The Mother

Agenda

Volume 8

May 3, 1967

(Mother gives Satprem a new booklet, brown-colored and with its title in golden letters: “God”)

I have a very sweet little story: The day before yesterday, people came (yesterday morning, I saw fifty-five people in the room over there... fifty-five! The day before, there were a little fewer, but maybe forty-five), and there was a small child, less than a year old, carried by his father. He was sleepy, leaning against his father's shoulder, like that. The father came in; when he came near me, the child saw me – he opened his eyes, a man's eyes! It wasn't a child anymore, you understand. Then he looked at me. He had a blissful smile and... held his hand out to me! He caught hold of my hand, I gave him my hand – how happy he was! But the father wanted to do pranam [prostration], so he put him on the floor. There was beside me a large tray with some fifty of these small books (which contain all the quotations of the passages in which Sri Aurobindo spoke of God). The child looked; he took a book, looked at it, fingered it, tried to open it – without a word or anything. Naturally, the parents, who think they are very wise, the father, who thought he was a wise man, said, “We can't leave this book in the child's hands,” and took it to put it back in its place – the child howled! Then C. took the book and gave it to him, and while the others did pranam (there were a dozen people), all the while he kept looking at the golden letters, feeling them....

He is certainly one of the most remarkable children [I have seen], but not the only one. All the children less than a year old who are brought to me are like that (more or less). This one is very, very conscious. Such eyes, you know – fully conscious eyes.

So sweet! And so happy, as if saying, “At last I'm seeing you!”

So here is the book.

But the crowd is beyond all imagination.

*
*   *

Soon afterwards

Pavitra has been filing old letters, and... I told you, didn't I, that since the 24th there was a CONSTANT insistence, every minute, on giving full support to the Harmony and not allowing disorder, disharmony and confusion to manifest – from the physical, vital and mental points of view. Like that, like someone pounding something since the 24th (I told you the other day about the Force that came; it's been like that since then). And yesterday or the day before, Pavitra, while sorting out those letters, came across something I had written to someone in English:

“Yes, the good-will hidden in all things reveals itself everywhere to that one who carries goodwill in his consciousness.

This is a constructive way of feeling leading straight to the future.”¹

I found this very interesting (it was written years ago, at least more than a year ago, and Pavitra told me he hadn't even found it in a letter: it was loose among the files). And it was as if to tell me, “See, you were already speaking like this before.” Because the “goodwill” is the Harmony (on the psychological level, of course), it's the will for everything to go well psychologically. I found this rather interesting.

And it's good it came back; it's a form quite within everyone's grasp, which they can understand – you aren't asked extraordinary things: you are asked goodwill. When I found this again, I smiled and found it amusing, I said, “Well, I could have written the same thing about cheerfulness! I could have said, ‘Be cheerful and you will see cheerfulness everywhere.’” – One can say many things (Mother rotates her hand slowly as if to present various facets), it always makes me think of a kaleidoscope with color arrangements to express something else which, as soon as it is expressed... shrinks, becomes diminished, generalized and finally within everyone's grasp. But there is one thing: like a FORMIDABLE conflict taking place over the earth at this moment, with this wonderful divine Grace always helping, always striving for the better and exerting a pressure: “Come now, be cheerful, come now, have goodwill, come now, have, yes, have that inner Harmony of contentment, hope, faith. Do not accept the vibrations of... decomposition – the vibrations that diminish, degrade and lead towards destruction.”

It's everywhere, everywhere like that (gesture of pressure on the earth).

So, naturally, the “wise men” Sri Aurobindo speaks of ask, “What does 4.5.67 mean? What's going to happen on 4.5.67? Why...” It comes from every side into the atmosphere. So yesterday I said to someone, someone with great faith and some authority over a large number of people (they ask him all these stupid questions; he didn't tell me but said it mentally, so that I received it mentally), when I saw him in the afternoon I said to him, “So, you have been asked all these questions; well, here is what you are going to answer them very gravely (!):

4     means     Manifestation

5     means     Power

6     means     New Creation

7     means     Realization.”

Now, let them do whatever they like with that!

It's to keep them quiet.²

And indeed, he told me this morning (I replied, “You need not tell me, I know!”), he said to me, “Oh, as for me, I'd rather wait and see.” I answered, “That's the true attitude, it's better to wait and see.”

In any case... I don't know – I don't know anything and don't want to know anything, I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if nothing happened, but... Because, for me, it has ALREADY happened. It came on the 24th, I told you, I had had all kinds of experiences (you too told me!), but never this one: the material personality, the body – absolutely dissolved. There only existed... the Supreme Consciousness. And that, I must say, has remained. It has remained in the sense that... I can no longer eat, I can almost no longer rest, I see really hundreds of people and things and papers and... This poor body might say, “Phew!” – but not at all. And if the tension in others happens to cause a slight loss of balance, the body spontaneously says like this: “Oh, but You are here” – and it's all over. It's all over right away. So this is something.

We will see.

