back again. And I can see that for years the body and the whole body consciousness used to rush back into the old way to seek safety, it used to find its safety in flight; but now, the body has been persuaded not to do it any longer and on the contrary to accept: "Well, if it's dissolution, let it be dissolution." It accepts what will be.

Mentally, when that happens in the physical mind (it happened years ago, but I had observed that), it's what gives people the feeling that they're going insane, and they get frightened (and with fear things happen), so they rush back into ordinary common sense to escape. It's the equivalent – not the same thing, but the equivalent of what happens in the material: you feel all the usual stability is vanishing. Well, for a long time – a long time – there was that retreat into habit, and then you are quite at peace and you start all over again. But now, the cells no longer want that: "Come what may, we'll see soon enough!" The great adventure.

How will we be? – How will we be? How ... You understand, it's the cells asking, "How should we be? How will we be?"

It's interesting.

January 25, 1967

(Nolini reads out to Mother his translation into English of the conversation of January 11 for the Ashram Bulletin. Mother remarks that she used the French word "injure" [=insult] where she meant a blow or a scratch, because she heard the English word "injury.")

I so often hear Sri Aurobindo speak, and I say it in French, but I use the English word because I hear him speak.

Often the thought alone comes, but quite often it's the exact words; and then, while speaking in French I tend to use the English words. While I take my bath, for instance, he always speaks to me and tells me the things I have to write or say; so afterwards, when I come out of the bathroom, I very often have to ask for a piece of paper and a pen, and I write.

It's constantly, constantly like that.

I remember, some time ago, at night, I said to him (I see him almost every night, but for a few days I hadn't seen him, then I met him at night ... because he is always there [Mother makes a gesture enveloping her], but at night, in that subtle physical world, I see him objectively, as if I were meeting him), and I said to him, "I haven't seen you for a few days," like that, in jest. Then he put on his most serious air, but with all his irony: "Oh, I am very busy these days." And ... (laughing) the next day I learned they were shooting a film on Sri Aurobindo's life![9] So I thought he must have been busy sending them good suggestions. But it was so comical! With straight-faced seriousness: "Oh, I am very busy." (Mother laughs)

That's how "injury" came.

(Satprem:) In the text of those "Instructions" [in the event of cataleptic trance], you also use the word "injure"; you say that in that trance state, your body will have to be kept "a l'abri de toute injure" [sheltered from all injuries]. But I deliberately left the word, because in the original sense of the French word we speak of the "injures du temps" [the injury or assault of time]. Is that what you'd like to keep in those Instructions?

That day he told me (it was he who told me to say that), "The bites of insects, the bad contacts, things like that." He said, "All injuries, poisoning by an insect, etc."

(Then Mother listens to the English translation of the conversation of September 30, 1966, for the "Notes on the Way." The subject was the disappearance of the bone structure in the new being and the need for intermediary stages. Mother, speaking in English, turns to Nolini:)

Do you think people will understand?... Not much?

(Nolini :) Some will understand.

Some! ... a few.

And yet, for me, it is already far behind. It's funny, when you were reading the translation, I had the impression of something that was pulling me back in a condition that is no more mine.

Things are going quick, quick, quick.

I am just living the thing, so it is difficult to describe ... But it is quite a new condition. After some time I will be able to say ... (Mother remains silent for a long while) what is meant exactly by the irreality of this apparent matter.

It is just in the experiencing, I can't yet describe it. It takes some time.

There, in this "talk" [about the disappearance of the bone structure], I have the impression of having still one foot here, one foot there.

*^**

After Nolini has left

So, what's new?

What about you?

You know, I have the impression, exactly an impression (it's a transcription), the impression of being on the verge of finding a key – a key or a "trick" ... a procedure (I don't know how to put it: all this is popularization), but something which, if you got hold of it without being wholly on the true side ... in one second you could be the cause of a frightful catastrophe. That's why the integral preparation of the consciousness must go side by side with the perception of the Power. And then, there are such subtle differences that for the understanding (I am not referring to the ordinary understanding, but even for a quite spiritualized and prepared state of consciousness, which is not THE consciousness), an insignificant, almost imperceptible tiny little movement could bring about catastrophe.

What catastrophe? I don't know.... Something like a dissolution of the world.[10]

So you stand there (Mother makes a gesture to indicate a very narrow ridge), as if on an invisible borderline, with an extraordinary, almighty Power which, at the same time, makes you know and prevents you from knowing, with extraordinary tiny subtleties of movement so nothing may happen too soon, that is, before everything is ready.

(long silence)

That would amount to saying that falling ill (from falling ill to dying) is caused by the incapacity to maintain the necessary tension to go from one state to another without falling back again, without the slackening of unconsciousness. Illness is always a fall back into unconsciousness out of incapacity to sustain the movement of transformation. And death is the same thing – the same thing, somewhat more complete.

January 28, 1967

Mother shows a note she has just written:

I wrote this to someone here.... He hasn't been in India for a long time, and he doesn't understand anything about Indians – which isn't a crime, but he's full of scorn. Because he doesn't understand he is full of scorn. So I wrote him this:

"One should be careful not to scorn what one does not understand, for innumerable are the marvels sealed from our narrow view.

"The Lord has unsuspected splendors which He reveals progressively to our too limited understanding."

It's a whole category of ways of thinking. Those who think they have superior intelligence and scorn what they don't understand are innumerable – innumerable. And that's the very sign of stupidity! On the other hand, there are many (they are generally regarded as "simple-minded," but I, for one, have a liking for those simpleminded people, they have a warmth of soul) who admire anything they don't understand. They have a sort of open-eyed admiration (regarded as stupid) for anything they don't understand. But they, at least, have goodwill. While to the others on the lofty height of their so-called intelligence, anything they don't understand is worthless. This man came here and said, "One can't work with these people, they are Indians!" (Mother laughs) And he says it as a matter of course.

You met someone the other day, I heard?

Yes, the man who is to write an extensive article on India in "Planète."

So then, what's this gentleman like?

He's a man full of sexuality. When you enter his atmosphere there is sex and nothing else. It's the only problem he's interested in. So in his magazine and a few other similar ones, they are trying to make Tantrism "of the left hand," the "Vama Marga," fashionable.

Oh!

He asked me questions on sexuality and talked of a "yoga of sexuality "!

Oh!

So I set things straight....

Oh, good.

Not very diplomatically, by the way. I said it had nothing to do with Tantrism. But the strange thing is that despite all this sexual atmosphere, the man still has an opening: one day, some twelve years ago, as he had a problem, instead of writing to Sri Aurobindo (he had read Sri Aurobindo), he thought, "But why shouldn't I concentrate on Sri Aurobindo to have the answer to my problem?" He concentrated, and in the night he suddenly saw a big golden disk come and fill him, and a voice told him with extraordinary force the words he was waiting for, words of revelation.... So the man has an opening.

Oh, yes.

But then he told me, "That was probably my unconscious, it came from my unconscious, but anyway ..."

(Mother laughs) He has a good unconscious!

Those people!... The Grace comes to them and kindly gives them a beautiful experience, just like that, and then: "It's my unconscious "!

(Mother laughs)

When he said that to me, I really felt Sri Aurobindo smiling.

Yes, he is amused.

But it seems that this so-called Tantrism and "yoga of sexuality" is overflowing everywhere in the West.

Yes, it's dangerous. It's dangerous.

It may be the cure, they may go through, I can't say.... Because Sri Aurobindo said that if you go beyond satiation you are cured, just as if you get rid of desire you are cured. But if you go beyond satiation you are cured, you are disgusted, you feel the same disgust .... That's possible, I don't know.

(Laughing) In the meantime it makes a fine mess!

The other method is much quicker: abolition. I mean not only material abolition, but abolition of the PRINCIPLE of the thing; that's what I said before: when you go beyond animality, the material fact no longer has any reason to be, so it falls away. That's so to say immediate. But if you go all the way to loathing, that's another method!

Going all the way to loathing isn't the most dangerous thing; it's covering up this business with spirituality and making a "yoga of sexuality."

Oh, (laughing) if you say that to them, they'll all fall sick!

But maybe one day impotence will take over. Then it will be the end. Because it's only Nature's instinct that gives power to this somewhat morbid imagination, and once Nature's instinct is exhausted or finished ... oh, I must say I knew some old, very old people who were full of dirty things; but that was probably because they had repressed themselves during their whole youth.

There is, of course, something very repugnant about it, which people overcome in order to get the "pleasure"; but there is something very repugnant about it, which, as soon as the pleasure is gone, becomes really thoroughly repugnant. What I meant was that they will perhaps be cured through disgust.

Lots of sects and movements have been accused of practicing this kind of sexuality (I think it was the "moral" basis for the accusation against the Templars). It's probably the result of the Christian attitude; Christianity has spoken of "sin" and made it a sin, so there's the result. It's the reaction.

But in truth, as soon as you are capable of having the true Ananda, it's absolutely repugnant, just like wallowing in mud.

Only, with this method there will be a good amount of wastage.

But it's nothing but the survival of a natural process which was useful in the beginning of evolution.

Quite so.

And the meeting of two beings must take place through other means.

Naturally!

From every side people ask the question of the sexual relationship between man and woman and of spiritual discipline.

(Mother remains silent awhile)

To tell the truth, the Lord makes use of everything! One is always on the way towards something.

There comes a point when you go beyond indignation.

@

 

January 31, 1967

Regarding food

... What's necessary above all is to eat without hurrying: to eat very peacefully. That's indispensable. But very peacefully, not just slowly: there must be inwardly a sort of very slow rhythm, as if one had all the time one needed, in total peace.

This (gesture to the forehead) must be calm, it must live in a sort of eternity. Then one digests well. If the thought is very active, it's bad. There must be a kind of inner relaxation and the sense of a very regular, very vast rhythm.

*^**

Soon afterwards

There is such a curious thing: at times the atmosphere is grumpy, grouchy; all that comes, all that enters is like that; at other times it's smiling, pleasant, benevolent, and then all that comes (exactly the same things as before), all that comes is received pleasantly, like that: "Oh, that's good."

And I have noticed that it depends neither on circumstances nor on people nor on anything; it depends ... (Mother sniffs the air) as if something had been added or taken away in the atmosphere. Have you noticed?

Yes, absolutely.

So I am trying to find the key to that.

It's collective. It's independent of beings.

It's independent of beings and it's collective, and it acts on everyone and every circumstance. Where does it come from? That has to be seen. It must be found.

It's very strange. I've asked myself the same question because the impression is that the same thing is happening at different points of the GLOBE.

Yes, yes, it's terrestrial. It's a terrestrial state. At times it goes on, at other times it changes very abruptly. Does it come from interplanetary currents? I don't know. It has to be seen, to be studied.

Astrologers say it's the "opposition" between planets; at certain times planets are in opposition or conjunction and it results in certain currents. That's how they explain the trend of events. So the secret would be to make this law obey the higher Influence, the higher harmonizing law.

Then we would find the secret of many things.[11]

February

February 4, 1967

Mother comes in with a bad cold

There were constant obstructions here, between the nose and the throat, and I was silly enough to complain about it; I said it really didn't make sense and it had better go – so then ... the drastic method.

But this morning I was told to "rest," that is, to go within. I said I had other things to do – then it came over me forcibly! Which means that something suddenly comes to me, I see it, and then, quite naturally, I concentrate on it – and I realize I've gone away!

It was like that this morning, while I was working.

They are always sending me photos of people who went to get married (it has become a craze), and I am asked if they are well-matched, if it's all right. And I immediately see – I immediately see the sort of life they will have together, it's very funny! Today there were three couples like that. In the first, the man was intelligent, sensitive, with an emotional side in need of something, of a response. The woman, rather stupid, rather ordinary too. Not at all made for one another. But I was looking, and as I looked I saw what had happened: one day she had a sort of sentimental and emotional formation coming through her, and it so happens that that day she met this man, who was exactly in need of that. He said to himself, "This is it!" All his friends told him, "No, no, don't marry this woman, it will never work," and they are right. But he said, "I felt something." And that was just a day when it caught hold of her and he happened to be there. So I saw it all (it was very amusing), and off I went!

(Mother goes into a meditation, then suddenly breaks off)

Why? There's a purple V in front of you. A purple V – not purple: dark mauve, the color of the vital. A V of victory.

Has something happened?

I don't know.

As broad as this, luminous, mauve. And it was in front of you, you were seated between its two wings. It was for you. Has anything special happened?...

(Mother resumes her meditation)

February 8, 1967

I have some interesting things to tell you. It's about that cold. An extraordinary healing power ... All the phases in their most acute form, with the study of the process, going through each phase in a few hours, or a few minutes (depending on what it was). When you have a cold, you usually go through one phase, then another (you know how it is), then it goes lower down, then there is a cough, then ... All of it was gone through quickly, and in two days it was over. And with the whole process, but not the mentalized process, not at all: the vibratory process, showing how the Force comes and acts, and at the same time ... Oh, it was very, very interesting, because there was the part played by the inconscient, the part played by conscious reactions, the part played by the will (that's tremendous, an enormous part), the part played by mental suggestion (tremendous, too), and ... the action of the supreme Vibration. The whole thing in detail, day and night, constantly; to such a point that at times I stood still, like that, to follow the course. And it went on (I saw you on Saturday) for ... Sunday, Monday, Tuesday: those three days.

It's my fault it started; as I told you I had complained about these sinuses which were a constant nuisance, and there was also that constant inflammation of the mouth and the throat. So it had its effect. I can't say it's fully over because there still remains a lot, quite a lot of the old habit, but it came with the intention of changing things.

And all this has been learned in detail from a vibratory point of view. It's very interesting, I haven't wasted my time!

Because what applies to a cold obviously applies to any disorder, doesn't it?

It's the detailed process in each case. That was one of the manifestations of a cold.

I mean, it could act with other diseases, too, couldn't it?

Every disease represents its own vibratory mode. Every disease has its own vibratory mode; it represents a whole field of vibrations to be corrected. It's the EXACT measure of what in Matter resists the divine Influence – the exact measure, to the atom.

Oh, how interesting it is, if you knew how interesting.... Take coughing, for instance (not in the chest, in the throat). So, the first vibration: an irritation that draws your attention in order to make you cough. It has a certain kind of vibration which we may call "pointed," but it's not violent: it's light, annoying. It's the first little vibration. So with that vibration, awakening of the attention in the surrounding consciousness [of the throat cells]; then refusal to accept the cough, a rejection here [in the throat], which at first almost causes nausea (all this is seen through a microscope, you understand, they are tiny things). The attention is focused. Then, at that point, there are several possible factors, sometimes simultaneous and sometimes one driving the other away; one is anxiety: something goes wrong and there is apprehension at what's going to happen; another is a will that nothing should be disturbed by the irritation; and all of a sudden, the faith that the Force is capable of restoring order everywhere instantly (none of this is intellectual: it's vibrations).

Then, sometime yesterday morning, something very interesting took place: a clear perception that the vast majority of the cells (in THIS case: I'm not talking about the whole body, I am talking about this particular spot – throat, nose, etc.), that the vast majority of the cells still have a sort of feeling – which seems to be the result of innumerable experiences or of habits (it's both; not clearly one or the other, but both) – that Nature's force, that is to say, the nature governing the body, knows what needs to be done better than the divine Power: it's "used to it," it "knows better." That's how it is. So then, when this new consciousness [the mind of the cells] which is being worked out in the physical being caught hold of that, oh, it was as if it had caught hold of an extraordinary revelation; it said, "Ah, I've got you, you culprit! You are the one who is preventing the transformation."

It's tremendously interesting, tremendously interesting!

All this is magnified in order to be expressed, but it's on the scale of the body's cells. And there was something like a flash of luminous Power as soon as that was discovered: it came down like that, brrm! (gesture of a sword of light plunging into Matter)

And it hasn't gone away since then. To such a point that I tried to recall that state of consciousness in order to note it down in detail – it no longer exists.

Those actions are ... really miraculous, but in tiny details, of course, which is why they don't look miraculous: they are only actions in details.

The attitude taken by the cells, the action of the will, the habit of Nature, the Intervention – all that was seen minutely, phase after phase. Because these cells [in the throat] were complaining; they were the ones that said things weren't changing and remained as they were. They clearly saw that things were kept under control, but without any sign of transformation. And that cold came as a magnifying glass, you understand. It came and magnified everything so it would become more visible and more easily observed. And the detail of all that's going on is, oh, really marvelous: it's a whole world, and it's tiny little things that generally go unobserved because we observe mentally. But seen like this ... For instance, at a certain point in those successive phases, all the signs are there that the body's will is going to flag and that you are going either to faint or to fall "sick" for a while. Then comes the choice made within by the cells, which weigh the possibilities against one another from the standpoint of the progress of transformation: "What can act? What can be the most useful and produce the greatest result? Is it to yield and have an apparent fall (it's only apparent), and in that fall, to allow the Force to do its work without interference? Or is it to follow the course of conscious transformation?" And that's where this marvelous discovery of the cells took place: they really felt Nature knew better (laughing) how to go about it, because it was used to it. That was exquisite! Wonderful.

All this must be going on in everyone, but people are unconscious. It's the consciousness of the cells which has awakened, you understand. It's so interesting! And how illnesses can be avoided, how things ... All of it based on the experience of the UNREALITY OF APPEARANCES: a play is going on behind, which is altogether different from what we see or know.

I am now perfectly aware of the causes of allergy (studied in detail), and why cases of allergy are multiplying here in the Ashram. Naturally, it's based on ... (Mother starts coughing and concludes:) Ah, forbidden topic.

(After a moment of silence, Mother resumes:) It's the nerves that become increasingly receptive to the Force (and consequently, increasingly sensitive), and they don't have the wisdom or equilibrium necessary to counterbalance the increased sensitiveness. But then, the doctors' treatment is stupid! What would be needed is just the opposite: what's needed is (how can I put it?) to infuse wisdom and peace, not to deaden the body.

Yesterday evening, something amusing happened. I received some soups from Japan. It was all written in Japanese, impossible to read. When the doctor came (he comes every evening), I asked him, "Would you like to try a Japanese soup?" And I gave him a packet to take away. Yesterday evening, when he came back, I asked him, "Did you taste the Japanese soup?" He said, "It's a shellfish soup," and he added, "It's not good for you." I asked him, "Why is it not good for me?" (I asked him just for information, to know what my "illness" was (!), why I couldn't eat shellfish.) He answered me, "Oh, you would have an allergic reaction." Then I looked at him and, with great force, said to him, "I have NO allergic reactions." The poor man! He gave a shudder ... and he is down with fever!

It's true that now, as soon as the nerves (but you know, it's an observation of every second), as soon as the nerves start protesting ... It happens very often when they are interested in a sensation: they become interested in a sensation, they concentrate and follow it, then suddenly, it exceeds ... (how should I put it?) the amount they are used to considering as pleasant (it can be put that way), so there's a slight tipping over and they start going wrong, they start protesting. But if there is observation, there is the action of the inner "mentor" that tells them, "Now, all sensations can be borne almost to their highest degree: it's quite simply a bad habit and a lack of plasticity. Calm down and see what happens." (Something of the sort.) Then they are docile, they calm down, and ... everything falls flat. Falls flat, and then ... the allergic reaction is over. So I think I've learned the knack! That's why I answered the doctor with such force.

It's very amusing. That way you learn things.

Only, how to communicate this to people? I don't know.

It's a subtle, keen, minute observation.

At the same time, there is another factor (oh, there are several methods). You have a small material action to do (quite uninteresting in itself, but anyway, it has to be done) and there is that same inner disquiet which can cause things to tip over on the wrong side any moment; if the consciousness – the total consciousness of the body – is busy with something else, the difficulty dies down without your noticing it. So the possibility is there of keeping the consciousness interested in something else. But then the possibility of illness or disorder isn't cured. So it's a constant choice between the work of transformation and (or) an equilibrium sufficient to go on with the general work.

I could write volumes, it's very, very interesting. It's being organized.

We don't really understand the value of the microscopic.

Yes! Yes, exactly.

@

February 11, 1967

(Regarding Mother's "Agenda." Satprem is sorting out a huge stack of files.)

... Now that bits are coming out in the Bulletin, lots of people are beginning to be very, very interested and want to know. They ask me, "But are you saying everything?" I answer, "Everything, that's impossible. But I am saying more." Then, "Can't we know?" – No one would understand a thing.

When it's completely over, we'll see.

I am telling you this so you know this work isn't wholly in vain.

Oh, but I'm sure it's not in vain, I am convinced of it! I don't need to be reassured.

It will be a monument! It's better to leave it as a monument, not to publish it in bits: massive, a thick volume like this, and then ... (laughing) crush people underneath! Then they won't ask anything anymore.

Do you want me to start preparing an edition (!)

No, no! When I have caught hold of the end, we'll publish it – I haven't caught hold of the end yet, far from it. Far from it. All these lessons I am given[12] are like lashes to tell me, "There, you must be ready for anything." All right. It's not in vain.

Oh, surely not! These old Agenda conversations I read again once they have been typed are full of light!

I don't know.

Oh, but I know!

When she [Sujata] has finished typing, we'll see.

We fell behind a lot during my illness, when I was in that hospital.

But it was also a long period from which nothing is left. It's going to leave a gap. There was nothing: I didn't talk, didn't speak to anyone. It has left a gap.

*^**

Soon afterwards

I'd really like to know what it is I'm up to at night. It's never been so totally unconscious, without ever seeing you – there's nothing, complete unconsciousness.

With me too, the last few nights ... And it has been deliberate: the last few nights (for a week, maybe), how can I explain?... There are no more "excursions," I no longer go about.

Last night, for instance (I return to the outward consciousness two or three times every night), I noticed V. had gone out.[13] Naturally I saw the consequences and went on considering how I should manage. Well, I noticed (she went out around two; every day I get up at 4:30), I noticed that during those two and a half hours I didn't sleep ("didn't sleep," I mean I didn't exteriorize). And I wasn't "thinking" (thank God!), there was simply a kind of consciousness watching. And time went by with such fantastic speed that I was myself dumbfounded. I thought it was going to be long waiting for the time to get up, for 4:30, but it was absolutely outside time, absolutely outside time. Yet I remained in my body.

So then, this incident made me realize that I seem to be learning a new way of resting without going out of the body. Because I was sure I was then "awake," as it's called: there was nothing resembling sleep, and I wasn't thinking. There was only the consciousness watching, like that. But interiorized. And a will to get up at 4:30. I looked at the time once in between (there was a clock near my bed, I looked at it), it was 3:15. I was surprised, I thought, "How come? It was 2:30 a minute ago." Then I made a slight concentration to be sure of being quite awake at 4:30. And at exactly 4:30: "How come? I've just seen it was 3:15!" It was dumbfounding, because I didn't leave my body, I know I didn't sleep, and the consciousness was perfectly still, motionless, so to say; a consciousness simply concentrated (but a consciousness with "foresight," which sees what has to be done), simply like that, without thought.

It was so to say instantaneous.

It happens to me now and then during the day. I go into a certain state (it only lasts for a minute or two), a strange state: you are perfectly awake, perfectly conscious, and at the same time totally unaware of time and things around you ... not exactly of things around you, but not conscious of them in the same way – I don't know how to explain.

February 15, 1967

(The following conversation was noted down from memory. It occurred apropos of a young disciple who did not understand how everything – impulsions, desires, etc. – could come from "outside," from universal Nature, while Sri Aurobindo otherwise declares, "I become what I see in myself.")

I told him once that he would begin to be intelligent when he became capable of setting all opposites face to face and bringing them into a synthesis.

What they lack is the sense of the fourth dimension, so they don't understand. There, everything holds together, in a very concrete, palpable way, the "outside" and the inside.

As for Théon, he insisted a lot on adverse forces, while Sri Aurobindo didn't talk about them. So when I came here I asked him, "But do hostile beings and adverse forces exist?" He said to me, "Yes, they do exist, but in order to master them it's easier to regard them as being outside, rather than inside as a part of your nature." He on his part insisted on the One: everything is the One distorted to a greater or lesser extent, even the "adverse" forces. What we call "adverse forces" are, at bottom, distortions of consciousness. When those distortions predominate in a being, that is to say, when his nature obeys distorted influences and no longer responds to the divine influence, we may call it a "hostile being" (they do exist, God knows!). But here in India, they have insisted above all on the notion of Oneness. Of course, at the origin of the worlds a separation took place, but it's mostly the Tantrics who have insisted on that; they say that in order to re-form Godhead, the two poles must be reunited.... All this is languages, it's manners of speaking that fill the gaps and complement one another. And according to the individuals, the times and countries, some manners of speaking were purer than others, some closer than others. But all said and done ... We may say that the Lord enjoys narrating Himself in all possible ways.

And when you are on the very lowest rungs of the ladder of consciousness, those manners of speaking become increasingly concrete, absolute, hard, and exclusive of all that isn't themselves: those are religions.... Oh, by the way, it seems the Pope was approached about Auroville and he asked if there would be a Catholic church! ... They put the question to me. I said, "No. No churches, no temples."

But it might be funny if we put together one specimen of every religion from every country and every epoch. A city of religions, can you see that?... The totem pole next to the cathedral! Oh, that would be very funny! All the ancient religions – the Egyptian, the Tyrian, the Scandinavian gods ... – and then the new religions.

They'd all quarrel with each other!

It's a pity, men have too little sense of humor! Otherwise we could have great fun. It's a wonderful remedy.

We could arrange guided tours, just like Cook's tours (!) We would have a tour of religions, with all the statues and monuments. The explanations could be read out by some guide or other, but they would be prepared by someone with a slightly higher vision (oh, not a supramental vision, just a slightly higher one), and they would show human creeds and how men have shed blood in the name of "God."

The most bloodthirsty god is the most popular, I think. All the slaughters, all the horrors, all the tortures that have been committed in the name of God ...

It's a subject I found very interesting, in the beginning I even wanted to give a class[14] on it, when the School only had thirty children or so: a class on religions showing the whole course from the gods with the heads of birds or jackals to cathedrals. Oh, when I was just five, I was revolted by that "God" who really was a wicked character and caused bloodshed.

So we could have a "city of religions." But we would have to re-create the atmosphere.

A museum of religions?

No, a museum is too intellectual – a city of religions. We would have to re-create the atmosphere and have a temple, churches, a cathedral, a totem pole ... (laughing) We'd entrust the Greek temple to Ananta![15] That would be really unique on earth.

But you know, there are still so many fanatics – more than we think. You would think all that has disappeared with modern development – not at all.

The farther I go, the more I have a perception of a Harmony. A harmony, that is, a vision of the Whole in which everything is in its place: qualities, movements, even forms. It's something being worked out, a vision being worked out.

Yet outwardly, it's apparent chaos.... You know, an equilibrium is made out of a multitude of interlockings holding one another and creating a stability. But when you want to move on to a higher equilibrium, all that must be disintegrated, so to speak (gesture of a pyramid being flattened), then reintegrated in a broader way, and all the interlockings must be formed again on a higher level. It's the transition from one to the other that's difficult. The disequilibrium is what prepares a new equilibrium.

We are in the middle of the chaos.

And the only solution at such a time is to draw back, as it were (gesture of drawing within), and hang on unshakably to something higher, fasten on to it while the hurricane passes by. Then you can go through.

ADDENDUM

(As late as in 1960, Mother intended to give a class on the "history of religions," as the following letter in answer to a question from a teacher at the School bears witness to.)

"... And finally, what was the occult influence of this Judaism on human evolution? The more I think about it, the more the threads of it all appear to me so tied up and entangled together that only a knowledge 'in overview' seems capable of helping to bring out the essential. Well, Mother, I leave it all to you. I hope you will be able to tell me the way in which we here should approach the question and to give me the few major elements on which I will be able to build my exposition."

November, 1960

I do not know what Pavitra told you or asked you for, but here is a summary of what I said to him. For a long time I have been thinking of explaining to the students young and old the particular truths that are found at the root of all human religions, each of them representing one aspect of the total Truth which exceeds them all. This has been perfectly explained in Sri Aurobindo's writings, which one must have read and studied before one can even conceive the way in which the subject must be treated. At any rate, there was no question of asking anyone to do it, since I had reserved the subject for myself, considering that it can be usefully treated only if one has oneself had the experience, that is to say, if one has lived the truth behind all the religions.

What I asked for was to give the students, as a preparation, a class on the "history of religions," from the purely historical, external and intellectual standpoint. There is no question of dealing with the subject from the spiritual angle.

At any rate, nothing useful can be done before carefully reading all that Sri Aurobindo has said on the subject (Synthesis of Yoga: in the "Yoga of Knowledge" he deals with religions; the first chapters of Essays on the Gita; Foundations of Indian Culture; Thoughts and Aphorisms, and many others too). Therefore start reading first.

So I am not replying to your questions because they are part of the course I want to give myself and have not, besides, written yet.

With my blessings

Signed: Mother

February 18, 1967

All these last few days I have been considering the proportion that should be maintained between what was accomplished and established in the past and the attitude of complete acceptance of what comes from the future.

There is obviously in Nature a tendency to want a slow transformation from what was habitually regarded as "good" (expressive, good, harmonious) to the new Thing. And I was observing the extent to which there is attachment: the attachment of habit, something very spontaneous and uncalculating. Then, recently (yesterday), I had an amusing example.

Do you know little S.?[16] Have you ever spoken to her? ... I've heard she beats sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys at logic and new mathematics. I saw her today. She is obviously quite remarkably intelligent. And yesterday was her birthday. You know that Y. [her adoptive mother] has gone into hospital; and when she went she asked me to send something to Thoth every day (you know who's Thoth,[17] don't you?), because it seems that whenever he receives something from me, he is quite calm for two hours. Very well. So I sent something the first day (that was yesterday). And yesterday was little S.'s birthday. I thought that rather than for her to fetch from the secretary the fruit I give for Thoth, it would be better if she came to see me at 10 and I'd give her her card and bunch of flowers at the same time. But then, everything is disorganized and not too efficient: she wasn't informed. When she came it was too late because it was 10:30 or 11 while I had said "before 10." So she wrote me a letter.... I saw the girl today, she is really very intelligent, no doubt about that, and here is her letter. (Note that when she came to live with Y., she knew French because she had learned it with the Sisters – she was a pupil at the "Mission" some three years ago – and for three years Y. has been giving her French lessons.) So here is the child's letter:

(translation)

Sweet Mother,

I am absolutely ... [one word skipped here] having missed seeing you. Yesterday evening nobody came to tell me. And when they brought the presents for Thoth from You they didn't tell me nothing either.

Sweet Mother, since yesterday big S.[18] wants to see you, and now that they say it's too late and I feel I'll miss seeing You, big S. is sad and I don't like that.

S.

It's not French, of course. You clearly feel that the thought isn't ordinary.... I found that very interesting. But for a French class, it would be riddled with errors.

Of course, but there is a "tone" in it....

Exactly.

I was surprised, because Y. [the adoptive mother] knows French well, obviously, and she is quite capable of teaching her to write correctly: she hasn't taken the trouble, or didn't want to, I don't know why. But there is a certain force there.

Oh, yes.

It's interesting.

And after all, what we want ... we know that we need, not an artificially new language, but something supple enough to be able to adapt to the needs of a new CONSCIOUSNESS; and that's probably how that language will emerge, from a number of old languages, through the disappearance of habits.

What's specific to each language (apart from a few differences in words) is the order in which ideas are presented: the construction of sentences. The Japanese (and the Chinese even more so) have solved the problem by using only the sign of the idea. Now, under the influence from outside, they have added phonetic signs to build a sentence; but even now the order in the construction of the ideas is different. It's different in Japan and in China. And unless you FEEL this, you can never know a foreign language really well. So we speak according to our very old habit (and basically it's more convenient for us simply because it comes automatically). But when I "receive," for instance, it's not even a thought: it's Sri Aurobindo's formulated consciousness; then, to be expressed there is a sort of progressive approximation, and sometimes it comes very clearly; but very often it's a spontaneous mixture of French and English forms and I feel it's something else trying to be expressed. At times (he follows my notation), he makes me correct something; at other times it comes perfectly well – it depends.... Oh, it depends on the limpidity. If you are very tranquil, it comes very well. And there, too, I see it's not really French and not really English. It's not so much the words (words are nothing) as the ORDER in which things come up. And when afterwards I look at it objectively, I see that it's in part the order in which they come in French and in part the order in which they come in English. And the result is a mixture which is neither one language nor the other and endeavors to express ... what might be called "a new way of consciousness."

It leads me to think that something will be worked out that way, and that any too strict, too narrow attachment to the old rules is a hindrance to the evolution of expression. From that point of view, French is a long way behind English – English is much more supple. But the languages in countries like China and Japan that use ideograms seem to be infinitely more supple than our own.

Certainly!

They can express new ideas and things far more easily through juxtaposition of signs.

But now, with this "new logic" and "new mathematics," a whole set of new signs is beginning to be universal, that is to say, the same signs express the same ideas or things in all countries, whatever language is used in the country, quite independently.

These new thoughts and new experiences, this new logic and new mathematics, are now taught in higher classes, but all the primary and secondary studies have remained in the old formula, so I have been very seriously thinking of opening primary and secondary schools in Auroville, based on the new system – as a trial.

But what's the process? It's a problem that interests me a lot: how do you catch this new expression?

It can only be done ... This is my experience: if I want to express clearly what Sri Aurobindo says (he doesn't "say," I don't know how to explain it ... it's his consciousness going like this [gesture of projection], expressing itself), well, first the mind must be silent, that goes without saying. But the difficulty is the passage to expression; that's what I have studied and where I have seen the extent of that sort of spontaneous and automatic attachment to the old habits.

Yes!

So what should be done there (and what I try to do) is the same work of receptive silence and to let inspiration, the inspirational consciousness, gather the necessary elements. For that we must be very tranquil. We must be very supple, in the sense of surrendered; I mean, allow as little habitual activity as possible to mix in – be almost like automatons. But with the full perception of the consciousness trying to be expressed, so that nothing gets mixed in with it. That's the most important thing: to receive this consciousness and hold it like ... really like something sacred, without anything getting mixed in with it, like that. So then, there is a problem of attraction, we might say, and of concretization in the formula.[19] I always say to myself that if I knew a lot of languages, it would all be made use of; unfortunately I know only two (properly speaking I know only two) and I have only very superficial and minimal glimpses of two or three others – that's not enough. Only, I had a contact with very different methods: the method of the Far East and the Sanskrit method, and of course the methods of the West. It does give a sort of base, but it's not sufficient – I am poles apart from erudition. I have always felt that erudition shrivels up thought – it parches the brain. (I have great respect for erudite people, oh indeed, and I seek their advice, but ... for myself it won't do!)

Once, very long ago, when Sri Aurobindo was telling me about himself, that is, his childhood, his formation, I put the question to him, I asked him, "Why am I, as an individual being, so mediocre? I can do anything; all that I have tried to do I have done, but never in a superior way: always like this (gesture to an average level)." Then he answered me (at the time I took it as a kindness or commiseration), "That's because it gives great suppleness – a great suppleness and a vast scope; because people who have perfection in one field are concentrated and specialized." As I said, I took it simply as a caress to comfort a child. But now I realize that the most important thing is not to have any fixity: nothing should be set, definitive, like the sense of a perfection in the realization – that means a dead stop in the march forward. The sense of incapacity (with the meaning I said of mediocrity, of something by no means exceptional) leaves you in a sort of expectation (gesture of aspiration upward) of something better. So then, the most important thing is suppleness – suppleness. Suppleness and breadth: reject nothing as useless or bad or inferior – nothing; set nothing up as really superior and beautiful – nothing. Remain ever open, ever open.

The ideal is to have this suppleness and receptivity and surrender, that is, so total an acceptance of the Influence that whatever comes, naturally, spontaneously and effortlessly the instrument adapts itself instantly to express it. With everything, of course: with the plastic arts, with music, with writing.

(silence)

The nature [of Mother] was rather shy, and as a matter of fact, there wasn't much confidence in the personal capacity (although there was the sense of being able to do anything, if the need arose). Till the age of twenty or twenty-one I spoke very little, and never, never anything like a speech. I wouldn't take part in conversations: I would listen, but speak very little.... Then I was put in touch with Abdul Baha (the "Bahai"), who was then in Paris, and a sort of intimacy grew between us. I used to go to his gatherings because I was interested. And one day when I was in his room, he said to me, "I am sick, I can't speak; go and speak for me." I said, "Me! But I don't speak." He replied, "You just have to go there, sit quietly and concentrate, and what you have to say will come to you. Go and do it, you will see." Well then (laughing), I did as he said. There were some thirty or forty people. I went and sat in their midst, stayed very still, and then ... I sat like that, without a thought, nothing, and suddenly I started speaking. I spoke to them for a half-hour (I don't even know what I told them), and when it was over everybody was quite pleased. I went to see Abdul Baha, who told me, "You spoke admirably." I said, "It wasn't me!" And from that day (I had got the knack from him, you understand!), I would stay like that, very still, and everything would come. It's especially the sense of the "I" that must be lost – that's the great art in everything, for everything, anything you do: for painting, for ... (I did painting, sculpture, architecture even, I did music), for everything, but everything, if you are able to lose the sense of the "I," then you open yourself to ... to the knowledge of the thing (sculpture, painting, etc.). It's not necessarily beings, but the spirit of the thing that uses you.

Well, I think it should be the same thing with language. One should be tuned in to someone in that way, or through that someone to something still higher: the Origin. And then, very, very passive. But not inertly passive: vibrantly passive, receptive, like that, attentive, letting "that" come in and be expressed. The result would be there to see.... As I said, we are limited by what we know, but that may be because we're still too much of a "person"; if we could be perfectly plastic it might be different: there have been instances of people speaking in a language they didn't know, therefore ...

It's interesting.

With everything, the great secret is for the consciousness to be ... THE Consciousness – the limitless Consciousness. Then what It does is to set this [the instrument] in motion. Later – later, when the transformation takes place, when it's total and effective, there 'will probably be a conscious collaboration; but now it's only a surrender, a self-giving, and this lends itself – lends itself with enthusiasm and joy – for THE Consciousness to use it.

When it's like that, all goes well.

All the old habits, oh! ...

And looking at it from this angle, you realize the total absurdity of judgments, which are more than 99% based on old habits: the old habits of what you regard as good or bad, useful or harmful, and so on. An automatic judgment, automatic acceptance or refusal ...

This story of little S. has taught me much. Because I saw that little girl this morning. She is black-skinned, of course – she was all luminous. All luminous. And I don't think she is conscious of it (perhaps only in so far as Y. has flattered her – that's always possible), but it's very spontaneous in her, she wasn't trying to put on airs, she didn't come to strike a pose: she just came to take the fruit and flower for Thoth. She was here in front of my table; when I saw her come in I said, "Strange." This little girl who is so black-skinned ... she was clearer than others.

And this letter is so strong!

Yet she wouldn't pass an examination.

February 21, 1967

(Message for Mother's eighty-ninth birthday)

When darkness deepens strangling the earth's breast

And man's corporeal mind is the only lamp,

As a thief's in the night shall be the covert tread

Of one who steps unseen into his house.

A voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey,

A power into mind's inner chamber steal,

A charm and sweetness open life's closed doors

And beauty conquer the resisting world,

The truth-light capture Nature by surprise,

A stealth of God compel the heart to bliss

And earth grow unexpectedly divine.

Sri Aurobindo
(Savitri, I.IV.63)

February 22,1967

(Mother gives Satprem the text of an answer:)

"Why is the choice imperative?"

"Because we are at one of the 'hours of God' as Sri Aurobindo puts it – and the transforming evolution of the world has taken a hastened and intensified movement."

(silence)

Are you tired?

Not tired ... – it's confusion.

The nights are good, but the mornings ... (Mother shakes her head)

(meditation)

February 25, 1967

(Mother gives Satprem a rose the color of fire.)

Do you think Nature will ever invent something better than this?... I don't think so.

It's beautiful, this Nature! I find this more beautiful than animals. From the point of view of consciousness, it's obviously more limited; a plant doesn't have the consciousness an animal has – they have this aspiration towards the light, but the consciousness isn't precise. But from the point of view of material organization it's incomparable. Take a tree like this one (the coconut tree under Mother's window), I see it all the time, this tree, it's wonderful! And how it struggles, how it works, how it produces ....

From the point of view of beauty, I mean material harmony, the Mind has spoilt things a lot, quite a lot (at least that's my impression).

How will things be?... Because nothing I have seen has, from the point of view of form, the richness, variety, unexpectedness, beauty of color and form that this rose has. I have seen things, I have seen supramental realizations – from the point of view of consciousness, they are infinitely superior, without a doubt, but from the point of view of form ...

They are yet to be born. Those forms are going to be born.

Let us hope so. Let's really hope so.

They are bound to.

Let's hope so, really.

From the point of view of consciousness, with the beings I saw,[20] for instance, when they wanted to be clothed somehow, they did it through willpower; from the point of view of consciousness, that's certainly incomparable, there's no possible comparison, but ...

Of course, one can clothe oneself in a marvelous way.

Yes, like a flower. The consciousness can change all the colors according to the moment.

Oh, that would be lovely. If one could become a lovely rose! ...

Well, that's an idea! (Mother laughs)

(Mother goes into a contemplation)

We may say that all experiences tend towards a single revelation – that consciousness alone exists. And that it is the decision or choice (words are inaccurate), a decision of the consciousness that causes the form – all the forms, from the most subtle to the most material ones; and the material world, the apparent fixity of the material world stems from a distortion or a darkening of the consciousness, which has lost the sense of its all-powerfulness.

This distortion has been still more pronounced since the advent of the mind, which in its working has so much taken the place of consciousness that it has so to speak substituted itself for consciousness, and that the mind, in its ordinary working, cannot be distinguished from consciousness – it doesn't know what consciousness is, and so ... (Mother makes a gesture expressing a shrinking or hardening).

It's becoming very, very precise, very clear, very visible in the developed human mind. For the functioning of the body, for example, the difference between the action and perception of the consciousness and the action and perception of the mind. And in our world as it's still organized, the mind is more (oh, as an impression this is very interesting), much more concrete – "concrete" in the way of what we are used (wrongly used) to calling "real" – and set. It's not translucent, not fluid; it's not plastic, not fluid: it's mental, concrete. And then, the mind needs acquired knowledge and all the contacts with the outside.... Let's take a disorder in the body's functioning (which may come for all kinds of reasons that are very interesting to observe, but anyway, we can't speak of everything at the same time). The disorder is there and is expressed through a sense of discomfort; the way the consciousness reacts and acts and the way the mind reacts and acts are entirely, absolutely different (we can't say opposite, but absolutely different). Then there is the weakness (I am talking about the sensation of the body itself), the weakness arising from old habit. It's not a lack of faith, the body knows in an almost absolute way that there is only one salvation, one savior: THE Consciousness. But there is a weakness that causes a sort of slackening, a letting go to habit, and that's where an intensity of faith is needed – but an energy in the faith – in order not to yield. This goes on in a very small sphere, you understand, it's a question ... not even of minutes – of seconds. And if there is a letting go, it means illness; while the other way [of the consciousness] means, little by little, progressively, the unreality of the disorder.

But it means an intensity of faith which, compared to the present state of mankind, may be regarded as miraculous.

And the acceptance of illness is the acceptance of the usual end, which is generally called "death" (that doesn't mean anything), but anyway, it means that the aggregate is unable to be transformed and is dissolved.

These are things [those "seconds"] that happen very often, and without any relationship whatever to outer circumstances. Which means that if one were all alone – all alone, still, in meditation – it would be more radical and definitive. But it's mixed in with the movement of life, outer circumstances, and those outer circumstances make it necessary that it should go more or less unnoticed. So the result is less complete, only partial, and so it recurs again and again, it's repeated.... It stretches over a considerable time.

(silence)

All this has a meaning, really a meaning, only if we reach the end.

The end is consciousness reassuming its power.

But even if the effect isn't total or general, I mean for the whole earth, even on one point it will still have tre-men-dous effect.

There, we must be patient.

@

 

March

March 2, 1967

(Regarding foreign visitors who have asked to see Mother)

... Seeing me should be the RESULT of something, not the beginning. That's what I never stop saying to them. It's not to give them an impulse: it's to respond to a preparation that needs to take root. Then it has a meaning. They come, it's done in two minutes, they go away with what is needed. Then it's all right.

*^**

(The conversation turns to Mother's last birthday, on February 21, and to the difficulty in containing the increasing and chaotic stream of outer activities.)

I live in growing confusion. It has one advantage, I see that very clearly: there can no longer be any automatism. When you live a well-organized life, things become automatic – that's not possible anymore, the consciousness must be like a beacon every minute, cast forth in order to know what must be done. I clearly see it's meant to be like that. It's deliberate.

Some of the things I said in the Talk you've read me today were true at the time, are still true for the majority of people, but are no longer true for me....[21] To the present vision, there is nothing that isn't willed and doesn't come purposely (not exactly deliberately, but with a precise aim in view), and it is AT THE SAME TIME a complete, multifaceted and integral whole (which is why it's very difficult to grasp). But now the thing is very clearly felt. And for two or three days, following a very minute observation – precise and minute ... The center of consciousness is fairly high (gesture far above the head); in the past it was always there (gesture near the top of the head), it would see things around and inside, but it seems to have risen: the field of the consciousness is much vaster. Also, the body has become transparent, so to speak, and almost nonexistent; I don't know how to put it ... it doesn't obstruct the vibrations: all vibrations can go through. For example (I'll give an example to make myself understood, omitting details deliberately), I was asked for a certain amount of money, an increase. (On the material level a certain number of things are under [Mother's] control from here, and I have to pay for them regularly.) So then, an increase was asked for. Not that the request was unreasonable, that's not it (it was an increase for something special, a daily increase), but, I don't know why (because here [gesture to the forehead] nothing happens, I am absolutely, not only blank, but transparent, and everything is allowed to go through unobstructed), when I had to make the decision, there was immediately a vision (but a vision, as I said, from above, which looks over a much larger field), a vision of conflict, battle, and to the observation there was something [in Mother] very much displeased, like a protest. I wondered why. If it had been translated into words, there would have been indignation at that request (without there being in the consciousness the least reason for this indignation: it all becomes very, very impersonal – very impersonal). I went on looking with the vision of the consciousness, and then, as if automatically through this mouth I asked how much this increase would amount to a week (because even the mental state that enables you to calculate isn't there at all: it's only a question of consciousness). I asked someone who was there, and he told me. Then, there immediately came the decision: "I will give so much once a week." And everything calmed down. Why and how and who? I haven't the faintest idea.

So I am forced to conclude that it's a highly superior consciousness which sees things with reasons quite beyond us, sees also how things must be done and sets them in motion everywhere (global gesture to indicate the play of forces) until they are done as they must be. And where there was a person, it no longer exists – there are no more "persons": there are forces in movement that bring about certain material actions, but no more persons.

Since then, an observation has been going on: I have noticed that everything concerning this body has become like that. So the body itself scarcely has the sense of its limits (gesture as if the delimiting shape had melted). It's fairly new. I can see it has come about rather progressively, but it's fairly new, so it's hard to express. But it's this very body that no longer feels limited like that (same gesture): it feels spread about in everything it does, in everything around it, in all things, people, movements, sensations, in all that.... It's spread about like that.

It has become very amusing, very interesting. It's really new.

And it has grown more precise after February 21. There were one or two very difficult days around the birthday, then a kind of adjustment took place inside, and afterwards came the experience. It was the outcome. There really is a change.

The body has to be a little attentive and careful not to bump into things or drop them: the gestures are somewhat wobbly. It's very interesting. It must be a transitional phase, which will last until THE true consciousness is established; then it will have a wholly different functioning from the one it had previously, but with a precision that can be foreseen to be incalculable. And of a very different order. With many things, for instance, the vision is clearer with eyes closed than with eyes open, but the same clarity is beginning (it began long ago), beginning to come with open eyes; they see differently (gesture showing the inside of things).

There are amusing details in the whole, but I will tell you about them later because they involve certain people, so I'd rather not talk (the details are interesting only with the names), I'd rather not talk about them right now.... It has to do with the "power of the Mother" and how it will manifest – amusing things, ambitions, perhaps (it took on the appearance of ambitions), but I am watching (the "I" above – the true "I"), I am watching to see if it corresponds to a concrete reality.... From a quite external and ordinary point of view (and it's not like that, it's not SEEN like that), but translated in the human consciousness, those ambitions are caused by the fact that the material age is increasing,[22] and so one may foresee ... (laughing) my disappearance. It's very amusing. But I'll tell you about it later.

Very well. (Mother laughs heartily)

You must see some funny things!

It remains to see when I'll disappear! ... Sri Aurobindo said to me, "Your body on earth ..." He said, "What I see is that your body is the only one that has sufficient endurance to go through the ordeal." But, you understand, this body knew nothing about it, it has no ambitions (!), still less pretensions. But basing myself on that, when he told me, "You will do the work," I said yes. So there we are. But now, I see – I have seen: holding out is tough. It's tough. It takes both an unflinching energy – a constant energy, like this (inflexible gesture) – and at the same time, a perfect humility ready to abandon EVERYTHING, because all that is is nothing in comparison with what must be. A perfect humility. I don't think there are many bodies like that. It really (laughing) has goodwill!

Oh, these last few days there have been moments ... a few minutes (it could hardly last more) when it was really tough. And then, what makes it possible for the body to go through is that at such moments, it's completely like this (gesture of surrender): "Lord, what You will." Nothing, no thought, no speculation – nothing: "What You will." And "You alone exist." That's all.

Moments of anguish, you know ... in an ordinary consciousness it would translate into hard-to-bear physical pains, but the Grace is there – the UNREALITY OF THE SUFFERING is there, fortunately.

Oh, a marvelous Grace.

So then, the result (these few days were difficult), the result is this: that the consciousness of the body itself has really changed. Its consciousness is up above: there's nothing left here inside, it's all like that, like something everything goes through.

(silence)

It may have one ambition (it's expressed as an aspiration, at any rate): the possibility of making this unreality of suffering felt everywhere. When the possibility is glimpsed of transmitting everywhere the unreality of suffering, there comes a joy – a light, a joy in the body. That makes it happy. So the Consciousness above says "That's how it is, that's how it will be." There.

@

March 4, 1967

(Regarding Sri Aurobindo's aphorism 126: "The most binding law of Nature is only a fixed process which the Lord of Nature has framed and uses constantly; the Spirit made it and the Spirit can exceed it, but we must first open the doors of our prison-house and learn to live less in Nature than in the Spirit.")

That has been precisely the subject of ... (can we call it meditation?), of this morning's work. It came so clearly. But the experiences aren't literary, they can't be expressed.[23]

(Mother goes into a contemplation)

Someone has just brought, from two sides at the same time (gesture to the right and to the left), a plate with grapes and a second plate with grapes, like that. One was for you and one for me.

For two or three days some beings from the vital have been eager to manifest their goodwill, and this was like the expression of their goodwill. In the vital, food is very often grapes, very frequently. Grapes of incomparable beauty, besides. And grapes are the fruit of life. So I suppose that's why. There were two bunches: one was bigger, the other not so big; I don't know whom the bigger was for and whom the other for: they came from both sides, they were presented like this (gesture to the right and to the left of Mother). One was on a plate, the other on a square of white paper. I presumed the one on the square of white paper was for me!

Lovely, beautiful bunches! Grapes turning golden, you know – transparent and golden as when they're ripe. Each grape was this big (gesture: about two inches).

(silence)

I tried to express what happened this morning, and what kept coming to me was: "But the experiences aren't literary, they can't be expressed."

(silence)

Some beings of the vital said to me, "There was a time when you used us and we were very happy. Why aren't you using us anymore now?" So I replied to them, "If you want to do work, I'm certainly not going to stop you!"

That was yesterday evening. I was asked questions on levitation (questions a proper modern child might ask), I was asked, "How is it that one who escapes from this law doesn't just go up into the atmosphere?" I answered from my experience that that's not the way levitation works, it's not because one escapes from the law of gravity: it's because physical bodies are supported by materialized vital forces (slightly materialized). So then, it put me back in contact with those forces and beings, and last night they said that to me; they told me, "Why aren't you using us any longer? We were quite happy!" I said, "Come along and do some work!" And there we are [= the grapes].

When you sleep (that is, when the body is in a state of trance), you can eat. You sense the taste when you have gone outside the body. And it's very nourishing, it gives strength. I have eaten I don't know how many times like that, mostly grapes – and what grapes! ...

*^**

Soon afterwards

Yes, this problem of the transformation, I see more and more clearly that there are three approaches, three ways to go about it, and that in order to be more complete one should combine the three.

One – the most important, naturally – is the way we could call "spiritual," the way of the contact with the Consciousness – Love-Consciousness-Power, that is. These three aspects: supreme Love-Consciousness-Power. And the contact, the identification: making all the material cells capable of receiving Him and expressing Him – of BEING That.

Of all the ways, that is the most powerful and most indispensable.

There is the occult way, which brings all the intermediary worlds into play. There is a very detailed knowledge of all the powers and personalities, all the intermediary regions, and it makes use of all that. That's where one makes use of the Overmind godheads: it's in this second way. Shiva, Krishna, all the aspects of the Mother are part of this second way.

Then there is the higher intellectual approach, which is the projection of a surpassing scientific mind and takes up the problem from below. It has its own importance too. From the standpoint of the detail of the procedure, it reduces approximation, it gives a more direct and precise action.

If one can combine all three, then obviously the thing will go faster.

Without the first, nothing is possible (and even, the other two are an illusion without the first: they lead nowhere, you go round in circles endlessly). But if you clothe the first in the other two, then I think the action is more precise, direct, rapid.

It's the result of these last few days' "study."

@

March 7, 1967

I've received a certain number of questions from the older pupils (not the young children, the older pupils) on "death," the conditions of death, why there are so many accidents at present, and so on. I have already answered two pupils. Of course, the answer is on a mental level, but with an attempt to go beyond.

There is that sort of mental logic which wants ... yes, which wants things to be deduced from one another according to that logic, and so they have reached ... impossible questions.

(the text of the questions:)

Are the time and manner of death always chosen by the soul? In large human destructions through bombings, floods, earthquakes, have all the souls chosen to die together at that time?

The vast majority of human beings have a collective destiny. For them the question does not arise. One who has an individualized psychic being can survive even in the midst of collective catastrophes, if such is the choice of his soul.

How is the soul conscious of being and existing after death, once it is separated from its physical vital and mental beings?

The soul is a spark of the Supreme Divine, I do not see how the Lord needs a body in order to be conscious of being.

It's nothing very new, but it's a broadening of the consciousness. And all these questions have in fact been coming into the atmosphere lately, giving at first the impression that man knows nothing about death – he doesn't know what it is, doesn't know what happens, he has built all kinds of hypotheses but has no certainties. And by pressing on – by insisting and pressing on – I have reached the conclusion ... that there is really no such thing as death.

There is only an appearance, and an appearance based on a limited outlook. But there is no radical change in the vibration of consciousness. This came as an answer to a sort of anguish – there was in the cells a sort of anguish at not knowing what death really is; a sort of anguish, like that. And the response was very clear and persistent: it was that the consciousness alone can know, because ... because the importance attached to the difference of state is a merely superficial difference based on an ignorance of the phenomenon in itself. One who could retain a means of communication would be able to say that as far as he himself is concerned, it doesn't make much difference.

But this is something being worked out at the moment. There still remain gray areas and some details of experience are missing. So it would be better to wait, it seems to me, until the knowledge is more complete, because rather than give an approximation with assumptions, it would be better to tell the complete fact with the total experience. So we'll put it off till later.

But you say there is no difference – when one is on the other side, does one go on having or is one able to have the perception of the physical world?

Yes, yes! Exactly. Exactly.

The perception of beings, of ... [Satprem meant seagulls over the sea, trees, the pretty sunshine on the earth].

Yes, exactly.

Only, instead of having a perception ... You leave a sort of illusory state and a perception which is one of appearances, but you do have a perception. That is, at certain times I had the perception, I was able to see the difference, but of course, the experience wasn't total (it wasn't total in the sense that it was cut short by people), so it's better to wait awhile before we talk about it.

But the perception is there.

Not absolutely identical, but with an effectiveness which is sometimes greater in itself. But it's not really perceived by the other side. I don't know how to explain. I've had the example (not an example: it was lived with the full perception) of a being who lived with me for years, who remained in perfectly conscious contact after he had left his body (and left it quite materially), and who didn't merge but closely associated himself with another living being and in this association went on living the life of his OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. I can give neither the names nor the facts about all this, but it's as concrete as can be.[24] And it's going on.

All this has been seen – I've been seeing it for a long time, but just this morning it came back as an illustration of the new knowledge. Extraordinarily concrete [the "association"] in its effects, changing the capacities and movements of the other's consciousness. And consciously – an absolutely conscious life. And it's the same consciousness that was conscious during the phase when there was no body left at all and the presence was visible only in the night vision.

There are other cases.

This one is very close and intimate, which is why I have been able to follow it in all its details.

But it's clear, precise and EVIDENT only with this new vision, because (how can I explain?...) I knew this – I knew it before, I was aware of it – but I saw it again with the new consciousness, the new way of seeing, and then the understanding was total, the perception was total, absolutely concrete, with elements that were completely missing – convincing elements that were completely missing in the first perception, which was a vital-mental knowledge. While this is a knowledge of the consciousness of the cells.

But all this would only be interesting with all the facts (which I can't give). So I'd like to have a more complete and "impersonal" experience, I might say, I mean not illustrated by facts but an overall vision of the process. Then I will be able to talk about it. It will come.

@

March 11, 1967

There is a question of terminology. I would like to put a note at the beginning of the third volume of "Questions and Answers," in which I say: "We found it fit to begin this new volume with the Talk of February 29, 1956, because on that day, during the meditation that followed the class, there took place ..." What? "The first descent of the supramental forces into the Inconscient"?

(Mother shakes her head) It was: Light-Force and Power. And it wasn't into the Inconscient, it was into the earth atmosphere.

Light-Consciousness-Power?

"Consciousness" is part of the totality, it will come later.

Supramental Light-Force-Power?

Yes.

And is the word "descent" right?

It's "manifestation," rather. The image was ... (I can't say there was "above" and "below," that's not how it was), it was the barrier being broken and the flow rushing forth. It's better to put "manifestation."

*^**

(A little later, regarding the extraordinary clutter on Mother's table:)

... That's why I keep so many things on my table. Someone gives me something, and there is in it a good thought, a force, something that puts me in contact with the person, so I leave it there on my table, to keep up the contact. Each of these things generally represents the contact with someone. So I keep it there (and of course, it also goes on increasing!). Sometimes, children (very young children) come; when the little ones see something, their eyes open quite wide, so I give it to them. And I always wonder (laughing) what may happen with what's in the thing, what kind of circuit?!

(Mother holds Satprem's hands in hers for a long time)

I make you all stride on very fast.

March 15, 1967

The roses are open now (Mother holds out a rose to Satprem), but this one has a magnificent color. Beautiful, isn't it?

This morning I had an amusing experience with roses. There was a closed bud – big, hard – big and hard, red. I took it, looked at it, then my fingers ran over the flower like that, and ... (gesture showing the flower opening up), one petal after another and another and yet another – before my very eyes. And it was completely hard and closed. I took it and said, "A pity." I was about to put it back in water so it would open up, and while I looked ... It was such a pretty sight, you know, opening up, happy, as if saying to me, "Oh, how happy I am!"

Flowers and I are on very friendly terms, I must say.

Once in the past, I took flowers that had wilted – wilted flowers (that was when I was practicing occultism with Théon – it happened several times). One flower was quite drooping: I took it in my hand, looked at it, and slowly, little by little, it straightened up again and became quite smiling!

They are very, very receptive.

*^**

Soon afterwards

Quite amusingly, all the experiences that occur in the vital, the mind and above, are occurring in the material, in the cellular consciousness, and they are a reproduction, as it were, but with a slight alteration caused by Matter. When you stir water, for instance, when you agitate it, it's no longer transparent; there are eddies, and those eddies prevent the water from being transparent. You can no longer see through it. It's the same thing materially: when you are restless, when you don't have that sort of calm (which isn't stillness but the opposite of restlessness, I don't know how to describe it – it's something imperturbable) ... Very few people have that, and when they come near, there are immediately (gesture of tremor and seething in the atmosphere) vibrations and disorder – and confusion settles in. You can see the phenomenon occur on a small scale with people coming here; you can see it on a larger scale with the movements of the Ashram; and you can see it on a still larger scale with the movements of the earth. It's the same thing with that sort of mental restlessness people have (excitement and restlessness): as soon as there is excitement and restlessness, it's impossible to see clearly; it's the same as with water, it goes like this (same gesture of tremor and seething), swarms of movements of confusion, and you can't see anything. It's the same thing materially. And then, as soon as a problem has to be solved (especially a material problem), people are in the habit of getting restless, and as soon as they get restless, it's absolutely impossible to find any solution. And it makes the confusion worse.

This is something I experience constantly, every minute. If I am in my normal atmosphere, however intense the action may be (or also the problem to be solved), the thing is clearly seen and the solution imposes itself as something absolute, irrevocable: this is how it must be done. The minute the restless atmosphere of someone else comes in (and as soon as a problem arises, not one in a thousand isn't restless, at least inwardly a little), it starts going like this (same gesture of tremor), and not only do you stop seeing, but things are no longer in their place! And as for the solution ... you have to mend the disorder before you can think of the solution. It's an experience almost every moment. I see numbers of people; with some, as soon as they enter the atmosphere, along with them comes their confusion, and you can't see anything anymore – you have to wait a little, try and calm things down, and then you can see. With some it never calms down – it's hopeless, you can only send them back. With others, it calms down after a certain length of time, then you can start seeing and knowing what needs to be done.

But materially it results in something very interesting. When I am alone and everything is tranquil in my atmosphere, if at any time I take anything, any object, it's exactly in its place. And everything goes without a hitch. As soon as someone (anyone) is there, there is a little vibration (same gesture of tremor). With some people the vibration gets much worse – and I lose my things! I lose them almost irretrievably ... until the atmosphere has calmed down again. Then the thing comes back quite naturally, almost as if it had gone away and come back – it didn't go away and come back: it was only confusion veiling everything. And I find the place again, the thing in its exact place. This goes on from morning to night (I can't say from night to morning because I go off into another region!). But it's constant. And so I feel I am living in constant confusion.

At times the going gets rather heavy. For instance, here in the morning, when there are three or four sources of confusion at the same time, it becomes acute. I have only one solution, that is to be alone somewhere or other and stay like this (gesture of withdrawal into absolute stillness), until order is restored everywhere. Then everything is in order again, the Lord's Presence is there again ... it's always there, but it can express itself, manifest again – while it can't get through that [confusion]! So I stay still and all goes well. From there I can face fresh disorders coming in (provided they don't rush in too close on each other's heels!), but anyway, I can pull through. To tell the truth I always pull through, but there are disorders that shouldn't be, that are useless. I always feel like telling people, "Oh, I beg you, keep calm! ..." But not the "calm" of apathetic quietude, not slumped in a corner and you don't move anymore (while anyway it keeps going like this inside [gesture of seething]), no: calm, quiet, like this (vast gesture) in the consciousness, then everything becomes limpid. And in that limpidity you see very clearly, decide very clearly, everything works out, things organize themselves, you don't even need to intervene.

All difficulties ... I see that, I've seen it lately with regard to political organizations, relations between nations and all that, all the problems to be solved – it's all the same thing: people are like this (same gesture of tremor), all the time, all the time ... one wave of restlessness, another wave of restlessness, yet another wave of restlessness coming on top of it – and you don't see anything anymore! You can't see anything anymore! While if one can keep calm for a while ...

It's the same with all the questions I am asked (I receive innumerable questions), it's all like this (same gesture), everything is like this and one can't see anything. If one keeps calm ... the Light comes through, everything grows limpid, transparent, and ... it becomes so natural, so simple! So simple, so obvious: there is ONE thing that can be done and it's the true thing. All the rest ... (same gesture of seething).

Some people live in a constant whirl, and they're quite surprised that everything goes wrong! They meet with complications, with ... And it's always like this (same gesture).

I am not referring to those who are tamasic and completely inert: they are like an inert mass, so the Light can't go through – what goes through is others' restlessness, it stirs them up! No! I am talking about a Light ... (vast gesture) above things, untouched by them, which sees. And this Light is in a ... (how can I explain? ...) The whole, entire universe moves forward with fantastic speed and in perfect immobility. Words seem idiotic, but you can feel this – you can feel it, see it, live it. A luminous immobility moving forward with fantastic speed.

In that immobility there is perfect transparency ... and the problem does not exist: the solution comes ahead of the problem. That is to say, things organize themselves (gesture showing the movement of universal forces) in such a way that they can change positions or take a different place in order to express the new thing that must be expressed: something new constantly enters the manifestation (as if emerging from the Nonmanifest), it enters the manifestation and transforms. And it takes place automatically. A vast, immense movement ... (Mother smiles with her eyes closed) in which one can participate only if one is per-fect-ly peaceful and calm and translucent.

(Mother takes Satprem's hands and keeps looking at him for a long time)

Tell me, it would be lovely if one could take people's consciousness as one takes a flower, and then, because one looks at it and holds it and the vibration is that Vibration of supreme Love, it opens up, like that, becomes organized, and grows magnificent.

It would be fine if one could do that – (laughing) perhaps one can!

Yes, that's what you do!

March 22, 1967

It's very interesting.... Because of this "message" for the new year[25] (everybody is talking about this message everywhere, it has given a good jolt; even in government circles, everywhere), because of this message, everyone is claiming to be a "defender of the Truth." They ask me questions, and everyone is surprised that truth as he conceives it isn't established in the world. So I am beginning to be forced to wage war for the Truth against all the conceptions of the truth! And that's rather interesting.

For instance, there is here that old idea of vegetarian food. Some people write to me indignantly that these "holy rules" are being increasingly broken in the Ashram! Someone wrote to me a first time, asking me to answer; I neglected to. So he wrote a second time to tell me, "What can we do if you don't answer?" I answered (they'll probably bite their tongues at my reply), I replied something like this:

"Truth is not a dogma that one can learn once and for all and impose as a rule. Truth is as infinite as the supreme Lord and It manifests every instant for those who are sincere and attentive."

I could have added other things but didn't, so as not to wage battle too openly!

The same day, that is, just today, I got another letter.... The whole letter ranted and raved about all that's going on in the Ashram, saying, "What! This place is worse than the world!" and so forth. (All this in the name of "truth," naturally.) So (laughing) I answered:

"Were Truth to manifest in such a way as to be seen and understood by all, they would be terrified by the enormity of their ignorance and false interpretation."

I hit hard this time.

And it's going on.

Day after day it's like that, growing acute. Everyone is the "defender of the Truth." One about food, another about money, another about business, another about relationships ... – everyone has his hobby-horse.

The wonderful thing is that till now not one has told me, "Maybe my opinions aren't true?" – not one! "Maybe my way of seeing or feeling isn't true?" – not one. They are all in full Truth!

It's very interesting.

The defenders of the truth are often worse than the enemies of the truth.

(Mother nods approvingly) But I can't say anything about that because I am the one responsible, I told them, "Cling to Truth."

No, they all make the same mistake: they confuse truth with the old idea of virtue. They all make the same mistake as the moral error.

And above all, they want a truth expressed in a few very clear and well-defined words, so they can say, "This is true." The old calamity of religions: "This is true" – therefore the rest is falsehood.

How many times ... how many times Sri Aurobindo (and I myself) said, "When a thing is true, you can be sure that its opposite is also true. When you have understood this, then you will begin to understand."

This morning I was also bombarded with a quotation from Sri Aurobindo (they came and bombarded me in the name of Sri Aurobindo!), to tell me that in The Mother he wrote, "The divine Grace can act only in the Truth" – and I shouldn't forget that! (Mother laughs) There is a quotation from Sri Aurobindo in which he says, "The divine Grace will answer, but do not think it will answer in Falsehood...." An admirable sentence. Only, they don't know: THEY are the possessors of the Truth – Falsehood is for others!... And even intelligent people (that's the strange thing, because it's so idiotic!), even people who, anyway, have a brain, who understand, fall into the trap.

