The Mother

Agenda

Volume 7

March 19, 1966

We spent part of the night together.

There was something I thought yesterday I should tell you, but now I don't remember.... In fact, I think we did it last night!

What happened last night?

Oh, all sorts of things always happen.

It's always on a plane of intellectual organization.... “Intellectual,” meaning that it doesn't go lower than the intellectual: it's something coming from above which we spread and organize in the terrestrial mind – that's where we always meet. “Meet” isn't exactly the word: it's a habit of work. I must be going there very regularly, but when the night is full of lots and lots of things, I don't always remember. But last night, it so happens that I became conscious at that moment; it seems to be a very habitual activity.

It's a place (I have already told you about it¹), a place which is very, very vast, very open and luminous, and VERY PEACEFUL. And very pleasant, it's a place where one works very well. And there is nothing, no limits – it's not a sky, not an earth at all; I can't say there are buildings, there are no buildings, yet one feels one is protected; and yet there are no walls. Now and then one sees a sort of very small shining steel bar (Mother draws a sort of frame that seems to delimit the place), like silver, now and then; and now and then, one feels there are kinds of cupboards that one opens, shelves, but transparent, it's all transparent. There are tables, but transparent; they're solid since one can write on them, but they're transparent. No object is in the way. But everything is organized for the work. And you are there, you often write; you often come in and we talk, we organize. There are people, too, and we tell them to do this or that.

But I meet you there very regularly. Only, I must say that before going to bed I thought I would see you today and I wondered if I would have something to tell you, an experience or something else, and then, in the middle of the night (between half past midnight and one), I woke up, if I may say so, I awoke there, materially, and I remembered everything. I thought, “Well, well!”

What we tell each other, what we talk about with words, I don't know. I don't have a sense of uttering words, but we communicate very well: we each know what the other thinks; we speak, answer one another; and then we organize. And there were people from different countries – we were arranging things. It seems to be the place of intellectual directives for the work in different countries.

You must probably lack what Théon called the “substance” of certain planes in the consciousness of your being, so when you wake up you don't remember, it doesn't come through. But maybe you are left with an impression, no?

Yes... It's very insubstantial.

But it isn't “substantial.” It's VERY conscious, but not substantial. It's very conscious, far more conscious than the consciousness here. It's a clear, precise, powerful consciousness (sovereign gesture), with the sense of a great mastery over things. But it isn't substantial. It's probably my translation – translation in the physical consciousness – that gives the impression of... of what?... They are like huge, huge “halls,” and so high! There's no ceiling, you don't see any ceiling; you don't see any floor, yet you walk – you walk, but without the feeling of walking: you move about. And then, if you want something somewhere, you seem to open a drawer or a cupboard and you find it, but there are no keys, no knobs, you don't even see any objects.

It's very conscious, but not at all material.

But it's a state of being in which, in thought, you very often are. It's the intelligence that stands above circumstances, events, and which... there, one doesn't even feel the need to “foresee” – there's nothing for one to try to know, of course! The knowledge is there, it's a PLACE of knowledge. One has the knowledge of things as they are and a clear will for what they must be. But absolutely no sense of struggle or effort, nothing of all that.

It's not at all an “emotive” place. It's clear, precise, luminous, very vast, without struggle – a remarkable infallibility.

But it is certain that some part of me is there all the time: I don't feel I have to change places in order to go there, it's... (how can I explain?) as if my center of observation shifted: I observe my activity here or there, or there, or here. It's not “me,” there isn't a “me-center” changing places, not at all. I must be there permanently, working there permanently.

And there are kinds of messengers that are sent into the earth atmosphere to convey orders or inspiration or a particular knowledge.

For some time now, whenever I think of terrestrial or Indian circumstances, I have a sort of repeated impression of the calm before the storm.

(Silence) But that place is above the storm – the storm is all the way down.

I feel something is being prepared.

All over the world, things aren't going too well.

It's not the world that bothers me, it's India.

Yes, I mean it's in India that things don't look good.

That's where the nerve center is. It's very sad, it's not pretty.

It doesn't look good.

And that poor woman [Indira Gandhi] truly does the best she can with goodwill, a goodwill that tries to understand all sides at the same time.² She really does the best she can. Inwardly I support her as much as I can, because...

The astrologers have predicted that the next few months, March and April, and perhaps May, are going to be months of horrible confusion, battle, rebellion; and so, in their mind (a sort of subconscious mind), people feel the need to be in agreement with the astrologers! That's how it is, it's as silly as that. A spirit of imitation: “Oh, the astrologers said so, therefore it has to be so.” There you are.

And it's ugly everywhere.

It is true that up till now, the government has multiplied blunders of such stupidity!... It seems a child with common sense wouldn't have committed such blunders. And naturally, even in those who have no bad will or vengeful feelings, it creates an unpleasant tension: you can't do anything anymore, you're bound on all sides! Whatever you do, there are oppositions and prohibitions everywhere. So people no longer know what to do, nobody can do anything anymore.

They have ruined the country, starved it.

But then, even on that (I don't know who is responsible for it), they have launched a campaign abroad, a campaign for “the poor devil starving and crying famine,” in such a mean, oh, such a mean way!... We get letters from everywhere, from every country (lots of letters from France), and especially from schools, centers of education, people who write, “We hear that you are starving, we are so appalled, what can we do to help?” We are obliged to answer them, “No, we're not starving at all!”

It's pitiable.

(silence)

But up above, “one” really isn't in favor of havoc.

One isn't in favor of havoc?

(Mother makes a gesture of vigorous denial) It's a waste of time.

All the more so as men have perfected such means of destruction that it could mean centuries lost, not just a few years. Entire civilizations to rebuild.

No, “one” isn't in favor of that.

It's a seething of something very dark, very dark.

It reminds me of the words of the “Lord of Nations,” the great Asura, when he told me, “I know that my power is drawing to its close, but you may be sure that before disappearing I will destroy everything I can.”

That's it, that's exactly it.

And unfortunately, people give him the opportunity to do so: it's stupidity, ignorance, a sort of blindness.

What's lamentable above all is the way men confuse power with violence. That sort of ignorant feeling that thinks power must manifest as violence.³ Violence is an asuric deformation. True power acts in peace – a peace like this (gesture of massive descent), which nothing can disturb.

¹ See Agenda V, August 14, 1964.

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² Indira Gandhi had been nominated prime minister of India two months earlier, on January 19.

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³ Let us recall Mao Tse-tung: “Power comes from the barrel of a gun.”

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