AGENDA 1951-1960

Mother's Agenda 1960


28. January 1960 – Stubbornness leads to Victory

To the most stubborn goes the victory.

When I started my japa one year ago, I had to struggle with every possible difficulty, every contradiction, prejudice and opposition that fills the air. And even when this poor body began walking back and forth for japa, it used to knock against things, it would start breathing all wrong, coughing; it was attacked from all sides until the day I caught the Enemy and said,’ Listen carefully. You can do whatever you want, but I’m going right to the end and nothing will stop me, even if I have to repeat this mantra ten crore times.’ The result was really miraculous, like a cloud of bats flying up into the light all at once. From that moment on, things started going better.

You have no idea what an irresistible effect a well-determined will can have.

Some difficulties remained, of course, but they stemmed more from what had to change within.

Actually, difficulties come from very small things; they may seem quite commonplace, totally uninteresting, but they block the way. They come for no earthly reason – some detail, a word that comes rubbing against a sensitive spot, an illness in someone close to me, anything at all, and suddenly something in me contracts. Then all the work has to be started afresh as though nothing had been done.

Of all forms of ego, you might think that the physical ego is the most difficult to conquer (or rather, the body ego, because the work was already done long ago on the physical ego). It might be thought that the form of the body is a point of concentration, and that without this concentration or hardness, physical life would not be possible. But that’s not true. The body is really a wonderful instrument; it’s capable of widening and of becoming vast in such a way that everything, everything – the slightest gesture, the least little task – is done in a wonderful harmony and with a remarkable plasticity. Then all of a sudden, for something quite stupid, a draft, a mere nothing, it forgets – it shrinks back into itself, it gets afraid of disappearing, afraid of not being. And everything has to be started again from scratch. So in the yoga of matter you start realizing how much endurance is needed. I calculated it would take 200 years to say ten crore of my japa. Well, I’m ready to struggle 200 years if necessary, but the work will be done.

Sri Aurobindo had made it clear to me when I was still in France that this yoga in matter is the most difficult of all. For the other yogas, the paths have been well laid, you know where to tread, how to proceed, what to do in such-and-such a case. But for the yoga of matter, nothing has ever been done, never, so at each moment everything has to be invented.

Of course, things are now going better, especially since Sri Aurobindo became established in the subtle physical, an almost material subtle physical. But there are still plenty of question marks... The body understands once, and then it forgets. The Enemy’s opposition is nothing, for I can see clearly that it comes from outside and that it’s hostile, so I do what’s necessary. But where the difficulty lies is in all the small things of daily material life – suddenly the body no longer understands, it forgets.

Yet it’s HAPPY. It loves doing the work, it lives only for that – to change, to transform itself is its reason for being. And it’s such a docile instrument, so full of good will! Once it even started wailing like a baby: ‘O Lord, give me the time, the time to be transformed...’ It has such a simple fervor for the work, but it needs time – time, that’s it. It wants to live only to conquer, to win the Lord’s Victory.

03. March 1960 – Krishna

Experiences are coming at a furious pace – fabulous experiences. If I were to speak now, it’s certain that I would not at all speak as I used to. That’s why we must date all these Questions and Answers, at least all which come before the [Supramental] Manifestation of February 1956, so that there will be a clear cut between those before and those after.

Only a few days ago, on the morning of the 29th, I had one of those experiences that mark one’s life. It happened upstairs in my room. I was doing my japa, walking up and down with my eyes wide open, when suddenly Krishna came – a gold Krishna, all golden, in a golden light that filled the whole room. I was walking, but I could not even see the windows or the rug any longer, for this golden light was everywhere with Krishna at its center. And it must have lasted at least fifteen minutes. He was dressed in those same clothes in which he is normally portrayed when he dances.

He was all light, all dancing: ‘You see, I will be there this evening during the Darshan.’ And suddenly, the chair I use for darshan came into the room! Krishna climbed up onto it, and his eyes twinkled mischievously, as if to say, ‘I will be there, you see, and there’ll be no room for you.’

When I came down that evening for distribution, at first I was annoyed. I had said that I didn’t want anybody in the hall, precisely because I wanted to establish an atmosphere of concentration, the immobility of the Spirit – but there were at least thirty people in there, those who had decorated the hall, thirty of them stirring, stirring about, a mass of little vibrations. And before I could even say ‘scat’ – I had hardly taken my seat – someone put the tray of medals on my lap and they started filing past.

But what is surprising is that in a flash, no one was there any longer. No one, you understand – I was gone. Perhaps I was everywhere (but in fact I am always everywhere, I am always conscious of being everywhere at the same time), though normally there is the sense of the body, a physical center, but that evening there was no more center! Nothing, no one, not even the sense that there was no one – nothing. I was gone. There was indeed something handing out the medals which felt the joy of giving the medal, the joy of receiving it, the joy of mutually looking at each other. It was simply the joy of the action taking place, the joy of looking, this joy everywhere, but me? – Nothing, no one, gone. Only later, afterwards, did I see what had happened, for everything had disappeared, even the higher mind that understands and organizes things (by ‘understand’ I mean contain, which ‘contains’ things). That also was gone. And this lasted the entire distribution. Only when that [the body] had gone back upstairs to the room did the consciousness of what is me return.

There is a line by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri which expresses this very well: to annul oneself so that only the Supreme Lord may be.

And there are many, many experiences like this. It is only a small, a very small beginning. This one in particular came to mark the new stage: four years have elapsed, and now four years to come. Because everything has focused on this body to prepare it, everything has concentrated on it – Nature, the Master of the Yoga, the Supreme, everything... So only when it’s over, not before, will it really be interesting to speak of all this. But maybe it will never be over, after all. It’s a small beginning, very small.

06. May 1960 – Sri Aurobindo speaks of this Secret almost everywhere

At times I sense there’s an extraordinary secret to discover, just there at my finger tips; I feel that I am going to catch the Thing, to know...

Sometimes, for a second, I see the Secret; there is an opening, and again it closes. Then once again it is unveiled for a second and I come to know a little more. Yesterday the Secret was there completely clear, wide open. But it’s not something that can be explained: words are silly, it must be experienced.

Sri Aurobindo speaks of this Secret almost everywhere, especially in his Essays on the Gita. He tells us that in the Gita itself one gets glimpses of this thing which is beyond the Impersonal, beyond even the Personal behind the Impersonal, beyond the Transcendent.

Well, I saw this Secret – I saw that the Supreme only becomes perfect in terrestrial matter, on earth.

‘Becomes’ is just a way of speaking, of course, for everything already is, and the Supreme is what He is. But we live in time, in a successive unfoldment, and it would be absurd to say that at present Matter is the expression of a perfect Divine.

I saw this Secret (which is getting more and more perceptible as the Supramental becomes clear), I saw it in the everyday, outer life, precisely in this very physical life which all spirituality rejects... a kind of accuracy or exactitude right down to the atom.

I am not saying that the ‘Divine’ becomes perfect in Matter – the Divine is already there – but that THE SUPREME becomes perfect in Matter.

16. May 1960 – The Foundation is Humility

If there is one fundamental necessity, it is humility. To be humble. Not humble as it is normally understood, such as merely saying, ‘I am so small, I’m nothing at all’ – no, something else... Because the pitfalls are innumerable, and the further you progress in yoga, the more subtle they become, and the more the ego masks itself behind marvelous and saintly appearances. So when somebody says, ‘I no longer want to rely on anything but Him. I want to close my eyes and rest in Him alone,’ this comfortable ‘Him,’ which is exactly what you want him to be, is the ego – or a formidable Asura, or a Titan (depending on each one’s capacity). They’re all over the earth, the earth is their domain. So the first thing to do is to pocket your ego – not preserve it, but get rid of it as soon as possible!

You can be sure that the God you’ve created is a God of the ego whenever something within you insists, ‘This is what I feel, this is what I think, this is what I see; it’s my way, my very own – it’s my way of being, my way of understanding, my relationship with the Divine, etc.'

And then they say, ‘I want to close my eyes and see nothing but Him I want nothing more of the outer world.’ And they forget there’s Love! That is the great Secret, that which is behind the Existent and the Non-Existent, the Personal and the Impersonal – Love. Not a love between two things, two beings... A love containing everything.

In the early part of the century, I wrote Prayers and Meditations, and I too spoke of ‘Him’; but I wrote that with all my aspiration, all my sincerity (at least with all the sincerity of the conscious parts of my being) and I locked it up in a drawer so that no one would see it. It was Sri Aurobindo who later asked me to publish it, for it could be useful... If I knew then, fifty years ago, what I know now, I would have been crushed!... All this ‘shame,’ all this ‘unworthiness’...

After all, it’s good to know gradually, good to have some illusions – not for the sake of illusions but as a necessary step along the way.

Everything comes at the right moment.

And what is wonderful is that at each moment the Grace, the Joy, the Light, the Love never cease pouring down in the very midst of all this – despite the ego, despite the shame, despite the unworthiness.

To be humble...

16. May 1960 – The Experience of physical eternity

I was sick two days ago with a cold and fever. I know why – a point to be transformed. The body may have put too much zeal into it, so it teetered a little. But thanks to that, I had an interesting experience. X had put his force on me to speed up the healing. And of course, according to each one’s nature, the force gets colored, so to speak – it clothes itself in a different color. In me, this was translated by a new physical experience which lasted from 4 in the morning till 6:30, when I had to start speaking with people and deal with outer things. It was a kind of eternity, a kind of absolute PHYSICAL immobility which contained no possibility of illness within it – as a matter of fact, nothing remained in this immobility, it was a sort of nirvana. But it did not keep me from going through all my usual motions of getting dressed.

I spent the whole day yesterday trying to understand this experience.

And in that kind of physical eternity (which lasted two and a half hours – it’s a long time for an experience), I was aware of something missing, something not there: the joy of the consciousness. Because throughout my life I have developed the habit of being conscious of everything, always, at each second. And the joy of the consciousness was not there. So I thanked the Grace that made me see that this kind of nirvana was quite simply physical tamas.

(silence)

X has the power of rendering things very material – that’s his great power, which is why things get upset when he comes here. Overnight, someone progressing well comes to grips with difficulties; money on the way stops coming; you fall sick, things break down – all because he has the power to give materiality to things from above. For, you see, you can go right to the height of your consciousness and from there sweep away the difficulties (at a certain moment of the sadhana, difficulties truly don’t exist, it’s only a matter of nabbing the undesirable vibration and it’s over, it’s reduced to dust). And everything is fine up above, but down below it’s swarming. When X comes, it’s precisely all this swarming that becomes tangible.

The mastery must be a TRUE mastery, a very humble and austere mastery which starts from the very bottom and, step by step, establishes control. As a matter of fact, it is a battle against small, really tiny things: habits of being, ways of thinking, feeling and reacting.

When this mastery at the very bottom combines with the consciousness at the very top, then you can really begin doing some work – not only work on yourself but also the work for all.

21. May 1960 – True Purity is non-ego

What I call purity, the true purity, is not all those things morality teaches: it is non-ego.

There must be nothing but Him.

Him, not only because we have given Him everything and consecrated ourselves totally to Him (that is not enough), but Him because He has taken total possession of the human instrument.

At times, I feel that I’ll never get over the difficulty. We are besieged by this enormous world of hostile forces – oceans of forces, churning and combining and submerging each other in gigantic pralayas, then again regrouping and combining. When you see that, it feels as if you had to be the Divine Himself to get over the difficulty. Precisely so! (And it’s the hostile forces who help you to see this, it’s their role.)

You have TO BE THE DIVINE, that is the solution, that is the true divine purity.

***

When X is here, I get the impression that things are going backwards instead of forwards. But once he’s left, I suddenly leap ahead. And then I perceive that the progress is a real progress, that things won have really been won and they don’t come undone again. That is X’s true power, a very material power. For I often feel that things could come into being, they could be realized in the consciousness above (and the vision is there, the Power is there, I have it – the invisible power over the earth). But when you come down to the material plane, everything is uncertain. Whereas with X, once things have come down, they no longer dissipate. This is certainly why the Supreme put him on my path.

For example, there was one difficulty he helped me resolve. I have always been literally pestered, constantly, night and day, by all kinds of thoughts coming from people – all kinds of calls, questions, formations that have naturally to be answered. For I have trained myself to be conscious of everything, always. But it disturbed me in the work, particularly when I needed absolute concentration – and I could never cut myself off from people or cut myself off from the world. I had to answer all these calls and these questions, I had to send the necessary force, the necessary light, the healing power, I constantly had to purify all these formations, these thoughts, these wills, these false movements that were falling on me.

What was needed was to effect a shift, a sort of transference upwards, a lifting up of all these things that come to me – so that each one, each thing, each circumstance could directly and automatically receive the force from above, the light, the response from above, and I would be a mere intermediary and a channel of the Light and the Force.

Well, I tried hard but I couldn’t really find the way. At times, I almost seemed to have it, a mere nothing would have been enough; it was just a matter of getting the knack (and at heart, this is what Power is all about – to get the knack, to suddenly seize upon the means, the right vibration, what in India is called siddhi). Well, after his departure, all of a sudden it came. It happened while I was doing my japa, while I was walking up and down my room... As if I were holding all that in my arms – it was so concrete – and lifting it up towards the Light, along with this ascending OM, rising from the very depths, OM! – and I was carrying all these people, and it was spreading forth, PHYSICALLY spreading, and I was carrying the earth, I was carrying the whole universe, but in such a tangible, concrete way – all towards the Supreme Lord.

And this was not the invisible power: it was concrete, it was tangible, it was MATERIAL.

24. May 1960 – Disintegration of the physical ego

It happened last night. For approximately three hours, the physical ego disintegrated for the first time in such a total way.

Nothing remained but the Force, nothing remained but Sat-Chit-Ananda, and not only in the consciousness but in the physical sensation – the divine Satchidananda spreading in a constant flood throughout the universe.

These experiences are always absolute, as long as they last; then, through certain signs that I know (I am accustomed to it), I notice that the body consciousness begins closing up again. Or rather, ‘something’ – evidently a Supreme Wisdom – decides it’s sufficient for this time and that the body has had enough. It ought not to break, which is why certain precautions are taken. So this comes in several little stages that I know quite well. The final one is always a bit unpleasant because my body gets into rather peculiar positions as a result of the work. As it’s only a sort of machine, towards the end I have some difficulty straightening my knees, for example, or opening my fingers – I think they even make a noise, like something forced into one position whose life has become purely spontaneous and mechanical. There are plenty of people like that, plenty, who enter into trance and then can no longer get out by themselves; they get themselves into a certain position and someone has to free them. This has never happened to me; I have always managed to extricate myself. But yesterday evening, the experience lasted a very long time. There was even a little cracking at the end, as when people have rheumatism.

And during all this time, approximately three hours, the consciousness was completely, completely different. It was here, however; it was not outside the earth, it was on earth, but it was completely different – even the body consciousness was different. And what remained was very mechanical; it was a body, but it could just as well have been anything. All this power of consciousness that for more than seventy years I’ve gradually pushed into each of the body’s cells so that each cell could become conscious (and it goes on constantly, constantly), all this seemed to have withdrawn – there only remained one almost lifeless thing. However, I could raise myself up from my bed and even drink a glass of water, but it was all so... bizarre. And when I went back to bed, it took nearly forty-five minutes for the body to regain its normal state. Only after I had entered into another type of samadhi and again come out of it did my consciousness fully return. It is the first time I have had an experience of this kind.

During those three hours, there was nothing but the Supreme manifesting through the eternal Mother.

But there was no consciousness of being Mother, neither eternal nor whatever: it was a continuous and all-powerful flood, and so extraordinarily varied, of the Lord manifesting Himself.

It was as vast as the universe, a continuous movement – the movement of manifestation of something which was EVERYTHING at once, a single whole. There was no division. And such a variety of colors, vibrations, powers – extraordinary! It was one single thing, and everything was within it.

The three Supreme Principles were very clearly there: Existence, Consciousness (an active, realizing consciousness) and Ananda. A universal vastness that kept going on and on and on...

It moves and it doesn’t move. How can you explain that? It was in motion, a constant, unceasing motion, and yet there was no shifting of place. I had the perception, or rather there was the perception, of something which WAS forever, which never repeated itself, neither began nor ended, which didn’t shift places yet was always in motion.

Words cannot express it. No translation, none, not even the most subtle mental translation can express this. It was... Even now the memory I have of it is inexpressible. You have to be in it to feel it, otherwise...

However, to the consciousness it was very, very clear. It was neither mysterious nor incomprehensible, it was absolutely obvious – though untranslatable to our mental consciousness. For they were contradictory, yet they existed simultaneously, indistinguishable: they were not stacked one upon another – it was all simultaneous. How can you explain that?! It’s too difficult. It must be experienced.

You see, when something goes beyond thought, a sort of conception of it, or super-conception rather, remains behind. But in this case, in my experience, there was no question of thought – it was a question of physical sensation. It was not beyond thought, it was beyond sensation. I was LIVING this thing. And there was no more ‘I’. There was nothing but this thing, and yet there was a sensation. I can’t explain it!

When I went back to bed, the transitional period lasted 45 minutes. During this time, I tried to locate the role of the individual consciousness on earth. In a flash, I understood its purpose. For you see, as long as the experience lasted, I did not feel any necessity at all of an individuality for this supreme flood to manifest. Then I understood, precisely, that the individuality served to put into contact, in this flood, all that reached out towards what is called ‘I’ – this individualized representation of the Divine – in order to receive help and support from it, and to be put into contact. I did not say ‘put into contact WITH this flood’ but ‘put into contact IN this flood,’ for it was not happening outside – nothing was outside this flood, nothing exists outside it.

And what was really very lovely was the ACCURACY and the power which directed the forces. I watched this for three quarters of an hour: for each thing that presented itself (it could have been someone thinking, something taking place, anything at all), a special little concentration of this flood went exactly onto that point, like a special insistence.

And all this was absolutely egoless, without any personal reaction, nothing; there was nothing but the consciousness of the Supreme Action. It was the only thing existing.

And of course, the whole ordinary and higher mind (as well as the physical mind, it goes without saying, for that must be abolished before going into trance), everything here in the head, above the head, around the head – absolutely immobile.

After all that, towards the end of the night, at two in the morning, only a kind of faint suggestion was left: How can this state – which I knew in trance, in samadhi, and which necessitates lying down – become constant in a physical body which moves about? There is something to discover there. And what form will it take? For in my consciousness, you see, it is constantly like that, this universal flood, but the problem is IN THE BODY: it’s the problem of the Force in its most material form.

And during the time my experience lasted, I had no feeling of anything exceptional, but rather simply the fact that after all its preparation, the body consciousness was ready for a total identification with That – in my consciousness it’s always the same, a perpetual, constant and eternal state in that it never leaves me. It’s like that, and it never varies. What diminishes the immensity of the Vibration are the limitations of the material consciousness which can color it and even sometimes change it by giving it a personal appearance. Thus, when I see someone and speak to him, for example, when my eyes concentrate on the person, I have almost the sensation of this flood flowing from me towards the person or of it passing through me to go onto the person. There is an awareness of the eyes, the body. And it is this which limits or even changes a little the immensity of the thing ... But already this feeling has almost disappeared; this immensity seems to be acting almost constantly. There are moments when I am less interiorized, when I am more on the surface, and it feels like it’s passing through a body – moments when the body consciousness comes back a little. And this is what diminishes the thing.

This experience last night also enabled me to understand what X had felt during one of our meditations. He had explained his experience by way of saying that I was this mystic tree whose roots plunge into the Supreme and whose branches spread forth over the world, and he said that one of these branches had entered into him – and it had been a unique experience. He had said, ‘this is the Mother.’

And now I understand that what he had seen and translated by this Vedic image was that kind of perpetual flood.

And you see, this experience he had, this contact between him and me, is just a point, a drop, it’s nothing; it’s merely something the consciousness puts into words, but the THING itself is universal. Last night it was universal; there was no room, no bed, no door – and it was concrete, concrete, so concrete, with such a splendor! There was all the Joy – this perpetual downpour in a limitless splendor.

I was reluctant to speak (because of this problem that remains hanging: to make it permanent, even in the active consciousness), and I said to myself that if I speak, it will create difficulties for me in finding the solution... But it’s all right. I shall simply have to make a still greater effort, because something always evaporates when you speak.

28. May 1960 – Burning people after death

K left his body. The operation had been extraordinarily, almost miraculously successful – one of those dreadful operations where they extract part of your body. He was quite all right for four days afterwards, then everything went wrong.

During the operation and just afterwards, I had simply put the Force on him, as I always do in such cases, so that everything would turn out for the best. Then a few days ago, during my japa, a kind of order came – a very clear order – to concentrate on him so that he would be conscious of his soul and able to leave under the best conditions. And I saw that the concentration worked wonderfully: it seems that during his last days he was ceaselessly repeating Ma-Ma-Ma – even while he was in a semi-coma.

And the concentration grew stronger and stronger. The day before yesterday it became very, very powerful, and yesterday morning, around half past noon, it pulled me inward; he came to me in a kind of sleep, a conscious sleep, and I even said almost aloud, ‘Oh, K!’

It lasted fifteen minutes; I was completely within, inside, as if to receive him.

But there is something interesting: when I went down at 2 p.m., I found the family had come to inform me that they had been notified by telephone that he had died at 11:45 a.m. Myself, I saw him come at 12:30.

So you see, the outer signs... It’s not the first time I’ve noticed this – the doctors observe all the outer signs, then they declare you dead, but you’re still in your body!

In other words, he was still in his body.

So it’s probably during this period that people are ‘resuscitated,’ as they say. It must be during this period, for they have not left their bodies, they are not really dead, though the heart may give every appearance of having stopped. So K left his body at around half past noon, and officially it was at 11:45. Forty-five minutes later, in other words.

And it takes place very gently, very gently (when it’s done right), very gently, very gently, smoothly, without any shock.

So this morning they’re burning him.

When they’re in too much of a hurry to burn them, sometimes they burn them alive!... They should wait.

For there’s a consciousness of the form, a life of the form. There’s a consciousness, a consciousness in the form assumed by the cells. That takes SEVEN DAYS to come out. So sometimes the body makes abrupt movements when burned – people say it’s mechanical. It’s not mechanical, I know it’s not.

I know it. I know that this consciousness of the form exists since I have actually gone out of it. Once, long back, I was in a so-called cataleptic state, and after awhile, while still in this state, the body began living again180; that is, it was capable of speaking and even moving (it was Théon who gave me this training). The body managed to get up and move. And yet, everything had gone out of it!

Once everything had gone out, it naturally became cold, but the body consciousness manages to draw a little energy from the air, from this or that... And I spoke in that state. I spoke – I spoke very well, and besides, I recounted all I was seeing elsewhere.

So I don’t like this habit of burning people very much.

I think they do it here (apart from entirely sanitary considerations in the case of people who have died from nasty diseases), here in India, mainly because they are very afraid of all these little entities that come from desires, impulses – things which are dispersed in the air and which make ‘ghosts’ and all kinds of things. All desires, all attachments, all those things are like pieces that break off (each one goes its own way, you see), then these pieces gain strength in the surrounding atmosphere, and when they can fasten on to someone, they vampirize him. Then they keep on trying to satisfy their desires.

The world, the terrestrial atmosphere, is full of filth.

And people here are much more sensitive than in Europe because they are much more interiorized, so they are conscious of all these little entities, and naturally they’re afraid. And the more afraid they are, the more they’re vampirized!

I think that many of these entities are dispersed by fire – that creates havoc.

I know one person, a boy who died here, who was burned before he had left! He had a weak heart, and not enough care was taken – that is, they probably should not have operated on him. He was our engineer. He died in the hospital. Not a serious operation, an appendicitis, but his heart could not take up its natural movement.