(silence)

With this 4.5.67, there are quite amusing things. Some people have the attitude of “righter of wrongs” (there are people like that) and take their own example of a wrong they have suffered which must be righted; and they say, “This will be the Mother's symbol.” Another would like cameras to be sensitive enough to photograph the “presence” invisible to the human eye. That also comes, they are things that come in the atmosphere [of Mother]. Another (several others, it seems) thinks that on that day the Indian new year will begin. Others... everyone thus imagines something, and it comes into the atmosphere. It's amusing.

And I always think of that passage in Savitri in which he says, “God shall grow up...” Grow up in Matter, of course (and you SEE the Divinity grow up in Matter, and Matter being made more and more capable of manifesting the Divinity), and he says, “...while the wise men talk and sleep.”³ It's exactly that. And it's charming.

(silence)

Sri Aurobindo once told me that one of the first results would be that governments would come under the supramental influence (not that WE would govern! But that governments would be influenced). And these last few days I have seen three ministers and five members of parliament! And I have received an offering from the prime minister [Indira Gandhi]. So it's going well! It's quite amusing.... Some come from Delhi just for a day, only to see me and go back. So one hopes – one hopes – that they will grow a bit wiser (!)

*
*   *

(Then Mother starts sorting out a series of notes scribbled here and there. She stops at this one:)

“Auroville is the shelter built for all those who want to hasten towards a future of knowledge, peace and unity.”

We have a small place called “Promesse,” where there will be six or eight rooms, an office which will be Auroville's first administrative office, and also a guest house with a few rooms, five or six rooms for visitors. It's quite a small place, with a pretty garden and trees, on the Madras road. It's on Auroville's outer border. And so it's being built. There will be a lotus pond in the middle and a sort of big bowl, made of marble, I think, on which this text will be engraved (in French) to let people passing by know what Auroville is.

*
*   *

(Mother files her note on “goodwill” after deciding she would give it for publication in “Mother India.” Satprem remarks that it's a pity for the “Bulletin.”)

Oh, (laughing) I can make as many as you like for you! It comes like that – something having fun.

The way it comes is amusing, too. Someone (for instance, X, Y or Z) reads me a letter; “me,” you understand, there's no me, I am absolutely absent, busy with the things I do: putting this away, doing that or this. Suddenly (gesture from above), “Say this.” Ah, very well.... And then it comes. And it's amusing: it's words playing, it always makes me think of a cat playing with something, like that, with its mischievous eye, sending the ball away and catching it again, poking it with one paw and catching it again with the other; it's exactly the same movement with words. It's someone having fun. You know who the “someone” is (!)

Sometimes it has such extraordinary sense of humor, with such sharpness – he just picks up the slightly ridiculous side of the person who wrote or asked the question, then answers with imperturbable seriousness. Marvelous!

*
*   *

(Mother tidies up her table, on which an extraordinary mass of sundry objects is piled up. She picks up a new pen from a corner:)

So, what do you have to say?

(silence)

Do you need a pen?... I don't know what it's worth, it's brand new. People bring them to me; some five or six, others four or five.... I am inundated with things. Keep it, they are backup tools. If you need anything, don't hesitate to ask, because there's every kind of thing here – except lions! Though invisible ones, there are. Oh, one day it was so funny: I don't remember on what occasion, I was waiting for someone – when I suddenly see a lion come from here, another lion come from there, yet another lion come from there (gesture to the four corners of the room), and my eyes were... (how should I put it?) neither closed nor open: I was looking within, looking at the work. So I asked them, “But what do you want?” – They smiled like children!... It was really amusing; So maybe I am unfair to them when I say there's everything here except lions!

Will I see something one day?⁴

Mon petit, there is... (you will find this amusing), there is mental vision: when you are concentrated, you see things here (gesture around the head); not with the same kind of vision as with open eyes but you see. You see images, you see thoughts, you see... There is a vital vision: you just have to close your eyes and you see all sorts of things. It's not always pretty. It's the kind of dreams you have. You've had dreams of that kind which weren't too pleasant. And then, for (how long?) twenty, thirty years (I started seeing when I was quite small – I didn't know what it was) but when I began to know what it was, I complained a lot that I didn't have perfectly objective visions (Mother gestures in front of her open eyes): not those one has here around the head; not those one has when one is in the vital: but those one has like this, with open eyes. And when I met quite ordinary mediums, people who saw with open eyes, I used to say, “Those people are first-rate!” When I met Sri Aurobindo, I told him. Naturally he made fun of me – he was right. So I stopped bothering about it.

Then, quite recently, when I began doing the yoga in the cells, lo and behold, they started seeing! But then... what a conglomeration! And it kept going and coming, seeing more and still more constantly, all the time. When I opened my eyes, instead of seeing material things, I would see the physical things behind them. Then I said, “Oh, I understand!... It was the aspiration of Ignorance, now I understand: people who don't see are blessed!” Because I always used to say, “My visions aren't concrete, they are subjective visions since they are internal; they are subjective visions, not concrete ones – I want concrete visions, I want to see the material world as it is, not in its deceptive appearance – AS IT IS.” When I started seeing, I said, “No thanks! We are blessed not to see.”

But that's not what I am asking for.

No, I know that.

I want to see the Light.

Yes, you want to see the Light. But you see it!

No, I don't!

