The Mother

Agenda

Volume 8

September 13, 1967

(Still regarding Mrs. Z, the Catholic lady who hovers around the Ashram.)

I have a nasty little story to tell you.... The other day, I forget when, F. met Mrs. Z, who told her (she too was in a concentration camp), “I would like...” (word for word) “I would like Satprem to go back to the concentration camp to see if his reaction now would be different!” F. was so indignant that she couldn't help telling her, “But that is a monstrous desire to have!”

There's my story: “I'd like him to go back to the concentration camp to see!...”

But the marvel is that I feel I could be sent anywhere, anything could happen to me, even the worst things, and... nothing would budge!

It wouldn't matter in the least, yes, that's right. And that's what upsets them! You understand, for them you can have that salvation only if you are Catholic.

Anyway, the matter is now closed.

But you know, it's not the end! I fought a battle with her.

Oh, did she write again?

A veritable battle.

When?

When I told her, “I can't do anything for you if you don't seek something else,” she wrote me another letter in which she said, “But I do seek something else,” and so forth. I didn't want to reply. Then I did a little drawing, a sort of picture that came to me: a big sun in the corner, mountain ranges like in the Himalayas, then at the bottom, a small mosque, a small church, a small pagoda, and a bird flying away towards the sun.... And I sent her my drawing!

(Mother laughs) And then?

Then she came to see me. And there was a veritable battle; really, for an hour it was absolutely a battle with her. Because she kept pushing me, she wanted to know: “Why do you turn me down? Why do you shut your door? Why do you turn me down?...” Then I was driven to tell her everything: how she is imprisoned, how her religion is like a structure in which she is shut, how one can't do the yoga until one breaks out of it and so on – it all came out. Because I was really driven to it. I felt I was fighting a veritable battle, and two or three times I was very conscious of a sort of little thing going like this [gesture like the tongue of a snake], just a malevolent little vibration two or three times: “Ah,” I thought, “this is it.” And at the same time, a kind of quite sincere distress in her, when she said, “I have been wanting to come to India for twenty years now, I have been waiting for this moment for twenty years now, so why do you close your door on me?”

It's difficult to break free from that grip.

Very difficult.

And how did it end?

Well, it ended up in nothing. I told her, “I am not closing my door on you, but I am putting you face to face with what it all means.” I said, “The ABC of yoga is precisely to pull down all those constructions.” But she told me, “Christ is the Supermind!” I said, “No, it's not like that!”

(Mother laughs)... It didn't leave any trace?

I was a little worried because it really was a battle, then afterwards I did some good praying, and it passed off well.

It must be after that that she told F. she'd like to see you in a concentration camp – it was out of spite!

But I really spoke to her with the truth – not with violence, but with the truth that says, “Here is how it is, I can't help it.”

That's very good, it's the happiest thing that could happen to her. Sugaring the pill would have been of no help.

We'll see. If the call is sincere, then we'll see.

But I did feel a sincerity, Mother, because what responded was like a response to a sincere call in her. But at the same time two or three times I felt that little vibration and said to myself, “Oh, this is nasty.”

It's the fear of hell, mon petit! The amount of harm that conception has done in the world is frightening, frightening: the idea that if you commit a serious fault, it means hell for ALL ETERNITY, do you hear!

It's horrible.

It's a dreadful, monstrous notion.

When you look at it as it is, outside all routine, when you look at it as it is, it's a monstrous notion – I don't know what demon invented it.... If you were told, “You'll have to spend a few years in hell to expiate,” that would do – it's not charitable, not generous, but anyway it's acceptable; but that idea of “all eternity” – an ETERNITY OF HELL – is something monstrous! It's a wholly diabolical idea.

And that's what frightens them. Even when consciously they don't accept it, it's there in the subconscient.

(silence)

It is said... (but I am not sure about this, because it was simply repeated to me), a Catholic panjandrum to whom I spoke my mind quite plainly, answered me, “In the College of Cardinals, they are taught the truth and told this is not true.” I said, “God bless the cardinals, but their first duty should be to destroy this... monstrous formation.”

The most terrible thing is that she believes she is free!

Of course!

She believes she is luminous, or enlightened. So I told her, “Of course, if you are inside a box and there is light in the box, you have the fullness of light in a box!”

(Mother laughs) Oh, that's very good!

I told her everything, there came a lot of things like that. In the end she was frozen. It was a real battle.

You did good work.

But you understand, the idea is, “Christ is the Supermind.... Christ is already risen from the dead, he already has a glorified body, he is already transformed....”