It's very common at the School.

(silence)

Thanks to all this, I might say (not even "because of" – THANKS TO all this), I have had these last three days a vision – a concrete vision every second, showing how the supreme Consciousness (which I personally find convenient to call the "supreme Lord"), how EVERY SECOND it makes you do or say or see or know ex-act-ly what is needed for everything to move on like this (round gesture expressing the innumerably ramified movement of universal forces), to move forward. It's not yet the direct, all-powerful, crushing Movement of direct Forces (gesture from above downward, like a sword of light): it's a movement like this (same round gesture), but marvelous – marvelously subtle, ingenious, respectful of everything, but everything; you know, a movement that makes use of everything to lead towards the goal, even "errors" – which aren't errors because when the Consciousness is there, the error isn't one committed by ignorance: a thing is said or done because that's what needs to be said or needs to be done – it may in appearance be even a blunder, yet it's ex-act-ly what is needed for everything to move forward (same innumerable round gesture), move forward luminously towards the desired goal. It's absolutely marvelous! And seen in tiny little details and in the whole. It's this marvel of a Consciousness that makes everyone do what must be done, puts everything in its place, sorts out everything, and it's our idiocy, an absolutely ignorant and stupid vision, that would have us believe in mistakes, in errors, in ... Everyone is a problem to be resolved, so all those problems interpenetrate, and it is the WHOLE that must be led towards precisely this famous Truth (the true one). But I've spent, you know, hours in admiration – a blissful admiration – at this marvel of organization, with all the little things around you, all the little people around you, all the little circumstances.... It's wonderful, wonderful!

And then, this overweening mind which understands nothing and asserts itself in its all-powerful knowledge, oh ... it's so comical!

(silence)

It is the maximum use of all possibilities and all impossibilities, all capacities and all incapacities; a maximum use in a maximum power and a maximum Compassion, and also ... a smile! A smile, a sense of humor, oh! ... Such a benevolent irony, so full of compassion, so wonderful.... And this overweening mind, a fantastic phenomenon indeed: it spends its time judging what it doesn't know and deciding on what it doesn't see!

(silence)

Then there was the vision of others and the remembrance of the time when those things had great importance and were taken very seriously, with a solemnity ... a wholly moral solemnity. That's amusing, too.

@

March 25, 1967

(Satprem reads out to Mother an "old" conversation dating from ... two weeks ago.)

... It's gone. As soon as it's said, it's gone and away. When things are read back to me, I don't remember what I said, it comes like something new.

As soon as it's expressed, it's gone. And always it's gone as though expressing meant emptying yourself of something and making room for a new thing – always. When you tell of an experience, the effect of the experience is as though exhausted and you are ready for another. Speaking always makes a void for a new thing to come in.

And the impression is always: how old, oh, how old! I find everything old. The movement must be extremely rapid.

But it's a pity that material occupations are so cumbersome.[26]

There must be a reason.

What organizes the world and life is much wiser than we are: we don't see, we are extremely shortsighted. But That (vast gesture), as I told you last time, is marvelous! Marvelous. So there must also be a reason for this fact that I am so overburdened. Of course, the general reason is very plain (it's easy to understand), but even from the point of view of the sadhana: that way, probably, nothing is overlooked.

What's interesting is to follow this sort of change in the consciousness of the cells: a lot of them still have a sense of wonder at the fact that the Truth exists. That's the form it takes: a sense of wonder.... "Ah, so that's what it is!" A wonder. A wonder at the existence, the UNIQUE existence of the Lord – a joy! Such an intense joy and a childlike wonder, you know: "Oh, so it's really like that!" And this goes on in one part of the body after another, one group of cells after another. Truly charming. And then, when the mantra comes spontaneously, oh! ... An adoration: "It's like that, like that! That is true, THAT is true – all the disorder, all the ugliness, all the suffering, all the misery, all of that isn't true! It's not true, THAT is true." And not with words (words make it very small): with an extraordinary sensation, extraordinary! Then ... it's the beginning of that sort of glorious, marvelous life. It's still at the stage of wonder; that is, something unexpected in its sublimity.

At the same time, there is an overall vision growing more and more total, in which each thing has its own purpose, its own place, and which no longer excludes anything. That need to exclude the mind in order to surpass it is no longer there. Now the mind is perfectly tranquil, peaceful, and it sets itself in motion only when it receives a command to do so, an imperative command. It receives a command, then does something precise for a precise reason, a very precise action, and then ... silence and calm.

So then, that rehabilitates everything. It's only the quagmire it has been turned into that ceases to be.

(silence)

When the work is complete, there will come the Power ... to restore order, obviously. I increasingly feel the need to intervene to restore order and harmony. It's the main reason for all this burdensome work. It's a lesson and an experience to learn gradually how to put things in order and establish harmony.

It's a big work.

There's still a lot to do, quite a lot! (Mother laughs)

@

March 29, 1967

(Regarding the conversation of March 7 on "death," in which Mother said in particular: "There really is no such thing as death.... There is no radical change in the vibration of consciousness.... You have a perception of the physical world which isn't absolutely identical but with an effectiveness which is sometimes greater...." Mother at first authorized the publication of this conversation in "Notes on the Way," then...)

I begin to think that it is not good to give this kind of "lived knowledge" to people who are not capable of having it, of experiencing it.

For instance, these last few days I have clearly seen that men do not know the reality – the concrete reality – of the invisible, because if they knew it they would go insane. They have such fear of these things....

Even now, when they see in a vision someone they loved when he was living, when they see him at night, they say, "Ohh, a ghost!" And they are horribly scared!

So maybe this is going to terrify them.

It's not terrifying since, on the contrary, it gives them hope!

Yes, but one shouldn't try to make people reasonable when they aren't.

I don't know.... It may fall into the hands of someone to whom it will do much good, but is it worth running the risk of doing harm for the sake of one or two to whom it will do good? That has to be seen.

I, for one, find it comforting that you state this continuity of consciousness. It can't do harm, can it?

(Mother laughs and does not answer)

*^**

Soon afterwards

I was asked a question: "What is youth?" Here is what I replied (Mother holds out a note):

"To be young is to live in the future for the future. To be young is to be always ready to abandon what one is in order to become what one ought to be....

And above all, the most important:

"To be young is never to admit the irreparable."

Then Mother takes out another note she has just written to a disciple:

"One is always deeply disgusted at one's own faults when one encounters them in others" (!)

*^**

Yet another note:

"Europeans attach the greatest importance to the words uttered. Indians are much more sensitive to the feeling, which more often than not those words veil."

It's about a remark by B. She said something to someone with very kind and extremely polite words, but in her heart she doesn't like the person she spoke to; and she was shocked because the other became indignant.... But I understood immediately. She was indignant, she said, "Why? I was very polite, so why?"

But they feel, deep down they sense the feeling with which you say the thing. That's what they feel and what they respond to.

A last note:

It's in reply to an Ashram "association." They asked:

"What is the need of the hour?"

"Do not try to deceive the Divine!"

(Mother laughs wholeheartedly)

@

April

April 3, 1967

Mother holds out a paper to Satprem:

Here is what I wrote for the opening of the sports season:

"... I must tell you once more that for us spiritual life does not mean contempt for Matter but its divinization. We do not want to reject the body but to transform it. For this, physical education is one of the means most directly effective...."

*^**

Last time, there was something I didn't have the time to tell you; now, regrettably, it's only a memory – not quite, not just a memory, something remains. The effect remains. But while it was there ...

Sri Aurobindo said, but he said it as the expression of a knowledge that had always been expressed on the summit of the scale of consciousness, as one more rung beyond the state in which one knows (one knows it, lives it), he said the essential Oneness, that everything is "That," the expression or manifestation or objectification or ... of "That." Naturally, according to the times and epochs and milieus, it has been put in different words, but it seems to be the supreme experience. And the conclusion, when you go outside time and space, is that everything is from all eternity.

Sri Aurobindo regarded this (we talked about it), he regarded it as the realization (not just the knowledge: the realization) giving supreme Peace and putting an end to all the whys and hows and all the wills to rectify things. All that, that whole drama of life, disappears when you realize that.

I have had this experience. I've had it in an almost constant way. And in the most conscious part of the being (which is one with the heights), there was with the expression of this experience, let's say, "Everything is from all eternity" or "Everything is the expression of the supreme Vision" (I am not using the word "will," I'll say why in a moment), there was the sense of a limitation. I don't know how to express it, but that's how it was (it goes without saying that all words are always approximations). Always, every time the experience was there, it was there with the sense that ... to put it crudely I might express it with the phrase, "That's not it!"

So the other day (the day before I saw you), it came at the time of my experiences, that is, very early morning (the time of my lived experiences), and it was like that, with that same sense of inadequacy. Then I entered a certain state in which "that" remained quite luminous and clear, but at the same time – at the same time, simultaneously – there came the perception ... (how can I put it?) of the original Vibration, as it were, in all the splendor of its all-powerful Light, and the two things – that and That – were simultaneously translated on the level of expression, without opposition both together like this (Mother clasps her two hands, interlacing her fingers), closely together, in a single Light: every instant – every instant – it's like a pulsation of that Force (it is: creative Force-Light-Power, contained in the global Vibration of Love)

with every pulsation, a complete re-creation.[27]

When the two things are like this (same gesture) and you live in that Consciousness, then there is a sense of absolute Freedom: nothing is impossible.

It lasted for a few minutes, perhaps, complete; then it began being objectified, but at first it simply was ... that IS, that IS. Afterwards it began being objectified, that is to say, being a witness of it at the same time as one is it – a slight drop. But at the time, while it was there, it was THAT.

It was omnipotence.

Absolute omnipotence.

Then, at the same time, there came together with it the experience (not an objectified one), the experience that the Will is on a much lower level than "That," or rather, much more external. Because the Will sees and acts – sees AND acts – whereas there, it's not seeing AND executing AND acting, or seeing AND being: it's simultaneous. It's something above vision – above vision and above will – something ... (silence) something that is. And at that time, simultaneously, that is to say, without any possible space (space or time, of course, it's quite outside that, because it's not a vision that sees itself see, it's not a perception that's conscious of its perception, not a consciousness conscious of its consciousness), it just IS, like that. It is everything, I might say, as it will be projected in space and time.

So when we say, "To want what God wants" or "To unite with the divine Will," it's our way of looking at it (gesture from below upward, or from the low to the high). And it's quite approximate. But there ... And the marvelous thing is that it's not what we in our infirmity might conceive of as a simplification, it's really ... the Whole: the manifested, the nonmanifested, the yet-to-be-manifested, everything, but everything – the Whole. At that second, when you are there, it's omnipotence. Omnipotence, absolute freedom, the unforeseeable, and the existent whole. And that ...

Naturally, words are stupid.

When I came back from That (it lasted long enough for me to have the full experience of it – full, total), there were many things I understood then. One, for instance, which I had noticed with Sri Aurobindo about all the small details of life, anyway all things as they happen on earth – mere nothings; when I went to him with an inner vision and said to him, "This is how I see that" (I would say it to him with words or wordlessly), it would AUTOMATICALLY become true, it would become real: things that were neither in my hands nor in his nor ... And it wasn't that we would make a decision: it was automatic. I noticed this several times and found it wonderful.... It so happens that in a few psychological cases, that is, when it has to do with individual consciousnesses, recently enough (it hasn't been like that for a long time), when someone is sincere (one must be sincere) and expresses an aspiration, for instance, or a hope, a vision of how he or she should be, I have seen this same phenomenon occur: it automatically becomes true.

It's not very frequent yet, but it has happened. And now I understand how it happens.

The day we are able to keep that state I was in the other day, in which will is already a secondary movement, then it will be possible for things to be like that: it's omnipotence. Because those two ideas[28] that appear most contradictory are only like two ways of looking at ... the same thing.

Naturally, when you try to bring that back into the consciousness that expresses itself, it becomes very difficult, but when You live it, while you live it, it's different.

Now the experience has become a memory, but a memory that remains quite living; its effect in the cells (Mother touches the skin of her hands) is making itself felt constantly. It is translated here as a sense of a Freedom of choice. And a choice all-powerful in its execution. The impression that ... with life's every pulsation, the universe chooses ... what it is.

(silence)

It was followed by another peculiar experience.... Some people in Bombay have taken it into their heads to prepare a big event for 1968, when I turn ninety (supposedly ninety!). So they have prepared leaflets which they are going to distribute to lots of people and so on – I am quite unconcerned about it, but they sent it to me for my approval. I stuck it in a corner and didn't bother about it. They returned to the attack, went and saw Nolini, said they were in a hurry because it's a big work and they needed to have it right away, so I shouldn't keep them waiting. So Nolini started reading out the brochure. And as he read along ... (they put in all that Sri Aurobindo said on the "universal Mother," the Mother's "Aspects" and all that, the whole old story – generally it leaves me quite indifferent), but while he was reading, when he gave all the quotations and sentences, there was a sort of sensation (I don't know how to explain it), a sensation of imposed limitation, with a malaise, and something that wanted to break those limits. I didn't say anything. I said, "I don't want to concern myself with this, do what you like, it's no business of mine." And he answered along those lines, politely. But I found it very interesting, because that sense of malaise, of constriction – limitation, constriction – was very, very strong. So I said, "What's going on? What is it, why do I feel this way? What is it?..." As I said, usually I let myself float in an indifference, like that – not "indifference," but ... (vast gesture). Instead of that, it was as if someone wanted to shut me in something. Then I looked, and the memory of the experience [of the pulsations] came back, and I understood. It's interesting.

All this is felt in the body; all the experiences are in the body, in this – which, besides ... I sometimes look (laughing), I look to see (I look from above), to see if there's still a shape! (Mother laughs) ... It's peculiar. And why does it remain like this?... Oh, I have stopped asking this question too. It's like that ... it's like that as the effect of a supreme Grace, because if it were otherwise ... it would be intolerable – intolerable for everybody.

Just the state of consciousness when I act spontaneously (the "I" is a habit of speech, it's to avoid having to make long sentences), when I act spontaneously, without objectifying myself, is generally unbearable enough: the reactions in others are difficult. I always have to ... [restrain myself]. It does happen, but generally I am obliged to be careful, especially when I have to speak.

And there is a very amusing observation; it's exactly what Sri Aurobindo wrote in Savitri: "The wise men talk and sleep...." God grows up while the wise men talk and sleep.[29] And that's how it is: wholly unconscious of what goes on. I don't say it (I am saying it to you), but they are wholly unconscious. I constantly feel I am using a candle snuffer (!) so as not to be ... really unbearable.

When this luminous Power comes, it's so compact – so compact that it gives the impression of being much heavier than Matter. It's veiled, veiled, completely veiled, otherwise ... unbearable.

(silence)

When Nolini read me sentences from that pamphlet, at first when I felt that malaise, I wondered ... Because, as I have said several times, for the transformation to take place freely in this body, those very Entities and Powers and Beings were all keeping at a distance, they were no longer manifesting so as not to cause any mixture and so this [body] could be transformed. At first I thought, "That's what it is: I have got out – the body, I mean, has got out of the habit of manifesting that [the gods, the aspects of the Mother], and so, when it comes into contact with that, there is a malaise." I thought it was that. And for a day, a whole day, it came back again and again, like a problem to be resolved. Then, suddenly, looking at it attentively, I saw it was the very opposite! I saw it was the sense of a constriction, a limitation. Instead of it [those gods or aspects of the Mother] being an unbearable weight, it was something preventing the free manifestation! ... It seems so limited – all those Entities, all those Powers, all those qualities, differences, attributes ... oh! (Mother makes a cramped gesture)

There, that's what I wanted to tell you today.

(silence)

Experiences sometimes come and then go away. In the past, experiences would often come, show themselves, then go away. But this one isn't like that: it has remained HERE, but ... this [the body] isn't yet entirely ready for That to be able to be here all the time. But it's here, the contact hasn't been abolished. Only, it's not manifested.

This [the body] still has too many limitations, a lot of limitations.

@

April 5, 1967

Mother writes a note on the windowsill

It's the answer to a question. Have you heard what I said to the School's teachers?...[30] They've asked me another question. This is the beginning of my answer:

"It is the division between 'ordinary life' and 'spiritual life' which is antiquated and obsolete...."

*^**

(Then Mother gives Satprem roses and a garland of flowers called "adoration")

Do you want this?

(Satprem accepts unenthusiastically)

Mon petit, when the cells get into this state, it's wonderful, you can't imagine! It changes life com-plete-ly. They are like that: a sense of wonder at the first Contact. "Is it possible? Can it be that beautiful! Is it possible?" Like that. And constantly, all the time, every moment, on any occasion: "Can it be like that?" Such a sense of wonder! Then you see how much difference there is from the old habits and everything people have crammed their heads with [renunciation, the beyond] – it's marvelous! Unbelievable. This whole morning again it was like that.... There comes a sense of discomfort (it always comes from outside, from this and that, in relation to this and that; that's how it comes), and immediately, instantly, they remember. They remember, they say, "No! What You will, Lord." That's their attitude, an attitude of such complete self-giving! Much, much more complete, much more simple, much more charming than in any other part of the being. It's "What You will.... You, You, You, what You will. To be ... to be You not with an idea of aggrandizement, but to melt, flow, disappear in You like that." And also, "But You are reality!" And all these words are a diminution. Diminution not in the sensation, but in the consciousness – it's a marvel of consciousness, you know: "You, You ... But You alone exist, You alone are." Then all discomforts, all pains, it all vanishes without a trace. It's a marvel, one can't imagine!

Sri Aurobindo once wrote somewhere, after an experience like this of the Divine Presence in the being, he wrote, "If men knew how marvelous is the way.... But they don't know." He wrote it, I can't quote because I'll quote it wrong, but he had this experience: "If men knew how marvelous it is, they wouldn't hesitate for a minute."

Now they still make a distinction: the "spiritual life" and the "ordinary life."

Only, one should have what I had when I was very young: the sense of material realization in its utmost perfection, the will for perfection HERE. One should have this in order not to fling everything out of the window and just remain like that (gesture: dumb with bliss), like an idiot sitting there uselessly. It's thanks to that old discipline that everything I do is automatically done with a will for perfection. It's an old discipline. Otherwise one would be sitting there, laughing at everyone and everything: "Have my experience, you'll see what it's worth!"

It's really interesting.

Mother then returns to her note:

Have you read his question? Read it again to me.

"... We talked about the future. It seemed to me that almost all the teachers were anxious to do something so the children would become more conscious of why they are here. At this point, I said that in my opinion, telling the children about spiritual things often had the opposite result and that those words lost all their value ..."

"Spiritual things," what does he mean by spiritual things?

If the teachers spout it all like a story, of course ... That's what they often do, besides.

"Spiritual things"!... They teach history OR spiritual things, they teach science OR spiritual things. That's where the stupidity lies! In history, there is the Spirit; in science, there is the Spirit – the Truth is everywhere. And what's needed is to teach it not in an untruthful but in a true way.

They can't get that into their heads.

He adds: "I suggested it might be better to gather and listen to Mother's voice (the recordings of the Wednesday and Friday classes), for even if one doesn't understand at all, your voice would do its inner work, which we are not able to comprehend. In this regard I would like to know what is the best way to put the child in contact with you. For all the suggestions, mine included, seem to me arbitrary and worthless.... Mother, would it not be better for the teachers to concentrate exclusively on the subjects they teach, since you are there to look after spiritual life?"

Since?

"Since you are there to look after spiritual life."

I am going to answer him, "There's no such thing as 'spiritual life'!"

It's still the old idea. Still the old idea of the sage, the yogi, the sannyasin, the ... who represents spiritual life, while all others represent ordinary life – but it's not true! It's not true, not true at all.

If they still need to oppose one thing to another (because that wretched mind doesn't work when it's not given an opposition), if they need an opposition, let them take the opposition between Truth and Falsehood, it's somewhat better (I am not saying it's perfect, but it's somewhat better). But then, in all things Falsehood and Truth are there, mixed, everywhere; in the so-called "spiritual life," in the sannyasins, the swamis, those who think they represent divine life on earth and all that, there is also that mixture of Falsehood and Truth.

It would be better not to make a sharp cut.

(silence)

For the children, precisely because they are children, the best would be to inculcate in them the will to conquer the future; the will to look ahead always and move forward as rapidly as they can towards ... what will be. But not to drag along, like a millstone around their necks, the burden of a whole past weighing down on them. Only when you are already very high up in consciousness and knowledge is it good to look back in order to find the points when the future began to be outlined. When you can see the whole at a glance, when you have a very general vision, it's interesting to know that what will be realized ahead was already announced before; just as Sri Aurobindo said that "the divine life will manifest on earth because it is ALREADY buried in the depths of Matter." From this point of view it's interesting to look back or look at the very bottom (not in order to know what happened or to know what men have known – that's quite useless).

As for the child, he should be told, "There are marvels to be manifested, prepare yourself to receive them." Then, if they want something a little more concrete and easy to understand, they can be told, "Sri Aurobindo came to announce these things; when you are able to read him, you will understand." This awakens the interest and the desire to learn.

I do see the difficulty he alludes to: most people, in what we see written or in the conferences they have here, use bombastic words ...

Yes.

... devoid of any truth of personal experience and without any effect. They rather have a negative one. That's what he alludes to.

Yes. But that's why it would be better to do as I said.

Oh, but not so long ago, the majority of the teachers were still saying, "Ah, we must do this here because it's done everywhere." They have (smiling) come a little way. But they still have a long way to go.

But the main point, what is most important, is to get rid of that division. And they all have it in their minds – each and everyone of them! The division between living a spiritual life or living the ordinary life, having a spiritual consciousness or having an ordinary consciousness – there is only ONE consciousness!

In most people it's three-quarters asleep and distorted; in many it's still quite distorted. But what's necessary isn't to leap from one consciousness to the other – it is, quite simply, to open one's consciousness (gesture upward) and fill it with the vibrations of the Truth, putting it in harmony with what must be here (up there, it's from all eternity), but HERE, what must be HERE: the tomorrow of the earth. And if you weigh yourself down with a whole burden you have to drag along ... if you drag behind you all that you should let go of, you won't be able to move forward very fast.

Mind you, knowing things from the past of the earth can be very interesting and useful, but it must not be something that binds you or holds you back. If you use it as a springboard, it's all right. But ultimately, it's rather secondary.

From the individual standpoint, there was a time (besides, it was fairly widespread in people who dealt with so-called occult things), when it seemed thrilling to know one's past lives, one's past experiences; but as soon as I came here and understood what Sri Aurobindo had introduced, I found all that absolutely insignificant. It's childish curiosity. It doesn't help you in any way, it's merely either to glory in it or have fun, but it's unimportant. Some people still write to me, "Will you please tell me what my past lives were?" I answer them, "It's not interesting. What's interesting is the life you want to realize, not the errors you made in the past!"

(silence)

It would be interesting to formulate or work out a new method of teaching for the children, taking them very young. Very young, it's easy. There must be people (oh, we would need remarkable teachers) who have, first, sufficient documentation on what is known, so as to be able to answer all questions; and at the same time, at least the knowledge, if not the experience (the experience would be better) of the true intuitive intellectual attitude, and ... naturally, the capacity would be still preferable, but at any rate the knowledge that the true way to know is mental silence: an attentive silence turned towards the truer Consciousness, and the capacity to receive what comes from there. The best would be to have that capacity; in any case, they should explain that it's the true thing – give a sort of demonstration – and that it works not only with regard to what must be learned, the whole field of knowledge, but also with regard to the whole field of what must be done: the capacity to receive the exact indication of HOW to do it. As one progresses, it turns into a very clear perception of what must be done, and the precise indication of WHEN it must be done. At the very least, as soon as the children have the capacity to reflect (it begins at seven, but around fourteen or fifteen it's very clear), they should be given some first hints at the age of seven, and a complete explanation at fourteen, of how to do it and that it's the only way enabling you to be in contact with the deeper truth of things; that all the rest is a more or less clumsy mental approximation of something you can know directly.

The conclusion is that the teachers themselves should have at least a sincere beginning of discipline and experience: the point is not to pile up books and just keep repeating them. That's not the way to be a teacher – the whole earth is like that, we can just let it be like that outside if it enjoys it! As for us, we aren't propagandists, we just want to show what can be done and try to prove that it MUST be done.

When you begin with very small children, it's wonderful! With them, there's so little you have to do: you just have to BE.

Never make a mistake.

Never get angry.

Always understand.

Understand and see clearly why this movement took place, why that impulse, what the child's inner constitution is, which point needs to be strengthened and brought to the fore. That's all you have to do, and then leave them: leave them free to blossom, just give them the opportunity to see many things, touch many things, do as many things as possible. It's great fun. And above all, do not try to impose on them something you think you know.

Never scold, always understand, and, if the child is capable, explain. If he isn't capable to receive an explanation, replace the false vibration by a true one (if you are yourself capable of it). But that ... that's asking of the teachers a perfection they rarely have.

But it would be very interesting to draw up a program for the teachers, and the real program for study, starting with the very small ones – they are so plastic and anything leaves such a deep imprint on them! If they were given a few drops of truth when they are very small, they would blossom out quite naturally as their being grows.

That would be a lovely work to do.

*^**

ADDENDUM

(Mother's answer in English to the School's teachers when she was told that the new special afternoon classes at the library had chosen as a first research theme "India's spiritual History.")

No! It won't do. It is not to be done that way. You should begin with a big "BANG'!

You were trying to show the continuity of History, with Sri Aurobindo as the outcome, the culmination – it is false, entirely.

Sri Aurobindo does not belong to History; he is outside and beyond History.

Till the birth of Sri Aurobindo, religions and spiritualities were always centered on past figures, and they were showing as "the goal" the negation of life upon earth. So, you had a choice between two alternatives: either a life in this world with its round of petty pleasures and pains, joys and sufferings, threatened by hell if you were not behaving properly; or an escape into another world, heaven, nirvana, moksha [liberation]....

Between these two there is nothing much to choose, they are equally bad.

Sri Aurobindo has told us that this was a fundamental mistake which accounts for the weakness and degradation of India. Buddhism, Jainism, Illusionism were sufficient to sap all energy out of the country.

True, India is the only place in the world which is still aware that something else than matter exists. The other countries have quite forgotten it: Europe, America and elsewhere.... That is why she still has a message to preserve and deliver to the world. But at present she is splashing and floundering in the muddle.

Sri Aurobindo has shown that the truth does not lie in running away from earthly life but in remaining in it, to transform it, divinize it, so that the Divine can manifest HERE, in this PHYSICAL

WORLD.

You should tell all this at the first sitting. You should be square and frank.

Then, when this is told, strongly, squarely, and there is no doubt about it – and then only – you can go on and amuse them with the history of religions and religious or spiritual leaders.

Then – and then only – you will be able to show the seed of weakness and falsehood that they have harbored and proclaimed.

Then – and then only – you will be able to discern, from time to time, from place to place, an "intuition" that something else is possible: in the Vedas, for instance (the injunction to descend deep into the cave of the Panis); in the Tantras also ... a little light burning.

I may add that you could adopt as motto for your first project this quotation of Sri Aurobindo:

"We do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons of the future."

(Essays on the Gita)

*^**

Message from Mother to the School:

"Sri Aurobindo does not belong to the past nor to history.

"Sri Aurobindo is the Future advancing towards its realization.

"Thus we must shelter the eternal youth required for a speedy advance, in order not to become laggards on the way."

@

 

April 12, 1967

(Satprem, as usual, complains about his totally unconscious nights)

There has been for some time a deliberate will not to leave the body. In the morning, when I emerged from my night activities, I would often notice that a whole work of readjustment had to be done in the body, as though the concentration of forces had been disturbed and even undone in the night and everything had to be started up again. It was a sheer waste of time. Previously, in the evening when I stretched out on my bed, I would go limp, a complete relaxation (one should always do that), that is, surrender, and the consciousness would rise above. There was a concentration of forces, but it wouldn't last: after two or three hours, everything was taken up by the night's activities. But now, instead of that there is a will to keep the whole consciousness in the body, to concentrate and keep all the energies so that the work in the cells may go on undisturbed. And I see that the effect lasts much longer; even when I wake up (or rather when I get into external activity), I can see it goes on, it doesn't cease, and it resumes as soon as I am outwardly awake. A sort of concentration of energy, of consciousness, force, light, which starts working in the cells at night. So then there's nothing, no activity, there's a contemplative silence.

I had only one instance of activity in these last four nights, one morning between two and four, two hours I spent absolutely conscious and active with Sri Aurobindo, who had made "changes" in his activities and his organization of the subtle physical; he had made changes and wanted to show them to me, to let me know about them. And he showed it all to me for two hours. But that was the only thing, and as for the rest – everything, going to see people, going here or there, doing this or that – I have stopped it all. And things are better.

So I wonder if this decision hasn't had an effect on your sleep? That's quite possible.

*^**

Soon afterwards

I've had an amusing experience these last three days.... Y. sent me a whole treatise on LSD[31] (Mother takes a file on her table).

It seems the man who discovered it did so by accident (that's always how it happens): he took a dose without knowing it and without knowing what it was, and the effects on him were extraordinary. (He was a Swiss man, a doctor, I think, or a chemist, I don't know.[32]) And now, for the first time after years (the discovery took place years ago), for the first time he has consented to give a description of his experiences. Naturally, Y. enthused over it, she prepared a report for me and sent it to me.

As you know, I am very busy. I didn't have time to read these papers, but I also know that Y. is rather impatient (!), and these last three or four days I had been saying to myself, "I must ABSOLUTELY see that, otherwise it won't do. I've GOT to see that...." And it kept coming back. Then one morning (in the morning, at the time when I have all my experiences), while I was sitting, I suddenly felt something so heavy in my head, heavy in my chest, and ... odd. I had never felt that before. And all the sensations had become as if violent. So I closed my eyes, and ... you know, an avalanche, a stampede of forms, sounds, colors, even odors, which imposed themselves with a reality and intensity – I had never known that before, never.

I watched, then I said to myself, "But that's a good way to go insane!" And I started doing what had to be done for it to stop. But it wouldn't stop! It wanted to go on. So I thought, "It's clearly here for a reason. Since it's imposing itself in this way, it means there's a reason for me to have this experience." I watched, studied, observed. And I saw it was a magnified faculty of sensation – inordinately magnified, you understand – BECAUSE the equilibrium between all the faculties of the being had been disrupted.

The natural equilibrium which makes things balance each other, harmonize and organize spontaneously into a coherent whole with a conscious existence, was shattered – shattered to the benefit of the faculty of sensation. Naturally, that faculty of sensation was terribly multiplied (or aggravated, I might say) and even imposed itself brutally. And I saw that something had upset the equilibrium. Something that had the power to upset the equilibrium of the being – to insist on one point to the detriment of all others.

Once I had seen that, a sort of tranquillity came into me and it was over.

I didn't give it any more thought. For three days I didn't think about it again. It seemed to be some extravagance or other. Yesterday evening, I decided I would read those papers. I asked Pavitra to read them to me. The man describes his experiences – the first description is just what happened to me!

So I had the experience he had when he took the medicine! He describes it (I couldn't read everything), he describes it exactly as I felt it. So (laughing) I had the experience without swallowing the medicine! Simply because the consciousness was turned to that.[33]

But then, I understood! And those people imagine it's a way to "develop human consciousness" and open it up to "unknown horizons".... The effect (now I am absolutely sure of it) is the dislocation of the being's equilibrium.

In my case, it's very sensitive, because the equilibrium is very conscious, willed, organized, and naturally that makes a considerable difference; for them (laughing) it's "just like that," a fancy. And then, they are convinced (Y. included) that humanity can make great progress with that! It makes them "conscious of a whole realm they didn't know." But ... it creates one more falsehood in the consciousness, because the perception of a SINGLE aspect of reality to the detriment of all others is a dreadful falsehood. As I said, the impression it made on me was: "It's a good way to go insane."

To them it's accidental, in the sense that they take the medicine and think, "When I stop the medicine, naturally it won't happen again" – but that's not true! It can give the being the habit of disorder, the habit of imbalance.

There.

It was yesterday evening that Pavitra read me the complete description of the experience I had had ... without knowing what it was. I found that very amusing!

I haven't read the whole thing, only half of it, I am going to read the other half. But according to what they say there, now it's, oh, tremendously widespread!

Now, we may ask if it's necessary for mankind to fall into general imbalance in order to reach a higher equilibrium?

But it's perfectly clear that one doesn't need drugs in order to have experiences – I didn't take drugs!

That's what they think, they think it gives them a certainty that it [the other worlds] isn't imagination, or, for the more reasonable ones, that there are many more things than they know or can imagine. But you can find all this out without swallowing drugs!

@

April 13, 1967

(A note from Mother to Satprem, who is in a bad mood)

Satprem, my dear little one,

We're still friends anyway!

Tenderness

Signed: Mother
April 15, 1967

Have you read this report on LSD? What's your impression?

It's interesting. They have experiences that aren't just on the level of brute sensation. That drug does release the consciousness, all the same.

(Mother remains silent)

It releases from the whole habit of formations.

Ah, yes, that, surely.

But he himself says it's better to begin with a guide.

But do you hold the same opinion after reading the end? Because you hadn't read the whole thing.

That it disrupts the being's equilibrium is absolutely without doubt. And obviously, disrupting one equilibrium may lead you to a higher equilibrium. But there is a risk.

(silence)

It's probably part of the preparations. Only, the results may be catastrophic enough.

It could be part of a scientific discipline. But then, that's how it should be done, as a discipline, and under the supervision of those who know.

You see, he takes great care not to say anything about the harmful effects. I have personally met two people who had done the experiment and had met with dreadful effects – they decided never to touch it again in their lives.

They are very careful not to say anything about that.

It should be done as a discipline of education, with all necessary safeguard and supervision.

It's the same as all the rest: it's the method that starts from below. The true method starts from above – it's more difficult, less spectacular, and it takes more time.

From the standpoint of study and observation, it's very interesting. But it should be done scientifically, in a spirit of discipline and almost consecration, as a means of study.

Of course, just the contact with a small amount of the Force from above disturbs many people's minds; so here, I think the effect would be very widespread.

It's a risk one has to take.

If someone – someone conscious, who already knows much, has much self-mastery and control over his reactions – does it as a means of study, it can be very interesting. But giving it to a poor devil who knows nothing and is hurled into it out of curiosity can be disastrous.

(silence)

In the last part, what he calls the "cellular level" is indeed the description – ONE description – of cellular phenomena and activities on their level of consciousness, and also on the level of consciousness of the infinitesimal. He speaks of "great currents" and "cellular transformations" and all that; it's quite correct, only ...[34] It's what is going on at present, but it's precisely the consciousness brought down to the scale of the infinitesimal. And it's a reproduction of what takes place in the other dimensions. But, for instance, with all this discipline of the cells that has been going on for ... several years now, his description strikes me as the same thing SEEN THROUGH AN ILLUSION. And the illusion is caused by that very imbalance: the illusion of an absolute reality, while it's a quite relative reality. You understand, it's the difference between seeing something with a sense of relativity, with a whole immensity of other things, and seeing it all alone as an exclusive and unique reality. It's the sense of the harmony and equilibrium of the Whole that is gone. And so, it becomes "awesome": as he says, some people may find it frightening. And that's precisely because that equilibrium is missing. It's the same thing, on a very small scale, in a personality: that vision of the whole which gives the proportion of every event, the importance of every event and everything, changes completely when you have the sense of the Whole, and what appears, as he says, frightening or catastrophic or marvelous becomes again just a part of the Whole. It's the sense of equilibrium that is gone. When I read the end, it gave me one more confirmation of my experience.

It may be necessary, in certain cases, to disrupt that equilibrium so as to come into contact with something new, but that's always dangerous. And the way of consecration and surrender to the supreme Power is infinitely superior – it's slightly more difficult. It's more difficult than swallowing a drug, but infinitely superior.

We could call it "yoga within everyone's reach"! But ... it's not without danger.

And they say a considerable number of people are taking it....

(silence)

That the Force is working is without a shadow of doubt, and that this is the result of the action of the Force is also without a shadow of doubt.

There are other, very interesting examples. There's a Burmese (you may have heard of this) who has just received a "peace prize." He has written an article (he is Burmese, I don't know which language he wrote it in, but it has been published in French in a Swiss newspaper), in which he says what everybody knows, but also what everybody forgets: that if all the money wasted on preparing means of destruction were used for the progress of human well-being, it could work wonders. And he adds (I can't quote him exactly): for that to be done, men – nations and men – should stop distrusting and fearing each other, and should live in the sense of unity. And he says, if, for that, HUMAN NATURE HAS TO CHANGE, it's high time it changed and we must all work for that to happen.

I am extremely happy to hear this. Here is a man who has caught the true thing.[35]

And it's beginning to spread. In Korea, too, there is someone who says the same thing and is known by thousands of people. They are all asking for the change in [human] nature, for a "new consciousness."

(long silence)

There is something interesting in this cellular consciousness: they have a sense of sincerity which is much sharper, and what they call in English exacting, than in the vital and the mind (even the material vital and mind). There is a sort of absoluteness in the sincerity which is very remarkable, and they have a severity towards each other which is quite wonderful. It's extremely interesting. If anything, any part, any movement, tries to cheat, they catch it like this (gesture of nipping it and wringing its neck), and in such a sharp and precise way.... In all vital or mental movements, there is always a kind of (sinuous gesture) suppleness, something that tries to adapt itself – while here, oh ... it's like this (inflexible gesture). So when there is invocation, prayer, self-giving, surrender, trust, all those things become so pure – so pure, so crystalline, you know, that ... oh!

And there is a growing conviction that a perfection realized in this very Matter is a FAR MORE perfect perfection than anywhere else. That's what gives it a stability it has nowhere else.... When there is the great offering and also the joyous self-giving, joyous surrender, if something comes in with even a very slight self-interest – for instance, a suffering in some little corner (a pain or disorder), which hopes for or wishes or expects some improvement – then it gets caught like this (same gesture of nipping and wringing its neck) and it's told, "Oh, insincere one! Give yourself without condition." Then it's magnificent.

It's very interesting.

And this joy, this enthusiasm at the possibility: that being wholly sincere should be POSSIBLE; that it should be, I might almost say, allowed (these are words): "Life is such a disorder and muddle of insincerity that THAT is really what is expected of us, THAT; THAT is what's permitted, THAT is what must be realized: to be absolute in the joy of self-giving." It's a marvel, a marvel!

Also, the contact with all those beings of the Overmind, all those gods, all those Entities, all those divinities.... There is here, in the cells, a sort of ... (what can I call it?) rectitude, and, yes, sincerity and honesty that says, "Oh, what fuss they make! How all this is (Mother puffs up her cheeks) puff! puff! swollen up." It's very interesting, really very interesting. The vision of the world is quite different. It's far more honest – far more honest, far more sincere, far more straightforward. It's strange.

The consciousness expressed in transformed cells is a marvel. It justifies all those ages of misery. Reaching that was really worth the trouble. Really worth the trouble.

Especially all pretense, all exaggeration, all vanity, oh, it's all gazed at as through the ingenuous eyes of a very pure child (it's much better than that! The comparison is invidious).

(silence)

There is also a sort of internal code of regulations. When there is a pain somewhere, something that goes awry, you should see the others' attitude! ... A sternness that first says (I have to translate, and it loses all its charm), but first it begins with, "Don't you make such a fuss and to-do" (or "don't you all," it depends). Then, a pressure to surrender. And that action to make the Light circulate everywhere.... I am translating; with the translation, the mind always mixes in, unfortunately. The thing in itself doesn't think itself – it doesn't think itself, doesn't watch itself be, it's very spontaneous. Very spontaneous and, therefore, very sincere. It's pretty.

It's like an immense society, you understand.

And during the work there are ... (what should I call them?) aggregates, or very small groups of cells that have retained imprints, imprints made on them. Or sometimes here (gesture to the brain), but here it's full of a great light like that, compact; still there are corners – many dark nooks and crannies – and the memory of the circumstances, events, sensations, perceptions that built the imprint unfolds all of a sudden: it's all seen in the new Light, to be done away with. And then ... yes, as they[36] say, you "travel," you travel in an immense world, indeed; and it's not things from the past, it's ... an immense Present in which you travel.

Only, you travel consciously and at your own will, rather than through the effect of a drug. That's superior.

This morning again, the lesson was repeated with, for instance, bits of old things still clinging, reactions, small movements (inner movements): "Only one solution, one single solution: self-annulment, perfect self-giving, the surrender of everything."

Then there's the joy of Light – the beauty, the joy ... a splendor!

(silence)

It's the only remedy.

Naturally, everything is good, everything is possible,[37] but ... it seems to be a very circuitous route to come to the same place.

@

 

April 19, 1967

Yesterday evening, I got a big file from Y. on "prenatal education".... She says that during the first months of its life, the child needs to touch its mother's skin, and that this (Mother shows the photo of a naked Negress carrying her naked child on her back) is the ideal way to carry children!?

I read it yesterday, because she had so much spoken of this prenatal education, saying the child is fully educated by the age of three, so I wanted to know what she proposed. But there isn't a single thing in it, she doesn't say what should be done.

Just at the last page.

Yes, there is something there.

The child of the future

He has never met with a burst of impatience.

He has never heard an angry voice.

He has never seen anyone lamenting.

He has never heard the word "me" or "mine."

Nothing has ever pulled him out of oneness.

No one has ever told him, "Come!" or violated his physical rights.

No one has ever told him, "You must!" and violated his psychic rights.

He has always been treated as a soul in evolution.

The universe is his mother and the future his school.

A child to whom you should never say, "Come".... That makes for awkward language if you can't tell him, "Come"!

No one ever tells him, "You must."

Ah, yes, that's fine.

Where is she going to find parents to do that!

Yes, it's the parents who should be educated!

Yes, to begin with.

Just in this last page there is a hint of what that education might be, but it's the negative side, what must not be. That's all. But the positive side isn't there.

She had already spoken to me once about prenatal education, so I thought there must be some meaning to it, but here ...

Of course, you know from experience that you can give the form you conceive of; in the broad lines, you can give the character you conceive of; all that is quite correct. So to begin with, it's the mother who should be educated, not the child. Then, through a very strict control of your own reactions, you can prevent certain wrong impulses from mixing into the child's construction. But all that isn't new, it's been known for a long time since it's what I practiced when I was expecting a child. So I know it.

But once again, it's the mother who must be educated, before she has a child, that's what matters.

As for me, I thought she meant that you could already give the child ideas, aspirations, tendencies (I didn't know how that was possible), but she doesn't say anything leading to that.

There's only one thing, she says somewhere that during the first few weeks, for the child the separation is very painful, and so the physical contact is necessary – the touch, the contact with the skin to give the child the taste for life and the understanding of physical life.[38] That's possible. But nowadays doctors say, "The last thing you should do is touch your child – put it in a cradle. You should not touch it because that will deform it." It quite runs counter to her theories. Of course, she may be right to a certain extent, it's possible. But anyway, it's a very small detail, it's nothing. I expected a lot and have been somewhat disappointed.

But what this Burmese man has said is fine – that's much more interesting: this idea that it's high time human nature changed. That's good. Because in ordinary life, ordinary people tell you, "I can't help it, that's the way I am!" It's the answer you always get.

(silence)

To do things well, we would need a small "educational booklet" for the children of the future. A "preconceptional booklet" to prepare the father and mother (especially the mother, that's the most important). Then a booklet for the first three years of life: the qualities required, the attitude to be taken.... At any rate, the father and mother should first know the possibility (at least the possibility) of a child being more than a mere animal man.

Then, the conception should take place entirely outside desire. That's another very difficult condition to be fulfilled.

And the mother, throughout the gestation, should be in an atmosphere absolutely protected from all degrading influences: an ideally beautiful place, a wonderful climate where everything is harmonious, and a wholly spontaneous, free and harmonious and beautiful life sheltered from all vulgarities of life. And the mother herself should have the ideal of the new child. It should be done not as a mechanical but as a conscious, willed thing in an absolutely "creative" atmosphere, we might say.

All these are very difficult conditions to fulfill.[39]

April 22, 1967

(Mother gives Satprem a letter and newspaper cutting she has just received from America about LSD. There is also the photo of a poster inviting people on a "trip.")

They look half mad – a bit more than half!

Would you like to publish in the next Bulletin what you said about LSD?

No, I think that would be giving them far too much importance.

In America, it has become rather frightening.... There are a considerable number of people who take this drug.

I don't think it's possible to stop them – they'll go on taking it till serious accidents happen, and then ... then the government will intervene and will add another blunder to this one.

(silence)

That there is a very great Pressure, a sort of intensity of pressure, is indisputable – everywhere, just everywhere. And, naturally, the reaction of Ignorance.

Nature, basically, had arranged things, and as she had no limitation of time, they were arranged so as to last millennia and millennia and millennia – she went along at a leisurely pace, having fun on the way; she invented everything that could be invented and had fun. But things didn't move along very fast. And she has arranged them in such a way that if you exert a pressure to move faster, oh, it causes catastrophes.

On the immense mass, the mass still plunged in Ignorance, it creates a sort of excitement that tends to become unhealthy. Those who are settled in a certain equilibrium protest; I have often heard them say, "But we aren't in a hurry, things are all right as they are! Why do you want to change them so fast, that will happen in its own time!" That's the attitude of those who have found a sufficiently harmonious equilibrium in life: "Oh, what a hurry, why do you want to upset everything? Let things just carry on on their own. It will happen in its own time" – like that. All those who are in a somewhat "sattvic" poise are in some such equilibrium.

Then, among those who aspire, a small number are sincere, serious, level-headed, ready for anything: ready to go slowly, to go fast, to do much, to do little – but they are regular and quiet. And finally, a band of people like imbalance and, for them, it's an opportunity for all kinds of crazy things. But the Pressure of the Force is clearly making itself felt everywhere.

Sri Aurobindo always said that the most important, but also the most difficult thing, is to learn to keep one's BALANCE IN INTENSITY. To have the intensity of aspiration, the intensity of effort, the intensity of the march forward, while at the same time keeping one's balance – the balance of perfect peace. That's the ideal condition. But it's difficult.

(silence)

And for the cells of the body, the transition from the tranquillity of "tamasic" origin (the calm that was, in the distant past, the outcome of Inertia, and what still remains of that tendency for inertia), for this calm to stop being inert and, on the contrary, to belong to the calm of All-Powerfulness, there is a difficult transition. For the cells it's difficult.

These last few days, oh ... It's this transition that's being worked out in the details, and it's not easy.

It's like that habit of the cells of drawing the force from below (through food and so on): when you try to transform that into a constant habit of drawing the force from above, every instant, in every small detail, there's a difficult moment.... ("From above" is a manner of speaking, because if you think about it, it may also be from the depths: there's no sense of direction, high or low or anything of the sort.) But it's no longer leaning on the surface for support – for standing, walking, sitting, moving about....

There is also the pressure of external agitation (the world lives in ceaseless agitation), the external agitation: everything and everyone is rushing towards ... one really doesn't know towards what. They want to squeeze in ten times more things in a space of time than can be normally done, so it goes like this (gesture of tremor). And to have the strength to remain calm and steady in the middle of it, in that whirl ...

It's very interesting, really.

What people generally call force (in the English sense of the word strength) is something very heavy and tamasic. The true force is a movement of fantastic speed but ... in perfect calm. There is no agitation; the movement is fantastically faster, but without agitation, in such calm! ... They generally don't even feel that Force, yet it is the one that makes – that will make – the transformation possible.

The difficulty is always the transition. You see, the body acts (it is carried, so to speak: things are done without the sense of resistance or fatigue, nothing of the sort, that doesn't exist), and then, if for some reason or other (generally some influence or some thought coming from someone else), if the memory of the other method (the ordinary method, the universal method of all human beings) comes back, the body suddenly seems ... (it's very strange), it seems to become incapable of doing ANYTHING, absolutely as if it were about to faint. Then, there immediately comes the reaction, and the other movement gets the upper hand again. But that makes for a difficult time. When these relapses become impossible, there will be security. But as it is now, it's difficult.

Only, now (in the past there used to be a dangerous moment), now there is immediately in the cells that movement of adoration, which calls, "You, You, You ..." Then it's all right.

April 24, 1967

(Message given by Mother)

"For after all it is the will in the being that gives to circumstances their value, and often an unexpected value; the hue of apparent actuality is a misleading indicator. If the will in a race or civilisation is towards death, if it clings to the lassitude of decay and the laissez-faire of the moribund or even in strength insists blindly upon the propensities that lead to destruction or if it cherishes only the powers of dead Time and puts away from it the powers of the future, if it prefers life that was to life that will be, nothing, not even abundant strength and resources and intelligence, not even many calls to live and constantly offered opportunities will save it from an inevitable disintegration or collapse. But if there comes to it a strong faith in itself and a robust will to live, if it is open to the things that shall come, willing to seize on the future and what it offers and strong to compel it where it seems adverse, it can draw from adversity and defeat a force of invincible victory and rise from apparent helplessness and decay in a mighty flame of renovation to the light of a more splendid life. This is what Indian civilisation is now rearising to do as it has always done in the eternal strength of its spirit."[40]

Sri Aurobindo

@

April 27, 1967

(Regarding the "darshan" of April 24, forty-seventh anniversary of Mother's coming to Pondicherry.)

How was the 24th? Did you stay at home for the meditation?

No, I always come.

It was rather peculiar.

Here is the sequence of events: someone living here had a very bad cold some seven or eight days before the darshan. I said to myself, "I must not catch it."[41] So I did a special prayer not to catch it. But it has had consequences.

I told you about that experience, which has been growing increasingly concrete and constant, of the Vibration of Harmony (a higher harmony expressing the essential Consciousness in its aspect of love and harmony and, as it draws nearer to the manifestation, of order and organization), and of the nearly constant and general vibration of disorder, disharmony, conflict – in reality, Matter's resistance to this Action. The two vibrations are like this (Mother slips the fingers of her right hand between those of the left), as if they interpenetrated each other and a simple movement of consciousness sent you to one side or the other, or rather, as if the aspiration, the will for realization, put you into contact with the Vibration of Harmony, and the SLIGHTEST slackening made you lapse into the other. It has become constant. So then, on the 24th, right from morning there was a constant aspiration, a constant will for the triumph of the Vibration of Harmony. Then I sat down at my table as I always do, some five or ten minutes before it [the meditation] began. And instantly, with a power – a power capable of crushing an elephant – this Vibration of Harmony came down like that, in such a mass ... that the body lost the sense of its own existence altogether: it became That, it was conscious of nothing but That. And the first quarter of an hour literally flashed by in a second. Then, there were three people in the room; one of the three, or maybe all three, felt ill-at-ease (nothing to be surprised at!), and that woke me up: I saw the light (I burn a candle on my table) and I saw the time, but it wasn't me – something saw. Then there was a sort of pacifying action on the place, and then – gone again. And one second later, the call of the end![42]

It's the first time that has happened to my body. It always used to remain conscious. Sri Aurobindo, too, told me the same thing, that he never, ever had samadhi in his body. Neither did I: I always, always used to remain conscious. While that ... only Force remained, there was nothing left but Force at work: there was a concentration here, a concentration on the whole country, and a concentration on the whole earth. And it all was conscious, like that (vast gesture above the head), at work. But something massive, as powerful as an elephant – enough to crush you.

I didn't say anything to anybody, I wanted to know (because when I speak, people try to find something, while I wanted to know the spontaneous reaction). The first thing I received was a letter from G. saying that he was at the Samadhi, and just before it started, a force came down on him so strongly that he fell (he was sitting, he fell forward). So he asked me what it was. I haven't replied yet. Then there have been other people, other things.

That was unique for me, because it's the first time it has happened to me. But it has had a result: all that still clings within to that old habit of disorder and disharmony – which is the cause of, oh, everything, all mischief, all illnesses, everything – that has been ... Yesterday afternoon, I saw there was something that needed to be done away with, and it changed into a head cold. It's nothing.

It's nothing, and it has given me an opportunity to see that all the cells everywhere, even those that according to the old habit should be in discomfort because of the cold, are all in a blissful aspiration of transformation. And they truly and spontaneously feel that what's happening to them is to make things move a little faster. So they are very happy.

But things should move still faster; that is, all these things such as colds and so on should pass very quickly – come in and go out.

There are still lots of bad habits – that will pass.

And there was the consciousness – the Total Consciousness, in a light ... a light without any equivalent here, yet it was quite material. If you like, it might be like molten gold – molten and luminous. It was very thick. And it had a power – a weight, you know, like that, it was astonishing. And then, no more body, nothing anymore – nothing anymore, nothing but That. And the vision of That, like this (gesture widening out above the head), in its immediate action, its action on the country, and its action on the whole earth. An action that doesn't cause any movement, I don't know how to explain it. A sort of pressure – a pressure in which nothing is displaced.

The pressure went away after the meditation, but the effect has remained, and when, out of the old habit, I got up afterwards to take something on the table over there, I nearly fell! The body no longer knew how to walk! I had to concentrate, then it came back.

Something still remained (but not as strong as that), something remained when I went to the balcony [in the afternoon of the 24th]. At the balcony I was different from what I usually am. I don't exactly know what it was. But then, the photographs are very different; there is something in the photographs that wasn't there before. There was a special atmosphere.

(silence)

I remembered something Sri Aurobindo told me sometime during the last months; he told me, "When the supramental Force" (which he was constantly calling down, of course), "when the supramental Force is there and for as long as it is present, you get a sense of all-powerfulness – an unconditioned all-powerfulness: an ALL-powerfulness." But he said, "It goes into the background" when the pressure of the Force is removed.

@

April 29, 1967

Mother gives Satprem a pink lotus bud

A few days ago, in the afternoon, I gave Z a lotus like this one, hardly more open. Then she kept it in her hand and slept with it the whole night. The next morning, she put it in water, and ... it opened! After a whole night in her hand. It's good-natured!

Flowers are very receptive to people's vitality – to the QUALITY of the vitality. With some people, when they hold a flower it withers instantly; with others, it opens. I myself saw several times Sri Aurobindo take a half-withered flower in his hand, and it became quite fresh again – it was quite happy!

And I knew a woman in Paris, who claimed to be a disciple [of Mother's], she would always bring me flowers when she came to see me, and always, without a single exception, the flowers had withered. She would arrive and tell me, "But they were quite fresh when I bought them!" (Mother laughs) And they were absolutely finished. So in the end I told her, "It's because you take all their life into yourself!"

She had taken away their life.

*^**

Soon afterwards

Last time I told you about those two vibrations.... There is a constant effort to bring everything under the true Vibration. And the subtlety of the work is very interesting. The whole night is spent like that, too.

I feel something is really being prepared: there is a very strong pressure – but what? I don't know. People ask me, "What's going to happen on 4.5.67?"[43] I tell them, "Wait and see."

There is a very active influence from Sri Aurobindo, and then this constant work [of the two vibrations]: even during the visits, when people whom I don't know come, it goes on. It's like a sort of sifting.

*^**

(Then Mother asks for news of Satprem, who is not too well physically or otherwise.)

... I have only one remedy left for everything. But it's active!

May

May 3, 1967

(Mother gives Satprem a new booklet, brown-colored and with its title in golden letters: "God")

I have a very sweet little story: The day before yesterday, people came (yesterday morning, I saw fifty-five people in the room over there ... fifty-five! The day before, there were a little fewer, but maybe forty-five), and there was a small child, less than a year old, carried by his father. He was sleepy, leaning against his father's shoulder, like that. The father came in; when he came near me, the child saw me – he opened his eyes, a man's eyes! It wasn't a child anymore, you understand. Then he looked at me. He had a blissful smile and ... held his hand out to me! He caught hold of my hand, I gave him my hand – how happy he was! But the father wanted to do pranam [prostration], so he put him on the floor. There was beside me a large tray with some fifty of these small books (which contain all the quotations of the passages in which Sri Aurobindo spoke of God). The child looked; he took a book, looked at it, fingered it, tried to open it – without a word or anything. Naturally, the parents, who think they are very wise, the father, who thought he was a wise man, said, "We can't leave this book in the child's hands," and took it to put it back in its place – the child howled! Then C. took the book and gave it to him, and while the others did pranam (there were a dozen people), all the while he kept looking at the golden letters, feeling them....

He is certainly one of the most remarkable children [I have seen], but not the only one. All the children less than a year old who are brought to me are like that (more or less). This one is very, very conscious. Such eyes, you know – fully conscious eyes.

So sweet! And so happy, as if saying, "At last I'm seeing you!"

So here is the book.

But the crowd is beyond all imagination.

*^**

Soon afterwards

Pavitra has been filing old letters, and ... I told you, didn't I, that since the 24th there was a CONSTANT insistence, every minute, on giving full support to the Harmony and not allowing disorder, disharmony and confusion to manifest – from the physical, vital and mental points of view. Like that, like someone pounding something since the 24th (I told you the other day about the Force that came; it's been like that since then). And yesterday or the day before, Pavitra, while sorting out those letters, came across something I had written to someone in English:

"Yes, the good-will hidden in all things reveals itself everywhere to that one who carries goodwill in his consciousness.

This is a constructive way of feeling leading straight to the future."

I found this very interesting (it was written years ago, at least more than a year ago, and Pavitra told me he hadn't even found it in a letter: it was loose among the files). And it was as if to tell me, "See, you were already speaking like this before." Because the "goodwill" is the Harmony (on the psychological level, of course), it's the will for everything to go well psychologically. I found this rather interesting.

And it's good it came back; it's a form quite within everyone's grasp, which they can understand – you aren't asked extraordinary things: you are asked goodwill. When I found this again, I smiled and found it amusing, I said, "Well, I could have written the same thing about cheerfulness! I could have said, 'Be cheerful and you will see cheerfulness everywhere.'" – One can say many things (Mother rotates her hand slowly as if to present various facets), it always makes me think of a kaleidoscope with color arrangements to express something else which, as soon as it is expressed ... shrinks, becomes diminished, generalized and finally within everyone's grasp. But there is one thing: like a FORMIDABLE conflict taking place over the earth at this moment, with this wonderful divine Grace always helping, always striving for the better and exerting a pressure: "Come now, be cheerful, come now, have goodwill, come now, have, yes, have that inner Harmony of contentment, hope, faith. Do not accept the vibrations of ... decomposition – the vibrations that diminish, degrade and lead towards destruction."

It's everywhere, everywhere like that (gesture of pressure on the earth).

So, naturally, the "wise men" Sri Aurobindo speaks of ask, "What does 4.5.67 mean? What's going to happen on 4.5.67? Why..." It comes from every side into the atmosphere. So yesterday I said to someone, someone with great faith and some authority over a large number of people (they ask him all these stupid questions; he didn't tell me but said it mentally, so that I received it mentally), when I saw him in the afternoon I said to him, "So, you have been asked all these questions; well, here is what you are going to answer them very gravely (!):

      4          means Manifestation

      5          means Power

      6          means New Creation

      7          means Realization."

Now, let them do whatever they like with that!

It's to keep them quiet.[44]

And indeed, he told me this morning (I replied, "You need not tell me, I know! "), he said to me, "Oh, as for me, I'd rather wait and see." I answered, "That's the true attitude, it's better to wait and see."

In any case ... I don't know – I don't know anything and don't want to know anything, I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if nothing happened, but ... Because, for me, it has ALREADY happened. It came on the 24th, I told you, I had had all kinds of experiences (you too told me!), but never this one: the material personality, the body – absolutely dissolved. There only existed ... the Supreme Consciousness. And that, I must say, has remained. It has remained in the sense that ... I can no longer eat, I can almost no longer rest, I see really hundreds of people and things and papers and ... This poor body might say, "Phew!" – but not at all. And if the tension in others happens to cause a slight loss of balance, the body spontaneously says like this: "Oh, but You are here" – and it's all over. It's all over right away. So this is something.

We will see.

(silence)

With this 4.5.67, there are quite amusing things. Some people have the attitude of "righter of wrongs" (there are people like that) and take their own example of a wrong they have suffered which must be righted; and they say, "This will be the Mother's symbol." Another would like cameras to be sensitive enough to photograph the "presence" invisible to the human eye. That also comes, they are things that come in the atmosphere [of Mother]. Another (several others, it seems) thinks that on that day the Indian new year will begin. Others ... everyone thus imagines something, and it comes into the atmosphere. It's amusing.

And I always think of that passage in Savitri in which he says, "God shall grow up ..." Grow up in Matter, of course (and you SEE the Divinity grow up in Matter, and Matter being made more and more capable of manifesting the Divinity), and he says, "... while the wise men talk and sleep."[45] It's exactly that. And it's charming.

(silence)

Sri Aurobindo once told me that one of the first results would be that governments would come under the supramental influence (not that WE would govern! But that governments would be influenced). And these last few days I have seen three ministers and five members of parliament! And I have received an offering from the prime minister [Indira Gandhi]. So it's going well! It's quite amusing.... Some come from Delhi just for a day, only to see me and go back. So one hopes – one hopes – that they will grow a bit wiser (!)

*^**

(Then Mother starts sorting out a series of notes scribbled here and there.
She stops at this one:)

"Auroville is the shelter built for all those who want to hasten towards a future of knowledge, peace and unity."

We have a small place called "Promesse," where there will be six or eight rooms, an office which will be Auroville's first administrative office, and also a guest house with a few rooms, five or six rooms for visitors. It's quite a small place, with a pretty garden and trees, on the Madras road. It's on Auroville's outer border.

And so it's being built. There will be a lotus pond in the middle and a sort of big bowl, made of marble, I think, on which this text will be engraved (in French) to let people passing by know what Auroville is.

*^**

(Mother files her note on "goodwill" after deciding she would give it for publication in "Mother India." Satprem remarks that it's a pity for the "Bulletin.")

Oh, (laughing) I can make as many as you like for you! It comes like that – something having fun.

The way it comes is amusing, too. Someone (for instance, X, Y or Z) reads me a letter; "me," you understand, there's no me, I am absolutely absent, busy with the things I do: putting this away, doing that or this. Suddenly (gesture from above), "Say this." Ah, very well.... And then it comes. And it's amusing: it's words playing, it always makes me think of a cat playing with something, like that, with its mischievous eye, sending the ball away and catching it again, poking it with one paw and catching it again with the other; it's exactly the same movement with words. It's someone having fun. You know who the "someone" is (!)

Sometimes it has such extraordinary sense of humor, with such sharpness – he just picks up the slightly ridiculous side of the person who wrote or asked the question, then answers with imperturbable seriousness. Marvelous!

*^**

(Mother tidies up her table, on which an extraordinary mass of sundry objects is piled up. She picks up a new pen from a corner:)

So, what do you have to say?

(silence)

Do you need a pen?... I don't know what it's worth, it's brand new. People bring them to me; some five or six, others four or five.... I am inundated with things. Keep it, they are backup tools. If you need anything, don't hesitate to ask, because there's every kind of thing here – except lions! Though invisible ones, there are.

Oh, one day it was so funny: I don't remember on what occasion, I was waiting for someone – when I suddenly see a lion come from here, another lion come from there, yet another lion come from there (gesture to the four corners of the room), and my eyes were ... (how should I put it?) neither closed nor open: I was looking within, looking at the work. So I asked them, "But what do you want?" – They smiled like children! ... It was really amusing; So maybe I am unfair to them when I say there's everything here except lions!

Will I see something one day?[46]

Mon petit, there is ... (you will find this amusing), there is mental vision: when you are concentrated, you see things here (gesture around the head); not with the same kind of vision as with open eyes but you see. You see images, you see thoughts, you see ... There is a vital vision: you just have to close your eyes and you see all sorts of things. It's not always pretty. It's the kind of dreams you have. You've had dreams of that kind which weren't too pleasant. And then, for (how long?) twenty, thirty years (I started seeing when I was quite small – I didn't know what it was) but when I began to know what it was, I complained a lot that I didn't have perfectly objective visions (Mother gestures in front of her open eyes): not those one has here around the head; not those one has when one is in the vital: but those one has like this, with open eyes. And when I met quite ordinary mediums, people who saw with open eyes, I used to say, "Those people are first-rate!" When I met Sri Aurobindo, I told him. Naturally he made fun of me – he was right. So I stopped bothering about it.

Then, quite recently, when I began doing the yoga in the cells, lo and behold, they started seeing! But then ... what a conglomeration! And it kept going and coming, seeing more and still more constantly, all the time. When I opened my eyes, instead of seeing material things, I would see the physical things behind them. Then I said, "Oh, I understand! ... It was the aspiration of Ignorance, now I understand: people who don't see are blessed!" Because I always used to say, "My visions aren't concrete, they are subjective visions since they are internal; they are subjective visions, not concrete ones – I want concrete visions, I want to see the material world as it is, not in its deceptive appearance – AS IT IS." When I started seeing, I said, "No thanks! We are blessed not to see."

But that's not what I am asking for.

No, I know that.

I want to see the Light.

Yes, you want to see the Light. But you see it!

No, I don't!

Ah, mon petit, I know you do, because the very first time you told me, "I want to see," I assure you in all honesty that I said, "But why doesn't he see? He should see." Then, the first time I met Sri Aurobindo (that is, immediately afterwards), I said to him, "Satprem wants to see." He answered me, "He sees, but without knowing it. But he sees."

So I thought there may be ... You know, sometimes there's a very small gap (we have layers of consciousness interpenetrating like that, quite a few), and a gap, a lacuna, a void between two of them is enough for you not to know. That's what Théon once explained to me: "All your states of being are there in the fourth dimension, one inside the other; what you lack is a very small degree." It's nothing, you know, in your consciousness you don't notice it, but in its construction something is undeveloped, and so what's on the other side can't come through; it's lost between there and here. It's lost. So I asked him, "What can be done?" He told me, "You must develop it." And I did the experiment; he told me and I did it. And indeed I had a "nervous subdegree" (he used to call the vital the "nervous"), a nervous subdegree that wasn't developed, not sufficiently conscious. And for a year, day after day after day, a concentration to develop it, applying the consciousness, applying the consciousness ... – absolutely no result. For at least – at least six months continuously, a concentration every day; I kept an hour for that – absolutely no result.

Only, I didn't doubt. I simply thought, "How very stupid of me, I don't know how to do it...." I was living in Paris; came summer, I went on holiday. I went to some friends' who had an estate by the sea. There was a small wood, large meadows, it was pretty. And after lunch, I go and lie down on the grass ... and all of a sudden, everything – from the air, the earth, the water, from everywhere – everything came. Everything, but everything I wanted to have came like that. Suddenly. Like that, effortlessly. The result of six months of work.

But I very often feel the lack of Nature here.

You feel it.

Yes, a lot. I miss Nature a lot.

Yes. My feeling ... (because I've studied your problem a good deal – I seem as if I couldn't care less, but that's not true! I've studied your problem a great deal), my feeling is that in your higher mind, the faculty of expression is developed – highly developed – so that as soon as there is contact with the Light, it gets translated into ideas, words, concepts, like that. It doesn't have THE TIME to be visualized. It's not outwardly but all the way up that it is (how can I put it?) particularly and exceptionally active and expressive (something quite rare, because generally, in everyone, it's nebulous up above). And because it's so developed (which is a higher condition), you've missed the primary condition, that is, the vision, the shock of the Light.

So there is only one solution. To me, there is a solution: it's the sudden contact with a HIGHER light in the Supermind. Sri Aurobindo said (that's obvious, it's always like that) that there are several layers (it's not quite like layers, but never mind), several layers of supramental light. The first (the one that has manifested) you immediately translated into concepts, ideas and words. That is, something a large number of intellectuals are praying and imploring to have – you had it spontaneously, let's say. So the first contact, the dazzling contact of the Light, that you didn't have. But when a HIGHER light comes, you will have it.

I am waiting for that moment.

I don't know if your mind is critical or if ... To make myself clear, I mean whether your critical mind OR your faith, which of the two is stronger – I hope it's the faith. So to the faith (not to the critical mind, I don't speak to it), to the faith I say that since the 23rd we've been working hard. And I have asked a great deal that you may, tomorrow, be put into contact with that higher light, that you may have the dazzling vision of the Light.