But as he was accustomed to going out of his body, he didn’t know! He even used to make experiments – he would go out, circle around in his room, see his body from outside, observe the difference between the subtle physical and the material physical, etc. So he didn’t know. And it’s only when they burned his body...

I tried to delay the moment, but he was in the hospital, so it was difficult. I was in my room when they burned his body, and then suddenly I saw him arrive – sobbing – saying, ‘But... But I m dead. I DIDN’T WANT to die! Why am I dead, I DIDN’T WANT to die!’ It was dreadful. So I kept him and held him against me to quiet him down.

He remained there for years.

And whenever we used to have meetings to decide on the construction of something or on repairs to be made, for example, I always felt him there and he influenced those who were present.

He wanted to live again; I managed to give him the opportunity. He was very conscious; the child isn’t yet so.

But people are such fools, they are so ignorant!...

04. June 1960 – Energetic and conscious sleep

(The disciple complains of his bad nights)

If you wake up tired in the morning, it is due to tamas, nothing else – a dreadful mass of tamas. I became aware of this when I started doing the yoga of the body. And it’s inevitable as long as the body is not transformed.

Myself, I go to bed very early, at eight o’clock. It’s still quite noisy everywhere, but I don’t mind; at least I’m sure of no longer being disturbed. First you must stretch out flat and relax all your muscles, all your nerves – you can learn this easily – become like a ‘dishrag’ on the bed, as I call it; there should be nothing left. And if you can also do that with the mind, you get rid of a lot of idiotic dreams that make you more tired when you wake up than when you went to bed; they are the result of the cellular activity of the brain going on uncontrollably, which is very tiring. Therefore, relax fully, bring everything to a complete, tensionless calm in which everything has stopped. But this is only the beginning.

Once I’m relaxed, I have developed the habit of repeating my mantra. But it’s very strange with these mantras – I don’t know how it is for others; I’m speaking of my own mantra, the one I myself found – it came spontaneously. Depending on the occasion, the time, depending on what I might call the purpose for repeating it, it has quite different results. For example, I use it to establish the contact while walking back and forth in my room – my mantra is a mantra of evocation; I evoke the Supreme and establish the contact with the body.

This is the main reason for my japa. There’s a power in the sound itself, and by forcing the body to repeat the sound, you force it to receive the vibration at the same time. But I’ve noticed that if something in the body’s working gets disturbed (a pain or disorder, the onset of some illness) and I repeat my mantra in a certain way – still the same words, the same mantra, but said with a certain purpose and above all in a movement of surrender, surrender of the pain, the disorder, and a call, like an opening – it has a marvelous effect. The mantra acts in just the right way, in this way and in no other. And after a while everything is put back in order. And simultaneously, of course, the precise knowledge of what lies behind the disorder and what I must do to set it right comes to me. But quite apart from this, the mantra acts directly upon the pain itself.

I also use my mantra to go into trance. After relaxing on the bed and making as total a self-offering as possible of everything, from top to bottom, and after removing as fully as possible all resistance of the ego, I start repeating the mantra. After repeating it two or three times, I am in trance (at the beginning it took longer). And from this trance I pass into sleep; the trance lasts as long as necessary and, quite naturally, spontaneously, I pass into sleep. And when I come back, I remember everything. The sleep was like a continuation of the trance. And essentially, the only reason for sleep is to allow the body to assimilate the results of the trance, then to allow these results to be accepted throughout and to let the body do its natural night’s work of eliminating toxins. My periods of sleep practically don’t exist – sometimes they are as short as half an hour or 15 minutes. But in the beginning, I had long periods of sleep, one or even two hours in succession. And when I woke up, I did not feel this residue of heaviness which comes from sleep – the effects of the trance continued.

It is even good for people who’ve never been in trance to repeat a mantra (or a word, a prayer) before going to sleep. But the words must have a life of their own – by this I don’t mean an intellectual meaning, nothing of the kind, but rather a vibration. And this has an extraordinary effect on the body, it starts vibrating, vibrating, vibrating... and so calm, you let yourself go, like falling off to sleep. And the body vibrates more and more, more and more, more and more, and you drift off.

Such is the cure for tamas.

It’s tamas that gives you a bad sleep. There are two kinds of bad sleep – that which makes you heavy and leaden, as if the result of all your effort the day before were wasted, and that which exhausts you, as if you had spent the whole time fighting. And I’ve observed that if you cut your sleep up into sections (it becomes a habit), the nights get better. In other words, you must be able to come back to your normal consciousness and your normal aspiration at certain intervals, come back to the call of your consciousness... But you must not use an alarm clock. When in trance, it’s not good to be jolted.

Just as you are drifting off, you can make a formation and say, ‘I shall wake up at such-and-such time’ (children do it very easily).

You should count on at least three hours for the first part of your sleep; for the last part, one hour is enough. But the first should be a minimum of three hours. In fact, it is best to remain in bed for at least seven hours; with six, you don’t have the time to do much (of course, I’m speaking from the standpoint of sadhana, to make the nights useful).

But for years together I only slept 2 1/2 hours a night in all. I mean that my night consisted of 2 1/2 hours. And I went straight to Sat-Chit-Ananda and then came back: 2 1/2 hours were spent like that. But the body was tired. That lasted more than five or six years while Sri Aurobindo was still in his body. And during the day, I was all the time going into trance for the least thing (it was trance, not sleep – I was conscious). But I clearly saw that the body was affected, for it had no time to burn its toxins.

...There would be many interesting things to tell about sleep, because it’s one of the things I’ve studied the most – to speak of how I became conscious of my nights, for instance. (I learned this with Théon, and now that I know all these things of India, I realize that he knew a GREAT deal.)

But it bothers me a lot to say ‘I’ – I this, I that. I’d rather speak of these things in the form of a treatise or an essay on sleep, for example. Sri Aurobindo always spoke of his experiences but rarely did he say’ I’ – it always sounds like boasting.

Sri Aurobindo said that the true or yogic reason for sleep is to put the consciousness back into contact with Sat-Chit-Ananda (I used to do this without knowing it). For some people the contact is established immediately, while for others it takes eight, nine, ten hours to do it. But really, normally you should not wake up till the contact has been established, and that’s why it’s very bad to wake up in an artificial way (with an alarm clock, for example), because then the night is wasted.

As for me, my night is now organized. I go to bed at 8 o’clock and get up at 4, which makes for a very long night, and it’s sliced into three parts. And I get up punctually at 4 in the morning. But I’m always awake ten or fifteen minutes beforehand, and I review all that has happened during the night, the dreams, the various activities, etc., so that when I get up, I am fully active.

To make use of your nights is an excellent thing, for it has a double effect: a negative effect, in that it keeps you from falling backwards, from losing what you’ve gained (that is really painful); and a positive effect, in that you progress, you continue progressing. You make use of your nights, so there’s no more residue of fatigue.

There are two things to avoid: falling into a stupor of unconsciousness, with all those things coming up from the subconscious and the unconscious that invade and penetrate you, and a vital and mental hyperactivity in which you pass your time literally fighting – terrible battles. People come out of that black and blue, as if they had been beaten – and they have been, it is not ‘as if’! And I see only one way out – to change the nature of sleep.

12. July 1960 – Mother's experience

Last night something happened to me that I found quite amusing. I was awakened by a Voice, or rather it roused me from one trance to put me into another. It happened at about 11 o’clock. Not a human Voice. I don’t exactly recall its words any longer, but it had to do with the Ashram – its protection, its success, its power. And what was interesting was that when I woke up, I was in a state in which this formation that is the Ashram and the Force that is condensed here to realize what this Voice wanted, seemed a very tiny, tiny part of myself.

I heard the Voice and awoke with the feeling of this Power, this Light, this Force of realization concentrated here which sets everything in motion (as always, it is always the same, a Power in motion). It was a dazzling white light. But then, what I found funny was that there I was, quite in my natural state, and this, the Ashram, was a tiny, tiny part of myself. And throughout the whole experience, it remained like that – a very tiny part of myself. Everything else was... I can’t say deconcentrated, but an entirely general, overall activity, as it normally is every night. And I saw the Ashram quite clearly – it was something special, made for special reasons, but whereas I seemed to have an immense body, that was very small, very small. It went on for an hour. That’s what I found amusing; the other things just happen, and they may be interesting, but this was so spontaneous; I was watching it (I don’t know where my head was), I was looking down from above... so tiny, so tiny.

What was me was up above, and the Ashram was... It began just here (the navel) and went that way (downwards), and it was encircled, to show that it was a special formation – encircled in the inconscience of the terrestrial creation. And I was everything else, with the usual vibrations of power and light. And then one current and another current and another were passing into it, into this formation, and they kept going in and in and in, accumulating. They kept going in, and yet they did not come out, they did not leave. It was not an undulatory movement, but rather a pulsating movement – it had no beginning, it didn’t go out, and yet it kept moving. It’s very difficult to describe.

The formation represented by the Ashram was located approximately here, at the height of the navel in relation to what I was – but although the body was not delimited, it had certain attributes or undefined forms, each one of which was situated in relation to the other as though each represented one part of the body; each was symbolic of either an activity or a part of the world or a mode of manifestation. So the formation started from about here, near the navel, and went down towards the appendix... Here, I’ll draw you a sketch:

It’s form was elongated, slanting downwards (it always has this form). At the top it looked like a head, then the lines disappeared down below. It had no openings. And then, it was surrounded by various dark sheaths, a very dark purple which is the color of protection. A sparkling light was entering into it – it kept entering, but without making any holes. It passed right through everything, through the purple – through everything. It passed through and entered inside, where there were sparklings of every color, like a cascade. There are always these cascades of force – similar to a cascading stream whose waters neither flow on nor disappear, but accumulate: an accumulation of energies, a condensation. And they accumulate without taking up any more space through a kind of compression. And inside, it’s moving, vibrating, vibrating, vibrating, it keeps coming and coming – you don’t know where it comes from, but it keeps coming and accumulating.

It was a force with a sparkling white light at its center, the light which is the force of the Divine Mother, and as soon as it was well packed and concentrated inside, or condensed, it took on all the colors – vibrations of every color... Like a materialization – these colors were like a materialization of the Divine Force when it enters matter. (Just as matter is a condensation of energy, well, this seemed to be a condensation of Divine Force. That’s really the impression it gave.)

It reminded me of tantric things. I have seen tantric formations and how forces are systematically separated by them – each vibration, each color. It’s very interesting. They are all one, and yet each is distinct. That is, they are separated in order to be distinguished and for each one to be used individually. Each one represents a particular action for obtaining something in particular. This is the special knowledge the tantrics have, I believe. Or it’s the reflection of their knowledge. And my impression is that when they do their pujas or say their mantras, what they are trying to do is recombine all that into the white light. I’m not sure. I know they use each one separately for a separate purpose, but when they speak of their puja ‘succeeding,’ it may mean that they have been able to recombine the light. But I say this very guardedly. For I would have to see X do his puja one day to really know – from afar I’m not so sure. It’s merely an impression.

This is what I am constantly seeing now, but along with this Divine Force or this Divine Consciousness that Sri Aurobindo speaks of when he says, ‘Mother’s Force is with you.’ When it comes, it is sparkling white, perfectly white and perfectly luminous. And as it accumulates inside, it makes living vibrations of every color. And it goes on and on and on. Sometimes it lasts half an hour, three-quarters of an hour, an hour – nothing goes out. And it keeps constantly entering. And it piles up. It’s as if it is all being accumulated or compressed together.

So, the observing mind, the intelligence that watches, looked at all this – ‘Ah, that’s what it’s like’ (an intelligence that watches without interfering in the least). It’s like a spectator talking to himself.

So in my vision, my body was as big as the universe, and that (the Ashram) was so tiny, so tiny.

***

(Soon afterwards, regarding an old ‘Question and Answer’)

Heaven and hell are at once true and false. They exist and don’t exist. I’ve seen various people go to heavens or hells after their death, and it’s very difficult to make them understand that it is not real. Once it took me more than a year to convince someone that his so-called hell was not hell, and to get him out of it.

But there is something else – the psychological condition that you yourself create, the asuric hell you live in when you cultivate an asuric nature within you.

***

If no vibrations ever disappear, then what happens with all these horrible things coming from every corner of the world? Don’t they pile up? Don’t the bad vibrations take on a more and more enormous volume in the end?

They are transformed. And at times they are transformed almost immediately.

You can’t see it or feel it till you concretely live the fact that all is divine, that HE is everywhere, in everything, always, in all that happens.

The first reaction is always a kind of shrinking before things which seem horrible, but if you can overcome that and really have the experience, everything changes.

And there are hundreds and hundreds of little experiences like that, like so many little stones marking the way. Then you see that the two things are ALWAYS together: the destructive and the constructive. You can’t see one without seeing the other. A time comes when the effort is to conquer the negative parts of creation and death (as at the end of Savitri), and when you have conquered that, then you’re above. And then if you look at all these things, even those which seem the most opposed to the Divine, even acts of cruelty done for the pleasure of cruelty, you see the Presence – the Presence that annuls their effects. And it’s absolutely marvelous.

I had a startling experience one day when X was doing his pujas to encircle the titans. He was in difficulty and I was about to intervene to help him when I was abruptly stopped. I was faced by a massive blackness (blacker than the blackest physical thing) and suddenly, right at its center, I saw the Divine Love shining with such a splendor – I had never seen it so splendid.

And now it has become constant; each time I hear or see something ugly or horrible, or each time something ugly or horrible happens, something which is a negation of the divine life... just behind is this flame – so wonderful. And then the effect is annulled.

There is a magnificence of realization which could not have been had this evil, this horror and this negation not been.

Our consciousness shrinks from these things which belong to the past and which are no longer in their place, so we feel disgust and revulsion – because we are ignorant. But if we can raise ourselves above and be in contact with That – the supreme Light – which is ALWAYS just behind, then this Light seems all the more supreme because it is so much its own opposite.

Then you know.

You know, so there is no longer this uneasiness, this shrinking. You feel carried more and more by all that you reject; you are in a forward movement, further and further, higher, constantly further.

10. July 1960 – About Questions & Answers

Of course, we’re dating all these old Questions and Answers, but not everyone pays attention to dates. How can those old ones be mixed with the present things which are on an altogether different plane?

There is an experience in which one is entirely outside of time – that is, ahead, behind, above, below, all these things are one and the same. And at the very moment the identification takes place, there is no longer any past, present or future. And really, it’s the only way to know.

As the experiences unfold, these old Questions and Answers give me the feeling of someone circling outside a garden while describing what’s inside it. But a day comes when you enter the garden, and then you know a little better what’s inside. And I’m starting to enter. I’m starting.

23. July 1960 – Mother's night vision

Something interesting happened last night exactly between ten and eleven. I was in some kind of vehicle. I didn’t see the vehicle but I was in it. Someone in front of me was driving, though I could only see his back; I didn’t bother about who it was – he was simply the one meant to do it.

It was as if the doors of destruction had been flung open. Floods – floods as vast as an ocean – were rushing down onto... something... the earth? A formidable current pouring down at an insane speed, with an unstoppable power. It was brackish water – not transparent, but brackish. And it was imperative to reach a certain spot BEFORE the water. Had the water reached there ahead of me, nothing could have been done. Whereas if I got there first (I say ‘I’, but it was not I with this body), if I got to the other side before the water, I would be completely safe; and from this safe position, I would be able, I would have a chance to help those left behind.

And this vehicle was going faster than the flood (I saw and felt it by its motion) – a formidable flood, but the vehicle was going still faster. It was so wonderful. In places there were some especially difficult and dangerous spots, but I ALWAYS got there before the water, just before the water barred the way. And we kept going and going and going. Then, with a final effort (there was no effort, really, it was willed), with a final push, we made it to the other side – and the water came rushing just behind! It rushed down at a fantastic speed. We had made it. Then, just on the other side, it changed color. It was... it changed in color to a predominant blue, this powerful blue which is the force, the organizing force in the most material world. So there we were, and the vehicle stopped. And then, after having been looking straight ahead the whole time we were speeding along, I turned around and said, ‘Ah, now I can start helping those who are behind.’

Here, I’ll draw you a little sketch:

The water was flowing off towards the right. From time to time there were these fissured dips or depressions along the vehicle’s path where the water rushed through, and in fact it must have rushed through each one just as soon as I had sped past. It was most dangerous, for if you had reached there a second too late, the water would already have flooded in and you would no longer have been able to get across; it was such that with even only a few drops, you would no longer get across. Not that they were very wide, but... And the water was pouring in (‘pouring in’... our words are very small), it was pouring in, and I could see it ahead, but then the vehicle would arrive at full speed and instead of stopping, in a wild roller coaster-like movement it would plunge through, vroom! – just in time, exactly like a roller coaster. I always arrived just in time to get through. And then again the same thing, broken here and there (in this way there were many fissures, though I’ve only drawn two; there were quite a few, five or six at least), and again we would dart across, then race on until we would reach the spot where I have drawn the water turning.

Right at the end, there was a place where the water had to turn to run down – this was the Great Passage. If you got caught in that, it was all over. You had to reach this spot and cross over before the water came. It was the only place you could get across. Then a last plunge, and like an arrow shot from a bow, full speed ahead, I crossed over and there I was.

And once on the other side, without even a rise in ground level (I don’t know why), it was immediately safe. And the current went on and on, waves upon waves, on and on, as far as the eye could see, but it was canalized here at the Great Turning; and as soon as it went past this point, the inundation was total, it spread out over something... over the earth. And the current turned – it turned – but I was already on the other side. And down below, everything was finished, the water rushed down everywhere. Only, as soon as I was on the other side, it could not touch me – the water could not get across, it was stopped by something invisible, and it turned away.

Moreover, it seemed that everything had already been prepared, as if the way had been made to divert the water.

There, down below me, below the vehicle, I had the impression that it was the earth, it really seemed like the earth, and the water was rushing down towards it.

The vehicle’s path was not on earth, but up above (probably in interstellar regions!), a special path for this vehicle. And I didn’t know where the water was coming from; I couldn’t see its origin, which was off beyond the horizon. But it came raging down in torrents – not precipitously like a waterfall, but rather like a rushing torrent. My path passed between the torrents of water and the earth below. And I saw the water before me, everywhere, in front and behind – it was so extraordinary, for it looked like... it was everywhere, you see, except along my path (and even then, there was some seepage). Water speeding everywhere. But there was a kind of conscious will in this onrush, and I had to reach the Great Passage before this conscious will. This water resembled something physical, but there was a consciousness, a conscious will, and I had to... it was like a battle between the will I represented and that will. And I passed each fissure just in time. Only when I reached the Great Turning did I see the will that impelled this water. And I reached there just before it. And passed through at a fantastic speed – like lightning. Even time ceased... I crossed over like a flash of lightning. And then, suddenly, respite – and it was blue. A square.

At the time, I didn’t know what it all meant. Then this morning, I thought, ‘It must have something to do with the world situation.’

It had all the dimensions of something almost... the earth seemed small in comparison, you see. It was similar to what happens here when water is unleashed on earth, during floods for instance, but on a much greater scale.

What was pleasing, and really quite interesting, was this tremendous speed, like an arrow, and I always arrived in time, just in time, just in time. Once I had crossed over to the other side (I clearly felt that nothing would be left, for it was such a powerful deluge), the danger was finished, there was no longer ANY possibility at all of being touched – this was the main feeling. Everything was stopped. Nothing could touch.

I turned around and saw all this water rushing down, and I thought, ‘Now let’s see if we can do something here.’ There was someone behind who interested me, someone or something – it was still something; it was very likable and had something of the blue color that was here on the other side. Not really individuals, but more like beings representative of something that was following me quite closely. When I was there, it also was there, but it could not keep up, it kept losing ground – as my speed increased, its decreased. It could not keep up. But it interested me in a special way. ‘Oh, he’s so close (he or it); he might just make it,’ I thought. And at that moment, I saw that all this destructive will with its instrument of water, symbolically water, had rushed past and was spreading out everywhere. But there was still a chance of saving all those who were along this path. And that’s immediately what I thought of, it was my first wish: ‘Let’s see if they can still get across, if I can manage to get them across.’ I remembered some especially dangerous spots (while speeding past, I had remarked, ‘Oh, here we might still be able to do this, there that could still be done’ – my consciousness moved at the same speed, and I noted everything along the way), and once I was firmly there on the other side, I started sending back messages.

Down below, the water was having a grand time; it was... it was hopeless. But here, along this path, there was still a hope, even... even after the water had passed; I probably had a certain power at my disposal to help others cross these fissured places. But because I woke up, I didn’t see what it was. So that stopped everything. Probably because I woke up rather abruptly, I could not see what it meant.

All this is a translation in human language, actually, because really it was...

And it happened quite early in the night – at such an early hour, they are not visions or things you observe: they are things you do.

I’ve been seeing for a long time that nights are actions. They are no longer images or symbols or representations – they are all actions. And they take place certainly not on a human scale.

Does that indicate war?

I don’t feel any war.

S.M came the other day... He’s quite informed about events as only the government knows them. He brings me government news – not what they feed to the public. It doesn’t look good. But as he has confidence, he wanted to know (so much confidence that he goes and tells Nehru and others, ‘Oh, Mother said this, Mother said that.’ And it turns out true, fortunately!). So after describing things at some length, he asked my opinion.

Logically, according to reason, war seems unavoidable. But as he asked, I looked – I looked at my nights, precisely, as well as other things. And then I said, ‘I don’t feel it. I don’t feel any war.’

And again this morning, when I looked at this vision, I asked myself, ‘Will there be war?’ – I don’t feel it will be like that... It may be worse.

You see, it didn’t seem human.

I remember wandering about one night some time ago. It’s no longer very clear, but one thing has remained – I had gone out of India, and then when I returned to India, I found huge elephants installed EVERYWHERE – enormous elephants. At that time I was not at all aware that the Communists in India had adopted the elephant as their symbol; I only learned that later. ‘What does this mean,’ I said to myself. ‘Does it signify the Indian army?’ But they did not resemble war elephants. These elephants were like immense mammoths, and they looked like they were settling down with all the power of a tremendous inertia. That was the impression – something heavy in an inert and very tamasic way, forever immovable. I did not like this occupation. When I came back, I had a rather painful feeling, and for several days I wondered if it did not mean war. Then by chance, in a conversation, I learned that the Communists had selected the elephant as their symbol whereas the Congress had chosen the bullock... In my vision, I was moving (as I always do), I was moving among them, and nothing moved. And if I needed room, some of them even tried to stir a little.

But when human beings are involved, I believe that visions take on a special form – it’s a special image. Not an inundation like this. That was very, very impersonal. They were forces. A feeling of floodgates bursting open, of something being held back, retained or prevented, then suddenly...

The vehicle and the forward movement are the sadhana, beyond the shadow of a doubt. I understood that the speed of sadhana was greater than the speed of the forces of destruction. And it ended in certain victory, there is not a shadow of doubt. This feeling of POWER once I was firmly grounded there [in the ‘square’], enough power to help others.

These were universal forces. I can’t say it means war. I’ve foreseen many wars – widespread wars, local wars, so many wars – and up to now they have never been presented to me in that form. They’ve always come as a fire – flames, flames, the home burning. Not as an inundation.

A cataclysm?

Ah, that, we’ve already had some. From all around, people are proclaiming that in 1962, there will be... some people have even foreseen the end of the earth, but that’s foolish! For the earth was built with a certain purpose, and before things are done, it will not disappear.

But there may be... some changes. In fact, the Ashram’s financial situation has never been so bad. We’re living from day to day, minute to minute... One day, it will crack – all these things are connected (Mother is alluding to the vision of the flood She has just described).

