7. October 1970 – Satprem’s Books

Secrets are simple, because the truth is simple…. And what looked like a human impossibility will become child’s play.

25. November 1970 – About Satprem’s Book

On the Way to Supermanhood:

It’s extraordinary! There is a sort of… a sort of EMOTION in it, which doesn’t belong to this world. It puts you into contact with a certain… I don’t know what to call it, but it’s like an emotion1 which is beyond the mind—beyond everything, everything, not only the mind but the intellectual.

Its a new emotion. I can’t describe. It’s strange. And every time it does the same thing, every time I say to myself, “I’ll be very careful to follow and see”—and… I try to keep my consciousness in its natural state, but then IN SPITE OF MYSELF, it’s something that… It’s like a magic, mon petit!

It’s something like emotion, but an emotion that knows, an emotion that understands. It’s not a thought. It’s really interesting. And every time, it becomes increasingly conscious; every time, I say to myself, “This time, I won’t let myself get caught!” (laughter) But this time, I was more conscious of what it was…. And it’s a new thing which is beyond the mind, the intellectual and the whole comprehension, and it’s a way of being that… (I don’t know what to call it), it’s something like an emotion, but very clear and VERY conscious.

13. February 1971 – Satprem’s Book – On the Way to Supermanhood

“True liberty is an ascending movement, not yielding to the lower instincts.”

“True liberty is a divine manifestation.”

“We want the true liberty for India so that she may be the right example for the world as the demonstration of what humanity must become.“

26. May 1971 – The Lord loves Satprem

There’s something I feel very deeply…. (silence) Words… words (Mother shakes her head)…. But to say it as simply as possible, I could say, “The Lord loves Satprem.” And that’s something profound, profound, profound…. The Lord loves Satprem. That’s all.

3. July 1971 – Satprem to Mother

For me it's like the bankruptcy of the whole teaching. The whole teaching seems like a fabrication of the higher mind and nothing more - something that has no concrete reality.

I feel I don't want this anymore. It's as if the mind didn't want ANY of it anymore.

11. December 1971 – Satprem’s Addendum

SRI AUROBINDO AND THE EARTH’S FUTURE

Sometimes a great wandering Thought sees the ages still unaccomplished, seizes the Force in its eternal flow and precipitates upon earth the powerful vision, which is like a power of realizing what it sees. The world is a vision becoming real. Indeed its past and its present are not the result of an obscure impulse coming from the womb of time, of a slow accumulation of sediments which little by little mold us—and stifle us and imprison us. It is the powerful golden attraction of the future which draws us in spite of ourselves, as the sun draws the lotus from the mud, and forces us to a glory greater than any our mud or efforts or present triumphs could have foreseen or created.

Sri Aurobindo is this vision and this power of precipitating the future into the present. What he saw in an instant the ages and millions of men will unwittingly accomplish. Unknowingly they will seek the new imperceptible quiver that has entered the earth’s atmosphere. From age to age great beings come amongst us to hew a great opening of Truth in the sepulchre of the past. And in actuality, these beings are the great destroyers of the past. They come with the sword of Knowledge to shatter our fragile empires.

This year, we are celebrating Sri Aurobindo’s Birth Centenary. He is known to barely a handful of men and yet his name will resound when the great men of today or yesterday are buried under their own debris. His work is discussed by philosophers, praised by poets, people acclaim his sociological vision and his yoga—but Sri Aurobindo is a living ACTION, a Word becoming real, and every day in the thousand circumstances that seem to want to rend the earth and topple its structures we can witness the first reflux of the Force he has set in motion. At the beginning of this century, when India was still struggling against British domination, Sri Aurobindo asserted: “It is not a revolt against the British Government [that is needed]…. It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature.”