If you have faith, you will have it. If the critical mind is stronger, it will be slightly delayed, maybe.

There, now I've made my confession!

It's a still unmanifested supramental light – with the first shock of contact, you will see.

You understand, I don't want to say anything that encourages the vanity of the ego, if there is any. But your contact with the Light is unusual; for you it has become something quite natural. But the truth is, it's exceptional. So you see people who don't have this realization at all but who enjoy the contact with the Light, precisely because for them it's something marvelous and new ... And so you are deprived (it's Sri Aurobindo speaking to me), deprived of the pleasures they have. But you should know that it's because you have been given a much higher realization. Only, with aspiration, with opening, with self-giving, you can contact something really new. And then you will have the shock of the new.

This is his answer.

But, for that, the mind should keep quiet.

With all these experiences of the cells, how many times all that so-called wisdom, which is in the material consciousness and comes from rubbing against life, from so-called experience – the wisdom that comes from experience – how many times it started expressing itself and Sri Aurobindo said, but mercilessly, "Shut up, you are foolish!"

It has learned its lesson. It has learned its lesson, but quite recently.

We think we're wise, we think we're intelligent ...

There.

(Mother takes Satprem's hands)

I want it to be, for you tomorrow, really a new birth – but not a new birth to an inner being: an opening to something not yet manifested in the world.

That's what you are destined for.

May 6, 1967

I made a speech to P. and A. (not "made a speech," but they told me about something and I started speaking), and P. tried to note it down. He hasn't read it to me, I don't know what he wrote; you can read it to me if you like.

But wait.... On the morning of the 4th, when I got up (it was 4:30), suddenly I seemed to be sent ... well, it was as if I were sent a ball of lightning like this (Mother strikes her head). I said, "Ah, very well!" (Mother laughs) But it shook me! It was so strong that it shook me (I was sitting over there). Then came the explanation of the "message" for 4.5.67. It came in English. He told me, "You must say this, you must say this, you must ..." and it kept being repeated till I had noted it down.

You remember the message, don't you?[47]

(Mother reads her note:)

"The Divinity mentioned by Sri Aurobindo ...

It was Sri Aurobindo speaking to me, but he said it like that!

"The Divinity mentioned by Sri Aurobindo is NOT A PERSON...

He insisted a lot on this.

"... is not a person, but a condition to be shared and lived by all those who prepare themselves for it."

So I was walking (I always walk a half-hour in the morning, saying the mantra), and he went on and on and on repeating it, like that, until this expression came. Then, when I had noted it on paper, it was over.

Afterwards, he told me to put it into French like this:

"La Divinité dont parle Sri Aurobindo n'est pas une personne, mais un état auquel participeront tous ceux qui se sont préparés à le recevoir."

Did something happen on the 4th?

That is what happened.

And a constant Presence the whole day long.

I tell you, it started like that in the morning, as if I had been stunned for the day – I no longer existed.

It's like that all the time: the Force at work, the Force at work, the Force at work ... all the time like that, constantly, nothing but the Force at work. That's what I told you the other day [the two vibrations], it's like that. But all the time, all the time. At the balcony, constantly, constantly: the Force at work, the Force at work ... Nothing remains except that.

And as there is a large crowd, it does a lot of work.

But at the balcony (and even before, in the morning when that ball of lightning came), there was a very special concentration on you. But that, I don't know, it's for you to say. If you felt something, so much the better!

I had a very pleasant, very good meditation. I felt the Power, but ...

Yes, the meditation gave the sense of something very charming. And a constant insistence on Harmony, Harmony, Harmony.... A harmonious balance: harmonious balance of nations, harmonious balance of people, harmonious balance of inner faculties, harmonious balance ... like that.

And then, resistances are clearly expressed as a disharmony.

Something extremely smiling, harmonious, smiling, harmonious....

There was a rather interesting phenomenon (it was yesterday or the day before), amusing little details: now the last member of the government of India has been converted, so to speak. All the government members (the central government – I don't mean the whole country, but the center), all the government members are ... (what should I say?) I might almost say "apprentice disciples of Sri Aurobindo," with a great goodwill to serve.

And everywhere, everywhere in the world, the signs of a CONSCIOUS goodwill awakening.

That's what Sri Aurobindo once said to me. What he saw was that the supramental Force would have enough influence on the various governments of the earth, of the nations, to permit hope for a harmony.

If that's how it is, it's something.

We'll see.

But still I didn't see the Light!

You didn't see the Light.

I didn't have a sensation of contacting ...

... something new.

I suppose I must be dense.

No ... No, as for me, I still see (it's the same thing in this body, you understand), there are still small spots of obtuseness, you know: scattered here and there, like that – very small spots of obtuseness, but sufficient to stop the movement from being integral.

For instance, what Sri Aurobindo says – that purity which consists in receiving ONLY the Influence of the Divine, so that none of the other influences can touch you ... For instance, a certain number of people have been paid to destroy me. I know it. And I see it. Well, it can't do anything, but it does give a little work – it SHOULDN'T give any work. Now and then I am obliged to hold up the shield of white Light to stop them from coming through. That shouldn't be necessary, it should be automatic. And it comes from the fact that swarms of cells still have old habits – old imprints, old habits.

That must change.

They weep a little ("weep," well ...), they whine a little; they are very conscious of their infirmity and pray a lot, but ... they still have the sensation that they would need some peace and quiet and a certain amount of time for the supreme Harmony to be able to penetrate everywhere – which is silly, but ... So they feel they are, not exactly in contradiction but somewhat constrained or weighed down by the multitude – the immensity – of the material work. You understand, this [body] can hardly eat anymore, doesn't have time to rest anymore (now even at night there's much work – I had made a resolve to remain quiet at night, but there's work and it has to be done), so the result of it all is that ... (gesture of conflict). They [the cells] are stupid, they still feel, "Oh, if I could have some nice peace and quiet, then I would change." They need a slap. That's all.

There's still some friction.

And the body is conscious enough to be convinced that it has no right to demand the change (I mean a certain change) in the Whole so as to enable its own change. That it knows very well: "Then what use am I? If I am like the others, I am useless – I MUST have the capacity to emerge into the Light, whatever the people or difficulties around me." It knows that, it's under no illusions. But still, there is some slight friction.

(silence)

Well, read me this notation by Pavitra, I'd be curious to know how it is.

"About physical suffering, Mother says:

"There are three different layers or levels of consciousness that are the origin of that suffering. They are as if juxtaposed, superimposed, but don't intermingle. You pass from one to the other in alternation, without fixed order.

It's not quite like that. It has become so rigid! Never mind, read on.

"One is a repulsion, a fear that sometimes borders on terror. The second is a perverse, unavowed attraction. The third, a sense of inevitability, of 'can't be helped,' of total helplessness.

"Almost everyone allows himself to be ensnared, but there IS one remedy – only one – to cure all those diseases (doctors are something else altogether, they are another ill, which doesn't really cure).

"This remedy – it's good for all earth life – is to attain and open up to the consciousness of Harmony – not mental or vital harmony, but the 'essential' harmony, the 'principle' of harmony.

"It's always the same remedy. It's wonderfully effective if one can apply it, but that is difficult because the human consciousness is very unstable, in constant change. That change is what gives man the sense of life and movement. It's absolutely stupid, but that's how it is!

"So, if one can make one's consciousness stable and bring those juxtaposed layers into contact with the consciousness of harmony, there are seemingly miraculous results. For instance, S. came back this morning, ten years younger; as you know, he was half-dead....

(Laughing) S. isn't you! It's someone from Calcutta.

"... They had wired me from Calcutta that he was dying. So I concentrated (gesture) like that ... to make contact little by little with this force of harmony, this principle of harmony.... And now he tells me that he feels quite fine, quite a new man.

"That's what I did....

He even told me (I saw him), he even told me the vision that was at the origin of his cure. And it was really interesting. He said he saw it almost with open eyes: everything was dark (it was in the night), the room was dark, he felt absolutely depressed, and – it was a heart attack – had no more interest in anything, no more interest in life, and felt as if he was letting himself "flow into death," just like that. Then, suddenly, he thought of me. And – he says his eyes were open – the whole room was dark, except for a sort of oval of light just in front of him. A quite dazzling oval of light, which stayed on. So he looked (he wasn't asleep), he looked to see what could be causing that light (he is materialistic enough), but then, nothing – he realized there was nothing. Then he started watching that light, and he saw, rising from the bottom (he didn't know from where, couldn't see from where) a sort of flame – two small flames – of a very, very pale light, very bright. He found it interesting, and continued to watch. And all of a sudden, he saw in the light the shape of what he calls ... I think it's Mahasaraswati (I forget which of the four, but I think it's Mahasaraswati: "perfection in work"), he saw her there, staying there. And at the same time he felt in himself, oh, a great desire to serve, to work well, to consecrate his life to the divine work, all that. And the next morning, when the doctors came they said, "Oh, everything is changed!"

Interesting. And it coincided with the time when I was doing my concentration here. (I had got the telegram from a young boy he adopted and is very fond of: he had sent a telegram to let me know that the doctors had all but condemned him.) Then he had that experience – it's a transcription, of course, according to his conception. But it's interesting.

But I certainly don't want anyone to know what I am saying here: everyone must be left to his own conception. As for him, he is convinced it's Mahasaraswati who gave him back his life (still he has much devotion for me, but that doesn't matter ...). I don't want it known. I didn't say anything to him, I smiled at him – yes, I told him, "You are receptive." And when he expressed his gratitude, I said, "We needed you to do some work." Like that, quite simply.

But I found that interesting, because ... It's generally like this: the Force is there, working, and if something comes (a call from someone, a prayer or something), all this (gesture to the forehead) generally remains absolutely still, immobile, merely letting the Force pass through, and all I sometimes do is simply (gesture of offering or presenting something upward): "Lord, here is this task, it's for You." That's all, and I leave it. But in this case, I was sitting at my table (the telegram had just come), concentrating, and I quite deliberately and consciously put him in contact with the Force. Because there was a whole world of suggestions, he expected the end: "Now it's the end." So because of that, I concentrated and put a formation.

(silence)

Is this "notation" over?

No, it goes on:

"... It's a highly superior equilibrium.

"It reminded me of Théon who used to say that the world had been put forth and reabsorbed six times; in other words, that there had been six creations and six pralayas.[48] And that now we were in the seventh creation, the last. The world would find a new, higher equilibrium, not static but progressive, which means there would be unending progress in equilibrium and harmony, without pralaya."

(April 24, 1967)

That I already told you several times.

But I don't want the story of S. to be published; I don't want to seem to be boasting about having saved his life, you understand! It might have quite unfortunate consequences for himself.... I only told Pavitra because I was still under the impact of the experience, I had just seen the man: when he walked in I hardly recognized him! That is, he struck me as a thoroughly new man. And, interestingly, he felt it, he said, "Oh, but it's as if the old man had died, I am a new man." That is to say, I found in him the energy he used to have some twenty or thirty years ago.

@

May 10, 1967

(Satprem reads Mother an old Playground talk of May 23, 1956, in which Mother suddenly asked various questions about the pronunciation of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.)

Was there something special that triggered your questions?

At one time, I was very interested in knowing about it. I tried to recall the memory of the elements that lived at that time, but ...

Yes, you say, "I wondered how they retrieved the names of the pharaohs and gods." Then you ask, "Is the Egyptians' language contemporary with the most ancient Sanskrit, or still more ancient?... Or is there another human language older than the oldest Sanskrit?" You also ask, "Is this hieroglyphic Egyptian language akin to the Chaldean line or the Aryan line?"

Yes, all that is very interesting, but I can't get an answer. There's a complete lacuna.

Had you heard sounds or what?

(After a silence) Listen, I'll give you an example. Some two years ago, I had a vision about U.'s son. She had brought him to me (he was almost one) and I had just seen him there [in the music room]. He struck me as someone I knew very well, but I didn't know who. Then, the same day in the afternoon, I had a vision. A vision of ancient Egypt, in which I was someone, the high priestess or I don't know who. (Because you don't say to yourself, "I am so and so"! The identification is total, there is no objectification, so I don't know.) I was inside a wonderful monument, immense, so high! But it was completely bare: there was nothing, except in one place where there were magnificent paintings. That's where I recognized the paintings of ancient Egypt. I was coming out of my apartments and entering a sort of large hall: there was a kind of gutter running on the ground all along the walls to collect water. And I saw the child playing in it, half-naked. I was very shocked, I said, "What! This is disgusting!" (But the feelings, ideas and so on were all translated into French in my consciousness.) The tutor came, I had him called. I scolded him. I heard sounds – well, I don't know what I said, I don't remember those sounds. I heard the sounds I uttered, I knew what they meant, but the translation was in French, and I didn't keep a memory of the sounds. I spoke to him, telling him, "What! You let this child play in that?" And he answered me (I woke up with his answer), saying (I didn't hear the first words, but to my thought it was), "Such is the will of Amenhotep." I heard "Amenhotep," I remembered it. So I knew the child was Amenhotep.[49]

Therefore, I know I spoke; I spoke in a certain language, but I don't remember. I remembered "Amenhotep" because I know the word Amenhotep in my active consciousness. But otherwise, the other sounds didn't stay. I don't have the memory of sounds.

And I know I was his mother; at that moment I found out who I was, because I know that Amenhotep is so and so's son (and also I looked up in history books). Otherwise there's no connection: a void.

I always admire those mediums (they generally are very simple people) who have the exact memory of the sound and can tell you, "This and that is what I said." That way we could have a phonetic notation. If I remembered the sounds I uttered we would have the notation, but I don't.

I remember these questions: I suddenly thought, "How interesting it would be to hear that language!" And then, a curiosity: "How did they rediscover the pronunciation? How?" Besides, all the names of ancient history we were taught when we were very small have been changed now. They said they rediscovered the sounds, or rather they claimed they did. But I don't know.

It's the same thing with ancient Babylon: I have extremely precise and perfectly objective memories, but when I speak I don't remember the sounds I utter, there is only the mental transcription.

I don't have the memory of sounds.

So how did they rediscover them? Do you know?

Through crosschecks. That's in fact what Pavitra explains to you [in the Talk]. They found stones with inscriptions in Egyptian, Greek and Coptic: the same text in those three languages. So they pieced it together.

Now, with the phonograph and all that, the sounds will be remembered, but at that time they weren't noted.

I wondered what gave rise to your questions.

That's what, the awareness that I don't have the memory of sounds. Some people have the memory of sounds, but I don't. So I'd be interested to know how it was. Otherwise I was always able (when I found something from the past doubtful or interesting or incomplete), I always found a way to recall it into the consciousness. But the sounds don't come. They come as a state of consciousness that's translated mentally, and it's translated mentally into words I know. So that's quite uninteresting.

Even now, even when I used to play music, the memory of sounds was vague and incomplete. I had the memory of the sounds I heard in the "origin of music" (gesture above), and when the material music reproduced something of those sounds, I would recognize them; but there isn't the precision, the accuracy that would enable me to reproduce exactly the sound with the voice or an instrument. It's not there, it's lacking. Whereas the memory of the eyes was ... it was astounding. When I had seen a thing ONCE, that was enough, I would never forget it.

Several other times, in visions ("visions," I mean memories:: relived memories), I spoke the language of that time, I spoke in it and heard myself speak, but the sound didn't stay. The MEANING of what I said stayed, but not the sound.

A pity.

(Mother goes into a meditation)

*^**

After the meditation, Mother tells what she has seen:

It was the symbol of the road opening up, wide open, easy – not "easy": it's dangerous in itself, but quite easy, one traveled on it easily. It was as if riding in a car (but these are images), and it went with dizzying speed, like a power – a power nothing could stop. You were there.

@

May 13, 1967

(Y., a disciple, asks for Mother's permission to bring an orangutan to make it "participate in the education.")

Some have already protested against Thoth [the disciple's first ape], if now there's an orangutan they'll reproach me! ... Because, naturally, the servants were afraid, even the neighbors, anyway it wasn't to their liking. Once Thoth walked into the bedroom, so the maid started howling; the neighbor came (luckily he has enough sense), he remained calm, just staring at Thoth, with some severity, probably. Then Thoth left without anything happening. But at other times when Thoth is upset, he tears bedsheets to pieces or whatever. Finally the neighbor came and told me the incident (that was long ago). I said to him, "You don't know the first thing about animals! You are lucky enough to have a peaceful nature, but animals are extremely sensitive to your feelings or sensation: if you are afraid, they instantly get afraid; if you are angry, they instantly get angry; and if you are gentle, kind, affable, they become gentle, kind, affable." He understood quite well, and ever since all has been well. But he isn't alone in the house.... An orangutan is a big thing, you know!

That Thoth is really remarkable. Did I tell you what happened when I first saw him? (And I asked Y. very insistently whether she had taught him, but she hadn't said anything at all to him – not taught or said anything.) He came with her, and as soon as he saw me (he was on Y.'s arm), he folded his hands! And then he gave me a speech: his mouth moved; there weren't any sounds, but his mouth was moving. And an expression ... Then I complimented him, and he immediately leapt onto my knees, curled up in my arms, and ... went off into a semitrance – stopped moving, kept still. It lasted at least five minutes. After five minutes, I thought, "He can't just stay here forever, he should go now!" – then he opened his eyes and went away! ... The receptivity is far more remarkable than in human beings. Then he looked around, looked out of the window, well, took interest in the place. Then he again looked towards me, came back on my knees, and rested against my shoulder.

Long afterwards, a year afterwards, I asked Y. if he was in the habit of greeting with folded hands; she told me, "He's never done it, he did it only with you." It's clearly a special sensitivity. You know, the sign of an absolute trust, curled up against me.

Now he is very tall, he is of mature years, he has teeth ... teeth like a leopard's, a leopard's canine teeth. But he is as gentle as a lamb. But an orangutan ...

She wants M. to bring an orangutan back from New Caledonia. Can you picture M. leading an orangutan by the hand!... That would be charming enough! (Mother laughs) ... And if he brought it to my room!

But animals really have a lot of charm. I must say we are on very good terms. The whole perversion brought into the human consciousness by mental activity isn't there (except in those that have lived with man), but those that came straight from outside have a simplicity, a sort of ingenuousness which is very charming. And an uncanny receptivity, you know, much more spontaneous than human receptivity.

Now it's different, there is a whole race of small children (I told you the other day), who are very receptive. And they are charming. Charming.

@

 

May 17, 1967

I don't know if you would be interested in this: I've read an article on the electric power of cells.[50]

Oh!

An Italian professor did some research in Mexico. He says: "Human cells can generate enough electrical energy to electrocute another human being standing eighteen feet away. Dr. Ruggiero, who feels that his experiments in human cells may result in the cure of paralysis, says that an electrical energy screen generated by human cells could be used to stop bullets. Electrical energy could make a 'human dynamo' capable not only of inflicting death, but of literally walking on air. By connecting cables to the human frame, human cells could produce energy and light sufficient to activate power needs in the average home or small manufacturing units. In experiments in his Mexico City laboratory, Dr. Ruggiero has produced a current in a goat with which the animal has lit a series of forty-watt bulbs and activated an electric door bell...."

But it's been known for a long time that cats, the skin of cats is full of electricity. It was used in the past to cure rheumatism.

He says this electricity could be used to reactivate dead or paralyzed or cancerous cells.... And he concludes, "The human body is virtually a living dry cell. The era of human electric energy is close at hand."

It's the same thing as magnetic force. It's all the same Force! Ultimately it seems to be the expression of the Power mingled with the different states (gesture in levels): the mental, the vital, or the purely material form where it would become electricity.[51]

I think that's what it is.

When I had gatherings in Paris and followed Théon's system (he didn't call them meditations but "repose": "having repose together"), at the time, during our gatherings a kind of vibration of light would flow out of my fingers (it was visible to the naked eye), but it was like electricity. And that was a concentrated vital force. It was visible as a vibration of light flowing out of my fingers.

It must be the same thing.

Ultimately, everything is the same, it's only different aspects of the same thing (same gesture in levels).

I remember, the first time I gave X [a Tantric] a flower, my fingers touched his and he almost jumped; then, when he went out, he said to someone that there was a kind of vibration or ... (I forget his words) a current, I don't know, which went through his whole body, like an electric current. He simply touched my fingers when I gave him the flower.

I think all this is the same thing, only it's their material notation of the Fact. That's all. To their intelligence it becomes much more real and concrete, but it's the same thing.

The Lord in electric vibrations! (Mother laughs)

*^**

Towards the end

The action is going double-quick.... We'll see later.

May 20, 1967

(Mother gazes at a flower she called "divine purity": lobelia longiflora.)

Can you tell me what divine purity is?... I no longer know. What can it mean?

Obeying the true Impulsion?

If we mean "divine purity in beings," I quite understand, but if we mean "the Divine's purity," I no longer understand.

Divine purity in beings means they are closed to any influence except the Divine's. (Mother counts the petals) Five petals ...

*^**

Soon afterwards

I go on seeing throngs of people whom I don't know. And with more than half, it's per-fect-ly useless: curiosity, pride, bragging. That's all. So they can say, "Oh, you know, I saw the Mother." So what!

But the small children are still very nice. Very nice. About one out of ten or twelve was born under an "unlucky star," which means the parents were in a very bad state when they conceived it. It happens. But most of the small ones are nice, really nice; and a few are remarkable.

It's the fashion to send me the kid's photo and to ask me for a name, so that I see a lot of them. And really, about one out of ten, yes, on average, is an ordinary child. But the others are very nice.

*^**

Soon afterwards

There is increasingly a sort of pressure of the Consciousness to awaken all that's semiconscious, subconscious, and to reach down to the Inconscient; it's like something going down (gesture like a drift) with a pressure. And as it goes down, as the pressure increases, there is a sort of ... (what can I call it?) a review or overall vision of the whole state of consciousness of the being and beings (gesture around). And the result is the perception of such imbecility! ... When you live, while you live something (you don't even know what you live while you live it), you feel you are in a light, that you receive a direction, follow that direction, anyway that a light of consciousness is acting; and when there is that pressure of THE Consciousness (like that, from above; we could call it the "truth-consciousness," or anything – THE consciousness), then all you did, all you thought, all you felt, all you saw, all those things which appeared to be conscious ... it all becomes so imbecilic that you really need a very ... (how should I put it?), not only a very complete faith, but a very complete surrender in order not to be crushed under the weight of that imbecility.

This whole morning I reviewed all sorts of movements of consciousness – not a recollection in thought or sensation or vision, but a recollection in the consciousness of whole periods of life, especially the life with Sri Aurobindo, because at the time, I felt I was relying on the divine Consciousness and acting under its pressure (I already felt that); so it's interesting that it should now look like an abyss of imbecility. And then, you wonder what Sri Aurobindo – he who was conscious – what he must have been feeling? How he must have been seeing all that around him, that swarm of people bustling and acting and stirring around him ... (Mother takes her head in her hands). You say to yourself that if he had the consciousness which is now here (he surely had it! He had that consciousness), well, it was a marvel of patience. That's my conclusion.

You see, an undeniable goodwill, a will to do the right thing,[52] an attitude that seemed as good as it could be, and already the sense of a surrender and an effort to express not at all personal movements, but the guiding Will – all that, that whole attitude (which at the time seemed quite good), seen with today's consciousness! ... (Mother takes her head in her hands) So it's easy to think that ...

Sri Aurobindo surely had that consciousness, since he spoke about it – he had it, and he saw us living like that around him ... what patience! What a marvel of patience.

The goodwill was obvious, but there's especially a sense of imbecility, something so blind in the perception.

(silence)

With every new descent, there was in this way a period in which things were seen from a certain standpoint: there was the standpoint of feelings, the standpoint of thoughts, and so on – a CERTAIN standpoint. But this time round, it's the standpoint of consciousness, and then ... (swarming gesture).

And certainly, between the state of consciousness now trying to manifest and the higher state of consciousness that will manifest after some time, there will again be the same difference.

These experiences always start from the small circle of the individual as being the best known and most easily observable point, then they begin spreading, finally extending all over the earth. It's been like that every time. But then, the sense, the perception that the difference between what is and what's trying to be is so huge ... It's only because the surrender is there (and has always been there! It wasn't denied at that time, far from it! It was there), that alone helps to go through.

The perception of that immense Wisdom, you know, total, carrying everything – in every detail, with all the conscious details – carrying everything towards the future perfection (a growing perfection, always a future perfection): that's what saves you from being crushed, otherwise ... otherwise the contrast is a bit crushing.

These experiences always come after a great call in the cells, which feel their infirmity, their incapacity, their state which we might almost call a state of ignominy in comparison with the splendor we aspire for; the perception of the contradiction between what these cells are and what they aspire to be in order to be an expression of the Divine ... It's always following that that these experiences come, as if to say, to show the road that has been traveled. But at this rate, between the road traveled and what remains to be traveled ... it will take a great deal of time yet.

(silence)

We must be very patient.

May 24, 1967

Yesterday, someone wrote to me and asked:

"In the end, what is the Divine?"

I answered.

I told him that I gave one answer to help him, but that a hundred could be given, each as good as any other:

"The Divine can be lived, but not defined....

Here, I added, "But anyway, since you ask me the question, I will answer you."

"The Divine is an absolute of perfection, eternal source of all that exists, whom we grow progressively conscious of, while being Him from all eternity."

Once, Amrita also told me that for him, the Divine was something simply unthinkable. So I answered him, "No! That way, it won't help you. Just think that the Divine is everything (to the fullest possible extent, of course), everything we want to become in our highest, most enlightened aspiration. All that we want to become – that's what the Divine is." He was so happy! He told me, "Oh, that way it becomes easy!"

But when you look at it – when you emerge from mental activity and look at the experience you have, you wonder, "How to say it? How to explain it?..." The nearest, most accessible, is this: into that "something" we aspire to become, we instinctively, spontaneously put everything we want to exist, all the most marvelous things we can imagine, all the objects of an intense (and ignorant) aspiration, all of that. And with all that, you draw near "something" and ... Ultimately, you don't get the contact through thought; you get the contact through something IDENTICAL in your being, which is awakened through the intensity of your aspiration. So, as soon as you have got for yourself, be it for one second, this contact – this fusion – there's no more need to explain: it's something that imposes itself in an absolute way, outside and beyond all explanation.

But to go there, everyone puts into it all that makes it easier to lead him there.

And when you have the experience, at the time of this fusion, this junction, to the consciousness it's obvious that the identical alone can know the identical, and that, therefore, it's proof that That is here (Mother points to the heart center). It's a proof that That is here. And through the effort of aspiration, It awakens.

When I was given the question, it was just as if that person were saying to me, "Yes, yes, that's all very fine, but after all, what IS the Divine!" So I read his letter, and there was that total silence of everything, and a sort of SINGLE gaze – a single gaze encompassing everything – which wanted to see ... I remained like that, gazing, until the words came. Then I wrote: "Here is ONE answer" – there could be a hundred ... which would be just as good.

And at the same time, when there was that gaze at the "something" which had to be defined, there was a great silence everywhere and a great aspiration (gesture like a rising flame), and all the forms that that aspiration has taken. It was very interesting.... The story of the aspiration of the earth ... towards the marvelous Unknown we want to become.

And everyone – everyone who was destined to effect the junction – thinks in his simplicity that the bridge he has walked is the only one. The result: religions, philosophies, dogmas, creeds – battle.

Seen as a whole, it's very interesting, very charming, with a Smile that looks. Oh, that Smile ... looking on. It seems to be saying, that Smile, "How complicated you make it! While it could be so simple."

To put it in a literary way, we could say, "So much complication for something so simple: being what one is."

(silence)

And what do YOU think the Divine is?

I don't know, I never ask myself that sort of question.

Neither do I! I've never asked myself that question. Because, spontaneously, as soon as there was a need to know, there was an answer. And not an answer with words that can be argued ... like that, a something: a vibration. It's something almost constant now.

Naturally, men make it difficult (I think they must love difficulties, because ...), with everything, the SMALLEST thing, there's always a world of difficulties. So you spend your time saying, "Quiet, quiet, quiet – be quiet." Even the body lives in difficulties (it too seems to love them!), but all of a sudden the cells chant their OM ... spontaneously. Then there is a sort of childlike joy in all those cells, they say (in a tone of wonder), "Oh, really, we can do that? We are allowed to do that?!" It's touching.

And the result is immediate: that great, peaceful, all-powerful Vibration.

But as for me, if I weren't under the constant pressure of all the wills around, I would say, "But why do you want to know what the Divine is? What does it matter to you! – Just become the Divine!" But they don't know a joke when they see one.

"I want to know what the Divine is."

"But no! It's perfectly useless."

"Oh?" they answer with a shocked look, "Oh, it's not interesting?!"

"You don't need to know what the Divine is: you must BECOME it."

For them, I mean the vast intellectual majority, doing or being something without knowing what it is is inconceivable.

We could also say this, if we liked joking: "You are the most divine when you don't know you are."

*^**

(Soon afterwards, Mother reads a letter by Sri Aurobindo, dated January 25, 1935, on Russian Communism and spirituality.)

"I know it is the Russian explanation of the recent trend to spirituality and mysticism that it is a phenomenon of capitalist society in its decadence. But to read an economic cause, conscious or unconscious, into all phenomena of man's history is part of the Bolshevik gospel born of the fallacy of Karl Marx. Man's nature is not so simple and one-chorded as all that – it has many lines and each line produces a need of his life. The spiritual or mystic line is one of them and man tries to satisfy it in various ways, by superstitions of all kinds, by ignorant religionism, by spiritism, demonism and what not, in his more enlightened parts by spiritual philosophy, the higher occultism and the rest, at his highest by the union with the All, the Eternal or the Divine. The tendency towards the search of spirituality began in Europe with a recoil from the nineteenth century's scientific materialism, a dissatisfaction with the pretended all-sufficiency of the reason and the intellect and a feeling out for something deeper. That was a pre-war phenomenon, and began when there was no menace of Communism and the capitalistic world was at its height of insolent success and triumph, and it came rather as a revolt against the materialistic bourgeois life and its ideals, not as an attempt to serve or sanctify it. It has been at once served and opposed by the post-war disillusionment – opposed because the post-war world has fallen back either on cynicism and the life of the senses or on movements like Fascism and Communism; served because with the deeper minds the dissatisfaction with the ideals of the past or the present, with all mental or vital or material solutions of the problem of life has increased and only the spiritual path is left. It is true that the European mind having little light on these things dallies with vital will-o-the-wisps like spiritism or theosophy or falls back upon the old religionism; but the deeper minds of which I speak either pass by them or pass through them in search of a greater Light. I have had contact with many and the above tendencies are very clear. They come from all countries and it was only a minority who hailed from England or America. Russia is different – unlike the others it has lingered in mediaeval religionism and not passed through any period of revolt – so when the revolt came it was naturally anti-religious and atheistic. It is only when this phase is exhausted that Russian mysticism can revive and take not a narrow religious but the spiritual direction. It is true that mysticism d revere, turned upside down, has made Bolshevism and its endeavour a creed rather than a political theme and a search for the paradisal secret millennium on earth rather than the building of a purely social structure. But for the most part Russia is trying to do on the communistic basis all that nineteenth-century idealism hoped to get at – and failed – in the midst of or against an industrial competitive environment. Whether it will really succeed any better is for the future to decide – for at present it only keeps what it has got by a tension and violent control which is not over."

Sri Aurobindo
January 25, 1935

What marvelous clarity of vision! And so total, isn't it, forgetting nothing.

Every word is full of meaning.

Things are moving fast at present. He saw clearly: things are moving on as he said, now they are going at a gallop.

And the Americans! ... They claim they want to launch a "disarmament campaign," but they themselves don't feel the possibility of it: they are full of fear and distrust; so their "solution" is to sell arms to everyone! (Mother laughs) With the idea, first, of making money, and then of making countries "equal"!

@

 

May 26, 1967

(Regarding the New Year message: "Men, countries, continents! The choice is imperative: Truth or the abyss." A disciple asks Mother, "What is the meaning of 'abyss' in your New Year Message?" Mother's reply, in English:)

Right now there is a great tension. They have all taken positions as if to start war. It is the blind passion that men put into their international relations.

At the base of it all there is fear, general distrust, and what they believe to be their "interests" (money, business) – a combination of these three things. When these three lowest passions of humanity are brought into play, that is what I call "the abyss."

When someone has decided to consecrate his life to the seeking for the Divine, if he is sincere, that is to say, if the resolution is sincere and carried out sincerely, there is absolutely nothing to fear, because all that happens or will happen to him will lead him by the shortest way to this realisation.

That is the response of the Grace. People believe that the Grace means making everything smooth for all your life. It is not true.

The Grace works for the realisation of your aspiration and everything is arranged to gain the most prompt, the quickest realisation – so there is nothing to fear.

Fear comes with insincerity. If you want a comfortable life, agreeable circumstances, etc., you are putting conditions and restrictions, and then you can fear.

But it has no business in the sadhana!

@

May 27, 1967

Do you remember S.B.? He was here.... He was a man with many disciples, he had yogic powers. He came here and was thunderstruck, as it were, when he saw Sri Aurobindo: he fainted. He said afterwards it was because of the power of the revelation. He stayed here for years and years; he lived there, downstairs. Then he went away; you see, he used to receive all his disciples here, so I said, "No, that won't do, it's better to have a room elsewhere." Then he left. And for years and years he wasn't heard of again. He has been making contact again lately (I have seen him relatively often at night), and he's made contact again with such ardor, such enthusiasm! He has just sent this card from Riga, in Latvia – he intended to go to Russia (Mother hands the card to Satprem):

"Greetings. I remember your marvel. I spoke of our divine Master and of your sweetness in a great conference here. Bless me. Yours ever."

He was in Russia.... It has come back to him all at once: a great enthusiasm.

He lived for a time in that house at the corner, which has become the "Auroville Office," and the roof of the house is uneven (one part is on a certain level, and without warning, the level suddenly drops half a story lower). Once while he was walking on the roof in meditation, he fell; it seems he had just eaten his meal, and he had a blockage. And he claimed he cured himself with an hour of concentration. It may be....

He was very childlike, very enthusiastic, and very boastful at the same time, but with a fervor which was rather fine. A sort of very young enthusiasm.... Now he must be rather old. And I always see him in the middle of a large crowd. He knows how to command attention. He isn't quite indifferent. But I didn't work to send him away from here: he had quarreled with someone or other, then started openly receiving a large number of disciples; I said, "It would be better if you saw your disciples elsewhere." Then he left.

He writes a lot of books in Tamil.

It's the second card I've got from him. In the first he wrote he was for the second time going round the world, especially round Europe, and that he had been invited to Russia. And he has written a whole book (in Tamil) on Sri Aurobindo's yoga.

*^**

After a silence

D. has gone to the Tibetan zones (not in Tibet, that's not possible, but up there, where the Tibetan refugees live), with some sort of hope of finding a guru. But I saw her yesterday, and she has changed a lot. Yesterday she told me (she had read something by me, I don't know where, because she generally doesn't read), she told me that one day, "Oh, I had a revelation, I suddenly understood that I didn't understand anything of what you say! Because we don't give words the same meaning." I said it was true (!) "And now I've understood, I've understood how it is when we don't understand!" ... And she was troubled, because of course, everyone tells her, "Why do you go there in search of what you have here?" I answered her, "What does it matter to you! It's quite simple, just tell them the truth – that you aren't ready for staying here." She said, "Yes, that's what I am trying to tell them." (She is trying to tell them in a roundabout way.)

But she has a great sincerity in her aspiration....

She's left. And this morning, before leaving, she sent me the flower "Light without Obscurity."[53]

*^**

Soon afterwards, Mother goes into a long meditation

I saw a series of roses, this big (gesture of about ten inches), coming one after the other – magnificent! All kinds of colors. They certainly had a significance: one would arrive, come forward, as if giving a little bow, and go away, and then another arrived – roses this big.... Because I had complained just before![54] It was just in front of you (gesture on the heart level), magnificent roses of a perfect shape, and all kinds of colors.

Basically, it [meditating] is my lazy moment. When I stay like that, it immediately becomes very pleasant, and there's always something pretty to be seen. It's my lazy moment.

It feels nice like that.

Oh, yes!

I just stop everything, and ... To put it into words, it's like saying, "Your presence, Lord, let there be nothing left but That," and it's over, everything stops. Then, at times I don't see anything, at other times ... But tell me, it's ironic, I always see something when you're here! ... At times I don't see anything at all, simply like this (blissful gesture). At other times I can hear the sounds around, but that's when the concentration is less deep: then you can hear. But that was very pretty! A very pretty spectacle in front of me! And they came like ... You know, like when they show slides: it comes from one side, pop! show itself, and then goes away; then from the other side, another one comes, pop! and goes away. And it remained there, in front of you.

We have work to do.

As for me, I am mentally tired.

You're tired.... But the mind shouldn't stir! It must stay put, like that. Oh, when the mind works it's horrible.

But there's a mental work that has to be done.

I greatly admire you!

So do l! And I complain.

But when I am like this, at the height of my laziness, do you find it restful, at least?

Oh, yes, certainly.

(Mother puts away the papers she had taken out and prepares to resume the meditation)

No, no! I'm quite rested.

Too bad, you were giving me my chance!

*^**

(Then Satprem reads out a text from the Agenda, which he proposes to publish in the next Bulletin with the omission of a few passages.)

That's the very passage I find the most interesting!

It doesn't matter. Those who find it shocking will think I've grown soft in the head.

I can no longer read anything – when I start listening to something read out to me, I find it a bore! Words, words, words....

(Satprem protests)

As it is, no one any longer understands anything of what I write. A few people have timidly ventured to tell me so.

Never mind, prepare a copy of the whole thing and I'll show it to the very wise Pavitra. If he says it can pass ... (Mother laughs) then ...

There will always be people who don't understand.

Most of them.

So what!

If ONE understands, it's enough.

May 30, 1967

(Mother gives Satprem a soup packet from Israel)

Poor Israel ...

Oh, it's disgusting! There's another disgusting story.[55]

Oh, yes!... That business is trumped up from start to finish, and India – India...

Bah!

India goes and gives her support to that fellow. It's sad. That's a wicked thing to do.

I've got a letter from someone (not from Israel) who writes to me that there is such a spirit of fraternity and collaboration in the country, so strong, the like of which he has never seen anywhere else.

Humanity is preparing to do very nasty things, it seems.

Yes. But that India, which ought to be the mouthpiece of something a little truer, should ... It's painful, really.

Oh, that's because the natural tendency here is against the Muslims, so those who think they are superior say one should be above one's dislikes: "Let's be with them." (Mother laughs) There's the logic of it.

(Soon afterwards, regarding Sri Aurobindo's letter on Communism, which Mother intended to publish in the next Bulletin:)

Oh, mon petit, I've received a clipping from the Figaro. In early April, the cultural attaché to the Indian Embassy in Paris said that the Soviet government had expressed a desire to "participate in the construction of Auroville." I haven't yet got confirmation of it, but it's there in the Figaro. In that case, if it's correct, it may not be the right time to publish Karl Marx's "fallacy"! (Mother laughs) It might be better to wait a little! ... I hesitated a lot to publish it because it's a letter, and Sri Aurobindo always told me that in his letters he had expressed himself very frankly from the political and social viewpoint, but that he didn't want them to be published. We are more flexible now; but it may be that that newspaper clipping has come just to tell me it would be wiser to wait a little.

Yes, there's no need to upset them.

No, because it's no more than one side of the question. Sri Aurobindo always described all the sides, and if they are put together, it becomes something that far exceeds all opinions people have. So to publish just one part without its counterpart isn't quite right.

A time may come when we'll have to tell Sri Aurobindo's vision and how the world has evolved since he spoke about it (that would be very interesting). For that we'd have to find again everything he said on the different subjects.... On the religious level, I have been thinking about it for a long time. Those are the two things that can't be touched without instantly arousing human passions, and there, people's vision is quite narrow, limited, so that they no longer understand anything. In ten years, perhaps.... It could be, things are going fast. In ten years, maybe we'll be able to see and say a little something. In any case, it's better to put this letter aside. (laughing) It's not the time to fling stones at them!

*^**

Mother goes into a long meditation

This morning at 4:30, I was discussing something with you! ... On the best way to express something. And I woke up uttering a sentence (I've forgotten now). I was saying to you, "It's better to put it this way." At 4:30!

I never used to hear words previously, never, it's absolutely new. It's been going on for a few weeks. And I always wake up like that, uttering words.... I never used to do that before! ... I don't know why.

It was the "best way" to say ... what? I don't know.

The effect of the heat!

@

 

June

June 3, 1967

A. writes that he received in Paris people who asked for information on Auroville. He answered with a letter, and when he was about to send it, he thought, "Maybe I'd better show it to Mother, after all." He sent his letter – and well he did! Those people asked him the conditions to be admitted to Auroville; he replies, "Oh, that hasn't been decided yet!" (Mother laughs) So I've prepared a little note; because he just says, "Oh, nothing has been decided, we'll see," as though there weren't any Aurovilians yet. I don't know if he did it purposely to discourage people; at any rate, it's not good to write like that. At least three or four hundred Aurovilians have been accepted and I signed them in. So one can't answer like that.... I know what he based himself on: I had told him that, naturally, from the material point of view, the CONDITIONS OF LIFE in Auroville were not arbitrarily fixed in advance.

Here is what I wrote:

"From the psychological point of view, the essential conditions are:

1) Being convinced of the essential human unity and having the will to collaborate in the advent of this unity.

2) The will to collaborate in all that furthers future realizations."

That's all, it's not complicated.

Then, from the material point of view:

"The material conditions will be worked out as the realization progresses."

It's not too complicated.

Of course, we'll add a note saying that for the time being, after they have read the brochures on "Why Auroville?" and have adhered to that, people will have to send their photograph along with their request, and I am the one who will accept them or not. As long as the number remains limited, a few hundreds, it's very easy to see their photos and thus have a minimum guarantee that tricksters won't come in. Because it's very easy to say, "Oh, I am thoroughly convinced and eager to participate," but that's just words.... I can't see each and every one, but even with their photograph one can see clearly enough whether they are sincere or not.

*^**

Soon afterwards

Oh, I have something much more interesting.... K. is giving a class, of sociology, I think, but based on what Sri Aurobindo writes. And then, you know that at the School I have AT LAST got them to agree that examinations should not be indispensable; that if a student shows interest and attention during the classes, he can move up to the next year without needing a certificate or having to take exams.[56] I have obtained that at last, after so many years! So the students have been told, "It's up to you; if you want to take exams, there are exams and you can take them; but if you don't feel the need for exams, you need not take them and can just as well move up to the next year." And K., who has a simple heart, thought all those boys and girls had understood Sri Aurobindo's teaching and had a sound contempt for exams and the old ways. So he expected his children to tell him, "Oh, then we won't take exams...." And each and every one of them, with a single exception, said they preferred to take the exams so as to get a certificate....

He was very disappointed. He said to me, "How is it that after all this ... Well, I thought they had understood. And after having studied Sri Aurobindo, here they are following the old ideas!" Then he said, "I have found in a letter of Sri Aurobindo's a passage that perhaps provides an explanation, and I would like to ask you if I should take heed." I told him he should.

Here is the letter, I find it very good:

"It may be said generally that to be overanxious to pull people, especially very young people, into the sadhana is not wise. The sadhak who comes to this Yoga must have a real call, and even with the real call the way is often difficult enough. But when one pulls people in in a spirit of enthusiastic propagandism, the danger is of lighting an imitative and unreal fire, not the true Agni, or else a short-lived fire which cannot last and is submerged by the uprush of the vital waves. This is especially so with young people who are plastic and easily caught hold of by ideas and communicated feelings not their own – afterwards the vital rises with its unsatisfied demands and they are swung between two contrary forces or rapidly yield to the strong pull of the ordinary life and action and satisfaction of desire which is the natural bent of adolescence. Or else the unfit adhar [vessel] tends to suffer under the stress of a call for which it was not ready, or at least not yet ready. When one has the real thing in oneself, one goes through and finally takes the full way of sadhana, but it is only a minority that does so. It is better to receive only people who come of themselves and of these only those in whom the call is genuinely their own and persistent."

Sri Aurobindo
May 6, 1935

*^**

Later

I saw Y. on the 31st. She stayed for about an hour and told me of her hopes: she sees the possibility of a sort of world television (I don't know how that would be arranged), with a telephone and a central office where answers to all possible questions would be collected – each question answered by someone eminent or qualified. The result would be the organization of a universal – well, a world education that would really be an education for all countries, in which the knowledge and best qualities of every country in the artistic, literary and scientific fields would be gathered in a kind of transmitting center, and all you would have to do would be to get into communication with it. So then, instead of having more or less incapable teachers to teach what they know also more or less, you would have the answer to every question, the most competent and best answer. Thus there would really be all over the earth an education that would be the best possible, from which everyone would receive only what he wants; you wouldn't have to attend classes, a number of useless classes, in order to catch the little you want to know: you would have it just by getting into communication with the center; you would ask for such and such a number and would get your answer.

If it could be realized, it would be very good. It means that the most beautiful works of art, the most beautiful teachings, all the best of what humanity is GOING to produce, would be collected and within the reach of all those who had a television. There would be pictures along with the explanation, or a text or speech. A kind of imposing central building where everything would be gathered. I found it rather attractive. I told her that we would have that in Auroville (not the central office: just a receiving set). She said that instead of teachers who teach poorly what they know, there would be the best teaching for each subject.... (I didn't ask her WHO would select those people – that remains the somewhat delicate point.) But I found the idea very attractive. She said things are moving in that direction.

Yes, but it's still a kind of encyclopedia....

Yes.

It's very interesting, but the best education is the one that could put you in contact with the region of knowledge where you find all answers.

Ah, that would be very good.

Yes, that would be true education. It's not finding answers in a superlibrary, but catching hold of something up above – and you have all answers.

But that's more difficult, isn't it?

Maybe not.... When I was a kid, I was quite conscious of being able to PULL something down from above, and that the answer was there, above. Children just don't know, after all. If they were told, if they were shown and made to understand that knowledge is there, that you can catch hold of it ...

Yes.

On the contrary, they're taught to rely on books, precisely on encyclopedias. I had to come here to understand what it meant, why I used to "pull" from above. Which means it wasn't at all encouraged when I was a child.

But Z has done experiments like that. He told me the story of a girl at the School who had no imagination: when she was asked a question she could only answer what she had learned, and when she was given a problem she was never able to solve it. She was like that, blocked above. And he taught her to try and make contact precisely with that intuitive zone, by keeping quiet, falling silent and listening. And it seems that after some time, she had extraordinary results in that way, by falling silent and listening – answers which were really remarkable and certainly came from the region of intuition. And that's a practical fact, he did it at the School.

Well, that's what should be done, it's much more important.

Far more important than a machine.

I listened to what she said and simply found it was better than recruiting incompetent teachers.

But there still remained a doubt (which I didn't discuss) on the quality of the CHOICE of answers. Whereas if you go there, to the Origin, then you're sure!

That's what they are now trying to do here in their new classes: teaching them to make contact with the intuitive zone.

It's certainly quite superior.

@

June 7, 1967

I have something to add to what we said the other day about the Divine.[57] Someone asks me, "And whatever is God?" It's about a text from Sri Aurobindo. Here it is:

"Love leads us from the suffering of division into the bliss of perfect union, but without losing that joy of the act of union which is the soul's greatest discovery and for which the life of the cosmos is a long preparation. Therefore to approach God by love is to prepare oneself for the greatest possible spiritual fulfillment."

(The Synthesis of Yoga,
XXI.III.523)

It's about the last sentence; someone has asked me, "What is God?" So I've replied (taking the word "God"):

"It is the name man has given to all that exceeds and dominates him, all that he cannot know but is subject to."

Instead of saying "to all that exceeds him," we could say, "to THAT WHICH exceeds him," because from the intellectual standpoint, "all that" is debatable. I mean there is a "something" – an indefinable and inexplicable something – and man has always felt dominated by that something. It is beyond all possible understanding and dominates him. And then, religions gave it a name; man has called it "God"; the French call it Dieu, the English, God, in another language it's called differently, but anyway it's the same.

I am intentionally not giving any definition. Because my lifelong feeling has been that it's a mere word, and a word behind which people put a lot of very undesirable things.... It's that idea of a god who claims to be "the one and only," as they say: "God is the one and only." But they feel it and say it in the way Anatole France put it (I think it was in The Revolt of Angels): that God who wants to be the one and only and ALL ALONE. That was what had made me a complete atheist, if I may say so, when I was a child; I refused to accept a being, WHOEVER HE WAS, who proclaimed himself to be the one and only and almighty. Even if he were indeed the one and only and almighty (laughing), he should have no right to proclaim it! That's how it was in my mind. I could make an hour-long speech on this, to show how in every religion they tackled the problem.

At any rate, I have given what I find is the most objective definition. And as in the other day's "What is the Divine?", I have tried to give a feeling of the Thing; here I wanted to fight against the use of the word which, to me, is hollow, but dangerously so.

I remember a very powerful line in "Savitri" which says it all wonderfully in a few words. He says, "The bodiless Namelessness that saw God BORN...."[58]

(silence)

I told you the other day that I'd met D. before she left [in search of a Tibetan guru] and we had talked together. I told her about Sri Aurobindo and his teaching. But she has been converted! Yes, really. She again wrote me a letter, which I've just got today (it's the second letter she has written me from up there), in which she says she has met that famous Tibetan sage with whom she wanted to discuss.... He seems to have made fun of her – she doesn't say so, but she says he "constantly puts you face to face with your mental formations" (he must have shown her that she was feeding on words). And then she adds, "But as for me, I feel, I do feel your love always with me, and everything is fine." – Never! It's the first time in her life she has told me this.

So it gave me the idea of writing down what I told her about Sri Aurobindo's teaching:

"In order to understand and follow Sri Aurobindo's teaching, one must learn to rise above all possibility of contradiction."

That is, to reach the region where contradictions no longer exist. That's true. You understand, if you take quotations from Sri Aurobindo on a particular subject, you can put side by side things that are the very opposite of each other: he says one thing, then its opposite, then again something different. So to understand him and not keep saying to yourself, "But why does he constantly say the opposite of what he said just before!", you must learn to rise up above – up above, it's quite fine (!) There, it's ... very interesting. Once you are there, it's very interesting.

And from the practical point of view, the remarkable thing is that in that region, which is beyond all possible contradictions, there lies the source of the true Power.

But I mean that we could find in Sri Aurobindo a sentence saying, for instance, that "God" is a word empty of meaning into which man puts whatever he likes, and then a description similar to the one I gave of the Divine. And throughout all his writings, it's like that with everything.

(silence)

Then I would like to publish this quotation from Sri Aurobindo:

"The traditions of the past are very great in their own place, in the past, but I do not see why we should merely repeat them and not go farther. In the spiritual development of the consciousness upon earth the great past ought to be followed by a greater future."

January 14, 1932

*^**

Soon afterwards

Did your mother intend to come by plane?

By sea.

Mon petit, ships can no longer sail past Port Said: the Suez Canal is closed.

What's going to happen?

(After a long silence) We are just like this (gesture hanging in balance between two chasms).

Yesterday, I would have answered very strongly.... Let me tell you what happened. We had here an American, a very nice boy who, before he came here, was a paratroop instructor in Israel's army. I don't think he is an Israeli, I think he's American; I am sure his nationality is American, I saw his passport. But he was a paratroop instructor in Israel's army. When those two started quarreling, he wrote me a letter in which he explained that, and also paid great compliments to the Israeli nation, saying they had achieved a really remarkable sense of brotherhood and cooperation. That was his impression of the country. And he said that if war broke out, he would like to go back there to help them as much as he could. So as soon as they started bombing each other, he decided to go. He left yesterday evening. And I saw him in the afternoon, before he left.

He is a sincere man. While he was here, Sri Aurobindo ... (how can I explain?), the impression is that Sri Aurobindo "concretizes" (he is always here, but at certain times he seems to concretize, as though ... [Mother makes a gesture of gathering or condensing]. That's really the impression: he concretizes and starts speaking). So then, first Sri Aurobindo said to him (but there was a whole WORLD in it), "My blessings are with you."

The man was very touched (I didn't tell him it was Sri Aurobindo; I spoke, you understand, it was my mouth that spoke then, but it was Sri Aurobindo who spoke). Then I concentrated, and Sri Aurobindo said with great force:

"All the countries live in falsehood. If only one country stood courageously for truth, the world might be saved."

(silence)

Towards the end of the day, when I was alone, I began asking Sri Aurobindo precisely what he meant.... Naturally, his hope is that the country that stood for Truth would be India – for the moment, she is very far from it. But ... And since the subject was before me, I asked him how he saw the terrestrial possibility in a harmonious future.

Then he said to me – it was very simple, very clear: "A federation of all nations and countries without exception, all continents. A single federation: the federation of all human nations of the earth." And a group – a governing group – consisting of one representative from each country, the most able man from the standpoint of political and economic organization. And nothing of the proportional question that would give large countries many representatives and small ones only one – one representative for every country. Because every country represents one aspect of the problem. And they would sit in rotation.

It was a vast vision, not so much with words as with a vision.

That's where things stand. Today ... Have you heard today's news?

They have blocked Suez and broken off with the U.S.

All the Muslim countries, including Algeria and so on, have been ordered to break off with America and Britain.[59] I don't know if all this news is true, but there is also a general pressure from all countries, from America and Britain, for instance, and at the same time from Russia, for a cease-fire, to stop the conflict.

If this news is true (because the amount of lies that are passed around is unbelievable), if this news is true, it means the Pressure is beginning – the pressure of the Consciousness. It has already started acting.

You see, every national entity has a right to free and independent existence, provided it doesn't interfere in the free and independent existence of all other entities. Ambitions, territorial expansions – of course, all colonies and all of that – must be swept out of the picture. To defend themselves, the Egyptians say that the Israelis had publicly declared that Israel's border should be the Nile – I don't know if that's true. I don't know if it's true because everybody tells lies. On their part, the Egyptians publicly declared three years ago (it was a public declaration), they publicly declared that the Israeli nation had no right to exist and had to disappear.

Three days ago, Nasser declared that he wanted "the destruction of Israel: wiped off the map."

Yes, that's it. But three years ago, they declared that Israel shouldn't exist. So that clearly puts them in the wrong.

I don't know how the others replied.... The whole world lives in falsehood, without a doubt, but one thing must be established in an absolute way: the right of each nation or country to individual existence, provided it doesn't interfere in another nation's right.

That should be the base.

Of course, they will start arguing: "BUT at that time, things were like that; at that time they were like this; and in the past this was ours; in the past ..." Endless arguments. So there should be a higher vision, which means a balanced and just and deep vision of things, capable of saying, "This is how it is." Otherwise there would be an indefinite source of arguments.

For the moment, at any rate, all diplomatic relations are based on falsehood – and the crudest falsehood at that: it's recognized as a necessity and the only way out. That's how they consider it. So that's what must be abolished to begin with.

(silence)

There is a group in the new Indian parliament, a group of people dissatisfied with the position taken by India, who have declared their wish to act according to Sri Aurobindo's ideal and instructions. And they've asked if we could send someone from here to hold conferences in Delhi.... It's a "group" – naturally not the whole parliament.

It's something to be envisaged.

But the difficulty is to find the "someone," because it should be a man who knows Sri Aurobindo thoroughly to begin with, who is capable of receiving his inspirations directly (a very difficult condition), and has at the same time a very strong character with a power – a contagious power – and a force that can arouse the inert masses.... For years I have been looking for that man, without finding him.

There was a man who would have done – not fully well, not with enough breadth of mind to fully understand Sri Aurobindo, but very straight and strong – he was assassinated in Kashmir.

Assassinated?

He is the one who came here when we wanted to have a conference for the opening of the University, he presided over it.[60] A rather tall man, and strong. I forget his name. But it was in Kashmir that he was assassinated (not officially, of course: he "fell ill.")

It wasn't perfect, it was a stopgap, but anyway he would have done. But now ... Among the young people whom I don't know?... What is needed is power combined with that breadth of mind capable of understanding Sri Aurobindo's inspiration and transmitting it; and along with that, vital power. The two things together.

And it's not something for tomorrow: it's for right now, that's the problem, because the danger is now.

(silence)

All that will go into the [Agenda] "box," it can't be published.

But you know – I have rarely felt that – yesterday there was really something like a prayer for Israel.

Indeed there was!

You really say to yourself, "This MUST NOT be."

That's it, absolutely. It was so strong.

(silence)

But is there a way for you to contact those people in Delhi and have them told what you want?

Ah, if I sent someone they would receive him. It's this N.S. who is a member of the government, she has a whole group with her, a party that has grown fairly strong.

It's quite recent, they've just asked us to send them someone. N.S. only knows N., so she told him, "Would you like to come?" N. has offered to go, but ...[61]

He has a knack with people, but ...

No, he's not the man. He doesn't strike one as being pure and straight. He isn't a straight man.

(After a silence) He is still in the state in which one tries to please people....

A man like P.?

(Mother laughs) But he's not willing! He doesn't want to touch politics. Oh, in his field, he is strong indeed! (Mother laughs) But he isn't a politician.

(long silence)

The sign of true strength – true strength – is becoming ab-so-lute-ly calm, imperturbably calm in the face of danger – danger or the need to make decisions and do things. An unshakable calm, like that (inflexible gesture, like a sword), which is established immediately, automatically. That's the sign.

It was very interesting. You weren't here when the Ashram was attacked, were you?[62] It was very interesting.

You know, fires lighting up here, there, at the corner over there, people shouting, stones flying.... That day I had an unforgettable experience. The minute the actual news of the attack came, the consciousness was as if drawn into the universal physical consciousness, like that (widespread gesture). And it was from there, from the universal physical consciousness, that everything was watched. That's how I was able to see: I was able to see the reaction IN EVERYONE. It was really interesting, oh, really interesting!

Anything that started vibrating (I am not even talking about fear – those who have fear, that goes without saying, it means catastrophe – not even fear: excitement), anything that started vibrating in that way attracted – ATTRACTED – things (I was looking at the whole scene at once), attracted danger.

Naturally, my body was like this (imperturbable gesture), but that was nothing, because for me ... But P. became like this (same gesture), like an unmoving sword: calm, calm.... That's how I knew [what he was], I didn't know before. All the others ... (vibrating, excited gesture) phew!

The headquarters were here, in this room, the whole night till midnight; everybody met here. And I saw in everyone – everyone. From above, it was such a clear, clear vision, and imperturbable, absolutely impersonal.... I saw what was going on everywhere, but everywhere.

There was a movement of excitement and a stone came from the street and hit the wire screen of my window – only one. I knew why, who it was.

It was quite interesting.

@

June 14, 1967

(For the past eight days, Mother has been "ill," just as the conflict between Israel and Egypt was unfolding.)

A great battle.... I have learned a great many things.

And it's going on.

I've made discoveries.... Diseases, accidents, catastrophes, wars, all of that is because the human material consciousness is so small, so narrow that it has a rabid taste for drama. And of course, there is, behind, the vital being having fun, also influences ... anyway all that enjoys an opportunity to delay the divine Work and make things difficult. And all that takes pleasure in that naturally encourages drama. But the seed of the difficulty is that smallness, extreme smallness of the physical consciousness – the material physical consciousness – which has an absolutely perverse taste for drama. Drama – the slightest thing has to make a drama: if you have a toothache, it turns into a drama[63]; if you bang against something, it turns into a drama; if two nations quarrel, it turns into a drama – everything turns into a drama. The taste for drama. If anything in your body is even slightly upset or there is the smallest trouble, which should go completely unnoticed, oh, it makes a big fuss, a drama. The taste for drama. I was deeply disgusted.

Everything, everything ... Like the bedlam at a marketplace.

The attack was apparently violent, so violent that after studying and observing it I was forced to think that some people were having fun doing black magic.... Everything took on fantastic proportions. The same teeth I've had for such a long time (in the same state for such a long time, that is!), which for years hadn't given me any trouble, suddenly fancied they too had to make a drama! So, a raging toothache, swelling – absolutely ridiculous, absolutely. And you know, this discovery of drama wasn't thought out, it wasn't an observation: it was an acute experience, caught hold of as you would catch a thief. I caught it. And it's universal, all over the earth.

Because EVERYTHING was creating drama – the roars of a marketplace, bedlam, all of it, a big fuss. Like those people out there when they fought each other, the same fuss (gesture expressing the roaring turmoil of the war). What a to-do they make! What with "rights" and "duties" and "honor," oh! ... So then, as things were pretty bad (I was almost completely incapacitated[64]), I asked what it meant (Mother laughs), and he showed me the picture! Then I understood.

The minute I understood, things started calming down [the raging toothache as well as the raging war in Palestine].

It's profoundly ridiculous, and unhealthy, moreover.

You understand, once the thing had been seen – seen and felt and lived completely – they started slowing down there. I can't say things are quite all right as yet, far from it, but anyway I think a worse catastrophe has been averted.[65]

Grotesque.

Things are somewhat better. There is still some friction.... "Traitors," "enemies," oh!... Now they say that Indonesia and Pakistan are up to something.... And with EVERYTHING, you know, from the biggest to the smallest, from what seems the most important (what disturbs the most things, at any rate) to the least little physical discomfort, it's like that: a very small, such a very small consciousness, petty and limited and narrow, which makes a mountain out of a molehill.

There you are.

(silence)

Because what took place is nothing new, it has happened so many times before, but the body's experience was different.... Previously, the consciousness of all the other inner beings was there and would happily counterbalance this idiotic tendency: even the vital, the vital being which also loves grand effects, but provided at least they are great, vast, powerful enough to be on a large scale and save it from being ridiculous; and then, positively above all that, all the other beings, with a smile. But this time, this body was left TO ITSELF, so it would learn. And it has learned.

But death, too, is the result of the taste for drama – what a pretty drama, ugh!

(silence)

Well, there you are.

And as, naturally, it became impossible to eat, another consequence was that it became impossible to do any work.... The doctor made me take proteins that don't need to be digested, those that are directly injected into the blood, but he made me swallow them. Then I was able to resume some work – I could no longer speak, no longer eat, no longer ...

It went on worsening nicely, till the day (I forget which) when I said with "high indignation" (Mother takes on a dramatic tone), "What is this creation in which ..." (I said it in English) "in which living is a suffering, dying is a suffering, everything is a suffering...." (Mother laughs) As soon as that was uttered, it was enough. And the consciousness was there, saying, "There is only one remedy, but the world rejects that remedy." Then I was put in the presence of the fact, face to face with it, the thing staring at me – oh, what a pretty drama!

(silence)

I wondered whether it was peculiar to the earth and if the other planets and suns weren't in this idiotic situation? ... On an external level it would be interesting to know. But I am nearly sure that death, for instance, is something that belongs exclusively to earth life – death as we FEEL it, as we understand it. Yet animals take part in it, but they don't have man's mental deformation.... The taste for drama is exclusively human, because those animals that live with man catch the malady, while those that don't don't have it at all.

(silence)

I saw this

child [Sujata] on Sunday; I didn't look too great, did I?

(Sujata :) No, Mother!

I couldn't speak anymore....

Well, that's more or less something of my experience. Oh, it was ... a lot, a lot more than that.

For two days the sense of not knowing whether you are alive or dead (but these are words on the surface), of not being very sure of the difference it makes.... And then, the body asking this question: "But everyone has his theory: one says death is like this, another says it's like that, yet another says still something different, but what is our OWN experience like? ..." And it was like that (gesture of hanging between two worlds).

Then the body suddenly remembered (that was rather interesting; it's more recent, it was yesterday or the day before), the body suddenly remembered that it had once been brought back to life. It said, "But you knew at that time, you knew since you brought me back to life."[66] Then I recollected what I used to know (and had stopped knowing because the knowledge was quite incomplete – it was entirely external and lacked the higher knowledge), I recollected the experience, and the two things joined together [the old knowledge and the new]. "Now," I said, "this is interesting!"

You know, the story of the "soul leaving the body," what childishness! Because I had that experience, too, of leaving (not the soul! It's entirely independent, always and in everyone), of leaving the psychic being, the individual psychic being. When I went away from here in 1915, I left my psychic being here deliberately. I left it here, I didn't take it with me. So the body can live without psychic being (it was rather sick, by the way, but that wasn't the reason – it's again the taste for drama! ... Oh, always the taste for drama!).

There we are.

So the problem narrows down more and more.... If your most material vital being goes out, it doesn't make you die – it puts you in catalepsy, but it doesn't make you die. What makes you die? ...

There are two things that make you die. One (the one that precedes the dramatic human existence) is wear and tear. What does wear and tear come from? From Ignorance, obviously. Ignorance and incapacity to renew forces; that's how the whole lower life works: it decomposes, recomposes, decomposes again.... But it's only with animality and the beginning of a mental functioning that there arises (Mother takes on a grandiloquent tone) "death," as we conceive it. But that is when the vital element that gives life (what we call "life") breaks down. There are innumerable reasons for that, all of which come from the same source. Of course, looking at it as a whole, it is the incapacity to follow the movement of progress: the need to mix everything together again in order to start all over again. But for those who begin to think, that no longer has any reason to exist.

An accident?... An accident to the material combination. But which accident, since the heart can stop and start again? It's a question of how long the accident lasts.

If, for this wear and tear, this deterioration (which comes from the Inconscient and is the result of the RESISTANCE of the Inconscient), if for this we can substitute the aspiration for progress and transformation (not with words – the vibration) ... That experience has been given me several times. Suppose something is quite upset, there is a pain somewhere, something disorganized that no longer works properly; if there is the vision and conception in faith (faith and consecration to the Supreme) that it's deliberate, that the Supreme has allowed it to be (how can I express it? All words are meaningless), has allowed or willed it, or wanted it to be, because to Him it was the best way to transform the thing, to have it make the necessary progress, if the cells that are somewhat disorganized and "sick," as they say, are able to feel this ... then, instantly, it takes a marvelous turn for the better – instantly, in five minutes, ten minutes. I could give concrete, precise examples, with all the details. So that means bringing the two extremes into contact, I might say. And if that can become the normal life of the elements which make up this outer form, then there is no reason why ...

No, there is no need to die, no need whatsoever. There comes a point when death loses all meaning.

And in the small detail, in the little cell or the faint sensation (and when you come to feelings, there is some kind of thing which is the embryo of thought – oh, then ...), you catch the taste for drama. Ah, then everything is explained.

The taste for drama, the need for catastrophe.

That's what was there, pressing and pressing on the earth to bring about all the conditions for a clashing and clangoring grand finale (Mother shrugs her shoulders).

And only one remedy: to broaden into eternal peace ... To break limits, become immense.

(long silence)

You said just a while ago that your body remembered an earlier death ...

Oh, yes.

But you didn't say what that recollection was.

Yes, everybody knows it: it happened at Tlemcen while I was working with Théon. I had gone out in a wholly material way, the body was in a cataleptic state, and something came, something occurred that cut the link. So the link was cut.

But what was the experience like at that time?

The experience was that ... (laughing) impossible to get back in there! But Théon was there (Théon had a bad scare!), and there was at that time the knowledge – a good deal of knowledge! – of the occult. The knowledge was there as well as the will (Mother makes a gesture of pushing to reenter the body), and also an inner faith (but I never used to talk about that), and a concentration. As for him, he was capable, he knew. He was able to "pull." And the body hadn't deteriorated, you see, it wasn't damaged, so it wasn't difficult. It was in a very good condition, but the thread was cut, which means that what gives life had gone out and could not get back in.

I came back in as a result of the power and the will, because ... In fact, simply because I still had something to do on earth.

It happened in 1910, I think.

So it's not because the soul leaves the body, is it?

Oh, that's just words!

The soul may very likely make a resolve, noting that the body is either unworthy or unfit or incapable or unwilling or ... anything, and the soul may decide that the body should die so it may go; but the soul's going isn't what kills the body. There are innumerable people who are without a soul – they have a soul, but their soul isn't in their body – lots of people. And they go on living quite well.