(After a silence) No, he went back, he didn't stay. He doesn't have a glorified body, he went back. He went back to the higher regions, he doesn't have a glorified body.... He may be glorified up there, that's his business (laughing), but here... He went back. Of course, Sri Aurobindo himself said Christ was an Avatar. An avatar in the line of Krishna, the line that represented... yes, goodness, charity, love, harmony. He belongs to that line.

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Regarding humility

It's very simple: when you say to people, “Be humble,” they immediately think of “being humble towards others,” and that humility is bad. True humility is humility towards the Divine, that is, the precise, exact, LIVING sense that you are nothing, can do nothing, understand nothing without the Divine, that even if you are an exceptionally intelligent and capable being, that is NOTHING in comparison with the divine Consciousness – and one must keep that constantly, because then one constantly has the true attitude of receptivity. A humble receptivity that sets no personal pretension against the Divine.

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(Then Mother talks about young R. and the coincidence between Paul Richard's death and the birth of this child.)

I saw this child when he was hardly two months old, they brought him to me. He was quiet, peaceful, in his mother's arms. She put him on my lap, and I looked at him – I looked at him, and also put a little Force, like that. Then he gave a start and began to scream and scream.... They had to take him away. But I very clearly felt that if I spoke to him... It seems that when he is spoken to, he listens: his eyes open, he looks and listens eagerly, and when he is told about Auroville he shows great interest. And I saw that his consciousness is as if centered in the mind; you understand, what I wanted to see was his reaction to the silent pressure of the Force (I told you: he started screaming), but if he is spoken to (and I knew it, I saw it), if he is spoken to he listens and is very interested.

The next time they bring him to me, I'll give him a speech, a long speech! (laughing) We'll see what happens.

The other baby, A.F., has poor health, but if you recite poems of Sri Aurobindo to him, he becomes blissful! Neither of these two are ordinary children, obviously.

But I'll try the next time I see R.... It's a “coincidence” – but is there such a thing as a “coincidence” in the world? I don't believe in that.... In the past (I don't know what became of him afterwards), in the past Richard had some occult knowledge, I mean I had given him enough occult knowledge for him to be able to leave his body and enter another. So did he try to do it?... I know he wanted to come back here; especially after Sri Aurobindo's departure, he took it into his head to come here.

We can't say, we'll see that later.

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At the end of the conversation, Mother gazes at Satprem for a long time

Did I tell you something?

Friends of F.'s, French people, who had come here once and have come again, wrote to me asking to see me. The young man wrote to me, saying, “Last-time, you looked at me for a long time and I was terrified by your look, is it necessary for me to come again?” (Mother laughs) I had given him an appointment before reading his letter, so naturally I didn't look at him! But it made me see something. Because of that (or through that), I saw a whole thing. And the same day, the very same day, I got a letter from an Indian, perhaps a forty-year-old man, who wrote to me, “When I was sitting in front of you, you looked at me for a long time and I felt that your eyes were burning all impurities in me.” So naturally, he expressed gratitude.

You know, when I go there [to the music room] to see people, I simply concentrate and there is a sort of invocation to the Lord's Presence. And when He is there, when I feel the whole room full of Him, then it's good. That is the sole will (still, passive gesture turned upward). I translated it when I said to someone, “I give them a bath of the Lord”! And that's indeed how it is: His Presence, His Action... His Presence, His Action... That's all. And when I look at them, there is no more person: there is only His Presence and Action.

So there we are, it has a different effect on everyone!

They tell me, “Your look purifies me”.... I don't want to go into such considerations and do not answer anything, but there is only the Presence and the Action. I don't even try to know, neither what happens nor how nor what He does nor what takes place – nothing. The only thing that comes into me (into this consciousness) is the state of the person who is there: that's very clearly recorded. (Laughing) The other day, there was a very amusing experience.... A girl here has taken a fancy to a gentleman – neither of them is very young, that is, they are neither children nor young people: they are both over thirty, or between twenty-five and thirty. So she writes him letters, long letters, sends him sweets, sends him flowers, and he passes it all on to me. (There is nothing more than that.) It was her birthday, and she must have had a rather guilty conscience, I suppose – as for me, I had completely forgotten the story.... She came for her birthday, I received her as I always do, in the same way – and suddenly, gnawing pains, cramps, sharp pains in the stomach. I wondered, “What's going on in her? What's all this?” And it went on for quite a while, I had to make a little concentration to make it go. Then in the afternoon, the gentleman (I don't think they meet) sends me a letter and a box of sweets she had sent him. Ah! (Laughing) I said, “So there! She was afraid I would scold her and had gnawing pains in the stomach!” There you are.... That's how it is, you understand, it's a kind of work in a general unification. And people's reaction is felt in my body, that's how I become aware of it, conscious of it.... (Laughing) At times it's bliss, at other times stomach cramps!

It's amusing.