I myself am clearly seeing it from the other side; I see a black, muddy form – a black, black force. And I see the [Divine] Force acting on people and, miraculously, the money comes – and then... it’s like something armored – it seeps in with difficulty, a thin trickle from day to day.

Provided the sadhana works, that’s all that is needed.

And in fact, periodically, in one way or another, in one form or another, I receive a kind of assurance, a promise that it will all go well.

***

When I read what Sri Aurobindo writes in The Synthesis, how things should be and what they are now, when I see the two, that’s when I feel we’re turning in circles.

It’s more and more a universal yoga – the whole earth – and it is like that day and night, when I walk and when I speak and when I eat. It’s constantly like that. As if the whole earth were... it’s like kneading dough to make it rise.

But when I read his Yoga of Self-Perfection and see... simply what we are... phew! What yeast we would need to make all that rise!

But this is not true: HE alone is doing it, it’s always He.

And sometimes things stagnate, they seem so absolutely obscure and stupid. And then, if you simply go like this (gesture of offering), simply, truly – do it, not think it – it’s instantly like a shower of bliss... A tiny point, something very small which looks stubbornly stupid and obstinate, if only you do this (and if you want, you can): ‘Take, take!’ Give it to Him, simply, like this, truly give it to Him: ‘It’s You, it’s Yours, take it, do with it what You want.’ And instantly, instead of this shrinking and this painful feeling – ‘What in the world can I do with all this?’ – a shower, it comes like a shower. Truly Ananda. Of course, if you are stupid enough to call back the difficulty, it returns. But if you remain quiet, if you keep your head quiet, it goes – finished, cured. But there are thousands and thousands and thousands of such points...

With my japa, I’ve reached about seven lakhs. I repeat it 1,400 times a day. But you must be much further than I!

I don’t see what effect it’s having, in any case...

No, but... in the morning while walking, I see the difference. There is definitely a difference.

In the beginning, I said I’d do a crore, and if that were not enough, I’d do ten crore. And one crore will take... 20 years!

We shall see.

This also is quite. enjoyable.

This feeling of something... everlasting. It’s enjoyable. Quiet... like floating in eternity.

You reach a point where there is no more worry, neither for yourself nor for the world nor anything. When you reach that, you are always smiling, you are always happy. And when something happens, it doesn’t matter, you look at it with a smile, forever a smile.

So there you are, my child.

26. July 1960 – After Mother's concentration

I woke up at three o’clock (what I mean is, I came out of my nightly activities). I had an hour ahead of me before getting up. So I concentrated and went within.

I came out of the concentration at 4:10 – quite late. For I was VERY busy! I was in some sort of small house similar to my room, but it was at the top of a tower, for you could see the landscape from above. It was similar to my room here, with large windows. And I was much taller than I actually am, for there was a ledge below each window (there was a cupboard below each window, as in my room), and this ledge came quite low on me; in my room, it comes up to my chest, whereas it was much lower in my vision. And from there... oh, what beautiful landscapes! It was surrounded by such lovely countryside!... There was a flowing river, woods, sunlight – oh, it was really lovely! And I was very busy looking up words in the dictionary!

I had taken out a dictionary. ‘There, it’s this one,’ I said. Someone was next to me, but this someone is always symbolic: each activity takes on a special form which may resemble someone or other. (The people around me for the work here are like families in those worlds there; they are types, that is – each person represents a type – so then I know that I’m in contact with all the people of this same type. If they were conscious, they would know that I was there telling them something in particular. But it’s not a person, it’s a type – and not a type of character, but a type of activity and relationship with me.)

I was with a certain ‘type,’ and I was looking for a word, I wanted to conjugate the verb vaincre [to conquer]: je vaincs, tu vaincs, il vainc – good, now nous vainquons, how do you spell that, nous vainquons? It was so funny! And I was looking it up in the dictionary – vainquons, how do you spell that?

And at the same time, I had the feeling of something completely arbitrary, and all this kind of knowledge seemed so unreal – a completely arbitrary convention corresponding to nothing luminous anywhere.

I was very... oh, I was very, very anxious to know how je vaincs, tu vaincs goes... nous vainquons, vous vainquez. And I woke up at 4:15... without having found it in the dictionary!

Then when I woke up, I immediately said to myself, ‘Hmm, it’s true – how would I spell that?’

It took me half a minute to remember. It was really funny!

Coming at the end of the night as it did, it means that it’s an exploration in some part or another of a subconscious mental activity. And you can make so many discoveries there... it is unbelievable! But it’s lovely. And rarely unpleasant. There was a time when it was very unpleasant, oppressive, full of effort and resistance. I would want to go somewhere, but it would be impossible; I toiled and struggled, but everything would go wrong – the straight paths would suddenly plunge into an abyss, and I’d have to cross the abyss. For years it was like that. Just recently, I looked back over this whole period... But now it is over. Now it’s something... it’s lovely, it’s enjoyable, it’s a little... it has a childlike simplicity.

However, it’s not a personal subconscient, but a... it’s more than the Ashram. For me, the Ashram is not a separate individuality – except in that vision the other day, which is what surprised me. It’s hardly that. Rather, it is still this Movement of everything, of everything that is included. So it’s like entering into the subconscient of the whole earth, and it takes on forms which are quite familiar images to me, but they are absolutely symbolic and very, very funny! It took a moment to see that vainquons is spelled q-u-o-n-s. And I wasn’t sure! I meant to ask Pavitra for a dictionary which gives verb conjugations, for then if I’m stuck on something while writing, I can look it up.

The other day I wrote something – it was a letter I gave Pavitra to read. ‘I think there’s a spelling mistake,’ he said. ‘It’s quite possible,’ I answered, ‘I make plenty of them.’ He looked it up in a splendid dictionary and, as a matter of fact, it was a mistake. I meant to ask him for a dictionary this morning.

It’s very simple, actually; it’s a convention, a conventional construction somewhere in the subconscious brain, and you write automatically. But if you want to try to bring the light of a slightly higher reason into it, it’s terrible. It becomes meaningless, and you forget everything.

You have to be inside this automatic convention to remember; it’s very difficult (Mother laughs). So I make a lot of spelling mistakes... (under her breath, in a mischievous tone) I think I’ll ask him for his dictionary (laughter)!

Vaincre!... I wanted to write to someone to proclaim the Victory. The idea was very clear, it was really lovely. Then, in a second, I was stopped – ‘How do you spell vainquons? And how do you spell vaincs?’ The person next to me didn’t know a thing – nothing. ‘It’s spelled v-a-i-n,’ he said. So I said, ‘No, I don’t think so!’ (laughter) It went on like that, you know, it was so funny!...

Are you good at spelling?

Oh, it depends. When I don’t pay attention, it’s all right. I usually don’t make mistakes – not too many!

Yes, yes; it’s quite automatic, a kind of convention somewhere. But if you have the misfortune to step out of that and to look at it, it’s finished, you don’t know anything any more.

20. August 1960 – Flooding with letters

I would like to see you much more often, perhaps three or four times a week, every other day – if people would...

It’s the same with the letters.

They assassinate me with their letters.

The little basket I put them in can no longer close! I take 45 minutes every morning upstairs to write letters. And I receive six, seven, eight, ten letters a day, so how can I manage? In the end, Sri Aurobindo spent the whole night writing letters – till he went blind.

Myself, I can’t afford to do that, I have other things to do. And I’m not keen on going blind either. I need my eyes, they are my work instruments.

On top of that, there are all the people who want to see me. Now everyone wants to see me! And since they are happy after coming once, they ask to come again! If I were very disagreeable and told them... (Mother laughs) but that can’t be done.

...We should not allow all this to upset us. There is but one thing to do – remain in a state of constant peace, constant equanimity, for things are not... they are not very pleasant. Oh, if you only knew all the letters they write me... if you knew, first of all, the tremendous pile of stupidities that need never be written at all; then, added to that, such a display of ignorance, egoism, bad will, total incomprehension and unequalled ingratitude, and all this... so candid, my child! They heap all this on me daily, you know, and it comes from the most unexpected quarters.

If this were to affect me (Mother laughs), I would long ago have been... who knows where. I don’t care at all, not at all, really not at all – it doesn’t bother me, it makes me smile.

(silence)

So don’t let yourself be upset... I often think of you, for I know how very sensitive you are to all this. It is... it is really ugly. A whole realm of human intelligence (it’s too great a compliment to call that intelligence), of the human mind, that is very, very... repugnant. We must come out of that. It doesn’t touch us. WE are elsewhere – elsewhere. We are NOT in that rut! We are elsewhere, automatically.

Our head is above.

I myself see you outside, I feel you outside, I always meet you there.

20. September 1960 – Many things can be done...

If he imagines for one moment that I believe all the people here are doing sadhana, he is grossly mistaken!

The idea is that the earth as a whole must be prepared in all its forms, including even those least ready for the transformation. There must be a symbolic representation of all the elements on earth upon which we can work to establish the link. The earth is a symbolic representation of the universe, and the group is a symbolic representation of the earth.

Sri Aurobindo and I had discussed the matter in 1914 (quite a long time ago), for we had seen two possibilities: what we are now doing, or to withdraw into solitude and isolation until we had not only attained the Supermind, but begun the material transformation as well. And Sri Aurobindo rightfully said that we could not isolate ourselves, for as you progress, you become more and more universalized, and consequently... you take the burden upon yourself in any case.

And life itself has responded by bringing people forward to form a nucleus. Of course, we clearly saw that this would make the work a bit more complex and difficult (it gives me a heavy responsibility, an enormous material work), but from the overall point of view – for the Work – it’s indispensable and even inevitable. And in any case, as we were later able to verify, each one represents simultaneously a possibility and a special difficulty to resolve. I have even said, I believe, that each one here is an impossibility.

But this way of seeing is too far removed from the state of mind and spiritual education in which X has lived, of course, for him to understand. Nor am I in favor of proselytizing (to convince X); it would disturb him quite needlessly. He has not come here for that. He came here for something special, something I wanted which he brought, and I have learnt it. Now it’s excellent, he is a part of the group in his own fashion, that’s all. And in a certain way, his presence here is having a very good effect on a whole category of people who had not been touched but who are now becoming more and more favorably inclined. It was difficult to reach all the traditionalists, for example, the people attached to the old spiritual forms; well, they seem now to have been touched by something.

When Amrita, seized with zeal, wanted to make him understand what we were doing here and what Sri Aurobindo had wanted, it almost erupted into an unpleasant situation. So after that, I decided to identify myself with him to see – I had never done this, because normally I only do it when I am responsible for someone, in order to truly help someone, and I’ve never felt any responsibility in regard to X. So I wanted to see his inner situation, what could and could not be done. That was the day you saw him coming down from our meditation in an ecstatic state, when he told you that all separation between him and me had dropped away – it was to be expected, I anticipated as much!

But when I did that, I saw what X wanted to do for me. As a matter of fact, I recalled that when we first met I had told him that everything was all right up to this point (Mother indicates the region above the head), but below that, in the outer being, I wanted to hasten the transformation, and things there were difficult to handle.

When Sri Aurobindo was here, I never bothered about all this; I was constantly up above and I did what the Gita and the traditional writings advise – I left it to Nature’s care. In fact I left it to Sri Aurobindo’s care. ‘He is making the best use of it,’ I would say. ‘He will manage it, he will do with it what he wants.’ And I was constantly up above. And from up there I worked, leaving the instrument as it was because I knew that he would see to it.

Actually, it was very different at that time because I was not even aware of any resistance or any difficulty in the outer being; it was automatic, the work was done automatically. Later on, when I had to do both things – what he had been doing as well as what I was doing – it became rather complicated and I realized there were many... what we could call ‘gaps’ – things which had to be worked out, transformed, set right before the total work could be done without hindrance. So then I began. And several times I thought how unfortunate it was that I had never studied or pursued certain ancient Indian disciplines. Because, for example, when Sri Aurobindo and I were working to bring down the supramental forces, a descent from the mental plane to the vital plane, he was always telling me that everything I did (when we ‘meditated’ together, when we worked) – all my movements, all my gestures, all my postures, all my reactions – was absolutely tantric, as if I had pursued a tantric discipline. But it was spontaneous, it did not correspond to any knowledge, any idea, any will, nothing, and I thought it was like that simply because, as He knew, naturally I followed.

Later on, when Sri Aurobindo left his body, I said to myself, ‘If only I knew what he had known, it would be easier!’ So when Swami and later X came, I thought, ‘I am going to take advantage of this opportunity.’ I had written to Swami that I was working on transforming the cells of the body and that I had noticed the work was going faster with X’s influence. So it was understood that X would help when he came – that’s how things began, and this idea has remained with X. But I have raced on – I don’t wait. I’ve raced on, I’ve gone like wildfire. And now the situation is reversed. What I wanted to find out, I found out. I experienced what I wanted to experience, but he is still... He is very kind, actually, he wants really to help me. So, when I identified with him the other day during our meditation, I realized that he wanted to give silence, control and perfect peace to the physical mind. My own ‘trick,’ if you will, is to have as little relationship with the physical mind as possible, to go up above and stay there – this (Mother indicates her forehead), silent, motionless, turned upwards, while That (gesture above the head) sees, acts, knows, decides – all is done from there. Only there can you feel at ease.

Along the way, I once went down into this physical mind for awhile to try to set it right, to organize it a little (it was done rather quickly, I didn’t stay there long). So when I went inside X, I saw... It was rather curious, for it’s the opposite of the method we follow. In his material consciousness (physical and vital), he has trained himself to be impersonal, open, limitless, in communication with all the universal forces. In the physical mind, silence, immobility. But in the speculative mind, the one there at the very top of the head... what an organization, phew!... All the tradition in its most superb organization, but such a rigidity! And it had a pretty quality of light, a silver blue – VERY pretty. Oh, it was very calm, wonderfully calm and quiet and still. But what a ceiling it had! – the outer form resembled rigid cubes. Everything inside was beautiful, but that... There was a very large cube right at the top, I recall, bordered by a purple line, which is a line of power – all this was quite luminous. It looked like a pyramid; the smaller cubes formed a kind of base, the lower part of which faded into something cloudy, and then this passed imperceptibly downwards to a more material realm, or in other words, the physical mind. The cube on top was the largest and most luminous, and the least yielding – even inflexible, you could say. The others were somewhat less defined, and at the bottom it was very blurred. But up at the top! – that’s where I wanted to go, right to the top.

When I got there, I felt a moment of anguish; my feeling was that nothing could be done. Not for him in particular, but universally, for all those in his category – it seemed hopeless. If that was perfection, then nothing more could be done. This lasted only a second, but it was painful. And then I tried... that is, I wanted to bring my consciousness down into the highest cube – this eternal, universal and infinite consciousness which is the first and foremost expression of the manifestation – but... nothing doing. It was impossible. I tried for several minutes and saw that it was absolutely impossible. So I had to make a curious movement (I couldn’t get through it, it was impassable), I had to come back down into the so-called lower consciousness (not lower, actually – it was vast and impersonal), and from there I came out and regained ... my equilibrium. This is what gave me that splitting headache I told you about. I came out of there as if I were carrying the weight ... the weight of an irreducible absolute – it was dreadful. Unfortunately, I was unable to rest afterwards, and as people were waiting to see me, I had to talk – which is very tiring for me. And this produced a bubbling in my head, like a... this dark blue light of power in matter was there, shot through with streaks of white and gold, and all this was flashing back and forth in my head, this way and that way – I thought I was going to have a stroke! (Mother laughs)

This lasted a good half hour before I could calm it down, make it quiet, quiet. And I saw that this came from the fact that he wanted to bring the Power down, to transmit the Power into the physical mind! But as soon as I’m put in contact with the Power, you understand, it makes everything explode! (Mother laughs) It felt exactly like my head was going to explode!

I felt better that night because I was concentrated, but my head was still hurting a little. Then the following day I said to myself, or rather I told him inwardly, ‘Whether you like it or not, I am bringing down what’s up above; it is the only way I can feel comfortable!’ And I told you what happened – as soon as I sat down I was so surprised, for he didn’t start doing what he had done the day before; I myself did the same thing, I... participated, so to speak, in his will (so as to find out), but with the resolve to remain consciously in contact with the highest consciousness, as always, and to bring it down. And it came in a marvelous flood. He was quite happy, he did not protest!... All the pain was gone, there was nothing left, it was perfect. Only towards the end of the meditation did he again want to start doing his little trick of enclosing my physical mind in this construction, but it didn’t last – I watched all this from above.

And he isn’t aware of this, actually, he isn’t aware at all. If he were told, he would absolutely deny it – for him, it’s an opening onto Infinity!... But in fact, it’s always like that, we are always shut in, each of us – each one is enclosed inside certain limits which he doesn’t feel, for should he feel it, he would get out! Oh, I know this feeling very well, for when I was with Sri Aurobindo I was open in this way (gesture towards the heights), and I always had this feeling of ‘Yes, my child...’ – He tolerated me the way I was and waited for it to change. That’s truly how things are, you know. And now I feel my limits, which are the limits of the world as it is at present, but beyond that there’s an unmanifested immensity, eternity and infinity – to which we are closed. It merely seeps in – it is not the great opening. What I am trying to bring about is the great opening. Only when it has opened wide will there really be the ... (how should I put it?) the irreducible thing, and all the world’s resistance, all its inertia, even its obscurity will be unable to swallow it up – the determining and transforming thing... I don’t know when it will come.

But this experience with X was really interesting. I learned many things that day, many things... If you concentrate long enough on any one point, you discover the Infinite (and in his own experience he found the infinite), what could be called your own Infinite. But this is not what WE want, not this; what we want is the direct and integral contact between the manifested universe and the Infinite out of which this universe has emerged. So then it is no longer an individual or personal contact with the Infinite, it’s a total contact. And Sri Aurobindo insists on this, he says that it’s absolutely impossible to have the transformation (not the contact, but the supramental transformation) without becoming universalized – that is the first condition. You cannot become supramental before being universal. And to be universal means to accept everything, be everything, become everything – really to accept everything. And as for all those who are shut up in a system, even if it belongs to the highest regions of thought, it is not THAT.

But to each his destiny, to each his work, to each his realization, and to want to change someone’s destiny or someone’s realization is very wrong. For it simply throws him off balance – that’s all it does.

But for us who want an integral realization, are all these mantras and this daily japa really a help, or do they also shut us in?

It gives discipline. It’s an almost subconscious discipline of the character more than of thought.

Especially at the beginning, Sri Aurobindo used to shatter to pieces all moral ideas (you know, as in the Aphorisms, for example). He shattered all those things, he shattered them, really shattered them to pieces. So there’s a whole group of youngsters here who were brought up with this idea that ‘we can do whatever we want, it doesn’t matter in the least!’ – that they need not bother about all those concepts of ordinary morality. I’ve had a hard time making them understand that this morality can be abandoned only for a higher one... So, one has to be careful not to give them the Power too soon.

It’s an almost physical discipline. Moreover, I have seen that the japa has an organizing effect on the subconscient, on the inconscient, on matter, on the body’s cells – it takes time, but by persistently repeating it, in the long run it has an effect. It is the same principle as doing daily exercises on the piano, for example. You keep mechanically repeating them, and in the end your hands are filled with consciousness – it fills the body with consciousness.

I have a hard time making X understand that I have work to do when I’m with him. He doesn’t understand that one can work.

Of course not! A disciplined work, which to us seems important, is to him basically an ignorance. What is true to such a person is a contemplative, ecstatic life – along with a sentiment of compassion and charity, so that nonetheless you spend a bit of your time helping out the poor brutes! But the true thing is ecstatic contemplation. As for those who are advanced and yet still attach some importance to work – it’s irrational!

The only way I can make him understand that I have work to do is to tell him, ‘Mother asked me to do it’; then he keeps quiet.

Yes, he doesn’t dare say a thing... He doesn’t understand it very well. What funny ideas, eh! He must think I have funny ideas, but anyway ... In the end, he tells himself, ‘Oh, it’s just because she’s born in France that she is still carrying this burden’!

It’s quite funny.

Sri Aurobindo saw more clearly. He said – it was even the first thing he told the boys around him when I came in 1914 (he had only seen me once) – he told them that I, Mirra (he immediately called me by my first name), ‘was born free.’

And it’s true, I know it, I knew it then. In other words, all this work that usually has to be done to become free was done beforehand, long ago – quite convenient!

He saw me the next day for half an hour. I sat down – it was on the verandah of the ‘Guest House’, I was sitting there on the verandah. There was a table in front of him, and Richard was on the other side facing him. They began talking. Myself, I was seated at his feet, very small, with the table just in front of me – it came to my forehead, which gave me a little protection... I didn’t say anything, I didn’t think anything, try anything, want anything – I merely sat near him. When I stood up half an hour later, he had put silence in my head, that’s all, without my even having asked him – perhaps even without his trying.

Oh, I had tried – for years I had tried to catch silence in my head ... I never succeeded. I could detach myself from it, but it would keep on turning... But at that moment, all the mental constructions, all the mental, speculative structures... none of it remained – a big hole.

And such a peaceful, such a luminous hole!

Afterwards, I kept very still so as not to disturb it. I didn’t speak, above all I refrained from thinking and held it, held it tight against me – I said to myself, ‘make it last, make it last, make it last...’

Later on, I heard Sri Aurobindo saying that there were two people here to whom he had done this and as soon as there was silence, they panicked: ‘My God, I’ve gone stupid!!’ And they threw it all overboard by starting to think again.

Once it was done, it was done. It was well-rooted.

For years, from 1912 to 1914, I did endless exercises, all kinds of things, even pranayama – if it would only shut up! Really, if it would only be quiet!... I was able to go out (that wasn’t difficult), but inside it kept turning.

This lasted about half an hour. I quietly remained there – I heard the noise of their conversation, but I wasn’t listening. And then when I got up, I no longer knew anything, I no longer thought anything, I no longer had any mental construction – everything was gone, absolutely gone, blank! – as if I had just been born.

***

(soon afterwards)

I went to inaugurate the sugar factory the other day. I had an amusing experience.

From the material point of view, it’s almost hellish – the noise, the smell – a nauseating smell. I had to apply all my will not to be physically disturbed – they made me climb up narrow little stairs, go down, climb back up, look into deep pits. At some places there weren’t even guardrails, so I had really to control myself.

I was watching all this sugar cane – piles of sugar cane – which is thrown into the machine, and then it travels along and falls down to be crushed, crushed, and crushed some more. And then it comes back up to be distilled. And then I saw... all this is living when it’s thrown in, you see, it’s full of its vital force, for it has just been cut. As a result, the vital force is suddenly hurled out of the substance with an extreme violence – the vital force comes out... the English word angry is quite expressive of what I mean – like a snarling dog. An angry force.

So I saw this – I saw it moving about. And it kept coming and coming and coming, accumulating, piling up (they work 24 hours a day, six days a week – only on the seventh do they rest). So I thought that this angry force must have some effect on the people – who knows, maybe this is what creates accidents. For I could see that once the sugar cane was fully crushed and had gone back up the chute, this force that had been beaten out was right there. And this worried me a little; I thought that there must be a certain danger in doing such a thing!... What saves them is their ignorance and their insensitivity. But Indians are never entirely insensitive in the way Westerners are – they are much more open in their subconscious.