It's more difficult to live without the psychic being, on the other hand. The psychic being, of course, is the clothing – the individualized clothing – between the eternal soul and the transitory body; and [from life to life] it grows more formed, individualized, more and more individually conscious. When that leaves the body, the rest generally follows. But I had the experience of doing it deliberately, so I KNOW. One has to know how to do it, but it can be done. My psychic being stayed here with Sri Aurobindo, and I left with my mental, vital and physical beings. It was a ... slightly precarious condition. But as I also kept the contact quite consciously, it could be done.

What people call "death" ... I see loads of people who, to me, are living dead (they are those who are without their psychic being, or even those who have no contact with their soul). But to know that, one must have the inner vision. But what people call "death," that is, the decomposition of the cells and dissolution of the form, is when the most material "vital subdegree," which brings into contact with Life – with vital force, life – goes out. That is how death occurs in animals, for example. And that vital subdegree generally goes away when the external organism is unable to continue – when, for instance, it's cut in two or the heart has been removed, or anyway when something quite radical has happened to it! Because some people have met with accidents and had many parts missing, yet they lived on. But even cardiac arrest, as I said, doesn't necessarily mean death, since after stopping, the heart can start up again. Those who have the material knowledge tell you that for a few ... I forget whether a few seconds or a few minutes, the heart can start up again; after that, decomposition sets in. With decomposition it's over, naturally.

So we could correctly say that there are kinds of GRADATIONS in death. Gradations in life and gradations in death: some beings are alive to a greater or lesser degree, or if we want to put it negatively, some beings are dead to a greater or lesser degree. But for those who know, oh, for those who know that this material form can manifest a supramental light, well, those who don't have the supramental light in them are already a little dead. That's how it is. So there are gradations. What people have conventionally called "death" is just a purely external phenomenon, because it's something they can't deny – the body going to pieces.

But I have seen people who were supposedly dead (not many in my family because it wasn't the custom to let the children see them, and once I was grown-up there were only very few opportunities), but I have seen a few here. And they weren't all in the same state at all – far from it.

(silence)

There was the case of Sri Aurobindo. "He is dead," the doctors decided – he was absolutely alive. Absolutely living. And even after five days, when they put him into ... it was because of (how should I put it?) the pressure of the outside world, and because it was impossible to preserve him. We had to consent. But I cannot say he was dead! He wasn't at all dead, it was perfectly obvious. The body was already beginning to ... (very little, but a little at the end of the fifth day), that is, the skin was losing its color, but ... (Mother makes a glorious gesture).

For the first three days, I remained standing there, near his bed, and in an absolutely ... well, to me, it was absolutely visible – all the organized consciousness that was in his body DELIBERATELY came out of it and into mine. And I not only saw it but felt the FRICTION of its entry.

Then people say, "He is dead" – that's ignorance.

(silence)

All that supramental power he had attracted into and organized in his body little by little came into me METHODICALLY.

I didn't say anything to anyone because it was nobody's business, nobody's concern. I remained standing there and ... (gesture showing the forces passing from Sri Aurobindo into Mother's body).

You know, people revel in high-sounding words and keep talking and talking – they don't even know what they're talking about.

Not very long ago, I saw one or two photographs of someone, then he came to see me. I said, "He is dead, he's a dead man." And I don't mean a dissolution at all (of course not! Since he came in and spoke – he spoke very loudly, thinking himself very alive, in fact): he was dead. So ...

(silence)

Some time ago, I said that the cells were wondering, "But what is death?" They kept wondering like that. And just yesterday or the day before, because there came a certain state, the Knowledge that constantly comes from above seemed to be saying to them, "But why do you wonder? You had the experience, you know how it is." Then, to the small central consciousness (there is a small central consciousness,[67] which is now gradually growing and taking shape), this Knowledge said, "Don't you remember? You know how it was." Ah, then all the memory of the experience in all its details came back – they did know.

Why are we so ridiculous?

We think we are ... we think we are so great, so wise, so ... Oh, all the virtues we give ourselves! (Mother laughs) So courageous, so enduring, so ... An act we put on for ourselves our whole life long.

(silence)

At that time, for a few moments, there was the certitude of such a simplicity! ... A simplicity ... (how can I put it?) whose immensity made it all-powerful.

That's still literature. It's the mind's playacting: pretty sentences.

No words, no sentences, no wonderful gestures, no attitudes ...

(Mother goes into a contemplation)

Oh, for those who like definitions, here's another answer to "What is the Divine?" – a smiling and luminous Immensity.

And HERE, you know, it's here. HERE.

Ah, shall we work? Enough chattering!

(silence)

What makes me think that there were external adverse wills is that from every side there kept coming fine-sounding sentences – fine-sounding sentences, suggestions (dramatic suggestions, precisely) announcing a considerable number of catastrophes. They come from every side, like this (swarming gesture, like a rising tide), like so many snakes waiting there, kept at arm's length, rushing up as soon as they're given the opportunity to do so....

Which shows there's clearly something the matter.

Suggestions like this one, for instance: "Oh, now you're well, you are strong and can speak – ah, but you'll see what happens to you." Suggestions and suggestions.... You understand, it can only come from rotten human thoughts. A swarm of things, each one uglier than the other, coming like that. And you see them come (same gesture like a rising tide of snakes), you see them come like that.... From the basest to the most violent.

There was also, in relation to those possibilities of magic and also to "adverse forces," a vision of it all as being a part of the great Play (gesture from below), but ... This Immensity, luminous and smiling, an immensity ... ("immensity" is a word – "infinite" also is a word), something ... absolutely limitless, which simply goes like this (gesture of descent) in a movement of manifestation; then, at a certain point, It encounters a sort of movement from below that seizes hold of It and turns It into ... what we see. In the higher part [of the being], it's a mixture of perverted mind and extremely powerful vital, which obviously enjoys the distortion; as That grows more concrete, It's turned into all those human reactions; and when It draws near the earth, then ... ah, you have the fine mess men have made with the earth atmosphere. So this Thing, this smiling, luminous, marvelous Immensity, so ... – a living and conscious bliss ... It becomes that.

And if by chance, by miracle, one drop falls without getting completely distorted, it becomes a miracle!

(At the end, the conversation turns to Satprem's health and a certain hemoptysis.)

... Tell your cells not to make a drama and you'll see! If you know how to tell them ...

They aren't bad-willed, they're idiotic (Mother laughs), that's not the same thing!

@

 

June 17, 1967

With this Israel affair, I have been made to write all sorts of things, to answer all kinds of questions (Mother looks for her notes).... Did I show you this?

"Those who serve the Truth cannot take one side or another. Truth is above conflict or opposition. In Truth all countries unite in a common effort towards progress and realisation."

This was in answer to someone who asked whom one should "take sides" with.

There is also that man who wrote from Israel, saying that their success, their victory exceeded anything they had hoped for. And he adds, "They seem to be too materialistic to know the real source of it" – he knew. But he says (he is American, not Israeli; he may be Jewish by religion, I don't know, but he is American by birth), he says he greatly admires the way the country is organized, there in Israel, and that it's "a wonder of brotherhood and sense of organization." So he writes to ask me if this isn't the beginning of a future realization?

They clearly are very receptive.... I saw it straight away; when I was told that the Egyptians, and in particular this present president, [68] had decreed that the Israeli nation must disappear, I straight away saw there was a very strong reaction[69] – (laughing) it brought about quite a categorical result!

Then I was asked another question:

"If a world-war breaks out, it may not only destroy the major portion of humanity but may even make living conditions for those who survive impossible due to the effects of the nuclear fall-out. In case the possibility of such a war is still there, will it not affect the advent of the Supramental Truth and of the New Race upon earth?"

Here is the answer [in English]:

"All these are mental speculations and once you enter the domain of mental imaginations there is no end to the problems and to their solutions. But all that does not bring you one step closer to the truth.

"The safest and most healthy attitude of the mind is like this one: we have been told in a positive and definite way that the supramental creation will follow the present one, so, whatever is in preparation for the future must be the circumstances needed for the advent whatever they are. And as we are unable to foresee correctly what these circumstances are, it is better to keep silent about them."

I wanted to tell you that I saw V. a few days ago, and he said that according to what he has felt or seen, he is ninety-five percent certain that a new conflict will break out around September or October, probably in the direction of Pakistan or China: between Pakistan and India or between China and India.

People are expecting that.

He told me he is ninety-five percent certain.

People are quite expecting that. And Pakistan has joined hands with China, their ships are now sailing around India.... What are they doing? I don't know.

But a few years ago, you said that the fate of the present civilization would be "settled" in 1967. You used the word "settled."[70] Well, the impression is that if the future is to be really "settled," a great many things, a great many latent diseases are yet to come out, aren't they?

Yes ... Yes (Mother nods her head several times and remains silent).

I've received a telegram from D., from Darjeeling.[71] Her request for a permit has been turned down: she wanted to go farther up, but she has been turned down. She had written a letter that came two or three days ago, in which she said, "The talk is all about spying, the atmosphere is full of spying, all letters are opened, everyone is watched," and "things are in an awful condition." And yesterday, I got the telegram in which she said she has been refused a permit: she has to leave.

Very nervous, people are very, very nervous.

June 21, 1967

A few days ago, I said something about Muslims and Israelites, and F. noted it down.... The impression it made on me (what should I say?) ... The whole life is gone, at any rate: it's hollow, dry, like an empty shell – well, the impression is of an unlit lamp. A lightless lamp! (Mother laughs) Here it is anyway:

"The Muslims and Israelites[72] represent the two religions in which faith in God is the most extreme. Only, the Israelites' faith is in an impersonal God, while the Muslims' faith is in a personal God.

"Their enmity perhaps exists only because they are neighbors! ...

I should add that it was a reply to a letter B. wrote to ask me all kinds of questions, in particular: "Why? These two nations being neighbors, why do they hate each other so much?"

"... That curse on the Jews is a Christian story, it has nothing to do with the Muslims.

"Violence and enmity ... When brothers hate each other, they do so much more intensely than others do. Sri Aurobindo said: 'Hatred denotes the possibility of a much greater love.'

"The Arabs have a passionate nature. They live almost exclusively in the vital and its passions and desires, while the Israelites live mostly in the mind, with a great power of organization and realization, something quite exceptional. The Israelites are intellectuals with an exceptional will. They are not sentimental, that is to say, they don't like weakness.

"The Muslims are impulsive, the Israelites are reasonable.

"This is not the conflict that will decide the future of our civilization."

(Rough notation of June 15, 1967)

Yes, he ended his letter with: "This conflict which must decide the present civilization ..."[73] So my last sentence is in answer to that.

Yes, that's not where the issue is being played out.

No.

But this [the notation] is the lightless lamp!

When Pakistan and China attacked India [in 1965], I had a sort of very clear intuition that the conflict, if there is to be one, that must decide the fate of the civilization, can only be played out in India...

Yes.

Because this is where the last Asura [demon] must symbolically come and die. The issue isn't being played out anywhere else.[74]

(Mother remains silent)

(A month later, a disciple sent Mother the following letter, in English, on the same subject:)

"... At present the working is going on with direct Supramental Force. Its immediate action on the world of selfishness, strife and disharmony is not encouraging. We see everywhere clashes; the world is going on in the old way as usual, perhaps worse. One is reminded of the old legend that the first thing that arose from the churning of the Ocean of Life was poison. Nectar came last. The action now looks to be similar. India is going on in the same old way, placating Pakistan and the Mussulmans and Russians.

"One sentence in the Mother's reply in connection with the Israeli-Arab war seems to me to be very ominous: 'This is not the conflict that will decide the future of our civilisation.' Does it mean that there will be another bigger conflict in which the present civilisation will be destroyed though the world will be saved? Or does it mean that there may not be any war at all and the fate of our civilisation may be decided by natural evolution of consciousness? But the last one seems very unlikely except that the complete transformation of the Mother's physical will produce such tremendous effect everywhere that disharmony will become impossible."

(July 19, 1967)

(Mother replied thus, in English:)

"It looks evident that if the transformation undertaken could be achieved in its totality, the necessity of another world war would no more exist.

"But purposely, for the sake of the work, the future is not revealed. So your question cannot be answered. Thus for everyone the wisest is to open oneself as much as possible to the force that is pressing for manifestation, to keep sincerely an ardent aspiration and an unshaken faith ... and wait patiently for the result."

(July 27, 1967)

*^**

ADDENDUM

(We venture to publish here a text written by Satprem on June 24, 1967, despite its daring or extreme predictions, for it may hold a grain of truth that time will reveal, and above all because it is obviously influenced by Mother's vision. The following is therefore not so much an exercise in prediction as food for thought.)

THE END OF THE ASURA

If, as Sri Aurobindo announced, the supramental Power is to enter a realizing phase in 1967 and if, as Mother said, the fate of the present civilization is to be settled in 1967, it is clear that the earth's many latent diseases must come out in the open and find a focus somewhere, as an abscess is the focal point for the disease of the body, our earth body.

There are no "catastrophes." The Supramental is a force of order and harmony. So what may seem to us at first glance to be a catastrophe is bound to actually put things in order, work in every way and every detail towards putting the earth in order.

September/October is generally the month of wars.

There is but one place in the world where the issue is being played out really and symbolically – that is India. That is where, therefore, the disease of the earth must be focused. It is in the order of things that the last Asura should come and die at the feet of the Mother.

But India, supposed to embody the forces of truth, is herself prey to the same Falsehood as is the rest of the earth. The Asura is also in India, perhaps more dangerous there as it is masked behind a veil of false truth.

The awaited conflict will thus have to put the house of the Mother in order to begin with, at the same time as it will put the other houses of the earth in order.

The devil will unmask himself and fall headlong into his own trap.

India's Falsehood will necessarily attract like falsehoods: those of China and of Pakistan. The troubles on Bengal's borders are already preparing the way for China's aggression, and the falsehood of Tashkent has left the wound open in Kashmir. Here India shall receive the blessed blow that will liquidate her untrue government and will give way to a military government that will prepare a more truthful government. Here China shall receive the blow that will free her from her Maoist Asura, while at the same time bringing Russia and America closer together against the common danger. Here Vietnam will lose its two untrue henchmen, in the North and in the South, and will put its own house in order. Here Pakistan will have set its own trap by allying itself with China and will lose its rights over Bengal and the eastern part of India.[75] Left only with its western unit, which cannot be economically self-sufficient, Pakistan will be obliged to form a confederation with India and to understand that its destiny is inseparable from that of India. Here a wiser Russia and a wiser America, and a frightened earth, will become aware that they too must form a confederation of the nations of the earth and that the fate of any one nation is inseparable from that of all the others.

And order will be restored in the house. Man will be able to prepare himself for a vaster adventure.

Ultimately, everyone commits the errors that will help towards the larger triumph of the Truth.

Satprem
24 June 1967

@

June 24, 1967

Much to say, but ... It's better to reach the end. It's a curve – it's better to reach the end. It's too early to talk.

(After a silence) The near totality of the body's movements are movements of habit. There is, behind, the consciousness of the physical mind (what I call the "cellular mind") which, for its part, is constantly conscious of the divine Presence and anxious not to let in anything except That. So a whole work is going on to change, to shift the origin of movements. I mean that instead of that origin automatically being habit, the work is for the divine Consciousness and Presence to automatically be the prime mover (Mother makes the gesture of forcing the consciousness into the body).

But it's quite ... quite inexpressible, that is, as soon as you try to express it, it becomes mentalized, it's no longer the thing. That's why it's very difficult to express. I can't talk about it.

But I think I told you not long ago about that habit of and taste for drama in the most material consciousness.[76] That was the starting point. As soon as that part grew conscious, that habit became foreign, so to say, foreign to the true consciousness, so the transfer is now taking place.

It's a very delicate and difficult work.

It means fighting against a millennial habit, you understand. It's the automatism of the material consciousness which is, yes, dramatic, almost catastrophic; sometimes dramatic while at the same time imagining a conclusion that undoes the drama. But as soon as you express it all, it becomes much too concrete. It's better not to talk about it.

As soon as it's said, it becomes artificial.

It's as if, in order to replace that habit, there were a kind of effort to create another one (!) which is only an approximation. Does that state of consciousness, that way of being, that way of existing, reacting, expressing, does it strive towards the divine Manifestation? Is it in conformity with the tendency towards the divine Manifestation?... The thought is silent, still, so the imagination isn't working (all that is deliberate), and the movement is trying to be as sincere and spontaneous as possible under the influence of the divine Presence.... Words distort too much.

From time to time, now and then, all at once – the concrete experience, as in a flash: the experience of the Presence, of identification. But it lasts for ... a few seconds, then things revert to their former state.

It can't be expressed.

*^**

(Then Mother turns to the translation of two texts by Sri Aurobindo which she wants to publish.)

"That is a great secret of sadhana, to know how to get things done by the Power behind or above instead of doing all by the mind's effort."

That's exactly the point.

Then:

"The importance of the body is obvious; it is because he has developed or been given a body and brain capable of receiving and serving a progressive mental illumination that man has risen above the animal. Equally, it can only be by developing a body or at least a functioning of the physical instrument capable of receiving and serving a still higher illumination that he will rise above himself and realise, not merely in thought and in his internal being but in life, a perfectly divine manhood. Otherwise either the promise of Life is cancelled its meaning annulled and earthly being can only realise Sachchidananda by abolishing itself, by shedding from it mind, life and body and returning to the pure Infinite, or else man is not the divine instrument, there is a destined limit to the consciously progressive power which distinguishes him from all other terrestrial existences and as he has replaced them in the front of things, so another must eventually replace him and assume his heritage."

(The Life Divine, XVIII.231)

I understand! I have been preoccupied with this all the time.

(silence)

But Sri Aurobindo's conclusion is that it isn't this [the body] that can change: it will be a new being.

No! He says "if" man cannot, it will be a new being.

No, I don't mean here in this text, I mean in the things he wrote afterwards.

?...

Besides, it's the same problem, because ... Can a body change?... It does seem very difficult – though not impossible. It's not impossible, but ... it's such a formidable labor that life is too short. So even there, something needs to be changed, that habit of wear and tear is indeed a terrible thing.

Yes, but where would a "new being" come from? He won't drop from heaven, will he?!

Of course not, that's just the problem! The more you look at it ... It won't come that way (Mother laughs), it will obviously come in a similar way that man came from the animal. But we lack the stages between the animal and man – we may think them up, imagine them, they have found some things, but to tell the truth we weren't there to see it all! We don't know how it happened. But that doesn't matter.... According to some, the transformation can be consciously begun inwardly by forming the child. It may be, I am not saying no. It may be. Then he will have to form another more transformed, and so on – several stages, which will disappear just as the stages between the ape and man disappeared?

Well, yes, that is the whole story of human improvement.

We can call it what we like, of course. But a NEW BEING ... We can imagine, as you say, a new being coming down ready-made from start to finish! ... But that's pulp fiction.

That's what Sri Aurobindo also says. That being must be worked out.

After two or three – or four or ten or twenty, I don't know – intermediary beings, there would come the new way, the supramental way of creating.... But will it be necessary to have children? Will it not do away with the need to have children in order to replace those who go, since they will now live on indefinitely? They will transform themselves sufficiently to adapt to the new needs.

All that is quite conceivable in the long term.

Yes, in the long term.

But Sri Aurobindo and you are here so it's done in the short term!

No, Sri Aurobindo didn't conceive of it in the short term.

Anyway, so it's done by you. Whether in the long or the short term, so it's done by you in this life and this body.

But what I see ...

I am trying to do it – not out of an arbitrary will, not at all: there is simply "something," or someone, or a consciousness or whatever (I don't want to talk about it) which uses this (Mother's body) to try and do something with it. Which means that I do the work and am a witness at the same time, and as for the "I," I don't know where it is: it's not down here, it's not up above, it's not ... I don't know where it is, it's for the requirements of language. There is "something" that works and is a witness of the work at the same time, and is at the same time the action being done: the three things.

Because now, the body itself really collaborates as much as it can – as much as it can – with ever-increasing goodwill and power of endurance, and the self-observation is truly reduced to the minimum (there is still some, like something touching lightly now and then, but it doesn't even stay for a few seconds). Self-observation, oh, that means a thoroughly disgusting, repugnant and catastrophic atmosphere. It's like that, FELT like that. And it's becoming increasingly impossible, I see that, it's visible.... But there is still the whole weight of millennia of bad habits, which we could call pessimistic, that is, expecting decay, expecting catastrophe, expecting ... well, all those things, and, ugh! that's the most difficult thing to purify, to clarify, to remove from the atmosphere. It's so INGRAINED that it's absolutely spontaneous. That is the great, great, great obstacle – that sort of sense of inevitable decay.

Naturally, from the mental standpoint, the entire earth atmosphere is like that, but in the mind it hardly matters at all: one ray of light and it's swept away. But it's HERE INSIDE (pointing to her body), that habit – that catastrophic habit – is what is terrible, terrible to contradict. And it's INDISPENSABLE that it should disappear so the other can settle in.

So it's a struggle every minute, every minute, all the time, all the time.

And of course, the being isn't cut off, the body isn't cut off: the body is something of a multitude, with varying degrees of proximity; and very near, there are all those who are here, and it's the same problem – the same problem. Because all that has been gained in the consciousness of this being hasn't been gained at all in the consciousness of others. So that increases the work.

The problem of mental, even vital, contagion is solved, so to speak, but the problem of material contagion still remains.

And in this material consciousness, there is this material mind which has so marvelously responded here [in Mother], but it doesn't yet have the power to assert itself spontaneously against what comes from outside, that never-ending contagion, constant, constant, every minute.

(long silence)

When, all at once, the Contact is conscious and the sense of Identity comes (for a few seconds, as I said), when it comes ... it's like a hosanna in all, but all the cells, they say, "Oh, so it's true! It's true indeed! ..."

And that's all-powerful.

It comes perhaps a hundred times a day, but it doesn't stay.

@

June 28, 1967

Regarding an Italian disciple who has just come

... Her family wanted to baptize her child and they were beginning to quarrel (because I said, "We do not want baptism"), so they wrote to me in despair, saying, "We don't know what we should do, because the whole family is against us and they're constantly picking a quarrel with us." So I wrote: "If they really want freedom, let them come and give birth to the child in Auroville! ..." Oh, they were enthusiastic, she left right away!

Here, see the register! (Mother laughingly shows the notebook in which she noted a few days ago the first birth in Auroville.)

@

 

June 30, 1967

(About an Indian disciple from South Africa who has been jailed for a few months in Syria under the pretext that his banknotes were counterfeit.)

... They have no government to protect them. Before India's independence they had a British passport, but now the government of South Africa doesn't recognize them, the government of India doesn't look after them, so they're like that, neither fish nor fowl, and with no one to protect them. It's rather peculiar.

There are a few here [in the Ashram] who still have a British passport, and they don't know what to do. They're neither this nor that, they're nothing I

To those who are nice I say, "Never mind, you will become Aurovilians." That saves everything. Because the principle has been recognized by UNESCO, they've recognized the idea: everyone becomes Aurovilian, no more separate nationality. So it's very good.

As an idea, it's interesting.

Only, I've warned them to be careful about admissions, because ... (Mother laughs) it could be seen as a refuge for brigands who have been driven out of their country! ... As long as I control admissions it's all right, but after?...

What's that country again which started as a colony of brigands? ... (Laughing) There's a country like that somewhere, which started as a colony, I forget which.[77]

Soon afterwards

This morning, at 4: 30 when I got up, I remember I thought, "Well, here is something interesting to tell Satprem." And now it's all gone! ...

(Mother goes into a long meditation lasting almost the whole time)

It could go on indefinitely! ...

But now I remember what it was this morning: it was about health and balance. Because it was like an answer to a sort of call (or prayer or aspiration, anyway, as you like) that I had yesterday evening, and in the night I seemed to be shown the mechanism to restore harmony in the body's functioning.

And I made a special concentration on you, which continued this morning.... Now I remember.

These are things that can't be explained yet. It's not yet possible to explain them.

But it came back just now, like a demonstration.... What could we call it? A sort of mode of being in the cells and their relationships with each other, under ... (how can I put it?) the government of the supreme Consciousness. And the difference in the functioning. The way to establish the inner balance.

It can't be explained.

So that's what was being done [last night and during the whole meditation]. And it's a seemingly almost endless work.

I remember, for nearly an hour this morning, I had a demonstration in my own body of how to do it. A demonstration. But it can't be explained. And it began again just now, but instead of being with me alone, it was what I might call a collective demonstration (gesture between Mother and Satprem), I mean it had to do more particularly with you.

It's like things being put in order, in a certain very subtle way which isn't easy to express.

There you are.

But it's clearly an endless work, you know. The general work is relatively swift, but this is a work of detail, on each point, and it's almost endless.

And then ... (smiling) there's no inclination to talk, either!

So I hope it will have an effect on you.

While you were meditating, I had a sense of extraordinary harmony.

Ah!

A kind of suppleness – of softness, suppleness, harmony.

Yes, that's it, that was it.

So it's good, it shows you are receptive.

But as soon as one tries to explain it, there comes a sort of principle of artificiality, and it's no longer the thing.

It was there, oh, for ... (this morning, in detail) for more than an hour ... (what can I call it?) the substitution of one kind of vibration for another. And in the whole, something ... simply harmonious, a great simplicity, a great harmony.

Very well.

 

July

July 5, 1967

You remember that man who had left for Israel – the Indian Embassy has refused him a visa to come back here! ...[78] So he is forced to go to America (America is his country, he is American), he is going to America, and then, he writes to me, he will make some money so he can come and bring it to me!

Another boy here was to go and work in Germany with E., everything was arranged, then Germany said, "No, we don't want any Indians." So there's universal brotherhood.

But with the Israel affair and the stand they have taken, the Indians haven't made many friends.

No, they haven't.

Oh, but from Holland a woman who was here wrote to me (during the events), "I have never seen in my life such a display of hatred as the one we have here against Israelites! ..." In Holland!

And in Germany, God knows it's the same thing. So it's not localized. It's the PRINCIPLE OF HATRED manifesting senselessly, without rhyme or reason.

In France, too, it seems there has been a widespread anti-Semitic movement, very violent.

In France it's not a majority, it's a small minority.

Is it? ... I don't know.

It's the very minority that was on the side of Vichy during the war.

What was that marshal's name?

Pétain. Yes, it's that whole side.

Yes, the one who behaved like ... He looked as if he wanted to imitate Hitler as much as he could!

No, but the incoherence of it all ... Some resent India's attitude during the war, others resent Israel's victory in the war! So, never mind the most contradictory things in the same line of thought – it's a need ... to hate. To be nasty, as nasty as possible.

*^**

Soon afterwards

I've had a rather strange dream.

Oh, tell me.

But I don't know if it's not fabrication, because it was all going on in a rather dark and confused atmosphere.... I remember that Sri Aurobindo was lying down and had to undergo a serious operation: an operation on his two feet, and on all his toes. Then he left for the operation (I should add that he left on his own, unhelped). After a few moments I saw him come back (yet it was a long operation), I saw him come back with his two feet heavily bandaged: there were big bandages on his two feet. Then I was quite astonished, because I saw him walk very soon afterwards: he no longer had any bandages and was wearing new shoes.

Oh!

New shoes, I can still see them ... they seemed to me rather peculiar, cream-colored. And he who didn't use to wear shoes had shoes on! But that was very soon afterwards.

Cream-colored?

Yes, the color of ... like this box, if you like. Not cream-colored, it was pink ... a mixture of pink and cream.[79]

Ah! The feet are the symbol of physical life, and according to what I saw once (your dream seems related to that), EACH part of his body represented someone – or rather represented his, Sri Aurobindo's, MODE of expression in someone.[80]

One night I saw him like that, I told you. But it was extremely complex; I only noted two or three important things, but there didn't seem to be even one small part of his body that wasn't represented by someone.... So if we take the symbol of the feet to be the physical ... Not only the feet, but all the toes, did you say?

All the toes, yes.

That is to say, a certain number of people.

In my vision, his two feet were me. But in my vision, his feet had white tabis on, to make me clearly understand that it was me. And in my vision, he walked on the edge of a path strewn with bare flintstones, so it was very hard and sharp-edged, and he said, "No, this is not the way it should be, let's walk higher up on the road so it's smoother," and he came back to the middle of the road. So if it's like this, if it's the same symbol going on, that would mean something concerning me – it may be.

The shoes are a clothing. A clothing ... Pinkish cream, did you say?

Yes, pinkish cream.

It's the color of the supramental in the physical. That is how I have seen it.

So I would have a supramental clothing?... I would put on a supramental clothing? That would be amusing!

Your dream is very interesting, you know; it's not a dream, it's much better than a dream.

But there was a serious operation.

Yes, mon petit, I know that quite well! (Mother laughs) But it took one minute. You said he came back almost immediately.

Yes, he came back almost immediately. Then I was quite astonished to see him walk very soon afterwards.

Yes, that's right!

He came back with big bandages on his two feet.

(After a silence) When did you have this dream?

Two days ago, during the night of Sunday to Monday.

That's right.

On Sunday, Sunday night, before going to bed, I complained (I can't say I complained very seriously, but you know, like when one is in a grumpy mood), I complained, saying, "But since You want me to manifest You, why do you allow me to feel so out of sorts!" There were all kinds of troubles – small ones, naturally, but when there are lots of them they add up to trouble plain and simple. So (laughing) I was grumbling! It lasted for the space of a second or two, after that I laughed! But I grumbled, I protested. As if it [the body] were telling me, "Why all these – yes, why all these painful operations?" So I immediately gave myself a sound slap, saying to myself, "You are still full of vanity, you've got what you deserve!" Then it was over.

But that's indeed the way it is; it's true, everything looks, oh, very serious, very difficult, very complicated, very ... while if we were less stupid, it could probably be very easy and swift! It's clearly because of our own stupidity, without a shadow of doubt.

(long silence)

Just these last few days (because of all kinds of things – of people and things that come), I have been increasingly seeing that the human concept of divine Omnipotence is the concept of an omnipotence that would operate without rhyme or reason, through a succession of whims, senselessly – that's what people call "Omnipotence": being able to do the most stupid things at will.

Obviously, that doesn't quite conform to a higher Harmony (!) Yet human beings are like that: if the god they worship or want to manifest isn't willing to do, to execute whatever comes into their heads in a totally incoherent and arbitrary way, he isn't all-powerful!

I am magnifying it to make it more easily perceptible; it's not like that: they deceive themselves (if you tell them that, they protest), but they deceive themselves, and it comes to what I've just said.

When you succeed in going into that Consciousness of Harmony (but not an individual or local harmony), a universal Harmony – even ultra-universal, as the universe is only one part of it – then values are completely changed, completely....

(Mother shakes her head and remains in contemplation)

All things are so simple and at the same time so COMPLEX....

For instance, that relationship of simplicity (like the one a child has) in which you very simply ask for the thing you feel the need for, but without mental complications; without explanations, without justifications, without all that useless farrago – simply, "Oh, I would like ..." You have, for instance, quite a special feeling towards someone or something and you would like that someone or something to be perfectly harmonious, happy (which physically is expressed by good health or favorable circumstances), and so, spontaneously, simply, you say, "Oh! ...," you pray, "Oh, may it be like that!" And it happens. Then the thought, the general human thought: "This has happened, therefore it's the expression of the Truth." And it's made into a principle: "This is true, this is the way things must be." But up above, in that Consciousness – that global Consciousness – in that total Harmony, those things in themselves, in their material expression ("good health," "favorable circumstances") are of no more than minor importance, so to say, of almost nonexistent importance: things may be this way or that or this (they may be a hundred different ways), without its making any difference to the Harmony; but this particular way is chosen because of the simple, pure, naive beauty of the aspiration – that is lovely, that is powerful in its simplicity. And, you know, without mental complication, without hypocrisy of any sort, any pretense of any sort: very simply, but from a luminous, pure, loving heart, without any egoism, "just like that." So that's a lovely light which has its place; and because of it, things may be this way or that (good health, favorable circumstances), it doesn't matter, it's unimportant. Human beings only attach importance to the external form, to what has manifested; they say, "Oh, this is true, since it is" – and it's ... a passing breath of air. But the cause of it, its origin has a place in that total, universal Harmony: a disinterested goodwill, love devoid of egoism, trust that doesn't argue or reason, simplicity – ingenuous simplicity for which evil doesn't exist.[81] If we could catch hold of that and keep it ... The trust for which evil doesn't exist – not "trust" in what takes place here: trust up above, in that all-powerful principle of Harmony.

(long silence, then Mother says this prayer:)

Glory to You, O Lord, all-triumphant Supreme, Grant that nothing in us shall be an obstacle to Your work, Grant that everything in us may be ready for Your manifestation.

July 8, 1967

(Mother starts sorting innumerable scraps of notes and stops at this one:)

"For the Government of India, one thing is to be known: does it want to live for the Future or does it stick desperately to the past?"

(June 20, 1967)

It was when that man came here on behalf of the government of India; he saw everything and was to make a report. Before leaving (I saw him: he is a nice man), he said, "I wonder what words I should use to convince them?" Then I told him, "Well, there's only one question: do they want to work with the future or do they want to ... stick, to remain stuck to the past?" And he took it with him! (Mother laughs) He's going to say that right in Parliament!

*^**

Another note:

"As the origin of these sayings is not mental, I cannot give to them any mental explanation."

Yes, this, too ... They ask me questions (it's not me who answers: it's Sri Aurobindo), and then they ask me (K. especially, he specializes in it), "In your message, you said such and such a thing, does it mean this or does it mean that?" Oh! ... So this time, I answered.

*^**

Mother goes on sorting her notes

Previously I used to tear them to pieces and throw them into the wastepaper basket, then I realized they collected all those torn pieces and went through a tremendous toil to put them back together! ...

When I really want to get rid of something, I burn it myself.... I've burned lots of things.

You know that I burned all those notebooks.... For – how many years? – at least four or five years, every day I used to write those Prayers and Meditations (I had several notebooks of them, big like this). Then, when Sri Aurobindo told me to make a book out of them (naturally, as it was written every day, there were some repetitions), I made my choice; I selected and extracted all those he wanted (I also kept a few, which I extracted and distributed), and as for the rest ... It was a long, long time ago, I was still living over there.[82] The last times I wrote, it was after my return from Japan, that is, in 1920. In 1920 I still wrote a little, then stopped. Then Sri Aurobindo chanced on it, and he told me it had to be published. I said all right, made a selection, and what to do with the rest? So I burned it.

Oh, what didn't I hear! ...

I said, "Well, that's what you should do with your past: burn it with the fire of aspiration." Otherwise, you always remain hitched and fastened, a slave everywhere, with millstones around your neck.

But I tell you, later I realized that if I didn't burn my papers myself, the others kept the pieces! ... There were things on which I had written "To be destroyed if I were to leave this body," "Destroy without opening." Then I realized I couldn't trust anyone! So I destroyed them myself.

Even when I write accounts, they ask me for the pieces of paper! I have given bundles of them to Champaklal. He keeps them. He has kept ... Sri Aurobindo used to burn coils[83] in his room, to repel mosquitoes, and he's kept all the ash of those coils! He has such a big pot full of all the ash! Burnt matchsticks too! He's kept and sorted everything – organized, labeled and all! ... Very well.

So I know from experience what they do ... (laughing) I take my precautions!

@

 

July 12, 1967

(Mother had asked Satprem to listen for her to a recording of European music.)

That screaming soprano was quite simply abominable. Even Schubert's music, even Haydn's trio seemed to me artificial.

I can no longer hear music.

Now and then, two or three notes are very good, but the rest is mental construction. I can no longer hear music.

Except for Sunil's music – that's all right. Still, there are "stopgaps," but not too many, not a lot.

*^**

Yesterday, I received twenty-six letters in a single day! Today, there's already a pile of them! So how can they imagine I'll find the time to answer?... I reply to four, five, six letters a day, I think that's good enough! (Mother laughs)

*^**

Later

That's how it is. All of a sudden, for two or three seconds, you seem to be holding the key. And all that's conventionally called "miracle" looks like the simplest thing in the world: "But it's perfectly simple, all you have to do is this!" And then ... it goes away. And once it's gone, you try and try – absolutely useless.

But when it's there, it's so simple, so natural! And absolutely all-powerful.

(silence)

A world of things that one could say. But saying them spoils them.

One thing that seems to be trying to come is the power to heal. But not at all as it's described, it's not that at all – it doesn't give a sense of "healing," you understand. It's ... (Mother searches for words) putting things back in order. But that's not it either.... It's a little something that disappears, and that little something is ... essentially it's the Falsehood.

It's very strange.

Basically, it's what gives the ordinary human consciousness the sense of reality. That's what must disappear. What we call "concrete," a "concrete reality" ... yes, what truly gives you the sense of real existence – that's what must disappear and be replaced by ... It's inexpressible.

(silence)

Now I can follow.

I remember, when I came back after having BEEN those bursts – those pulsations, those bursts of creative Love,[84] when I returned to the ordinary consciousness (while retaining the very real memory of That, of the state), well, that state, which I felt to be pulsations of creative Love, is what must, is That which must replace here this consciousness of concrete reality – which is, which becomes unreal: it's like something lifeless – hard, dry, inert, lifeless. And to our ordinary consciousness (I remember how it was in the past), that's what gives you the impression, "This is concrete, this is real." Well, "this," this sensation, is what must be replaced by the phenomenon of consciousness of that Pulsation. And That (Mother makes an intense gesture enfolding her whole face) is at the same time all-light, all-power, all-intensity of love, and such FULLNESS! It's so full that ... where That is, nothing else can exist. And when That is here, in the body, in the cells, then all you have to do is focus It on someone or something, and order is instantly restored in the person or the thing.

So, translated into ordinary words, it "heals." It heals the disease. But it doesn't heal it: it annuls it.... Yes, it annuls it.

It unrealizes it.

Absolutely. I have concrete proof of it.

Any disease, any disease whatsoever.

(silence)

And the condition of all the cells (the vibrations that make up this body) is undeniably what makes the thing [healing] possible or not; that is, depending on the body's condition, it serves either as a transmitter, or on the contrary as an obstruction. Because it's not a "higher force" acting in others THROUGH Matter: it's a direct action (horizontal gesture, on a level) from matter to matter.

What people generally call "healing power" is a very great mental or vital power that imposes itself through the resistance of Matter – but this isn't at all the same thing! It's the contagion of a vibration. And then it's irrevocable.

But it's gone in a flash. It's only a promise or an example of what will be: it WILL be like that, obviously. Obviously. When? ... That's another question.

(silence)

Right here, this Vibration is felt as ... (Mother gestures as if everything were swelling). You understand, it [the body's ordinary condition] is tied up, it's tied and bound, I might almost say hardened, I don't know; and at such times, it seems to swell, to expand.

Only, it's momentary.

*^**

(At the end of the conversation, Mother shows Satprem a note she wrote the same morning:)

"Instead of excluding each other, religions should complement each other."

Sri Aurobindo said that to me; it's so simple, so simple!

I was looking at all those religions, seeing them as facets, innumerable facets that harden and brace themselves against each other, and he seemed to be saying, "Well, put it all together, it will be so simple!"

Just one sentence, not one word too many.

July 15, 1967

Someone here, whose name is S., a man over forty (oh, yes, much older than that, I think he is approaching fifty), has been learning French, but so energetically that he writes French really remarkably. He regularly sends me questions in French, and because of the care with which he writes, I reply. The other day, he wrote to me (I forget his exact words, but it was very well put) that he had just realized that aspiration for progress and the result of the aspiration were both the divine Grace, the effect of the divine Grace.... So I thought, "Well, well, let me see if he knows French well enough to have a sense of humor." And I replied this:

"One could say humorously that we are all divine but scarcely know it, and it is just what in us does not know it or is unaware of being divine that we call ourselves!"

I'll see his reaction.

Afterwards something came, and I wrote it in its definitive form (in English it's better):

"For the Truth-vision all of us are divine, but we scarcely know it and in our being it is just what does not know it that we call ourselves."

*^**

(A little later, about a spelling mistake Satprem points out to Mother:)

It's the infinitive, here, Mother!

(Mother laughs) I've forgotten my grammar!

I quite understand! It's so artificial.

You know, I have no memory left at all, only the consciousness, and to the consciousness that's meaningless!

Lately, there came, oh, quite a number of such examples which unfolded before me, and I wondered, "But why is it this way? It's meaningless, it doesn't make any sense."

How did it take shape? Through habit? Or was it decided by minds?

By minds: grammarians.

There's a whole world of things people know by sheer habit automatically, which have been completely erased (because all habits are increasingly being erased), so at times it's embarrassing! And it comes back, all those things come back like that, as if on a screen (but the screen of consciousness), and those that correspond to a reality come forward like a picture, with the reality behind, so then it's very easy: you catch hold of the reality and it's over. But with many there's only the picture and nothing behind! So what do you replace them with?

When it comes to languages, it's very interesting.... Those are things that come, stay for an hour or two, then go away, they are like lessons, things to be learned. And so, one day, there came the question of languages, the different languages. Those languages took shape little by little (probably through usage, until, as you said, one day someone took it into his head to fix it in a logical and grammatical way), but behind those languages, there are identical experiences – identical in their essence – and there are certainly sounds that correspond to those experiences; you find those sounds in all languages, the different sounds with minor alterations One day, for a long time (more than an hour), it unfolded with ail the proof in support, for all languages. Unfortunately, I didn't see clearly, it was in the night, so I couldn't note it down and it went away. But it should be able to come back. It was really interesting ... (Mother tries to recall the experience) There were even languages I had never heard: I've heard many European languages, in India several Indian languages, chiefly Sanskrit, and then, Japanese And there were languages I had never heard. It was all there. And there were sounds, certain sounds that come from all the way up, sounds ... (how can I explain?), sounds we might call "essential." And I saw how they took shape and were distorted in languages (Mother draws a sinuous line that branches out on its way down) Sounds like the affirmative and the negative – what, for us, is "yes" and "no" – and also the expression of certain relationships (Mother tries to remember). But the interesting point was that it came with all the words, loads of words I didn't know! And at that time I knew them (it comes from a subconscient somewhere), I knew all those words.

At the same time, there was a sort of capacity or possibility, a state in which one was able to understand all languages; that is every language was understood because of its connection with that region (gesture to the heights, at the origin of sounds). There didn't seem to be any difficulty in understanding every language.

There was a sort of almost graphic explanation (same sinuous line branching out on its way down) showing how the sound had been distorted to express this or that or ...

It's a whole field of observation that's part of the study of vibrations: how essential vibrations are distorted as they spread out, and thus produce the different states – on the psychological level, on the level of thought, on the level of action, and also of languages, of expression.

Two or three days ago (this is part of the same field), I saw a baby girl who was born in America just while we were having here the meditation of 4.5.67. That child was born in America (of an Indian mother and an Indian father; the father was here, the mother there), and they brought her to me: a baby no bigger than this, microscopic! ... Her eyes were closed, a tiny thing: two-odd months old. The child was sleeping in her mother's arms, carried by her mother, her eyes closed, naturally. And – plop! – they put her in my lap without warning – a tiny little thing like this. At first I stayed put, giving her time to adapt to the new vibration. She began stirring as if something were waking her up, probably the difference in the atmosphere. Then (gesture of descent) I immediately applied the consciousness: the Consciousness, the Presence. And the child opened her two arms like this (gesture like a Christ with arms outstretched), she opened her eyes and looked – such eyes! Magnificent with light, with consciousness, it was magnificent!... It lasted maybe a minute, not more, not even that long. Then she seemed to give a start, so I withdrew the Force because (laughing) I became wary. And she started wriggling and ... But that look and that gesture – a gesture of ... (same gesture like a Christ), with such aspiration, such light! ... It was magnificent.

I don't know who is there? ... We'll know one day. It gave me the sensation of being a force or a principle rather than a person; it didn't have that ... that cramped character of personality.

The eyes were magnificent, with such consciousness! With the joy of conscious aspiration – it was magnificent. Then, afterwards, there was almost a sort of convulsion (it was too much, of course), so I withdrew the Force.

The matter [of the child] was of good quality, not heavy, only not very strong, not strong enough to bear "that."

Oh, and then I should have shown you photos of R., they were sent to me yesterday.... R. is a strapping fellow!

Is it simply the reproduction of the parents or something else?

The day the child was born, there came a telegram from America (dating from the day before) announcing the death of Paul Richard. The two things came together. I was surprised. I must admit I said, "Well, well! ..." Because Paul Richard (unless he fell into complete stupor after I left him, I don't know!), I had given him much occult knowledge, including the ability to leave one's body and enter another. So ... It's not impossible.

And for some time (for about a week), I'd been seeing his thought coming here and hovering about, like that. Which is to say that the news of his death was no surprise to me. But what I found interesting was this: the coincidence of the telegram and the birth.

The [child's] present form cannot reflect it [Richard]: it's something that will develop in that direction little by little. We'll see. For the moment, he is really his father's and mother's son!

Interesting children, those that are born now.

*^**

(Then Mother listens to Satprem reading from the notebook of a disciple who asks questions on the soul or "psychic being.")

He asks: "From life to life, the vibrations of the being develop, enrich and give form to the psychic personality behind the frontal personality. But then, how does the psychic, weighed down by those vibrations and memories, remain free?"

What? Do you understand what that means?

There are two rather unrelated things.

But why does he say "weighed down"?

All those vibrations that contribute to the development of the being "weigh the psychic down," he says.

No, it SIFTS them. That's precisely what happens: the psychic doesn't retain things in their totality: it sifts them – it sifts the vibrations as they come along.

The psychic memory is a sifted memory of events. In previous lives, for instance, there were moments when, for some reason or other, the psychic was present and took part, and it thus keeps the memory of just one circumstance. But the memory it keeps is the PSYCHIC life of that moment; so even if it retains the memory of a scene, it is a simplified scene, translated in the psychic consciousness and according to the psychic vibration of all those present.

He wouldn't ask such a question if he had ever had a psychic memory, because when you have one it's perfectly obvious.

Before I had the knowledge, before I met Théon and knew about those things, I had had memories that had always struck me because of their special character.... It's like having, not exactly an emotion, but a certain vibration of emotion associated with an occurrence. And that's what is full, what remains and lasts. And along with that, you have a perception – a bit vague, a bit fuzzy – of the people who were there, of the circumstances, the events, and that makes up a psychic memory.

What remains isn't often the events that the mind regards as the most memorable or the most important in a life, but the moments when the psychic took part – consciously took part in the occurrence. That's what remains.

I could have narrated many such memories, it's very interesting.

I had many in Italy. I traveled in Italy with my mother when I was fifteen, and I had lived a former life in Italy which was very conscious. So when I saw the places, it [the psychic vibration of emotion] would spring up suddenly. And it would come along with the scene.... What's in the foreground is the psychic movement (the word "emotion" isn't good, but anyway), it's the psychic movement which is in front and is important – that's what comes; the rest is like a background reflection: that is, forms, situations, circumstances.... I noted some down. Did you ever see something I wrote about a life in Italy? An old, old thing.... Fifteen – I had that experience when I was fifteen. I don't even know where I put it away, I don't think that paper is with me, I don't know where it is.... I narrated it a little later. When I met Théon, I understood my experience because it was explained to me (I didn't say the thing, but I understood afterwards, once I knew about the states of being, their working and all that), so I understood that was what a psychic memory was.

Before I knew anything mentally, I had had a considerable number of memories from past lives, but in that way: real psychic memories, not mental fabrications. And what comes first is emotion ("emotion": the psychic feeling), it's vivid, strong, you know, very strong; then, as a sort of background setting, there are the forms, appearances, circumstances, with something like the quality of a nebulous memory, and they come along with the psychic feeling.

I had that experience in Italy when I was fifteen, while traveling with my mother, and it struck me very much – it was very striking indeed! It was the memory of having been strangled in the Doges' prison. Quite a story. Afterwards I inquired; I inquired about the names, the facts, the events (I was able to inquire in Italy about what had happened – it was in Venice – and it tallied marvelously). But the interesting thing, from an external point of view ... I was visiting the entire Palazzo ducale with my mother and a group of travelers shown about by a guide: they take you underground, where the prisons were located. Then the guide started telling some story (which didn't interest me) when, all of a sudden, I was seized by a kind of force that came into me, and then, without even – without even being aware of it, I went to a corner and saw a written word. It was ... But then, there came at the same time the memory that I had written it. And the whole scene came back: I was the one who had written that word on the wall (and I saw it, saw it with my physical eyes, the writing was still there; the guide said that all the walls with writings on them made by the Doges' prisoners had been kept intact). Then the scene went on: I saw, I had the sensation of people entering and catching hold of me (I was there with a prisoner – I wasn't the prisoner: I was visiting him). I was there, and then some people came and seized me and ... (gesture to the neck) tied me up. And then (I was with a whole group of about ten people listening to the guide, near a small aperture opening onto the canal), then, the sensation of being lifted and thrown through the aperture.... Well, you understand, I was fifteen, so naturally...! I told my mother, "Let's get out of here!" (Mother laughs)

It was hard to restrain myself. We left.

But afterwards I made inquiries, I questioned and researched (we had some family there,[85] I knew some people), and I found out it was absolutely true. It was a true story, with the names and all (now it's all gone). A doge[86] had imprisoned his predecessor's son as a living danger to him, as he had tried to replace his father. So the doge, who had taken the father's place, sent the son to prison. But the daughter of this doge was in love with the son, and she found a way to go and visit him. Then the doge, in his rage, decided to have her drowned. The whole story was there. And it was really spontaneous: I knew nothing of it (it's the kind of stories they don't teach you in another country, they're known only locally).

That's my story. I found it very interesting.

But the very interesting part was that thing which told me, "Over there." I went and saw, and found written on the wall precisely what I remembered having myself written.

I've had many such memories (but that one was interesting), a great many, so that I know precisely the nature of the things that stay on and are part of the development of the psychic being.

There was another experience I had a little later (a little later, around eighteen or nineteen), in which I suddenly found myself riding a horse, in a man's costume, leading armies to a fantastic victory; and it was the glory of the sense of the presence of the Force of Victory that made me lead the army to victory. Afterwards, I remembered the costume I was wearing, the people's costumes, everything, and ... I saw it was Murat's famous victory.[87] I was ... (how can I put it?) the victorious spirit in Murat. And NOTHING MORE. SO when people tell you, "I was this person, that person," it's all tales: it's forces, states of consciousness that manifested in certain individualities at certain moments in their lives and which, at such moments, touched Matter concretely. And all that is gathered, collected together little by little, gradually, till it produces a conscious being.

Now, this [Mother's being] is a rather special conscious being.... The psychic of this life (laughing) was rather collective! Memories of Catherine the Great, memories of Elizabeth, memories of two lives at the same time (!) in the age of Francis 1,[88] memories ... innumerable memories, and quite diverse. Each one ... It's not that you were in such or such person for his or her whole life: you were the important psychic MOMENT in those lives.

I stopped paying attention to all that when I came here – it was part of occult knowledge, not of spiritual knowledge. I stopped paying attention to it. But now that everything is being gathered together, it comes like that, like a part of the work, because ... the cells participated to some extent when I had those visions, in the sense that they had the vibration in themselves; so all those vibrations have participated in the formation of all these cells, and now they relive it all. It gives them a possibility of breadth, of diversity, of synthesis and coordination of many, a great many things. And the sense of having thus lived for a long, long, long time.

(silence)

Before I came to India for the first time, I was twenty-two and knew nothing of spirituality or anything else, but I spent a month in Egypt, and for a month I lived in a state of extraordinary emotion, without knowing why.

Ah!

I was in a state of constant emotion: everything held me spellbound. Egypt made an extraordinary impression on me.

Ah, but we lived together in Egypt. I've known you from the time of Egypt,[89] I know that. You are one of those to whom I said in Egypt, "I promise you that you will be part ... that you will be on earth at the hour of realization." There are a few of them – not many (Mother makes a gesture of being scattered across the world). But I know that!

I made that promise to a certain number of people – not all in the same age: at different stages.

Did you go to Thebes?

Yes, I did.

Did you like it?

Oh, it was... that's where I had the most emotion.

Exactly.

(silence)

I don't generally talk about these things because it fastens people to the past: they try to relive what they lived, so you understand, that spoils everything.

But it's a sort of sensation I have: it doesn't correspond to anything here (gesture to the head), it's a sensation, the sensation of an atmosphere, or rather, of a kind of vibration which has already been felt, and so can easily be traced back to when and where.

Oh, there are amusing things.

Egypt was an extremely occult age, at that time they really had occult knowledge. So that gives you a power over the invisible, you can act there consciously.

There was one thing (which I told you, I think): for a while (it didn't last long), for a few days, there was a sort of need to know how people spoke, the sounds that were used.[90] If I had insisted, it would probably have come: how I used to say things, how that consciousness used to express itself.... That hasn't been preserved.

Our age will be far more durable in memory ... if things aren't destroyed – we'll just have to turn on a machine.

Unfortunately, there won't be much worth preserving from our age!

Oh! ... That's a remarkable thing: in every age, and probably on the contrary, the farther you go into the past, there's a jumble, a clutter of quite uninteresting things – which disappear. They disappear, they are destroyed. There only remains what had an interesting inner life. So the past seems to us much more interesting than the present, but from our age all the clutter will also disappear and be dissolved in the same way, and only the best will remain, except if they use mechanical means to preserve loads of recordings of heaps of stupidities. But otherwise ...

I have, for instance, an impression (a strong impression) that in the Assyrian age they had a means, they had found a means to record and preserve sound. It must have been destroyed, it disappeared. But it's a very strong impression, linked to certain memories and [psychic] impressions like the ones I said: they aren't ideas, but ... [vibrations]. There was a capacity to make the invisible speak, you understand. They had a machine. It must have been destroyed with the rest?

The oldest memory we have is the first Chinese attempts. It's in China that a machine to reproduce sound, to preserve and reproduce sound, was first found.

The Chinese were very inventive.

(silence)

I had a very strong impression, which, so to speak, crystallized when I went to China[91] (I know nothing of China: a city or two, a port or two, that's nothing; but still you pick up a bit of the atmosphere): the origin of those people is lunar. There must have been beings living on the moon, and they (or a few of them, I don't know) took refuge on the earth when the moon was dying. And that was the origin of the Chinese race.

They are very peculiar.... They don't at all have the same kind of vital being as all the other human beings, not at all.

Theirs is a strange vital.

What kind of vital?

Cold.

Cold: intellectual and cold. Cold. It's very insensitive. And the strange thing is that their sensitivity isn't the same at all, it's extremely blunted.

July 19, 1967

(Following the last conversation on the psychic being.)

These last few days I've had a series of experiences on this very subject, very interesting experiences.... With the same person, whom I see every day, let's say, or very often, the impression the contact has (an impression that stays on for a shorter or longer time) depends on the presence of the psychic. With the same person, you understand, the same relationship, at certain times it becomes full and you have the sense of something ... yes, full – not exactly "living," but ... (I can't say "solid" because there's nothing hard about it), but full, substantial; then, at other times, it's thin, fleeting, neutral. And I have observed (with the same people in the same circumstances), at times you have the sense of a ... more than living contact (the word "living" isn't enough), an EXISTENT contact, rather; an existent, durable contact (but not "durable" in time: durable in its nature); at other times with the very same people (often in the same circumstances), it's thin, flat, it's dry, superficial – it may be very active, apparently very living, but it has no depth.... And I have seen that it is when the psychic participates and when it doesn't.

So I have now reached the point where every minute I can feel ("feel," I don't mean perceive psychically, I mean feel materially) when the psychic is there and when it isn't. It's very interesting. These last few days.

And it makes the whole difference, in the sense that ... Well, it's like the difference between a picture or a representation or a narration and the thing itself – between a picture and the thing itself, between a narration and the thing itself. That's the difference. With the one, it EXISTS; with the other, it may be living, but it's ... superficial and ... momentary. And as I said the other day, it doesn't at all depend on how important what you are doing is (important according to the mental notion, of course), on how important what you are doing is or how grave the circumstance, none of all that: simply, the psychic is there or it isn't. That's all.

Which amounts to saying that the CELLS THEMSELVES feel the difference, perceive the difference.

Now I don't remember, because I don't note those things mentally, but it's an experience I had with someone I see very often (maybe every day, I don't know, I forget who it was). One day, for a time, the impression of an existent relationship, full and ... I could call it "comfortable," with a sense of security; the same person in the same circumstances: suddenly like an image of himself: hollow (mentally very living and active), but hollow and dry, indifferent – nonexistent, so to say.

That was a few days ago. I forget who it was.

And it has given me the key to the whole entire problem.

Basically, we could say that it's the difference between the same life, the same existence, the same organization – the same life on earth – with the Divine's Presence now perceptible, now unmanifest. And that's how it is from the point of view of the entire earth.

*^**

Soon afterwards

What do you WANT?

(silence)

I know very well what I want.

(Mother goes into a long concentration lasting about a half-hour)

Nothing to say?

One should remember always.

Remember ... Did you feel anything special?

Yes.

What?

I did something – not something special because I usually do it – but more totally, I might say, than usual. I'd like to know if you felt anything?

I don't know.... It seemed so much THAT.

Yes.

I told you the other day about what I call the "transfer"; for two days (more than two: several days, but especially yesterday and today), a work has been going on to make it continual, that is, to allow nothing except That.

Then there begins to come a kind of material power of EXTENDING – extending the zone, you understand, extending it like that (encompassing gesture) to what's immediately near. So today, instead of applying the Force like this (gesture from high to low), as I always used to do, I ... it was as if encompassing your body in the same movement of the cells.

It was successful enough! And I'd like to know if you felt a difference.

I've never had such a strong impression of That, and ... so strongly THERE.

Ah! Then that's it.

I do it at night for you, only it's more subtle than with the physical presence.

(silence)

It's being done.

It's being done in the sense that it's becoming more and more constant.

It is the action of a perfectly conscious aspiration, increasingly constant, and the Response which brings the immediate result of that aspiration.... But it's still a completely new field – new from that total, integral point of view. Formerly, everything going on in the body (I don't mean this one, I mean it in a general way) was a reflection and an effect of the "Thing," while now, it is the Thing itself. But the millennial habit of being otherwise is so strong that the impression is ... It's like ... (the comparison is poor, but anyway), like stretching a rubber band; so, as long as you keep it stretched (gesture of keeping Matter at full stretch), the effect is there; but if the tension stops, even for a second (gesture of abrupt flattening), it falls back out of habit.... Which compels you to constant tension. But it won't always be like that. It is the transition from one habit to another; once the other movement is established, then it will be natural, this constant tension won't be necessary.

We'll see how much time it takes.

And for the first time with you, I (because the result, too, was rather concrete and constant this morning), I tried to encompass. It's far from being what it should be, but there has been a result. It's very far from being "that" which it should be, but ...

(silence)

This extraordinary impression of the unreality of suffering, unreality of diseases, unreality ... It's very strange. Then that whole millennial habit comes along and tries to deny and say ... and say that it is the state you are in which is unreal! So then, it's there. Because there is no mental action or thought or any such thing: it's all in the vibrations ... There are moments, you know, of inexpressible glory, but it's fleeting. And the other thing is there – pressing all around....

When you succeed in keeping the [material] mind absolutely inactive, it's relatively easier, but when the mind comes and assails, then ... Then you almost have to use violence to repulse the onslaught, to establish silence.

That's why until you reach that state in which the mind can be like this (vast, calm gesture), absolutely still ... When there is nothing except the consciousness, then it's all right. Before that, it seems impossible, an impossible work. But when the mind is replaced by the consciousness, then ...

There's no time left for anything. We'll work some other day!

(Mother laughs)

July 22, 1967

I told you there is someone here learning French (and learning it very well, I must say) whom I answered with a joke to see if he had a sense of humor. And the next day he, in turn, sent me a joke!

"In the work of transformation, who is slower in doing his work, man or God?"

My answer:

"To man, God is too slow in answering his prayer." To God, man is too slow in opening to His influence." But to the Truth-Consciousness, everything is going as it should!"

(Mother laughs)

Then I have something else. I have been asked questions about music: "What is it we should attend to in music? How to judge the quality of a piece of music? What do you think of light music (cinema, jazz, etc.), which our children like very much?"

I replied this (it was yesterday):

"The role of music lies in helping the consciousness to uplift itself towards the spiritual heights.

"All that lowers the consciousness, encourages desires and excites the passions runs counter to the true goal of music and ought to be avoided.

"It is not a question of designation but of inspiration ...

Yes, because he says "light music," but I've heard light music that I found exceedingly lovely! Even some pieces of film music that were magnificent, and on the other hand some "classical" pieces, oh, how boring! So ...

"... and the spiritual consciousness alone can judge there."

Because at the School they play music every Saturday, and they've begun quarreling about the kind of music that should be played; then one boy said, "As for me, I LOVE light music, I find it VERY amusing." (Mother laughs) So they looked down on him scornfully! And they wrote to ask me. So that's what I replied!

"Light" music! Of course, jazz music ... but even there, there are very nice passages, one can't say.

One can't say.

Ultimately, it doesn't at all depend on the musician's intention: it depends on the STATE he himself was in. If you feel very joyful and suddenly hear sounds expressing a very light, very free joy, and put it into music, it's marvelous. While if you are grave, serious, see all the human misery, and put it into thick, ponderous sounds, and, oh, if it's made into orchestral music that bores you stiff ... (Mother laughs)

Wait, there's something else again.... Oh, poor K., he conducted examinations (they're out of their minds with their exams!), he conducted examinations on a text or a subject he had dictated to the students in his class. In other words, they had the answer quite ready. Two of the boys (one of whom K. finds very intelligent – he is, moreover – and has a liking for, while he doesn't like the other) were late, and K. asked the boy he doesn't like to bring him at home the result of their work. He brought it. K. read it, and to one of the questions, the two boys' answers were not quite identical but extremely similar. That was precisely the. subject K. had dictated to the students, so it was natural enough that the answers should be similar. K. "felt" right away that the boy had copied from the other, and told him so! The boy lost his temper and spoke to him rather rudely. So K. writes to tell me the whole story, in his own way, and the boy writes to tell me the whole story, in his own way, moreover expressing regret that he was rude to his teacher. But K. remains convinced that he copied. So, a flood of letters ... Finally I wrote K., "Send me the two texts, I will see" (not "see" with my eyes, but like that, "feeling" the thing). The boy did NOT copy. But to me, it's far worse, because it means K. made a mental formation with words – words put in a certain order – and stuffed it into their brains. And they repeat it parrot fashion – naturally, it bears an extraordinary similarity to his teaching. Finally, K. told me, "If I accept that the boy didn't copy, I am obliged to give him a very good mark, which I can't do!" (Mother laughs) And he asks me, "What should I do?" I replied yesterday evening: "There is a very simple way out: cancel the test. Take all the papers, tie them into a bundle, put them away in your cupboard, and pretend it never existed – and in future, no more exams! At the end of the year, when you have to give marks to the students, well, instead of using such an artificial method, you will be obliged to observe attentively, follow the child's inner development, have a deeper contact with him (Mother laughs mockingly), and know if he has really understood or not! Then you will be able to give marks, instead of basing yourself on the parrotlike repetition of something they learned without understanding." And I sent that. So now, they're in a fix! (Mother laughs) I find it so funny, it's great fun!

They had to hold a "teachers' meeting" to face up to my answer! (Mother laughs) I upset the whole School!

One of the teachers has already answered me, "It's impossible to know the students' progress unless tests are taken." To this I didn't exactly reply what I thought, but I thought: of course, if the teacher is an idiot, he can't judge the students' progress unless he makes them take tests, but if he is an intelligent man with a psychic sense, there are a thousand ways to find out if a student has understood.

So they've had their meeting.

But in the technical field, it's more difficult to judge progress.

Ah, yes, that's what they base themselves on. But it makes no difference! Two of the teachers of technology have shown how, in the purely technical field, it was possible to judge without the need for exams. No, you see, I know, I did my studies there, in France, there were lots of exams and I know how it is. I attended (I was young at the time, but that makes no difference), I attended exams like the ones taken for certificates, I saw the pupils who were there, I saw how they answered.... It's one of my very concrete experiences: the ones that pass are NOT AT ALL the more intelligent ones! Never. They are the ones that repeat parrot fashion. They repeat very nicely. They have no understanding of what they say.

Anyhow, I think we'll get somewhere.

But yesterday evening, with this poor K., what fun I had! ... I said, take it or leave it – either the teachers stop writing to me and asking me anything (which would give me time: I am overburdened with letters), or if they write to me, well, too bad, they've got to take it. I can't tell them what will please them.

Our School professes to follow a "new method" – the very least it could do would be to follow it!

(Mother gives Satprem the text of the three letters
she sent to the teacher on the question of
examinations at the School:)

(The teacher's question:)

"About this cheating in exams, what am I to do? Should we, as is done outside, keep three teachers in the room to watch vigilantly? – The teachers don't like that way of doing things here in the Ashram.

"Or should we abolish tests? This proposal seems to me doubtful, for exercises and essays amount to the same thing.

"The problem is there, at any rate, and to solve it truly we should understand why the children behave that way.

"Please tell me the cause of this perversion and the solution to the problem."

(Mother's reply:)

"It is quite simple. The majority of children study because they are forced to by family, habit, current ideas, not because they want to learn and know. Until the motive for their studies is rectified, until they learn because they want to know, they will use all kinds of tricks to make their work easier and get results with the least effort."

(July 13, 1967)

(A few days later, Mother sent the following letter, in English:)

"The only solution is to annul this test and all that are to come. Keep all the papers with you in a closed bundle – as something that has not been – and continue quietly your classes.

"At the end of the year you will give notes to the students, not based on written test-papers, but on their behaviour, their concentration, their regularity, their promptness to understand and their openness of intelligence.

"For yourself you will take it as a discipline to rely more on inner contact, keen observation, and impartial outlook.

"For the students it will be the necessity of understanding truly what they learn and not to repeat as a parrot what they have not fully understood.

"And thus a true progress will have been made in the teaching."

(July 21, 1967)

(Then, the next day, Mother sent this third note:)

"I find tests an obsolete and ineffective way of knowing if the students are intelligent, willing and attentive.

"A silly, mechanical mind can very well answer a test if the memory is good and these are certainly not the qualities required for a man of the future.

"It is by tolerance for the old habits that I consented that those who want tests can have them. But I hope that in future this concession will not be necessary.

"To know if a student is good needs, if the tests are abolished, a little more inner contact and psychological knowledge for the teacher. But our teachers are expected to do Yoga, so this ought not to be difficult for them."

(July 22, 1967)

*^**

Soon afterwards, regarding a letter of Sri Aurobindo's:

"... But in physics you are in the very domain of the mechanical law where process is everything and the driving consciousness has chosen to conceal itself with the greatest thoroughness – so that, 'scientifically speaking', it does not exist there. One can discover it there by occultism and yoga, but the methods of occult science and of yoga are not measurable or followable by the means of physical science – so the gulf remains in existence. It may be bridged one day, but the physicist is not likely to be the bridge-builder, so it is no use asking him to try what is beyond his province."

November 5, 1934
(XXII.201)

That's just the big quarrel with the Government! ... The Government says, "We can't recognize you as a "research School' because the progress of yoga can't be measured." Exactly what Sri Aurobindo says! If we published this letter, it would give the Government full ammunition!

You remember, in America a society or university or whatever opened a kind of competition to "prove life after death,"[92] and they gave two or three questions to be resolved. And I was asked, "Why don't you answer?" I said, the questions are not properly formulated, they're asked by ignorant people, so how can one answer? (I told you that long ago, I think.) Well, it's the same thing here. What they ask is ignorant, it isn't properly formulated; it's formulated by people who don't understand anything, so how can we answer them!