For the problem is fundamental. It is not a question of bringing a new philosophy to the world or new ideas or illuminations, as they are called. The question is not of making the Prison of our lives more habitable, or of endowing man with ever more fantastic powers. Armed with his microscopes and telescopes, the human gnome remains a gnome, pain-ridden and helpless. We send rockets to the moon, but we know nothing of our own hearts. It is a question, says Sri Aurobindo, “of creating a new physical nature which is to be the habitation of the Supramental being in a new evolution.” For, in actuality, he says, “the imperfection of Man is not the last word of Nature, but his perfection too is not the last peak of the Spirit.” Beyond the mental man we are, there exists the possibility of another being who will be the spearhead of evolution as man was once the spearhead of evolution among the great apes. “If,” says Sri Aurobindo, “the animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man, man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills to work out the superman, the god.” Sri Aurobindo has come to tell us how to create this other being, this supramental being, and not only to tell us but actually to create this other being and open the path of the future, to hasten upon earth the rhythm of evolution, the new vibration that will replace the mental vibration—exactly as a thought one day disturbed the slow routine of the beasts—and will give us the power to shatter the walls of our human prison.

Indeed, the prison is already starting to collapse. “The end of a stage of evolution,” announced by Sri Aurobindo, “is usually marked by a powerful recrudescence of all that has to go out of the evolution.” Everywhere about us we see this paroxysmal shattering of all the old forms: our borders, our churches, our laws, our morals are collapsing on all sides. They are not collapsing because we are bad, immoral, irreligious, or because we are not sufficiently rational, scientific or human, but because we have come to the end of the human! To the end of the old mechanism—for we are on our way to SOMETHING ELSE. The world is not going through a moral crisis but through an “evolutionary crisis.” We are not going towards a better world—nor, for that matter, towards a worse one—we are in the midst of a MUTATION to a radically different world, as different as the human world was from the ape world of the Tertiary Era. We are entering a new era, a supramental Quinary. We leave our countries, wander aimlessly, we go looking for drugs, for adventure, we go on strike here, enact reforms there, foment revolutions and counterrevolutions. But all this is only an appearance; in fact, unwittingly, we are looking for the new being. We are in the midst of human evolution.

And Sri Aurobindo gives us the key. It may be that the sense of our own revolution escapes us because we try to prolong that which already exists, to refine it, improve it, sublimate it. But the ape may have made the same mistake amid its revolution that produced man; perhaps it sought to become a super-ape, better equipped to climb trees, hunt and run, a more agile and clever ape. With Nietzsche we too sought a “superman” who was nothing more than a colossalization of man, and with the spiritualists a super-saint more richly endowed with virtue and wisdom. But human virtue and wisdom are useless! Even when carried to their highest heights they are nothing more than the old poverties gilded over, the obverse of our tenacious misery. “Supermanhood,” says Sri Aurobindo, “is not man climbed to his own natural zenith, not a superior degree of human greatness, knowledge, power, intelligence, will,… genius,… saintliness, love, purity or perfection.” It is SOMETHING ELSE, another vibration of being, another consciousness.

But if this new consciousness is not to be found on the peaks of the human, where then, are we to find it? Perhaps, quite simply in that which we have most neglected since we entered the mental cycle, in the body. The body is our base, our evolutionary foundation, the old stock to which we always return, and which painfully compels our attention by making us suffer, age and die. “In that imperfection,” Sri Aurobindo assures us, “is the urge towards a higher and more many-sided perfection. It contains the last finite which yet yearns to the Supreme Infinite…. God is pent in the mire… but the very fact imposes a necessity to break through that prison.” That is the old, uncured Illness, the unchanged root, the dark matrix of our misery, hardly different now from what it was in the time of Lemuria. It is this physical substance which we must transform, otherwise it will topple, one after another, all the human or superhuman devices we try to graft on it. This body, this physical cellular substance contains “almighty powers,” a dumb consciousness that harbors all the lights and all the infinitudes, just as much as the mental and spiritual immensities do. For, in truth, all is Divine and unless the Lord of all the universe resides in a single little cell he resides nowhere. It is this original, dark cellular Prison which we must break open; for as long as we have not broken it, we will continue to turn vainly in the golden or iron circles of our mental prison. “These laws of Nature,” says Sri Aurobindo, “that you call absolute… merely mean an equilibrium established to work in order to produce certain results. But, if you change the consciousness, then the groove also is bound to change.”