I didn’t speak of it to anyone, but it caused me some concern. And just the next day the machine broke down! When I was informed, immediately I thought... It was then repaired, and again it broke down – three times. Then the following night, just before ten o’clock... I should mention that during the day I had thought, ‘But why not attract these forces to our side, take them and satisfy them, give them some peace and joy and use them?’ I thought about it, concentrated a little, but then I didn’t bother any further. At ten o’clock that evening, they came upon me – in a flood! They kept coming and coming. And I was busy with them the whole time. They were not ugly (not so luminous either! ), they were wholesome, straightforward – honest forces. So I worked on them. This began exactly at 9:30, and for one hour I was busy working. After an hour, I’d had enough: ‘Listen, this is quite fine, you’re very nice, but I can’t spend all my time like this! We shall see what to do later’ – for it absorbed my whole consciousness. They kept coming and coming (you understand what that means to a body?!). So at 10:30 I told them, ‘Listen, my little ones, be quiet now, that’s enough for today...’ At 10:30, the machine broke down!

I found out, of course, because they log everything at the factory, so when they came to inform me of the breakdown the next morning, I asked them what time it had happened – exactly 10:30.

After that, I made a kind of pact with them – the trouble, you see, is that there are constantly new ones. If only they were the same! They are constantly coming in new floods, so there was the need of a permanent formation over there. I’ve tried to make this permanent formation, to take and absorb them, to calm them down and scatter them a little so they don’t accumulate in one spot, which in the end could be dangerous.

I found this quite amusing.

The most recent incident took place a few days ago, for there was a general excitement in the factory due to the expected visit of a government minister during the day. That afternoon, exactly at half past three, I felt that I had to make a little concentration. So I paid attention and saw poor L praying to me. He was praying, praying, calling me – such a strong call that it pulled me. I was having my bath (you know what happens when I’m very strongly pulled – I’m stopped right in the very midst of a gesture, then the consciousness goes wandering off! And I can’t do anything, it stops me dead. That’s exactly what happened to me in the bathroom). When I saw what was happening, I straightened things out. Then they must have had their ceremony, for suddenly I felt, ‘Ah, now it has calmed down, it’s all right.’ And I went on to something else.

The next day, L came to see me. He told me that shortly before 3:30, the machine had stopped once again, but this time it was quickly set right; they found out right away what had to be done. And then he told me that at 3:45 he had started praying to me that all should go well. ‘Oh, I know!’ I said.

Things can be done in this way. In truth, a lot can be done – it’s man’s ignorance that gets him in trouble.

24. September 1960 – Concentrating on what I'm doing

Imagine! I thought I had lost my hearing. But I just realized that when I don’t hear... it’s because I’m elsewhere.

Just now, I concentrated a little and tuned into your voice.

And not one word escaped me! It became clear, absolutely clear.

Normally I’m not there. And some people I hear, others I don’t hear. But I hadn’t imagined that it depended on this – I thought I had lost my hearing. But just now I stopped everything, absolutely everything, I concentrated and tuned in – it became so clear!

Basically, it must be the same for my eyes. Sometimes I see wonderfully, and sometimes it’s blurred.

It must be for the same reason... I probably have to learn to concentrate!

Yes, laugh if you want – what I mean is concentrate on what I’m doing.

Not concentrate within... Precisely, I’m rather too concentrated!

02. October 1960 – The World of Delight

This wonderful world of delight

waiting at our gates for our call

to come down upon earth.

***

This world of Delight above us is waiting – not for us to be ready but for us to accept, for us to condescend to receive it! This is what I am looking at in this photograph. In fact, this is what I am pulling down.

***

My nights contain so many things that I don’t always do the necessary work to remember – that takes up a lot of time. Sometimes I get up during the night and sit there recalling precisely everything that has already happened, but that sometimes takes half an hour! – and as urgent work still calls, I don’t take the time to remember and it gets erased. But then, you know, with all that’s coming you could write volumes!

From a documentary standpoint, my nights are getting quite interesting. In the Yoga of Self-Perfection, Sri Aurobindo describes precisely this state you reach in which all things assume meaning and a quality of inner significance, clarification of various points, and help. From this point of view, my nights have become extraordinary. I see infinitely more things than I saw before. Before, it was very limited to a personal contact with people. Now... In my nights, each thing and each person has the appearance, the gesture, the word or the action that describes EXACTLY his condition. It’s becoming quite interesting.

Of course, I much prefer being in my great currents of force – from a personal standpoint, such immensity of action is much more interesting. But these documentary things are also valuable. It is so tremendously different from the dreams and even the vi. signs you have when you enter certain representative realms of the mind (which is what I used to do). It is so different, it has another content, another life altogether: it carries its light, its understanding, its explanation within itself – you look, and everything is explained.

It always gives me the feeling that I am shrinking a little, but it’s interesting. And it’s useful, for I am constantly moving about and doing things with people; it indicates to me what I have to say and do with each one. It’s useful. But all the same, I miss the fullness and joy of the more impersonal Movement of forces.

Before going to bed, sometimes I say to myself, ‘I will do what is necessary to spend my night in these great currents of force’ (because there is a way to do it). And then I think, ‘Oh, what an egotist you are, my girl!’ So sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t – when there’s something important to do, it doesn’t happen. But all I have to do is concentrate in a certain way before going to sleep to spend my whole night in these... very far from here, very far... I can’t say very far from the earth, for surely it’s in an intermediate zone between the forces from above and the earth’s atmosphere. That’s what it mainly is, in any case. It’s a great universal current as well, but mainly it’s what descends and comes onto the earth, and it is permeating the earth’s atmosphere all the time, all the time, and it comes with this wide, overall vision – it makes for wonderful nights... I no longer bother about people at all – at least not as such, but in a more impersonal way.

(silence)

I have been pestered my whole life by... something similar to the sense of duty without its stupidity. Sri Aurobindo had told me that it was a ‘censor,’ that I had with me a ‘considerable’ one!

It was constantly, constantly telling me, ‘No, it’s not like that, it’s like this... Oh, no! It’s wrong to do that; be careful, don’t be egotistical; be careful – do this, do that.’ He was right, but I sent it away long ago – or rather, Sri Aurobindo sent it away. But there remains the habit... of not doing what I like. Rather, of doing what MUST be done, and whether it’s pleasant or not makes no difference.

This, too, Sri Aurobindo had explained to me. I used to tell him, ‘Yes, you always speak of life’s “delight,” life for the sake of its delight.’ But as soon as I had the notion, as soon as I was put in the presence of the Supreme, it was: ‘For You – exclusively what You want. You are the sole, the unique and exclusive reason for being.’ And that has remained, and this movement is so strong that even when... you see, now I have ecstasy and ananda in abundance – everything comes, everything. But even then, even when that is there, something in me always turns towards the Supreme and says, ‘Does this TRULY serve You? Is it what You expect of me, what You want from me?’

This has protected me from all seeking for pleasure in life. It was a wonderful protection, because pleasure always seemed so futile to me – yes, futile; for the sake of your personal satisfaction. Later, I even understood how foolish it is, for you can never be satisfied – though when you’re small you don’t yet know that. I never liked it: ‘But is it really useful, does it serve some purpose?’ And I still have this attitude in regard to my nights. I have this widening of the consciousness, this impersonalization, this wonderful joy of being above... all that. But at the same time I also have, ‘I’m here in this body, on earth, to do something – I mustn’t forget it. And this is what I have to do.’ But probably I’m wrong!...

I’m waiting for the Lord to tell me clearly.

But when I say that, I always see Him smiling – a smile... it’s all very good to smile, but... it encourages you more than it cures you!

08. October 1960 – A New Language is needed

There are moments while reading the Synthesis of Yoga when I feel so clearly why he put this particular word in that particular place, and why it could not have been otherwise – that’s what makes the translation difficult.

For the placement of words is not the same in English and in French. In English, for example, the place an adverb occupies is of major importance for the precise meaning. In French also, but generally it’s not the same! If at least it were exactly the opposite of English it would be easier, but it’s not exactly the opposite. It’s the same thing for the word order in a series of modifiers or any string of words; usually in English, for example, the most important word comes first and the least important last. In French, it’s usually the opposite – but it doesn’t always work!

The spirit of the two languages is not the same. Something always escapes. This must surely be why’ revelations’ (as Sri Aurobindo calls them) sometimes come to me in one language and sometimes in the other. And it does not depend on the state of consciousness I’m in, it depends on what has to be said.

And the revelations would probably be more exact if we had a more perfect language. Our language is poor.

Sanskrit is better. Sanskrit is a much fuller and subtler language, so it’s probably much better. But these modern languages are so artificial (by this, I mean superficial, intellectual); they cut things up into little pieces and remove the light behind.

I also read On the Veda where Sri Aurobindo speaks of the difference between the modern mind and the ancient mind; and it’s quite obvious, especially from the linguistic point of view. Sanskrit was certainly much more fluid, a better instrument for a more... global, more comprehensive light, a light containing more things within itself.

In these modern languages, it’s as if things are passed through a sieve and broken up into separate little bits, so then you have all the work of putting them back together. And something is always lost.

But I even doubt that the modern mind, built as it now is, would be able to know Sanskrit in this way. I think they are cutting up Sanskrit as well, out of habit.

We need a new language.

We need to make a new language.

Not some kind of Esperanto! – but sounds springing straight from above.

The SOUND must be captured. There must be one sound at the origin of all language... And then, to capture it and project it. To make it vibrate... because it doesn’t vibrate in the same way here as it does above.

That would be an interesting work.

The words must have a power – an expressive power. Yes, they should carry the meaning in themselves!

11. October 1960 – The Yoga of Self-Perfection; First Realization

I’m just now finishing the Yoga of Self-Perfection... When we see what human life is and, even in the best of cases, what it represents in the way of imbecility, stupidity, narrowness, meanness (not to mention ignorance because that is too flagrant)... and even those who believe themselves to have generous heart, for example, or liberal ideas, a desire to do good!... Each time the consciousness orients itself in one direction to attain some result, everything that was in existence (not just one’s personal existence, but this sort of collectivity of existences that each being represents), everything that is contrary to this effort immediately presents itself in its crudest light.

It happened this morning while I was walking back and forth in my room. I had finished my japa ... I had to stop and hold my head in my hands to keep from bursting into tears. ‘No, it is too dreadful,’ I said to myself; ‘and to think that we want Perfection!’

Then naturally there came as a consolation: only because the consciousness is getting closer to THE REAL THING can it see all this wretchedness, and the contrast alone makes these things appear so mean.

And it’s true, those things I saw this morning which seemed so... above all stupid and ugly (I’ve never had a sense of morality at any time in my life, thank God! But stupid and ugly things have always seemed... I’ve always done my best to distance myself from them, even when I was very small). And now I see that these things which seem not only ridiculous but, well, almost shameful were considered, as I recall, remarkably noble earlier on and they represented an exceptionally lofty attitude in life – the very same things. So then I understood that it’s quite simply a question of proportion.

And that’s how the world is – things which now seem totally unacceptable to us, things we CANNOT tolerate, were quite all right in the past.

The day before yesterday, I spent the whole night looking on. I had read the passage by Sri Aurobindo in The Synthesis on ‘supramental time’ (wherein past, present and future coexist in a global consciousness). While you’re in it, it’s marvelous! You understand things perfectly. But when you’re not in it... Above all, there’s this problem of how to keep the force of one’s aspiration, the power of progress, this power which seems so inevitable – so inevitable if existence (let’s simply take terrestrial existence) is to mean anything and its presence to be justified. (This ascending movement towards a progressive ‘better’ that will be eternally better) – How is this to be kept when you have the total vision... this vision in which everything coexists. At that moment, the other becomes something like a game, an amusement, if you will. (Not everyone finds it amusing!) And when you contain all that, why allow yourself the pleasure of succession?... Is this pleasure of succession, of seeing things one after the other, equal to this intensity of the will for progress?... Words are foolish!

The effort to see and to understand this gripped me all night. And when I woke up this morning, I thanked the Lord; I said to Him, ‘Obviously, if You were to keep me totally in that consciousness, I could no longer... I could no longer do my work!’ How could I do my work? For I can only say something to people when I feel it or see it, when I see that it’s what must be said, but if I am simultaneously in a consciousness in which I’m aware of everything that has led to that situation, everything that is going to happen, everything I’m going to say, everything the other’s going to feel – then how could I do it!

There are still many hundreds of years to go before it becomes entirely what Sri Aurobindo describes – there’s no hurry!

The mental silence Sri Aurobindo gave you in 1914, about which you were speaking the other day...

It has never left. I have always kept it. Like a smooth white surface turned upwards. And at any moment at all... You see, we speak like a machine, but there nothing moves; at any moment at all it can turn towards the heights. It’s ALWAYS turned like that, but we can become aware of it being like that. Then, if we listen, we can hear what comes from above. My active consciousness, which was here (Mother points to her forehead), has settled above, and it has never again moved from there.

I told this to X – or rather had someone tell him – to see his reaction. And I realized that he did not understand in the least! Once Amrita asked him how he himself SAW and KNEW things. So he tried to explain; he told Amrita that he had to pull his consciousness upwards by a gradual effort, to go beyond the heart, beyond the throat center... to pull it right up here (the top of the head), and once there, you’re divine, you know! All of a sudden, I understood that when I said it was there, above the head, it must have seemed absolutely impossible to him! For him, it’s the crown of the head (what they call the thousand-petalled lotus), just at the top of the head, whereas in my experience it opens, it rises and you go above, and then you settle there... For a number of years it even changed my [physical] vision – it was as if I were looking at things from above. It returns from time to time, too, as if suddenly I were seeing from above instead of from here, at eye level.

But the faculty of forming thoughts is now there, up above; it’s no longer here (Mother points to her forehead). And that’s contrary to their teachings.

The tantrics recognize seven chakras, I believe. Théon said he knew of more, specifically two below the body and three above. That is my experience as well – I know of twelve chakras. And really, the contact with the Divine Consciousness is there (Mother motions above the head), not here (at the top of the head). One must surge up above.

Doing japa seems to exert a pressure on my physical consciousness, which goes on turning! How can I silence it? As soon as my concentration is not absolute, the physical mind starts up – it grabs at anything, anything at all, any word, fact or event that comes along, and it starts turning, turning. If you stop it, if you put some pressure on it, then it springs back up two minutes later... And there is no inner consent at all. It chews on words, it chews on ideas or feelings – interminably. What should I do?

Yes, it’s the physical mind. The japa is made precisely to control the physical mind.

I myself use it for a very special reason, because... You see, I invoke (the words are a bit strange)... the Lord of Tomorrow. Not the unmanifest Lord, but the Lord as he will manifest ‘tomorrow,’ or in Sri Aurobindo’s words, the divine manifestation in its supramental form.

So the first sound of my mantra is the call to that, the evocation. With the second sound, the body’s cells make their’ surrender,’ they give themselves. And with the third sound comes the identification of this [the body] with That, which produces the divine life. These are my three sounds.

And in the beginning, during the first months that I was doing the japa, I felt them... I had an almost detailed awareness of these myriads of cells opening to this vibration; the vibration of the first sound is an absolutely special vibration (you see, above, there is the light and all that, but beyond this light there is the original vibration), and this vibration was entering into all the cells and was reproduced in them. It went on for months in this way.

Even now, when something or other is not all right, I have only to reproduce the thing with the same type of concentration as at the beginning... for, when I say the japa, the sound and the words together – the way the words are understood, the feel of the words – create a certain totality. I have to reproduce that. And the way it’s repeated is evolving all the time. The words are the same, however, the original sound is the same, but it’s all constantly evolving towards a more comprehensive realization and a more and more complete STATE. So when I want to obtain a certain result, I reproduce a certain type of this state. For example, if something in the body is not functioning right (it can’t really be called an illness, but when something’s out of order), or if I wish to do some specific work on a specific person for a specific reason, then I go back to a certain state of repetition of my mantra, which acts directly on the body’s cells. And then the same phenomenon is reproduced – exactly the same extraordinary vibration which I recognized when the supramental world descended. It comes in and vibrates like a pulsation in the cells.

But as I told you, now my japa is different. It is as if I were taking the whole world to lift it up; no longer is it a concentration on the body, but rather a taking of the whole world – the entire world – sometimes in its details, sometimes as a whole, but constantly, constantly – to establish the Contact (with the supramental world).

But what you are speaking of, this sort of sound-mill, this milling of words interminably repeating the same thing, I’ve suddenly caught it two or three times (not very often and with long intervals). It has always seemed fantastic to me! How is it stopped?... Always in the same way. It’s something that takes place outside, actually; it’s not inside – it’s outside, on the surface, generally somewhere here (Mother indicates the temples), and the method is to draw your consciousness up above, to go there and remain there – white. Always this whiteness, white like a sheet of paper, flat like a plate of glass. An absolutely flat and white and motionless surface – white! White like luminous milk, turned upwards. Not transparent: white.

When this mill starts turning – usually it comes from this side (Mother indicates the right side of the head) – it takes hold of any sound or any word at all, and then it starts turning, harping on the same thing. This has happened to me a dozen times perhaps, but it doesn’t come from me; it comes from outside, from someone or something or some particular work. So then you take it – as if you were picking it up with pincers, and then... (She lifts it upwards), then I hold it there, in this motionless white – no need to keep it there for long!

Aren’t you aware of this thing up above, this white plate at the crown of the head? It’s what receives intuitions. It’s just like a photographic plate, and it’s not even active – things pass right through it without our even realizing it. And then if you concentrate just a little, everything stops, everything stops.

A few days ago, I recall, I wanted to know something that was going to happen. I thought that with the consciousness of supramental time, I could find out... ‘I MUST find out what’s going to happen. What’s going to happen?’ – No answer. So I concentrated on it, which is what I usually do, I stopped everything and looked from above – total silence. Nothing. No answer. And I felt a slight impatience: ‘But why can’t I know?!’ And what came was the equivalent of (I’m translating it in words), ‘It’s none of your business!! ‘

So I understand more and more. Everything – this whole organization, this whole aggregate, all these cells and nerves and sensors – are all meant uniquely for the work, they have no other purpose than the work; every foolish act that is done is for the work; every stupidity that is thought is for the work; you are made the way you are because only in that way can you do the work – and it’s none of your business to seek to be somewhere else. That’s my conclusion. ‘Very well, as You wish, may Your will be done!’ – No, not ‘be done’; it IS done. As You wish, exactly as You wish!

And in the end, it’s quite fun.

***

(Concerning an old ‘Question and Answer’ of July 4, 1956 at the Playground in which Mother speaks of her first realization of the Divine, in Paris)

Just as the shooting star flashed past, there sprang from my consciousness: ‘To realize the divine union, for my body!’ And before twelve months were out, it was done.

I remember, it was at the door of our studio in Paris. I can still see it. That’s how I always remember – the picture simply comes to me.

I am just finishing The Synthesis of Yoga, and what Sri Aurobindo says is exactly what has happened to me throughout my life. And he explains how you can still make mistakes as long as you are not supramentalized. Sri Aurobindo describes all the ways by which images are sent to you – and they are not always images or reflections of the truth of things past, present or future; there are also all the images that come from human mental formations and all the various things that want to be considered. It is very, very interesting. And interestingly enough, in these few pages I have found a description of the work I have spent my whole life doing, trying to SIFT out all we see.

I can only be sure of something once a certain type of picture comes, and then the whole world could tell me, ‘But things didn’t happen like that’; I would reply, ‘Sorry, but I see it.’ And that type of picture is certain, for I have studied it, I have studied their differences in quality and the texture of the pictures. It is very interesting.

***

Basically, I see more and more that the Supreme Consciousness makes use of ANYTHING AT ALL when the time comes.

In these Questions and Answers, for example, you had wanted to edit out the words ‘Sweet Mother’ since people from the West might not understand. But then, we have just now received a letter from someone who suddenly had a very beautiful experience when he came across those words, ‘Sweet Mother.’ He saw, he suddenly felt this maternal presence of love and compassion watching over the world. The moment had come and, precisely, it did its work. It’s very interesting.

Mentally we say, ‘Oh, that can’t go.’ And even I am often inclined to say, ‘Don’t publish this, don’t speak of something or other.’ Then I realize how silly it is! There is something that uses everything. Even what may seem useless to us – or perhaps worse than useless, harmful – might be just the thing to give someone the right shock.

15. October 1960 – Their attitude towards THAT

It’s so funny – the thing in itself doesn’t exist for people. What’s important to them is their attitude towards the thing, what they think of it. How odd!

Each thing carries within itself its own truth – its absolute truth, so luminous and so clear. And if you are in contact with THAT, then everything falls into place so wonderfully; but men are NOT in contact with that, they are always in contact through their thought: what they think of something, what they feel about something, the meaning they attach to it (or sometimes it’s worse) – but the highest they go is always the thought they have of it. That’s what creates all this mixture and all this disorder – things in themselves are very good, and then they get confused.

19. October 1960 – Sri Aurobindo wanted to go!

(The day before ‘Kali Puja,’ the ritual festival devoted each year in India to the goddess Kali, the warrior aspect of the universal Mother)

She has already been here for two days and... Oh, yesterday especially, she was so... in such a mood! – like a warrior. I said to her, ‘But why not change them through ... through an excess of love?’

So then she answered (I remember how she put it), ‘First a good punch in the chest (she didn’t say ‘in the nose’!), a good punch in the chest, and then when they’re down, gasping for air, they’re ready.’

That’s one opinion!

Those people deny the reality of all physical needs.

***

It’s quite all right when you’ve come TO THE END, when you have totally mastered the body by means of the spiritual consciousness. But until then, I don’t agree – I do not at all agree.

It’s the same as when X tells people, ‘I am feeding you, so eat!’ And he serves you ten times more than you can put in. If you tell him, ‘My stomach can’t digest it,’ he answers that this is nonsense: ‘Eat, and you will see!’ And in fact, up above – that is, once you’ve mastered it – it’s perfectly true. But we aren’t there yet, far from it! He himself is sick all the time.

Then he would answer,’ Everyone is sick.’ – But that’s no reason.

It’s very well to say, ‘If you live in the Spirit, it’s not the same.’ That’s quite true, but... MUCH later. For the last two years, I myself have been learning this, and I see how difficult it is – one mustn’t boast. And to say, ‘Oh, it’s all the same to me,’ is a way of boasting. It SHOULD NOT be all the same to you. This body is not meant for us – it wasn’t for us that it was given, it’s for the Work, so consequently it must be in working order.

That’s what annoys me sometimes. Why not have this mastery? We SHOULD be masters of it. With consciousness, we should be able to be the masters of our bodies.

Yes, this was precisely the extraordinary thing Sri Aurobindo had.

He made no effort... But then he didn’t use it on himself!

But for humans, this is something UNTHINKABLE.

He wanted to go.

You see, he had decided to go. But he didn’t want me to know that he was doing it deliberately; he knew that if for a single moment I knew he was doing it deliberately, I would have reacted with such a violence that he would not have been able to leave!

And he did this... he bore it all as if it were some unconsciousness, an ordinary illness, simply to keep me from knowing – and he left at the very moment he had to leave. But...

And I couldn’t even imagine he was gone once he had gone, just there, in front of me – it seemed so far away... And then afterwards, when he came out of his body and entered into mine, I understood it all ... It’s fantastic.

Fantastic.

It’s... it’s absolutely superhuman. There’s not one human being capable of doing such a thing. And what... what a mastery of his body – absolute, absolute!

And when it came to others... he could remove an illness like that (gesture, as if Mother were calmly extracting an illness from the body with her fingertips). That happened to you once, didn’t it? You said that I had done this for you – but it wasn’t me; he was the one who did it... He could give you peace in the mind in the same way (Mother brushes her hand across her forehead). You see, his actions were absolutely... On others, it had all the characteristics of a total mastery... Absolutely superhuman.

One day, he’ll tell you all this himself. Now I understand it.

It’s tremendous.

I would like very much to ask you something... Why did he have to go?

Ah! That can’t be told.

I can tell you why, but in a purely superficial way... Because for him to do IMMEDIATELY – without leaving his body, that is – what he had to do, well...

