The Mother

Agenda

Volume 7

October 22, 1966

(Sujata:) P. is ill.

Ill again! But what's wrong with that girl?

What should she do inwardly?

Not be afraid of falling ill! That's what.

You see, they say, “But I AM ill.” They put it the other way around: they say they're ill, and so they are afraid. It's not true! They are afraid first, and then they fall ill. They constantly live with a sort of apprehension: “Oh, what's going to happen?” So something happens! (Mother laughs) The poor body feels that's what is expected of it, and it obeys!

Yes, ninety-nine people out of a hundred are like that. And it's more or less subconscious, meaning it's not a thought they have quite clearly, so they tell you, “No, that's not true!” – they aren't aware of it, they aren't aware of what goes on inside them.

(Then Mother gives Satprem flowers. She looks weary.)

We have half an hour of peace and quiet, unless there is something you'd like to say?

Maybe you are the one who'd like to say something?

Me, I have nothing to say, nothing – absolutely in a daze, I am dazed.

(Mother suddenly suggests that Satprem enter her room directly at 10:15  on the days he comes, even if the secretaries are still there.)

(Satprem, in disbelief:) I come in around 10:15?

You could come straight upstairs, we'll see what happens!

But I don't want to put you in a difficult situation too....

Oh, if you knew to what point... There aren't any reactions, you understand. I look at it all with a very clear vision, a very clear knowledge of the consequences, but there aren't any reactions: I simply become a kind of machine that signs this, does this and that.... And then, when I need to write something, I turn into an automaton: I remain absolutely blank, silent, like this (gesture of immobility, turned upward), and then I leave it (it depends on the case), either Sri Aurobindo or else something from up above comes and dictates. I am like this (same gesture), and more and more so – I am increasingly like this: nonexistent, a machine.

I have told them several times that they might as well replace this with a nicely designed robot, because this (laughing) doesn't need to be here! A well-designed robot, with a sophisticated mechanism: you press one button for one thing, another button for another thing, and it works!

You know the situation: I am not alone for ONE MINUTE, not in the twenty-four hours of the day.¹ And in addition to the outer crowd there is the inner crowd: from everywhere, constantly, it keeps coming and coming – oh, constantly and increasingly. Increasingly. So I am like this (gesture showing a consciousness spread afar), a sort of consciousness that responds, that's all, without any participation. A consciousness that responds like a machine.

Otherwise I think it would be impossible.

Yes, humanly your life is infernal.

If I didn't know how to do that, I would either go insane or fall ill: it's impossible. Fortunately, it's within the realm of possibility! Which means that the work gets done automatically, I don't have to make an effort.

And the number of things keeps increasing (Mother looks around her). When I first came into this room, it was empty; when they made the music room, it was empty. Now (Mother makes an amused gesture pointing towards the heaps of things on the windowsills, the furniture, everywhere), there's no room left for anything! It's crammed to overflowing. So I wonder at people – those who feel deprived and those who are bored: to me, those two categories are unthinkable! How can one have time to be bored and how can one lack anything?!

The work keeps increasing (for everyone); the mail is something unbelievable! It's pouring in from everywhere. I got... (Mother laughs) a letter from America, from someone I don't know at all, who listened to phonograph records of my voice. And, I don't know, it's people who seem to have “occult experiences” or perhaps practice “spiritualism,” and he writes to tell me that he hears my voice and I am giving him “revelations” about himself. But then ... (laughing) fantastic revelations! He says it's my voice, he doesn't doubt it (he accepts even the seemingly most fanciful things), but still, for safety's sake he'd like to ask me (!) if I am indeed the one who has told him those things. And among the things I am supposed to have told him, I seem to have declared that he is a combined reincarnation of Buddha, Christ, Archangel Gabriel, Napoleon and Charlemagne!... I am going to answer him that those five characters belong to different “lines of manifestation” and therefore they are rather unlikely to be combined in a single being (a single human being)!

It's obviously little vital entities having fun. They have fun, and the more fanciful, the greater the fun, of course!

But judging by the letters – all the mail – there is a kind of occult activity spreading over the earth in a very strange way.... In Korea, there is a man who declares himself to be the “New Avatar”.... There are scores and scores of them, everywhere. With the result that from a material point of view, people appear to have rather lost their balance. You feel as if the whole earth has gone half crazy. And with their new inventions, it can result in odd phenomena.

But since the beginning of this century and up till now, the change that has taken place on the earth – in the realms of thought, activities, products, inventions – is fantastic! It's so fantastic that things dating from the beginning of the century appear antiquated, as if they were almost two hundred years old. It's strange.

Things are clearly moving fast.

People seem to be rushing towards... As if they were rushing ahead without knowing why, and at the end is a great big hole!... I don't know what's going to happen.

(silence)

If you don't mind... (with a mischievous smile) that is, if you don't have sensitive nerves, come in at 10:15 next time and make yourself comfortable! At least it will be a lesson. We'll see what happens.

At what time?

Quarter past ten. You'll quietly open the door and come in. I at least will have great fun!

Because personally I have tried everything, without any result. When I tell them, “Time is up” with all the authority at my command, they tell me, “Yes.” That's all it means to them!

Ah, mon petit (turning to Sujata), tomorrow I have forty-two of them to see before you – forty-two people!²

¹ Even at night a “bodyguard” stays in Mother's room.

Back

² Satprem does not remember the effect of his sudden intrusion at 10:15 – probably none, or else not a pleasant one, because the experiment was not repeated.

Back