*^**

Mother turns to other tasks

In a magazine (I think it's Life, an American magazine), they published the story of a man (who is in fact one of the editors or administrators of the magazine), a man who was given an injection of penicillin but was allergic to penicillin. And lo and behold, all his cells begin to dissolve, while he, entirely conscious and as if concentrated in his brain, watches the dissolution. When it reached up to the heart, the doctors declared him dead.... The impression it had on him was that the cells had a kind of expanding movement, then burst and dissolved one after another: feet, legs, abdomen, everything. And when it reached the heart, the doctor said, "He's dead." But he had taken refuge in his brain and thought, "I must hold out; if I can hold out here, concentrate and resist here, all will be well." And that's what he did. Then he felt all at once a power, he says, something so luminous, so beautiful, so gentle, so ... so much more full of love than anything else in the world, such a marvelous sensation ... that he let himself melt into it, and after some time, order returned everywhere and he came back to life! He describes that. He describes it (with sentences: it's in a magazine, so he makes sentences), but his experience is really interesting. You see, because of that will to concentrate in what he conceived to be the essential part of his being, the center of his life, he suddenly found himself in the presence of that "power".... He said he tried to recapture it afterwards, but "I forget what it was, I no longer remember, except for that sensation, more marvelous than anything one can conceive."[93]

I found that interesting.

And that brought him back to life.

(silence)

I took it as one of the signs that the Force is really at work. Because I don't think that man had done any yoga, he knew nothing about those things; he is just a gentleman-who's-had-an-injection-of-penicillin which he can't tolerate (those accidents happen often enough), nothing else. There was just this idea that the brain is the conscious part of the being, and if he concentrated there ... His idea was, "I want to know what's happening, I want to be conscious of what's happening, I want to see what's happening." So that's what pulled the Force. A simple thing.

It seems to me there is a progress in human consciousness – that's my impression.

An awakening.

*^**

Then Mother goes into a long concentration

I have seen something.... In its totality, it is luminous, but not radiant, it's extremely peaceful, and as if golden, but not dazzling (I don't know how to explain ...), like a creamy and golden light. Very, very peaceful. But in it there were patches (as they say in English) of three VERY bright colors that were grouped together, as it were, and as though organized. There was a dazzling red, ruby red; a bluish white, almost pearl-gray, very luminous, too; and ... (Mother tries to remember) It's gone, I don't remember if it was.... Yes, it was green, but an emerald green that was also luminous – luminous and transparent. They were like demarcated zones, but their positions were changing (Mother makes a rotating gesture, like the lights in a kaleidoscope). They were almost like entities. And it was in your atmosphere. Like formations moving about and organizing (same gesture), made up of those three colors....

The gray is the gray of spiritual light, spiritual aspiration; the red is the ruby red of the physical; and that emerald green ...[94]

The shapes were demarcated, but not fixed. They were like clearly demarcated groups of light, but not fixed (they were plastic), and organizing like this (same gesture in kaleidoscope).

When I started talking, I almost stopped seeing.... I was in an inner vision, very deep inside. A very special consciousness.

It was moving about and organizing with great suppleness (same gesture)

And the whole thing was like a nimbus, like the haloes they paint, you know? It all was a nimbus of golden light, not bright but golden.

Did you feel anything special?

Yes, the Force – massive.

Powerful?

Yes.

Yes, they were things organizing in your being – your inner being – but powerfully.

@

July 26, 1967

(Mother, laughing, holds out to Satprem a note she has just written:)

"The goal we aim at is immortality. Of all habits, death is certainly the most inveterate!"

We could call our world "the world of bad habits."

There has been for some time, I don't know, a sort of benevolent, smiling and ... constructive irony. As if a "spirit" had come. Then, there is another thing (but I know that one), which Sri Aurobindo used to call a censor. He told me, "You have a very strong censor in your atmosphere." It kept criticizing me constantly, all the time; not so often now, but it's still there. And now and then, it tells me, "But you shock people! They expect something noble, great, imposing, and you always speak in an ironic tone!" Yesterday again, some people came to see me – and jokes keep coming to me all the time. I tell them jokes, and I see ... (laughing) I see their appalled looks!

Something seems to be constantly telling people, "But don't take things seriously! ... Don't take things seriously, that's what makes you unhappy! That's what makes you unhappy, you must learn to smile," and so on. And above all, to make fun of ourselves, that's the most important thing: to see how ridiculous we are – the slightest pain and we are full of self-pity, oh! ...

At times one protests....

It's a very odd atmosphere, and amusing. But it's a very good cure for that inveterate disease which self-pity is. The body is full of it, it pities itself as soon as there is the smallest trouble – and that makes it terribly worse.

And then, what goings-on ... The goings-on of the School, oh, those are ... priceless stories! But yesterday evening, I suddenly became indignant about a boy, the boy who had been accused of copying. He asserted he hadn't copied, and I saw he hadn't (but what I saw was almost worse!), and I said, "No more exams" – a dreadful row everywhere! Then K., who is really a good boy, wrote to me, "Should I not rather tell the boy that you decided he hadn't copied, because he must be worrying?" I thought, "Poor K.!" But anyway, it was a nice gesture, so I said yes. Then he called the boy, told him what he had to, also that exams were abolished and the whole matter was over and done with. As soon as the boy left him, he went and told his friends a world of lies: that I had asked K. to apologize, to express regret and reinstate the boy, and a lot of fibs ... a series of terrible lies (and lies about me). You understand, I had had a movement of sympathy for K. for what he had done; it shows a sort of nobleness of soul in him: he was so convinced, but he accepted what I said and made that gesture because he thought the boy must have been worrying. Then the boy's thoroughly disgusting reaction ... I had to restrain myself (inwardly): I was displeased. I had hoped, on the contrary, that that goodwill would give rise to a somewhat noble response, but all that is a sort of degradation.... Yesterday, I was on the point of giving the child an inner slap – I stopped myself from doing so, but he has clearly put himself in a bad spot.

Now they write to ask me, "How can we know whether the children follow if we don't have exams?" I had to explain the difference between a sort of individual control coming from observation, a remark, an unexpected question and so on, which allows the teacher to place the child, and the other method in which you are told, "You will have an exam in eight days and the subject will be what you have learned" – so everyone starts reviewing what he has learned and preparing himself, and that's that: the student with a good memory is the one who passes. I explained all that.[95]

If I had been a teacher, my objection to this decision would not at all have been from the teachers' point of view, but from the students' because I remember my studies, and had you not been obliged every three or six months to review what was learned in school, well, you know, you'd have just let it slip away.

Well, too bad!

But it's a sort of discipline that makes you review things.

If you aren't interested enough in the subject to try and remember it and retain the result of what you've learned, well, too bad, it's too bad for you.

The students' point of view is false, the teachers' point of view is false.

The students' point of view: they learn just to appear to know, pass their exam and cram their heads with all kinds of things.... The teachers' point of view is to have as easy a control as possible and be able to give marks without giving themselves too much trouble, with as little effort as possible. As for me, I say: each student is an individuality, each student should come not because he wants to be able to say, "I have studied and am going to take my exams," but because he is eager to know and comes with the will to know. And the teacher must not follow the easy method of giving a subject and seeing how everyone answers, whether the answer is good or bad, conforms to what he has taught or not: he must find out whether the student's interest and effort are sincere, and everyone according to his own nature – for the teacher it's infinitely more difficult, but that's education. And they protest.

As regards the teachers' point of view, I certainly agree entirely ...

Yes, but they are the ones who protest! (Laughing) The students don't. But I wrote the teachers: the students who want to please their teacher or learn by heart in order to seem to know what they haven't understood, well, those students aren't interesting – and they are always the ones about whom I am told, "He is a good student!"

But you know, I remember, I clearly remember my attitude when I was studying, and I clearly remember all my classmates and which one was to me an intelligent girl, which one a word mill.... I have some very amusing memories about that, because I couldn't understand what meaning there was in learning in order to seem to know (I had a tremendous memory at the time, but didn't make use of it). And I liked only what I had understood.

Once in my life I took an exam (I forget which one), but I was just at the age limit, which means that I was too young to sit at the time of the regular exam, so they had me sit with those who had flunked the first exam (I sat at that time because it was autumn, and then I was old enough). And I remember, we were a small group, the teachers were greatly annoyed because their holidays had been cut short, and the students were for the most part rather mediocre, or else rebellious. There I was, observing all that (I was very young, you understand, I don't remember, thirteen or fourteen), watching the whole thing: a poor little girl had been called to the blackboard to do a mathematical problem, and she didn't know how to do it, she kept spluttering. Me (I wasn't being questioned just then), I looked and smiled – oh, dear! The teacher saw me and was quite displeased. As soon as the girl was sent back, he called me and said, "You do it." Well, naturally (I loved mathematics very much, really very much, and also I understood, it made sense), I did the problem – the chap's face! ... You see, I wasn't in that [in the small outward person]: I was constantly a witness. And I had the most extraordinary fun. So I know the way children are, the way teachers are, I know all that, I had great fun, really great fun.

At home, my brother was studying advanced mathematics (it was to enter Polytechnique[96]), and he found it difficult, so my mother had engaged a tutor to coach him. I was two years younger than my brother. I used to look on, and everything would become clear: the why, the how, it all was clear. So the teacher was working hard, my brother was working hard, when I exclaimed, "But it's like this!" Then I saw the teacher's face! ... It seems he went and told my mother, "It's your daughter who should be studying!" (Mother laughs) And it all was like a picture, you understand, so funny, so funny! So I know, I remember, I know the reactions, the habits.... That's why I didn't want to look after the School here: I thought it would be a headache and everyone would go after me! Then I was forced to because of that copying affair. But now I find it funny! (Laughing) And I tell them outrageous things!

It's such fun, such fun!

For a time I attended a private school: I didn't go to a state school because my mother considered it unfitting for a girl to be in a state school! But I was in a private school, a school of high repute at the time: their teachers were really capable people. The geography teacher, a man of renown, had written books, his books on geography were well-known. He was a fine man. So then, we were doing geography; I enjoyed maps more completely because it all had to be drawn. One day, the teacher looked at me (he was an intelligent man), he looked at me and asked, "Why are towns, the big cities, found on rivers?" I saw the students' bewildered look, they were saying to themselves, "Lucky the question wasn't put to me!" I replied, "But it's very simple! It's because rivers are a natural means of communication." (Mother laughs) He too was taken aback!... That's how it was, all my studies were like that, I enjoyed myself all the time – enjoyed myself thoroughly, it was great fun!

The teacher of literature ... He was an old fellow full of all the most conventional ideas imaginable. What a bore he was, oh! ... So all the students sat there, their noses to the grindstone. He would give subjects for essays – do you know The Path of Later On and the Road of Tomorrow? I wrote it when I was twelve, it was my paper on his question! He had given a proverb (now I forget the words) and expected to be told ... all the sensible things! I told my story, that little story, it was written at the age of twelve. Afterwards he would eye me with misgivings! (Laughing) He expected me to make a scene.... Oh, but I was a good girl!

But it was always like that: with that something looking on and seeing the sheer ridiculousness of this life which takes itself so seriously!

All those things have come back these last few days, because of this affair [at the School].

I can recall only one instance when I took things seriously, and even then, I put on a serious LOOK. It involved my brother, who was still quite young (he may have been twelve, or less: ten, and I eight – no, nine and eleven, something like that, mere children). My brother was quick-tempered, he was easily angered and would speak very bluntly, almost harshly. One day he talked back to my father (I forget about what); my father was furious and put him across his knees (my father was an extremely strong man, I mean physically strong), he put my brother across his knees and ... (laughing) started spanking him; he had pulled his pants down and was spanking him. I enter and see that (it was taking place in the dining room) I see that, see my father, look at him, and say to myself, "But this man is mad!" And I told him, "You stop at once, or I'm leaving this house." (I was two years younger than my brother.) And I said it with such seriousness, oh! And I was resolute. And my father ... (laughing) was flabbergasted.

All those memories have come back like that. So now I remember to what extent – to what extent the consciousness was already there. But it was amusing.

(silence)

And the ease: whatever I wanted to do I could do. But there was one thing (now I understand, at the time I didn't know why it was so): whatever I wanted to do I could do, but after a time, I had experienced the thing and it didn't seem to me important enough to devote a whole life to it. So I would move on to something else: painting, music, science, literature ... everything, and also practical things. And always with extraordinary ease. Then, after a while, very well, I would leave it. So my mother (she was a very stern person) would say, "My daughter is incapable of seeing anything through to the end." And it remained like that: incapable of seeing anything through to the end – always taking to something, then leaving it, then after a time taking to something else.... "Unstable. Unstable – she will never achieve anything in life!" (Mother laughs)

And it was really the childlike transcription of the need for ever more, ever better, ever more, ever better ... endlessly – the sense of advance, advance towards perfection. A perfection that I felt to be quite beyond anything people thought of – something ... a "something" ... which was indefinable, but which I sought through everything.

So all that has come back to be sorted out, put in its place, offered (gesture upward), and now, it's over.

@

July 29, 1967

(At the beginning of this conversation, Mother expresses her strong displeasure that her so-called note on Arabs and Israelites[97] was published in "Mother India" under the title "The Jews and the Arabs." Mother protests against the use of the word "Jew," which corresponds to only one Israelite tribe and has taken on a pejorative meaning.)

The word has so often been used as an insult....

Anyway, thanks to that, probably because that note was published, things have been brought back into the atmosphere, and this morning there was a very, very concrete experience somewhere....

It's a strange thing, as if suddenly emerging from a conventional atmosphere of thought, which is like a terrestrial atmosphere (I don't mean it's an ordinary thought, I mean it's in the field of human mentality). And there is, above, something that sees things quite differently. As if ... Yes, things are ordinarily seen like this (gesture from below upward), while "that" sees like this (gesture from above downward), so when you enter there, you see things that you know here (you know them, they aren't new), but you see them with a totally different vision. And naturally, the notation is also done differently.... (Mother looks for a note)

It came in two ways. Those things are SEEN, you understand, seen. Words come afterwards to try and transcribe what was seen. The first thing that came was thus:

"Christians divinize suffering to make it a means of the earth's salvation."

Then it came with just a small difference – these are subtleties, but ... From an intellectual standpoint, these are subtleties without value, but up there you seem to be almost touching the heart of things, that is, the essence – the deeper essence of events. So then, it came quite simply, like this:

"Christianity DEIFIES suffering to make it the instrument of the earth's salvation."

It's hard to explain because it's the state of consciousness that is different.... Now it's a memory, but at that time it was a vision – a very, very deep vision, very sharp, naturally exceeding all that occurred on earth, but also all the ways of expressing what occurred. The personality of Christ and so on – it was all so different! And it became, yes, I might say symbolic, but that's not it.... At the same time, it placed this religion among all the others, in a very defined place in the earth evolution – in the evolution of the earth CONSCIOUSNESS.

The experience lasted for a half-hour, but everything, everything was different – different not in its appearance, different in its deeper significance.... Was the difference in my active consciousness? I don't know. I mean, did I make contact with a region of consciousness that was new to me? Possibly. But it seemed to me a wholly different vision of the earth and man's history.

During the experience I remembered what Sri Aurobindo had written: "Men love suffering, therefore Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem."[98] And that was like ... (smiling) a sort of foam of thought quite on the surface, all the way up, bathed in the light from above, and like the intellectual way of expressing what I was seeing (gesture from above downward), which came from above.... From the point of view of light, it was a very interesting experience.

And seen from above, what was the story like?

You see, Sri Aurobindo says, "Man loves suffering, therefore Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem," then I said, Christianity (I mean the universal, or anyway terrestrial, origin of what expressed itself on earth as the Christian religion), the action of this religion on earth has been to "deify suffering" because men NEEDED to understand – not only to understand but to feel and adhere to the raison d'être (the universal raison d'être) of suffering on earth as a means of evolution. We might, basically, say that they sanctified suffering so it may be recognized as a means indispensable to the evolution of the earth.

So now, that action has been exploited to the full and more, and ought to be gone beyond, and that's why it must be left behind in order to find something else.

You also said once, "It is not a crucified but a glorified body that will save the world."[99]

Yes. Then a Christian sent me a picture of Christ on the cross, and just above, the risen Christ in his ascent heavenward – that's how they take it!

It all happens on the heights.

Yes, heavenward.

(long silence)

Have you sometimes had that kind of very global vision in time and space, in which each thing takes its own place and everything is coordinated by a total consciousness? ... (It must be new for me only.) It is a knowledge-vision. My consciousness, the consciousness there (gesture above and around) is constantly a consciousness of action. Since the beginning of those creative bursts of Love, it has been a consciousness of action, always action – action, action, perpetual action. Ultimately, constant creation. But this morning, it wasn't action: it was (laughing) the "observation," I might say, the observation of that action as a sort of vision, as you would look at a picture, you know. Instead of being on the highest intellectual plane, the plane that has absolute comprehension and puts each thing in its place, it was ... (how can I explain it?). It's a knowledge through subjective vision. Not the vision of something foreign to you: it's the same state of consciousness as the one of the doer, but instead of only doing, you see at the same time. That was this morning's experience. It was rather new, in the sense that I only had it now and then, just like that, but never with that totality, that clarity and that sort of absoluteness. It is the sensation of a self-evident, absolute, indisputable knowledge – it's not "trying to express something: it's SEEING. Seeing, really seeing, but seeing ... not one thing after another: seeing everything at a glance, a totality in space and in time. And every detail with total precision, which makes it possible to write a thing like this [the note on Christianity].

To be clear, I should tell the whole thing. Yesterday I had an opportunity to speak to someone about this constant presence of Sri Aurobindo, here, who sees, says, acts all the time. Then, after I had spoken, I wondered, "How is it that this brain ..." Because, I think I told you, when Sri Aurobindo left his body, several times, several days in a row, I remained standing near his bed for one or two hours, and I felt – MATERIALLY felt – what came out of his body enter mine. To such a point that I remember having said, "Well, if anyone denies afterlife, I have proof it exists." So I thought, "Why does this brain [Mother's] go on working according to its usual routine now that the consciousness of the Presence is constant?" Then this morning I had this experience, and while having the experience, I felt, "This is how Sri Aurobindo used to see!" (Laughing) That must be it! ... And for some time I have noticed that as soon as, for this or other bodies, for events or ..., as soon as something is formulated (neither a desire nor an aspiration, but something like the living perception of a possibility that SHOULD be realized – it comes at times), it gets done! It gets done automatically and instantly. So this morning, for, oh, a half-hour, the impression was so charming, so pleasant: "Ah, there we are! THIS is how we should see things!"

Afterwards I had to be busy with other things, but it's still there. And the question was, "Why? Why isn't there in this brain the capacity to perceive and transcribe things ... as he had it?"

And so the conclusion. I've always heard it said (I don't know if it's true) that men think in a certain way and women in another. On an external level, the difference is not visible, but the attitude – the mental attitude – is perhaps different. The mental attitude on the Prakriti side is always action, always action; the mental attitude on the Purusha[100] side is conception: conception, overall vision, and also observation, as though it observed what the Prakriti had done and saw how it was done. Now I understand that. That's how it works. Naturally, no man (here on earth) is exclusively masculine and no woman is exclusively feminine, because it has all been mixed together again and again. Similarly, I don't think any one race is absolutely pure: all that is over, it's been mingled together (which is another way to re-create Oneness). But there have been TENDENCIES; It's like that note about Israelites and Muslims, it's just a manner of speaking; if I were told, "This is what you said," I would reply, "Yes, I said that, but I can also say something else and a lot of other things!" It's a way of selecting certain aspects and putting them to the fore with an action in view (it's always with an action in view). But for the moment, everything is like that, mixed and mingled together with a view to general unification – no one nationality is pure and separate from others, that no longer exists. But to a certain vision, each thing has its essential role, its raison d'être, its place in universal history. It's like that very strong impression that the Chinese are lunar, that when the moon grew cold, some beings managed to come to the earth, and those beings are at the origin of the Chinese nation; but now there only remains a trace – a trace which is the memory of that distinctiveness. And it's everywhere the same thing: if you look at individuals in every nation, you find in every nation a bit of everything, but with the memory ... the memory of a specificness which has been its raison d'être in the great terrestrial unfolding.

(Mother goes into a contemplation)

He was here, so present, so concrete – Sri Aurobindo. Did you feel him?

I stopped because of the time.

When he comes like that, you are inside – not outside, but inside. He is like that, enfolding. You are inside.

A part of your atmosphere (gesture above Satprem's head) is absolutely, absolutely one, like that, without any difference.

 

August

August 2, 1967

(Regarding a Tantric apprentice, disciple of X.)

Do you see W?

Yes, I saw him yesterday.

He wrote to me today: he is in full revolt. What did he tell you yesterday?

Oh .. .

He was in a pretty bad state.

Quite.

In full revolt. So at night, his heart hurts, his chest hurts, his head aches – aching all over. And today he writes to tell me, "Is this what you want till doomsday?" I wrote back, "What I want is just the opposite!"

I saw him yesterday and spoke to him for half an hour, but he was like ... you know, like iron bars; he had decided in advance that he wouldn't understand anything of what I would tell him. I tried to get in deep down, but ... He told me (it's an old formation on him) that whatever he wants to do he does for a while, then he meets with a catastrophe and the thing is stopped. And he says that what he was doing now was his spiritual effort, and he has met with a catastrophe (I don't know which one). Naturally, I told him it wasn't like that at all! That it was on the contrary the sign he had reached the point when the door could open and he could transform himself. But he refused to understand. You know, when people are obdurate like that, there's no way you can get in.

So I thought you could perhaps talk to him.

I saw him yesterday and felt it did him good, or at any rate that he listened to me....

I also felt (that's why I mention it) that he would listen to you, at least.

Yes, I am trying.

Then it's good.... You know, when you put iron bars around you and say, "Impossible, impossible, impossible" ...

The difficult problem for him now is, at bottom, all this Tantric japa he does.

But why does he go on?

Well, that's just the problem, he can't find the strength to break off.

Ah, that's it: he goes on....

Yesterday I tried to tell him that this kind of discipline is very powerful and good for some, but that in fact, it's like weaving around yourself more and more tightly a force you shut yourself in.

That's right. Yes, exactly!

But he must find the courage to cut off. That's his problem.

He hasn't once told me, "I want to stop."

But that's because he doesn't dare. And you don't tell him to, either, so ... (But of course, it's difficult for you to tell him.)

Yesterday I explained to him the effect that japa had on him, I explained in detail, but I don't think he understood anything. And I told him to change; I even gave him the Mantra (because if you do that it means the supreme liberation). Instead of leaving him without anything at all, I wanted him, as a matter of fact, to do that. But yesterday when I asked him, "Are you going on with your japa?" he said, "Oh, just a little."

There are, of course, inside oneself (and consequently around oneself) the very forces that oppose one's realization, and the system of those [Tantric] mantras is to try to lean on the Overmind beings for support against those forces, which are much more powerful than they, the gods, are – the proof is that despite all their goodwill, they [the Overmind gods] have never been able to turn the earth into a harmonious place. We can't help noting the fact. So I told him it was a direct fight, all those mantras are a direct fight against the difficulty, whereas ... (and that's what gave him the terrible headache he complains about: it's dangerous, of course, it can unsettle the whole functioning). I told him to stop and use that [Mother's mantra]. I explained it all to him yesterday. I told him he shouldn't wage a direct fight: one must try to lean for support on the force one has inside oneself, which is everywhere and can overcome the difficulty: "Instead of fighting, live in the other consciousness." But I saw he was closed – padlocked – with a hard look. He didn't want to understand. So ...

For half an hour he kept me here. It was half past twelve!

So if you explain that to him, I think it will do him good.

Yesterday evening, it got in, I touched something.

Certainly!

But ...

So the result: he writes this morning, "I couldn't sleep the whole night, my heart hurts, something else hurts" (I don't remember what: three or four different places), "I can't eat, impossible" – well, a most tragic picture, and asking me, "Do you want me to be like this till doomsday?"

His problem is to break off from that Tantric business.

No, there are two problems. There is that one on the level of action, and then there is a tre-men-dous pride in the whole family; a terrible pride, it's a formation.... That's what was in him yesterday, as if coagulated. So I told him, "Have a little more humility, a little more modesty."

One doesn't want to abdicate, you understand.

It's the sense of being nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing when you are in front of ... call it what you like, it doesn't matter (whether you start from the idea of consciousness or take it as the Supreme Lord, it doesn't matter). But it's the concrete feeling that as long as you want to remain shut in your little person, you are nothing, while if you abdicate that little person, you become everything. That's what they don't understand. Pride is simply ... You have a contact with inner eternity, inner omnipotence, but you are shut in your little ego, so the ego imagines itself to be That, and then it asserts itself – sits down and refuses to budge: a colossal I. It's precisely the supreme Truth (laughing) in its deformation.

I tried to make him understand that yesterday, but not like that, I put it very nicely!

One certainly sees that: with those who are the very opposite, who crawl on the ground, there is no stuff, you can't do anything with them; so you have to try and give them a little self-confidence. But that's nothing. While with those others you can do something, but ... oh, they become furious with you!

The contact with the great Asuras, the first Asuras, is like that: the full consciousness of their formidable power, their marvelous capacities – they forget one thing, it's that they deserve no credit for it, it's not their exclusive property! So they cut the connection and become instruments of disorder and confusion.

This one, the Lord of Falsehood ...

To the human consciousness, those things are terrible, but seen from up above, they make you smile. I remember, when I met him during the war (I had ruined his work with Hitler, then I met him), I told him, "You know quite well that your time is over." He said, "I know it, but until I disappear I will wreak as much havoc as I can."

Childishness.

*^**

Soon afterwards

I told you I was in constant touch with the School's teachers. A "conference" is going on, and here is this (Mother holds out a paper to Satprem). There is an interesting point:

"Your difficulty comes from the fact that you have still the old belief that in life, there are some things high and some things low. It is not exact. It is not the things or the activities that are high or low, it is the consciousness of the doer which is true or false....

That is the interesting point.

"If you unite your consciousness with the Supreme Consciousness and manifest It, all you think, feel or do becomes luminous and true. It is not the subject of the teaching which is to be changed, it is the consciousness with which you teach that must be enlightened."

(July 31, 1967)

Then, Y. asked me questions on de Gaulle (Mother gives another paper):

"So long as one is for some and against others, one is necessarily far from the Truth.

"All present politics is based on falsehood, and no nation can entirely escape this falsehood.

"De Gaulle has an embryo of inner life, he knows that there is a force higher than the physical and mental forces – and that is why he is more receptive than many others.

"But he has ideas, principles, preferences and so on, and as such, he can make gross errors as any other human being.

"It is through this whole jumble and chaos that the Truth-Consciousness is at work everywhere, on all the points of the earth at once, in all nations, all individualities, without preferences or distinctions, wherever there is a spark of consciousness capable of receiving and manifesting It."

(July 29, 1967)

*^**

(Mother reads Satprem a quotation from Sri Aurobindo:)

"To be perpetually reborn is the condition of material immortality."

Sri Aurobindo.

That's excellent.

*^**

A little later, following a meditation:

That's how it is. Day after day, almost hour after hour, with the Power coming back ... You remember, I once said it had completely gone,[101] and that was true, it had completely gone in order to leave the body absolutely to itself, for its conversion, if I may say so; but once there had been in this body consciousness the same aspiration and the same ardor of consciousness (with a far greater steadiness than in any other part of the being; there are no fluctuations as there are in the vital and mind, it's very steady), once that was established (through kinds of pulsations, not distant from one another, but first on one detail, then spreading out and becoming generalized), since then the Power has been ... I might say it has been coming back. But at every stage of that return, all the old difficulties appear to be waking up again,[102] they seem to spring up again (they had quite fallen asleep, you understand), and every time that happens, this body consciousness feels a sort of astonishment mingled with distress that the presence of the divine Power, the divine Consciousness, the Truth-Consciousness, should give rise to all those difficulties, which are essentially difficulties of ignorance and inertia – the incapacity to receive. And it comes back as memories, like that (gesture from below), like a snake rearing its head. And every time, the entire physical consciousness has the same call, "Why? How can these things be when You are here!" That's what astonishes it: "Since You are here, how can these things be?"

Till now, in most cases, that has signaled a conversion, a transformation, an illumination (depending on the case), but this case we were just talking about [the Tantric apprentice] came precisely as a result of that return of the Power (I knew it; he told me yesterday, but I knew it when he had his revolt). And all that came was just all the old revolts, all the old movements, which were previously so strong, so widespread, so ESTABLISHED, and had been as though halted in their expression by the withdrawal of the Power. So everyone was slumbering in his condition. Then, as soon as the Force started coming back and working again, it all woke up again.

But it's not the full Presence yet, not the complete Presence of the being, which, through an incontrovertible omnipotence, changes things. So then, the body, with something so very moving in the simplicity of its prayer and its childlike astonishment, asks, "Since You are here, how can that be?..." And all that is ready to be transformed is transformed. But it isn't yet ... (how can I explain?) the compelling thing (gesture of irresistible descent), the absolute authority nothing can resist – it's not that, not yet, far from it.

There's no knowing how much more time it will take.

All that is on the verge of changing changes.

Otherwise, it's the slow underground labor, invisible, almost imperceptible, continually.

(silence)

The interesting point is that this body spontaneously, instantly and effortlessly – spontaneously – tries to find in itself, in the body's cells (it's a whole WORLD! A whole world), the cells try to find in themselves, "Oh, where is my incapacity? Where is my helplessness? Where is ... even my bad will or my stupidity or incapacity to understand and adhere?" Like that. And always the same answer, "Give everything, give everything, give everything.... I don't understand, I can't understand, I don't know, I can't know – I can't do anything, I am incapable of doing anything by myself: everything is for You, do it."

They try and try, everything tries to give itself perfectly, perfectly, that is, without exception – everything, everything.

It's a sort of ... not anxiety, but above all a vigilance, as if they were on the alert: "May we do nothing but what You want, think nothing but what You want, feel nothing but what You want, say nothing but what You want...." Constantly, uninterruptedly, night and day. In the middle of activity or in the middle of rest, everything asks, "To be what You want, to feel what You want, to do what You want, to exist ... without difference."

The slightest pain, any discomfort, the slightest clumsy gesture, the slightest thing, and immediately, "Ah! (with a start) This isn't You."

(Mother goes into a contemplation)

The subtle physical seems to be more and more transformed. There is still a mystery between the two. A mystery. They are coexistent [the physical and the subtle physical bodies], and yet ... (gesture of a lack of connection), the subtle physical doesn't appear to have an influence on this [the body].

Something ... Something to be found ... something.

@

 

August 5, 1967

(Mother gives Satprem a quotation from Sri Aurobindo.)

"I have never known any will of mine for one major event in the conduct of the world affairs to fail in the end, although it may take a long time for the world-forces to fulfill it."

Sri Aurobindo
(October 1932)

It's very interesting! I didn't know Sri Aurobindo had said that so openly.... I knew the fact, I had noted it, but I didn't know he had said it so openly. Interesting.

Everything is certain.

(Mother nods her head)

@

August 12, 1967

They've asked me for a message.... On the 19th, the prince of Kashmir, K.S., is holding in Delhi a big meeting of all the members of the parliament and the government to tell them that there is only one policy worth following, that of Sri Aurobindo. And he wants a message from me. Here it is:

"O India, land of Light and spiritual knowledge, wake up to your true mission in the world. Show the way to union and harmony."

I deliberately didn't use the word peace; I said harmony. I don't want to say peace, because for them, peace means telling other nations platitudes so as not to fight (!). So I don't want to use that word.

(silence)

Things are very bad. But in reality ... in reality that's very good, because it awakens them to the need to do something. There's no longer any security anywhere, people who left from Calcutta to come here for the 15th have been stopped on the way, their train had to be diverted because there were, I don't know, bandits somewhere.

No, they weren't bandits at all! That's what's more serious: it's not bandits, it's students who stopped the trains! And to cap it all, the Chief Minister of Bengal has declared their "grievances" to be "legitimate."

They may be legitimate, but their action isn't.

And he said their action should be regarded "sympathetically." I read that in this morning's papers, it's astounding!

(Mother laughs) Charming!

They're not bandits at all!

In any case, those who were expected here are forty-eight hours late.... No, there's no longer any security: someone we know was sitting at his window in Calcutta – sitting at his table and writing – and from the street they threw a bowlful of acid at him!... Why? Nobody knows.

They've lost all their values. Yesterday I met the vice-chancellor of Bangalore University[103]; can you guess what they teach in psychology at the university? They teach Freud and Jung! European psychoanalysis! In this country where there is THE knowledge, where there is everything, they go after...

They're mad. No, the English made them thoroughly rotten. Those two hundred years of British rule left them completely rotten. Naturally, another effect is that some people have awakened, but they don't know anything; they know nothing either of administration or of government or anything – they've lost everything, and whatever they know is what they were taught by Britain, which means an absolutely corrupt business. So they don't know anything, they don't even know how to make a decision.

But still, they are beginning to think that they should ask for help from those who know.... So that opens the door.

We'll see.

If things had gone quite well ... Now the country is ruined, people are completely ruined, there are only a few bandits (I know them) who, on the contrary, are bursting at the seams, but all the others are ruined because ... because the government doesn't know how to do things, it governs with ideas, and what ideas! Ideas they picked up in the West again, which they don't understand and are already bad enough for the West, but here they become pestilential.

But now they're beginning to think that perhaps that's not the way! (Mother laughs) And that perhaps they should try another way.... In a month I have already seen four ministers. One is from here, the Chief Minister; it seems I saw him when he was a child (I don't remember, but he remembers that I had caressed him), and when he came the other day he told me (I gave him a flower and a "blessings packet"), he said, "There, I will wear it on me, and with it I will do your work in the government." And quite resolute. A young man, about forty, I think, and rather strong.[104]

From Madras?

No, no, from here, Pondicherry.

But I saw others, from the central government. And they don't come out of curiosity or casually, they really come because they feel the need for something.

So perhaps we'll be able to do something.... We'll see.

*^**

(Mother comes across the note she wrote on Christianity) and commented on July 29.)

"Christianity deifies suffering to make it the instrument of the earth's salvation."

You know, it came to me as a discovery.... The whole religion, instead of being seen like this (gesture from below), was seen like that (gesture above).... Here is what I mean: the ordinary idea of Christianity is that the son (to use their language), the "son of God" came to give his message (a message of love, unity, fraternity and charity) to the earth; and the earth, that is, the governing classes, which weren't ready, sacrificed him, and his "Father," the supreme Lord, let him be sacrificed in order that his sacrifice would have the power to save the world. That is how they see Christianity, it's the most comprehensive idea – the vast majority of Christians don't understand anything whatsoever, but I mean that among them there may be, there may perhaps be (among the cardinals, for instance, who have studied occultism and the deeper symbols of things) some who understand a little better ... anyway. But according to my vision (Mother points to her note on Christianity), what happened was that in the history of the evolution of the earth, when the human race, the human species, started questioning and rebelling against suffering, which was a necessity to emerge more consciously from inertia (it's very clear in animals, it has become very clear already: suffering was the means to make them emerge from inertia), but man, on the other hand, went beyond that stage and began rebelling against suffering, naturally also against the Power that permits and perhaps uses (perhaps uses, to his mind) this suffering as a means of domination. So that is the place of Christianity.... There was already before it a pretty long earth history – we shouldn't forget that before Christianity, there was Hinduism, which accepted that everything, including destruction, suffering, death and all calamities, is part of the one Divine, the one God (it's the image of the Gita, the God who "swallows" the world and its creatures). There was that, here in India. There was Buddha, who on the other hand, was horrified by suffering in all its forms, decay in all its forms, and the impermanence of all things, and in trying to find a remedy, concluded that the only true remedy is the disappearance of the creation.... Such was the terrestrial situation when Christianity came in. So there had been a whole period before it, and numbers of people beginning to rebel against suffering and trying to escape from it with such methods. Others deified it and thus bore it as an inescapable calamity. Then came the need to bring down on earth the concept of a deified, divine suffering, a divine suffering as the supreme means to make the whole human consciousness emerge from Unconsciousness and Ignorance and lead it towards its realization of divine beatitude, but not – not by refusing to collaborate with life, but IN life itself: accepting suffering (the crucifixion) in life itself as a means of transformation in order to lead human beings and the entire creation to its divine Origin.

That gives a place to all religions in the development from the Inconscient to the divine Consciousness.

It isn't just a little remark noted down in passing: it's a vision. One can always present it as something conceived mentally, but it's not that; it's not that, but it was, if you like, a necessity in the development. And it puts things in their TRUE perspective.

Islam was a return towards sensation, beauty, harmony in the form, and the legitimization of sensations and joy in beauty. From a higher viewpoint, it wasn't quite of a superior quality, but from a vital viewpoint, it was extremely powerful, and that's what gave them so much power to spread, to appropriate, seize, dominate. But what they did is very beautiful – all their art is magnificent, magnificent! It was a flowering of beauty.... Then there were others – it all comes one after another. And every religion came as a stage in the development and the relationship with the Divine, to lead the consciousness towards a oneness which is a totality and not a removal from a whole reality so as to obtain another. The need for totality, completeness, is what caused those religions to come like that, one after another.

Seen in that light, it's very interesting.

Instead of looking at it from below, there was all of a sudden an overall vision from the highest height of how it was all organized with such a clear consciousness, such a clear will, each thing coming just when it was necessary so nothing would be overlooked and everything might come out, emerge from that Unconsciousness, and grow increasingly conscious.... And so, in this immense history, the earth history, Christianity finds its place – its legitimate place. That has a double advantage: for those who despise it its value is restored, and as for those who believe it's the only truth, they are made to see that it's only one element among others in the whole. There.

That's why I found it interesting – because it was the result of a vision, and that vision came because I started concerning myself with religions (started again, to tell the truth, because I was very familiar with that subject in the past). And when I was asked questions on the Israelites and the Muslims, I looked and said, "Here is their place. Here is their place and their raison d'être." Then, one day I said to myself, "Well, it's true indeed! Seen in that way, it's obvious: Christianity is like a rehabilitation of suffering as a means of development of the consciousness."

And so Sri Aurobindo's sentence assumes its whole value.... Christianity came because men were rebelling against grief and trying to escape from the world in order to escape from grief.... Then, with the years going by and the unfolding, men took a liking to suffering! And because they love it (see how Sri Aurobindo's sentence becomes clear), "Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem." It assumes its full significance.

*^**

Soon afterwards

Couldn't we publish in the Bulletin what you've just said about Christianity?

I am not very fond of talking about religions, it's too early.

People are still too full of passion when you speak to them about religion.

But here, it's said so objectively.

You understand, the trouble is that everyone thinks his religion is the exclusive truth!

We'll see next year. Next year, maybe for the month of February, we'll see.

There may be something for the month of February....

August 15, 1967

(Message for Sri Aurobindo's ninety-fifth birthday:)

"But in any case the Divine Power is working always behind and one day, perhaps when one least expects it, the obstacle breaks, the clouds vanish and there is again the light and the sunshine. The best thing in these cases is, if one can manage it, not to fret, not to despond, but to insist quietly and keep oneself open, spread to the Light and waiting in faith for it to come: that, I have found, shortens these ordeals."

Sri Aurobindo

August 16, 1967

What did you feel at the darshan yesterday – not "darshan," at the meditation?... Nothing special?

No, Mother. It was fine, but I don't know.

Ah ... (in a disappointed tone). You were at home?

No, in Sri Aurobindo's room.

Oh....

Do you know, I sat down when it was nearly time [for the meditation], maybe half a minute before, and instantly, without warning, like a staggering blow: such a powerful descent (I was completely stilled) of something.... At the same time Sri Aurobindo seemed to tell me (because the definition came along with the "thing" – it was a vision which wasn't a vision, which was absolutely concrete), and the word was golden peace. But so strong! And it didn't budge anymore. For the entire half-hour it didn't budge. Never before ... It's something new, I had never felt that before. I can't say.... It was perceived, but not like an objective vision. And other people spontaneously told me that as soon as they sat down for the meditation (gesture of a massive descent), something came with a tremendous power, everything was stilled, and a sense of peace as they had never felt in their life.

Golden peace ...

And indeed it gave a sense of supramental golden light, but it was ... such peace! A concrete peace, you know, not the negation of disorder and activity, no: concrete, a concrete peace. I didn't want to stop: they sounded the gong, but I stayed on for two or three minutes. When I did stop, it went away. And it made such a difference for the body – the body itself – such a difference that when the experience went away I felt in great discomfort and it took me half a minute to find my balance again.

It came and went away. It came for the meditation, then went away. For more than a half-hour: thirty-five minutes.

Golden peace.

And in the evening [at the balcony], there was a crowd (I think it was the largest crowd we've ever had, it filled all the streets; the streets were full of people as far as the eye could see), so I came out. And when I went out, there arose from that whole crowd a sort of ... something in between an entreaty, a prayer and a protest, against the world's condition, and particularly the country's. And it rose up in waves.... I looked at it (it was particularly insistent), then said to myself, "Today isn't my day, it's Sri Aurobindo's day," and I did like this (gesture of withdrawal) and put Sri Aurobindo in front. Then, when he came in front, when he put himself in front, he simply said, very simply, "The Lord knows better what He is doing." (Mother laughs) I immediately started smiling (I didn't laugh, but started smiling), and there came the same peace as in the morning.

That's all.

The Lord knows better what He is doing ... with his most perfect sense of humor. And everything calmed down right away.

I felt like laughing, but I smiled.

You were at your doorway?

No, I was inside and looking through the window, because the street was full of people.... But Mother, how is it that I always perceive the same thing? There are differences of intensity, but it's ALWAYS the same thing. I am not complaining because it's admirably peaceful, powerful, tranquil, but it's always the "same thing"; I can't say that one meditation is very different from any other: whether I am with you or whether I am at the darshan, it's the same state.

But the minute (really the minute – it wasn't even a state in time, it really was the minute), the minute I made contact with what I call the Supreme, that is, the part that looks after the earth, throughout the years it has always been i-den-ti-cal-ly the same thing.

All that has differences is below. That is the summit. And the summit ... that's why I use the word "Supreme," because there's nothing other than "That," which is supreme Peace, supreme Light, a sort of supreme tranquil Bliss, a sense of supreme Power and a Consciousness ... an all-containing Consciousness, like that (immense gesture) ... and then it's over. It's still. Still – not "motionless," but far above movement, far above. And identical, with the sense that "it's like that forever." And it contains everything, but ... (immutable gesture, the palms of the hand drawn back).

As soon as you make contact with that, everything is fine.

Change, movement, newness is when you are on the way – on the way you keep having experiences, one upon another upon another; or when you are on the road to transformation, there is one thing, then another, then yet another. But when you make contact THERE, it's over (same immutable gesture). Every time you make contact there, it's like that. And it contains everything, but ... you are not concerned with that.[105]

And naturally, it's supreme rest, supreme power, supreme knowledge, supreme consciousness ... and something more.

August 19, 1967

This morning, for two hours, I had what I believe to be really the most wonderful experience in my life from the point of view of knowledge-vision. And it was so total ... from the most essential perception of That which is beyond the creation down to the perception of the body's cells, from high to low. And in every plane, the vision of the creation.

It went on for two hours. I walked about, had my wash – it didn't matter in the least, on the contrary there was, added to that, the knowledge of how the body can act without disturbing the state of consciousness.

Afterwards, there was a slight flagging, because there came ... I can't say the memory (it wasn't a memory), but all the complaints: the same thing as at the balcony on the darshan day – the human attitude towards the Supreme is only to complain and demand ... complain and demand and complain ... That's all. It came back. Before, the whole vision was there like that (gesture from high to low), it was magnificent, magnificent: each and every thing, the entire human history, the entire history of intellectual and material evolution, everything like that, everything in its place. It was really fine. And afterwards, there came that wave of complaints.

It was as if the body were asking, "What attitude" (that's what provided the link), "What attitude should I have? What should I do?..." Because there was the vision of life, death, of all circumstances, everything was there. The full knowledge of everything. Oh, the whole part about death was very, very interesting, and how mankind has tried to understand, how there have been all kinds of solutions (that is, partial attitudes), and all of it was part of the Whole.

So the conclusion ... Oh, at that time I could have said many things about all the different intellectual and even spiritual attitudes of mankind.... There aren't big differences. The spiritual (what's commonly called "spiritual") boils down to the whole attempt at finding the Divine again by annulling the creation – that's what has been regarded as spiritual life (that's why the word got distorted). To annul the creation in order to find the Divine again.... And then, NOW: the vision of now. We are obviously drawing nearer to the moment of possibility – that is clear. It's a question of time – of course, it can't be on the human scale, but we are on the borderline.

And as I said, the body asked ... oh, it had such a wonderful moment! A moment, a few minutes, when it KNEW how it ought to be. It was magnificent. Then the experience came.[106] Till then, it was inexpressible: it was lived, it was a living consciousness, but the mind had become very quiet, so it was inexpressible. Then there came back that great complaint from the world, and the experience started being expressed (Mother looks for a note). It started being expressed, because it isn't just the anonymous demand of thousands of people: it's virtually a shower of letters, questions, demands from people who believe ... they believe they are part of the Work, of the Action, they believe they have given themselves, and they ask all sorts of questions – and such futile questions – which to them are of crucial importance, but which are so puerile, stupid, unimportant: how to start a business, the date of its inauguration, a name for a house, a message for a meeting.... And what goings-on, it's a deluge from every side. So it all was seen in the new attitude – not "new," the consciousness was fully there, there had been a whole tendency to increasingly adopt that attitude, but now it was KNOWN, fully known: what one must be, how one must be. So I came down abruptly to reply to all that.

For some time there had been swarms of questions from people – I refused, just refused to answer; I would reply with some joke or other: "I am not a fortuneteller," or "It's none of my concern, none of my business." Jokes, and sometimes I would say, "Ah, let them leave me alone, that's childishness." And people who think they are very dedicated, for instance a man who has already given at least ten lakhs of rupees (he knows it only too well, but still he did give them!) and who wants to work to bring more – but then, his questions ... So instead of replying with a quip (that was my last experience: it's like dictated answers, but they are quips), this morning something came in English (Mother reads her note):

"We are not here to make our life easy and comfortable. We are here to find the Divine, to become the Divine, to manifest the Divine.

"What happens to us is the Divine's outlook, it is not our concern.

"The Divine knows better than us what is good for the progress of the world and our own."

Everyone comes and complains and complains – that so-and-so has robbed him, that his wife doesn't love him, that his brother has betrayed him, that ... All the idiotic stories by the hundreds, you understand, a deluge.

*^**

(Soon afterwards, regarding a sympathizer of the Ashram, Mrs. Z, who cannot get out of her Christianity.[107])

So, did you see this lady?

I feel there's a possibility to do something.... What's your impression?

This morning, Christianity, too, was there among all the other things.

(silence)

You understand, behind this whole earth evolution, there is, with a greater or lesser degree of consciousness (it's an unexpressed need rather than a precise consciousness), the need to live the Divine – or to put it differently, the need to live divinely. And it is clear that what was translated into different religions was solutions found individually ("found," and perhaps partially lived); and here [in India], there was this solution: in order to really become the Divine again, the creation should be done away with. That is, the Nirvanic solution. And instinctively – instinctively – mankind felt death to be the negation of the Divine. But like every negation, it had the capacity to lead and open the way. The solution of Christianity wasn't quite new, it was the adaptation of an ancient solution: a life in other worlds – which was translated into that quite childish conception of heaven. But that was a conception for public use: a life in the presence of the Divine, exclusively taken up with the Divine, and so you would sing and ... Touchingly simple. Anyway, they conceived of a world (not a material one) in which a divine life had been realized. In the ancient Indian traditions, there had also been a first hint of divine worlds, as a sort of reaction to that Nirvanism – if we want to be divine, we must stop being, or if the Divine wants to be pure, he must stop manifesting! ... So all that was like clumsy attempts to find the means, and perhaps at the same time like inner preparations, to make people capable of really making contact with the Divine. Then there was that great reaction of the cult of Matter, which has been VERY useful to knead it and make it less unconscious of itself: it has forcibly brought consciousness back into Matter. So perhaps all that has been a sufficient preparation for the moment of the Total Manifestation to have come (gesture of descent).

This morning, during the experience, the body felt the whole bliss of the condition, but it was very conscious of its incapacity to manifest, very conscious in such a perfect peace, like this (gesture with the palms of the hands open upward), in which there wasn't even the intensity of the need. It was simply a vision of how things were, how the condition was. And it was something like this: the conditions of the earth are such, the conditions of the substance are such that a local and momentary manifestation, as an example, is not impossible, but the transformation that would make possible the new Manifestation of the supramental being – and not just as an isolated case, but with its place and role in earth life – does not appear to be immediate. That was the impression.

And there was no anguish to know or anything of the sort, there was simply a very calm vision of things, absolutely devoid of almost any need: it was like this (same gesture with palms open), as peaceful as can be, smiling, calm, with a sense of eternity.... All that in this body, which was totally and entirely conscious of its incapacity. Naturally, the body, for its part, very clearly feels it neither knows nor is able to know or will or do: simply like this (gesture with palms open), as peacefully open, receptive, surrendered as possible. And that was the result [= the vision that the Manifestation was not for the immediate future].

And it always ends in the same way: "What You will."

But with a very clear vision that a collective transformation sufficient to create a new species on earth still seems some way off ... without any estimate of the length of time, but not immediate.

The fact is certain.

The fact is certain – it's not a possibility, but a FACT. But as for what's translated in the human consciousness in terms of time, that can't be estimated, it can't be calculated.

August 26, 1967

(Regarding the group "World Union")

This World Union, oh, how outmoded they are!... There are hundreds and hundreds of such groups that chatter, do nothing and change absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Yes, it has always seemed to me childishness and chatter.

Oh! ... Moreover, as soon as the group was set up, they kicked out the man who had started it! They did it under the pretext he was dishonest, but still he was the founder. He had gone to Russia, and it was in Russia that the idea of World Union came to him. So four or five of them came together to form this World Union, and fifteen days later they started quarreling – a year later they kicked out the one who had founded it! Then it was the turn of S., who, at least, has some ideas.... Anyway, he too was thrown out. Then they came to me to tell me their miseries! I told them, "Listen, you are profoundly ridiculous: you want to preach world unity, and the first thing you do is quarrel! It shows that you aren't ready." And I left it at that. Then A.B., who was very well known in Africa, recruited all kinds of people and made me see a few of them to ask me if they were able to do something – absolutely nothing, you know, nothing at all: old pillars of a house in ruins, nothing else....

*^**

(Mother listens to Satprem reading out from the notebook of a disciple who regularly asks questions.)

"Sweet Mother, it is said that the good and the true always triumph, but in life, one often sees the opposite happen. The wicked win and seem to have some protection against suffering."

(Mother laughs, then remains silent)

We always confuse two notions.

It is from the universal and spiritual point of view that, not exactly "good" as people understand it, but the True, the Truth, will have the last word, that is well known. In other words, the Divine will eventually be victorious. That is what has been said, what all those who have lived a spiritual life have said – and it is an absolute fact. When people translate it, they say, "I am a good boy, I live according to what I think to be true, therefore life should be a bed of roses for me!" (Mother laughs) To begin with, self-appreciation is always very doubtful, and then, in the world as it now is, everything is mixed and what openly manifests to the half-blind human consciousnesses is not the Law of pure Truth – they wouldn't even understand it. To be more precise, I mean that what is constantly realized is the supreme vision, but its realization in this mixed material world isn't seen by the ignorant human vision as the triumph of good (of what men call "good" and "truth"). But – to put it in jest – it's not the Lord's fault, it's men's fault! That is, the Lord knows what he is doing, but men don't understand it.

In a true world, everything would perhaps be the same as now, but it would be seen differently.

Both. There would be a difference. The ignorance and darkness present in the world are what gives divine Action a distorted appearance; and naturally, that must tend to disappear. But it is also true that there is a way of looking at things which ... I might say, which gives their appearance another meaning – the two are there, like this (intertwined gesture).

(silence)

It always comes down to this: men's judgment is false – false because their vision of things is false, incomplete – and their judgment necessarily has false results, too.

The world is in perpetual change – perpetual, it doesn't remain the same for one second – and the general harmony expresses itself more and more perfectly; so nothing can remain as it is, and in spite of all contrary appearances, the WHOLE is always in constant progression: the harmony grows increasingly harmonious, the truth grows increasingly true in the Manifestation. But in order to see that, one must see the whole, and man only sees ... not even just the human field, but his own tiny, so tiny, microscopic field – he can't understand.

It is a double thing that grows towards completion (same intertwined gesture), and with a reciprocal action: as the Manifestation grows more conscious of itself, its expression grows more perfect, and also truer. The two movements go together.

(silence)

That's one of the things that was seen very clearly the other day, when there was that Knowledge-Consciousness: when the Manifestation has sufficiently emerged from the Inconscient for that whole need for struggle created by the presence of the Inconscient to ,become progressively and increasingly unnecessary, it will disappear quite naturally, and instead of taking place in effort and struggle, progress will begin to take place harmoniously. That's what the human consciousness envisions as a divine creation on earth – it will still be only a stage. But to the present stage, it's a sort of harmonious culmination that will change universal progress (which is constant) from a progress in struggle and suffering into a progress in joy and harmony.... But what was seen was that this sense of inadequacy, of something incomplete and imperfect, can be expected to exist for a very long time (if the notion of time remains the same – I don't know about that?). But any change means time, doesn't it? We can't translate it in terms of time as we conceive of it, but it means a succession.

All those so-called problems (I constantly receive questions and more questions and problems of the mind – all the problems of Ignorance) are problems of worms. As soon as you emerge above, that kind of problem no longer exists. There are no contradictions either. Contradictions always arise from the inadequacy of vision and the incapacity to see something from all standpoints at once.

In any case, to come back to the down-to-earth question in his notebook, I don't think any sage in any age said, "Be good and all will outwardly go well for you" – because that's rubbish. In a world of disorder and a world of falsehood, hoping for that isn't reasonable. But if you are sincere enough and total enough in your way of being, you can have the inner joy and the full satisfaction, whatever the circumstances – and nobody, nothing has the power to touch that. But it's something else. But to ask for your business to do well, for your wife to be faithful and your children not to fall sick and all those things, that of course is rubbish!

*^**

(A little later, regarding Mrs. Z, the Christian sympathizer of the Ashram who has paid Satprem several visits and was going to become somewhat ... unwieldy.)

... I don't know what to do. I feel a need in her, a sincere need, and a wish to find a way out, without being able to.

She doesn't entirely want to.

That's right!

You know, I had an experience of this sort quite a long time ago – ages ago, when I was still in France, in Paris. There was a fellow student in the studio (because I studied in a painting studio for a long time), she was a very good painter, we were close friends, and I started telling her about the Cosmic Review and Théon's teaching. She belonged to a Catholic family with archbishops, even cardinals, anyway it was ... And she was extremely interested and wholly convinced: she felt a liberation of the spirit and aspiration. Then, when I had Sri Aurobindo's teaching, I passed it on to her, and there she was really quite taken. But she often told me, "As long as I am awake, everything is fine, but in my sleep I'll suddenly wake up with a dreadful fright: but if after all the Catholic teaching is true, then I'll go to hell!" And so, a torture. And she would tell me, "When I am quite awake, I see how ridiculous it is...."

But all those who were baptized and went for a time to confession are part of a whole, an inner, psychological entity, and it's VERY difficult to break free from it; they are bound to a whole – there is ... there is an invisible Church, and all those people are in its grip. To break free from it, one must be a vital hero. A true hero, you understand. Because it's very strong. I saw that, all religions have in that way kinds of congregations in the invisible; but among them all, the Christian is the strongest from a terrestrial standpoint. It's much stronger than that of the Buddhists, much stronger than that of the Chinese, much stronger than the ancient Hindu religions – it's the strongest. And naturally stronger than the more recent religions, too – the strongest. And when you are baptized, you are bound. If you don't go to mass and have never been to confession, with a little vital energy you can get out of it, but those who have gone to confession – especially confession – and when you take communion, when you are given Christ to eat (another frightful thing) ...

That girl was a true artist and a great intelligence, so I had the example. When she was awake, she understood wonderfully; and she herself was furious, but she didn't have ... she didn't have the power to remove the hold from her subconscient.

She was far more intelligent than Mrs. Z, there's no comparison. She was a great artist.

What should I do? Should I attempt something? I am like an intermediary, you understand. Or should I put her bluntly, but with consciousness and force, in front of the fact that she is a prisoner and I really cannot do anything for her?

I wouldn't like her to encroach on your life, to tell you the truth.

Because she isn't aware of it, but there may be an adverse formation (she is a completely unconscious instrument). If you were quite sturdy, you understand, with much vital force, I would say, "Never mind, we'll break their necks." But you need to be careful.

You yourself say it tires you.

Oh, yes, I am exhausted.

So you see. Once in a while doesn't matter, but not too often.

I'll have to tell her.

Yes, you could tell her very politely ... (laughing) saying that a breath of fresh air would do her good! But she'll propose to meet you outside![108]

I'll try to do something ... but she isn't very ... You know, I always feel as if they were surrounded with something sticky, as if they had sticky tape around them! – You can't get in.

She asked me for an Indian name.

Oh, she has taken you as her guru!

I don't know. She's taken me as an intermediary, yes. It's a role I don't like in the least!

(Mother laughs) Oh, indeed, it's bothersome.

But you understand, I am on the one hand concerned about her and on the other concerned about myself. What should I do?

(After a long silence) Do you know how to put me or Sri Aurobindo between you and the people you see?

I don't know if I know how to do it, but I always call, I am always like this [gesture towards the consciousness above], calling above.

But that's not the way! You must do it HERE (Mother gestures in front of the disciple's chest), and you hide behind ... (laughing) as I did the other day at the balcony! What was the interval between her two visits?

Five or six days.

We'll see, we'll try ...

She even said last time that she would like to meditate with me – but I'm not a guru!

It's not a pleasant trade! (laughter) We'll see, you will tell me.

(Mother goes into a concentration)

Now, Sri Aurobindo is there, like that, from here up to there (gesture from the lower part of the chest up to the forehead). So if you are like that when people are near you ... Just in front of you. Did you feel all at once a sort of fullness in the atmosphere? Did you feel it? As though it became something ... "comfortable" is a very small word: a sort of fullness. Did you feel it?

Yes.

That was when he came.

He is still there.

So if you have that, you can see anyone, it doesn't matter!

(silence)

There are also quite dark things in me.

(After a silence) One offers them up.

August 30, 1967

The last few nights, I have spent almost the whole night, several hours of it, in a place which must certainly belong to the subtle physical and where material life is being reorganized. It's immense – immense – and the crowd innumerable; but they are individualities, not a crowd, which means that I deal with each of them. And there are also kinds of documents and writing tables, but there are no walls! It's a strange place. A very strange place.

I have often wondered if the memory of physical forms is what makes me see that world like that, or if it REALLY is like that. Sometimes there is no doubt because it has its own specific character, but at other times I have a doubt and wonder if it's not in the active memory. Because when I am there I am very conscious, everything is extremely natural, you understand; and it's permanent: I find the same things in the same places again, sometimes with slight differences, but differences made necessary by action. Which means it's a coherent world, not wild imaginings. But to what extent are those forms the reflection of material forms? To what extent are they REALLY like that, or do we SEE them like that? I am not quite sure yet. I had the same problem in the past when I used to go into the Overmind and see the Gods: I always had a kind of hesitation as to whether they really are like that, or we perceive them like that because of our physical habits.... There, after a time I reached a conclusion, but here, physically? ...

Strangely, there are no doors, no windows, no ceiling or floor, all that is self-existent and does not appear to be subject to the law of gravity, that is, there isn't the earth's magnetic attraction, yet what you write with (laughing) looks like a fountain pen! What you write on looks like paper; the documents are placed in what looks like filing cabinets.... You do feel that the substance isn't the same, but the appearance is very close. And I am still wondering about that appearance: is it something we add on because of our ordinary brain working, or are things really like that?

I meet almost everyone there. I told you that you are there quite regularly, and we do work. As for you, you don't remember. Others remember, but their memory is ... (Mother makes a slight twist with her fingers) just slightly off, that is, not identically what I saw. And when they tell me, I clearly feel it's because of, yes, the transcription in their brains.... The objective reality of the material world stems from the fact that when you see the same object again ten times, it looks ten times like itself, with differences that are logical, for instance differences of wear and tear – but there too it's like that! If you study carefully, even in the physical world no two people see things in exactly the same way. There, it may be more pronounced, but it seems to be a similar phenomenon....

The explanation becomes very simple and very easy when you enter the consciousness in which it's the material reality that becomes an illusion – it's illusory, inexact: the inner reality is truer. Then, in that case, it's simple. Maybe it's only our mind that finds it surprising?

Take writing, for instance: I haven't noticed in detail, but when you write there, you seem to write much more easily.... I don't know how to explain it ... it takes much less time. And things are noted down on paper, but is it paper? It looks like paper, but things are noted down much more directly.... It's perhaps only a similarity, like when, for example, you use a fountain pen or a pencil: it's not exactly a fountain pen or a pencil, it's something that looks like it and is ... (what should I say?) the prototype or principle of that object. But what I mean is that if we were still at the time of the goose quill or the twig that you dip into ink, I would probably see it like that! ... It's the ESSENCE or principle of the thing, which, in the memory, is translated as a similarity.

But it's an action. I am aware of the time only on my return, because I have formed a habit of looking at the time when I come back to the material consciousness (there is a watch beside my bed and I look so as to know), and that's how I can say, "It lasted an hour" or "It lasted two hours." But there, you don't have the sense of time at all, it's not the same sense at all – what matters is the CONTENT of action, and during those hours, many, many things are done, very many. I meet you very regularly, but many others too, and I am at many places at the same time! And when someone tells me, "Oh, I saw you last night, you did this and that," then somewhere up above I say, "Oh, it's true indeed." There's a tiny (same gesture of twist), tiny little difference, but the essence of the thing is the same.

And I have noticed that with those things that are very close to the physical, if you wake up abruptly, still more if you move when you wake up, if you stir or turn over, they go away. It's only if later I have a very quiet moment and go within myself that I can slowly make contact again with that state. So I am not surprised that most people don't remember. Experiences in the vital, in the mind, are much more easily remembered, but that, which is very close to the physical ...

And its character is such that if you kept consciousness of it when you woke up, you'd look a little mad. I had that experience two days ago, and it taught me a lot – I looked, studied and studied until I had understood. It was during the afternoon rest (I don't sleep at all in the afternoon, but just enter the inner consciousness), and I had decided beforehand that I would "wake up," that is, get up, at such and such a time. When the time came, I was still very much in my action and it went on, the state of consciousness went on with open eyes; and in that state of consciousness there was ... (I can't say "I" because it's not the same "I," you understand; at such times I am many people), but the "I" of that time was in the habit (not here materially but "up there") of wearing a gold watch (gesture to the wrist) and had forgotten to put that watch on; and it looked and noticed it: "Ah, I forgot to put my watch on, what's happened to it? Why did I forget?" Like that. So then, when I woke up (I don't wear any watch here, as you know), when I came back, the two consciousnesses were simultaneous, and I said aloud, "Where is my watch? I forgot to put my watch on." And it's only when I had said that (laughing) that I realized! So it left me thinking, I studied carefully, looked carefully, and clearly saw that at that moment the two consciousnesses were absolutely (Mother closely superposes her two hands), but absolutely simultaneous.

It's very interesting. Oh, all kinds of problems have been solved with that experience. For instance, the problem of many people who are called mad, and who are simply in that subtle consciousness (same superposed gesture): at certain times it prevails, which makes them say things that are meaningless here but have a very clear meaning over there, and so the consciousness is like this (superposed gesture, almost merged). That accounts for many cases of so-called madness. Certain cases of apparent insincerity are also like that, because the consciousness sees clearly in that region, and that region is so close that you can give things the same names (they seem to have the same shapes or very similar ones), but it's not what is conventionally called here "tangible reality": materially, outwardly, things aren't exactly like that. And so, there are cases of so-called insincerity that are simply too close a mingling of the two consciousnesses – too close for an active discernment.

Oh, a whole region has been clarified, and not only clarified but with the key to the cure or the transformation. From the psychological, internal point of view, a huge amount of things has been explained – a huge amount. Which considerably brings down the number of cases of real mental derangement and cases of real lies, that is, the cases when one deliberately and consciously says the contrary of what is – that mustn't be as frequent as we think. Many people say incorrect things like that (floating, dangling gesture), but they have perceptions in another world than the purely material world, with too close a mingling and without enough discernment to be aware of the mingling.... Sri Aurobindo used to say that real bad will, real hostility and real falsehood are rare enough cases ("real" in the sense of absolute in themselves, and conscious, deliberate – deliberate, absolute, conscious); that's rare. And that, he said, is what is described as hostile beings. But all the rest is a sort of illusion of the consciousness, consciousnesses that interfere with each other (Mother intertwines the fingers of her two hands to and fro), but without a precise discernment between the different consciousnesses, which are like this (same gesture), intermingled, each going in and out of the other.

(silence)

So the result has been to see the immensity of the problem to be solved, of the path to be walked, of the transformation to be worked out.... When you look at it from the purely psychological standpoint, it's relatively easy and swift, but when you come to this (Mother touches her body), to the outer form and so-called matter, oh, it's a world! Each lesson ... it's as if you were given lessons, and it's so interesting! Lessons with all the consequences and explanations. You spend one or two days over a tiny little discovery. And you see that after it, after that day or those hours of work, there is a change in the body consciousness: the light is there, it's changed – changed, the reactions are not the same. But ... (Mother gestures to express a world of work).

And the Presence – the Presence grows more and more intimate, more and more concrete, and at such times ... at times (Mother makes a gesture of swelling) it's so concrete as to be almost absolute. Then (gesture of being covered again) another state of consciousness comes and everything has to begin all over again.

interesting.

And it's so clearly to teach you ... High-sounding words, great attitudes, remarkable experiences are all very fine up above, but here ... nothing spectacular – everything is very modest, very quiet, very unassuming. Very modest. And that's the condition for progress, the condition for the transformation.

There, mon petit.

@

 

September

September 3, 1967

(Regarding Auroville's beach, where Satprem now often goes in the evening for a stroll. The beach is some four miles from Pondicherry.)

I find the atmosphere different.

Over there?... It's wonderful.

Yes, but there is a very different atmosphere, I don't know if it's in my consciousness.

Something is missing? ... It [Mother's atmosphere] doesn't reach up to there?

I don't know, I don't feel "surrounded" as I do here.

When Sri Aurobindo was here and I used to go out, I would feel his atmosphere as far as the lake.[109] Then, as soon as I went beyond, it would thin out and then vanish. But I thought that there ...

I don't know, that's my impression; it may be quite subjective, but I don't have the same sensation of comfort, if you like.

Because now there is such a tremendous accumulation here, you know! I am every moment marveling that nothing wrong happens to anyone. So naturally, people who are receptive and sensitive must feel a big difference.... It has really become almost concrete, you know, like that (gesture of a clenched fist). I myself feel the difference. It may be that.

*^**

(Regarding that same Christian lady who is trying to come into closer contact with the Ashram.)

Have you seen her?

Oh, yes.... There have been new developments. The last time I saw her, I clearly perceived she was enveloped in something ... something that looked very receptive but was in fact completely shut in in its own structure.

That's right.

Then the next day she wrote me a letter. And when I read that letter I felt I had put my finger on the Falsehood, the Asura. The REAL Falsehood, you know, I mean the one that has caught hold of the light and turned it into a falsehood.

Yes, exactly.

Really I said, "This is the Falsehood." And I had a very strange reaction: I suddenly felt like taking that letter, a knife, sticking the knife into the letter and burning it.

Well, that's interesting!

I didn't do it because I thought I might do her harm.

I too had that sense of Falsehood.[110]

And the amusing thing is that I got her letter, read it, then Sujata came into my room, stayed five minutes in it, and I saw her go out abruptly, just like that. And half an hour later she told me, "But what's the matter in your room? I suddenly felt exhausted as if I had worked for twelve hours."

See. Then what happened next?

I wrote her a letter in which I said this: "... You have to see by yourself, feel by yourself. If you are satisfied with the religious experience that Christianity represents, I do not see why I should disabuse you. Everyone follows the path he feels good for him. If you came and told me, 'I seek something else,' it would be a different matter and I might be able to do something to help you. But until then, I really cannot do anything for you, and all words are useless. It is for you to feel and see."