(silence)

We can put it this way: the world was not ready. But to tell you the truth, it was the totality of things around him that was not ready. So when he SAW this (I only understood this afterwards), he saw that it would go much faster if he were not there.

And he was ABSOLUTELY right, it was true.

Once I saw that, I accepted. When I saw it, when he made me understand, I accepted; otherwise...

There was a difficult period.

It wasn’t long, but it was difficult.

(silence)

When he left, I said twelve days, twelve days. And truly, I gave it twelve days, twelve days to see if the entire Work... Outwardly, I said, ‘After twelve days I will tell you if the Ashram (the Ashram was nothing but a symbol, of course), if the Ashram will continue or if it is finished.’

And later (I don’t know – it didn’t take twelve days; I said that on December 9, and on the 12th it was all decided – seen, clear and understood), on the 12th, I saw people, I saw a few people. However, we began all the activities again only after 12 days from December 5. But it was decided on the 12th.

Everything was left hanging until the moment he made me understand the COMPLETE thing, in its entirety... But that’s for later on.

He himself will tell you, it’s true – later on.

22. October 1960 – Mother's House in Paris; Rue du Val de Grâce

(Pavitra shows Mother a photograph of the house in which She lived in Paris, rue du Val de Grâce)

Well, well! The house on Val de Grâce! It looks inhabited, the windows have curtains in them. I lived there – a small house, really very small, with a bedroom upstairs.

Here, this is the kitchen; here is the living room, this is the studio. And then behind the kitchen there was a small room that I used as the dining room, and it opened onto a courtyard. Between the dining room and the kitchen there was a bathroom and a small hallway. The kitchen is here; you went up three steps and then there was this small hallway with the stairs leading up to the bedroom. Next to the bedroom was a bathroom about as big as a thimble.

It is part of a huge house. There’s a seven-story apartment building on each side, and the street is here.

It wasn’t very big. The studio was rather large – a beautiful room ... That’s where I received Madame David-Neel – we saw each other nearly every evening.

There was a considerable library in the studio; one whole end was given over to the library – more than two thousand books belonging to my brother. There were even the complete works of several classical writers. And I had my entire collection of the Revue Cosmique, and my post card collection (it was down below) – mainly post cards of Algeria, Tlemcen, nearly 200 of them. But there were five years of the Revue Cosmique. And written in such a French! How funny it was!

Théon’s wife dictated it in English while she was in trance. Another English lady who was there claimed to know French like a Frenchman. ‘Myself, I never use a dictionary,’ she would say, ‘I don’t need a dictionary.’ But then she would turn out such translations! She made all the classic mistakes of English words that mustn’t be translated like that. Then it was sent to me in Paris for correcting. It was literally impossible.

There was this Themanlys, my brother’s schoolmate; he wrote books, but he was lazy-minded and didn’t want to work! So he had passed that job on to me. But it was impossible, you couldn’t do a thing with it. And what words! Théon would invent words for the subtle organs, the inner senses; he had found a word for each thing – a frightful barbarism! And I took care of everything: I found the printer, corrected the proofs – all the work for a long time.

They were stories, narratives, an entire initiation in the form of stories. There was a lot in it, really a lot. She knew many things. But it was presented in such a way that it was unreadable.

I also wrote one or two things, experiences I had noted down; they were rather interesting, which is why I’d like to get them back. I had described some of my visions to Madame Théon, and then she explained their meaning to me. So I would narrate the vision and give its explanation. That was readable and interesting, because there was some symbolism.

(Pavitra:) What was this ‘Chronicle of Ki’?

It wasn’t ‘Ki’ but ‘Chi,’ for he was the founder of China! – those things were fantastic! The story was almost childish, but there was a whole world of knowledge in it. Madame Théon was an extraordinary occultist. That woman had incredible faculties, incredible.

She was a small woman, fat, almost flabby – she gave you the feeling that if you leaned against her, it would melt! Once, I remember... I was there in Tlemcen with Andre’s father, who had come to join us – a painter, an artist. Théon was wearing a dark purple robe. Théon said to him, ‘This robe is purple.’ ‘No, it’s not purple,’ the other answered, ‘it’s violet.’ Théon went rigid: ‘When I say purple, it’s purple!’ And they started arguing over this foolishness. Suddenly there flashed from my head, ‘No, this is too ridiculous!’ – I didn’t say a word, but it went out from my head (I even saw the flash), and then Madame Théon got up and came over to me, stood behind me (neither of us uttered a word – the other two were staring at each other like two angry cocks), then she laid my head against her breast – absolutely the feeling of sinking into eiderdown!

And never in my life, never, had I felt such peace – it was absolutely luminous and soft... a peace, such a soft, tender, luminous peace. After a moment, she bent down and whispered in my ear, ‘One must never question one’s master!’ It wasn’t I who was questioning!

She was a wonderful woman, wonderful. But as for him... well...

It’s funny... I don’t know why, but a short while ago this house on Val de Grâce suddenly came to me... (to Pavitra) When did this photograph come? Yesterday.

Suddenly the house had come into the atmosphere. ‘Well, well,’ I said to myself; ‘someone is thinking about that house.’

***

I entered into your sleep last night. I saw you and told you certain things, I even gave you some explanations: ‘You see, you must do it this way... you must go like this...’ I also said, ‘One day, we shall meditate together.’ But more precisely, you had once spoken to me about the problem in your physical mind – that it keeps on turning interminably – and you had told me that it happens during your japa. So last night I told you, ‘I would like you to do your japa for a few minutes with me one day so that I may see what goes on inside you, in your physical mind.’

But I wasn’t speaking to you with words ... Everything I see at night has a special color and a special vibration. It’s strange, but it looks sketched... When I said that to you, for example, there was a kind of patch, a white patch, as I recall – white, exactly like a piece of white paper – a patch with a pink border around it, then this same blue light I keep telling you about – deep blue – encircling the rest, as it were. And beyond that, it was swarming – a swarming of black and dark gray vibrations... in a terrible agitation. When I saw this, I said to you, ‘You must repeat your mantra once in my presence so that I may see if there is anything I can do about this swarming.’ And then – I don’t know why – you objected, and this objection was red, like a tongue of fire lashing out from the white, like this (Mother draws an arabesque). So I said, ‘No, don’t worry, it doesn’t matter, I won’t disturb a thing!’ (Mother laughs mischievously)

All this took place in a realm which is constantly active, everywhere; it is like a permanent mental transcription of everything that physically takes place... They aren’t actually thoughts; when I see this, I don’t really get the impression of thinking, but it’s a transcription... it’s the result of thoughts on a certain mental atmosphere which records things.

And I see it all the time now. If someone is speaking or if I’m doing something, I see the two things at the same time – I see the physical thing, his words or my action, and then this colored, luminous transcription at the same time. The two things are superimposed. For example, when someone speaks to me, it gets translated into some kind of picture, a play of light or color (which is not always so luminous!) – this is why most of the time, in fact, I don’t even know what has been said to me. I recall the first time this phenomenon happened, I said to myself, ‘Ah, so that’s what these modern artists see!’ Only, as they themselves aren’t very coherent, what they see is not very coherent either!

And that’s how it works – it is translated by patches and moving forms, which is how it gets registered in the earth’s memory. So when things from this realm enter into people’s active consciousness, they get translated into each one’s language and the words and thoughts that each one is accustomed to – because that doesn’t belong to any language or to any idea: it is the exact IMPRINT of what is happening.

I am constantly seeing this now.

And it is here, too, that I see the result of this confusion and excitement in the Ashram – it jumps, jumps, jumps about. It keeps jumping on the same spot. There are machines like that – constantly shaking; it’s exasperating.

***

For some time now I’ve been experiencing a precise moment during my japa when something takes hold of me and I have all the difficulty in the world to keep from entering into trance. Yet I remain standing. Usually I’m walking, but some things I say while leaning up against the window – not a very good place to go into trance! And it grabs me exactly at the same place each time.

Yesterday, I suddenly saw a huge living head of blue light – this blue light which is the force, the powerful force in material Nature (this is the light the tantrics use). The head was made entirely of this light, and it wore a sort of tiara – a big head, so big (Mother indicates the length of her forearm); its eyes weren’t closed, but rather lowered, like this. The immobility of eternity, absolutely – the repose, the immobility of eternity. A magnificent head, quite similar to the way the gods here are represented, but even better; something between certain heads of the Buddha and ... (these heads most probably come to the artists). Everything else was lost in a kind of cloud.

I felt that this kind of... yes, immobility came from there: everything stops, absolutely everything stops. Silence, immobility... truly, you enter into eternity. – I told him it wasn’t time!

But I tried to understand what he wanted... It’s been difficult here in the Ashram for some time – everyone is seized with a sort of frenzy, a weary restlessness. They are all writing to me, they all want to see me. It makes for such an atmosphere... I react as well as I can, but I’m not able to pass this on to them to keep them quiet (the more tired and weary you are, the more calm you ought to remain – certainly not get excited, that’s dreadful!). So I understood: this head had come to tell me, ‘This is what you must give them.’

But if I were to pass that on to them, they’d all think they were becoming rattle-brained, that they were losing their faculties, that their energy was spent. For they only feel energy when they spend it. They are incapable of feeling energy in immobility – they have to be stirring about, they have to be spending it. Or else, it has to be pounded into them.

I looked at this problem yesterday; it occupied me for much of the day. And I’m sure this head came to give me the solution. For me, it’s very easy – at once... three seconds, and everything stops, everything. But the others are stubborn! And yet I’m positive, I’m positive, I tell them, ‘But relax; why are you on pins and needles like that? Relax! It’s the only way to overcome your fatigue.’ But they immediately start feeling that they’ll lose their faculties and become inert – the opposite of life!

And this is surely what oriented my night, for I started my night looking at this problem: How can I make them accept this? For neither should they fall into the other extreme and slip from this weary agitation into tamas. That’s obvious.

But how many letters I receive from people telling me, ‘I feel listless, all I want to do is sleep, to rest, not do anything.’ They go on complaining.

The experience I have – what I mean by ‘I’ is this aggregate here (Mother indicates her body), this particular individuality – is that the more quiet and calm it is, the more work it can do and the faster the work can be done. What is most disturbing and time consuming are all these agitated vibrations that fall on me (truly speaking, each person who comes throws them on me). And this is what makes the work difficult – it stirs up a whirlwind. And you can’t do anything in this whirlwind, it’s impossible. If you try to do something material, your fingers stumble; if you try to do something intellectual, your thoughts get all entangled and you no longer see clearly. I’ve had the experience, for example, of wanting to look up a word in the dictionary while this agitation was in the atmosphere, and everything jumps up and down (yet the lighting is the same and I’m using the same magnifying glass), I no longer see a thing, it’s all jumping! I go page by page, but the word simply doesn’t exist in the dictionary! Then I remain quiet, I do this... (Mother makes a gesture of bringing down the Peace) and after half a minute I open the dictionary: the very spot, and the word leaps out at me! And I see clearly and distinctly. Consequently I have now the indisputable proof that if you want to do anything properly, you must FIRST be calm – but not only be calm yourself; you must either isolate yourself or be capable of imposing a calm on this whirlwind of forces that comes upon you all the time from all around.

All the teachers are wanting to quit the school – weary! Which means they’ll begin the year with half the teachers gone. They live in constant tension, they don’t know how to relax – that’s really what it is. They don’t know how to act without agitation.

I think that’s what this head came to tell me, and it’s precisely what’s wrong in the Ashram – everything here is done in agitation, absolutely everything. So it’s constantly a comedy of errors; someone speaks, the other doesn’t listen and responds all wrong, and nothing gets done. Someone asks one thing, another answers to something else – bah! It’s a dreadful confusion.

What if we meditated a little.

Sit as you normally do and... forget that I’m here!

(silence)

(After the meditation)

I’m going to tell you what I saw – it’s very interesting. First, emanating from here (Mother indicates the chest), a florescence of every color like a peacock’s tail spread wide; but it was made of light, and it was very, very delicate, very fine, like this (gesture). Then it rose up and formed what truly seemed like a luminous peacock, up above, and it remained like that. Then, from here (the chest), what looked like a sword of white light climbed straight up. It went up very high and formed a kind of expanse, a very vast expanse, which was like a call – this lasted the longest. And then, in response, a veritable rain, like... (no, it was much finer than drops) a golden light – white and golden – with various shades, at times more towards white, at times more golden, at times with a tinge of pink. And all this was descending, descending into you. And here (the chest), it changed into this same deep blue light, with a powdering of green light inside it – emerald green. And at that moment, when it reached here (the level of the heart), a number of little divinities of living gold – a deep, living gold – came, like this, and then looked at you. And just as they looked at you, there was the image of the Mother right at the very center of you – not as she is commonly portrayed but as she is in the Indian consciousness... Very serene and pure and luminous. And then that changed into a temple, and inside the temple there seemed to be an image of Sri Aurobindo and an image of me – but living images in a powdering of light. Then it grew into a magnificent edifice and settled in with an extraordinary power. And it remained motionless.

That is the representation of your japa.

It’s beautiful.

I had to stop because there is something like time that exists here – what a shame! But it is very good.

And it shouldn’t be difficult to keep that all the time.

I didn’t notice you being bothered by these things of the physical mind you had mentioned. However, I had first done this (gesture of cleansing the atmosphere), right at the beginning, so that nothing would come to disturb us... Did you feel anything?

I felt that you were there. I felt your Force.

Ah! You felt it!

Yes, of course – very strongly. At one moment it was very, very powerful.

(Mother laughs heartily) Your japa is lovely. Oh, it’s a whole world that’s forming, and it’s truly harmonious, powerful, beautiful. It’s very good. If you like, we’ll do this for a few moments from time to time. It was very... how should I put it?... very pleasant for me. It feels comfortable, a bit removed from all this porridge! I was very glad.

If you want to prevent these disturbances in your physical mind, then when you sit for japa... You know my Force, don’t you? Well then, wrap it around you, like this, twelve times, from top to bottom.

25. Oct 1960 – Story about an abducted boy; Master of Everything

There is a black cloud over the ashram. It’s origin is rather unique and very interesting.

S has a nephew in Bombay, and one day towards the end of August or beginning September, he told me an extraordinary story about this nephew, who had disappeared (he showed me his photograph – he looks rather like a medium). He returned home two days later, I believe. He’d been found in a train in a hypnotic state; fortunately someone shook him and he suddenly woke up: ‘Why am I here? What am I doing here?’ (He had no intention of travelling, you see; he had simply left his house to visit a neighbor in Bombay.) So he returned home without knowing what had happened to him. And he was quite bizarre, really rather off.

A few days later, this nephew had to go somewhere, I don’t know where; he went down to the railway station – and didn’t return. Impossible to find out what had happened to him, he was nowhere to be found. Several days had passed when the family decided to send me his photograph and to tell me the story, adding that it was surely a sequel to the previous occurrence (there must be some people doing hypnotism), and then they asked me where he was and what had become of him.

All this happened just on the day X was leaving. So I told S to take the photograph and letter to X and tell him the story. X consulted some book, did a very short japa for a few seconds and said, ‘Oh, he’ll come back before September 26, BUT inform Mother so that She may see to ft.’ therefore, I concentrated a little.

About two weeks later (in other words, ten days or so before September 26), some more news – the boy’s older brother, who lives in Ahmedabad (not Bombay), came to visit his mother, father and grandmother (there’s also a grandmother), and he asked about his brother. He had come with a friend. ‘Your brother has disappeared,’ they explained, ‘we don’t know what has happened to him.’ So the two of them decided to search for him: ‘We’ll find him .’

The day before their departure, the elder brother’s friend said he was going to visit the grandmother (she lives some hundred yards away). He went out – and didn’t return. Disappeared.

So of course they were terribly worried; they wondered what had happened. I had someone write to X, I concentrated, and four days later the boy (the brother’s friend, that is) returned in a lamentable state: white, emaciated, barely able to speak. Then he recounted his story:

On his way to the grandmother’s house, he passed by the station and went in to drink something. While drinking, two persons who were there started playing with some balls in front of him. He WATCHED. But suddenly, he felt very uneasy; he wanted to leave and ran towards an exit that opened onto the tracks – it was closed and he could not get out. And these two people were just behind him; suddenly he lost consciousness: ‘I don’t know what happened to me after that.’

He woke up in a railway station somewhere between Bombay and Poona, and he began telling them that he was hungry (he was with those same two persons). They punched him in the stomach and put a handkerchief over his nose – he again passed out! At Poona, he woke up again (he’d lost his appetite by then!), and again they put the handkerchief over his nose. And it went on like that – they kept on punching him a lot. When he woke up in the country on the outskirts of Poona, four men were around him arguing in a language he didn’t know (his language is Gujarati). They were probably speaking in some other language, I don’t know which one – it seems they were very dark. He didn’t understand, but from various signs they made he could see that they were arguing about whether to kill him or not. Finally, they told him (probably in a language he could understand), ‘Either you join our gang, or we’ll kill you.’ He grunted in reply so as not to commit himself. The others decided to wait for their chief (thus the chief wasn’t there): ‘We’ll decide after he comes.’ Then just to make sure, they punched him a few more times in the belly and put the handkerchief over his nose – out!

Sometime later (he doesn’t know how long, for until he returned he had no sense of time), he woke up in a rather dark, low-roofed house way out in the country; there were five persons now, not four. They were busy eating, so he was careful not to budge. Mainly they were drinking (they have prohibition there). Four of them were already dead drunk. So he got up to have a look. The fifth one, whom he hadn’t seen before (he must have been the chief), was not yet totally drunk; when he saw the boy stirring, he let out a fearful growl – so the poor boy threw himself flat in the corner and lay still – he waited. After awhile, the fifth one (after downing another bottle) was also dead drunk. So now that he saw them all fast asleep, he got up very cautiously and... he said he ran for an hour and a half!... A boy pummelled as he had been, who hadn’t eaten for four days! I think that’s a miracle.

After running for an hour and a half, he found himself back at the Poona station, he doesn’t know how. He caught a train back to Bombay, scarcely knowing how he managed it.

When I found this out, I immediately thought, ‘Good, this boy caught the formation X had made for the other one, and it got him back.’ For it’s really miraculous that he succeeded. But the other one, the nephew, was left stranded, nowhere to be found. It was obviously the same gang and the same method.

Then the police got involved. They wanted to take him back to the countryside around Poona (naturally I suppose they nursed him in the meantime), but not much came out of it. Seems that wherever he remembered seeing these people, when he said he had seen them, he fainted. Finally, I was told the story, and the poor family wrote to me saying, ‘Who are these demons with such a great power that even it withstands Mother’s force as well as that of X – and who are holding our son?’ So X was again informed and, knowing the story of the elder brother’s friend, he said, ‘Ah, now I know where the other one is, and I hope it won’t take too long.’ But then September 26 passed – general despair in the family. They wrote to me, and I concentrated.

It was just before Durga Puja, or just after – I can’t remember (dates and I don’t go together) – no, it was after Durga Puja. So I went into a deep concentration and, as a matter of fact, I saw that a very powerful and dangerous Rakshasic power was involved. And then, when I started walking for my japa upstairs in my room (I had given some thought to this story and tried asking for something to be done), I suddenly saw Durga before me raising high a lance of white light – the lance of light that destroys the hostile forces – and She struck into a black swarming mass of men.

But then there came a ... frightful reaction. For one day I was nearly as sick – not quite – as two years ago (they must have used the same mantra). And, you see, I who never vomit... terrible vomiting – everything inside came out! Only now I’m a bit more experienced than two years ago (!), so I set it right... It happened here, downstairs, in the afternoon. I went right back up to my room (I didn’t see anyone that afternoon), and I remained concentrated to try to find out what had happened. I saw that it came from there – a backlash of those people trying to defend themselves.

I did what had to be done.

But unfortunately, this spread all over the Ashram, all over everyone – a black cloud everywhere. It was rather... troublesome!

But some days later, a telephone call: the boy was found in Ahmedabad and brought back to Bombay.

The boy’s story is... fantastic! It’s fantastic. He was thin, gray, empty-headed. I no longer recall all the details, but ultimately it was the same story: abducted from a railway station in the same way; he saw some people, an hypnotic state, and then no more recollection of what had happened to him, nothing at all. I don’t know if they used a handkerchief on him as well, but he was ‘hypnotized.’ They punched him also when he asked to eat. And after that, no more appetite! As if they removed all interest in eating – even when there was food, he didn’t touch it. And absolutely empty-headed.

However, he recalls them repeatedly telling him this: ‘You have no family; that name is not yours; you are called by such-and-such-a-name (they gave him another name); you are all alone and depend exclusively upon us.’ But then, probably this boy had a slightly deeper consciousness, for although his brain did not seem to be working outwardly, something deep down was able to observe and remember.

Finally, they had him work as a waiter in a small café in Ahmedabad, near the station. One day it even happened that his brother and his brother’s friend stopped by (he vaguely recalls having seen them) but he was incapable of speaking to them or of getting them to recognize him. Another time, he tried to leave and headed towards the station, but after awhile he could no longer walk, he was suddenly stopped by something (he doesn’t know what), and he had to go back. That’s how it was – quite a... unique state. But one day, a friend of the brother stopped at this café to drink something, and this same boy served him. He had changed a lot, but the other fellow recognized him all the same and asked, ‘What’s your name?’ He saw that the boy seemed dazed and couldn’t answer. So he didn’t say anything but ran immediately to where the elder brother lived; they came back, took the boy into a corner and doused his face with seltzer water. It seems that then he started becoming more alive. Then they led him away and informed the police.

I don’t have any more details yet...

(Here we introduce, parenthetically, the details of the story as Mother told them two months later)

I found out the details: this boy had to go to the station, but on his way, he went into a shoe store just next to the station to buy a pair of sandals. As he entered, he saw a man there choosing a pair of women’s shoes for himself! This seemed strange to him: ‘What’s this man doing buying...’ and he WATCHED – suddenly, nothing more. He lost consciousness and no longer knew what happened to him. And that’s how the story began – a man selecting women’s shoes in a shop! He must do strange things – probably intentionally – to attract people’s attention. Naturally, out of curiosity, the boy started watching, and that was that – all of a sudden, blank, nothing more! And long afterwards he found himself far away in a train with this man. He’s here now with his mother – they came to thank me. It’s he who gave me the details. He’s a nice boy, but all this has left him with some anxiety, especially when he speaks of it. He’s trying to forget. He told me he’d like to join the army and asked my permission. The boy feels a need for force and he has the idea that to be part of such a force would be good for him. (Of course, he didn’t tell me all this, he’s not that conscious. But that’s what he feels – the need to be supported by an organization of force.) So I encouraged him. I told him it was a good idea. His mother wasn’t very happy! She feared he was leaping from the frying pan into the fire!

Another curious detail is that after having taken away all his appetite and having put him in the café as a waiter, they told him, ‘Now you must eat,’ so he tried to eat, and for four days he vomited up everything he put in – it was completely black! After that, he was able to start eating a little. It’s a fantastic story!

(The conversation resumes here)

But I was mainly interested by the fact that I felt the danger these people represented – not because they were brigands, but because they had some power – brigands with a power – and from what I saw, it was not merely an hypnotic power. There must have been a tantric force in it, otherwise they would not have been so powerful, and especially so powerful from a distance. I had said to myself, ‘They MUST be caught.’ Which was why... (the Force kept on working, you see). And yesterday, the newspaper said that a gang of five men, eight women and half a dozen children had been arrested by the police in Allahabad for using what the newspaper called ‘mesmeric’ means to rob people, attack them, etc. (They were operating in Poona, Bombay and Ahmedabad, but they were caught in Allahabad). Probably when they realized that the boy was gone, they got frightened and fled to the North. And they were arrested in Allahabad – I had made a very strong formation and had said, ‘They MUST be caught.’