Ah, mon petit, I know you do, because the very first time you told me, “I want to see,” I assure you in all honesty that I said, “But why doesn't he see? He should see.” Then, the first time I met Sri Aurobindo (that is, immediately afterwards), I said to him, “Satprem wants to see.” He answered me, “He sees, but without knowing it. But he sees.”

So I thought there may be... You know, sometimes there's a very small gap (we have layers of consciousness interpenetrating like that, quite a few), and a gap, a lacuna, a void between two of them is enough for you not to know. That's what Théon once explained to me: “All your states of being are there in the fourth dimension, one inside the other; what you lack is a very small degree.” It's nothing, you know, in your consciousness you don't notice it, but in its construction something is undeveloped, and so what's on the other side can't come through; it's lost between there and here. It's lost. So I asked him, “What can be done?” He told me, “You must develop it.” And I did the experiment; he told me and I did it. And indeed I had a “nervous subdegree” (he used to call the vital the “nervous”), a nervous subdegree that wasn't developed, not sufficiently conscious. And for a year, day after day after day, a concentration to develop it, applying the consciousness, applying the consciousness... – absolutely no result. For at least – at least six months continuously, a concentration every day; I kept an hour for that – absolutely no result.

Only, I didn't doubt. I simply thought, “How very stupid of me, I don't know how to do it....” I was living in Paris; came summer, I went on holiday. I went to some friends' who had an estate by the sea. There was a small wood, large meadows, it was pretty. And after lunch, I go and lie down on the grass... and all of a sudden, everything – from the air, the earth, the water, from everywhere – everything came. Everything, but everything I wanted to have came like that. Suddenly. Like that, effortlessly. The result of six months of work.

But I very often feel the lack of Nature here.

You feel it.

Yes, a lot. I miss Nature a lot.

Yes. My feeling... (because I've studied your problem a good deal – I seem as if I couldn't care less, but that's not true! I've studied your problem a great deal), my feeling is that in your higher mind, the faculty of expression is developed – highly developed – so that as soon as there is contact with the Light, it gets translated into ideas, words, concepts, like that. It doesn't have THE TIME to be visualized. It's not outwardly but all the way up that it is (how can I put it?) particularly and exceptionally active and expressive (something quite rare, because generally, in everyone, it's nebulous up above). And because it's so developed (which is a higher condition), you've missed the primary condition, that is, the vision, the shock of the Light.

So there is only one solution. To me, there is a solution: it's the sudden contact with a HIGHER light in the Supermind. Sri Aurobindo said (that's obvious, it's always like that) that there are several layers (it's not quite like layers, but never mind), several layers of supramental light. The first (the one that has manifested) you immediately translated into concepts, ideas and words. That is, something a large number of intellectuals are praying and imploring to have – you had it spontaneously, let's say. So the first contact, the dazzling contact of the Light, that you didn't have. But when a HIGHER light comes, you will have it.

I am waiting for that moment.

I don't know if your mind is critical or if... To make myself clear, I mean whether your critical mind OR your faith, which of the two is stronger – I hope it's the faith. So to the faith (not to the critical mind, I don't speak to it), to the faith I say that since the 23rd we've been working hard. And I have asked a great deal that you may, tomorrow, be put into contact with that higher light, that you may have the dazzling vision of the Light.

If you have faith, you will have it. If the critical mind is stronger, it will be slightly delayed, maybe.

There, now I've made my confession!

It's a still unmanifested supramental light – with the first shock of contact, you will see.

You understand, I don't want to say anything that encourages the vanity of the ego, if there is any. But your contact with the Light is unusual; for you it has become something quite natural. But the truth is, it's exceptional. So you see people who don't have this realization at all but who enjoy the contact with the Light, precisely because for them it's something marvelous and new... And so you are deprived (it's Sri Aurobindo speaking to me), deprived of the pleasures they have. But you should know that it's because you have been given a much higher realization. Only, with aspiration, with opening, with self-giving, you can contact something really new. And then you will have the shock of the new.

This is his answer.

But, for that, the mind should keep quiet.

With all these experiences of the cells, how many times all that so-called wisdom, which is in the material consciousness and comes from rubbing against life, from so-called experience – the wisdom that comes from experience – how many times it started expressing itself and Sri Aurobindo said, but mercilessly, “Shut up, you are foolish!”

It has learned its lesson. It has learned its lesson, but quite recently.

We think we're wise, we think we're intelligent...

There.

(Mother takes Satprem's hands)

I want it to be, for you tomorrow, really a new birth – but not a new birth to an inner being: an opening to something not yet manifested in the world.

That's what you are destined for.

¹ Original English.

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² Among the questions put to Mother, let us note these: “In 1967 the Supermind will enter the phase of realising power. What does realising power exactly mean?” (Mother:) Acting decisively on the mind of men and the course of events. “Does this date – 4.5.67 – mark the beginning of what the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have called the new race – the race of superman?” (Mother:) Since a few months the children born, amongst our people mostly, are of a very special kind.

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³ Savitri, I.IV.55.

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⁴ A few weeks earlier, Satprem had written a letter to Mother in which he bitterly complained that he never saw anything.

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