Such is the new adventure to which Sri Aurobindo invites us, an adventure into man’s unknown. Whether we like it or not, the whole earth is moving into a new groove, but why shouldn’t we like it? Why shouldn’t we collaborate in this great, unprecedented adventure? Why shouldn’t we collaborate in our own evolution, instead of repeating endlessly the same old story, instead of chasing hallucinatory paradises which will never quench our thirst or otherworldly paradises which leave the earth to rot along with our bodies? “Why be born if it is to get out at the end?” exclaims the Mother, who continues Sri Aurobindo’s work. “What is the use of having struggled so much, suffered so much, of having created something which, in its outer appearance at least, is so tragic and dramatic, if it is only to learn how to get out of it—it would have been better not to start at all…. Evolution is not a tortuous course that brings us back, somewhat battered, to the starting point. Quite the contrary, it is meant,” says Mother, “to teach the whole of creation the joy of being, the beauty of being, the grandeur of being, the majesty of a sublime life, and the perpetual development, perpetually progressive, of this joy, this beauty, this grandeur. Then everything has a meaning.”

This body, this obscure beast of burden we inhabit, is the experimental field of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga—which is a yoga of the whole earth, for one can easily understand that if a single being among our millions of sufferings succeeds in negotiating the evolutionary leap, the mutation of the next age, the face of the earth will be radically altered. Then all the so-called powers of which we boast today will seem like childish games before the radiance of this almighty embodied spirit. Sri Aurobindo tells us that it is possible—not only possible but that it will be done. It is being done. And perhaps everything depends not so much on a sublime effort of humanity to transcend its limitations—for that means still using our own human strength to free ourselves from human strength—as on a call, a conscious cry of the earth to this new being which the earth already carries within itself. All is already there, within our hearts, the supreme Source which is the supreme Power—only we must call it into our forest of cement, we must understand the meaning of man, the meaning of ourselves. The amplified cry of the earth, of its millions of men and women who cannot bear it anymore, who no longer accept their prison, must open a crack to let the new vibration in. Then all the apparently ineluctable laws that bind us in their hereditary and scientific groove will crumble before the Joy of the “sun-eyed children.” “Expect nothing from death,” says Mother, “life is your salvation. It is in life that you must transform yourself. It is on earth that you progress and on earth that you realize. It is in the body that you win the Victory.”

“Nor let worldly prudence whisper too closely in thy ear,” says Sri Aurobindo, “for it is the hour of the unexpected.”

2. April 1972 – Satprem’s Vision

One Thousand Years

We enter the courtyard of a building, Satprem and I. We see sadfaced people. Head bent, solemn and silent. The Mother is dead. Everybody thinks that The Mother is dead.

Picture of Satprem's Vision

A few are scattered here and there, individuals or groups of three or four. But most go out from a side door to our left. Another door is to the left at the top of a stairway which mounts from the courtyard below and ends in a sort of bridge or passage. I see one or two persons going out from this bridge-door. Turning to the right, this passage leads straight to the Mother’s room.

We enter Mother’s chamber. The Mother is lying on a bed. She is dressed in white satin or silk (the couch also). Four or five people are inside, disconsolate. Slowly they wander out. One or two Pass to the adjoining chamber. Finally only Satprem and I remain. He is near the Mother’s bed The Mother sits up and starts talking to Satprem. She is explaining to him about the transformation of the body. She talks for a long time.

I am standing a little away and behind.

Suddenly Sri Aurobindo beckons me from the adjoining chamber which is His. He too is lying on a cot. I draw near Him. He puts two fingers (index and middle) on my right palm, and says, “You have to carry faith and aspiration during one thousand years.”