As of now, I have no other news... They’ve been caught, so they can’t do any wrong OUTWARDLY, but still their power is there. We’re going to have to be... And everyone here says the same thing – like a black veil of unconsciousness that has fallen upon us. Even those who aren’t accustomed to such things have felt it. I’m presently cleaning the whole place – it’s not easy. Everything is upside down.

I had X informed. But I didn’t tell him my difficulty (this mantra they threw on me to kill me), I didn’t speak of that at all. For he had insisted, from the beginning he had said, ‘Mother must see to it, only Mother’s grace can save them.’ And I understood – their attack came just at the time of Durga Puja, so I understood that Durga had to intervene. So that’s the story.

Things are not going so well for X either; everywhere it’s grating. It was probably very important... I am hopeful that it can bring some change.

But normally, shouldn’t the mantra bounce back on them?

Obviously! It’s boomeranging back on them. They must be having a rather hard time of it now, but too bad for them! They won’t escape it.

I don’t know what’s going to happen to them... They must have killed quite a few people. If that’s discovered, they’ll get what they deserve and we’ll be rid of them – they’ll become little disembodied demons! It’s less dangerous.

Unless they reincarnate somewhere else. Some people are always ready to accept demons, that’s the trouble!

(No sooner had Mother finished telling this story than, by a curious ‘coincidence,’ someone brought her a portrait drawn by P.K., one of the Ashram artists. Several days earlier, at about two in the morning during an uncommonly violent lightning storm, P.K. had suddenly SEEN amidst the flashes of lightning in the sky a rather terrible, demoniacal head in front of his very eyes. Having nothing else available, he hastily drew his vision in chalk on a schoolchild’s slate, which is the portrait Mother speaks of here:)

Well, well! So P.K. is clairvoyant! It’s him, for sure – this is the being behind those people. That’s why they had so much power. And he came here because of that – he was furious. Quite a demon!

I also saw him that night. ‘You fools with your small crackers,’ he said, ‘I will show you what real crackers are!’ – and those flashes of lightning, such an astonishing violence... Oh, he proclaimed all kinds of things, disasters, what not... But these are very complex matters and it’s better not to go into detail.

(Some days later, Mother added the following:)

Merely by looking at that portrait, one child came down with fever!

I myself didn’t dare look at it for long!

Oh, it’s terrifying! I don’t know who had the stupid idea of showing this to the child, but after he saw it he had a fever for three days, with terrible chills. And I believe the artist too was sick after finishing his sketch.

***

What about you, is your health better? (the disciple had not been well)

(soon afterwards)

When you have to slip in seven hours of japa a day, it makes your life a bit strange!

It’s so contrary not only to the education but to the make up of people from the West! For an Indian... for a modern Indian it would be difficult, but for those who have kept something of the old tradition it would not be difficult. It’s easy for children raised in a monastery or near the guru...

(silence)

I looked and saw the realm which is under the influence of thought – the power of thought on the body is tremendous! You cannot imagine how tremendous it is. Even a subconscious or sometimes unconscious thought acts and provokes fantastic results!... I’ve studied this. I’ve been studying it IN DETAIL for the last two years – it’s incredible! If I had the time one day to explain all this, it would be interesting.

Even tiny, the tiniest mental or vital reactions – so tiny that to our ordinary consciousness they don’t appear to have the LEAST importance – act upon the body’s cells and can create disorders... You see, when you observe carefully, you suddenly become aware of a very slight uneasiness, a mere nothing (when you’re busy, you don’t even notice it), and then if you follow this uneasiness to see what it is, you perceive that it comes from something quite imperceptible and ‘insignificant’ to our active consciousness – but it’s enough to create an uneasy feeling in the body.

Which is why – unless you are intentionally and constantly in what here is called the Brahmic consciousness – it is practically impossible to control. And this is what gives the impression of certain things happening in the body independently of... not only of our will but of our consciousness – BUT IT IS NOT TRUE.

Only, there is all that comes from outside – that’s what is most dangerous. Constantly, constantly – when you eat, you catch it... oh, what a mass of vibrations! The vibrations of the thing you eat when it was living (they always remain), the vibrations of the person who cooked it, vibrations of... All the time, all the time, they never stop – you breathe, they enter. Of course, when you start talking to someone or mixing with people, then you become a bit more conscious of what is coming, but even just sitting still, uninvolved with others – it comes! There is an almost total interdependence – isolation is an illusion. By reinforcing your own atmosphere (Mother gestures, as if building a wall around her), you can hold these things off TO A CERTAIN EXTENT, but simply this effort to keep them at a distance creates (I’m thinking in English and speaking in French)... disturbances. Anyway, now all this has been SEEN.

But I know in an absolute way that once this whole mass of the physical mind is mastered and the Brahmic consciousness is brought into it in a continuous way, you CAN... you become the MASTER of your health.

This is why I tell people (not that I expect them to do it, at least not now, but it’s good they know) that it’s NOT a matter of fate, NOT something that completely escapes our control, NOT some sort of ‘Law of Nature’ over which we have no power – it is not so. We are truly the masters of everything which has been brought together to create our transitory individuality; we have been given the power of control, if only we knew how to use it.

It’s a discipline, a tremendous tapasya.

But it’s good to know in order to avoid this feeling of being crushed when things are still completely outside your control, this sense of fatality people have – they’re born, they live, they die: Nature is crushing and we are the playthings of something much bigger, much stronger than us – that is the Falsehood.

In any case, for myself, in my yoga, only after I KNEW that I AM the Master of everything (provided I know how to BE this Master and LET myself be this Master – provided, that is, that the outer stupidity accepts to stay in its place), did I know that one could be the Master of Nature.

There’s also this old idea rooted in religions of Chaldean or Christian origin of a God with whom you can have no true contact – an abyss between the two. That is terrible.

That absolutely has to stop.

For with that idea, the earth and men will NEVER be able to change. This is why I have often said that this idea is the work of the Asuras, and with it they have ruled the earth.

Whereas whatever the effort, whatever the difficulty, whatever time it takes, whatever number of lives, you must know that all this doesn’t matter: you KNOW you ARE the Master, that the Master and you are the same. All that’s necessary is... to know it INTEGRALLY, and nothing must belie it. That’s the way out.

When I tell people that their health depends on their inner life (an intermediate inner life, not the deepest), it’s because of this.

During the last two years, I’ve been accumulating experiences IN THEIR MINUTEST DETAILS, things that might seem most useless. You have to consent to that and not have a mania for greatness; you must know that where the key is found is in the tiniest effort to create a true attitude in a few cells.

The problem is that when you enter into the ordinary consciousness, these things become so subtle and require such a scrupulous observance that people are justified (they FEEL justified) in having the attitude, ‘Oh, it’s Nature, it’s Fate, it’s the Divine Will!’ But with that conviction, the ‘Yoga of Perfection’ is impossible and appears as a mere utopian fantasy – but this is FALSE. The truth is something else entirely.

(long silence)

...When I say to someone, ‘I shall take care of you,’ do you know what I do? I join his body to mine. And then all the work is done in me (as far as possible – essentially it’s possible, but there is a relativity because of time; but as far as possible...). So I find it very interesting to make cross-references and find out the results of my intervention – not so I can boast (there’s nothing much to boast about), but for the sake of the SCIENTIFIC study of the problem: to know how to proceed, how to discriminate, what is active and what isn’t, what are the guide lines, etc.

And even if at the moment you don’t feel very good, you are able to say, ‘It doesn’t matter; what we have to do, we’ll do’ (this fear of not being able to do what has to be done is the most irksome), if at that moment you can sincerely say to yourself, ‘No, I trust in the Divine Grace... no, I will do what I have to do, and I’ll be given the power to do it, or the power to do it will be created in me’ – then that is the true attitude.

I feel that’s what you give me.

30. October 1960 – Vision of old Egyptian Occultism

(After a meditation with Mother on the occasion of the disciple’s birthday. At the outset of the conversation, Mother had given the disciple a small leather wallet with an Egyptian fresco depicted on it.)

Let me see the wallet (Mother looks at it)... Ah, so that has nothing to do with it!

As soon as the meditation began, I started seeing quite familiar scenes from ancient Egypt. And you, you looked a little different, but quite similar all the same... The first thing I saw was their god with a head like this (gesture of a muzzle), with a sun above his head. A dark animal head with... I know it VERY WELL, but I don’t remember exactly which animal it is. One is a hawk, but the other has a head like... (Mother makes the same gesture)

Like a jackal?

Yes, like a jackal, that’s it. Yes, that’s what it was. With a kind of lyre above its head, and then a sun.

And this god was very intimately related to you, as if you were melted together; you were like a sacrificial priest and at the same time he was entering into you.

(Horus, the sun god, child of Isis and Osiris. According to tradition, Anubis, the jackal-headed god, helped Isis to rebuild the body of her spouse, Osiris, who had been killed and dismembered by his brother Set. Osiris was the first god to rule over men. Owing to certain special rites, Isis, helped by Anubis, succeeded in bringing him back to life. So we are not very far from the legend of Savitri and Satyavan.)

And this lasted quite long (it’s what I saw most clearly and what I best remember). But there were many, many things – old things that I know – and certainly a VERY INTIMATE relationship which we had in the days of Egypt, at Thebes.

It’s the first time I saw this for you – it was very, very...

‘Was it by chance the wallet that brought this to mind?’ I wondered right at first. I had the impression of having given you something Egyptian, but I could no longer remember what it was – I’m happy it wasn’t that!... I hesitated for barely a moment, then said to myself, ‘Why?’ And what came is that everything, even apparently accidental things, is organized by the same Consciousness for the same ends – it’s obvious.

But I found this interesting, so I began looking, and I LIVED the scene, all kinds of scenes of initiation, worship, etc., for quite some time. When that lifted, a light much stronger than the last time (during the last meditation) came down, in a wonderful silence. (I might add that the first thing I did, at the beginning, was to try to establish a silence around you, to insulate you from other things so as to keep your mind quiet; it kept jumping a little, but once this light came down...) And it came down with a very hieratic quality and... (how can I put this?) Egyptian in character – very occult, very occult, very, very distinct, very specific, like this (gesture indicating a block of silence descending).

And then there came a long moment of absolutely motionless contemplation... with something that now escapes me – it may come back.

Then suddenly I went into a little trance. And in it I saw you, but you were... physically, you were on one plane, and then I saw another man on a different plane (I saw him quite concretely; he was rather tall, broad-shouldered – not so tall as broad, with a dark, European suit). And he took your hands and started shaking them enthusiastically! – but you were quite indifferent, just as you are now, dressed in Indian fashion and sitting cross-legged. He took both your hands and started shaking them! And then I distinctly heard the words: ‘Congratulations, it’s a great success!’ – it had to do with your book. And at the same time, I saw all sorts of people and things who were touched by your book – all kinds of people, obviously French, or Westerners in any case... women, men. There was even one woman (she must have been an actress or a singer or... anyway, someone whose life was... she was even dressed for the stage, with some kind of tights – a beautiful girl!) and she said to someone, ‘Ah, it has even given me a taste for the spiritual life!’ It was extremely interesting... All kinds of things of this nature. And then once again I came out of this trance and... In the end, I tried to do some certain thing for you and it turned out well. It turned out quite well.

But then, just before that, there was this powdering of golden light coming down. And as it descended, it was white with a touch of gold (but it was white) and it came down in a column, with such POWER!... And then, just at the end, this powdering of gold came and settled into this white light which had remained there the whole time – oh, it was so... abundant. A great power of realization. I had a hard time coming out of it! At the start, I had decided to come out of it at half past, so I came out, but still not completely...

So there, my child. And you, what did you feel?

When I meditate with you... When I’m alone, there is never this power, this... It’s something else... Sometimes it’s strong but it always lacks this particular quality. There are powerful moments when I’m alone, but not like this.

Of course! I’m also with you there in your room when you meditate, but it does make a difference...

The physical vibration is important. The circumstances relating to the work of transformation make the physical vibration important. I feel it, for as soon as I want to do something with someone on the physical plane (physical, mind you), it all comes into the body. And the body is simply seized... I see that absolutely physical vibrations are being used all the time. It’s really so different. All the work which is done at a distance (gesture indicating action stemming from the mind) – it acts, of course, but...

You know, even now, all this (Mother touches her body, her hands) feels so vibrant and alive that it’s difficult to sense its limits... as if it extends beyond the body in all directions. It no longer has any limits.

But it’s still not luminous in the dark. What is normally luminous in the dark is something else... I had that when I was working with Théon (after returning to France, we had group meditations – though he didn’t call it ‘meditation,’ he called it ‘repose,’ and we used to do this in a darkened room), and there was... it was like phosphorescence, exactly the color of phosphorescent light, like certain fish in the water at night. It would come out [of the body], spread forth, move about. But that is the vital, it originates in the vital. It is a force from above, but what manifests is vital. Whereas now it is absolutely, clearly the golden supramental light in... an extraordinary pulsation, vibrant in intensity... But probably it still lacks a... what Théon used to call ‘density,’ an agent that enables it to be seen in the dark – and then it would be visibly gold, not phosphorescent.

But it is very, very concrete, very material.

I wonder if at night... Sometimes it’s so intense that I wonder if it doesn’t radiate. But I can’t see as my eyes are closed!

Again last night, for a large part of the night, it was... the body has no more limits – it’s only a great MASS of vibrations.

And the experience just now (during meditation) was somehow mixed with what I usually see at night (it was not a combination – or maybe it was a combination...), for it had that same light... It was a kind of powdering, even finer than tiny dots – a powdering like an atomic dust, but with an EXTREMELY intense vibration... but without any shifting of place. And yet it’s in constant motion... Something shifting about within something that vibrates on the same spot without moving (something does move, but it’s subtler, like a current of tremendous power which passes through a milieu that doesn’t move at all: rather, it vibrates on the same spot with an extreme intensity). But I don’t exactly know how it is different from the present experience... It becomes less golden at night, the gold is less visible, whereas the other colors – white, blue and a sort of pink – are much more visible.

Oh, now I remember! It was PINK during the second phase, just afterwards, after Egypt! Oh, it was like... like at the end of a sunrise when it gets very clear and luminous. A magnificent color. And it kept coming down and down, in a flood... that part was new. It’s something I see very rarely. It was not there at all the last time we meditated together. And it came filled with such a joy! Oh!... It was absolutely ecstatic. It lasted quite a long time. And from there I went into this trance where I saw (laughing) that man congratulating you! I heard him say (his voice is what roused me from my trance, and then I saw him), ‘Congratulations, it’s a great success!’ (Mother laughs)

It’s good. We’ll have these little meditations from time to time. For me, it’s pleasant, for I have neither to restrict nor contain nor veil myself. It’s nice.

And I see what’s coming down; it’s good.

And there is something very happy, very happy, which keeps repeating, ‘It’s good, it’s good!’ Happy... and rather satisfied because of that.

My impression is that in a while, maybe not in such a distant future, we’ll be able to do something, a sort of... it will no longer be personal. We should be able to establish something.

All I know is that HERE you must be very careful not to weaken the body’s resistance (I don’t just mean in India, but here in the Ashram). Here, it’s important – the base must be solid, for otherwise it’s difficult. The more the Force descends – as it has just now descended – the more the body must be... rather square. It’s important.

I’ve tried everything, you know, from complete fasting to a meat diet – everything, everything. Well, I noticed that you can have pleasant experiences while fasting, but it’s not good, it shouldn’t be done – these are all old ideas. No, the body must be solid, solid... otherwise...

05. November 1960 – Mother's is nearly erased

These things from the past... it’s rather odd – now, once they come and I’ve spoken of them, they get erased. As if they were returning one last time to say goodbye before going for good.

All these ‘memories’ (actually they’re rather pictures) seem to be coming forward to show themselves with all the knowledge, truth and HELP they represent; they come to say, ‘There! You see, this is the origin of that’ – a whole curve. Then once I’ve seen it, it’s gone.

One day, as an experiment, I tried to remember something from the past, for I was interested in what it contained; I tried – impossible! It had been cleaned out, it was gone. So I understood that these things come, they show themselves (you have to be ATTENTIVE and know what purpose they have served) and then they go away.

I have so totally forgotten a whole world of incidents and events that when someone reminds me of something (the people around me have lived with me, so they’ve seen things and remember them), I get the feeling that they are speaking of someone or something else – it no longer has any connection with me at all. And it’s the same with everything, whether near or far, which has brought to my consciousness whatever it had to bring, lost its utility and – disappeared. Only, these memories probably still have some utility for the others, so they remain. But for me it’s completely erased, absolutely, as if it had never been.

It’s the only way to forget.

People often try to forget the past, but it doesn’t work. Only once it has brought all the lessons that it was meant to bring into your life (it’s decanted, so you see the thing in its deepest truth), is its utility finished, and it disappears.

I am convinced that at heart Karma is simply all the things we haven’t used in the true way that we drag along behind us... If totally and clearly we have learned the lesson which each event or each circumstance ought to have brought, then it’s finished, its utility is gone and it dissolves.

It’s an interesting experience to follow and observe.

***

(soon afterwards)

I went down into a place... a place simply in the human consciousness, thus necessarily in my body... I have never seen anything more timorous, fearful, feeble and mean! It’s... it must be a part of the cells, part of the consciousness, something that lives in apprehension, fear, dread, anxiety... It was truly, truly dreadful.

And we carry that within us! We aren’t aware of it, it’s almost subconscious – for you see, the consciousness is there to prevent us from yielding to that – it’s cowardly, and it can make you fall sick IN A MINUTE. I saw it, I saw things that had been cured and overcome in myself (cured in the true manner, not in an outer way), and then they return! It’s cured, but then it begins again.

So then I went in search of its origin. It’s something in the subconscient – in the cells’ subconscient. Its roots are there, and on the least occasion... And it’s so very, very ingrained that... For example, you can be feeling very good, the body can be perfectly harmonious (and when the body is perfectly harmonious, its motions are harmonious, things are in their true places, everything works exactly as it should without needing the least attention – a general harmony), when suddenly the clock strikes, for example, or someone utters a word, and you have just the faint impression ‘Oh, it’s late, I’m not going to be on time’ – a second, a split second, and... the whole working of the body falls apart. You suddenly feel feeble, drained, uneasy. And you have to intervene. It’s terrible. And we’re at the mercy of such things!

To change it, you have to descend into it – which is what I’m in the midst of doing. But you know, it makes for painful moments. Anyway, once it’s done, it will be something. When that is done, I’ll explain it to you. And then I’ll have the power to restore you to health.

08. November 1960 – Moral, vice and virtue

(After a conversation with Z, a distant ‘disciple’ reputed for his loose morals and the object of numerous ‘moralistic’ or even so-called ‘yogic’ criticisms among the ‘true disciples’ in the Ashram)

He lives in a region which is largely a kind of vital vibration which penetrates the mind and makes use of the imagination (essentially it’s the same region most so-called cultured men live in). I don’t mean to be severe or critical, but it’s a world that likes to play to itself. It’s not really what we could call histrionics, not that – it’s rather a need to dramatize to oneself. So it can be an heroic drama, it can be a musical drama, it can be a tragic drama, or quite simply a poetic drama – and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it’s a romantic drama. And then, these ‘soul states’ (!) come replete with certain spoken expressions... (laughing) I’m holding myself back from saying certain things! – You know, it’s like a theatricals store where you rent scenery and costumes. It’s all ready and waiting – a little call, and there it comes, ready-made. For a particular occasion, they say, ‘You’re the woman of my life’ (to be repeated as often as necessary), and for another they say... It’s a whole world, a whole mode of human life which I suddenly felt I was holding in my arms. Yes, like a decoration, an ornament, a nicety – an ornament of existence, to keep it from being flat and dull – and the best means the human mind has found to get out of its tamas. It’s a kind of artifice.

So for persons who are severe and grave (there are two such examples here, but it’s not necessary to name them) ... There are beings who are grave, so serious, so sincere, who find it hypocritical; and when it borders on certain (how shall I put it?) vital excesses, they call it vice. There are others who have lived their entire lives in a yogic or religious discipline, and they see this as an obstacle, illusion, dirtiness (Mother makes a gesture of rejecting with disgust), but above all, it’s this ‘terrible illusion that prevents you from nearing the Divine.’ And when I saw the way these two people here reacted, in fact, I said to myself, ‘but...’ – you see, I FELT So strongly that this too is the Divine, it too is a way of getting out of something that has had its place in evolution, and still has a place, individually, for certain individuals. Naturally, if you remain there, you keep turning in circles; it will always be (not eternally, but indefinitely)’ the woman of my life,’ to take that as a symbol. But once you’re out of it, you see that this had its place, its utility – it made you emerge from a kind of very animal-like wisdom and quietude – that of the herd or of the being who sees no further than his daily round. It was necessary. We mustn’t condemn it, we mustn’t use harsh words.

The mistake we make is to remain there too long, for if you spend your whole life in that, well, you’ll probably need many more lifetimes. But once the chance to get out of it comes, you can look at it with a smile and say, ‘Yes, it’s really a sort of love for fiction!’ – people love fiction, they want fiction, they need fiction! Otherwise it’s boring and all much too flat.

All this came to me yesterday. I kept Z with me for more than half an hour, nearly 45 minutes. He told me some very interesting things. What he said was quite good and I encouraged him a great deal – some action on the right lines which will be quite useful, and then a book... unfortunately mixed with an influence from that artificial world (but actually, even that can be used as a link to attract people). He must have spoken to you about this. He wants to write a kind of dialogue to introduce Sri Aurobindo’s ideas – it’s a good idea – like the conversations in Les Hommes de Bonne Volonté by Jules Romain. He wants to do it, and I told him it was an excellent idea. And not only one type – he should take all types of people who for the moment are closed to this vision of life, from the Catholic, the fervent believer, right to the utmost materialist, men of science, etc. It could be very interesting.

This is what you see in life, it’s all like that – each thing has its place and its necessity. This has made me see a whole current of life... I was very, very involved with people from this milieu during a whole period of my existence – and in fact, it’s the first approach to Beauty. But it gets mixed.

(Mother remains silent a moment)

Symbolically, in life, we might think of tamas as the earth (the solid and obdurate earth), and this intervention of the vital is water flowing onto it. But when first it touches the earth, it stirs up mud! There’s no reason to protest, for it’s like that. And thereby the earth becomes less hard and resistant, and it begins receiving.

It’s an approach which is not at all mental nor intellectual nor (God knows!) moral in the least – no notion of Good or Evil nor any of those things, absolutely none of that. There’s a moment in life when you begin thinking a little and you see all this from an overall or universal point of view in which all moral notions completely disappear – FOR ANOTHER REASON. This experience with Z reminded me of a certain way of approaching Beauty that enables you even to find it in what appears dirty and ugly to the common vision. It is She trying to express herself in this something which to the common vision is ugly, dirty, hypocritical. But of course, if you yourself have striven assiduously and have greatly held yourself in, then you look at it reprovingly.

From my earliest childhood, instinctively, I have never felt the slightest contempt or... how should I say... (well, well! I was thinking in English) shrinking or disapproval, severe criticism or disgust for the things people call vice.

(silence)

I have experienced all kinds of things in life, but I have always felt a sort of light – so INTANGIBLE, So perfectly pure (not in the moral sense, but pure light!) – and it could go anywhere, mix everywhere without ever really getting mixed with anything. I felt this flame as a young child – a white flame. And NEVER have I felt disgust, contempt, recoil, the sense of being dirtied – by anything or anyone. There was always this flame – white, white, so white that nothing could make it other than white. And I started feeling it long ago in the past (now my approach is entirely different – it comes straight from above, and I have other reasons for seeing the Purity in everything). But it came back when I met Z (because of the contact with him) – and I felt nothing negative, absolutely nothing. Afterwards, people said, ‘Oh, how he used to be this, how he used to be that!... And now look at him! See what he’s become!...’ Someone even used the word ‘rotten’ – that made me smile. Because, you see, that doesn’t exist for me.

