The Mother

Agenda

Volume 9

May 29, 1968

(Mother looks for a vase for an amaryllis, intending to put it together with roses.)

Roses don't like that at all! They don't want it. They don't want to have someone else with them.... But I'll put it with them just the same!

(Mother, laughing, sticks the amaryllis in the middle of the roses)

They have a spirit of caste!

*
*   *

Soon afterwards

There's a letter from T.F. complaining about the films shown [at the Ashram] and saying that films should be instructive and show admirable things....

But for a film to show admirable things, people should live those admirable things, no?!

She even wrote to me that they were a whole group of teachers who intended to write and circulate a letter asking for a change – I don't like all that. It's a small-town boarding-school spirit. So yesterday evening, I wrote an answer.

(Mother reads)

“We would like to be able to show the children pictorial representations of what life should be, but we still have not reached that stage, very far from it. Those films are yet to be made. And for the moment, films more often than not show what life should not be, and do so strikingly enough to give you a disgust for it.

“That too is useful as a preparation.

“Films are allowed in the Ashram not as entertainment but as part of education. The problem is therefore that of education.

“If we consider that a child must only learn, know and be aware of what can keep him pure of all lower, crude, violent and degrading movements, then we should eliminate at one stroke the entire contact with the rest of mankind, beginning with all those accounts of wars, murders, conflicts and deceits that are called History; we should eliminate the present contact with family, parents and friends; and we should constantly control the child's contact with all the vital impulses of his own being.

“This idea is what led to monastic life shut in a convent, or to ascetic life in the cave or the forest.

“This remedy has proved to be totally ineffective and has not pulled mankind out of its quagmire.

“According to Sri Aurobindo, the remedy is altogether different.

“We must face integral life with all that it still entails in terms of ugliness, falsehood and cruelty, but while taking care to discover in ourselves the source of all goodness, all beauty, all light and all truth, in order to consciously put that source in contact with the world so it may transform it.

“That is infinitely more difficult than fleeing or closing one's eyes so as not to see – but it is the only really effective way, the way of those who are truly strong and pure and capable of manifesting the Truth.

“You can show this letter to those who share your indignation.”

They need to be shaken a little, oh, they're goody-goody!

And that's not all. It seems I am giving “classes” to the two of you [Sujata and Satprem]....

Classes!

And she asks me if it's possible to take part in these “classes”!... Oh, what an idea! Can you see me giving you a class! Oh, it's dreadful!... Dreadful. She asks me to admit “a certain number of teachers” to this class, because it would do them good, including to her.

I am going to tell her, “I can't admit you for the simple reason that there are no classes!...” Already last year, R. had asked me, and I had told her, “But it's not like that at all! I may talk or may not, but it's never a class! Now and then I say something, and then...”

What an idea!... The guru turned into a super-teacher! As it is, the idea of the guru makes me shudder, but a super-teacher guru, oh, how horrible!

The amount of nonsense they must speak among themselves – frightful.