Satprem and I come out from the Mother’s chamber and take the passage leading to the left (exit) door to announce to the world that

THE MOTHER IS ALIVE

22. July 1972 – About Satprem

You see, one “does” in higher regions. Sri Aurobindo insisted, he said you (Satprem) were ready to get the superman’s consciousness—not “superman”: supramental, the supramental consciousness. And that’s what he wanted to give you. He wanted… he insisted that you should be preoccupied with THAT, concentrated on that, because you have the capacity. In this domain the numbers are VERY small, so it’s important that all those who can do it do it. That’s how I saw things.

2. August 1972 – The Formation of Death

On several occasions since the beginning of this year 1972—and actually even in a conversation of September 8, 1971, where some of Mother’s words had a strange ring to them—Mother mentioned the “formation of death” she was up against. Today, again, in the following conversation, Mother speaks of that “formation.”

In occult terms, a “formation” is a strongly “formed” thought, or a concentration of force with a specific goal and a permanent existence of its own. Formations can be negative or positive. In everyday life, for example, wills or desires or long-nurtured suggestions one day come to their happy or sorry fruition. The day, the success, or the “accident” were prepared by the constant repetition of insignificant little thoughts, which eventually exude their cancer or dazzling success. Thus Mother, who for long had had no “thoughts” or “will” of her own, except “what You will,” was extremely sensitive and vulnerable to anything coming from the “outside,” precisely because there was no more “outside” for her, she was directly and instantly bathed in everything: she was “in” people. “My body is excessively sensitive,” she said, “and needs to be protected from all those things coming in. As if it had to work inside, as in an egg.”

February 26

Herein, we are therefore trying to find out what happened on November 17, 1973: the why of things. A “tragedy” does not occur at a particular minute or hour in History. It is the result of all the hours and little minutes that have prepared that particular minute or made it inevitable. As I said earlier, I was thunderstruck on that November 18, 1973. I was certainly the blindest of all the characters taking part in the tragedy, for they all seemed to know in advance that she was going to die—at least those in her immediate entourage. But that “knowing in advance” bears a terrible implication. Here we put our finger on the “formation of death” Mother was imbibing daily—“a perpetual discomfort,” she used to say. In those repeated little minutes we can pinpoint the cause of what happened at 7:25 p.m. on November 17,1973.

There is no better eyewitness than Pranab, Mother’s “bodyguard” since he was almost constantly physically present and even slept in Mother’s room. Asked about the cause of Mother’s departure, this is what he stated in a public speech on December 4, 1973 [in English]:

“On one side She had to fight the onset of decay and old age and on the other She was fighting against this dirt that we were constantly throwing upon Her. But more the failing body I hold responsible for what happened. Often I have seen that She was trying to counteract these forces but when She saw that She could not concentrate much, She could not talk much, She could not write much, She could not see people, She could not do as She wanted, because the body was failing, and the dirt and dust that we were throwing upon Her was increasing, increasing and increasing, I felt and I have seen also some kind of despair….”

We know that all too well, alas: they thought she was old and disabled But Pranab adds the following, which suddenly gives us the magnitude of the real tragedy—we could almost say the horror Mother had to face in her body. This is what he says, and let us remember we are today in August 1972:

“This thing which came now [in November 1973], I think She had prepared me enough for it from quite a long time back. Long before, say, in the year 1948, when Sri Aurobindo was still living, She told me, “I am not willing to go, I will not go, and this time there will be no tragedy: but if it so happens that I leave my body, then put my body under the Service Tree”…. And lately, say, AFTER 15th AUGUST 1972, I felt that perhaps what has happened was going to happen. I could not tell anybody and everybody, but to my close associates I said what I was feeling. Afterwards, I felt strongly that it was going to happen, I was counteracting this idea, saying that it should not happen. But behind everything the idea was there.”

Thus, Mother was imbibing their thoughts of death: she was GOING to die. And for her this was no “thought”: things had become “concrete” for her. Her body, the consciousness of her body felt itself in the grip of death.