What I saw is this world, this realm where people are like that, they live that, for it’s necessary to get out from below and this is a way – it’s a way, the only way. It was the only way for the vital formation and the vital creation to enter into the material world, into inert matter. An intellectualized vital, a vital of ideas, an ‘artist’; it even fringes upon or has the first drops of Poetry – this Poetry which upon its peaks goes beyond the mind and becomes an expression of the Spirit. Well, when these first drops fall on earth, it stirs up mud.

And I wondered why people are so rigid and severe, why they condemn others (but one day I’ll understand this as well). I say this because very often I run into these two states of mind in my activities (the grave and serious mind which sees hypocrisy and vice, and the religious and yogic mind which sees the illusion that prevents you from nearing the Divine) – and without being openly criticized, I’m criticized... I’ll tell you about this one day...

You’re criticized?

Yes, but naturally without daring to criticize me openly. But I’m aware of it. On the one hand, they see it as a kind of looseness on my part (oh, not only for that – many things!). And on the other hand, you know well enough; it applies to other things, slightly different areas, it’s not exactly the same, but in this area they’re also severe. I’m even told that there are some people who shouldn’t be in the Ashram.

My reply is that the whole world should be in the Ashram!

But as I cannot contain the whole world, I have to contain at least one representative of each type.

They also find I give too much time and too much force (and maybe too much attention) to people and things that should be regarded with more severity. That never bothered me much. It doesn’t matter, they can say what they like.

But since Z’s visit yesterday, and this morning on the balcony... Oh, it’s so... I had already seen this long ago – this whole milieu that is not very pretty – and I had said, ‘Well, it’s all right, that’s how it is,’ and I didn’t discuss it further: ‘That’s how it is, and absolutely the whole world belongs to the Lord – IS the Lord! And the Lord made it so, and the Lord wants it so, and it’s quite all right.’ Then I put it aside. But with his visit yesterday, it found its place – such a smiling place. And there’s a whole world of things of life which have found their true place in this way – with a smile!

(silence)

As if suddenly something were opening in a marvelous way – it has classified a whole part of terrestrial life. It was truly interesting.

(silence)

How strange it is!... You have the feeling of ascending, of a progress in consciousness, and everything, all the events and circumstances of life follow one another with an unquestioning logic. You see the Divine Will unfolding with a wonderful logic. Then, from time to time, there appears a little ‘set’ of circumstances (either isolated or repeated), which are like snags on the way; you can’t explain them, so you put them aside ‘for later on.’ Some such ‘accidents’ have been quite significant, but they don’t seem to follow this ascending line of the present individuality. They’re scattered along the way, sometimes repeated, sometimes only once, and then they vanish. And when you go through such an experience, you sense that they are things put aside for later on. And then, all of a sudden (especially during these last two years when I have again descended to take all that up), all of a sudden, one after another, all these snags return. And they don’t follow the same curve; rather, it’s as if suddenly you reach a certain state and a certain impersonal breadth that far surpasses the individual, and this new state enters into contact with one of those old ‘accidents’ that had remained in the deepest part of the subconscient – and that makes it rise up again, the two meet ... in an explosion of light. Everything is explained, everything is understood, everything is clear! No explanation is needed: it has become OBVIOUS.

This is entirely another way of understanding – it’s not an ascent, not even a descent nor an inspiration... it must be what Sri Aurobindo calls a’ revelation.’ It’s the meeting of this subconscious notation – this something which has remained buried within, held down so as not to manifest, but which suddenly surges forth to meet the light streaming down from above, this very vast state of consciousness that excludes nothing... and from it springs forth a light – oh, a resplendence of light! – like a new explanation of the world, or of that part of the world not yet explained.

And this is the true way of knowing.

These things are like landmarks along the ascending path: you go forward step by step, and sometimes it’s painful, sometimes joyful, or with a certain amount of toil that bears witness still to the presence of the personality or the individuality and its limitations (the Questions and Answers are full of this) – but the other thing is different, completely different: the other thing is an overflowing joy, and not only the joy of knowing but the joy of BEING. An overflowing joy.

There, my child.

...If you weren’t there, all these things would never get said.

I don’t know why. I don’t know why I wouldn’t say them. But I know why I say them to you – I already gave you a hint. I told you, didn’t I, that there was a reason.

Yes, but you didn’t tell me what it was!

(Mother laughs) Because it’s not that kind of reason, not a reason that can be explained!!

No, it’s a... it’s the same thing, a contact.

I know – I told you that I had had a vision, but you didn’t understand what I told you that day. It was a vision of the place you occupy in my being and of the work we have to do together. That’s really how it is. These things [that I tell you] have their utility and a concrete life, and I see them as very powerful for world transformation – they’re what I call ‘experiences’ (which is much more than an experience because it extends far beyond the individual) – and it’s the same whether it’s said or not said: the Action is done. But the fact that it is said, that it is formulated here and preserved, is exclusively for you, because you were made for this and this is why we met.

It doesn’t need a lot of explaining.

And, even with Sri Aurobindo, even with him I didn’t speak of these things for I wouldn’t waste his time, and I found it quite useless to burden him with all this. I would tell him... I always described my visions and experiences at night – I always recounted that to him. And he would remember (I myself would forget; the next day, the whole thing would be gone), he would remember; then sometimes, long afterwards, even years afterwards, he would say, ‘Ah, yes! You had seen that back then.’ He had a wonderful memory. While myself, I would already have forgotten. But those were the only things I told him, and even then only when I saw that it had a very sure, very superior quality. I didn’t bother him with a whole jumble of words. But otherwise... even Nolini, who understands well... I never, never felt even the... (it’s not the need) not even the POSSIBILITY.

I don’t want to tell you this too precisely, to expand on it, for these things cannot be explained. I want you to – not know nor think it, but feel it suddenly, like a little electric shock within that leaps forth.

It will come.

I’m really so thick, you know...

It’s the mind that’s terrible. It’s a nuisance. To have an experience like the one I told you about a little while ago you have to tell it, ‘Okay, be quiet; be quiet now, be calm.’ But if it’s left on its own and you’re unfortunate enough to listen to it, it spoils everything. This is what you must learn to do.

But effort is not of much use, my child, it’s... (long silence) it’s... you can call it grace, or you can call it a ‘knack’ – two very different things, yet it has something of each.

If I could only make my head quiet!

That is horrible. It’s painful, exhausting.

And the more you try, the more fidgety it gets.

That’s it, exactly. It’s what I was telling you, that it’s not the result of any effort... In fact, sometimes it comes all by itself when you’re no longer thinking about it. Maybe I’ll be able to help you one day.

12. Nov 1960 – Only the Divine Love can change things!

You asked me just now if we have a say in the matter. Well, last year I didn’t go out; I had no intention of going to the Sports-ground or to the theater for the December 2 program, but I was often asked to see that the weather be good. So while I was doing my japa upstairs, I started saying that it shouldn’t rain. But ‘they’ weren’t in a very good mood! (When I used to go out myself, it had an effect, for it kept the thing in check, and even if it had been raining earlier, that day it would stop.) So they said, ‘But you aren’t going out, so what does it matter.’ I said I was counting on it. Then they answered, ‘Are you prepared to have it rain the next time you go out?’ – ‘Do what you like,’ I replied. And when I went out on November 24 for the prize distribution, there was a deluge. It came pouring down and we had to run for shelter in the gymnasium – everyone was splashing around, the band playing on the verandah was half-drenched, it was dreadful! – the day before it hadn’t rained, the day after it didn’t rain. But on that day they had their revenge!

I don’t want that to happen this time. Once is enough. So I’m going to see about it.

(silence)

But it’s explained very well in Savitri! All these things have their laws and their conventions (and truly speaking, a really FORMIDABLE power is needed to change anything of their rights, for they have rights – what they call ‘laws’)... Sri Aurobindo explains this very well when Savitri, following Satyavan into death, argues with the god of Death. ‘It’s the Law, and who has the right to change the Law?’ he says. And then comes this wonderful passage at the end where she replies, ‘My God can change it. And my God is a God of Love.’ Oh, how magnificent!

And by force of repeating this to him, he yields... She replies in this way to EVERYTHING.

It’s all right for winning a Victory, but not for stopping the rain for one day!

So I’m trying to come to an understanding, to reach an agreement – these are very complicated matters (!). For it’s a whole totality... You see, we are trying something here which really is contrary to all those laws and practices, something which disturbs everything. So ‘they’ propose things that have me advancing like this (sinuous motion), without disturbing things too much, and without having to call in forces... (Mother makes a gesture of a lance thrust into the pack) forces a bit too great, which may disturb things too much. Like that, we can keep tacking back and forth.

A while ago... You know that I have TREMENDOUS financial difficulties. In fact, I have handed the whole matter over to the Lord, telling Him, ‘It’s your affair; if you want us to continue this experience, well, you must provide the means.’ But this upsets some of ‘them,’ so they come along with all kinds of suggestions to keep me from having to... to resort to something so drastic. They suggest all kinds of things; some time ago they said, ‘What about a good cyclone, or a good earthquake? A lot of damage to the Ashram, a public appeal – that would bring in some funds!’ (Mother laughs) Yes, it’s of this order! And it’s all quite clear and definite – we have veritable ‘conversations’!

I listen, I answer. ‘It’s not satisfactory!’ I told them. But they’ve kept to their idea, they like it. When that first storm came some time back (you remember, with those terrible bolts of lightning and that asuric being P.K. saw and sketched): ‘Don’t you want us to destroy something?...’ I got angry. But it was... This influence was so close and acute that it gave you goose bumps! The whole time the storm lasted, I had to hold on tight in my bed, like this (Mother closes her fists tight as in a trance or deep concentration), and I didn’t move – didn’t move – like a... a rock during the entire storm, until he consented to go a bit further away. Then I moved. And even now, it comes – from others (there’s not just one, you see, there are many): ‘How about a good flood?’ A roof collapsed the other day with someone underneath, but he was able to escape. So roofs are collapsing, houses... ‘Arouse public sympathy, we must help the Ashram!’ ‘It’s no good,’ I said. But maybe that’s what’s responsible for this interminable rain. And they offer so many other things ... oh, what they parade past me! You could write books on all this!

But generally – and this is something Théon had told me (Théon was very qualified on the subject of hostile forces and the workings of all that ‘resists’ the divine influence, and he was a great fighter – as you might imagine! He himself was an incarnation of an Asura, so he knew how to tackle these things!); he was always saying, If you make a VERY SMALL concession or suffer a minor defeat, it gives you the right to a very great victory.’ It’s a very good trick. And I have observed, in practice, that for all things, even for the very little things of everyday life, it’s true – if you yield on one point (if, even though you see what should be, you yield on a very secondary and unimportant point), it immediately gives you the power to impose your will for something much more important. I mentioned this to Sri Aurobindo and he said that it was true. It is true in the world as it is today, but it’s not what we want; we want it to change, really change.

He wrote this in a letter, I believe, and he spoke of this system of compensation – for example, those who take an illness on themselves in order to have the power to cure; and then there’s the symbolic story of Christ dying on the cross to set men free. And Sri Aurobindo said, ‘That’s fine for a certain age, but we must now go beyond that.’ As he told me (it’s even one of the first things he told me), ‘We are no longer at the time of Christ when, to be victorious, it was necessary to die.’

I have always remembered this.

But things are PULLING backwards – phew, how they pull!... ‘The Law, the Law, it’s a Law. Don’t you understand, it’s a LAW, you can’t change the Law.’ – ‘But I CAME to change the Law.’ – ‘Then pay the price.’

What can make them yield?

Divine Love.

It’s the only thing.

(silence)

Sri Aurobindo has explained it in Savitri. Only when Divine Love has manifested in all its purity will everything yield, will it all yield – it will then be done.

It’s the only thing that can do it. It will be the great Victory.

(silence)

On a small scale, in very small details, I feel that of all the forces, this is the strongest. And it’s the only one with a power over hostile wills. Only... for the world to change, it must manifest here in all its fullness. We have to be up to it...

Sri Aurobindo had also written to the effect, ‘If Divine Love were to manifest now in all its fullness and totality, not a single material organism would but burst.’ So we must learn to widen, widen, widen not only the inner consciousness (that is relatively easy – at least feasible), but even this conglomeration of cells. And I’ve experienced this: you have to be able to widen this sort of crystallization if you want to be able to hold this Force. I know. Two or three times, upstairs (in Mother’s room), I felt the body about to burst. Actually, I was on the verge of saying, ‘burst and be done with.’ But Sri Aurobindo always intervened – all three times he intervened in an entirely tangible, living and concrete way... and he arranged everything so that I was forced to wait.

Then weeks go by, sometimes even months, between one thing and another, so that some elasticity may come into these stupid cells.

So much time is wasted. We are... oh! We are so hard! (Mother hits her body) As hard as a rock.

But three times now, I’ve really felt that I was on the verge of... falling apart. The first time it brought a fever, a fever so... I don’t know, as if I had at least 115°! – I was roasting from head to toe; everything became red hot, and then... it was over. That was the day when suddenly – suddenly – I was... You see, I had said to myself, ‘All right, you must be peaceful, let’s see what happens,’ so then I brought down the Peace, and immediately I was able to pass into a ‘second of unconsciousness – and I woke up in the subtle physical, in Sri Aurobindo’s abode. There he was. And then I spent some time with him, explaining the problem.

But that was really an experience, a decisive experience (it was many months ago, perhaps more than a year ago).

So I explained the problem to Sri Aurobindo, and he replied (by his expression, not with words, but it was clear), ‘Patience, patience – patience, it will come.’ And a few days after this experience, ‘by chance’ I came upon something he had written where precisely he explained that we are much too rigid, coagulated, clenched for these things to be able to manifest – we must widen, relax, become plastic.

But this takes time.

I don’t really see what we can do... I mean, it’s you who does, of course, but I don’t see what we can do to help change things.

Nor do I!

I have quite the feeling that I myself ‘do’ nothing at all, absolutely nothing. The only thing I do is this (gesture of offering upwards), constantly this, in everything – in thoughts, feelings, sensations, in the body’s cells, all the time: ‘You, You, You. It’s You, it’s You, it’s You...’ That’s all. And nothing else.

In other words, a more and more complete, a more and more integral assent, more and more like this (gesture of letting herself be carried). That’s when you have the feeling that you must be ABSOLUTELY like a child.

If you start thinking, ‘Oh, I want to be like this! Oh, I ought to be like that!’ you waste your time.

15. November 1960 – Mother's experience of THAT

I don’t know if it’s due to Z’s visit or simply if the time had come and things converged (because that’s what generally happens), but a whole period of the past is coming up again – and it’s not a purely personal past, for it includes all the acquaintances I used to have, a whole collection of things that represents not only my individual life but something rather collective (as it always is; each of us is always a collectivity but we aren’t aware of it, and if anything were taken away, it would unbalance the whole). A whole set of things that were absolutely wiped clean from the memory (it must have been buried somewhere in the subconscient or the semi-conscient – in any case, something more unconscious than the subconscient), and it has all come back up. Oh, things... such things... If just two weeks ago someone had asked me, ‘Do you remember that?’ I would have replied, ‘No, not at all!’ And it’s coming from every side. Oh, such mediocrity! (mediocre in the way of consciousness, experiences and activities) and so gray, so dull, so flat! Only this morning, while getting ready for the balcony, I thought, ‘Is it possible to live like that?!’

And then it became so clear that behind all this there was always the same luminous Presence, this Presence that is everywhere, always, watching over everything.

And as I look now at the things of life, at people, at this totality, I see that it’s identically the same thing when seen from there, from that consciousness – it’s so drab, dull, insipid, gray, uninteresting, lifeless... Oh, all of life, WHATEVER IT IS, is like that when seen from that consciousness!

So I understood that this must correspond to a certain realm of experience; I understood all those who say, ‘If it has to be like this, if it can never be otherwise, then...’ (this opposition, this abyss between a TRUE life, a TRUE consciousness, a TRUE activity, something living, powerful, fulfilling... and life as it now is), ‘if there must always be this difference between the physical expression as it is or as it can be in the present circumstances, and the true life, then...’ For if despite everything – despite this tremendous distance I’ve covered in my life (these memories go back more than sixty years) and all the evolutionary effort upwards I have made since that time IN MATTER (I’m not speaking of leaving Matter behind, but IN MATTER, IN action) – if that doesn’t further reduce this gap between the true consciousness and the possible material realization, then I understand... I understand why people say, ‘It’s hopeless.’ (Of course, this ‘hopeless’ is meaningless to me.)

But I... (how can I put this?) I lived their experience, I lived it; and even events which seem quite extraordinary when seen from afar, which is the way they appear to most people, even historical things which have furthered the earth’s transformation and its upheavals – the crucial events, the great works, you might say – are woven from the SAME fabric, they are the SAME thing! When you look at all this from afar, on the whole it can make an impression, but the life of each minute, of each hour, of each second is woven from this SAME fabric, drab, dull, insipid, WITHOUT ANY TRUE LIFE – a mere reflection of life, an illusion of life – powerless, void of any light or anything that resembles joy in the least. Oh!... if it has always to remain like that, then we don’t want any of it.

Such is the feeling it gives.

For me it’s different, because I KNOW that it can and must become something else. But then all this Consciousness which is there and in which I live and which has this world vision must come forward and manifest in the vibration of EACH second – not in a whole which looks interesting when seen from afar; it must enter the vibration of each second, the consciousness of each minute, otherwise...

(silence)

How well I understand all those who don’t know or to whom it hasn’t been shown or revealed that we are GOING towards something else, that it WILL BE something else!... Such a feeling of futility, stupidity, uselessness, and absolutely devoid of any... any intensity, any life, any reality, any ardor, any soul – bah! It’s disgusting.

While it was all coming up, I thought,’ How is this possible?...’ For during those years of my life (I’m now outside things; I do them but I’m entirely outside, so they don’t involve me – whether it’s like this or like that makes no difference to me; I’m only doing my work, that’s all), I was already conscious, but nevertheless I was IN what I was doing to a certain extent; I was this web of social life (but thank God it wasn’t here in India, for had it been here I could not have withstood it! I think that even as a child I would have smashed everything, because here it’s even worse than over there). You see, there it’s... it’s a bit less constricting, a bit looser, you can slip through the mesh from time to time to breathe some air. But here, according to what I’ve learned from people and what Sri Aurobindo told me, it’s absolutely unbearable (it’s the same in Japan, absolutely unbearable). In other words, you can’t help but smash everything. Over there, you sometimes get a breath of air, but still it’s quite relative. And this morning I wondered... (you see, for years I lived in that way... for years and years) just as I was wondering, ‘How was I AsLE to live that and not kick out in every direction?’, just as I was looking at it, I saw up above, above this... (it is worse than horrible, it is a kind of... Oh, not despair, for there isn’t even any sense of feeling – there is NOTHING! It is dull, dull, dull... gray, gray, gray, clenched tight, a closed web that lets through neither air nor life nor light – there is nothing) and just then I saw a splendor of such sweet light above it – so sweet, so full of true love, true compassion something so warm, so warm... the relief, the solace of an eternity of sweetness, light, beauty, in an eternity of patience which feels neither the past nor the inanity and imbecility of things – it was so wonderful! That was entirely the feeling it gave, and I said to myself, ‘THAT is what made you live, without THAT it would not have been possible.’ Oh, it would not have been possible – I would not have lived even three days! THAT is there, ALWAYS there, awaiting its hour, if we would only let it in.

(silence) And it’s still the same thing; only now I’m up here (Mother gestures above the head), I’m here, so it’s quite another matter.

I am no longer looking out at the sky from below, but from up above... I am looking, as if each look at each thing seen established the Contact.

It was like that this morning at the balcony.

The rainy season expresses this state of things so well: a constant descent of luminous sweetness (sweetness is not the right word – there must be a Sanskrit word for it, but this is all we have!...) in this endless gloom.

***

(Soon afterwards, Mother comes back to the same theme)

It all began the day I received the news of Z’s arrival. ‘All right,’ I thought, ‘here’s a chunk of life sent back to me for clarifying. I must work on it.’ But it didn’t stop there... It’s strange how all this past had been swept clean – I could no longer remember dates, I couldn’t even remember when Z had been here before, I no longer knew what had happened, it had all been wiped clean – which means that it had all been pushed down into the subconscient. I didn’t even know how I used to speak to him when I saw him, nothing, it was all gone. All that had remained alive were one or two movements or facts which were clearly connected to the psychic life, the psychic consciousness – but just one or two or three such memories; all the rest was gone.

So a whole slice of my life came back, but it didn’t stop there! It keeps extending back further and further, and memories keep on coming, things that go back sixty years now, even beyond, seventy, seventy-five years – they are all coming back. And so it all has to be put in order.

It’s quite odd, for this was not a personal consciousness, it was not ‘someone remembering his life’ – this is what I found most interesting; what came were pieces, little chunks of life’s construction, a collection of people and circumstances. And it is impossible to separate the individual from all that is around him, it’s clear! It all holds together like... (if you change one thing, everything is changed) it holds together like an agglomerated mass.

I had seen this earlier from another angle. In the beginning, when I started having the consciousness of immortality and when I brought together this true consciousness of immortality and the human conception of it (which is entirely different), I saw so clearly that when a human (even quite an ordinary human, one who is not a collectivity in himself – as is a writer, for example, or a philosopher or statesman) projects himself through his imagination into what he calls ‘immortality’ (meaning an indefinite duration of time) he doesn’t project himself alone but rather, inevitably and always, what is projected along with himself is a whole agglomeration, a collectivity or totality of things which represent the life and the consciousness of his present existence. And then I made the following experiment on a number of people; I said to them, ‘Excuse me, but let’s say that through a special discipline or a special grace your life were to continue indefinitely. What you would most likely extend into this indefinite future are the circumstances of your life, this formation you have built around yourself that is made up of people, relationships, activities, a whole collection of more or less living or inert things. But that CANNOT be extended as it is, for everything is constantly changing! And to be immortal, you have to follow this perpetual change; otherwise, what will naturally happen is what now happens – one day you will die because you can no longer follow the change. But if you can follow it, then all this will fall from you! Understand that what will survive in you is something you don’t know very well, but it’s the only thing that can survive – and all the rest will keep falling off all the time... Do you still want to be immortal?’ – Not one in ten said yes!... Once you are able to make them feel the thing concretely, they tell you, ‘Oh no! Oh no! Since everything else is changing, the body might as well change too! What difference would it make!’ But what remains is THAT; THAT is what you must truly hold on to – but then you must BE THAT, not this whole agglomeration. What you now call ‘you’ is not THAT, it’s a whole collection of things..

Formerly, that was my first step – a long time ago. Now it’s so very different... I wonder how it was possible to have been so totally blind as to call that ‘oneself’ at any moment in one’s life! It’s a collection of things. And what was the link by which that could be called ‘oneself’? That’s more difficult to find out. Only when you climb above do you come to realize that THAT is at work here, but it could work there as well, or as well here, or here, or here... At times there is suddenly a drop of something (Oh, I saw that this morning – it was like a drop, a little drop, but with SUCH an intense and perfect light...), and where THAT falls it makes its center and begins radiating out and acting. THAT is what can be called ‘oneself’ – nothing else. And THAT precisely is what enabled me to live in such dreadfully uninteresting, such nonexistent circumstances. And at the moment when you ARE that, you see how that has lived and how that has used everything, not only in this body but in all bodies and through all time.