That's very good, excellent, really. That's what she had to hear.... They're all the same, they want to "profit" from others, you know. And that's really falsehood.

This letter is very good.

(silence)

Those attitudes always end up in a crisis.

We had a Frenchwoman here, she came from Dordogne and changed her name when she came here: she was called Nivedita. She was extremely enthusiastic, very devoted, but at the same time she had remained very Christian: she tried to keep the two going side by side. Here, naturally, that gave her inner difficulties, and one day, without really knowing why or how, she went to confession – and everything collapsed. She was in despair, collapsed. I told her, "It's better for you to go." And she went. She went back to France. As soon as she was there, she wrote other desperate letters, and then she died.

So the nearer they draw, the more difficult the problem becomes. It's better to ... This lady has external work to do. I haven't been too much encouraging her becoming intimate here, because one day she'll be up against the big problem – you understand, symbolically it's limited to one person, but it's the big problem of Religion, as a dogma and absolute law, versus freedom, and ... not many can hold out.

September 6, 1967

I have four baskets full to the brim, more than a hundred letters to read! So in the morning (Mother shows a stack of letters on her table) this much comes, and in the afternoon it will be the same thing. Then A. comes in the evening at seven with other letters.... That is, twenty-five to thirty letters a day. Out of them, if I work hard, I can reply to four or five! So you understand, the residue piles up: four baskets!

*^**

Soon afterwards

I have made discoveries these last few days.... I have discovered that in former lives (I don't know which ones), my psychic being was several times in a tortured body. And it comes back for (how should I put it?) a collective action in the world, on the earth, so the possibility of the thing may disappear. It's a rather interesting work.

But I noticed it because I said to myself, "But why is my attention constantly turned to that?" Then I looked carefully and saw that the psychic was several times in a tortured body, long ago at the time of the Inquisition, but also in political cases (much more recently, probably). Real tortures, you know, those inventions in which men are worse than monsters – no animal is as monstrous as a human consciousness when it is like that.... And it came back with the "law," the principle of the thing, of the distortion of consciousness, and once I had understood, I looked at myself (I was wondering, "Why? Why is my attention turned to that?"), I looked and saw. And I started doing what had to be done so it may no longer exist in the creation – some things will not exist any longer.

But nothing in the creation that belongs to the mineral world, the plant world, the animal world, needs to disappear. There were those monstrous animals: they disappeared materially but not ... not the principle of the creation. It's since man came with the mind – when the mind was twisted, deformed by the adverse forces. That's really ugly.

How can that be dissolved? Torture, for instance, that sort of thing? How can it be dissolved from the earth consciousness so it no longer happens again? How can it be done?

Oh, for all really monstrous things, there is only one force – only one force that can dissolve them. I knew it in principle, but now I know it in practice: it is the force of Love. Love is truly all-victorious – but true Love, not what men call "love," not that: true, divine Love.

You see one drop of "That" in its perfection, and all shadows disappear – all disharmonies disappear. Only in its perfection, in its essential purity.

It truly is all-powerfulness.

And without ... without the sense of victory, that's what is so, so wonderful! It's the All-Victorious which doesn't at all have the sense of being victorious – not at all, not at all.

(silence)

This morning for more than an hour, there were veritable scenes [of torture] in their completeness, with all the details, and then ... that wonderful Thing.

Even while the torture is taking place, in that Consciousness, it disappears. And it disappears not only for the one who's subjected to it, but for the one who's doing it. And the Thing in itself. It was interesting.

There were all the details of the scene, with such precision! The words uttered, the gestures ... To such a point that if it had simply been written down, it would have made an extraordinary novel! That's what surprised me, because I am not a writer, and it doesn't generally interest me, so why did it come back like that, presented so completely?... Until ... until the fulfillment – the end was a marvel: That.

*^**

(Then Mother turns to the first Playground Talk[111] intended for the next Bulletin. In that Talk of April 29, 1953, Mother, as if coincidentally, was speaking about ... religions. She said this, in particular: "... Otherwise, there wouldn't be any religions. There would be masters and disciples, people with a higher teaching and an exceptional experience. That would be very good. But as soon as the master is gone, what happens is that the knowledge he gave is turned into a religion. Rigid dogmas are established, religious rules are born, and you can only bow before the Tables of the Law, whereas in the beginning it was not so. You are told, 'This is true, that is false, the Master said ...' After a time, the master becomes a god, and you are told, 'God said.'")

Should I let this pass? ... It will cause a hurricane! (It's a good text, anyway.)

Was it like that or did you arrange it?

No, no! I arrange the grammar in places, but I haven't altered it at all, it's as it was.

I am asking you because when I had those gatherings [at the Playground], on some days I would feel the full Force like this (gesture of descent), and everything I said would come direct. At other times, it was the memory that spoke, and then it would be so flat! But when you read those Talks back to me, I perceive those that were direct and those that were simply a machine playing (!) And this one, this talk, was very good.

With the last ones especially, in the last year, to me it was very clear, perfectly clear: on certain days That would speak (gesture from above), and I would only feel my mouth move and hear the sound of my voice. At other times it was the whole storehouse of memories, and what was expressed was just worthless.

For a long time, with these Talks we published in the Bulletin, I often used to arrange them because the language seemed to me too spoken or disjointed. But now that I am preparing the complete edition, I put things back almost word for word as you said them, except when it really jars too much, when it's too ungrammatical! Otherwise, I leave it as it was, because I find that's how it has force.

(Mother goes into a contemplation)

A head big as this ... He was smiling, and showing us both something that was the symbolic image of these Talks. It was very interesting! His head was this big (gesture: about a foot and a half), wholly luminous with that supramental light which is ... it's golden, but with red in it – not red: pink, but ... it's inexpressible.

It's almost like a flame, but not dazzling; and it gives the sense of a force – a really all-powerful force. He was there like this (gesture between Mother and Satprem), between the two of us, with his hand outstretched (it was all the same color), and held in it was a cube. And that cube was all those Talks. So he showed the cube, which had a transparent light ... (how can I put it?) a steady transparent light – not still, but steady. And there were kinds of veins in it: blue veins, silvery ones ... It was a cube, you see, a perfect cube, but it was all moving about: blue, silvery, red veins, and also, here and there, a small dark line. And he was showing it as if to say, "Here is how it is." The whole thing was a cube of colorless, transparent light – purely transparent and purely luminous; and there were kinds of currents passing through it: sometimes in a corner (but it was shifting about, not still), and it was now dark blue (not dark, but blue – really blue), now silvery, now white, and in places, from time to time, here or there (gesture to various points), there was in a corner or at an edge, a small black line!

He held it out in his hand and laughed!

It was very good! (Mother laughs) The exact representation of these Talks.

But he meant (it certainly looked like that), he meant that the whole thing was the cube – a well-organized cube, with a transparent light, very pure, very luminous, like that, and then (laughing) it was all moving about inside it!

I saw him in profile (he was just in between us), I saw him in profile, and his hand, which I saw, was just in between us, like that, and he showed that so we would both see it – and he smiled and smiled.... I think he wanted to laugh!

September 9, 1967

(The "unbearable pressure")

As soon as you want to do something, the whole opposite rises up in a mass ... with a degree of stupidity beyond all measure.

You want to create Harmony: everyone quarrels! Intelligent people seem to become stupid, they do silly things – this morning I have been spending all my time writing to stop people from doing foolish things.... Strange. Intelligent, responsible people, you understand, people who have worked for a long time – and ... tomfoolery.

Oh, as soon as there comes a little power – the power of light, power of truth, power of love (the aspect of power in things) – as soon as that manifests (gesture of uprising), it causes a terrible confusion: everyone feels full of energy, and with that energy does stupid things! ... Then, if you withdraw the Power ... (gesture of flattening) flat out – no one does anything anymore!

Anyway ...

September 13, 1967

(Still regarding Mrs. Z, the Catholic lady who hovers around the Ashram.)

I have a nasty little story to tell you.... The other day, I forget when, F. met Mrs. Z, who told her (she too was in a concentration camp), "I would like ..." (word for word) "I would like Satprem to go back to the concentration camp to see if his reaction now would be different!" F. was so indignant that she couldn't help telling her, "But that is a monstrous desire to have!"

There's my story: "I'd like him to go back to the concentration camp to see! ..."

But the marvel is that I feel I could be sent anywhere, anything could happen to me, even the worst things, and ... nothing would budge!

It wouldn't matter in the least, yes, that's right. And that's what upsets them! You understand, for them you can have that salvation only if you are Catholic.

Anyway, the matter is now closed.

But you know, it's not the end! I fought a battle with her.

Oh, did she write again?

A veritable battle.

When?

When I told her, "I can't do anything for you if you don't seek something else," she wrote me another letter in which she said, "But I do seek something else," and so forth. I didn't want to reply. Then I did a little drawing, a sort of picture that came to me: a big sun in the corner, mountain ranges like in the Himalayas, then at the bottom, a small mosque, a small church, a small pagoda, and a bird flying away towards the sun.... And I sent her my drawing!

(Mother laughs) And then?

Then she came to see me. And there was a veritable battle; really, for an hour it was absolutely a battle with her. Because she kept pushing me, she wanted to know: "Why do you turn me down? Why do you shut your door? Why do you turn me down?..." Then I was driven to tell her everything: how she is imprisoned, how her religion is like a structure in which she is shut, how one can't do the yoga until one breaks out of it and so on – it all came out. Because I was really driven to it. I felt I was fighting a veritable battle, and two or three times I was very conscious of a sort of little thing going like this [gesture like the tongue of a snake], just a malevolent little vibration two or three times: "Ah," I thought, "this is it. "And at the same time, a kind of quite sincere distress in her, when she said, "I have been wanting to come to India for twenty years now, I have been waiting for this moment for twenty years now, so why do you close your door on me?"

It's difficult to break free from that grip.

Very difficult.

And how did it end?

Well, it ended up in nothing. I told her, "I am not closing my door on you, but I am putting you face to face with what it all means." I said, "The ABC of yoga is precisely to pull down all those constructions." But she told me, "Christ is the Supermind!" l said, "No, it's not like that!"

(Mother laughs) ... It didn't leave any trace?

I was a little worried because it really was a battle, then afterwards I did some good praying, and it passed off well.

It must be after that that she told F. she'd like to see you in a concentration camp – it was out of spite!

But I really spoke to her with the truth – not with violence, but with the truth that says, "Here is how it is, I can't help it."

That's very good, it's the happiest thing that could happen to her. Sugaring the pill would have been of no help.

We'll see. If the call is sincere, then we'll see.

But I did feel a sincerity, Mother, because what responded was like a response to a sincere call in her. But at the same time two or three times I felt that little vibration and said to myself, "Oh, this is nasty."

It's the fear of hell, mon petit! The amount of harm that conception has done in the world is frightening, frightening: the idea that if you commit a serious fault, it means hell for ALL ETERNITY, do you hear!

It's horrible.

It's a dreadful, monstrous notion.

When you look at it as it is, outside all routine, when you look at it as it is, it's a monstrous notion – I don't know what demon invented it.... If you were told, "You'll have to spend a few years in hell to expiate," that would do – it's not charitable, not generous, but anyway it's acceptable; but that idea of "all eternity" – an ETERNITY OF HELL – is something monstrous! It's a wholly diabolical idea.

And that's what frightens them. Even when consciously they don't accept it, it's there in the subconscient.

(silence)

It is said ... (but I am not sure about this, because it was simply repeated to me), a Catholic panjandrum to whom I spoke my mind quite plainly, answered me, "In the College of Cardinals, they are taught the truth and told this is not true." I said, "God bless the cardinals, but their first duty should be to destroy this ... monstrous formation."

The most terrible thing is that she believes she is free!

Of course!

She believes she is luminous, or enlightened. So I told her, "Of course, if you are inside a box and there is light in the box, you have the fullness of light in a box!"

(Mother laughs) Oh, that's very good!

I told her everything, there came a lot of things like that. In the end she was frozen. It was a real battle.

You did good work.

But you understand, the idea is, "Christ is the Supermind.... Christ is already risen from the dead, he already has a glorified body, he is already transformed...."

(After a silence) No, he went back, he didn't stay. He doesn't have a glorified body, he went back. He went back to the higher regions, he doesn't have a glorified body.... He may be glorified up there, that's his business (laughing), but here ... He went back. Of course, Sri Aurobindo himself said Christ was an Avatar. An avatar in the line of Krishna, the line that represented ... yes, goodness, charity, love, harmony. He belongs to that line.

*^**

Regarding humility

It's very simple: when you say to people, "Be humble," they immediately think of "being humble towards others," and that humility is bad. True humility is humility towards the Divine, that is, the precise, exact, LIVING sense that you are nothing, can do nothing, understand nothing without the Divine, that even if you are an exceptionally intelligent and capable being, that is NOTHING in comparison with the divine Consciousness – and one must keep that constantly, because then one constantly has the true attitude of receptivity. A humble receptivity that sets no personal pretension against the Divine.

*^**

(Then Mother talks about young R. and the coincidence between Paul Richard's death and the birth of this child.)

I saw this child when he was hardly two months old, they brought him to me. He was quiet, peaceful, in his mother's arms. She put him on my lap, and I looked at him – I looked at him, and also put a little Force, like that. Then he gave a start and began to scream and scream.... They had to take him away. But I very clearly felt that if I spoke to him ... It seems that when he is spoken to, he listens: his eyes open, he looks and listens eagerly, and when he is told about Auroville he shows great interest. And I saw that his consciousness is as if centered in the mind; you understand, what I wanted to see was his reaction to the silent pressure of the Force (I told you: he started screaming), but if he is spoken to (and I knew it, I saw it), if he is spoken to he listens and is very interested.

The next time they bring him to me, I'll give him a speech, a long speech! (laughing) We'll see what happens.

The other baby, A.F., has poor health, but if you recite poems of Sri Aurobindo to him, he becomes blissful! Neither of these two are ordinary children, obviously.

But I'll try the next time I see R.... It's a "coincidence" – but is there such a thing as a "coincidence" in the world? I don't believe in that.... In the past (I don't know what became of him afterwards), in the past Richard had some occult knowledge, I mean I had given him enough occult knowledge for him to be able to leave his body and enter another. So did he try to do it?... I know he wanted to come back here; especially after Sri Aurobindo's departure, he took it into his head to come here.

We can't say, we'll see that later.

*^**

At the end of the conversation, Mother gazes at Satprem for a long time

Did I tell you something?

Friends of F.'s, French people, who had come here once and have come again, wrote to me asking to see me. The young man wrote to me, saying, "Last-time, you looked at me for a long time and I was terrified by your look, is it necessary for me to come again?" (Mother laughs) I had given him an appointment before reading his letter, so naturally I didn't look at him! But it made me see something. Because of that (or through that), I saw a whole thing. And the same day, the very same day, I got a letter from an Indian, perhaps a forty-year-old man, who wrote to me, "When I was sitting in front of you, you looked at me for a long time and I felt that your eyes were burning all impurities in me." So naturally, he expressed gratitude.

You know, when I go there [to the music room] to see people, I simply concentrate and there is a sort of invocation to the Lord's Presence. And when He is there, when I feel the whole room full of Him, then it's good. That is the sole will (still, passive gesture turned upward). I translated it when I said to someone, "I give them a bath of the Lord"! And that's indeed how it is: His Presence, His Action ... His Presence, His Action ... That's all. And when I look at them, there is no more person: there is only His Presence and Action.

So there we are, it has a different effect on everyone!

They tell me, "Your look purifies me".... I don't want to go into such considerations and do not answer anything, but there is only the Presence and the Action. I don't even try to know, neither what happens nor how nor what He does nor what takes place – nothing. The only thing that comes into me (into this consciousness) is the state of the person who is there: that's very clearly recorded. (Laughing) The other day, there was a very amusing experience.... A girl here has taken a fancy to a gentleman – neither of them is very young, that is, they are neither children nor young people: they are both over thirty, or between twenty-five and thirty. So she writes him letters, long letters, sends him sweets, sends him flowers, and he passes it all on to me. (There is nothing more than that.) It was her birthday, and she must have had a rather guilty conscience, I suppose – as for me, I had completely forgotten the story.... She came for her birthday, I received her as I always do, in the same way – and suddenly, gnawing pains, cramps, sharp pains in the stomach. I wondered, "What's going on in her? What's all this?" And it went on for quite a while, I had to make a little concentration to make it go. Then in the afternoon, the gentleman (I don't think they meet) sends me a letter and a box of sweets she had sent him. Ah! (Laughing) I said, "So there! She was afraid I would scold her and had gnawing pains in the stomach!" There you are.... That's how it is, you understand, it's a kind of work in a general unification. And people's reaction is felt in my body, that's how I become aware of it, conscious of it.... (Laughing) At times it's bliss, at other times stomach cramps!

It's amusing.

@

September 16, 1967

(Regarding a rather painful letter Satprem has received from the same very Catholic lady.)

Yes, the first impression was ... painful, then I took a good look; and at bottom, the whole trouble comes from the fact that this person has a very high opinion of herself, she judges everything from the height of her superiority – for instance, that air of benevolent compassion for the Ashram.... But that was my first impression when I saw her the first time, and it has been growing since then. And this letter has confirmed everything.

So then, I didn't say anything, but yesterday I made F. talk about the lady, and she finally told me, "There is something I have never told you because it made me uneasy, but today I will tell you. Soon after we first met, Mrs. Z one day told me (I repeat word for word), 'Because of MY position and YOUR position, I am convinced that we are destined to bring the Catholic Church and the Ashram together....'" F. told me, "I didn't reply – didn't argue, didn't answer, didn't say a word or anything, I just left it at that."

But I said to myself, "There is the answer to everything...." She has put herself at the very top, on the "summit" of the Catholic religion....

Yes, she told me the same thing.

That's it: she has been sent by God (laughing) to bring the Church and the Ashram together.

So I think it will be wiser not to say anything, to leave it at that – not to argue or reply. If she comes (I don't think she will dare) just be polite, that's all. To reply is to play her game (that's what she wants). If you like, I will keep your letter and hers with me like that, because for me it acts as a center of action.

Before she came to see me, I didn't know she was a fervent Catholic, I hadn't thought about it, but the first time she came and saw me, I simply thought (or saw), "My dear girl, you lack the humility indispensable for making progress." That's all. Then everything has been unveiled little by little, and yesterday the picture was complete because it takes some cheek to say, "We are destined to bring the Catholic Church and the Ashram together."

When I got her letter, the force in it literally wrung my stomach....

(long silence)

All this is part of a great Plan of organization in the Mind....[112]

You know, in olden days you were put through ordeals – they were symbolic things, naturally, but you were aware that they were ordeals, so you were on your guard. But now ... I remember, in the very beginning, when I started working with Sri Aurobindo, he warned me (I had already noticed it long before) that the circumstances of life are every minute organized in such a way that one who is destined to do the work is confronted with his own difficulties, which he must conquer, and with the difficulties of the world he works in, which he must conquer too. If he has the humility needed to see in himself what must be transformed so he can become capable of doing the Work, then all goes well. Naturally, if he is full of pride and vanity, thinks the whole fault lies outside and there is none in him, then naturally things go wrong. And the difficulties become sharper. And for as long as I did the work, for ... (how many years?) the thirty years I worked with Sri Aurobindo and he was there, and I was like this (gesture hidden behind Sri Aurobindo), so comfortable, you know – I was in front, I seemed to be the one doing the work – but for my part, I felt completely protected, behind him like this (same gesture); I was very quiet, not trying to understand or know or anything – I was simply attentive to ... what had to be done, the necessary action. It was rarely necessary to tell him; if sometimes I was faced with a difficulty I would tell him, but he didn't need to answer: it was immediately understood – thirty years like that.

And when he left, there was a whole part – the most material part of the descent of the supramental body up to the mind – that visibly came out of his body and entered mine, and it was so concrete that I felt the FRICTION of forces passing through the pores of the skin.... I remember I said at that time, "Well, anyone who has had this experience can, with it, bring the proof of afterlife to the world." It was ... it was as concrete as if it had been material. So naturally, after that it was there in the field of consciousness.... But I have seen more and more often, more and more clearly, that all that takes place, all the people we meet, all that happens to us personally (that is, taking this little body as being the person), all of it is ALWAYS a test: you stand firm or you don't; if you stand firm, you make a progress forward; if you don't, you have to go through it again.

Now it has become that way FOR THE BODY: when it hurts, when it gets disorganized, when it threatens to fall apart.... And then, there is always that Consciousness inside, straight as a sword, saying, "Now, will you stand firm?" And the cells are really touchingly goodwilled: "Oh, is it like that? Very well, very well." So you remain very quiet, very peaceful, and then you call – you call the Lord. And you say the mantra, which comes automatically, and ... Peace establishes itself. And after a while the pain has disappeared – everything, just everything, all the threats disappear one after another. That's how it is: "Lord, You are here...." And you know, such dazzling, indisputable proof of this Presence, which is so wonderful and so simple, so simple, so total, in all that comes, all that happens, down to the smallest details, so as to lead you as fast as possible to the transformation.

And all that draws near – near to a greater or lesser distance, but all that draws near is swept along in the Movement, without even knowing it.

That's why I have kept this lady's letter.

To come back to her Catholic preoccupation, there have been some really interesting things.... You know that the Pope, when he came here to Bombay, said things that I had told him like this (gesture of inner communication) when we had that conversation[113] (he certainly does not know whom he had that conversation with, but I think he is conscious enough to know he had one). A conversation ... We had three of them, but one was long, important, precise; he himself was taken, like that, and when the time came to leave each other – for him to go back to his body and for me to go back to my work – he said to me, "And what will you say to people about our meeting?..." I told you the story. And, well, the things he said when he came here to India were exactly what I had told him; the decisions he made there were exactly what I had told him.... which shows it has had some effect.

Have you heard about the latest decision? ... In the church, the priest always used to have his back to the faithful while officiating: he would face the deity and have his back to the faithful (the original idea was certainly that he represented the faithful's aspiration and prayer: he addressed himself to the Divine). Now the Pope has said, "Turn your altars around, face the public and represent the Divine." It's interesting.... They are doing it here now, and the comical part is that they've asked U. [a disciple] to do the work of turning the altars around. That's how I know it, it's U. who told me; they have asked him to go to all the churches here and turn the altars around. It's a big work because they are sealed.

(silence)

I'd like to be clear on one point deep down in my consciousness. If this person comes to see me again, should I keep alive in her the idea of a possibility of reconciliation between her Christ and the yoga, or should I squarely leave her under no illusion and tell her, "Anyone who wants to do the yoga must break out of that"?

When I read her letter and learned the whole story, as always I did like this (gesture of still offering upward), and then the TRUE thing came (not at all what she thinks or what the Pope thinks, but the TRUE thing): an essential unity that will manifest on earth, but not just for this particular religion – for ALL religions, all the religions that were manifestations of a ... to understand each other clearly, let us say of an Avatar, that is, something that was sent down from above, that came to earth to bring a message, and a religion came out of it (I am not talking about all the forms of superstition and ignorance). Those religions are destined to go back to their Origin and form a complex unity, complete, total, that is to say, the essence of all human aspirations for ... the unknown Divine. And that has not only been sanctioned: it EXISTS. In other words, it's ready to descend.

In egoistic and limited human consciousnesses, it finds expression in this or that person, or it finds expression in the Pope who, naturally, would like to ...[114] That's his whole raison d'être, otherwise he would just be one little man among many others. There is, in other words, the whole motivation of human egoism. That's what distorts everything. But there is a "something" (which they talk about without knowing what they talk about), a something ready to manifest. And at the same time I seem to be told, "Don't worry, be in peace, you don't need to do anything: it WILL BE, and as usual you will spontaneously say what you need to say, without knowing it." There.

But what I wanted to say is that if she comes materially, you shouldn't try to fight or convince her or change her, you should.... be a manifestation: you know, the shining Light, WITHOUT INTENTION. Then the work will be done in order. To be the shining Light – without intention. Simply the shining Light. Then you quite spontaneously say what you have to say, but without intention, without mental intention. You do what you have to do, say what you have to say – the Lord is there.

It's interesting.

These people (laughing), we could say that their ego has taken the attitude of being the Divine's instrument – but it's the ego. So naturally, they don't see clearly: they see what they want to see, do what they want to do. And for them, "I am God's instrument."

We'll see.

I am trying to keep her somewhat quiet, I don't like her to interfere too much in your life. It's an unnecessary strain. But if you do as I've said, if you withdraw into the Light and remain like that, it will no longer tire you, or much less at any rate.

(long silence)

It's this extraordinary experience that when you take all that comes as the means to learn what you should be – to increase your receptivity, increase your effectiveness – you immediately feel a wonderful, all-powerful Presence, but concrete, like that.

Then you understand that nothing is impossible.

September 20, 1967

Someone has taken it into his head to print a brochure for February 21 next year [when Mother will be ninety], so they sent me the brochure and asked me to write a message on the first page. And for that brochure they have solicited (!) the opinion of all prominent people: there is Indira Gandhi, India's president, and what have you. And everyone says what has always been said millions of times over: "A great personality, this and that...." All the usual ineptitudes. So I wrote this:

There is no other consciousness than the Supreme Consciousness. There is no other will than the Supreme Will. There is no other life than the Supreme Life. There is no other personality than the Supreme Personality, the One and the All.

All the usual platitudes they do all over again! I thought it would teach them a lesson.

*^**

Soon afterwards

I had many things to say, but now I don't remember.

Only an observation, which is really very interesting: it's that everyone has said the same thing, all those who had the Experience have said the same thing ... but everyone in his own way, so it looks like something different. Yesterday it was so clear, and again early this morning, the whole morning: this way, that way, this one here, that one there (Mother shows different facets), the philosophers, founders of religions, sages of all countries – they have always said the same thing. For instance, Buddha's teaching and, say, the Christian teaching, seem to be so different, but it's always the same thing. Which means there is ONE state (if you catch hold of it), ONE state in which you are conscious of the divine Consciousness (not "conscious of": "conscious through" or "conscious with," I don't know how to explain ... it's the divine Consciousness which is conscious, that is, the Consciousness in its essence), and there are no more problems there, no more complications, no more explanations, nothing anymore – everything is as clear as can be. So then, everyone has tried to explain that, and naturally it has become confused, incomplete, incorrect, with one explanation clashing with another – while everyone is talking about the same thing!

It came yesterday in relation to a boy who sent me the letter from one of his friends, in which he said the usual nonsense: "I don't believe in God because I can't see him." The usual little stupidity. And in that connection, I saw (I looked, like that, looked for a long time), I saw that the one who rejects, the one who asserts, the one ... all that, all of it is (how could I put it?) variations on the same theme, even when it appears to be saying the contrary.

Yesterday it was interesting, because the observation was the same for the materialists who feel that the only truth is a "concrete" truth, the truth that can, according to them, be seen or heard or touched.... And it's the same thing, the same state – the same state reflected in different mirrors. But the difference in mirrors is not an essential and radical difference, it's only ... (gesture showing facets in movement), yes, that's what some have called the "play," but it's not even a play; I might almost say it's a difference of position.

Everything you can say about it is nothing, it's part of that huge chattering that tries to express the inexpressible "something." But when you are IN it, it's so clear, so obvious – simple, without problems. And the world is no longer a problem.

Even that apparently rather fundamental difference between those who regard the Manifestation as divine and essential and those who consider that in order to reach the essential Divine you must leave the Manifestation (because it's an "error" – that is, an error that took place in the Consciousness), even those two positions are the same thing! But how can you explain it? When you say that, it seems foolish, yet up above it's true. It's true – true and full. It's full, not hollow – here everything rings hollow, so hollow; the hollowness of inadequacy. But up above ...

It's almost like a kaleidoscope: you turn it and get one picture, turn it again and get another picture, turn it again ... yet it's always the same thing!

But now, it's the body that has the experience. In a certain state, the state which corresponds to That, the essential state, everything is harmonious, with a living, smiling, happy peace; then as soon as there is ... a nothing, you know, a mere trifle, simply the coming into the atmosphere of something clashing – a mere nothing – it's felt like something extremely acute and painful. But not in the way of the pain of Ignorance, it's more like ... you could call it a discomfort, but it's not even that.... Everyone has explained it in his own way: some have called it "falling from the Truth into Falsehood," others "falling from the Light into Darkness," others "falling from Ananda into suffering," yet others ... Everyone has given his explanation, but it's something else.... As for me, I have no words for it, but the body feels it, feels it very acutely, and it sees that at the end of it, the consequence of it, is disintegration. And its whole effort is to strive to reestablish that inner harmony, that harmonic state in which everything becomes harmonious, everything – and in their appearance things haven't changed! Yet in one way they are marvelous, and in the other detestable.

The opposition between the two things is growing sharper every minute: one moment everything is divine, the next moment everything is detestable – yet it's the same thing.

Since the 15th of August, since that experience at the balcony,[115] it has become very clear.

But then, it has nothing to do with thought, or even with sensation: it's purely material (Mother touches the skin of her hands), and it's the difference between a progressive and unbroken harmony that has no reason to stop and grows more and more conscious, more and more harmonious, and also more and more ... we say blissful, happy and all that – but it's not that! It's "something" ... something so NATURAL, SO natural and ... with the rhythm of eternity. So there is THAT, and then suddenly (gesture of reversal) you fall back into ... exactly the SAME THING, everything is the same, yet everything is the opposite!

To such a point that you have a perception, a material perception inexpressible' because it's hardly mentalized, of a perfect Harmony which can, in the consciousness, turn into a serious disease! Things of that sort.

There is also the vision, an extremely complex and at the same time complete vision, that those, for instance, who have tried to explain the power of imagination, of thought or will or faith (all those things: the direct action on matter), the vision that each of those things has caught hold of one little aspect of the Thing, but in the Thing, there are no divisions; it's something which, when you perceive or conceive it, is divided into scores of little things, but it's essentially ... (how should I put it?) a way of being, a way of consciousness – it's a WAY OF BEING, not even a "way of consciousness" because that implies "being conscious OF something" and it's not that: it's a way of being. And that way of being is what, in the human consciousness, translates as "Ah, the Divine!" – by opposition, you understand. It's a PERFECTLY NATURAL and spontaneous way of being – but how, how does That become this [the mechanism of the passage from one state to the other]? How does That become distorted?... You constantly, constantly (gesture as of tiny reversals) switch from one to the other, back and forth, over and over again, as if to learn – to learn how That eludes. To us it looks like (to us, to all this poor consciousness that has gone through innumerable woeful experiences), it looks like a "relapse" into the old state; so it's not that. But what's the mechanism?...

In the end, we would have the solution only if we found the how and the why.

Constantly, constantly ... (same gesture of tiny reversals).

All the explanations people give are nothing but explanations. They are not THAT.

Knowing the why or the how probably implies the power to change everything....

In that case, it will come one day.

September 23, 1967

I've had another visit from Mrs. Z....

She is pertinacious.

She won't let go!

So what happened?

I can sum it up in two words. She again told me about her religion, and I said, "But listen, if you are satisfied with that religion, follow it!" Then she said this: "But you have secrets which we don't have."

Oh, so that's it.... Then what did you tell her?

I told her I wasn't a guru, that if she wanted to follow this path, she had to have a guru and I wasn't here to spread the Good News. I told her, "If you walk alone on this path, you run the risk of taking your thoughts and desires for God's commandments, so it helps to have a guru who protects and leads you. But I am not a guru." And I told her once more, "If you wish, Mother is there and you can turn to her." Then there was a little something that made me angry: she said, "Sri Aurobindo, yes, I understand Sri Aurobindo; Sri Aurobindo is an Avatar, but the Mother ... she is a highly developed personality, but not an Avatar." I replied, "But what kind of perception do you have to say things of that sort!" Then I added, "It doesn't matter in the least ...

Yes.

"... So long as one doesn't know, one talks about it; as for me, I don't say, 'Mother is an Avatar' or 'Mother is not an Avatar,' I don't say anything. When you have the perception, you are able to say. That's all." Finally I told her, "I am not a guru."

(Mother laughs) It's very funny! I think the little lady is ambitious: she isn't so much after Knowledge as after power.

But she is pestering you....

I take it as you told me to.

That's the only way.

Because she will come again, it's not the end.

Oh, yes, she is pertinacious.

But that's the crux of the matter: "You have secrets which we don't have."

Yes, that's it. But she only has to read! If she reads everything she will have the secrets, they are ALL there. They are all there, all of them.

That's the beauty of it: as long as you are in the mind, you can go on reading indefinitely without catching hold of the thing! ...

September 30, 1967

Have you heard of the Pope's conversion?

The Pope's conversion! No!

I was very happy because it showed me that our conversations hadn't been in vain. I was wondering if he was conscious; I don't know if he was conscious mentally, but in any case it's interesting, you can read (Mother holds out a newspaper cutting to Satprem).

Vatican City, September 26

The Pope, in an article published here last night, has said his journey to India in 1964 was "the revelation of an unknown world."

The Osservatore Romano published in an article excerpts from a forthcoming book of conversations with the Pope by a lifelong friend, the French philosopher and academician, Jean Guitton.

"I saw, as is said in the Apocalypse, a limitless crowd, a multitude, an enormous welcome. In those thousands of faces I read, stronger than curiosity, a kind of indescribable sympathy," the Pope said.

"India is a spiritual country. It has in its nature a sense of the 'Christian virtues'....

"Christian," he sees everything through his Christian word, but never mind.

"If there is any country in which the Beatitudes of the Sermon of the Mount could ever become a reality for the mass of the country, that country is India," Pope Paul added....

Can you imagine!

"What is nearer to the souls of Indians than poverty of spirit, sweetness, peace, mercy, and pureness of heart?" he asked.

"While the leaders of the West are politicians, in the land of India they are mystics and sages....

Yes.

"Life runs in contemplation. People speak in a low voice. Their movements are slow and liturgical. The country is born for the spirit," the Pope said.

Still, it means he is receptive.

And it explains the manner in which he received P. when he went there. P. [an Indian disciple], as you know, paid him a visit; he was taken there by an Italian who had come here (a very nice boy who showed him around Italy and took him to the Pope). The Pope gave him a private audience, and after talking, asking questions, replying (it was a whole conversation), he said to P. with a smile, "And now what will you give me?" (They spoke in French.) Then P. said, "I have only one thing, which I always keep with me and is infinitely precious to me, but I will give it to you," and he gave him Prayers and Meditations. And the Pope answered, "I am going to read them."

So it all fits together.

It's interesting.

Oh, yesterday I saw the photo of a man, a German who speaks German, but it's not clear whether he was born in Germany or in America. He must be some forty or forty-five, and for many years ... The story goes like this: his parents, both father and mother, were thorough unbelievers, and when he was born (or anyway the day after his birth), there was a horizontal column of light on his head, visible to the naked eye. Naturally, the parents were troubled. But the interesting thing is that it's going on. That man (I saw the photos) held in America a meeting with four thousand people (I saw the photo, four thousand people!) and while he was talking there was that column of light, it could be seen in the photograph. It was about as big as an arm and this long (gesture, about eight inches). And he feels he is "spoken to," that something like the supreme Divinity speaks to him, and that he has been told to proclaim the coming of the second Christ! ... Well ... He proclaims and gives people a kind of baptism. I saw his photo and ... it's very strange, he has a strong, powerful face, but a malicious mouth (hatchetlike gesture), tight-lipped, clenched.

And recently I saw two photos of the heads of the Rosicrucian movement in Holland (or Belgium, I forget), the Rosicrucian movement in Europe – exactly the same malicious, hard, inexorable mouth. Strange.

Right in the beginning, you told me the same thing about the Pope.

Yes, he has the same expression; but he has a less malicious mouth, though with something inexorable.

But what is it? ... And all those people, who are Christians, have it.

Anyway, about that German, it's quite obviously a vital phenomenon. To be visible to the naked eye, it can only be a vital light. And he has innumerable disciples. He baptizes them for the second coming of Christ.... It seems (I am not sure because it was written in German and only extracts were translated to me), but he doesn't at all seem to have a philosophical mind or conceptions: it's only a kind of action to bring people into contact with that light. I heard about him from a German woman who is here (her mother is in Germany, she is a disciple of that man and has sent her the book). But her mother is a bit frightened.

There is something inexorable – why? I don't understand. Because Christ came, on the contrary, to speak of brotherhood, goodness, charity, compassion.... Yet this expression has something inexorable – yes, there is no other word: tight lips and the mouth in a straight line like this (same hatchetlike gesture). It gives the appearance of a terrible malice, something inexorable (which found expression in the Inquisition, tortures and so on). Why is it there? ... But that German, for instance, the light was there when he was a baby, the day after his birth – he didn't have an inexorable mouth at that time!

But the evil with all those people – the Pope, this German, those Rosicrucians – is that ultimately they only think in terms of a Church....

Of course!

In terms of a Church and of power over people to keep them shut in their construction.

Yes, exactly.

That's the evil.

Exactly. That German, for instance (I am not sure because I haven't read the whole thing), gives baptism – he gives baptism, which means putting one's hand on the person and keeping him under (gesture over a bowing head).

There is also a Korean, have you seen his photo?... I saw his photo, he is a hefty fellow and must be the same age, between thirty and forty. A Korean who, for his part, bluntly says that he is, not the reincarnation of Christ (I don't think he is Christian), but the "new Avatar" (if he knew the Indian tradition, he would say "Kalki" [116]). And it seems he has hundreds of thousands of disciples! I saw his photo ... I saw him "Korean," you understand, that is, not universal.

But it means things are moving everywhere – moving more and more.

But this, a Pope saying this, is a new thing. It's new.

And I had that mental contact with him perhaps just three weeks before he came to India (of course his thought was turned to India). We had a very interesting conversation, and all I said came to: "Spirituality is much vaster than a Church, and as long as you limit spiritual realization to a Church or a religion, you will be in complete Falsehood." He listened. And when he came to India, that's what he said!

But I told you he was bothered by something. When he left, when it was time for me to get up and we had to leave each other, he looked at me with a sort of anxiety in his eyes, and said to me, "What will you say to your disciples about our meeting?" I smiled and said, "I will tell them that we were in communion in the ..." (not "identical" or "common," I forget the words) "love for the supreme Lord." Then his face relaxed and he left.... "We were in communion in the same ..." It wasn't "same" but ... I don't know, something expressing that both of us had been in communion in "the love for the Supreme Lord." And I said it like that, with a smile, which means it was Sri Aurobindo who spoke with his sense of humor.... His face relaxed and he left.

*^**

(After a long meditation, Mother, still deep inside

and half in trance, starts speaking:)

Did you feel anything special?... Because the last two or three days, but especially last night and this morning, it was the body learning, the cells learning ... I told you that the work till now has been the change – the transfer – from acting out of habit and reaction to letting the divine Consciousness act. And this morning, for a part of the night and the whole morning until people started coming, with every action, every movement, every gesture, all the tiny little things (when, for instance, a problem is put by someone or a decision has to be made, for years the answer has been coming from above), but now with all material movements, also the inner movements, with the attitude of the body, of the cells, the absolutely material consciousness, with everything, everything – the old method was gone.

It began with the perception of the remaining difference between how things were and how they should be, then that perception disappeared and there only remained "that".... Something (how can I explain?) ... The English word smooth is the most expressive; everything is done smoothly, everything without exception: getting washed, brushing one's teeth, washing one's face, everything (as regards eating, for a long time that has been worked on in order that it should be done in the true way). It always begins with (Mother opens her hands) this sort of surrender (I don't know the right word, it's neither abdication nor offering but between the two; I don't know, there is no French word for it), the surrender of the WAY in which we do things: not of the thing in itself, which is quite unimportant (in that state there is no "big" and "small," no "important" and "unimportant"). And it's something so ... (vast, even gesture) uniform in its simplicity, there is nothing that clashes or grates or causes difficulties anymore or ... (all those words express things so crudely): it's something that moves forward on and on so ... (same vast, even gesture) the nearest word is smoothly, that is, without resistance. I don't know. And it's not an intensity of delight, it's not that: that also is so even, so regular (same vast gesture), but not uniform: it's innumerable. And EVERYTHING is like that (same gesture), in a single ... rhythm (the word "rhythm" is violent). It's not a uniformity, but something so even, and which feels so sweet, you know, and with a TREMENDOUS power in the smallest things.

For several days there was (I told you the other day) the vision of cruelty in human beings, and a very active work to make it disappear from the manifestation. That's part of the general work, with such a concrete power (Mother clenches her fist) to make it disappear. It began with visions of horrors (almost memories), which were seen – more than seen, you understand: things that aroused that reprobation, that sense of horror.... Then it was organized in its totality and the whole thing was taken up like that (Mother opens her arms), all those movements in time (time and space merge into something ... an immensity – immensity, infinitude, and, I might say, "multiplicity," but words are poor), anyway it was a totality taken up in the consciousness – a totality of ways of being and vibrations – and as if presented to the Supreme Consciousness so it may be transformed, so it may cease to exist.

That's how it began.

Then, once that was done, it got as if concretized, concentrated on this little point of a body, so it may, there too, become impossible for certain things, certain vibrations of unconsciousness to continue to exist. And today the outcome was that transfer, which was constant – constant, unalloyed for about four hours. Afterwards ... It's mostly the invasion of outside things that cuts off the experience. Yet there is no reproval of that invasion; the transformation – the TRANSFER – must continue AMID the contact with all that comes. Then it will be fine.

There are two things. There is all this crowd I see constantly, and as soon as I am there, as soon as the body is there to see the people, it's a long time (a "long" time, that is, humanly speaking) since it stopped being anything but a channel, a kind of ... (gesture showing the Force flowing down through Mother to the people), so the Consciousness of the Lord may flow through it and go [and do its work]. There isn't even, or there is as little need to receive as possible: it's an action like this (same gesture through Mother), the Force passing through. And when it takes place in that room over there [the "music room"] which is exclusively reserved for seeing people, the room fills with the Presence, and it's as if that Presence opened its arms to receive people, took them, enveloped them, and then let them go.

But as regards the things personal to this body, like all that has to do with washing, food, now it no longer takes place in the same way. I don't know how to explain. Here, it's an activity; over there, it's simply a Presence. Here, it's an activity: you have to fill a glass with water, pour mouthwash, brush your teeth – it's all activities. And, well ... there are no memories left, no habits; things aren't done because you learned to do them that way: they are done spontaneously by the Consciousness. In the transition between the old and the new movements there is a difficult little moment when the old habit is no longer there, nor is the new consciousness there permanently, so ... It results, for instance, in apparently clumsy gestures, gestures that are not exactly what they should be. But it doesn't last, it happens once in a while for a particular thing, just for the lesson to be learned – there is always a lesson waiting to be learned.

To replace the memory, the remembrance, the action, with ... For instance, if you want to know where someone lives, his address or house (that was last night's activity), the old method, the mental method has to be replaced with the new method of consciousness that knows the thing just when it has to be done: "This needs to be done." It's not, "Ah, I have to go there," no: you are every minute where you should be, and when you come to the place you had to go to: "Ah, here it is."

It's really very interesting.

So, between the moment when you act like everyone and the moment when you act – when it's the Lord that acts, between the two, there's a little transition: you no longer quite know this, and don't yet quite know that, so at times this poor body feels somewhat uncertain, clumsy. But it's learning its lesson very fast.

Really interesting.

(long silence)

Then you clearly understand why saints and sages, those who wanted to feel themselves live constantly in this divine atmosphere, had got rid of all material things – because they weren't transformed, and so they fell back into the old way of being. And there comes a moment when it's ... unpleasant. But if you transform that ... it's in-com-pa-rably, vastly superior, in the sense that it gives an extraordinary STABILITY and consciousness and REALITY. Things become the TRUE vision, the TRUE consciousness; it becomes so concrete, so real!

Nothing – nothing else, nothing else can give that fullness.

Escaping, fleeing, dreaming, meditating, going into ... all that is very nice, but how poor it looks in comparison, how poor! So poor.

(silence)

The most difficult thing left is talking. That's the most difficult, it takes a great effort. This morning, while I had that experience, there was almost a kind of entreaty from the body: "Oh, don't talk, don't tell him." I didn't intend to talk, but (gesture from above) I am compelled to. The body doesn't intend to talk, it doesn't like to, but something obliges it to.

That's the only difficult thing.

Words are so inadequate! I have been asked that, too: how will they communicate, the wholly supramental beings (I mean, without the mixture of this material origin), how will they communicate? Simply like this? (gesture of inner exchange)

Talking takes such effort.

And it's not a "thought communication" like what they call telepathy, it's not that: it's ... movements of consciousness. That too will take place without clashes or resistance: movements of consciousness [in Matter]. If, for instance, something needs to be done but not by this body, by another, we are still obliged to say, "This needs to be done in such and such a way," and that represents ... you feel as if you have to lift a mountain, whereas if the other person were in the same state, it would get done quite naturally and spontaneously. I've had examples: now and then I SEE (not "think," but see), I see: "This needs to be like that" (very small things) and I don't say anything – the other body does it. It happens now and then, rarely – but it ought to be the constant state.... Oh, what an admirable life!

(silence)

And what about you?

I am in the tunnel, so to speak.

In the tunnel, oh, why?

A lot of work ...

(Mother laughs) Oh, this is amusing! Yesterday or in the night, I forget when, I told you, but with great force (it was something "very important"!), I told you, "At the end of the tunnel there is the light, and don't argue – don't argue: at the end of the tunnel there is the light." (Mother laughs) I wondered, "Why do I tell him that! ..."

 

October

October 4, 1967

(Sujata gives Mother a flower called "Power to heal.")

Power to heal? ... I've read in Planète the story of a man born in 1905, who for thirty-five years has been healing people by the laying on of hands![117] His father was Italian, his mother Spanish, and he was born in France, he is French. For thirty-five years he has been practicing the laying on of hands; he has treated five million people – five million. Out of them two thirds were cured, and he has been sued countless times ... by doctors, naturally: he had no right to heal people because he wasn't licensed! ... At one of the trials (I'll tell you the beginning of the story after – the beginning at the end!), maybe one of the last trials, his lawyer arrived very ill, with an attack of sciatica: one leg couldn't be moved, he was in acute pain. The judge, thinking himself very clever, told him, "Well, why don't you cure your lawyer to begin with?" The man got up, laid his hands on his lawyer, and five minutes later the lawyer was cured: "Oh, but I am cured!" (Mother laughs) He was convicted just the same. Wonderful. Anyhow, when he was quite small, that is, five or six, he had pinched a fish from his father who had gone fishing, and the fish couldn't be found. Two weeks later, his parents found the fish again among his things, with his toys ... absolutely dry and perfectly intact! Then the father tried an experiment to see: they had a fishbowl with goldfish; he took out two goldfish and gave one to his son, putting it in the hollow of his son's hand – the fish started drying up. As for the second fish, a few hours later it was rotten. Then they mentioned it to doctors (they were living in Toulouse, that was a little later, when he was twelve or thirteen). One doctor had in his hospital a patient whose wound he had been trying to heal for weeks and weeks in vain: it was horrible, purulent. The doctor called the child, who laid his hands – the next day, the wound was healed.

And this man (I saw his photo, he has a magnificent head) says, "I live in God's presence." That's what he says, and I don't think he makes any fuss – he doesn't have the time to, besides, because he goes to bed after midnight and gets up at five every day, starts work at 5:30 and spends the whole day working, that is, seeing people and people and more people (when that was read out to me, I thought, "And I complain!"). It's admirable. He did some studies, but he isn't a philosopher, he doesn't have any theories: he seems to have been born like that, with healing hands. He probably gets rid of infections by dehydrating, so he cures all the diseases from that side. And they did (poor man, they must have made his life impossible!), they did encephalograms, cardiograms and so on, and they noticed that just when he lays his hands (for a few seconds, two or three minutes at the most), at that moment his heartbeats suddenly go up from sixty to eighty a minute, then fall back to normal. And he doesn't seem to be making any fuss, unlike that German I told you about – nothing at all, very simple, very nice.

I liked that story.

A beautiful head. A tall man, very strong, who eats very little. And he has two or three hours' sleep at night, dreamless (that I understand!).

Interesting.

Sometimes people went to him only once, and he got worried, wondering why the person hadn't come again – "Yes, I was cured!" Then, trial upon trial, and an official of the tax department who, incognito, was present at some of his treatment sessions, said he had never asked for money, not once. And out of ... (I don't know, while the official was there, I think a little over two hundred people were treated), out of two hundred, sixty gave something. So the tax department was forced to acknowledge that he wasn't contravening the law.

Still, he was convicted.

It's rather lovely: you have no right to heal unless you're licensed! ...

*^**

Soon afterwards

It's going on.... Have you seen a monk?

Well, I met him in the street, but I didn't speak to him.

He is going to see Pavitra this morning, and F. has seen him twice. He has come here while traveling around India, and he seems to like the place very much. Here is his face (Mother shows a photo). Is this what you met? ... All right. He has written two letters, one to me and one to the prior of his monastery, which he sends for me to read. The two letters together are rather interesting (Mother gives Satprem the first letter):

Mother,

After only a few days spent in Aurobindo Ashram, where I have been nothing but the "delighted" one from the cribs of Provence, I take the liberty of asking you if you would allow me to remain here until the end of my stay in India, that is, until mid-December....

Signed: Brother A.

P.S. I am enclosing a letter to the Prior of Bellefontaine which I sent him in case it could be of use, and which I thought should be communicated to you.

I told F. to ask him to stay on till Friday, so I could show you this today and ask you if you would mind seeing the gentleman and speaking to him (to see how you feel). But if that troubles you ... F.'s impression is good. Here is his letter to the prior, read it:

"I have received your answer with joy and am writing again.... I am in Aurobindo Ashram, where I thought I would only stay briefly, but there is a certain something here which attracts me strongly, and I think I have had enough of traveling around. I intend to go to Ramakrishna Mutt at Ootacamund, since I informed them of my visit, but will come back here as early as possible. Everything here is wonderful and spellbinding. One who sees beyond the surface panes might well wonder if the new heaven and the new earth St. John speaks of do not meet here.

"I have a big church just a few minutes' walk away, and yesterday morning, the 1st of October, the celebrant said, 'Become citizens of the heavenly city....' He could not have aimed more precisely at my question mark. And in the evening, a young Parisian, landing here as new as a newborn, met before anyone else that same priest of the big church, who told him, 'What have you come here for? There is nothing.' The Parisian answered, 'What about the Ashram?' The priest replied, 'The Ashram? It's a brothel.' Because of that insulting declaration (and it is the kindest thing he said [Mother laughs ...]), I am petitioning Mother for permission to remain here till the end of my stay in India. I do think there is abomination and desolation in the Holy Place. When will the Christ's saying be acknowledged at last, 'A tree is recognized by its own fruits'? Jai-jai!"

Signed: Brother A.

Jai-jai means Victory-victory!

So, if you'd like to speak to him ...

I don't mind seeing him.... Oh, the Catholics here hate us.

Yes. That's also what I said in my declaration,[118] but they told me it wasn't true! They had the cheek to tell me (Catholics who came to see me), "Why did you say that? It's not true." We should stick this letter under their very nose. I KNOW this is how they speak to everybody. A kind of rage.

And it's been going on for a long time. It started when you were here with Governor Baron [twenty years ago]. You remember, they used to write things on the walls?

So you could see him. I was even told he had seen you?

I saw him in the street. But I can't trust my impressions, because ...

What was your impression? I'd be interested to know.

I dare not trust my ...

It's the same with me: they are indignant to begin with, then ...

I can't say I was very enthusiastic.... I felt what you feel with almost all Catholics, that something slightly (what should I call it.?) evasive, not very clean.

Hypocritical?

Yes, something like that, and underneath you feel a great repression; something there, underneath, which isn't clean.

That was also my impression when I saw his photo.

You feel those people are highly repressed.

They are hypnotized by that sex business.

Yes, that's what I felt underneath, and above, eyes ... that can't look straight at you.

That's right.

A Christian atmosphere of sin, basically.

That's why I wanted you to see him, because naturally, F.'s impression is very good, and Pavitra, when he read the letter, was full of exclamations. As for me, I was like that (withdrawn gesture), on my guard.

Why does he want to come? ... Naturally, it might simply mean that he is very happy and content here – that would be quite all right. But of course he is very much Christian, and doesn't intend to change that.

I don't know.

I wanted to ask you to see him because of that ... slightly painful impression, I don't know. And I didn't want to write him, "Yes, you may stay," if it is to end in something unpleasant. But it may not, if he is conscious – if he is conscious, it won't. You understand, to magnify the thing, in the name of their religion they betray their soul. That's how it is.

If he is conscious of the Possibility, then it will be fine. Because at least he will be on his guard.... But I haven't seen him, I only saw his photo, and the first contact with the photo was like this: "Beware ...."

I also had a recoil. But I put it down to prejudices. I don't trust my feelings, you understand, in my life I've had such abhorrence of this Christianity....

Was he wearing his habit?

No, he was in civilian clothes. But I tell you, the impression was that underneath it hasn't been spiritually cultivated.

Well, see him. I'd like you simply to tell me yes or no, that is, "Favorable impression" or "Unfavorable impression," something simple, one sentence, so that accordingly I may send him a line to tell him, "You may stay," or "It would be better if you didn't stay."

But in the end, he will still find himself faced with the same problem as always: religion versus freedom.

That's simply on the intellectual level. Because if he isn't a philosopher, if he doesn't live in ideas, it doesn't matter at all: it's rather a question of EXPERIENCE.... It seems that the experience he had[119] was a "descent of Ananda," something he had never felt before, which came to him all of a sudden. Then he told his Superior, "I'd like to go all alone into solitude, to the countryside," because he didn't like rites, ceremonies and all that. So that was the starting point, and then he felt the need to come to India. And in India he traveled all around, until he came here. He has been in orders for only two or three years, it's a recent conversion (not "conversion" from a religious standpoint but from the standpoint of life, because he must have been Catholic since his childhood, but he desired to leave life and become a monk), that's recent.

But it's a strange monastery, because Pavitra has had quite a sustained correspondence with an abbot who was in that monastery (he has a file of letters this thick!), then it stopped abruptly, I don't know why.

I don't feel this man is an intellectual, that's not the difficulty. But how to free them from the hold? That's the question.

Yes, it is. That's what I felt when I saw him: that thing which was there over him. It's a sort of "thing" common to all those people.

All of them.

An atmosphere. It's an atmosphere ...

It's a collective suggestion, mon petit, and so strong, so strong!

I told you the story: some people, when they are awake, resist and fight; intellectually, they understand; then, when they are half conscious or in sleep, it seizes them and they are terrorized.... It's over the WHOLE earth, the whole earth (there are Christians everywhere), it's an atmosphere that I see like a huge spider all over the earth.

(silence)

At any rate, there is clearly an effort to come closer (I showed you the Pope's declaration). That's why if the time had come to undo that hold, it would be worth trying.

That's simply why I leave the door open – we'll see. For years I didn't concern myself with it, but now that the Force has been going like this for some time (gesture of pressure), building up and building up and building up (it's tremendous), all that will have to change at some time or other, so ... has the time come?

It's rather significant that for some time you've been seeing Catholics come to you from every side!

Well, yes!

That Mrs. Z, this monk ...

Oh, and also others who write.

Yes, that's why: if he has a conscious goodwill, that is, if the hold is a subconscious affair ... (I told you, he isn't a man with a mental power he needs to fight against, it's not that), but if he has a great goodwill, through him we may be able to do something. That's why I want you to see him.

*^**

(Then Mother turns to the translation of the message she intends to distribute for the November darshan:)

There is a text I find very interesting, I had never read it. I already told you about that:

"There is always this critical hostile voice in everybody's nature, questioning, reasoning, denying the experience itself, suggesting doubt of oneself and doubt of the Divine. One has to recognise it as the voice of the Adversary trying to prevent the progress and refuse credence to it altogether."

Sri Aurobindo

It interested me greatly, because I noticed it was in the PHYSICAL consciousness, and very widespread, and one constantly, constantly had to fight against it – in oneself, in others, everywhere. It's like that, "underneath," as you said. So I find it interesting to say.

*^**

Soon afterwards

Do you have anything to tell me?

Yes, but it's not important.

Never mind.

I saw T. She told me about her mother's departure, and said you talked to her about a certain experience you had had with her mother during her whole period of coma or "unconsciousness"?

Yes.

And she would like you to tell your experience again.

You know, I can never tell the same experience twice. It came (it wasn't my intention to tell her all that; my intention was to say a word or two, "All is well"), then it came, and so I spoke. But once it has come out, it's over. I don't even remember what I told her. One thing I know. It's that I deliberately (I don't know if this is what she understood), I deliberately wanted her mother's departure to take place in the most harmonious possible conditions, with the least possible wastage, so she may retain the COMPLETE fruit of her passage in life, and ... What I did in reality (but this I didn't tell her), from the moment I got the news of her stroke (it was an apoplectic seizure), was to put her in a bath of the Lord. I kept her like this (gesture of enfolding). So, as for me, I knew first of all that if she was to be cured, she would recover quickly enough, and that if she didn't recover, it would show it was really time for her to go, but then she would go with ... her body benefiting, so to speak, the substance benefiting from the whole profit from physical life, and with her inner being in the best conditions. Of course, the inner being in the best conditions is the case for everyone, for all those who pass away here (but I generally don't have the opportunity to let the inner being go out slowly, you understand[120]). I saw ... you know that when Sri Aurobindo left, we kept him for five days; I saw how it happened. I told you, while I stood beside him, it came out of his body and entered mine, and it was so material that there was a friction – the body felt the friction of the Force coming in. And I saw (of course, in that case it was quite different, tremendous, but for everybody it's like that), I saw this: for the departure to be as harmonious as possible, it should take place like that, according to an inner RHYTHM, with the Presence (which is both a protection and a help), the Presence of the divine Force. So I put her in that Presence. And even (I don't know if she told you), when her brother, who is a doctor, came, he declared with their usual overweening confidence, "Oh, she'll be gone before tomorrow noon." I didn't say anything, remained quiet. Naturally, three more days went by. And even he was forced to acknowledge that there was something there he didn't understand.

What did she tell you?

She told me you had had a special experience with her mother, in the sense that the consciousness of the cells, the material consciousness of her body's cells, was able to leave along with the inner being, it wasn't lost.

Yes, but that is the NORMAL thing.

It's the normal thing. But then, it takes time. And the result is that the whole benefit the cells got isn't lost.

Yes, here, they hurry to burn people, that's terrible.

Oh! ... But she was buried. Oh, I know that. I know, I saw two or three cases here, people who were conscious – it was horrible for them, frightful, frightful.

There was the case of C.[121] He had learned to go out of his body, he knew how to do it: he would go about and see things; he would see, note things, and come back into his body. Then, when he was operated on, the doctors didn't take the necessary precautions and the heart couldn't withstand the shock of the operation: five days later, it was over. But he was in the habit of going out, so he went out and came to me (that's how I knew it before they came to tell me he was "dead"). But he wasn't at all aware of being dead: he had gone out of his body as he used to, and he came to me. he was with me. So then, it was quite fine, he remained peaceful. Then, at a certain point ... (he died in hospital, and naturally, at that time nobody listened to me: they burned him much too soon – it would have been too soon anyway, because in his case, precisely because he had that practice, much precaution and time would have been required; but it was all rushed through), then all of a sudden, when they burned him (I didn't even know the time of the cremation), he suddenly came into my room, you know, appalled ... appalled, crying, miserable: "But I am dead! I didn't know I was dead, but I am dead and they've burned me, they've burned me! ..." Oh ... it was horrible, horrible. So I calmed him down, told him to stay there, be calm, be with me, and that I would find him another body. And for a long, long time I had him consciously near me. Then I taught him to reincarnate – it was all done in detail. So I know ...

The same thing with N.S. In his case also ... He had fallen on his head and fractured it (he fell in a faint in the street, that's how he died). He was taken to the hospital. But he went out[122] and came to me right away (and so I knew: when I was told the accident had happened, I already knew something had happened because he had come to me). I kept him there, put him to rest, and he was quite peaceful – quite peaceful. They didn't even consult me about the time when he should be burned or anything (of course, a family of doctors!). Then, suddenly, brrt! (gesture of bursting) he went out of my atmosphere abruptly, like that. And no more sign of him.... It took me DAYS to recontact him – and that was the shock he had when they burned his body. It took me days to find him again, put him back to rest, gather him together. And one part had disappeared; his whole consciousness didn't return, because a part of his most material consciousness, of the material vital, must have been thrown out by the shock. I know it, because Albert's[123] father was operated on (it was more than a year later, maybe two), and when he was chloroformed, he suddenly saw N.S. in front of him (of course, even a part can take on the appearance of the whole being, Sri Aurobindo explained that, it's like a photograph). He saw N.S., and N.S. asked him news of his family, news of his wife, news of his children, and he told him, "I worry about them." It must have been the part tied to his family, which must have been separated from the rest of his being: when he came to me, he was complete, but afterwards, I don't know what happened (gesture of bursting under the shock). And it was so concrete that when Albert's father was woken up again, he said aloud, "But why are you cutting short my conversation with N.S.?" That's how they found out. He told them, "But I was talking with N.S., why have you interrupted my conversation?" So they found out.

There.

(Sujata:) Mother, I too saw N.S.

When?

It was the year he died, but months later. Less than a year later: eight or nine months. I saw him, he had come to my house (it was in the night, in dream), he was in our house, standing near the door, and I went to see him.[124] But someone who was near me said, "But he's dead!" And that gave poor N.S. such a shock, he was in pain. So I took him with me, made him stretch out on my bed. V. was there, and I sent her to inform you.

All that in dream?

All that in dream. I calmed him down, then told V. to go and see you.

But that division, that separated part came about when they burned him. Until then, I had kept him complete, and would have made him pass into the psychic as I do with everyone, peacefully, smoothly, without difficulty. But brrt! (same gesture of bursting) It's a frightful shock, you know! They put the fire in the mouth first.... It's ... Oh, the way men behave with each other – I have SEEN all that, I have SEEN it.... It's such a frightful, frightful thing!

And to think that ... It has happened not once or twice but hundreds of times that people who loved someone (they loved their father or brother, or their mother), as soon as that person is dead, if they see him in a dream or vision, they get terribly frightened and try to chase him away! .... Why?... If I ask them why, it's such a spontaneous movement in them that they can't answer me. They can't, they find it so natural that they are surprised I should ask the question.

That's what I said to T. (I don't think she understood), I told her that there isn't so much difference between what people call "life" and what they call "death"; the difference is very small, and grows still smaller when you go into the problem in depth and in all the details. People always make a clean cut between the two – it's quite stupid: some living are already half dead, and many dead are VERY alive.

@

October 5, 1967

(From Satprem to Mother)

Sweet Mother, I have seen the monk. My impression is favorable nevertheless.

With love

Signed:Satprem

 

October 7, 1967

(Satprem describes his meeting with the monk.)

... But he talked with Pavitra, and he said he is interested in the quest for the "inner divine," that's what he wants to find. He said, "The divinization of the earth is all very well ..." (Mother laughs) but what interests him is the discovery of the inner divine. Did he say anything to you?

Yes, while we were talking about dogmas, he said that all those outer things had no value for him and what mattered to him was the ascent here [gesture to the heart], the assumption and resurrection here.

That's good. If that's how he understands religion, it's good. Well, he seems to be sincere in his own quest.

He told me that in reality, sacraments, rites and so on didn't interest him much, but that he didn't want to leave either sacraments or rites, because, he told me, "If I leave them I leave their society, I am excluded and lose any means of action."

He wants to do something?

Yes, his idea is to broaden his Christianity, to find a truth and then take it there.

Oh!

He even told me something I found quite Christian; he said, "Deep down, I have a desire for total consecration, total self-giving, to be like a martyr and give my life for that new truth...." He thirsts to be a martyr – the martyr of the Church.

Sri Aurobindo once said (jokingly, as it were), while talking with those around him (I was there and we were talking about Christianity and the "new Christ"), he told them, "Oh, if the new Christ comes, the Church will crucify him!"

(silence)

Oho! So he has ambition....

Yes, of course, it's a kind of ambition. But it stems from something sincere.

Yes, a good intention.

Well, it's all right, we'll see what happens.

(Mother then holds out to Satprem a peculiar rose,
which in a few petals seemed to want to be red,
then turned pale yellow.)

You'd say it didn't know its own mind!

Just like people: they want to do one thing, then end up doing another. Perhaps it will also be like that with this brother A.?

Anyhow, it's the first time I've heard someone say he wanted to change something: the others want to change the new thing to suit it to their religion, but he wants to bring the new thing into his religion to change it. it's good. It's a good intention.

Why are people hypnotized by the past?... It's strange. The thing was very interesting when it came, of course, very necessary; it had to come, it did its work – but now it's over.

They don't know how to move on. They just sit down like that – "Now I've found it! I'll sit down and won't budge." (Mother laughs)

Sri Aurobindo always used to say, "I don't want people to do the same thing with what I have said...."

One must always go farther.

And he is still saying new things to me, it's very interesting.... This morning again, for a long time, it was as if everything established were swept away: "Ah, no! A little farther, a little higher, a little truer...."

(silence)

He also talked about people's fear – his prior's, for instance.

Fear?

Yes. This prior is a very nice man, sincere, who seeks the truth, but ultimately he has fear.

That's it.

And he told me, "The devil isn't in sin: this is where the devil is!"

In fear, yes.

But still, in the end he said, "You too are part of the Roman unity."

Ah, but I was told the same thing. A "leading light" of the Church said to me, "But what do you know? You belong to the universal Roman Church." I told him (laughing), "Well, I don't mind, that doesn't bother me!

But they're a nuisance with their Church!

(Mother laughs) They're like that.

Rome!... But Rome was a nonexistent fetus when there had already been millennia of wisdom.

But Rome is nothing! I don't know why in Europe they attach so much importance to this whole affair....

The world begins with them.

Even from the standpoint of culture, Rome was far inferior to Greece.... I don't know why – but it's the case of all the Latin countries, I think.

They put everything upside down.

That's what always stops me, because you feel you pour or give them some good substance ...

And they change it.

... and it simply goes to swell their Roman affair. That's what bothers me.

Yes. Oh, but they aren't the only ones to do that. As a matter of fact, all the old things seem to be swelling up as much as they can so as not to disappear. I received today a greeting card from a former disciple.... (Mother looks for the card) His name was A.C., an Israelite who was here and then went to England. In England he belonged for a long time to the "Sri Aurobindo group," then when the war between Israel and Egypt broke out (or a little before), he became fanatic, a fanatic Israelite: "I want to work for Israel alone." And as he had been contacted about Auroville, he answered, "Can Auroville help Israel?" Things of that sort. And right now, it's the New Year there, so he sent me this (Mother shows a card with seven candles illuminating the world, and wheat ears). In the past, he used to call me The Divine Mother, and Sri Aurobindo was The Lord. Then in his last letter, it was "Guru" (I have become the guru!), and, "I want to inform you that I have left the group." And now he sends me this card: "To the Mother ... God bless You" (Mother laughs). And it's the same thing, of course! Over there, few people are religious, they rather have a very practical mind, but he has the religious temperament, so now it has become like this (Mother puffs out her cheeks), his Judaism is swelling up. The seven lights and the ears of prosperity.... I found it touching: "God bless You" (Mother laughs).

I remember, long ago, right at the beginning (I think I had just moved into Sri Aurobindo's house), someone, I forget who (did Tagore have a sister?...[125]), she was a tall and strong woman, rather awe-inspiring, who had come to spend a day in the Ashram, and she told me, "Why don't you keep some rooms and rent them out to visitors? You would get ten rupees a day." (Mother laughs) I stared at her, I was flabbergasted (she was teaching me to be practical!). And at the end, she said, "God bless you." At that point I couldn't restrain myself, and I answered her, "It's already done!" (Mother laughs)

So it's the same thing everywhere, a patronizing attitude.

And when they are too small to swell themselves up, they enter religion and swell it up: they turn it into an enormous thing that dominates the world.

