The Mother

Agenda

Volume 7

January 26, 1966

(Regarding the previous conversation: the blue and pink Purani)

(Ironically) It's a pity we can't make pictures of those things, because Purani had lots of admirers and disciples, plenty in America, and so if I could send them a picture of Purani as I saw him, blue and pink (laughing), that would be charming!

(long silence)

There is at the moment a systematic demolition of all preconceived ideas, prejudices, habits, all the viewpoints – the social, moral, hygienic, health viewpoints – “it” takes hold of everything, one thing after the other, and it demolishes it with such irony!

Last night it was about “hygienic” measures concerning food, and there was such a comical demonstration of how ignorant the precautions we take are and of all sorts of prejudices we have... with scenes and pictures that would make priceless comedies on the stage, oh!...

It was about shrimps to be eaten (!) and it called to my mind how people are in Europe; they aren't at all like here, hounded by the thought of the possible contamination of the food they eat: in Europe, if you see a fruit, you take it and eat it. Shrimps, I remember having bought some on display in a big grocery, but it was on the pavement, outside, anyway – you never gave it a thought. And nothing happens to you!... It was very early this morning, and so comical! Like the funniest farce – whoever wrote those farces? (Mother vainly tries to recall the name) I don't remember now.... You know, names come on a tangent, and then all the similar sounds come on the other side. I tried to recall the name, something came by on a tangent, and on the other side, there came like a joke, “cartilage”! (Mother laughs) Whatever is the name of that “modern” who wrote farces, but wrote them very well?

Courteline.

(Mother laughs) Cartilage!

It was about those big shrimps that are called “jumbo prawns” here: they are as big as crayfish. Someone (a disciple here), who died rather a long time ago, came and brought me prawns; that is to say, I met him in the rooms downstairs... There are rooms that are reproduced somewhere, in a sort of subconscient, in fact the subconscient that has to be transformed, organized and so on, and there exists a sort of reproduction of the rooms downstairs [below Mother's room], but not exactly the same (yet with the same layout), and a certain category of activities takes place there. That's where we were together once, I told you: you were trying to clarify people's ideas (!) It's the same place. It's not physical here, it's in the subconscient. So then, there was that tall fellow who watched over the Samadhi for a long time, Haradhan; he was there. And when he saw me arrive, he told me, “I have brought something for you.” And in a sort of dark-blue cloth, he had wrapped two big prawns, which he gave me! There were already cooked, ready to be eaten. The cloth wasn't very much to my liking! So I thought, “How can I make them a little cleaner before eating them?” (Laughing) You know, it's a farce – a farce to make you understand... your stupidity. I began by removing the... (what is it called?), it's not “skin”... Oh, here too the word hasn't come, but on a tangent came “cuirass”! (Laughing) Cuirass and cartilage!... Anyway... I removed that, and as soon as I had removed it, I said to myself, “You fool! Now it's even more exposed than before!” I looked for a way, and I ran to a corner (in the place of Pavitra's laboratory), found a water tap and put my prawn under the tap. Immediately someone told me (not “someone,” the inner voice told me [laughing]), “Your water is even dirtier than the cloth!” So the consciousness came along with the light, and I was shown with such a clear vision the relativity of the measures we take, which are all preconceived ideas, based on no true knowledge. And finally he told me, “Come on, eat, that's the best you can do!” So I ate my prawn, and it was very good!

You know, we could write a farce. And scenes of such buffoonery!...

There are lots of them. And each with an intention... (laughing) an “educational” intention, to show the childishness in which we live.

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Then Mother takes up her translation of “Savitri”:

Des voix d'ascètes appelaient, des voyants solitaires

Sur le sommet des montagnes ou le bord des fleuves

Ou du cœur désolé d'une clairière dans la forêt

Cherchant le repos du ciel ou la paix de l'esprit sans monde

Ou dans un corps immobile comme une statue, figées

Dans une abolition extatique de leur pensée sans sommeil,

Des âmes endormies méditaient – et ceci aussi était un rêve.

[Ascetic voices called of lonely seers

On mountain summits or on river banks

Or from the desolate heart of forest glades

Seeking heaven's rest or the spirit's worldless peace,

Or in bodies motionless like statues, fixed

In tranced cessations of their sleepless thought

Sat sleeping souls, and this too was a dream.]

(X.IV.642)

(Laughing) He's terrible! He has a knack for demolishing everything.

But it's wonderfully true. It immediately puts you in the atmosphere of the relativity of all those human conceptions.

The trouble is that the outer being finds it hard to forget its habit of regarding material things as true, real, concrete: “This is concrete, you touch it, see it, feel it....”

It's beginning to come.

I tell you, every night it's like that, something is demolished through the comical or the ridiculous. It's very interesting. Oh, when it comes to morality, there are some marvelous things, marvelous! But... (Mother puts a finger on her lips) that's for later.