As in all tragedies in human History, there is not a particular person to blame. Humans only incarnate certain types of force or character—they come, die, triumph and vanish—but the forces remain and continue to animate millions and millions of unknown little humans here and there, who are silently “responsible” and the invisible actors in the drama. There is no one to put on trial here—except millions who are but ourselves. It would therefore be absurd to say that Pranab was the author, or the sole author, of that “formation” (“Everywhere, there are wills that it [the body] should die!” she said), but he certainly fostered it and transmitted it, and because he was physically present all the time, Mother had to breathe that horror constantly. Ultimately there remains this haunting question, the only one perhaps: Could it have been otherwise?

7. April 1973 – Satprem - Pranab - Mother

But we must, we must… (Mother gasps for breath, she moans, silence).

He is going to come. If you stay here long enough, he’ll come, and you can tell him.

Pranab?… All right.

I could—perhaps I could say to him, “I have asked Satprem to explain to you…”

And you’ll explain to him in detail.

Yes, yes, Mother, certainly.

I can tell you they’re absolutely wonderful already; they do their utmost, that’s why I don’t dare ask him. You’ll tell him I told you so.

Yes, Mother.

I appear to… (smiling), I appear to be “fanciful,” totally whimsical: I say yes, and the next instant I say no. So people get the impression….

No, no, Mother! No, no.

But my head, my consciousness is clear, clear, clear…. But I can’t talk anymore.

Tell me when he comes, because I want to tell him right away.

Yes, Mother.

(Enter Pranab. The attendant briefly explains to him that “Satprem has something to tell him on Mother’s behalf.” She had in fact listened to the whole conversation. Instant outburst of anger from Pranab. He shouts from the other end of the room.)

(Pranab, in Bengali:) Nonsense! Nobody can fool me. I know everything.

(Then in English, quoting a Bengali saying:) Our bed is sea, what do we care for this dew?

(Mother comes out of her concentration, she speaks to Satprem:)

Tell me if you’re tired.

(Satprem:) No, Mother, but Pranab is here.

Oh, he’s here! Call him.4

(Pranab, in a dreadful tone:) Yes, Mother?

I have…. I can’t speak.

(Pranab:) Don’t speak Mother! [The attendant laughs.]

I have asked Satprem to explain to you what is happening—why I must make a change….

(Pranab:) Mother, I am not interested, Mother.

No?

I am not interested—whatever happens, happens. I am there to stand up to the last—whatever happens, happens.

(Mother tries to speak, Pranab cuts her short)

…I am neither reasoning nor doing anything. And I don’t want to listen also, Mother. [The attendant laughs.] I understand fully. And let me go on with my own light—own conviction, own faith, own strength, own will. [Pranab raises his head as if he were talking to a crowd] And I don’t want to listen, Mother, anything from anybody.

But you don’t want to know?…

No, Mother, I don’t want.

(silence. Mother is perfectly still, her hands folded on her knees)

(Pranab:) It’s perfectly all right. I have come with something, I stand by something, and if it does not come, I don’t mind—I am a sportsman, Mother. And I don’t want to listen to any explanation. Because whatever explanation is given, if the object for which I came does not materialize, it is the same thing to me.

No, it’s because there is an attempt to transform the body ….

That will happen—when it happens, we shall see, Mother …. Why to predict?

(Satprem:) No, no, meanwhile, for this work, she may have to go as if in an inner sleep….

(Pranab:) Let her go! What is there!

(Satprem:) So then we have to….

(Pranab:) That she has told me. Long before Mother has told me. It is not a new thing, Mother! You had told me, explained to me.

Then, it’s all right.

Pranab:) I don’t want to listen to anything, Mother. Let it happen—what will happen will happen, and we shall do the best. That’s all.

(Satprem:) No, the thing is that people should not disturb her too much.

(Now Pranab explodes. Half standing, half kneeling, his fist on one knee, he pours out a torrent on Mother)

WHO is disturbing her? If anybody is disturbing you, Mother, amongst us, he can be off!