At the core, this is the experience; it is no longer knowledge. I now understand quite clearly the difference between the knowledge of the eternal soul, of life eternal through all its changes, and this CONCRETE experience of the thing.

It’s very moving.

It was strange, this morning... I came a few minutes late. (I blamed the clocks which weren’t working, but it wasn’t the clocks which were to blame!) I was getting dressed when suddenly all this came upon me – I had a moment of... it may have lasted one or two minutes, just a few minutes, not long. – Oh, the emotion I had during the experience was... it was very absorbing.

It was no longer this (that is, life as it is on earth) becoming conscious of That (the eternal soul, this ‘portion of the Supreme’ as Sri Aurobindo said); it was the eternal soul seeing life... in its own way – but without separation, without any separation, not like something looking from above that feels itself to be different... How strange it is! It’s not something else, it’s NOT something else, it’s not even a distortion, not even... It’s losing its illusory quality as described in the old spiritualities – that’s not what it is! In my experience, there was... there was clearly an... emotion – I can’t describe it, there are no words. It wasn’t a feeling, it was something like an emotion, a vibration... of such TOTAL closeness and at the same time of compassion, a compassion of love. (Oh, words are so pitiful!...) One was this outer thing, which was the total negation of the other and AT THE SAME TIME the other, without the least separation between them. It WAS the other. So what was born in one was born in the other as well, in this eternal light. A sweetness of identity, precisely, an identity that was necessarily such total understanding with such perfect love – but ‘love’ says it poorly, all words are poor! It’s not that; it’s something else! It’s something that cannot be expressed.

I lived that this morning, upstairs.

And this body is... oh, how feeble and how poor it is. All it finds to express itself are the tears that come to its eyes! Why? – I don’t know.

It has a lot to do before it is strong enough to LIVE that.

This was still there, like a sweetness, when I came to the balcony... And the notion that people, objects, life, that all that are ‘different’... is unthinkable! It is not possible. Even thought is so strange!

(silence)

I often find leaving the balcony difficult. And it’s only this same gentleman... (you know, the ‘censor’) who starts telling me,’ You’re keeping them there in the rain just because you’re in ecstasy; you’re just letting them stand there drenched and getting a crick in the neck looking up in the air. Aren’t you going to let them go?’ – When he insists too much, I go back inside.

Maybe that’s why he’s still there. Otherwise, if I forgot... (Mother laughs)

26. November 1960 – Talking about Sri Aurobindo's departure

You see, I’m doing the sadhana really along a... a path that has never been trod by anyone. Sri Aurobindo did it... in principle. But he gave the charge of doing it in the body to me.

That was the wonderful thing when we were together and all these hostile forces were fighting... (they tried to kill me any number of times. He always saved me in an absolutely miraculous and marvelous way). But you see, this seemed to create very great BODILY difficulties for him. We discussed this a great deal, and I told him, ‘If one of us must go, I want that it should be me.’

‘It can’t be you,’ he replied, ‘because you alone can do the material thing.’

And that was all.

He said nothing more. He forbade me to leave my body. That’s all. ‘It is absolutely forbidden.’ he said. ‘You can’t, you must remain.’

After that (this took place early in 1950), he gradually... You see, he let himself fall ill. For he knew quite well that should he say ‘I must go,’ I would not have obeyed him, and I would have gone. For according to the way I felt, he was much more indispensable than I. But he saw the matter from the other side. And he knew that I had the power to leave my body at will. So he didn’t say a thing, he didn’t say a thing right to the very last minute...

(silence)

Once or twice I ‘heard’ certain things about him and I told him (for I told him all I saw or heard), and I said that I was... that these suggestions were coming from the Enemy and that I was violently fighting against them. Then he looked at me – twice – he looked at me, nodded his head and smiled. And that’s all. Nothing more was said. ‘How strange!’ I thought. And that’s all. Then I myself must have forgotten. You see, he wanted me to forget.

I only remembered afterwards. But...

This path is very hard.

(silence)

And then things don’t happen at all as they do in ordinary life... for three or four minutes, sometimes five or ten minutes, I’m abominably sick, with every sign that it’s all over.

(silence)

But it’s only to make me find the... to make me go through the experience and to find the strength. And also to give the body this absolute faith in its Divine Reality – to show it that the Divine is there and that He wants to be there and that He shall be there. And it’s only at such ‘moments’ as these – when logically, according to the ordinary physical logic, it’s all over – that you can seize the key.

You have to go right through everything without flinching.

I haven’t told this to anyone until now, especially not to those who take care and watch over me, for I don’t want to... terrify them. Besides, I’m not so sure of their reactions – you understand, if they started getting frightened, it would be terrible. So I don’t tell them. But it has happened at least five or six times, usually in the morning before going down to the balcony, just when I don’t have the time... And it has to be done quickly, for I have to be ready on time!

It’s very, very interesting. But then, you see, at such moments the... concreteness of the Presence – concrete to the touch, really to the material touch – is extraordinary!

How many more such experiences will be necessary? I don’t know, you see, I’m only building the path.

(silence)

Don’t write all this down, erase it, because... I’ll speak of it later – once it’s over, when I’ve reached the end. I don’t want it to fall into anyone’s hands by accident. And for you, keep it in your I’m telling you all this because of what happened the other day. It’s with such experiences that the... the true Power is acquired.

And then, at the same time, some rather interesting things are happening. Imagine, X is starting to understand certain things – that is, in his own way he is discovering the progress I am making; he’s discovering it as a received teaching (through subtle channels). He wrote a letter to Amrita two or three days ago in which he translates in his own language, with his own words and his own way of speaking, exactly my most recent experiences – things that I have conquered in a general way.

This interests me, for these things do not at all enter through the mind (he doesn’t receive a thing there, he’s closed there). So in his letter he says that this thing or that is necessary (he describes it in his own words), and he adds, ‘This is why we must be so grateful to have among us the... the great Mother (as he puts it), the great Mother who knows these things.’ – ‘Good!’ I said to myself. (It had to do with something specific concerning the capacity for discrimination in the outside world, the different qualities and different functions of different beings, all of which depends on one’s inner construction, as it were.) So I see that even this, even these physical experiences, is received (and yet I hadn’t tried, I had never tried to make him receive it); it merely works like this, you see (gesture of a widespread diffusion), and the experience is very – how should I say? – drastic, with a kind of... (power of radiation). Imperative.

13. December 1960 – The disbelief of the Mind

During these last days, I was face to face with a problem as old as the world which had taken on an extraordinary intensity.

It’s what Sri Aurobindo calls disbelief, and it’s located in the most material physical consciousness – it isn’t doubt (which mainly belongs to the mind), it is almost like a refusal to accept the obvious as soon as it doesn’t belong to the little daily routine of ordinary sensations and reactions – a sort of incapacity to accept and recognize the exceptional.

This disbelief is the bedrock of the consciousness. And it comes with a... (‘thought’ is too big a word for such an ordinary thing) a mental-physical activity which makes you... (I am forced to use the word) ‘think’ things and which always foresees, imagines or draws conclusions (depending on the case) in a way which I myself call DEFEATIST. In other words, it automatically leads you to imagine all the bad things that can happen. And this occurs in a realm which is absolutely run-of-the-mill, in the most ordinary, restricted, banal activities of life – such as eating, moving... in short, the coarsest of things.

It’s fairly easy to manage and control this in the realm of thought, but when it comes to those reactions that rise up from the very bottom... they’re so petty that you can barely express them to yourself. For example, if someone mentions that so-and-so ate such-and-such a thing, immediately something somewhere starts stealing in: ‘Ah, he’s going to get a stomach-ache!’ Or you hear that someone is going somewhere – ‘Oh, he’s going to have an accident!’... And it applies to everything; it’s swarming down below. Nothing to do with thought as such!

It’s quite a nasty habit, for it keeps the most material state in a condition of disharmony, disorder, ugliness and difficulty.

I tried every possible way... To get out of it is relatively easy. But then it doesn’t change.

The problem appeared again to me very intensely when I read Sri Aurobindo’s The Yoga of Self-Perfection. I was confronted with a whole formidable world to be transformed – to transform what is already luminous is quite easy, but to transform that!... ugh – this stuff of life, so low and so coarse, so ordinary... it’s much more difficult.

For the last several days, I’ve been at grips fighting with it. How can I stop this idiotic, coarse and above all defeatist automatism from constantly manifesting? It’s truly an automatism; it doesn’t respond to any conscious will, nothing. So what will it take to...? And it’s QUITE INTIMATELY related to the body’s illnesses (the old habits the body has of coming out of its rhythmic movement, of entering into confusion) – the two things are very intimately linked.

I’m deep in the problem. For me, ‘the problem’ doesn’t mean explaining the thing (it’s easy to explain), but controlling, mastering and transforming it. That will take some time.

We shall see.

17. December 1960 – Accept everything as coming from the Divine

I think that even what seems to us ugly in animal and vegetal nature appears so only because of the limitations of our own understanding. But really, as soon as man enters the scene... phew!

Yes, I have always felt that in Nature one can live in beauty, always. But then once man shows up, something gets thrown out of joint. It’s the mind, actually. What gives birth to ugliness is really the intrusion of the mind in life. I wonder if it was necessary, if it could not have been immediately harmonious. But it appears not.

Even stones are beautiful; they are always beautiful in one way or another. When life appeared, there were some forms that were a little ‘difficult,’ but not to that extent, not like certain human mental creations. Of course, there may have been some animal species which were rather... but they were more monstrous than actually ugly. And most probably, it only seems like that to our consciousness. But the mind... And it’s the same for all these ideas of sin, of wrong, of... all that – it’s a falsehood. But it was man who invented falsehood, wasn’t it? The mind invented falsehood: to deceive! to deceive! And it’s a curious fact that animals domesticated by man have also learned to lie!

The curve...

Anyway, we have to go beyond all that.

Beyond?... That’s quite a task!

So many people are satisfied with their falsehood, their ugliness, their narrowness, all of it. They’re quite satisfied. When they’re asked to be something else...

This realm that I’m now investigating, oh!... I spend whole nights visiting certain places, and there I meet people I know here materially [in the Ashram]. So many are PERFECTLY satisfied with their... their infirmities, their incapacities, their ugliness, their powerlessness.

And they protest when you want them to change!

Even last night I went down into it... It was so gray and dull and... phew! Banal, lifeless. When they are told that, they retort, ‘No, not at all! Things are quite all right as they are, it’s you who is living in a dreamland!’

We’ll get out of it one day.

But you cannot get out as long as it all seems quite natural to you. What’s most unfortunate is when you resign yourself to it. You realize this when you go back to earlier states of consciousness; you see that it all seemed, if not quite natural, at least almost inevitable – ‘that’s how things are, you must take them as they are.’ And you don’t even think about it; you take things as they are, you EXPECT them to be what they are; it’s the stuff of our daily lives, and it keeps repeating itself endlessly. And the only thing you learn is to hold on, hold on, not let yourself be shaken, to go right through it all – and it feels endless, interminable, almost eternal.

(However, once you understand what eternal is, you see that this CANNOT be eternal, for otherwise...)

But this particular state of endurance – this endurance that nothing can upset – is very dangerous. And yet it’s indispensable; for you must first accept everything before having the power to transform anything.

It’s what Sri Aurobindo always said: FIRST you must accept EVERYTHING – accept it as coming from the Divine, as the Divine Will; accept without disgust, without regret, without getting upset or impatient. Accept with a perfect equanimity; and only AFTER that can you say, ‘Now let’s get to work to change it.’

But to work to change it before having attained a perfect equanimity is impossible. That’s what I have learned during these last years.

And for every detail, it’s the same. First, ‘May Thy Will be done’; then, afterwards, ‘The Will of tomorrow’ – and then those things will disappear. But first, one must accept.

That’s why it takes so long. Because those who readily accept are... they get encrusted and buried under it; they no longer move. And those who see the future and what must be have a hard time accepting; they pull back, they kick and protest – so they don’t have any power.

***

(Soon afterwards, concerning the conversation of November 5 on the subconscious roots in the cells that can make everything fall apart in a second: ‘To change it, you have to descend into it... it makes for painful moments... Once it’s done, I’ll have the power...’)

When was this? November 5? And now it’s December 17...

Well, it’s still continuing!

There should be machines to graph the curves, for it’s so... sometimes it goes like this (gesture of a very steep ascent) and at such moments you feel, ‘Ah! now I’ve caught the thing.’ And then back it falls – toil. Sometimes it even feels like you’re falling in a hole, really a hole – and how are you ever going to get out? But that ALWAYS precedes a rapid ascent and a revelation or illumination: ‘Ah, how wonderful! I’ve finally got it!’

And that goes on for weeks and weeks.

To have the exact curve or the REAL history, we’d have to note down everything at each minute, for it’s a CONSTANT work that’s taking place. You see, the outer activities are becoming almost automatic, whereas this goes on behind – I’m speaking, yet at the same time this is going on behind.

It’s a sort of oscillation – really, it’s so interesting – between two extremes, one of which is the all-powerfulness and capital or primordial importance of the Physical, and the other its utter unreality.

And it’s constantly going back and forth between the two (seesaw motion). And both are equally false, equally true.

It goes back and forth between the two all the time – a kind of curve like an electric arc between them; it goes up, it goes down, it falls and then climbs back up. In a flash comes the clear vision that the universal realization will be achieved along with the perfection of the material, TERRESTRIAL world. (I say ‘terrestrial, for the earth is still something unique; the rest of the universe is different – so this blown up speck of dust becomes of capital importance!) Then, at another moment, eternity – for which all the universes are simply... the expression of a second, and in which all this is a sort of – not even an interesting game, but rather... a breathing in and out, in and out... And at such a moment, all the importance we give to material things seems so fantastically idiotic! And it goes in and out... In this state, everything is obvious and indisputable. And in the other state, everything is obvious and indisputable. But between the two there is EVERY combination and every possibility.

(silence)

And the problem is to hold both of them so PERFECTLY together that they are no longer in opposition. For one second, it comes – ah! – just a thousandth of a second – ah, yes! – and then it’s over, it’s gone. And you have to begin again.

(silence)

And particularly, this sense of what’s ‘important’ and ‘not important’ is something which vanishes, leaving no trace at all. You are left like that, with... nothing. There is no SCALE in importance – that is entirely our mental imbecility. Either nothing is important or EVERYTHING is EQUALLY important.

The speck of dust, there, which you sweep away, or ecstatic contemplation – it’s ALL THE SAME.

20. December 1960 – Mother's experience

If I could only note all this down... It’s been so interesting all morning, right from the start – on the balcony, then upstairs while walking for my japa! And it was on this same theme (experience of the speck of dust)... This habit people have (especially in India, but more or less everywhere among those who have a religious nature), this habit of doing all things religious with respect and compunction – and no mixing of things, above all there should be no mixing; in some circumstances, at certain times, you MUST NOT think of God, for then it would be a kind of blasphemy.

There’s the religious attitude, and then there’s ordinary life where people do things – working, living, eating, enjoying life; they regard these as the essentials, and as for the rest, well, when there’s time they think about it. But what Sri Aurobindo brought down, precisely... I remember at Tlemcen, Théon used to say that there was a whole world of things, such as eating, for example, or taking care of your body, that should be done automatically, without giving it any importance – ‘it’s not the time to think of things divine.’(!) That’s what he preached. So you have the religious attitude of all the religious types, and then ordinary life – I found both of them equally unsatisfactory. Then I came here and told Sri Aurobindo my feeling; I said that if someone is truly in union with the Divine, it CANNOT change no matter what he does (the quality of what you’re doing may change, but the union can’t change no matter what you’re doing). And when he said that this was the truth, I felt a relief. And that feeling has stayed with me all through my life.

And now, all these different attitudes which individuals, groups and categories of men hold are coming from every direction (while I’m walking upstairs) to assert their own points of view as the true thing. And I see that for myself, I’m being forced to deal with a whole mass of things, most of which are quite futile from an ordinary point of view – not to mention the things of which these moral or religious types disapprove. Quite interestingly, all kinds of mental formations come like arrows while I’m walking for my japa upstairs (Mother makes a gesture of little arrows in the air coming into her mental atmosphere from every direction); and yet, I’m entirely in what I could call the joy and happiness of my japa, full of the energy of walking (the purpose of walking is to give a material energy to the experience, in all the body’s cells). Yet in spite of this, one thing after another comes, like this, like that (Mother draws little arrows in the air): what I must do, what I must answer to this person, what I must say to that one, what has to be done... All kinds of things, most of which might be considered most futile! And I see that all this is SITUATED in a totality, and this totality... I could say that it’s nothing but the body of the Divine. I FEEL it, actually, I feel it as if I were touching it everywhere (Mother touches her arms, her hands, her body). And all these things neither veil nor destroy nor divert this feeling of being entirely this... a movement, an action in the body of the Divine. And it’s increasing from day to day, for it seems that He is plunging me more and more into entirely material things with the will that THERE TOO it must be done – that all these things must be consciously full of Him; they are full of Him, in actual fact, but it must become conscious, with the perception that it is all the very substance of His being which is moving in everything...

It was quite beautiful on the balcony this morning...

A sweetness, a sensation... (both together) a sensation of eternity, and a sweetness! I wonder if it’s even possible for anything to escape That!

Of course, if one is so unfortunate as to start thinking, it’s all over.

(silence) (silence)

It’s a FACT. It’s not a thought, not something you observe – you aren’t a witness: it’s A FACT which is LIVED. So if you want to translate the experience, you’d have to say the most paradoxical of things, like Sri Aurobindo – so paradoxical that they are almost offensive to reason! Yes, more, far more than paradoxical.

23. December 1960 – Before meditation

I sat down shortly before ten o’clock for meditation. I was in my normal state and I was interested to see if there would be any difference from earlier times. And really, at first there was no difference at all. Then slowly, slowly, I felt this type of smiling and serene peace that I live in entering into the body. The cells are still not always conscious of it (sometimes they feel a sort of... tension of life – I don’t know what to call it). They’re conscious of their existence and of what it means and of the Energy that is acting (yes, conscious of the Action and the Energy that acts), but during the meditation THAT descended and there was an extraordinary relaxation. Not the relaxation that comes with surrender, which I normally feel before sleeping, but the relaxation that comes from a kind of serene, immutable and eternal joy. At that moment the body felt it could remain like that forever! ‘Oh, how nice I feel!...’ it said. And as a matter of fact, I’m not sure but I think he felt the meditation was over, whereas I was still... I felt him stirring, so I stopped.

There was a marked difference. For when something isn’t right, a pressure always comes down on the body from above, the pressure of the descending Force. But in this case it wasn’t that at all; rather, it was like this (Mother holds her palms upwards in an attitude of total surrender), but beatific in that it lives in itself, it is existence in itself – and that’s all.

I came here in that state directly after the meditation, and when I sat down... You see, I didn’t even have the... (naturally there is no question of ‘idea’) I don’t know, not even the instinct to pick up a flower for you, you understand? And when I sat down here, the consciousness of the column of Light started coming. There was no more personality, no more individuality: there was only a column of Light descending right into the very cells of the body – and that’s all.

Then it gradually became conscious of itself, conscious of BEING this column of Light. And then the ordinary consciousness slowly returned.

(silence)

It’s interesting for me to come here soon after the meditation, for it’s as if I were objectivizing my experience. Otherwise I’d be within, like that (gesture), and there’s no longer any... (you see, I say ‘I’ – but at that moment it doesn’t exist!) and even THE BODY feels this way, a kind of immutable and beatific eternity, and that’s all.

I tell you, not even... When I arrived, I said to you, ‘My hands are empty’; merely the contact with your atmosphere made me say it. But otherwise the ‘my,’ the ‘hands’ – none of it had any meaning.

It’s interesting.

31. December 1960 – Night after Night

Oh, but you know, night after night, night after night, I SEE how things which in their truth are so simple become complicated here in the human atmosphere. Really, it’s so interesting; I have visions... you see, the thing in its truth is so simple it’s stupefying, and then here it becomes so complicated, painful, exhausting, upsetting.

But it’s enough to take one step behind to come out of it all.

I’ll tell you about that... Wait, we still have three minutes; I want to tell you one of my most recent visions (but it’s almost the same thing every night):

I was in my home, somewhere – a world whose light is like a sun (golden with scarlet reflections); it was very beautiful. It was in a town, and my house was in that town. I wanted to take to someone some... not presents, but things he needed. So I got everything together, prepared it all, and then loaded my arms with all the packages (I had taken my own time to arrange everything nicely), and I went out when the whole town was completely deserted – there was not a soul on the streets. A complete solitude. And such a sense of well-being, of light and force! Yes, really a kind of felicity, for no reason. And instead of weighing me down, it seemed as if my packages were pulling me! They pulled me on in such a way that each step was a joy, like a dance.

This lasted the whole time I was crossing the town. Then I came to a border, right at the beginning of another part where I was to take my packages; there, just a little below me, I saw a house under construction – the house belonging to the person to whom I had to deliver these presents (the symbolism in all this, of course, is quite clear).

As I approached the house, but still from some distance, I suddenly saw some men busy at work. Then instantly... instantly this road which was so vast, sunlit and smooth – so smooth to the feet... oh, it became the top level of a scaffolding. And what is more, this scaffolding was not very well made, and the closer I came the more complicated it got – there were planks jutting out, beams off balance. In short, you had to watch every single step to keep from breaking your neck. I began getting annoyed. Moreover, my packages were heavy. They were heavy and they so saddled my arms that I was unable to hold onto anything and had constantly to do a balancing act. Then I began thinking, ‘My God, how complicated this world is!’ And just at that moment, I saw a young person coming along, like a young girl dressed in European clothes, with a hat on her head... all black! This young person had white skin, but her clothes were black, and she wore black shoes on her small white feet. She was dressed all in black – black, all in black. Like complete unconsciousness. She also came carrying packages (many more than me), and she came hopping along the whole length of the scaffolding, putting her feet just anywhere! ‘My God,’ I said to myself, ‘she’s going to break her neck!’ – But not at all! She was totally unconscious; she wasn’t even aware that it was dangerous or complicated – a total unconsciousness. But her unconsciousness is what allowed her to go on like that! I watched it all. ‘Well, sometimes it’s good to be unconscious!’ Then she disappeared; she had only come to give me a demonstration (she neither saw me nor looked at me). And looking down at the workers, I saw that everything was getting more and more complicated, more and more, more and more – and there wasn’t even any ladder by which to get down. In other words, it was getting unbearable. Then something in me rebelled: ‘Ah, no! I’ve had enough of all this – it’s too stupid!’

And IMMEDIATELY, I found myself down below, relieved of my packages. And everything was perfectly simple. (I had even brought the packages along without realizing it.) All, all was in order, very neat, very luminous, very simple – simply because I had said, ‘Ah, no! I’ve had enough of this business! Why all these stupid complications!’

But these are not ‘dreams,’ they are types of activity – more real, more concrete than material life; the experience is much more concrete than ordinary life.

I have had hundreds of such examples... It’s not always the same scene. The scenes are different, but the story is always the same – the thing, in its truth, is absolutely luminous, pleasant, charming; then as soon as men get involved, it becomes an abominable complication. And once you say, ‘No! I’ve had enough of all this – it’s NOT TRUE! it goes away.

There have been similar stories in ‘dreams’ with X. I saw him when he was very young (his education, the ideas he had, how he was trained). And the same thing happened. I was with him... but I’ll tell you that another time... And then at the end, I’d had enough and I said, ‘Oh, no! It’s too ridiculous!’ and with that I left the house. At the door was a little squirrel sitting on his haunches making friendly little gestures towards me. ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘here’s someone who understands better!’

But later I observed, I saw that this had helped drain him of all the weight of his past education.

Very interesting... Night after night, night after night, night after night – plenty of things! You could write novels about it all.