Ah, never mind, if they find it amusing ...

(silence)

What do these people call "sin," to begin with? What is sin?... When I am told about sin, I answer, "You know, sin is not being Divine."

So the whole world is in sin.

For them, the Catholics, sin is that miserable affair of sex. Yet they do bless marriage! They bless marriage, and when you are married by the Church, it's for eternity! If you go to hell, you go to hell together; and if you go to heaven, you go to heaven together – but you can never separate! (Mother laughs) Word for word, I am not making anything up.

But I told him, "Yours is a barbarous religion."

What did he say!?

But he rather agreed! His idea is to bring some new air into it.

(silence)

But it's very much like when you want to clean a pond and you stir its depths: it becomes disgusting, it all rises up.... Every day there come two or three things ... Anyway.

October 11, 1967

(Sujata gives Mother a flower called "New Birth.")

(To Satprem) Tell me, what's a new birth?

Being radically different.

(After a silence) Becoming new every moment.

This morning again, for, oh, more than two hours, absolutely a new person. And every time, with the work, the contact with the world ... [it fades away]. But it doesn't quite return the same, something is gone. For two hours this morning, it was still more than the other day, but not the same thing – never the same thing, never the same experience twice.

But it was ... At one point I thought of you and said to myself, "Oh, if he were here and could note this down, it would be interesting...."

*^**

(Mother goes to sit at her table, then laughs at the extraordinary accumulation of things on it – precariously balanced packets, stocks of envelopes, paper, pens....)

Here everything is arranged: if you have the slightest unconscious gesture, it means catastrophe! There are little beings that have been assigned to keeping watch, and that's the funniest of all: if you have an unconscious movement like that, they snatch from you the thing you are holding and send it flying far away! It has happened to me countless times. In my case, of course, I just laugh, I know what's going on: they take the thing and poff! send it flying into the air as if you had made a violent gesture. It happens constantly. This table has been PURPOSELY arranged for that – it wasn't me who arranged it: I was MADE to arrange it. And that's how it is: if you make an unconscious gesture, something tumbles down – naturally! (Mother points to the piles of envelopes)

Your table is frightful!

Yes, but each thing has its purpose and usefulness.

I also have deities (Mother lifts three statuettes, deluged with a few others in a torrent of paper): this is a standing Ganesh; this is Garuda, Vishnu's attendant; and this is Shiva's bull. And here (a little farther on the table), I keep three Ganeshes: a tiny little silver Ganesh, between the legs of this deity (a modern-looking one), then another Ganesh, I don't know what it's made of, and finally a bronze Ganesh. And in here (Mother points to a drawer in which she keeps money), I have three other Ganeshes: a bronze one, a silver one and a gold one! It's because he promised me that he would give me all the money I need, so this way (laughing) he can't say I forget him (or his promise either!).

This Ganesh (on the table) was given to me by a little boy maybe two and a half years old. When that little boy was a few months old and till the age of one, whenever his mother brought him to me he would cry and scream and make scenes – the parents were in despair. Every time I would tell them, "Don't worry, all will be well, we'll be very good friends. Then the parents would stare at me in disbelief. Now he is two and half or three, and as soon as he is in the stairway, waiting – "Mother, Mother, Mother! ..." (or "Ma," I don't know). But when he comes in (he is the first of the family to enter the room), he comes with a flower; and once, he gave me this Ganesh, but with such consciousness! He is wonderful. Yesterday, he was absolutely exquisite: he comes in first, so self-assured, so joyful, then gestures to me as if to say, "Everything is just fine, don't worry!" And I speak to him – he doesn't understand a thing of what I say, but he approves gravely. Absolutely exquisite.

There is great progress among children.

*^**

(Soon afterwards, regarding the "Durga puja" or festival and ceremony to the Universal Mother, which has taken place this very morning.)

This morning I had a visit from Durga. She pays me a visit every year, but this morning it was interesting because she explained to me her point of view, how she feels existence, and at the same time.... You know that she came last year, I told you the story. (Previously, when I used to go downstairs to give darshan, she would not only come but stay there for the whole time.) But when she came last year I told her, "Very good, it's very good, you fulfill your universal function very well, but you are missing something...." And I explained to her the meaning of being in conscious and attentive contact with the supreme Will. She understood. She understood and adhered, she said yes. And during the year she must have tried, because when she returned this morning, there was really a difference, especially a difference in the understanding, and she explained it to me. Then I spoke to her about the physical human nature and its infirmity, and she told me, "There is in this body something we – all of us up above – do not have and cannot have: the possibility of a constant Presence of and a constant contact with the Divine." She had never thought of it before! Only since a year ago. And she said it with such intensity – such intensity and understanding and meaning.... It was as though all human miseries instantly disappeared in front of this EXTRAORDINARY thing – the possibility of feeling in every cell the divine Presence.

It was really interesting. The morning was really interesting.

She stayed here while I was washing, and she told me, "See, you can do all this, and not for a minute, not for a second do you lose the contact with That, with the supreme wonder. And we who are full of power, without any of your petty miseries, any of your petty difficulties, we are so used to our way of being that we don't see the value of it, it's something obvious, almost inevitable." And she said (Mother smiles), "We never think of the Divine, because we ARE the Divine.... So there isn't that will to progress, that thirst for ever better, ever more – we totally lack it."

It was really interesting. I am putting it into words (of course, she didn't speak to me in French!), but it was very simple, the contact was very simple (gesture of inner exchange), and very natural, very spontaneous. At one point I even asked her (laughing), "Do you enjoy all this worship people give you?" She said no. "No, I don't care." She is too used to it, she doesn't care.

*^**

Later, regarding Auroville

I met Y. They're preparing an issue on Auroville, and she came with a list of questions this long (gesture), saying, "I don't know Auroville's sociology too well." I told her, "Neither do I!" Then she asked me questions (very intelligent ones, mind you), and I answered her. But there was one thing about the selection of people and admissions to Auroville; I told her that naturally, the essential condition to be able to select people was that preferences, attractions and repulsions, likes and dislikes, all moral rules, all of that must have completely disappeared – not that one should be on the way to overcoming it, it's not that: it must have disappeared (laughing), there must be no more ego! Then I told her, "It's not a judgment, it's not that you look at people and judge whether they are fit to be there or not, destined to be there or not, it's not that at all – you don't 'judge'...." And after she left, I noted the end of the thing (Mother takes a note and reads it out):

"The Force is put on all, identical and supreme ...

The Force is identical for all (uniform gesture all over the earth) and supreme, that is ... well, it means supreme, like this (same even, outspread gesture). Whoever they are, whatever their attitude, the Force is put on all identically – and THEY are the ones who classify themselves; it's not that you decide that such and such person goes here or there or here: they classify THEMSELVES according to ...

"... And everyone classifies himself, by himself, according to his own receptivity and the quality of that receptivity – or else his refusal or incapacity."

All degrees are there, of course. When it's refusal or incapacity, then the person flees BY HIMSELF, saying, They're fools, they are trying to do something impossible and unrealizable." (I know many such people, they think they have superior intelligence.) But even to place themselves, it's people themselves who will do it.... She came with the idea of a hierarchy. I said, "Yes, everything is always in a hierarchy, especially all conscious individuals, but not out of any arbitrary will: it's people themselves who spontaneously take their place without knowing it, the place they must have. It's not," I told her, "it's not a decision, we don't want categories: this category, that category, and so this person will go here, that person will go there – all that," I said, "is mental constructions, it's worthless!" The true thing is that NATURALLY, according to his own receptivity, his own capacity, his inner mission, everyone takes up the post which in the hierarchy he truly and spontaneously occupies, without any decision.

What can be done to make the organization easier is a sort of plan or general map, so that everyone need not build his position but will find it ready for him – that's all.

It was amusing, but very interesting.

(Mother gives her note to Satprem) But water from the flowers fell on it, so it's half erased!

The danger with all those people is that they want to codify things.

Oh, they want to build a mental construction, like that, as square as a prison, it's awful.

But you know ... when she comes, she is very nice, very kind, very receptive and open, and quite ready to receive and listen, at least in her outer attitude, but it seems she has a "group" over there, and in that group ... (I heard it through some sincere people who went there) it's frightful! Harsh judgments, you know. And a crushing superiority.

It's a pity.

I also heard (she didn't say anything to me or show anything), but anyway I heard that the Bulletin is behind the times.

That came to me.

Ah?

And strangely, it came to me as from Y.

Well, well!

The very words you've used. I don't know why, one morning something said, "Oh, the Bulletin is behind the times." And it was as if Y. was on the line. It's funny.

(Mother remains silent) Sri Aurobindo is already "in the past"!

She doesn't waste time!

But I know that, because I got a letter from her which gave a hint of it. She said that the Mother in her four Aspects, as in Sri Aurobindo's book, was "all very well for today's creation" (let's not yet say "yesterday's creation," let's say "today's"!), "but for tomorrow's creation, there must come the Mother's aspect of Love, which hasn't yet manifested." And it was put very deftly, but in such a way it was impossible not to understand that it was this lady who was to manifest That....

As for me, I said, "Very well! (Mother laughs) What the Lord wants will be." But since then, I have been treating her as ... (what should I say?) more than an equal – as a superior, and with assertions ... that for her are crushing. And I never miss an opportunity to tell her that in order to do this or that, or to manifest That or ... one must SPONTANEOUSLY AND DEFINITIVELY be above all desires, all ambitions, all preferences – every time, like this (hammering gesture).

Nothing in her apparently budges, but ... Very well (laughing), if she stands the "test," we'll see.

There is something very hard in her.

Hard, yes, very hard – merciless.

She is like the caricature of something else.

Exactly that.

(silence)

She brought me a little poem in French on "The Beloved and His Beloved" (all that up above), which, I must say, was very pretty. So she read it to me, and when it was over I told her, "But Love – this Beloved and his Beloved – is not a person, these are not persons; they are not human beings, not even symbolic human beings...." And at that point something opened up above, and I told her what Love is.

She was gripped at the throat so strongly that afterwards I almost lost my voice.

We'll see. Everyone can change, no? I give her her FULL chance.

You know, it's so wonderful, in fact.... Where That manifests doesn't matter in the least; whether It manifests here, there, or there, doesn't matter in the least, it's always the same thing manifesting everywhere. And wherever That chooses to manifest, which is where It must necessarily best manifest, there It manifests. The only thing – the only thing – is not to allow illusion and deceit to mix in, to hold them ruthlessly in their place, otherwise ... None of the ego's mischief – we don't want any of it. Because it's petty, mean, stupid, useless, a waste of time, and because it causes unnecessary turmoil in the atmosphere. But apart from that ... whether That manifests here or there or here ...

(silence)

Some people are quite taken by Y. But others who are conscious and went to her group once never set foot there again.

From the start I've had a sense of recoil from her.... The ego's hardness, that's it.

Yes, with a wholly benevolent mask.

Very interesting.

(long silence)

But the gods have a divine ego. That's what was really interesting this morning.... They feel they exist in themselves, by themselves, for themselves (Mother clenches her fist). Only, of course, there's no comparison with the sordidness of the human ego.

But that's what was so interesting this morning.... Once these divine egos have abdicated, and to the extent of that abdication, it will mean an EXTRAORDINARY transformation in the creation. It was like a vision taking shape slowly (Mother closes her eyes), almost with pictures, as if I saw the whole earth (gesture of a ball) and the picture of Durga (gesture enveloping the earth)! and the two together, it was quite lovely.

The earth in her arms ...

(silence, with eyes closed)

And in those visions (let's take this one, for instance), Durga has a visible, defined form, while this body [Mother's] isn't there because this body belongs here, down to earth; so it's a radiating center of white light that can take a form (but doesn't have one), a radiance of light, a vibration of light, of consciousness – of conscious light. And that's very interesting .... (Mother keeps her eyes closed) It was as if to see how this – this consciousness, this light – can manifest in precise forms on earth without losing something of the purity and radiance of the consciousness....

(Mother goes into a long contemplation)

There was here (gesture between Mother and Satprem), like that, one of those kinds of lamp stands, like the ones they make with snakes, you know – but it was high, this high (gesture about five feet). It was in copper, with inlays. designs in it, and at the top was a ball that contained all the lights, as if every snake's head was a light – it was magnificent! Really magnificent. And it was lit. There were "Power" flowers [red hibiscus] forming garlands around the base. And then, someone said, "Isn't this more beautiful than material reality?..."

And that was the artistic construction – mental, artistic – which was "more beautiful than reality." That was the guiding idea of the person we have mentioned: "Isn't this more beautiful than real nature?" Like that.

It was very beautiful, a beautiful thing, but ... it's the mental fossilization of the Thing. It was very interesting – unexpected, I didn't expect to see that: a shape of a coiled snake, in bronze, with bronze inlays, but magnificently wrought! And the burning lamps, the burning light ... superior to reality: "Isn't this superior?"

And the symbol of it was so clear to me that I was astounded.

It is, so to speak, the acme of mental evolution.

(silence)

The Lord makes use of everything, and He isn't afraid. He makes use of everything.

It's interesting, very interesting.

How He has used the gods, how He uses everything, how He has used the Adversaries ... everything.... It's all ways of being, and everything leads ... where we must go.

October 14, 1967

(The conversation begins an hour late. Sujata gives Mother flowers called "Transformation.")

Two for you (to Sujata), two for you (to Satprem), and one for me.... It's to prompt the body to transform itself! (Mother slips a flower through her buttonhole) It tries its best, people don't leave it much time to look after itself.... It's getting worse and worse.... The nights are shorter; during the day, the moment when I used to be able to rest is gone. So it's kept constantly, constantly busy. Not very easy.

*^**

Soon afterwards

All of a sudden, yesterday afternoon towards evening (around six, or a little before), there came a sort of atmosphere of ... (what should I call it?) a kind of discouraged pessimism in which everything had become lackluster, gray, dissatisfied. When you see things from above, in a certain atmosphere of totality, each thing plays its part and collaborates in a general manifestation, but there, it was like something shut in itself, with no reason to be except that it was. It was aimless, purposeless, with no reason to be, nor was it a special circumstance or a particular event: it was a kind of self-enclosed formation, a state of being which was obviously morbid, but not violent, nothing violent.... Yes, in which everything and everyone was without reason or aim, without any satisfaction – neither oneself nor others, nor things. And I was DELIBERATELY shut in it, so I would feel it. The consciousness wondered, "Why? What does it mean? Why is it like this?" And at the same time (you know that yesterday was the day of "Durga's Victory" for those who worship Durga), so I asked myself, "Why does she choose to shut me in ,his state just on the day of victory? What does it mean? What does it mean? ..." It was indeed like a factual demonstration of the perfect uselessness of that way of being, which had no reason to be, which could be turned to anything, any time, without reason and without motive. It was like the symbol of dissatisfied uselessness. But it went on.... I looked and looked at it, trying to find the slightest clue to the cause of that state: what, when, who, how? ... And the curious thing is that it's very, very foreign to my nature, because even when I was in real trouble, I never wasted my time being like that. And it went on, as things go on when I have to study them, understand them, and do what needs to be done. Then, at a certain point I said to myself, "Oh, perhaps this is what Durga intends to conquer this year?" And at the same time I remembered (like that, far away on the fringes of the consciousness), I remembered the time when Sri Aurobindo was here; every year, on the "Victory day," I would tell him, "Well, this is what Durga has done this year," and he would corroborate it. I would say, "This is what Durga has conquered, this is what Durga ..." Every year, for a long time. And so that memory was there, far away in the light, as if to tell me, "See, do you remember that?" And I said to myself, "Well, this may be what Durga wants to conquer?" Then I thought, "But what's to be conquered in this? It's silly!" It's a silly state. (Lots of people are in that state, I know, but it's absolutely silly, it has neither reason nor cause nor aim, it's like something that comes in without one knowing how or why.) It went on for a good while (I don't remember exactly how long). Then, when I had seen clearly, understood clearly what it was, I asked Durga, "Is this what you want to do?..." And it was suddenly as if ... a very strange thing, as if it evaporated before my eyes, pfft! ... It went like this (gesture of bursting), and then ... I tried and tried – the memory of it and everything had completely vanished! In one second it had completely gone.

While it was there, it was ... yes, as if something without any truth in itself, something that didn't rest on any truth. A morose, dissatisfied, grumpy state, and it was gray, gray, gray, lackluster, looking at everything from the angle of uselessness and stupidity.

Then there was a sort of bursting: all of a sudden, poff! like that, and it was all over. And now it's a sort of vague memory which I can hardly recapture, which no longer exists.

When it came, I said (laughing), "What a victory!" Then came the memory, the vision of Sri Aurobindo's time, and the impression, "Well, is this" (Durga was there, watching), "is this what you want to vanquish?" She didn't answer me, she smiled. And a few minutes later, poff! (same gesture of bursting), like that, I don't know how to explain it. But it was strange, I had never seen that before.... The other times, when Sri Aurobindo was there, whenever she overcame something, the impression was of a power surrounding a falsehood (gesture as if to pull out a tuft of grass), surrounding it like that, isolating it forcibly, paralyzing it and taking all support away from it; but this time ... it was an odd phenomenon. Something totally nonexistent, without any truth in it. And all that way of being was as if hanging over the earth, in contact with certain people, but as if wrapped inside a bag: you understand, it had no contact with the rest, but once you were inside it, impossible to get out! You were shut in, it was impossible. Then it burst all at once: "Ah! ..." And nothing was left.

It was interesting in that it was the first time I was the witness of such a thing. And it was really as if I tried to feel, to touch it – I tried, but there was nothing left! It was oppressive, you know: you tried to get out of it, but it was impossible – you were shut in, a slave, powerless.

So now I hope it will have repercussions.

*^**

A little later, regarding Auroville

Requests for admission to Auroville have been pouring in at a frightful pace these last few days – every day a stack big as this – so naturally, everyone must send his photo along with his request and say why he wants to be in Auroville, what his skills are, and which category he belongs to: there is the category of those who want to work to build Auroville, and the category of those who want to come and sit peacefully in it once it's ready. And what a humanity, mon petit! ... In fact, all those who come are generally dissatisfied people. Now and then, one of them has a light in his eyes and a need for something he hasn't found (then it's very good).

There are those that weren't successful in anything and are completely disgusted, so they wonder if they might not be successful here. Then there are the old ones who worked hard and want to rest. There are very few young people – the few young people are all people of worth (the ordinary youth aren't interested). And the few I have seen are those who want to work: they don't want to come and take advantage from others' work, they want to work. So we'll soon have a rather interesting team. But (laughing) with the satiated old ones, I ... postpone decision, put under observation (Mother laughs). Yesterday, there were a number of them. We'll see: if they want to be useful, that is, give money or things, or propose to do something, then we'll see; but as such, the satiated fat fellow with his leaden-seated fat missis who want to come and spend the rest of their lives in peace, to them we say, "Wait a bit, we'll see!"

The workers aren't asked anything, that is, they don't have to pay: they can come and work, on condition that they prove they are useful. But those who want a piece of land or a house to live in have to pay. And then, some have limited confidence (laughing) and say, "I'll give you a little money right now and will pay the rest little by little, in installments" – those I generally turn down. Some are so eager to come that they send money in advance, and when there's some life or something in them, I accept them. But to nearly all, except two or three, I say, "Under observation" – we'll see how they react!

*^**

(Soon afterwards, regarding a photo of Mother at the Playground in 1954, with the children and disciples around her.)

That was when I declared that I wanted to be Indian, to have dual nationality.... The government of India told me it was a "memorable day in India's history...." I wasn't aware of it![126]

(Mother studies the photo) It's amusing. When I look back at all those things, I have a very acute sensation of looking at my childhood, it all seems to me so childish! ... Still in the illusion of the world.

And for how many years?... Since something like 1915, I felt – constantly felt – I was acting on the Command: the Command from above. The personal impulsion had disappeared. Since as long as that, 1915, and in that condition, there have been a whole evolution and transformation. And now, when I look back, not only all I used to do, but the way of looking at things, especially the way of looking at things ... [seems to me childish]. The reaction was already like this (wide-open, even gesture), because great care had been taken to correct any ignorant reaction; the reaction was already very much like this (same wide open gesture), but it was VOLUNTARILY so, not spontaneously so. That's the great difference. You understand, that sort of universal equality like this (same gesture) was voluntary, it was the effect of a constant vigilance and a constant will. Now also the vigilance is constant, but it's replaced by the vigilance and will to be constantly like this (Mother turns the two palms of her hands upward, joined together like a bowl and forming an upside-down triangle at the level of her forehead), all the time like this inwardly, turned inward, as though each cell were turned inward, towards its center of light – that's how it is. And now there is still a vigilance not to forget, not to flag – all the cells turned inward towards That. So all that outward play, oh, how childish it all looks! And now I do things that are far more childish, lots of little things that are, to the ordinary human outlook, totally useless and quite childish – but all that isn't the same thing ... it's ... (vast, supple, slow gesture) like the waves and rhythm of a divine Harmony expressing itself.

I might put it like this: at the time of this declaration [of 1954], I was still taking things seriously. At the time of the "classes," when I spoke, I was taking all those things seriously.

Now it's not indifference' it's ... I don't know, words can't express it, because "detachment" wouldn't be correct. I don't know, there are no words.

There is certainly a kind of perception that mankind has given seriousness, importance, and ... It's obviously the mental structure, all that the mind has added in the world: first, differences in value, differences in importance, then a kind of solemnity, and, yes, a seriousness, an importance, a dignity.... All those things. All that is the mind's addition to life. And now it makes me smile.

Like the need of a cult in people, the religious feeling, that sort of awe (what's the word in French? ... Fear, terror?) before the divine Power – all of that is what the mind has brought into life – now it makes me smile.

When people come and see me with that sort of seriousness, when they come like that, I instantly feel like bursting into laughter! So I laugh, I smile, I welcome them like old friends! (Mother laughs) Voilà.

@

October 19, 1967

It seems the Gospel announces a great battle for this year....

For this year, in the Gospel!

Not this year, but it says there will be a terrible battle before the second coming of Christ.... As for me, I know nothing about that! But a lady disciple in Holland has written a letter: it seems everyone there is terror-stricken, there's a panic in the whole country (!) and they say it's the year of the battle. And here in India (not concertedly, of course), astrologers have said that September and October are months of a terrible battle (maybe not a war, but a battle) between Truth and Falsehood. There in Holland, it seems it's like in the year 1000: they gather for meditations, entreaties, collective prayers.... Well. And here, it's the same thing, they are panic-stricken.

But battle there is. You can't move a finger without waging a battle.

I'll give you quite a down-to-earth example: the government owes me 175,000 rupees, I absolutely need that amount, it's six months since they should have given it. Two weeks ago, they sent me a paper in which they said, "Here it comes." I was relieved because I had payments to make before the end of the month. But then the paper was just the promise of a check, and now all payments are over, they've stopped paying for this year! ... That sort of thing, you understand, and EVERYTHING is like that. If I didn't need money, I wouldn't care, but it's "Deepavali,"[127] then a house to be paid for, and one thing coming on top of another. So that's how it is: for the smallest thing you have to wage a battle.

It's like with Auroville: a whole part of the government is absolutely enthusiastic, but there are three or four individuals here, in Madras State, who are dead against, and they have a terrible action: they stop everything. Some ministers (as usual) come, are received, they give you a promise, saying, "I am with you, you'll have everything you want"; they leave the room and send a telegram to their assistant: "Don't sign the papers." That kind of lie, you understand, everywhere.

But the amusing point: here they are Hindus, over there they are Christians, and they both met with the stars to say that it's this year, right now.

And what do you think of it?

What do I think of it? I have been feeling the battle for a long time – the sordid battlefield, a battle of malice which manifests everywhere as much as it can.... For me, there is a single remedy, that is to be still – still – and to let the storm blow over without budging.

They said we would have a war with the Chinese in September: that could be averted.

October isn't over, we'll see. But battle there is, and I said so at the start of the year; I said it's a year when one must absolutely make the decision, and then hold out.

But at times you feel it would be better if outwardly it exploded.

(Mother shakes her head) Not with what they have found now. Not with what they've found – that's what holds them back, besides: they could destroy entire cities ... in an instant.

But the Russians have sent spacecraft to Venus, they took four months to reach, and in those spacecraft were radio-like communication systems that send news, and a device to collect the soil and analyze it – all of it just machines. It reached Venus, and now they give the news every day: "Here is how it is on Venus." (Mother laughs) They are rather amazing! The Americans were content with the moon – you reach the moon quite soon, in two months, I think, maybe less than that. But the Russians took four months to get to Venus and it arrived there, they got the news, it works with electrical devices.

Yes, but on the earth it doesn't work!

On the earth!... A humorist wrote an article in which the Americans had reached the moon, and while they were looking around, they suddenly saw people walk up to them: "They're Moonlings!" They couldn't understand each other (they could speak to each other but couldn't understand); but one of them spoke English and other languages, and so they found out that the Moonlings were Russians! That was very funny.

Well, I don't very well know, I read the Gospel long ago, but I don't remember, I didn't know a great battle was announced in it. I know they announce the Last Judgment when all the people who were buried will rise and appear before the Lord God seated in his armchair (Mother laughs), who will tell them whether they are ... (Laughing) He will put some on one side and others on the other side! ... I am not exaggerating, that's how it's written.

(['hen Mother gives flowers) This is my delight. My delight in life.

*^**

Soon afterwards

The doctor has again had a fall (just the evening before his birthday), he fell and hurt his arm, it seems there's internal bleeding. This morning he told me it would take more than two months to heal.... But it's everywhere, with everything, everything: people fall ill just when they shouldn't (and they get cured when it's not necessary for them to!). A general little malice, constantly, you understand. I tell them [the invisible beings], "You are stupid," but they're very happy to be told they're stupid, they say, "They must be quite upset to say we're stupid!"

And I saw ... Yesterday was the doctor's birthday, I gave him a meditation (he had asked for one). Before the meditation, he asked me very sweetly, "Oh, I would like peace in my whole body, my body doesn't have peace." I put Peace. For a quarter of an hour he was blissful, then there suddenly came (gesture floating in the atmosphere at a low level) something like a cloud, and he had a kind of unconsciousness: miserable, miserable, so miserable – he was appalled. So I had to stop the meditation. And it wasn't him: it didn't come from him, you understand, I saw it (same floating gesture). As for me, I see it, so it doesn't matter – I see it, I even see the nature it takes, the suggestions it gives and so on. It comes with such power that I am compelled to see it – I see. So there is only ONE solution (so far): the absolute stillness of the supreme Force – but no retaliation, just like this (inflexible, still gesture). Then, after a time, it exhausts itself and falls away. But one must hold out, and few people are able to hold out – it's hard. It's hard – it's malicious, mean, like that (gesture at ground level), and VERY MATERIAL, very material: it affects the cells, disturbs the order. The body starts feeling ill at ease, uneasy: "What's the matter'" Ill at ease. And it's like that in everyone; when they ask me what it is, I tell them, "Keep still – peace, peace, peace, peace, like that."

If you try to reply, it's much stronger than you: it comes in, and then the disorder is inside and you fall ill. Or you fall to the ground like the doctor.

Hideous, absolutely hideous.

*^**

(Soon afterwards, Mother remains concentrated on the photo of a European lady vaguely connected to the Ashram.)

... I don't feel. I have no contact – I have a contact with everybody, but I mean there's no special affinity: the psychic appears to be quite asleep. It's vital and intellectual. The psychic is asleep, or absent behind, not moving.

Her difficulties must be mostly of a mental order.

What can save all that?

It's precisely because there are too many people like this that the earth is in difficulty! Too many, too many people are in the mind: mental difficulties and more mental difficulties.... You can't get through (impenetrable gesture). It's an endless process. And that's what makes those ... bang! those battles, wars, conflicts necessary.

You know, an ardent faith, a psychic aspiration, a fervor, a self-giving, instead of being forever turned in on oneself, turned in on oneself .... A self-giving, that's what is needed to save the world!

(silence)

Mental faith isn't enough, psychic fervor is necessary – selfgiving, self-abnegation.

The body itself is learning that every time it thinks of itself, there's a small catastrophe – not "catastrophe," but I mean on the body's scale: a cellular catastrophe every time it even slightly turns in on itself. It must forget itself completely, forget itself, and most importantly, it must not try to find support, comfort, understanding, help or anything of the sort (horizontal gesture all around) – only there (gesture with the hands open upward and forming a kind of upside down triangle): the only support is the Divine. The only support. The only help, the only responsibility. All the rest.... There isn't one thing coming from or towards a human being that isn't mixed; and the moment it's mixed, it means conflict.

This is a time of extremes, even extremes in the downright material. Did I tell you two the other day that I had received the first flower of a plant which visibly was supramental power – a flower like this (gesture), a hibiscus? And yesterday there was the first flower of another plant, also a hibiscus, this big, snow-white, with such a color at the center! An indefinable color, it can't be described.... It's golden pink, but so beautiful that you wonder how such colors can be physical. A flower this big (gesture, about five inches), the first flower was yesterday. And that was VISIBLY (it expressed itself, you know) the Victory of Love, the Power of Love.... It's as if all this physical Nature were, oh, like this (gesture of intense aspiration), trying – she tries, and there is a Response. They are blessed not to have a mind.

It was beautiful. It doesn't keep, otherwise I would have kept it to show it to you. How beautiful it was! Like this (same gesture of fervent aspiration): a thirst, a thirst for the Divine, a thirst for the Divine. All those mental ratiocinations and complications, it all goes round and round in circles. Yes, it does bring about what's now taking place: a sordid conflict, really sordid, between Falsehood and Truth.

And the government is rotten. People whose very tactics and principle of action are falsehood: to deceive and deceive and deceive. And naturally, to deceive themselves.

You know that these are the Puja days: there were Durga's days, and there will soon be Kali's day. So then, all the Powers are like this (gesture ready to strike), at the slightest hint they would charge down. And one is obliged to hold them (immobilizing gesture), to take great care not to have the least indignation, otherwise ...

And the supreme Consciousness, above, looks on, and so ... That's the supreme Smile.

I told you about the meeting with Durga. Now there is Kali, waiting. And naturally, it's the great power – the great power, a power ... you understand, they are stronger, more powerful than this teeming humanity, so if you let them loose ... As for me, I want Love to be victorious RIGHT NOW – she will have the victory, she will, but ... not after so much breakage.

(silence)

We have reached a climax, because the impression is really that mind is triumphing over Matter, and it is convinced of it. Convinced – they go everywhere at their own sweet will, they know all that goes on everywhere ... and they don't even know what goes on inside themselves.

October 21, 1967

Yesterday afternoon, I had an experience in relation to a woman who has been in a coma for sixty-five days (!). After fifty or fifty-five days (the whole family was around her, but her son had gone to work), all of a sudden after fifty-five days, because her son had left, she started calling for him, shouting frantically! (Laughing) I think they all had a scare.... And the usual stupid remarks: "She was unconscious." I said, "Good God! But why do you say she was unconscious, you know nothing about it'... She can't express herself, but she isn't unconscious." She is entirely conscious, only the means of expression are damaged, she can no longer use them. And I made a long speech on the subject, but there was no one to record it and I can never say the same thing twice. It came clearly (Sri Aurobindo was there), and with the absolutely clear picture of what death is.... Now I can't repeat it.

In reality, to put it practically (but that's no longer the thing), what people call "death" is when the instrument of expression – the instrument of connection with the milieu, of expression – has deteriorated to the point where it can no longer be used, and so there comes a moment when the consciousness ... abandons it. Probably for all sorts of reasons (there must be different reasons in each case), but the consciousness abandons it because it can no longer be used.

But yesterday it came well; now it's nothing. It was lived. Lived, and so clear, so concrete, so obvious, it was, "But human beings know nothing, nothing, nothing at all! ..." Only now it sounds like a platitude.

(silence)

The vision was so clear (not vision: lived, the experience), it was so clear that it contained in itself the purpose of the creation. You could see the work of the consciousness to permeate the inconscient and make it progressively more capable of manifesting the consciousness (gesture like a flower rising out of the earth), with growing complications, but the complications are the result of the inability of the inconscient – of inconscient matter – which adds one device to another in the hope of reconstructing the supreme Possibility. Then, through all those complications, and as the substance becomes increasingly permeated with consciousness, the need for "devices" will diminish, and we will be able to return to the higher Simplicity.

But all that was lived, seen – seen, and so clear!

(silence)

And in each "life," as people call it, that is to say, the use of a portion of matter organized in what we call a body, how that use aims at the greatest possibility of manifestation (reception and manifestation) of the consciousness.

Naturally, this can be done because even in the inconscient, at its very bottom, there is consciousness; but that's philosophy. Yesterday, it was the perfectly concrete and material experience of it all.

And individualization is part of the process, it's a necessity of the process, because it permits a more minute and direct action.

And when Matter is supple enough to be transformed under the action of the consciousness – a CONSTANT transformation – then this need to abandon here something that has become useless, or is in impossible conditions, will no longer exist. That is how it will be possible, for the requirements of the transformation, to have at will a continuity, at least, of existence for a form which was transitional.

But yesterday, the impression was that it [death] is now only an old habit, no longer a necessity. It's only because ... First, because the body is still unconscious enough to (how should I put it?), not to "desire," because that's not the word, but to feel the need of complete rest, that is, inertia. When that is abolished, there is no disorganization that cannot be mended, or at any rate (the field of accidents hasn't been studied, but let's say in the normal course of things) no wear and tear, no deterioration, no disharmony that cannot be mended by the action of the consciousness.

It's only this residue (a considerable one), this residue of inconscient that asks for rest (gesture of dissolution). What it calls rest is the state of inertia. That is to say, the refusal to manifest the consciousness. It's no more than that.

There is also that FORMIDABLE collective suggestion ... weighing down. That suggestion of old age ... old age, wear and tear, death ("death," anyway what they call death, which isn't dying – what does "dying" mean? Annulment does not exist, nothing is annulled), but anyway, giving up the form because the form refuses to be transformed (that's nearly what it is) and isn't receptive, it accepts a progressive deterioration because of the formidable weight of the collective suggestion – the habit of millennia: "It's always been like that, it can't be helped." The great argument. Which isn't true, besides.

But there is such idiocy in this body. For instance, there is every moment (it's every second or minute), every moment there is the choice between continuation of the old habit and progress towards consciousness. It's constantly like that. And through ... (what can I call it?) listlessness (what is it?... It's not bad will because it's idiotic; it's more idiotic than bad will), there is a spontaneous tendency to choose deterioration rather than the effort of progress, and it's only when there is something like a slightly awakened consciousness that says, "You silly fool! You've gone through much more difficulty than the little difficulty of making an effort of progress," then that has some weight – not always.

There is a sort of passive knowledge (not that the body doesn't know how it is, it knows how it is – it's listlessness), but when it knows and makes effort, it is always, every time, translated as lights, yes, like vibratory waves, and those of progress are the ones which have all the colors, that twinkling of all the colors: a light made of a twinkling of all the colors. Those are the lights that choose the immediate little effort to reject the listlessness.... But it's not over important events: it's something going on every minute, for everything, all the time, all the time – for everything.

It must be a phase. I don't know how long that phase will last, but it must be a phase because it's obviously a transitional state. And then, when there is that inner aspiration, oh! ... I have seen those cells, I've seen them saying like this, "Oh, won't there be a possibility to be You effortlessly?" Then there comes such a marvelous Response! For a few seconds it's ... (blissful gesture), then the old routine starts up again.

But the big difficulty is mental observation: the mind observing (not a personal mind: an observing Mind). That makes things much more difficult. If one can keep the mind busy, it's easier. Because the mind is something extremely hard, dry, positive, phew! and logical, reasonable – it's dreadful. Dreadful. And yet, putting things at their best, the general waves are full (especially now, in our time) full of doubt – such a vile and obstinate doubt! They call all this fantastic imagination.

You are led to tell the mind, "I'd rather be mistaken this way than be mistaken in your way."

(silence)

Then, in the psychological makeup, there are all those old things that come from human atavism: you must be reasonable, prudent, shrewd ... you must take precautions, be provident, oh! ... The whole web of ordinary human equilibrium. It's so sordid. And it's like that, the whole mentalization of the cells is like that, full of that, and not only in your own way of being, according to your own experience, but in the way of being of your parents, grandparents, the people around, and ... oh!

October 25, 1967

Mother reads "Savitri"

A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell

And take the charge of breath and speech and act

And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns

And every feeling a celestial thrill.

Often a lustrous inner dawn shall come

Lighting the chambers of the slumbering mind;

A sudden bliss shall run through every limb

And Nature with a mightier Presence fill.

Thus shall the earth open to divinity

And common natures feel the wide uplift,

Illumine common acts with the Spirit's ray

And meet the deity in common things.

Nature shall live to manifest secret God,

The Spirit shall take up the human play,

This earthly life become the life divine.

(XI.i.710)

(Then Mother holds out a small desert flower:)

Look! It grows in the desert, without water, and it doesn't die.

Oh, how pretty!

You know, it looks like edelweiss which grows in the ice. And this is in the desert. It's like velvet. It's not fragrant, but it doesn't die. It's a flower without water. Someone has sent it to me. I find it very interesting. There are marvels in Nature. And see this small red dot....

(Sujata:) Yes, Mother, it's like a small flower of immortality.

I'll give you one, but you must keep it carefully....

(Satprem:) Basically, it's the water of life that makes things rot.

Yes, it's water. Edelweiss doesn't die, one which I had was intact after ten years. When things are dehydrated, they no longer die.

Wait, I'll show you two something (laughing), because you are really very nice.... See this (Mother shows a big red rose of a particular type), it's Sri Aurobindo. Wherever people grow this rose on earth, it's Sri Aurobindo. It grows as big as this.

(Sujata holds out to Mother a variety of white hibiscus)

When the light is on (I have a light in a tube, a fluorescent tube), they don't wither. When you put those flowers under the light, they stay put, I even saw some that were half closed open. They like that light. In the afternoon I put some in a bowl with water (when they are still nearly closed), I put one or two there, under the light – and they open!

They have a sensitiveness unknown to us.

Sometimes in the morning, I have a closed rose bud, then I take it out of the water like this (gesture of stroking the flower all around), without touching it ... and it opens!

And people say it's not conscious!

*^**

(The rest of the time is spent in meditation. Towards the end, Satprem feels a little guilty that he hasn't made Mother speak:)

I rarely ask you questions because I don't make my mind work very much.

But you know, I see more and more how horrible the mind's action in life is. Of course, in the long run, at the end of the curve, the mind will bring a precision and accuracy that didn't exist without it, but men come to regard that precision and accuracy as the truth, and that has spoilt everything. When it becomes nothing more than an INSTRUMENT of manifestation, it will be very useful. But for the moment it's still ... I am beginning to see in small details how its action is to add something to the manifestation, but in its daily labor it's horrible.

And people more and more flood me with questions – a flood, at the rate of twenty-five, thirty, forty letters a day, out of which perhaps not even two are worthwhile; even those are from beginners trying to find the way, so you can give them a little push, like that. Otherwise I take great care to keep their mind quiet.

Anyway, we can see this boy's notebook [the notebook of a young disciple who regularly puts questions to Mother]. What does he ask?

"Sweet Mother, why are we, in the Ashram itself, inclined to create small groups and societies, such as 'World Union,' 'New Age,' etc.? What is their purpose?"

Purpose! (Laughing) Do they have a purpose? ... I'll simply answer him, "Because men are fond of forming groups." Quite simply, nothing else to say.

(Mother writes, then stops; after a silence)

I am going to shock him a bit, no?

Yes.

(Mother completes her writing and holds out the notebook)

"Because men still imagine that in order to do anything useful, they must gather together in groups. It is the caricature of organization."

It will do, won't it?

World Union! ... They really did imagine they were going to make humanity progress! ... But when I tell people that the creation of a city like Auroville has more weight in the earth's history than all the groups of the world, they don't believe me. They don't believe me, to them it's totally unimportant, a fancy.

Once I asked Sri Aurobindo (because we had talked about Auroville a great deal, there were lots of difficulties), I asked him (because it was an idea I had – not an "idea" but a need that expressed itself some thirty years ago – more than thirty, almost forty years ago), so I asked him, and he answered me this (which I told you, I think): "It is the best chance men have to avoid a general conflict."[128] There.

So, since he told me that, I have been working very seriously. Of course, it wasn't "said," it was LIVED.

Only, I see quite clearly that they don't believe in it, there is no one who feels. So does it ...? And the concrete materialization of the spirit of Auroville hasn't taken place yet, it doesn't exist, there isn't in the earth atmosphere a formation of the "spirit of Auroville," which is a spirit ... (Mother remains absorbed for a long time) ... At bottom it is "The art of building unity out of complexity." Without uniformity, you understand: unity through harmony in complexity, with each thing in its place....

It's very difficult.

When R. [Auroville's architect] was here last time, he told me, "When are we going to create Auroville's atmosphere? Everyone is quarreling!" (Mother laughs) I said, "Yes, that's the difficulty...." And it's going on. But anyway, there is a Pressure from above, like that, a Pressure. We shall see.

It's still a symbol.

Each little group thinks it is a symbol – that too is a symbol.

And as the formation descends in order to manifest, all oppositions arise, contradictions arise, complications arise, and within you clearly see that they don't understand. So I spend my time telling them, "Don't try to organize, don't try, you are going to fossilize the whole thing before it's begun."

For my part, I wanted it to grow like that, spontaneously, with the full play of the unexpected. But then, you are confronted with all the rules and regulations: we are in a country [India] – we should do it on a desert island! But that no longer exists on earth, there isn't any island left that doesn't belong to a nation – we are caught, bogged down.

Anyway, we'll muddle along as best we can.

It's an attempt, that's all.

But what Sri Aurobindo meant was that the movement, the general movement was towards a catastrophe, and this was to divert the current of force.

But I have wondered whether the Tower of Babel, insofar as the story is true, wasn't a similar attempt? An attempt to harmonize men?... It's presented to us the other way around, but I have wondered if it wasn't that.

We'll see.

Now there is integrally, even for the most material consciousness, the body consciousness, this: to leave the entire responsibility to the Lord – what He wants will be, and that's all. When He wants us to do something, we do it, but after all ... We do it simply because He tells us to do it. And what will happen will happen. Then, if you want to know, you put yourself in the attitude of the Witness and look on. And that's very amusing! As soon as you are in the attitude of the Witness, it becomes very interesting – very interesting – and you smile.

That's how it is.

The body too has learned to be like that with the smallest things. Then it's good.

Voilà.

October 28, 1967

(Mother tries in vain to slip a "transformation" flower through her buttonhole.)

Can I help you?

No (Mother closes her eyes and slips the flower through her buttonhole). When I close my eyes, I see (laughter). But it's true! And I don't do it deliberately: when I want to see, I close my eyes, and I see! It's so natural and spontaneous that I don't even realize it: when I want to do something, if I want to see clearly I close my eyes.

*^**

(Nolini comes in to read Mother his English translation of "Notes on the Way"
for the next Bulletin.)

I have been wondering about this: maybe if I didn't listen I'd hear quite clearly! (Nolini stares at Mother with a certain bewilderment.) No, I said just before that when I want to see clearly, precisely, I close my eyes and see quite clearly. I do it spontaneously (I noticed it because Satprem asked me what was going on). And since I can't hear, maybe if I didn't listen and went within myself, like that, I would hear? – There must be a trick!

(Satprem:) It depends on the consciousness with which one reads to you.

Yes. Oh, some people speak almost in a low voice and I hear them perfectly well. Others howl and I can't hear a word; that is, I hear noise but can't make out anything. That's what it is, it's the precision of the consciousness: if the consciousness is precise, I understand; if the consciousness is muddled, I can't make out anything.

We'll try! (Nolini reads)

*^**

After Nolini has left

Ah, let me show you a photo that was taken the other day, on P.'s birthday (Mother holds the photo out to Satprem).

It's not me looking here: it's when I give a "bath of the Lord."

Even in the photo, the light in the eyes can be seen.

Some people get frightened, others on the contrary are happy – it's an instantaneous sorting. And I know, I know what this look is: it's the moment when there is no personal consciousness left, it's completely gone. There isn't the sense of a person anymore: it's the Force.

But it's the first time it's caught in a photo. T. had asked for my permission to come and take photos.

P. looks like a giant beside me.

He's the bodyguard!

(Mother laughs)

October 30, 1967

I have been asked for a message to be broadcast on February 21 all over India by radio. I said, "All right, I'll give one." But they want to have it in advance. And I saw so clearly that if I gave it now, it would belong to the period of Kali, of the struggle – I have a strong feeling that from next year the atmosphere will ... (gesture of lifting) will clarify. I don't know why. So it would be better to wait till January. Because mentally one can always imagine and say something, but with me it doesn't work like that: it comes or doesn't come. So a whole number of things come, but they belong to a certain state of consciousness, and it's not the state of consciousness of next year.

*^**

(For Satprem's birthday, Mother gives three cards which all depict ships, as well as a metal tray on which a ship is also painted.)

This [the tray] is for fun!

(Mother gives her cards) Three of them: one, two, and three.

Nothing but ships!... Am I going to travel?

No, no! To travel in space.

You'll read afterwards, it's not important....

(the first card)

"... For the awakening of the Supreme Consciousness and its power of vision."

(the second)

"... So the most beautiful dreams may become living and true realities."

(meditation)

About these ships, you asked if they indicated a journey.... As you know, it's always the symbol of the yoga, the discipline one follows, and everyone has his own form of transport (!) For some it's a plane; for others, a train; yet others ... But most often it's a ship, especially this great, classic sailing ship. And for you, it's very clearly the symbol of your advance towards realization. So all year long, whenever I receive a ship, I put it aside for you!

Am I getting on?

But this time, everything came together as if ... It was clearly with Sri Aurobindo's humor (many of these cards have his portrait). And in the end came the tray! When I received this tray, "Oh," I said, "this is perfect!" (Mother laughs)

And Sri Aurobindo himself was very insistent because ... To tell you the truth, I asked him (for that vision you would like to have, that state of vision), I asked him that it may be given you, that you may have it since you aspire for it. Then he said to me (on one of the cards I wrote what he said), the vision you will have is the vision of the Truth-Consciousness. It's the supreme vision, the true vision. (One may have visions in the subtle physical, in the vital, also a lot in the mind, but ... none of that is satisfying, one always gets a sense of a not quite accurate transcription.) But the true vision is the vision of the Consciousness, the supreme Consciousness. And he told me that's what you would have.

The ship is the development, the means of advance towards that realization. It all came like that.

So I have every reason to hope it will be for this year. Because it came like that.

I also worry a lot over this book, this "Sannyasin" I am rewriting.... That difficulty of a PURE transcription.

(After a long silence) As for me, I have always felt that writing was your way of doing the sadhana. That is, not meditating or anything of the sort, but writing, is your way of doing the sadhana. When you write, I see a sort of transmutation taking place in you. Not only something you call "personal," something which is "your" way of writing or "your book," not only that, but formulating things in the most accurate, the most precise fashion, is your way of doing the sadhana. It's a sadhana up above.

Which is to say that to my vision, the process of expression is more important than the outer result. There is an inner result (which isn't expressed in words), and it's far more important than the outer result. The last time, when you wrote the book on Sri Aurobindo, it was perfectly clear; with the last book too [the first version of the Sannyasin], but even more so: there was that sort of inner transmutation which was far more important than what you were writing – to my vision.

It's a process of inner fashioning of your consciousness.

And what happened at the end [of the first version of the Sannyasin, which Satprem rejected] was simply because the time of the final transmutation (I don't know how to explain ... or transformation – more than transformation), of the final transmutation hadn't come yet. It was near, but still at a tangent. That's why. It was like that (gesture showing two lines coming closer), drawing nearer.

That's what I kept seeing all the time.

And the expression – the expression that will give you a sense of ... that will make you say, "Ah, this is it!" will come with the culmination of the sadhana.

That is also for this year. It's very near, but at a tangent. It's drawing nearer and nearer, and ...

Ah, a happy new year.

November

November 4, 1967

(Regarding the storm that coincided with Kali Puja.)

Your home isn't flooded, is it? In the room over there, water fell on the table beside my chair, so I put a flower pot and gave people all the wet flowers!

Has Kali calmed down?

(Laughing) Maybe she got dampened! She laughed.... She can laugh, too!

*^**

(The conversation turns to Mother's Playground Talks – "Questions and Answers" – from 1950 to 1958. Satprem is preparing their first publication and complains that he cannot trace the original texts:)

Q was quite free in her movements, there are even some Talks which she destroyed – she didn't like them!

For a long time I used the Talks Q had left, until the day when I realized they were totally truncated. Then I finally discovered another collection, but I have also realized it wasn't the absolute original. So every time it's a huge work to collect everything together again in order to reconstruct the exact original.

But who did the recording?

In the beginning it was a "wire recording"; as there wasn't enough material, it used to be transcribed and then erased. But if at least the original notation could be traced ... Only, the "original" I've found was altered, it's not the original anymore!

Oh, when one speaks, one makes all kinds of mistakes, the sentences are unfinished ...

But that doesn't matter! I have noticed (because I've been doing this work for years now), I've noticed that even when a sentence is incomplete, it's worthwhile to leave it as such, incomplete, because there is a kind of inner rhythm in what is said which is destroyed if you don't leave the thing as it is.

Oh, I was able to tell when it came from above.... It wasn't always the same: on certain days when I spoke, it wasn't the consciousness here, it would come like that (gesture of descent), and even when, as you said, the sentences were unfinished, it was all expressed with a conscious Will.

On other days it was much more superficial – it was unimportant, of far less value.

*^**

Mother goes into a long contemplation

A very difficult time.

(long silence)

In full work and ... nothing to say, it's impossible. Impossible.

The most difficult thing in the material world, here, is to fight against the result of all those millennia of experiences that have created a sort of pessimistic and defeatist consciousness – a general consciousness, you know, like this (gesture enveloping the earth). It isn't formulated in words, but for that consciousness it can be translated thus, "Yes, we don't deny the existence of all those divine things, but they aren't for us, they're for ..." (gesture to the heights)

Quite miserable. A sort of general state like that, quite miserable. And that's the thing, you understand, that's what all those who had experiences on the heights saw, and they said, "It's hopeless."

It's not hopeless, not at all (of course not), but it demands a constant, constant, constant vigilance and care.

(silence)

So there, we'll see.

At the same time, the work has become (the "work," not the true one: the external work, the number of people, letters ...), it has become tremendous.... I can clearly see the reason for that, it's because (silence) ... circumstances come in order that the body loses the sense of personality. But it's very difficult.

Very difficult.

It can do it very well, but in its most conscious part.

November 8, 1967

(Mother first reads out for All India Radio the message she intends to broadcast for February 21, 1968, on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday.)

"It is not the number of years you have lived that makes you old. You become old when you stop progressing. As soon as you feel you have done what you had to do, as soon as you think you know what you ought to know, as soon as you want to sit and enjoy the results of your effort, with the feeling you have worked enough in life, then at once you become old and begin to decline. When, on the contrary, you are convinced that what you know is nothing compared to all that remains to be known, when you feel that what you have done is just the starting point of what remains to be done, when you see the future like an attractive sun shining with innumerable possibilities yet to be achieved, then you are young, howsoever many are the years you have passed upon earth, young and rich with all the realisations of tomorrow. And if you do not want your body to fail you, avoid wasting your energies in useless agitation. Whatever you do, do it in a quiet and composed poise. In peace and silence is the greatest strength."

There.

We spent a long part of the night together, from about eleven till ... oh, a long time, till three in the morning, working – working and moving about. Those are places – kinds of houses, landscapes – which I know well, very well, and where I go periodically, in an atmosphere special to them and for a special work. There are mountains, there are roads going down, there are ... And it's always the same thing: it's a place that exists permanently; but what happens there is different every time (just like in life). And the access is different: sometimes I go there on foot, sometimes in a car, and sometimes I have very peculiar means of transport! I don't always meet the same people there, I don't always do the same work, but the quality of the atmosphere (Mother feels the air with her fingers) remains always the same. It's a certain place of organization – of power of organization.

But I have known that place and have been going there for years and years. And last night, I spent ... oh, certainly a good three hours there – three hours of our time here (I don't know how long that was over there).

I met you, spoke to you, explained things to you, and we did things together: all the precise, meticulous details were there.... When I wake up, if I remained perfectly still I would remember, but otherwise I only retain an impression, also a few images which come like that (scattered gesture, as if Mother touched various points of a painting, which are the partial pictures that remain), and the impression or memory of the kind of work. And then ... It's a place which is clearly related to the construction of the future on earth.

But I came out of there with a great satisfaction, noting that things were going much better.... One could see, you understand: the future was clearer.

Generally, I don't remain there as long as that – it must have been a decisive moment.

*^**

(Mother goes on to several tasks, and remarks by the way:)

Ah, yesterday I saw ax-Brother A. He came to see me (he had asked to, so I called him). He came in, gave me a bunch of flowers, sat down and looked at me; we looked at each other for at least five minutes. Then I smiled, and he made a big "pranam," then got up and went away. I found him very receptive, very receptive and very sincere in his aspiration to find himself, to find his soul. Very fine and concentrated, very fine. I was quite satisfied. Anyhow he reacted quite well. It was very peaceful and receptive.

Then at one point, I smiled like that (I don't know why), and he got up and left. It was good.

He is sincere, he doesn't come with an intention at the back of his mind – not at all like that other lady [Mrs. Z].

(silence)

Then the 11th is Ml's birthday. She was born on the eleventh of the eleventh month of 1911 – eleven is the number of progress. Spiritually, she may not be very interested, but materially she is a woman who really likes and wants to do things well; what she does she likes to do well.

*^**

(At the end of the conversation, Mother returns to the experience she narrated at the beginning:)

Last night it was very good – you are very conscious, very conscious.

!!!

It's a connection that's missing (Mother shows a thin layer between her thumb and her index finger). Even for me, you know, when I come back a whole world is erased. It's there: if I made an effort it would come back, but it takes time, it's difficult and one must be quite in peace, not busy. But that world is very near ours, very active here, and that's why: up above, with the things from high up, it's much easier to remember, but with what's near like that, it's difficult.

I must be going there almost every day, probably, but briefly on my way; whereas last night it was remarkable. And you were perfectly at ease, I mean it was ... you were there as if it were something customary – besides, I see you there very often. But yesterday it lasted much longer: all kinds of explanations, demonstrations, organizations, and also there are places there from which one sees the world from above. It's very close to the earth.

You know, a layer as thin as a sheet of paper, something undeveloped, is enough to make the consciousness, when it goes from here to there (gesture), forget. At that point, it forgets.

But the effects, the results, aren't lost – one has them: it comes out again from within. It's not that one is cut off, it's only the active consciousness, the active remembrance that's not there. There, good-bye, mon petit.

@

November 10, 1967

Last night again, for a long time in that same place. It's strange, because I wouldn't be able to tell the precise memory of all that took place, but with every circumstance of the morning, every moment the impression is, "Ah, this was decided last night ... ah, I saw that last night...." Like that. Strange. And it's always the night before the day when I am to see you.

*^**

(Mother reads out the message she intends to distribute for January 1, 1968:)

"Remain young. Never stop striving towards perfection."

*^**

(Then Mother goes into a long contemplation lasting nearly forty-five minutes.)

Anything to say, or to ask?... As for me, I can stay like this indefinitely. It never happens, mind you[129] – yes, for a minute or two, but a long moment like this gives me a sort of bath of tranquil light: there's nothing left, nothing stirs anymore, it's all luminous, peaceful, tranquil ... a sort of bliss. Whew!

November 15, 1967

Anything to say?

No, the feeling is that unless something miraculous happens in the way men understand it, well, it will take many centuries.

But you never expected it not to take any time!?

Obviously not.

But I never thought, I never believed it could come fast. First of all, if one just tries with one's own body, as I do, one soon sees the difference between matter as it is, its constitution as it is, and ... well, and what we may conceive of a divine existence – "divine," that is, not tied down every second to the darkness of a nearly unconscious matter.... How long will it take? How long did it take to change the stone into the plant, the plant into the animal, the animal...? We don't know, but the way things are going ... Now that they are so smart in calculating, when do they reckon the earth was formed? How many billions of years ago?[130] All that time just to be where we are.

Of course, the farther we go, the faster things move, that's quite agreed, but fast ... How fast?

If the process is to be "natural," well, it will take an eternity.

No! It's not a question of natural. Nature organized things progressively for the manifestation of consciousness, which means that the whole work has been to prepare the Inconscient so it may grow conscious. Now, naturally, the consciousness is there at least to a great extent; so things are moving much faster, that is, the greater part of the work is done. But still, as I said, when you see how tied down we are to Unconsciousness, to a semi-vague consciousness, how those who don't know still feel "fatality," "fate," what they call "Nature" and all that dominating and governing them, well, for the final change to take place, all that must grow sufficiently conscious, and not merely in the mental way – that's not enough – but in the divine way! So there remains a lot to be done.

That's precisely what I see every day with this poor little body and everything around it (swarming gesture), all this substance, oh ... nothing but illnesses, miseries, disorders, oh! All that has nothing to do with the Divine! An unconscious mass.

You mean, unless something comes and changes that BY FORCE?

Yes.

But Sri Aurobindo said (I read it two days ago, I don't know where he wrote it because it was a quotation) that if the divine Consciousness, the divine Power, the divine Love, the Truth, were to manifest on earth too rapidly, the earth would be dissolved! It couldn't bear it ... brrf!

I am adapting it, but there's the idea!

Well, maybe not the large divine dose, but a small divine dose!

(Mother laughs) The small dose is always there, there's always a small dose! Even a rather strong dose, and if one looks at That one feels a sense of marvel. And it's precisely because of That that one still sees ... how things are.

You know, not a day passes without the observation that, not a dose, but a tiny little drop, an infinitesimal drop of That can cure you in a minute ("can," it DOES it, it's not that it "can"), that you are constantly in precarious balance and the slightest faltering means disorder and the end, and with just a drop of That ... it's all turned into light and progress. The two extremes. The two extremes side by side.

It's something one notes at least several times a day.

Naturally, if the purpose of this instrument [Mother] were to note, explain, describe, it could tell marvels, but you see ... I think ... I don't know, but it seems to be the first time that the purpose of the instrument, rather being to bring the "News," the "Revelation," to give a flash of light, has been to ... try and realize: to do the work, the obscure task. So it observes, but it doesn't go blissfully into the joy of observation, and it is forced to see every minute how much work, IN SPITE OF THAT, remains to be done! ... And so it won't be able to rejoice until the work is done – what does the work is done mean? Something ESTABLISHED. This divine Presence, this divine Consciousness, this divine Truth manifests like that, in flashes, and then ... everything goes on in its own sweet way – there is a change, but an imperceptible one. Well, for it [the body], I suppose that's what helps it keep heart and gives it a sort of smiling peace despite the result being quite unsatisfying; but that can't satisfy it, it won't be satisfied until ... until the thing is done, that is, until what is now a revelation – a dazzling but short-lived revelation – becomes an established fact; until there really are divine bodies, divine beings who will deal with the world in a divine way. Then ... then it will say, "Yes, there we are," but not before. Well, I don't think that can be for right now.

Because I see, I clearly see what is now at work.... I told you, there are many of those things with which, yes, if I were destined to speak and explain and prophesy, we could build a whole teaching – with just ONE of those experiences, and I have at least several of them every day. But it's useless, of course, I know that!

It's not impatience, it's not even a lack of satisfaction, it's not that at all, it is ... a Force, a Will advancing step by step, which won't stop to discourse and delight in what has been done.

(silence)

Is there somewhere on earth a really divine being, that is, not ruled by any law of Unconsciousness?... It seems to me we'd know it. If he existed and I didn't know it, I would have to tell myself that for that to be so I must have quite a big insincerity somewhere.

To tell the truth, it's not a question I ask myself.

In all those who are known, all those who have taken the stand of "revealers of the new world" or "realizers of the new life," in all of them the proportion of inconscient is still far larger than in me, so ... But that's only what is publicly known: is there somewhere a being unknown to all?... I would be surprised if there were no communication. I don't know.

There are lots and lots of them, you know, a whole crop of new Christs, Kalkis,[131] supermen, ooh! lots of them, but generally, communication is made somehow or other, at any rate their existence is known; well, among them, among all those with whom I have been in contact either invisibly or visibly, there isn't one who has ... (how should I put it?) less inconscient than there is in this body – but I acknowledge there is plenty, oh!

What I don't see is the process to break out of this inertia or unconsciousness.

Process, what process? The process of transformation?

Yes, it is said that the consciousness must act to awaken all this ...

But it's doing it!

Yes, it's doing it, but...

It never stops doing it!

I tell you, the response is like this: there is a sudden perception (oh, all these things are very subtle, very subtle – but as a matter of fact, to the consciousness they are very concrete), the perception of a sort of disorganization, like a current of disorganization; at first the substance making up the body feels it, then it sees the effect, and everything starts being disorganized: that disorganization is what prevents the cohesion necessary for the cells to constitute an individual body, so then you say, "Ah (gesture of dissolution), it'll be the end." Then the cells aspire, there is a sort of central consciousness in the body which aspires intensely, with as complete a surrender as it can make: "Your Will, Lord, Your Will, Your Will...." Then there is a kind of ... not something thunderous, not a dazzling flash of light, but a sort of ... well, the impression is of a densification of that current of disorganization; and then something comes to a halt: first there is a peace, then a light, then Harmony – and the disorder has vanished. And when the disorder has vanished, there is instantly IN THE CELLS a sense of living eternity, of living for eternity.

Well, that experience, such as I've told you, with the whole intensity of concrete reality, occurs not only daily, but several times in a single day. At times it's very severe, that is, like a mass; at other times, it's only like something that touches; then, in the body consciousness, it's expressed like this, with a sort of thanksgiving: one more step in the progress over Unconsciousness. But those aren't thunderous events, the human neighbor isn't even aware of them; he may note a sort of cessation in the outward activity, a concentration, but that's all.[132] So of course, you don't talk about it, you can't write books about it, you don't do propaganda.... That's how the work goes.

None of the mental aspirations are satisfied with that.

It's a very obscure work. (Mother goes into a long contemplation)

There were two tall candles, like this, and three small ones, all lit.... What could it mean? All five were burning. What can it mean? I don't know. Two were tall like this, burning, and it was all in a color ... neither red nor yellow, it was orangey, but transparent, and they were like candles burning between us.

Two tall ones and three small ones. I don't know what it signifies.

They were burning slowly, like this (still gesture), without any air current, very quietly.

It remained for a long time.

(long silence)

One or two days ago, I don't know, there was a sort of general vision of this striving of the earth towards its divinization, and someone seemed to be saying (not "someone": it was the witness-consciousness, the consciousness observing, but it gets formulated in words – very often it's formulated in English and I have a kind of impression that it is Sri Aurobindo, his active consciousness, but sometimes it gets translated into words only when it enters my consciousness), and these last few days, it was something saying, "Yes, the time of proclamations, the time of revelations is past – now, on to action."

Proclamations, revelations, prophecies, all that is after all very comfortable, it gives a sense of something "concrete"; now it's very obscure, there is a sense that it's very obscure, invisible (it will be visible only in results far, far ahead), and not understood.

Not understood, of course ... Someone, C., wanted to translate Notes on the Way and A Propos into Hindi, in one volume. He spoke with R. about it, and R. wrote to me, "People don't understand anything," and he feels "the human language is unfit to express that, so how will it turn out in a translation? – A platitude. It would be better to wait." I fully agree, I told him it would be better to wait. But it gave me the exact measure. Because R. and C. are people who are expected to understand, and they clearly don't understand anything. And then, Nolini was here, I gave him the letter to read, and he said, "Oh, yes!" – For him too it's the same thing, he hasn't understood! So it's general. Because lots of people quote to me what I said, or experiences they've had, explanations they give "in accordance with" those Notes on the Way, and every time I see that they haven't understood ANYTHING.

So it seems to me to be a general incomprehension.

(silence)

It belongs to a region which isn't yet ready to be explained, manifested in words.

It's obvious, I see it clearly, you know: it's because they are all quite nice, full of respect, that they don't allow their mind to say, "This is drivel," but for them it belongs to the incomprehensible.

And as a matter of fact, insofar as it's truly new, it is incomprehensible. What I say doesn't correspond to a lived experience in the one who reads.

I see clearly, so clearly the little work, like this (gesture of reversal), which would turn the thing into a prophetic revelation! A little work, a slight reversal in the mind – the experience is wholly outside the mind, so what can be said about it is ... (Mother shakes her head). Precisely because it's not mental, it's nearly incomprehensible, and for it all to become (oh, it's so visible), for it all to become accessible, it would take just (same gesture) a slight reversal in the mind, and then it would become prophetic. But that ... isn't possible. It would lose its truth.

Well, it's on the way.

@

November 18, 1967

(Mother answers appeals.)

In her note I felt she was quite distraught. I wanted to keep it to show it to you, but there is such a confusion of letters that I don't know where it's gone. I don't even know ... I wanted to send her a brief note in answer, but I don't even know if I did.

Because with all this accumulation of work, I have only one possible method – it is every minute to "transfer" and wait for the Impulsion to answer or not. For certain things the response comes right away: I immediately write a line and it's over; with others, I am obliged to keep it aside and wait in order to know what I should do. And among those, some I keep aside and find again, and another day, the answer comes and I reply; but with others, it's as if ... (gesture of vanishing) something took them away! They disappear, I don't see them anymore.... Naturally, the mental answer, the invisible action is done instantly, in every case – I know what I answered her, or rather what I DID: that goes without saying and it's never lacking, because it doesn't take any time, it's immediate. It's only a question ... in reality, answering is only a concession to the external consciousness. You understand, there are a good hundred cases every day, so ... What I lack is material time.

November 22, 1967

(Mother takes flowers) I'll put them in water.... Flowers are the beauty of life.

And there is a progress.

Oh?

At the end of the physical demonstration[133] [on December 2], all the children will pray in chorus, and the prayer has been written by me. I will read it to you.

But I hadn't thought about it: they asked me for it, and I wrote it.

They must have read the Bulletin, and then they asked me for a prayer – a prayer that would really be the body's. I answered:

THE PRAYER OF THE CELLS IN THE BODY

Now that by the effect of the Grace we are slowly emerging out of inconscience and waking up to a conscious life, an ardent prayer rises in us for more light, more consciousness:

"O Supreme Lord of the Universe, we implore Thee, give us the strength and the beauty, the harmonious perfection needed to be Thy divine instruments upon earth."

It's almost a proclamation.

There. So we'll put it into French.

They will say it after their demonstration; it seems they are going to show the whole evolution of physical culture, and then, at the end, they will say, "We have not reached the end, we are at the beginning of something, and here is our prayer."

I was very glad.

You said there is a progress?

A progress! It's a tremendous progress! The thought had never occurred to them, never; taken as a whole, they had never thought of the transformation: their thought was to become the best athletes in the world and all the usual nonsense.

The body, you see, they've asked for a prayer of the BODY. They have finally understood that the body must begin to transform itself into something else. Previously, they were all full of the whole history of physical culture in every country, in which country it's most developed, the use of the body as it is, and ... and so on. Anyway, it was the Olympic ideal. Now, they have leaped beyond: that is the past, now they want the transformation.

You understand, people were asking to be divine in their mind and vital – that is, the whole ancient history of spirituality, the same old theme for centuries – but now, it's the BODY. It's the body that asks to participate. It's certainly a progress.

Yes, but one can see how in the mind the aspiration sustains itself, how it lives by itself. In the heart too, one can see how the aspiration lives. But in the body? How can one awaken that aspiration in the body?

But good God! it's fully awakened! It's been for months in me! So it means they've felt it, they are feeling it.

How it's done? – It's being done.

But how can one in oneself ...

No, no, no. If it has been done in one body, it can be done in all bodies.

Yes, but I ask how.... Yes, how?

Well, that's what I have been trying to explain for months.

It's, first of all, awakening the consciousness in the cells....

Well, yes!