[The attendant laughs] Nobody disturbs.

(Satprem, appalled5:) No, no!…

(Mother tries to say something, Pranab cuts her off)

Mother, don’t, don’t tell anything. You go on: eat, sleep and work, and don’t try to make anybody explain me. I know what it is, what everything is.

Better everybody keeps quiet!

All right. All right, then.

I don’t want to hear anything from anybody.

All right, then.

(Pranab goes to the other end of the room. He shouts for the benefit of Dr. Sanyal, Champaklal, Mother’s attendant and Vasudha, who are all present.)

(Pranab:) I have my faith, I have my conviction, I have my purpose, and even if I am in the dark….

(Satprem to Mother:) Shall I come tomorrow at eleven, Mother?

(Pranab:) All that humbug, I don’t like.

Yes, mon petit, you’ll leave a little before [Pranab’s arrival]… that’s all.

(Satprem:) Shall I come at eleven or a little before?

A short while, till 11:25.

(Satprem:) Right, Mother. Understood, Mother. Good-bye, Mother.

(Pranab:) All those who like fuss, let them continue with the fuss.

(Satprem stands up to leave, Mother takes his hands. Her voice is like a child’s)

So. Thank you.

(Pranab:) There are many people to do fuss—I think most of them.

(Sujata lays her forehead on Mother’s lap)

Mon petit….

(Satprem, in a choked voice:) Good-bye, Mother.

(Pranab:) In thirty years I’ve seen enough—enough of humbug!

7. April 1973 – ADDENDUM

A Grain of Rice?

“To the ordinary human consciousness, I am going mad.”…. What happened on November 17, 1973? Or rather, what is happening?

I have pored over Mother’s every word for so many years, I have LIVED them all with a pounding heart—or a broken heart. What actually happened? And why?… I can never accept the idea that she left because the attempt failed—we may as well say that evolution has failed, or that she quit the game, or that it was too difficult—nothing was too difficult for her, she fought like a lioness. To say—as they all said—that “the body failed” because it was too old, or due to one thing or another, demonstrates that they never felt or even grazed that Power: “That” can revive a dead man and all the dead… without its making any difference. So… what happened? There was one moment when Mother lost the contact with her body, or rather, when THAT lost the contact with Mother’s body. Did she not say (on March 10), “If I lost the contact—but that’s impossible!” Another day in 1971 (on December 4), she had said, “Only a violent death could stop the transformation, otherwise it will go on and on and on….”

Therefore, there can be only two solutions to the mystery—I was about to say “murder mystery,” but can one call it by any other name? What other term could better elucidate the enigma? Assuredly, Mother had that horrid entourage, but it was in no way exceptional, neither in good nor in bad: the people around her exactly represented the average humanity and the ordinary physical consciousness, for which what she was doing was just questionable dreams and hallucinations. They all believed her old, senile or even “insane,” and on the brink of death—but could the beliefs of human pygmies get the better of that Consciousness? Of that Power? Of that Will? Could the attempt fail because of our belief or disbelief?

Thus she was alone among them—she was soon to be truly alone, from May 19 onward, exactly thirty-five days after the present conversation. I still hear Mother’s son artlessly asking me, a few days after that May 19, “How will we communicate with Mother now?” “There will be NO MORE communication,” I replied. He was flabbergasted—not I. WHO could she “communicate” with? But as I said, I was positive that the experience would continue with or without communication: Mother was going to sever the nutrient link to the old physiology—they did not let her. There remained cataleptic trance, the fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty—they did not want it. I can still hear the voice of the Brute: “No, I don’t want to.”

So?…

Did she decide to leave? No one will ever convince me that Mother “decided,” or that she was old, or insane, or incapable.

Did “the Lord decide”? Well, of course, it is He who decides in any case. But He also uses human instruments—otherwise this world would have never existed—and these human instruments have a freedom of choice, they are not mere puppets in the hands of “God” Or rather, to be more precise, they have a choice between being the Divine’s puppet or the devil’s—and maybe BOTH ways conspire to lead us to an unforeseeable goal.

Hence, humans decided They said no to the trance, no to the experience, no to the fairy tale; they could not stand it anymore—it had to stop.

A particular fact has haunted me for the past seven years, a particular passage in Pranab’s speech which he delivered a few days after Mother’s departure. (Once again, I am not accusing anyone: I am chronicling History; I would like to report the facts, the words, the characters as accurately as I can—I am Mother’s scribe, that is all… and I love her, because it’s lovely to love.) Now, in that speech, we find a small remark, the kind of remark one makes in passing, as the most “natural” thing in the world. Pranab is describing the “last days.” You call them the “last days” AFTERWARDS, when the story is over—in the meantime, it’s just life as usual:

(original English)

“At night [on November 14], She said, ‘Make me walk.’ We were very hesitant, but as She insisted, we lifted her up from the bed. She could not walk, staggered a little, almost collapsed. Seeing this, we put Her back in bed. We saw that Her face had become absolutely white and the lips blue. Then we decided that whatever She said, we must not take Her out from the bed again to walk. She took about 20 minutes to recover; She started saying, ‘Lift me up again, I shall walk.’ We refused. She asked why we were refusing. We said, ‘Mother, you are in such a weak condition that it will do you harm.’ Then She said, ‘No, lift me up.’ We did not. She began to plead, sometimes shout. All this continued until fifteen minutes past one. At that time we thought we would give Her some sedative, so that She might rest quietly. Then we gave Her SIQUIL as the doctor had prescribed. It took Her about 45 minutes to become quiet and She slept from 2 to 4 o’clock, but after getting up She started saying, ‘Pranab, lift me up and make me walk. My legs are getting paralysed; if you help me to walk again, they will become all right.’ But we did not listen. She went on entreating till about 6 o’clock when She fell asleep.”

Yes, she fought like a lioness—till the very end Is this the plea of someone “who has decided to leave”?

This was on November 14, three days before the “end”

“On the 15th,” Pranab reports, “at night again… She wanted us to help Her to walk, we refused to do that. We said, ‘Mother, you should not walk.’ She immediately obeyed us…. From that day She became absolutely obedient.”

How long had they been giving her SIQUIL? And what is SIQUIL, in the first place?4 A doctor friend of mine had explained to me: “It’s a dangerous drug.” But I could not believe in that kind of thing, it was simply too horrible.

Seven years later—it took me seven years—one day in September 1980, as I was passing a small local pharmacy on my way back from Madras, I decided to get to the bottom of it. I went in, asked for SIQUIL, pulled out the “directions” from the box and… read, dumbfounded:

“Studies have revealed that over-sedation is not always necessary to benefit such psychotic symptoms as agitation, delusions, hallucinations or delirium. SIQUIL greatly simplifies home management of emotionally deranged patients, many of whom might otherwise previously have been hospitalized. These patients adopt a more realistic behavior, become less of a burden to their families and are more easily approached for training purposes and eventual rehabilitation…. SIQUIL is especially indicated in the treatment of severe acute and chronic mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, mania, depression, delirium, senile psychoses and psychoses caused by organic brain disease.”

So, that body… whose cellular consciousness had been prepared, refined, trained by decades of yoga….

There is simply nothing to say.

They had had enough. They were unanimous.

I now recall a “dream” I had twelve years earlier, in which Mother seemed dead “because she had eaten a grain of rice.” What kind of “rice” was it, that minuscule particle capable of breaking her body? Yet, even if we find the physical cause of her departure, we will not have found the true reality—for the Divine uses everything, including our human errors, to turn it into his unforeseeable Honey.

I recall Sri Aurobindo: “the Eternal’s dreadful strategy.”

Indeed, Mother’s “end” is not the end.

“Wait till the last act,” she had said.

But still….