Yes, but once it's done it's done: the consciousness keeps awakening more and more, the cells live consciously, aspire consciously. I have been trying to explain it, good Lord, for months! For months I have been trying to explain it. And so, that's just what pleased me: it's that they have at least understood the possibility of it.

The same consciousness which was the vital's and the mind's monopoly has become corporeal: the consciousness acts in the body's cells.

The body's cells grow into something conscious, entirely conscious.

A consciousness which is independent, absolutely independent of the vital consciousness or the mental consciousness: it's a corporeal consciousness.

(silence)

And this physical mind, which Sri Aurobindo said was an impossibility and something going round in circles which would do so forever, without consciousness, precisely, like a sort of machine, this physical mind has been converted, it has fallen silent, and in silence it has received inspiration from the Consciousness. And it has started praying again: the same prayers that were earlier in the mind.

I quite understand all that can take place in you, but...

But since it's taking place in one body, it can take place in all bodies! I am not made of anything different from others. The difference is the consciousness, that's all. It's made of exactly the same thing, with the same elements, I eat the same things, and it was made in just the same way.

And it was as dull, as dark, as unconscious, as stubborn as all other bodies in the world.

It began when the doctors declared I was seriously ill, that was the beginning.[134] Because the entire body was emptied of its habits and forces, and then, slowly, slowly, the cells woke up to a new receptivity and opened directly to the divine Influence.

Every cell is vibrating.

Otherwise, it would be hopeless! If this matter, which began as ... Even a stone is already an organization; it was certainly worse than a stone: the inert, absolute Inconscient. Then, little by little, little by little, it awakens. One can see it, you know, one sees it: one just has to open one's eyes to see it. Well, the same thing is now taking place: for the animal to become a man, it didn't take anything else than the infusion of a consciousness – a mental consciousness – and now, it's the awakening of that consciousness which was there, deep down, in the very depths. The mind has withdrawn, the vital has withdrawn, everything has withdrawn; when I was supposedly ill, the mind had gone away, the vital had gone away, and the body was left to itself – purposely. And that's why, it's precisely because the vital and mind had gone that it looked like a very serious illness. And then, in the body left to itself, the cells little by little started awakening to the consciousness (gesture of a rising aspiration); once those two had gone, the consciousness which had been infused into the body THROUGH the vital (from the mind to the vital and from the vital to the body) started slowly, slowly emerging. It began with that burst of Love from all the way up, from the extreme, supreme altitude; then, little by little, little by little, it came down to the body. Then that sort of physical mind, that is, something totally and completely idiotic going round and round in circles, forever repeating the same thing over and over again, cleared up little by little and grew conscious, organized, then fell silent. And then in that silence, the aspiration expressed itself in prayers.

(silence)

It's a denial of all the spiritual assertions of the past: "If you want to live fully conscious of the divine life, leave your body – the body cannot follow." Well, Sri Aurobindo came and said, "Not only can the body follow, but it can be the base that will manifest the Divine."

The work remains to be done.

But now there is a certitude. The result is still very far – very far ahead, there is much to do before the crust, the outermost surface experience as it is, can manifest what takes place within (not "within" in the spiritual depths: within in the body). For it to be able to manifest what is within ... That will come last, which is very good because if it came earlier, we would neglect the work; we would be so happy that we'd forget to complete the work. Everything must have been done within, everything must be fully and thoroughly changed, then the outside will express it.

But it's all ONE SINGLE substance, the very same everywhere, which was unconscious everywhere; and so, the remarkable thing is that things are taking place AUTOMATICALLY (gesture of points scattered throughout the world), quite unexpected things here and there, even in people who don't know anything.

(silence)

These material cells had to gain the capacity to receive and manifest the consciousness; and what permits a radical transformation is that instead of an ascent which is so to speak eternal and indefinite, there is the appearance of a new type – a descent from above. The previous descent was a mental one, while this is what Sri Aurobindo calls a "supramental descent"; the impression is, a descent of the supreme Consciousness infusing itself into something capable of receiving and manifesting it. Then, out of that, once it has been thoroughly kneaded (there's no knowing how much time it will take), a new form will be born, which will be the form Sri Aurobindo called supramental – it will be ... anything, I don't know what those beings will be called.

What will be their mode of expression? How will they make themselves understood and so on?... In man, it developed very slowly. Only, mind has done a lot of kneading and, after all, has made things move faster.

How will we get there?... There will certainly be stages in the manifestation with, perhaps, a specimen that will come and say, "Here is how it is." (Mother looks in front of her) One can see that.

Only, when man emerged from the animal, there was no way to record – to note and record the process; now it's quite different, so it will be more interesting.

(silence)

But even at this moment in time, the vast majority – the vast majority – of human intellectuality is perfectly satisfied being busy with itself, satisfied with its little progress like this (Mother draws a microscopic circle). It doesn't even, doesn't even have a desire for something else!

Which means the advent of the superhuman being may well ... it may very well go unnoticed, or not be understood. We can't say, because there is no analogy; it's obvious that if one of the apes, the large apes, had met the first man, he would just have felt there was a somewhat ... strange being, that's all. But now it's different because man thinks, reasons....

But anything higher than him man has been used to thinking of as ... divine beings; that is to say, bodiless beings, appearing in the light, anyway all the gods in human conception – but it's not that at all!

(long silence)

Shall we translate this?

(Mother translates into French
the "prayer of the cells in the body"
silence)

So?

Aren't you convinced?

Why don't you try?

But I do! That's why I asked you the question. I am not doubting anything. I asked you how it's done, that's what I don't see.... For instance, I shave every morning. Well, in the morning you are dazed, tired, the mind doesn't work, the vital doesn't work....

Yes, it's an excellent opportunity.

Well, yes, so that's what I do! But I tell you, I just don't see, I don't. I don't know how it can be stirred – it doesn't stir.... It doesn't stir unless I apply the mind or the vital or the heart.

Bah!

It's not that I doubt! I say that my body is a donkey, quite possibly, but I don't doubt.

It's not a donkey, poor thing! (Mother laughs)

Doubt there isn't. But there is a question on the "how," that's what I don't know.

That problem never arose for me, because ... When you do music or when you do painting, you very clearly notice how the consciousness permeates the cells and those cells become conscious. This experience, for instance: there are objects in a box, and you say to your hand, "Take twelve of them." The hand goes like that, without your bothering about it, and it finds the twelve (without counting, just like that), it takes the twelve and gives them to you. That's an experience I had long ago; when I was twenty I began with experiences of that kind. So I know, I knew how the consciousness works. You understand, it's impossible to learn the piano or painting without the consciousness coming into the hands, and the hands become conscious INDEPENDENTLY of the brain – the brain may be busy elsewhere, it doesn't matter in the least. Besides, that's what happens in those people who are called "sleepwalkers": they have a consciousness belonging to their body, which makes them move about and do things quite independently of the mind and the vital.

I mean that when I am shaving in front of the mirror, if within myself I don't apply the mantra or an aspiration from the heart, well, it's an inert chunk shaving, and in addition the physical mind keeps running. But if I apply a mantra or a mental will ...

No! It's THE BODY that ends up saying the mantra spontaneously! So spontaneously that even if you happen to be thinking of something else, your body will be saying the mantra. Don't you have that experience?

No.

And it's the body that aspires, the body that says the mantra, the body that wants the light, the body that wants the consciousness – you yourself may be thinking of something else, Tom, Dick or Harry or a book or anything, it doesn't matter.

But now I understand, I understand very well! In the beginning I didn't, I thought I had been made supposedly very ill in order to stop the life I led downstairs[135] – the life I now lead is far more busy than the one I led downstairs, so ... I wondered why, whether it was a transitional phase. But now I understand: cut off – I would keep fainting. What made the doctor declare that I was ill is that I couldn't take a step without fainting: if I wanted to walk from here to there, poff! I would faint on the way; I had to be held up so my body wouldn't drop to the ground. So the doctor's decision: to bed and no moving. But as for me, not for one minute did I lose consciousness! I would faint but remain conscious, I would see my body and know I had fainted; I didn't lose consciousness, the body didn't lose consciousness. So now I understand! The body was cut off from the vital and the mind and left to its own means; and then little by little, little by little ...

I remember, for instance, all that the doctors do: they give you vitamins, this and that. All right. So as soon as I had taken those vitamins, I saw that sort of physical mind start stirring and stirring and stirring: "Vitamins," I said, "I don't want them, they cause excitement in the brain." Then they changed and gave me something some other time, and that was good. And all that, all of it was simply THE BODY: all that it knew, all the experiences it had had, all the mastery from all the parts of the being, from the vital to the mind and above, all of that was gone! And this poor body was left to itself. Then, naturally, little by little something was rebuilt. For a long time I remained unable ... unable to do hardly anything (a little something, but hardly anything), but little by little it all was rebuilt, increasingly rebuilt: a conscious, purely conscious being – which is now chattering away! (It was unable to express itself.)

Yes, I understand. I understand. Well, perhaps that is what Sri Aurobindo meant when he said, "Your body is at present the only one on earth that can do this work." I thought it was a kindness on his part.... But it's true that it was cut off, I knew it – I saw it – cut off, the states of being were sent away: "Go away, all of you are not wanted anymore." Then the body had to rebuild a life for itself. And instead of having to go through all those states of being as it did before, through successive awakenings (gesture of ascent from degree to degree, in the way of the yogis of old), up to the highest height, the highest height beyond the form, now it's no longer that at all, the body no longer needs anything of all that, it simply has ... (gesture of a rising aspiration opening out like a flower). Something within opened and developed, which caused that idiotic mind to become organized and capable of falling silent in an aspiration. And then ... then there was the direct Contact, without intermediaries – the direct contact. That it now has constantly. Constantly, every single moment, the direct contact. And it's THE BODY: it doesn't go through all kinds of things and states of being, not at all, it's direct.

But once that has been done (this is something Sri Aurobindo had said), once ONE body has done it, it has the capacity of passing it on to others; and I tell you, there is now (I am not saying in its totality and in detail, probably not), but here and there (scattered gesture to show various points on earth) people suddenly get one experience or another. Some of them (most) get frightened, so naturally it goes away – that is because they weren't prepared enough within (if it's not the little routine of every minute, ever the same, they get frightened), and once they get frightened it's over, it means they will need years of preparation for the experience to recur. But still, some don't; suddenly, an experience: "Ah!" something wholly new, wholly unexpected, which they had never thought of.

It's contagious. That I know. And it's the only hope, because if everyone had to go through the same experience again ... Well, I am ninety now – at the age of ninety people are tired, they've had enough of life. To do this work one must feel as young as a small child.

It takes a long time, I clearly see that it has taken a long time.

And it isn't done, of course, it's BEING done – it isn't done, far from it. Far from it ... What's the proportion of conscious cells? We don't know.

From time to time, some cells scold others, that's very funny! They scold them, they catch hold of them, say a thing or two (in their own way) to those which want ... (Mother draws a tiny circle) to go on with the old habits: digestion has to be done in a certain way, absorption has to be done in a certain way, circulation has to be done in a certain way, breathing has to ... all the functions have to be done according to Nature's method. And when it isn't like that, they are worried. Then those which know catch hold of them and give them a good bombardment of the Lord, it's very funny!

There is something that translates into words (it's wordless, but something in there translates into words), and so there are conversations between the cells (Mother laughs): "You fool, what are you afraid of? Don't you see it's the Lord doing this to transform you?" Then the other: "Ah! ..." And then it falls quiet, opens out, and waits. And ... the pain goes away, the disorder goes away, and then everything works out.

It's wonderful.

But if by some mischance the mind comes in, starts watching or judging, then everything stops and falls back into the old habit.

(long silence)

Basically, it's the vital, mental – and so on – ego, it's all of that which was – poff! – taken away.

It was a radical operation.

So now there is a sort of suppleness and plasticity. And all this is learning (it's very much in touch with everything [horizontal gesture]), it's learning to find its whole support, its whole strength, its whole knowledge, its whole light, its whole will, everything like that (vertical gesture, turned to the Supreme), exclusively like that, in an extraordinary plasticity.

And then – the splendor of the Presence.

(silence)

There.

So what should I do to you?

I don't know, an operation!

A radical operation (Mother laughs).

Yes, perhaps.

But tell me, when they put you to sleep to open your stomach, were you conscious? Nothing at all? Nothing?

No.

We'll see....

We'll see.

@

Prayers of the consciousness of the cells

(second series)

(We publish here the second series of the "Prayers of the Consciousness of the Cells,"[136] as Mother gave them to Satprem in 1970, collected under this title.)

July, 1965

I am tired of our unworthiness. But it is not to rest that this body aspires, it is to the glory of your consciousness, the glory of your light, the glory of your power, and above all, to the glory of your all-powerful and eternal love.[137]

@

July, 1965

Om, Supreme Lord, God of kindness and mercy. Om, Supreme Lord, God of love and beatitude. I am tired of our infirmity, but it is not to rest that this body aspires, it aspires to the plenitude of Your consciousness, it aspires to the splendor of Your light, it aspires to the magnificence of Your power – above all, it aspires to the glory of Your all-powerful and eternal love.

@

July, 1965

The other states of being, the vital, the mind, may enjoy the intermediary contacts.

The supreme Lord alone can satisfy me.

@

 

November 22, 1967

The prayer of the cells in the body

(The prayer of the body's cells)

Now that by the effect of the Grace we are slowly emerging out of inconscience and waking up to a conscious life, an ardent prayer rises in us for more light, more consciousness:

"O Supreme Lord of the Universe, We implore Thee, give us the strength and the beauty, the harmonious perfection needed to be Thy divine instruments upon earth."

Undated

Makest for it possible to bear the work of transformation.

@

Undated

... because I do know nobody who could make a grown-up body into which I could step without losing my consciousness.

Undated

... because the state of Nature that makes this necessary must be surpassed.

We aspire for the time when it will no longer be necessary for Sri Aurobindo to die.

Undated

The task of completing Sri Aurobindo's vision has been given to the Mother. The creation of a new world, a new humanity, a new society expressing and embodying the new consciousness is the work she has undertaken. Because of the very nature of things, it is an ideal that seeks to broaden the base of the attempt to establish harmony between body and Soul, Spirit and Matter, ...

@

Undated

The task of giving Sri Aurobindo's vision a concrete form has been given to the Mother.

 

November 25, 1967

Regarding Mother's mail

It's very often like that: I get nearly twenty-five or thirty letters every day; out of them, I have time to read eight or ten, and at the time of reading them, most often there is no answer: they're at least ninety-eight percent useless. When there is something [worthwhile in the letter], the answer comes right away. Or when there is no answer right away, sometimes (often) I put it aside, and when I am alone, Sri Aurobindo comes and says to me, "Why don't you tell him this?" Then I immediately write it down. It happens very often. And always an answer, oh, with a sense of ridiculousness, of humor touching the exact point where the weakness or unconsciousness is. That's very funny. So I never try to find, naturally, never ever, it comes like that quite simply. When I have to answer, it comes; then I just have to take a paper, my pen, and I write it down. That's the part of the work which isn't work, but amusement.

*^**

Soon afterwards

I gave you a speech, twice.

Very early in the morning, while you must have been still asleep. Last night and the night before, very early, around four in the morning, I gave you a speech. Not quite "I" (and what's "I," in the first place, where is "I"? I don't know), it's ... At times it comes from high above, like that, imperative; at other times, it comes from Sri Aurobindo, and that's much more close, intimate. And it was Sri Aurobindo, both times. I gave you a speech.

What was it?

He must have told you! And for you, it will come back like this (gesture from within); one day, all of a sudden, it will reemerge from deep within you. I even saw that (the experience was rather complete), I saw it go within, and saw that one day it would reemerge and would simply be like an inspiration or a revelation, or even simply like a knowledge: "Ah! So that's how it is!"

Very amusing.

Sri Aurobindo spoke very clearly. He told you WHY things are like this. But he told me not to say it, he told me, "I am saying it to him and one day he will know it."

But on what subject?

On the subject of what you told me last time: that your body left to itself doesn't have any experience. He told you why. And he told you how to do it. But that I can repeat to you; I can repeat the "how to do it": he told you that your body is still in a condition in which it has to go to school, and it's your inner being, your consciousness, your true self that must teach it. He said, "It is still at a stage when it must be taught its lesson, and so it must learn its lesson."

There.

It's very interesting, and very intimate.

Then I asked him, "Should I tell him?" He said, "No, it must come out of himself, like that, it must be a sudden revelation, so that he will say, 'Ah! yes ...'"

There. (Laughing) So I've given you a good little tug!

November 29, 1967

Well, read me this letter.

"Sweet Mother, in the Bulletin you said, 'Psychic memories ... are unforgettable moments of life when the consciousness is intense, luminous, strong, active, powerful, and sometimes also turning points in your life which gave it a new orientation. But never will you be able to describe the dress you wore or the gentleman with whom you spoke or the neighbors or the kind of field you were in.' (Questions and Answers of May 6, 1953) And regarding the memory of small details, you said, 'It's perfectly silly.'

"But then how is it that one often enough reads in newspapers the story of little children who remember their past life?..."

That's not a psychic memory. They always confuse things so dreadfully!

It's not psychic, it's when the vital, through some special circumstance, goes from one body to another, then it still remembers. That's generally when it comes back in the same family, or in neighbors.

Is that all he writes?

"... How is it that newspapers tell often enough the story of little children who remember their past life, and that details were confirmed? Since the study of such occurrences is what leads parapsychologists to note the existence of reincarnation, they are therefore not on a wholly wrong track, are they? And how can one give another kind of scientific proof of reincarnation?"

How arrogant the mind is! Instead of simply saying, "There is something here that I don't understand" and asking for an explanation, oh, instantly it rears its head.

What's the name of this young nincompoop?... I'll send him this (Mother writes):

"The memories you are referring to, those mentioned in the newspapers, are the memories of the vital being, when exceptionally it has come out of a body in order to enter another. That happens, though not frequently. The memories I am referring to are those of the psychic being, and one is conscious of them only when one is in conscious relationship with one's psychic being. There is no contradiction between the two things."

*^**

Mother turns to the darshan of November 24

I have new photos of the darshan day. Photos taken with a telephoto lens, would you like to see them? (Mother goes to get the photos)

S. has a new telescopic camera, and instead of taking a photo of the whole view at the balcony, she took only my face. Two of them I find very good.... They're not enlarged, they're just as they were taken (Mother shows Satprem the photos).

I don't know, at each darshan I feel as if I am a different person, and when I see myself like this, objectively, indeed I see a different person every time. Sometimes an old Chinese! Other times a sort of transposition of Sri Aurobindo, a veiled Sri Aurobindo; and yet other times, a person I am very familiar with, but not the present one: a person I was just ONCE. That has happened several times.

But here too, I get an impression of ... It's very different from you as you are usually.

Isn't it!

And I feel it's something I know.

Yes, exactly. My impression is just the same. I look at this and say, "I know this person very well" – but it has nothing to do with this body.

But it's something I know!

Yes, it's very well known, yet it's not this (Mother points to her body); it's not from here, yet it's very well known.

It reminds me of a painter, I don't know why.

One doesn't quite know whether it's a woman or a man, one isn't sure.

I wondered if it wasn't a being living in another world than the physical world of the earth? Because it's ... I know this, but not with the intimacy of the body's sensation. It's clearly someone I know very well and have seen often.

I get an impression of someone I have seen before.

Oh, yes. But I don't know if you saw it in this world.

I have a painting or a painter in mind, I don't know why.

Which of the two is more familiar to you?

This one, N° 14.

Yes, that's right. And are you sure it's a woman?

I'm not sure, either.

You're not.

But I don't know why, I get the idea of a painter or a painting.

A painter? ... Leonardo da Vinci? (Laughing) But he had a beard!

(To Sujata:) Do you know this person?

It's not the same Mother!

It isn't (Mother takes one photo, then the other): this and this are two different persons.

But strangely, I know this very well, especially this part (Mother points to the part of the photo between the eyebrows and the lips), and something about the gaze.

It might be a painting, perhaps you're right. But which one, I don't see.

Someone very familiar to me, but ... If I were told it's a historical personality, I wouldn't be surprised.

This one [N° 14] especially.

Strange. And it's becoming more and more like that. As the body catches hold of the inner rhythm, it [the manifestation of other beings through Mother's body] keeps increasing.

It's probably not physical.

(Sujata:) Somewhat Chinese!

What is it? One day we'll know....

It's quite familiar.

Yes. But my impression is like this: someone I knew very intimately, with whom I perhaps lived – but not "me," you understand. That is, it's the body that says, "Not me." Inwardly, it's quite different: there is no me-and-you, none of that exists; but the body still has it and says, "It's not me, it's someone I know very well, very closely, but not me."

Why does it come like that at the balcony?

It may be two things. It may be that the original consciousness split into two in a past existence (it has happened several times) and manifested in two different bodies at the same time; and so naturally, there was an intimacy and probably a familiarity in life – it may be something physical. But it may also be someone existing permanently, a permanent form somewhere, with whom we are in constant contact in that world (the overmental or supramental world, or elsewhere), and the feeling "Oh, I know this" springs from within. It may be either of those two things – I don't know which as yet.

(After a silence) It's more an expression, a type of vibration, an atmosphere than exact features. So it might rather be this: someone existing permanently somewhere with whom we are in contact.

That would explain the sensation that we don't know whether it's a man or a woman: it must be from a sexless world, a world where there is neither man nor woman.

(silence)

The body itself has more than an impression, it's ... a sort of knowledge – more than a knowledge, it's, well, a fact: there are lots and lots of beings, forces, personalities that manifest through it, at times even several at once. That's a very common experience. For instance, the experience that Sri Aurobindo is here, speaks and sees, with his own way of seeing (piercing and ironic gesture) and his way of expressing himself – that happens very often. Often too, it's Durga, or Mahakali, or ... very often. Often, what manifests is a being from very high up, very permanent – very permanent – and then there comes into the being a sort of absoluteness. At times, it's beings from a nearby plane trying to make themselves felt, to express themselves, but that's under control.

The body is used to it, you understand.

But the strange thing was that this time, on the 24th, when I went to the balcony, it was someone ... (and that happens to me now and then, more and more frequently) someone looking on from a sort of plane of eternity, with, mingled in it, a great benevolence (something like benevolence, I don't know how to express it), but with an absolute calm, almost indifference, and the two are together looking on like that (Mother draws waves far away below), as though it were seen from far away, far above, far ... (how should I put it?) seen from such an eternal vision. That was what my body felt when I went out for the balcony. So the body said, "But I have to aspire, there must be an aspiration for the Force to descend on all these people!" And "That" was like that (sovereign gesture above), oh, so benevolent, but with a sort of indifference – the indifference of eternity, I don't know how to explain it. And the body feels it all as something making use of it.

That's why I find these photos interesting, it's to objectify the

We'll know.

@

 

December

December 2, 1967

Mother gives "Transformation" flowers and slips one through her buttonhole

A general transformation!

I have my own here.... So it withers, and when I have my bath I take it out and put it in a glass of water – half an hour later, it's as fresh as if it had just been born! It's very pretty.

It's my joy in life.

Every morning, I must say, I spend three quarters of an hour arranging flowers like that, and it's all joyful – light, light in everything, without darkness.

*^**

(Then Satprem asks Mother about the conversation of November 22 – the turning point of 1962 and the awakening of the cells' consciousness – which he would like to publish in the forthcoming February issue of the "Bulletin," in "A Propos.")

It's too personal.

But it's so clear! It's the first time you have made the thing so clear.

(After a long silence) I know that people will be happy, but it will give me a lot of trouble.

You think it will cause you difficulties?

I am constantly invaded (it won't be much worse than it is!). At one point it was very difficult, but now it's beginning to ... I've reconciled myself to it. I think it's the body that reacts, but it's growing more and more impersonal, I think.

People understand so poorly – but what can be done about that? In the whole country, the number of things written about me, each one of them as stupid as the next ... all because of those ninety years. What a fuss they make over those ninety years!

You understand, I would have liked it to become public once the body's appearance had been transformed – then it becomes interesting, but we're still a long way from it.

*^**

Soon afterwards

This morning I was shown photos again, photos I had never seen, which I am asked to sign for people who've bought them.... In one I look like Annie Besant! (Mother laughs) There are all sorts!

But in one of them I seem to be shut in a world of darkness and unconsciousness, and if you look at the face ... it really looks desperate – not desperate, but unhappy. Things of that sort, which I had never noticed. They're sold by the thousands, mon petit!

December 6, 1967

I saw you last night.

Oh, yes?

Do you remember?...

No.

We were in the subtle physical. I saw lots of people: Purani [a departed disciple] and so on, people who are no longer on earth. It was in Sri Aurobindo's ... not his house, but his domain. I saw and did lots of things. There were people who live on earth and people who no longer do: they were all together. And at the end (for many details Sri Aurobindo was there, then he left), at the end I looked at all that, and for the first time in the subtle physical, I said, "Oh, how insipid and useless your life is, and flavorless, when you don't think of the Divine."

The experience was so acute! So acute. Then I said (among the people there, there was Purani, and as I said people who live on earth), I told them, "On the earth, there is that intensity of aspiration, but here ... life is so easy, so easy! Look at all your activities and all that, oh, it has no flavor, because there isn't that intense need to live for the Divine." And it was so strong that for hours in the morning it was like that (gesture of intense aspiration). Life anywhere – anywhere, in any part of the world (of the universe) and in any conditions, even the most easy and harmonious, is not worth living without this intensity of aspiration, of the NEED to be divine.

It's the first time.

In the past, when I went to all those regions, there were always very interesting things; and in the subtle physical, as a rule I was always with Sri Aurobindo – [last night too] I was with Sri Aurobindo but he withdrew to a part of his domain and I remained with all the others: they had an easy life, you know, carefree, and all they did seemed so ... meaningless. Why? Why all that, why keep oneself busy, why do all those things if it's not for this aspiration, for this need to be and become the Divine?

But it's the first time, and it lingered on: for hours this morning, I was like this (gesture of intense aspiration).

There.

As a result, my impression was that unless the whole universe becomes THAT, well ... what's the use? Everything and anything that isn't the Consciousness, the supreme consciousness, I mean, yes, the supreme and supremely divine consciousness, all the rest ... It's the first time I've felt so intensely the uselessness of all outward activities – their uselessness IN THEMSELVES, like a blossoming, because when there is the divine Play, then the same things become lovely, it all becomes interesting, but in themselves, for themselves, they are NOTHING. It's the first time I have felt that so intensely. Because I felt it in the subtle world (in the material world it's always mixed with all kinds of trouble and effort and difficulty so it's completely different), there, things are absolutely without difficulty, completely harmonious, really, and it was NOTHING. YOU understand, when Sri Aurobindo was there, it was perfect, but when he withdrew ... flavorless.

And it's the PHYSICAL consciousness that has those experiences at night: the body remains in trance, it's the physical consciousness; it was the physical consciousness, but in a subtle physical released from all difficulties – and it was no better. You know, it was like a reply to the ambition of people here on earth who want life to be pleasant, easy, without difficulties, without conflicts and clashes and diseases and ... they say, "Oh, how charming all would be!" – It's not true: if there isn't THAT, empty.

The experience was very interesting.

*^**

Soon afterwards

I have a whole correspondence in French with S., who is learning French and puts questions to me. So (Mother shows a sheet of paper), here is the latest one, from yesterday, because I had told him a story:

You know that I always keep a Transformation flower here (Mother points to her buttonhole); I keep it the whole morning, and when I take my dress off in the afternoon for a bath, the flower is naturally in a pitiful condition – so I used to throw it away. But one day, S. had sent me roses in a glass of water, it was on my bathroom table; I took the Transformation flower and put it in the water, and when I came back from my bath it was magnificent, far more fresh and strong than when I had received it! I kept it the whole night, kept it the next day, it wasn't budging! It remained just as fresh. Then the next day, I sent him the flower back, in his glass, and when he came to see me in the afternoon, I told him the story. I said, "Did you get the Transformation flower? Here is what happened...." The next day, he wrote me this:

"Does the transformation not demand a very high degree of aspiration, surrender and receptivity?"

I replied:

"The transformation demands a total and integral consecration. But is that not the aspiration of every sincere sadhak?

"'Total' means ...

Yes, it was on the following page (because I thought, "This man will wonder why I put 'total and integral' when the two words seem to mean just the same thing"). So I gave him the explanation:

"'Total' means VERTICALLY in all the states of being from the most material to the most subtle. 'Integral' means HORIZONTALLY in all the various and often contradictory parts that make up the outer being (physical, vital and mental)."

*^**

(Then Mother listens to new, unpublished letters of Sri Aurobindo's:)

"How can I receive Sri Aurobindo's light in the mind?"

"It can always come if you aspire patiently. But the basic condition, if you want that light, is to get rid of all other mental influences."

"What is the meaning of 'to get rid of all other mental influences'? Is it this that I had better not read any other books except Sri Aurobindo's or not try to learn anything by hearing or admiring others?"

"It is not a question of books or learning facts. When a woman loves or admires, her mind is instinctively molded by the one she loves or admires, and this influence remains after the feeling itself has gone or appears to be gone. This does not refer to X's influence merely. It is the general rule given to keep yourself free from any other admiration or influence."

May 30, 1932

This is something people generally don't know. It's very true, but they don't know it. When they start admiring all sorts of things, it becomes a hodgepodge.

(silence)

This is one of the things I've learned lately through experience – universalization, the contact with everything (horizontal gesture) – and it has been shown to the body in such a precise way, in the detail of the vibration.... In the state of receptivity (vertical gesture to the Heights), of receptive passivity (the opposite of action, that is), the body must be turned exclusively to the Supreme (same vertical gesture): the body and the cells have been taught that, and they've understood – they've understood and are now used to it. In the state of action (horizontal gesture), when you are one with (well, let's limit the problem to the earth), one with the whole earth, there must be an ACTIVE radiating vibration of the supreme Force. Receptivity like this (vertical gesture to receive the Force), and activity like this (horizontal gesture spreading the Force out). And the cells have felt, they've understood, they can do it. And the relationship with everything around you, down to the smallest detail, is something so wonderful, with an influence radiating farther and farther away.

When you realize those two attitudes simultaneously, the contagion is abolished: the mental contagion (the very one Sri Aurobindo refers to here, the one you get when you "admire" something), the mental contagion, the vital contagion, and EVEN THE PHYSICAL CONTAGION – when the cells realize that, you stop catching illnesses. Because formerly (for a long time), whenever something occurred in the sphere of influence of the action, there used to be a repercussion [in Mother]. For a very long time, it was dangerous. Then it became limited to a sense of unease which would grow conscious, and conscious of the why – the why and the how. It was limited to a state of unease, but it was still ... troublesome. And now it's a sort of ... I can't say "knowledge," because it's not mental, but an awareness (there's no word for it in French), a perception – and nothing more, it doesn't have any action [or any repercussion in Mother's body]. So then, the whole problem lies there:

There are those who found this, the vertical ascent to the heights, and who isolated themselves from the world (they weren't able to do that completely because they didn't have the knowledge, but they tried). That's not the solution. Then there are those who want to help, the generous ones who are like this (gesture of horizontal expansion), and who catch everything, even the mental diseases of all the people around them. So the truth is the two together: this, the passive, receptive state (vertical gesture), and this, the active state of action and radiating influence (horizontal gesture). And the body has become wholly conscious of the dual movement and is working to realize it in detail.

A great problem has been solved.

And it's interesting because those two attitudes can be almost simultaneous, but they are ... On the level of vibration, of vibratory sensation, they are two opposites combining with each other: receptivity like this (gesture), towards the Consciousness, the Force, Power, Light, all that comes from above, and naturally Love (but about Love I will speak later). And it comes (gesture of descent), it comes down and everything, everything is ab-so-lute-ly passive and receptive (gesture of vertical opening): it absorbs and absorbs and absorbs, like that, totally given, in the state of a sponge that absorbs and absorbs and absorbs.... At the same time, there is the relationship with the world (horizontal gesture) and the Power coming through and working, with the sense of the Force, the Action, the Thing imposing itself. It's magnificent. And in the SAME vibratory radiance of ... of "That." Always the same all-powerful Perfection being absorbed and acting (gesture of flowing through Mother over the world in a perpetual movement).

That seems to be the secret of all-powerfulness. There is no need at all to go through mental knowledge – that diminishes, shrinks, hardens.

It's a keen state of consciousness, that is, wholly awakened. In the cells of the body, it drives away all darkness. Naturally, it's a long and slow work, but it drives away, it's a state that drives away all darkness everywhere. And darkness is always the sign (sign or cause) of a disorder. So there is still plenty of it, one knows that. It's a slow work, a whole world! When you ... (how should I put it?) when you descend into (or I may say, concentrate on) this cellular constitution of the body, on the body's scale, it's a myriad world! A myriad world. Everything is as though made up of myriad tiny points, and each point has to be awakened and flooded with consciousness and light – a long work.

(silence)

So it's the solution to these two errors that constantly contradict each other: the error of shrinking, of an exclusivism of influence (which, when practiced on the mental level, becomes a limitation, a smallness, like all exclusive faiths); or else eclecticism without effect or force, which makes a sort of muddle with everything, with all ideas (mentally it doesn't matter, but on the level of the transformation, it's serious). So for these two opposites the problem has been solved.

The state I've just described is possible in the body's cells and in the body consciousness, also in the psychic consciousness; but vitally and mentally, even if you understand, it seems like an almost impossible realization because of a fixity, a fixity in the form: the form of thoughts and the form of sensations. Mentally it could only be translated as an acceptance of all thoughts, all formulas, raising them up towards ... something that's no longer a thought, no longer a mentally formulated thing, but a light, a light, a conscious light organizing and unifying all those thoughts. But if you take them all on the same plane ... You can accept everything, but everything as one standpoint – one among innumerable standpoints on "something" that cannot be expressed in words, because as soon as you put words on it, it becomes a formula, and the formula takes the power away. But physically, in the body's cells, it's very, very clearly perceptible and is lived quite spontaneously: you receive only from on high, and you spread it.

December 8, 1967

The only somewhat new thing is that the body is beginning to be a bit ... restless at its decay. Before, it didn't bother about it, it didn't give it any thought; it knew it was going on, but ... Now, it's beginning to be bothered. So perhaps it's a sign, I don't know? It's beginning to be bothered – not psychologically, but like this: when it receives a Command to do something and there is, not exactly an incapacity, but a limitation to the possibility, that starts its unhappiness. So I wondered ...

Then at night it's the same thing, it says, "Why such a whole long period of diminishing consciousness?"

Diminishing?

You understand, it's happy and in what it regards as its normal state only when it's fully conscious of and vibrating with the Presence. But in the night's activities ... (how can I explain?) it's becoming more ... more like something one is used to, you know, like a habit (gesture of a wave flowing); there's no longer the joy of a vibrating observation, but a normal state of things, and it's not happy with that: it wants the same intensity (vibrating gesture) to be there at night. For instance, it doesn't tolerate the idea of fatigue, of the necessity of rest (although that never arises from the inconscient any longer), but rest as a sort of turning in on oneself, like that, to repair wear and tear – it doesn't like that: there must be no wear and tear, there must be a constant adaptation to anything asked of it. Later, it will probably not even accept effort – there isn't much "effort" left, but instead of effort, there's a sort of conscious receptivity that enables it to do things; and there are constant examples to show that if this receptivity isn't there, well, there's an awkward movement, or an impossibility, things like that, but it ... in the past, it used to feel that was unavoidable, but now it no longer wants it. Now it no longer wants it: things must not be like that. For example, to put something away or find it or do something, it sometimes feels a sense of difficulty (it's never quite impossible because nothing is asked of it which is impossible), but at times it's difficult – and a sense of displeasure comes over it. It feels that as an infirmity, as a lack of receptivity, you understand. Also the fact that it has become stooped: in the past it would say, "It'll get corrected"; now it's beginning to lose patience. That's quite new. It began on November 24. Because it's not a selfish turning in on itself, it's not that, it's not for itself, it's ... the sense of a lack of receptivity to the Force, of limitation arising from incapacity – it doesn't like that anymore.

@

December 13, 1967

Did you feel the earthquake?... It was in the morning of the day before yesterday, at 4:30. I didn't feel anything. But some people felt it and told me. Over there it was quite bad.[138]

My mother reached Bombay on that day and felt it. All the dogs were howling; for three seconds houses were shaken.

A small town has completely disappeared.[139] But it's strange.... I wasn't asleep but was outside my body, so I didn't notice anything. It didn't wake up my body.

But it must have been very weak here. I was awake but didn't feel anything.

(silence)

Is there something behind this earthquake?

I don't know what it is.... I don't really know what it is, but the day before, in the evening (I forget what I was doing, I was busy), there was suddenly ... Often there are small vital entities, I think, or vital forces (but to me those things are without force or power), and a small vital entity showed me the memory of an earthquake: about 1922 or '23, we had an earthquake; I had gone out with Pavitra, we stood talking (we were on our way out, it was in the afternoon), when suddenly, hop! up we jumped into the air, the two of us.[140] We knew what it was because we had got used to it in Japan. I said, "Oh, an earthquake." It didn't last – a few seconds and it was over. I had completely forgotten it, and it was as if one of those beings came to bring the memory back, with at the same time, "And what if there were another one?" "Oh," I said, "what nonsense!"

Just the evening before.

Then I wondered, "What? Are these earthquakes set up by beings of this sort?..." I don't understand. With rain, I know: there are conscious beings, quite small, that is, limited to a single function, and you can negotiate with them if you want there to be rain or not (they move about, you understand). But as for earthquakes ... I don't know, it seems to me a considerable result for entities that appear to be doing it just for fun....

Strange.

I can't say, they have no form, you don't see any forms, but they have a consciousness that can express itself and is translated in our own consciousness as words, and more particularly images – images and wills.

But I remember, I didn't take it at all seriously, I said, "But this doesn't make sense! It doesn't make sense, there's no reason for it to be!" And that seems to have been sufficient because, in actual fact, nothing very serious took place.

@

 

December 16, 1967

Yesterday evening, Pavitra asked me for a message for the opening of the School today. I wasn't in too good a mood (!) and sent him back. This morning, at five, a message came, and I wrote it down. I had barely written it down when three others came! So I wrote the four of them, and at seven sent them to K., saying that each teacher or class should choose (they are all on the same subject and with the same idea, but shown from different angles).

And at eight, everyone already knew! Things spread very fast.... N. told me, "But the messages are for different classes and they haven't been selected!" I said, "No! It's not for me to select, but for the teacher in every class." And I added, "That's much more fun for me!" And with that I sent him away!

It's true: the same idea (it's not an "idea"), the same aspiration, the same need, depending on the state you are in, on your state of consciousness (or, for ordinary people, their turn of mind), you approach from one side or another.

I don't at all remember what I wrote.... As usual it's a call to the Truth.[141]

(silence)

There is something apparently paradoxical, but it's very interesting. It's this (Mother takes a piece of paper and writes):

"The best way to prepare oneself to receive Divine Love is to adhere integrally to the Truth."

(Mother then writes a second note:)

"Adhere totally to the Truth and you will be ready to receive Divine Love."

When you say that to intelligent good folks, their heads spin! ...

(Mother laughs) I must say that making their heads spin is great fun for me!

But the best part is that it's true! It's true, it is like that. Every time that there is (it's more than an aspiration, much more than a will, in English they call it an urge) a thirst to let Divine Love express itself completely, totally everywhere, the base, the favorable ground is the Truth.

Sri Aurobindo said it, of course. He said it, he wrote it in black and white (I forget the exact words): "The pure divine love can manifest safely only in a ... in a ground" (it's not ground ...) "of Truth." I don't remember now. If we wanted to put it poetically, we'd say, "in a land of Truth."

So before we can proclaim, "Love, manifest yourself, win the Victory," the ground for Truth must be made ready.

That's what I put under everyone's eyes at the School: aspire, aspire to the Truth. I don't at all remember what I wrote ... (Mother tries to remember). One is, "May the Truth be our master and our guide," then two others, and then, "O Truth ..." I don't remember.

That's quite a remarkable phenomenon: the second before, it's absolutely blank, empty, there isn't one word, one thought, one idea, nothing, just like that: not a thought. I am asked for a message, and I reply, "I have nothing to say." It comes like that, imperatively; if I can [that is, if Mother is free], I write it down and it's over; if I can't [that is, if Mother is busy with people], it comes back obstinately until it's written. Once it's written, gone! Nothing remains. Another way to present it comes, another form: that also, gone! ...

This (gesture to the forehead), you know, is like an empty box (very pleasant, it's very pleasant), an empty, peaceful box, like that: not closed, not compact, open, but it's a box – an empty box. Inside it's all white, nothing moving. And then, I don't even make an effort to bring something down, nothing: "It's not my business." If I am asked, I answer, "Nothing, I have nothing to say." Or else, something goes like this (gesture on alert, awakened), sits up and remains attentive, and after one minute, two minutes, ten minutes (I don't know), suddenly, plop! down it drops. Then I write it. And as it falls, it gathers words and makes its sentence. Sometimes it's in French, sometimes in English – it depends mostly on the person it's intended for, also on the subject. So then, if (that's why I keep pieces of paper and pens everywhere), if I have my piece of paper and pen, I write it down and it's over; if I don't write it, if I say, "Oh well, I'll note it down a little later," then it keeps coming and coming and coming back every second ... until it's written down. And once it's written, gone!

But there is (what did Sri Aurobindo call it?[142]) something we might call a "critic," there is constantly a critic there, saying, "Are you sure you put the right word? Wouldn't this be a better way to put it? Is it exactly the way it should be?" And also, "Are you sure there aren't any spelling mistakes, have you spelled it correctly?" Like that. What a nuisance! So sometimes I say to it, "Leave me in peace!" (not even as politely as that). Sometimes I give the piece of paper to someone, then take it back and say, "Let me see" – until it's satisfied. Sometimes a word isn't quite correctly spelled, then it says, "Ah! See, see, you've made a mistake here." Sometimes there are spelling mistakes: "See, see, it's wrong here!"

Now I don't even remember what I wrote for the School. I know that one message was in the form of a wish (two or three were like that), and one was in the form of a prayer, that is, directly addressed to the Truth: O Truth ...

But it's very pleasant to have this [the head] empty, oh, very restful.

And when, from outside, people fill it with letters, news, requests (it all piles up, you know), then I have only one way, the simplest way, which is to do this (gesture of offering): "Here ..." (what Sri Aurobindo calls surrender), "Here, it's not my business, not my concern." Then it's over.

*^**

(Mother goes into a long contemplation lasting over half an hour, then still in a slightly "faraway" state, she starts speaking in English:)

I saw a strange beast who came from there like that [Mother points to her left], made a round around you and went away. It was a horse with a lion's head.

Beautiful beast! It was a lion, the head like that, the front form was a lion and behind, it was a horse. And it was the symbol of ... a symbolical animal of something. At the moment I understood perfectly well, I said "Ah!" and ...

Very dignified. Came from there [same gesture to the left], like that, made a round around you and went away. It was for you. Lion is power, and horse ...[143]

And like that, it seems silly, but he was very beautiful, and of a beautiful color. And very dignified.

Oh! ... (Mother notices she was speaking in English) It was Sri Aurobindo who said all that to you. It's funny, isn't it, it comes like that.

It was something that came to announce something to you. It was a being, but a being ... There must be beings like that one. It was all in light, and it was ... to announce something to you.

But so real!

@

December 20, 1967

Mother comes in forty-five minutes late

There is obviously a will to abolish the sense of time, because ... It's very interesting, there are all kinds of experiences like that. I have work that would normally take thirty-six hours out of twenty-four, so naturally, I get later and later every day: I go to bed later and later, and I have to do the night's work, so sometimes I am late in the morning, at times I've been as much as one hour late. Then in the morning, with a certain concentration, in a half-hour I do what would normally take me an hour. I have learned a lot in that respect.

Now, at this time [10:45 A.M.], I can see that the only fatigue is the sense of being late, otherwise one can work indefinitely. There is something to be learned. I mention it to you because it's just occurred to me: it occurs to me that the purpose is to find the key to the mastery over time; not being punctual, but doing everything over a longer or shorter time, in a contracted or expanded time – so time may lose its concrete reality.

For me it would be very easy. The difficulty is all the people, all those around me, whose life (laughing) is like this (chaotic gesture), without direction. It looks incoherent. I can't tell someone, "I'll see you at such and such time," because that's not true! I don't know at what time I'll see him or her. And so, as people are used to eating, sleeping, working at regular hours and all that is regulated, it causes a dreadful confusion – but what's the way?

It's not easy. When you are alone, it doesn't matter, but when you are with lots and lots of people, it's very difficult.

There is the sense of the elasticity of time, which is to say that it has no concrete reality; what gives it a concrete reality is human organizations.... That would leave only the sun, but for the moment it's not a big disturbance because what I do doesn't need daylight; you can rest at any time and work at any time, but a life organized as it is...? I don't know.

Something has to be found.

But the thing to be found is perhaps to be able to shorten sleep and remove fatigue.

That's not enough. It's not enough, because it's an experiment I tried: I was able to rest for only two hours at night, and it was absolutely useless – absolutely. The more time you have, the more work you get.

True!

And now, there's a real crush every day – forty, fifty, sixty people a day. Let alone all the things to be signed, to be studied, then the financial side, which is particularly ... (laughing) "interesting," in this that the more work I have, the less money I get. I have been reduce-d to making payments almost by the hour, and still I owe money to people who vehemently demand it ... because for those who are waiting for their money to pay for their food, naturally it's not very easy if they don't get it.

But it's a sort of feat, something meant to abolish all that's regarded as the normal and natural rules. So there.

That's not to explain to you why I was late, because I did try to be on time! That's not the reason, it's not that I let myself go like that, not at all; but there is a will certainly far more effective than mine.

(Then Mother gives flowers)

This is "Divine Purity."[144] What does "Divine Purity" mean?... It means for the Divine to receive his own influence alone! ... I understand! Or else, for the individual no longer to receive anything but the divine influence – here, mon petit. (Mother gives the flower)

*^**

Soon afterwards

Then, did I tell you about the message for February 21 [when Mother will be ninety]? No? Wasn't it with you that it came?...

It's meant to break formulas, you know, thought formulas, mental categories, and it's not my fault (I mean I didn't do it deliberately). It came like that (Mother reads her message):

"The best way to hasten the manifestation of the Divine's Love is to collaborate for the triumph of the Truth."

So to the superficial mind ... As for us, we know it's true because, as Sri Aurobindo said, the Truth has to be truly established and reign for Divine Love to be able to manifest in all its power and glory without ... without demolishing everything. Sri Aurobindo put it more strongly than that, he said it would "shatter" everything.

So that's the message I am going to give.

*^**

Then Mother returns to the first topic:

Oh, the correspondence has become something fantastic! Twenty-four, twenty-six, thirty, sometimes forty letters a day. So naturally, try as I might ... When it's just a line, it's all right, but I can hardly answer eight or ten every day: I have only an hour and a half, that's not much – not even that much! No, no, the "hour" is too much: I have a half-hour! But I extend it: the half-hour I have is from 7 to 7:30 P.M., but every day I extend it till 8. Dinner is supposedly at 7: 30, I take it at 8. Supposedly too, I go to bed at 9:30 and get up at 4:30, but when I went to bed last night it was almost 11 – 10:30 is common, which means an hour late. So from time to time I get up late. You understand, between about 1 and 2 A.M. (around 12:30, 1, or 2), I complete the first stage of concentration to give the body a good rest; after that I start working, and before working, a slight concentration so that whatever the work, I should be back at 4: 30; but sometimes it's later, sometimes it's 4:45. Then, afterwards, I have a certain time in the morning for washing and dressing, and that's when there have been really interesting experiences: with a certain concentration (which has nothing to do with a will or anything of the kind: it's a concentration, a certain type of concentration and making contact with the Presence – and the sense of the relativity, the very considerable relativity of material time), with an intensity of concentration, you can do the same thing much faster. I eventually found out that simply by concentration you can reduce time by more than half. And you do things in exactly the same way, but they don't take time – how? ... Well, the secrets haven't been revealed yet. But the phenomenon exists.

The same principle is at work (it's not a "principle," it's a way of doing or a way of being), is at work for all things: with fatigue, onsets of diseases, that is, the cause of diseases (the internal disorder or the receptivity to the disorder from outside), it works in the same way. If you add to it the intensity of a faith or an adoration, then it's much easier, but it works in the same way. So what exactly takes place? To the inner perception, the perception of the consciousness, there is a sort of principle of disorder – a principle, almost a taste for disorder, I don't know, it's between a habit of and a preference for disorder – which gets replaced by ... yes (to be as general as possible), by a vibration of harmony. But that vibration of harmony is full of light, of sweetness, of ... warmth, intensity, and so wonderfully CALM! So when "that" takes the place of the other thing, then all that belongs to the world of disorder is dissolved. AND the rigidity of time disappears.[145] Time ... perhaps we could say (it's just a way of speaking), we could say that time is replaced by a succession ... (Mother remains absorbed for a long time).

And that specifically belongs to the material world.

I take the simplest and most concrete things like, for instance, brushing one's teeth; it's extremely flexible and things are done not out of habit but through a sort of choice based on a personal experience and a routine, so as to make a special concentration unnecessary (the real purpose of routine is to avoid the need for a special concentration: things can be done almost automatically). But that automatism is very flexible, very plastic, because depending, as I said, on the intensity of the concentration, time varies – time varies: you can (by looking at the watch before and after, you can notice the phenomenon), you can certainly reduce time by more than half, yet things are done in exactly the same way. That's right: you don't do away with anything, you do everything in the same way. To make sure, you can, for instance, count the number of times you brush your teeth or the number of times you rinse your mouth – I am DELIBERATELY taking the most banal thing, because in other activities there is a natural suppleness that allows you to spread yourself and concentrate (and so it's easier to understand with such things). But it works in the same way with the most concrete and banal things too. And there isn't any "Oh, I won't do this today" or "I am neglecting that" – there's none of all that, nothing at all: everything is done in the same way, BUT with a sort of concentration and constant call – the constant call is always there, certainly. The constant call which might find a material expression such as saying the mantra, but it's not even that: it's the SENSE, the sense of the call, the sense of aspiration – it's mostly a call. A call. You know, when the mind wants to make sentences, it says, "Lord, take possession of Your kingdom." For certain things, I remember, when there are certain disorders, something going wrong (and with the perception of a consciousness that has become very sharp, you can see when that disorder is the natural origin of an illness, for example, or of something very serious), with the call, the concentration and the response ... [the disorder is dissolved]. It's almost a surrender, because it's an uncalculating self-giving: the damaged spot opens to the Influence, not with an idea of getting cured, but like this (gesture of a flower opening out), simply like this, without condition – that is the most potent gesture.

But the interesting part is that formulating it in words makes it sound artificial – it's far more sincere, far more true, far more spontaneous than anything expressed or expressible by the mind. No formula can render the sincerity – simplicity, sincerity, spontaneity, something uncalculating – of the material movement. There was a time when expressing or formulating caused a very unpleasant sensation, like putting something artificial on something spontaneously true; and that unpleasantness was cured only, to begin with, by a higher knowledge that once you have formulated something, you must go beyond it. For instance, any experience expressed or described CALLS FOR a new progress, a new experience. In other words, it hastens the movement. That has been a consolation, because in fact, with the old sensation of something very stable and solid and immobile because of inertia (a past inertia, which is now being transformed but has left marks), because of that inertia there is a tendency to prefer things to be solid; so there is a thrill at being forced to ... "No, no! No rest, no halt go on!" – farther and farther and farther on ... When an experience has been very fruitful and highly pleasant, let us say, when it's had a great force and a great effect, the first movement is-to say, "We won't talk about that, we'll keep it." Then comes, "We'll say it in order to go farther on" – to go farther on, ever farther, ever farther....

There is a stability in the resolve and in the aspiration, a stability that can be found nowhere as much as here (Mother strikes the ground). That's a characteristic of Matter. And you know, when it has given itself and has faith, things become so stable, so constant, and ... a joy, a sort of widening, of luminous expansion – it becomes such a perpetual need that in no other part of the being has it ever been like that. It's something ESTABLISHED. And established effortlessly, established spontaneously, naturally, normally. So we can foresee that when this Matter becomes truly divine – truly divine – its manifestation will be infinitely more complete, more perfect in details, and more stable than anywhere else.

(Towards the end, Mother takes up the English translation of her message for February 21, and hesitates over a turn of phrase:)

I've noticed that if you ask an Englishman today, they are much more supple than those who learned English at the time of Victoria, which was a much more rigid English.

Generally I only have to listen, and Sri Aurobindo speaks to me.... Sri Aurobindo's English was very supple; purists used to argue over certain formulations, and I remember, about certain criticisms he would tell me, "But that's because they don't understand! If I put it this way, it means one thing, and if I put it that way, it means something else. And if I move one word to another place in my sentence, it changes the meaning." He was very exact. If you take little words like this one,[146] there is a subtle difference in meaning whether you use one or the other. And the classic formula generally gives the more banal meaning, the more ordinary, the more superficial.

December 27, 1967

(Mother studies an enlargement of the photograph of the November 24 darshan, which she already commented on in the conversation of November 29.)

I am beginning to think it's a sort of "prototype of a way of being." A prototype, up above, of a way of being. I don't know, it's that and not that; I don't know how to explain.... It strikes me as a photograph of what might be popularly called a "mood" – a universal way of being.

It's very odd, at any rate.

(Laughing) We could call it a mother's way of looking at her progeny, or the Creator's way of looking at his creation! ... Very odd. You see, we've always been given the picture of a smug and self-satisfied God, who says, "Excellent." And here (laughing) it's ... "My! my!"

So there.

*^**

Soon afterwards

There is a change.... You know that ax-brother A. wrote about that priest who abused the Ashram in coarse language – the priest received a command to keep quiet and stop talking slanderously. And now it's general, no one says anything about the Ashram. Then you know that on the Pope's command, all altars have been turned around; U. was asked to do it, he did it in all of Pondicherry's churches; so the archbishop wrote a few lines, saying, "Please thank the Mother because her children have done a very good work...." It means a change, you understand. It means they've received orders.

And I got from this ax-brother A. such a nice note (because he received a basket for Christmas), but a lovely, charming little note, that is, something felt, in which he said that the best of himself always feels itself in my presence. Really an inner change.

I have a strong feeling that they've received orders from above. It gives me a great change in the atmosphere.

*^**

(Regarding the violent agitation in South India against the imposition of Hindi, the language of the North, as the official language. This is the same agitation that had in 1965 led to an attack against the Ashram in which disciples had been injured and buildings burned down. At the time the Pondicherry lieutenant governor had not intervened to stop the rioters from attacking the Ashram. It may be recalled that the majority of the disciples come from North India. In the last few days, trains, buses, post offices have been set on fire....)

Did you notice the police at the gate?... It's the minister (a minister who came here) who sent an order to the lieutenant governor to guard the Ashram.

(silence)

If there were a way (that's what I have been working on for some time), a way to make all this youth understand that to destroy doesn't build – they can't give birth to anything whatsoever with this means. They want to change the state of things, agreed – they may not see very clearly the direction in which we should go, but that things must change is agreed – but still, this method is downright stupid.... They've thrown one more bomb at that poor Indira! She was at a university, at Santiniketan where she had gone to make a speech for a prize distribution (or something of the sort), and they threw a bomb at her. But this time, she was unscathed.

You see, that was the method of the adverse forces to prove that the creation was bad: they weren't satisfied with the creation and set about doing that – that's what they have been doing on a big scale. But it doesn't prove anything! They have established death, established destruction and all the forms of violence and hatred, anyway they turned everything topsy-turvy with the thought that, that way, the world would become a superior world – which is stupid.

And all these people now follow one another in single file, not even aware of what they're doing or why or how or anything! ... They act in the name of freedom and, yes, free progress, because an attempt is made to impose an arbitrary law [Hindi] on them – the arbitrary law is stupid, but what they are doing is still more silly.

Yes, but in this case, all the politicians are the ones responsible.

Oh, yes.

The students follow directives.

I have news from behind the scenes. I know some young people who are part of these movements of agitation, intelligent young people who don't want violence – but they want things to change. And there are all kinds of very interesting things: one of them (they are young people who live with their families, I know some from different places and different types), quite recently the father of one of them, from Calcutta or thereabouts, became worried (I know the father quite well), he was worried; he called a friend of his, a high official in the police, and the friend questioned his son; then he told the father, "Your son is remarkable, highly intelligent, highly remarkable...." But then, it revealed something, that there are spies in the police, and those spies tell lies on people to get themselves noticed, so that lots of reports are false – I'd known that for a long time, but in this instance it became perfectly clear and obvious. For example, there had been reports that this boy had been involved in acts of violence – he's never had anything to do with that! The man who questioned him was entirely convinced of it, because he's a boy who can't do such things, and he said, "I totally disapprove of that." But the police reports had asserted his involvement. So, of course, this falsehood everywhere, mingled with everything, complicates things.

It's perfectly obvious that the higher-ups are the ones responsible, because they're not genuine people: they have neither the knowledge nor the vision nor the wisdom necessary to govern.... For instance, Indira, it seems, was complaining; one of her friends (her close friends), who is a very good disciple of mine, told her one day when she was complaining (she said the people and the government were in a dreadful state), she told her, "But why don't you go and consult Mother? She will give you wisdom." Then Indira replied, "I dare not."[147]

You understand, all this confusion, all this disorder seems to be intended to prepare people for one thing, which, obviously, has not so far even been imagined as being possible – the recourse to a disinterested wisdom in order to govern. They're all caught up in "If I do this, these people will be against me; if I do that, those people ..."

(silence)

At the very bottom of the thing, two tendencies or two conceptions are confronting each other. The first says, "It's badly done: let's destroy it and we'll begin again," from top to bottom. The other says, "It's not the way it should be: let's transform it." These are the two things opposing each other: the effort for progress and transformation, or the brutal and stupid method of smashing everything and starting all over again, so that it goes on endlessly.

It boils down to the fight between Death and Life; progressive life, more and more divine, and Death, which systematically abolishes all that isn't divine. Because only what is divine escapes it.

But the process is ... endless.

The power of progressive transformation is what must be infused into Matter.

December 30, 1967

(Mother extracts from a heap of papers, letters and envelopes of all kinds, a note on Auroville, which was based on her words but written from memory.)

(Laughing) All this hangs together in a marvelous balance!

(Satprem reads out the note)

"Auroville will be a self-supporting township.

"All who live there will participate in its life and development.

"This participation may be passive or active.

"There will be no taxes as such but each will contribute to the collective welfare in work, kind or money.

"Sections like Industries which participate actively will contribute part of their income towards the development of the township. Or if they produce something (like foodstuff) useful for the citizens, they will contribute in kind to the township which is responsible for the feeding of the citizens.

"No rules or laws are being framed. Things will get formulated as the underlying Truth of the township emerges and takes shape progressively. We do not anticipate."

Is that all?

I thought I had said more than that. Because inwardly I said a lot, a whole lot about the organization of food and so on.... We are going to try things out.

Some things are really interesting. For instance, I'd like ... To begin with, every country will have its pavilion, and in the pavilion, there will be a kitchen from that country, which means that the Japanese will be able to eat Japanese food if they want to (!), and so on, but in the township itself, there will be food for vegetarians, food for nonvegetarians, and also a sort of attempt to find "tomorrow's food." The idea is that all this work of assimilation which makes you so heavy (it takes up so much time and energy from the being) should be done BEFORE, that you should be able to immediately assimilate what you are given, as with things they now make; for instance, they have those vitamins that can be directly assimilated, and also (what do they call it?... [Mother tries to remember] I take them every day.... Words and I aren't on very good terms!) ... proteins. Nutritive principles that are found in one thing or another and aren't voluminous – you need to take a tremendous quantity of food to assimilate very little. So now that they are clever enough on the chemical level, that could be simplified. People don't like it, simply because ... they take an intense pleasure in eating (!), but when you no longer take pleasure in eating, you need to be nourished and not to waste your time with that. The amount of time lost is enormous: time for eating, time for digesting, and the rest. So I would like an experimental kitchen to be there, a sort of "culinary laboratory," for a try. And according to their tastes and tendencies, people would go here or there.

And you don't pay for your food, but you must give work, or ingredients: for example, those who had fields would give the produce of their fields; those who had factories would give their products; or else your own work in exchange for food.

That alone does away with much of the internal circulation of money.

And in every field things of that sort could be found.... Ultimately, it must be a town for studies – studies and research on how to live both in a simplified way and in a way such that the higher qualities have MORE TIME to develop. There.

It's only a small beginning.

(Then Mother goes over the text of the note, sentence by sentence)

"Auroville will be a self-supporting township."

I want to insist on the fact that it will be an experiment: it's to make experiments – experiments, research, studies.

An experimental city?

Yes... Auroville will be a city that will attempt to be, or strive or want to be, self-supporting, that is ...

Autonomous?

"Autonomous" would be understood as a sort of independence that breaks off relations with the outside, and that's not what I mean.

For instance, those who produce food, a factory such as "Aurofood" (naturally, when we are fifty thousand, it will be difficult to meet the needs, but for the moment we'll only be a few thousand at the most), well, a factory always produces far too much.... So it will sell outside and receive money. And "Aurofood," for instance, wants to have a special relationship with workers, not at all the old system – something that would be an improvement on the Communist system, a more balanced organization than Sovietism or Communism, that is, which doesn't too much lean either toward one side or the other.

The idea of Aurofood is good, and they are trying to make propaganda among industrialists.

And there is one thing I wanted to say. One's participation in the welfare and existence of the whole township isn't something worked out individually: such and such an individual must give so much. It's not like that. It's worked out according to one's means, activity, possibilities of production; it's not the democratic idea, which cuts everything into small equal bits – an absurd machinery. It's worked out according to one's means: one who has much gives much, one who has little gives little; one who is strong works a lot, one who isn't does something else. You understand, it's something truer, deeper. And that's why I am not trying to explain it right away, because people will start making all kinds of protests. It must come into being AUTOMATICALLY, so to say, with the growth of the township, in the true spirit. That's why this note is quite succinct.

This sentence, for instance:

"All who live there will participate in its life and development..."

... according to their capacities and means, not a mechanical "so much per unit." That's the point. It must be something living and TRUE, not mechanical. And "according to their capacities," that is, one who has material means such as those a factory gives will have to provide in proportion to his production – not so much per individual or per head.

"This participation may be passive or active."

I don't understand what they mean by "passive" (because I spoke in French, then they put it into English). What can they mean by "passive"? ... It would rather be on different planes or levels of consciousness.

You meant that those who basically are sages, who work within, won't have to ...

Yes, that's right. Those who have a higher knowledge won't have to work with their hands, that's what I mean.

"There will be no taxes as such but each will contribute to the collective welfare in work, kind or money."

So that's clear: there will be no taxes of any kind, but everyone will have to contribute to the collective welfare through his work, in kind or with money. Those who have nothing other than money will give money. But to tell the truth, the "work" may be an inner work (but that can't be said, because people aren't honest enough). The work may be an occult work, a completely inner work, but of course, for it to be so, it must be absolutely sincere and true, and with the capacity: no pretense. But it's not necessarily a material work.

"Sections like Industries which participate actively will contribute part of their income towards the development of the township. Or if they produce something (like foodstuff) useful for the citizens, they will contribute in kind to the township which is responsible for the feeding of the citizens."

That's what we've said. The industries will participate actively, they will contribute. If they are industries producing articles that aren't in constant need – and are therefore in amounts or numbers too great for the township's own use, so that they will be sold outside – those industries must naturally participate through money. And I take the example of food: those who produce food will give the township what it needs (in proportion to what they produce, of course), and it is the township's responsibility to feed everyone. That means people won't have to buy their food with money, but they will have to earn it.

It's a kind of adaptation of the Communist system, but not in a spirit of leveling: according to everyone's capacity, his position (not a psychological or intellectual one), his INNER position.

In democracies and with the Communists, there's a leveling down: everyone is pulled down to the same level.

Yes, that's just the point.

The true part is that every human being has the material right ... (but it's not a "right" ...). The organization should be such, arranged in such a way, that everyone's material need should be met, not according to notions of right and equality, but on the basis of the most elementary necessities; then, once that is established, everyone must be free to organize his life, not according to his monetary means, but according to his inner capacities.

"No rules or laws are being framed. Things will get formulated as the underlying Truth of the township emerges and takes shape progressively. We do not anticipate."

What I mean is that usually (always so far, and more and more so), men establish mental rules according to their conceptions and their ideal, then they apply them (Mother lowers her fist, as if to show the world under the mental grip). And that's absolutely false, arbitrary, unreal, so the result is that things revolt, or else waste away and disappear.... It's the experience of LIFE ITSELF that must slowly work out rules AS SUPPLE AND VAST as possible, in order that they ever remain progressive. Nothing must be fixed. That's the immense error of governments: they build a framework and say, "Here is what we've established, now we must live under it." So naturally, Life is crushed and prevented from progressing. It is Life itself, developing more and more in a progression towards Light, Knowledge, Power, that must little by little establish rules as general as possible, so as to be extremely supple and capable of changing according to need – of changing AS RAPIDLY as habits and needs do.

(silence)

At bottom, the problem almost boils down to this: to replace the mental government of intelligence by the government of a spiritualized consciousness.

It's an extremely interesting experience: how the same actions, the same work, the same observations, the same relationship with the people around (near or far), how they take place in the mind, through intelligence, and how they take place in the consciousness, through experience. And that's what this body is now learning – to replace the mental government of intelligence by the spiritual government of the consciousness. And it makes (it looks like nothing, one may not notice it), it makes a tremendous difference, to the point of multiplying the body's possibilities a hundredfold.... When the body is subjected to rules, even if they are broad, even if they are comprehensive, it is a slave to those rules and its possibilities are limited by them. But when it's governed by the Spirit and the Consciousness, that gives it incomparable possibility and flexibility! And that's what will give it the capacity to prolong its life, to last longer: it's by replacing the mental, intellectual government by the government of the Spirit, the Consciousness – THE Consciousness. Outwardly, it doesn't seem to make much difference, but ... My experience is like this (because now my body no longer obeys the mind or the intelligence at all, no longer at all – it doesn't even understand how that can be done), and it more and more, better and better follows the direction and impulsion of the Consciousness. But then, it sees, almost every minute, the tremendous difference that makes.... For instance, time has lost its value (its rigid value): you can do the same thing in very little time or in much time. Necessities have lost their authority: you can adapt yourself this way, adapt yourself that way. All the laws – those laws that were laws of Nature – have lost all their despotism, if I may say so: it no longer works that way. All you have to do is constantly and always to be supple, attentive, and ... responsive to the influence of the Consciousness – the Consciousness in its all-powerfulness – so as to go through all this with extraordinary suppleness.

That is the discovery being made more and more.

And it's wonderful, you know! A wonderful discovery.

It's like a progressive victory over all constraints. So naturally, all the laws of Nature, all the human laws, all habits, all rules, all that grows increasingly supple and finally becomes nonexistent. Yet it is possible to keep a regular rhythm that makes action easier – it's not contrary to this suppleness. But it's a suppleness in the execution, in the adaptation, which comes and changes everything. From the point of view of hygiene, health, organization, from the point of view of the relationship with others, all that has not only lost its aggressiveness (because for it to lose its aggressiveness, all you have to do is to be wise – wise and level-headed and calm), but also its absolutism, its imperative rule: that's entirely gone – gone.

And then, you see: as the process grows more and more perfect – "perfect" means integral, total, leaving nothing behind – it NECESSARILY, inevitably means victory over death. Not that this dissolution of the cells which death involves stops existing, but that it would exist only when necessary: not as an absolute law, but as ONE of the processes, when necessary.

It's mainly all that the Mind has brought in terms of rigidity and absoluteness and near invincibility – that's what ... is going to disappear. And simply by ... handing the supreme power over to the Supreme Consciousness.

That may be what the sages of old meant when they spoke of handing the power of Nature or the power of the Prakriti over to the Purusha – handing it from the Prakriti over to the Purusha. Perhaps it was their way of expressing the same thing.

@