The Mother

Agenda

Volume 10

August 9, 1969

UNESCO want to publish a brochure on “tolerance,” and they wrote to K. to ask him for a message from me. So I wrote something (Mother laughs), here it is:

“Tolerance is only the first step towards wisdom. The need to tolerate indicates the presence of preferences. He whose consciousness is one with the Supreme Consciousness meets all things with a perfect equanimity”

They puff themselves up like that, they still think themselves highly superior because they have “tolerance” – and tolerance is looking down on things with contempt.

(silence)

Have I seen you since that experience?... I spent one night (but I forget which), it was strange .... I was with Sri Aurobindo, but a Sri Aurobindo... (how can I put it?) quite joyful, full of liveliness, and slightly more material than what I usually see, as though... not material, but (I don't know how to explain) more precise, and we spent hours working together, seeing things, seeing people, doing things, and so on. But then, the strange part, the peculiar part was that it didn't depend on my body being asleep: it didn't sleep, it was simply quiet; and in the middle of it I had to get up, but when I did, that consciousness and activity didn't cease. It was the ordinary consciousness (that is, the perception of ordinary things, of the room and all that) which was somewhat less precise. It was as if topsy-turvy, you understand. And it remained for a long time, even in the morning, until I was obliged to see people and do things.

It was very particular, it's the first time it has happened like that. Which means that this slightly inner consciousness was more concrete than the ordinary consciousness.

The funny thing is that this ordinary consciousness, these ordinary things, it's not that they fade away and are effaced: they become... like paper! (Mother laughs) Paper, or bark, or... something dry-dry and thin and devoid of true reality, simply like a thin appearance. The sensation is like this (Mother makes the gesture of feeling something), like paper or bark.

It's the first time it has happened.

And a quite joyful Sri Aurobindo .... It's strange... as if he were very happy at the way things are going.

(Mother remains silent for a long time)

Did I tell you that in Italy a veterinarian has found a cure for cancer?... This man has discovered that goats, the goat species (male and female), never have cancer! They even went as far as trying to make them have cancer, and they didn't succeed. Conclusion: in their makeup, there's something opposed to cancer; they've discovered that something in the stomach (I forget the details), and he made a serum. As he is a veterinarian, he doesn't have the right to give it, but he has doctor friends, and those doctors (a dozen or so) have tried it out – extraordinary cure, without fail. But with a difference: the female goat cures certain cases, while the male cures other cases; it's not the same with the male or the female, they cure different types of cancer (I understand nothing about it). Anyway, he lives somewhere in Italy, I don't know where, and I had him asked if he would like to come here – he has accepted. And he's going to come: there's a whole group of young Italians who want to come at the end of the year for Sri Aurobindo's yoga, and he'll probably come with them, or else he will come with Paolo if Paolo doesn't mind paying for his travel. My intention is to put him in touch with Dr. S., to let them study that together, and if it works well, I'll ask him to stay on. Because you know that S. now has a sort of dispensary in Auromodèle [in Auroville] (there's even a young French medical student who has come and stays there too, he is very happy). So we could open a “cancer clinic,” that would be very interesting! Because with S.'s presence here, there's no difficulty – in Auroville he can do what he likes. That would be wonderful!

He is coming before the end of the year. And the other man, the healer, is coming in September... The other, we'll see if he wants to cure some people here, that would be good.

It would straight away give an interesting direction .... “Auroville, the city of healing”! That would be good!

Nature will have to invent other means to get rid of the human surplus!

Oh, there's no lack of means ....

It's frightful!

There would be one way, to make human beings sterile. That would be the best way. And it seems they have already found something; if a woman takes it regularly, she doesn't have a child – a pill.

Yes, but people don't want it.

More and more want it .... Oh, there's still that old sentimental attachment. No, as long as death is there, the sense of the necessity of reproduction is there; it's the presence of death that makes things like that, like a need. But if death were no longer there...

I don't know about other countries, but here, any deliberate abortion was a crime, that is, punishable under the law-they're now getting rid of that. There are too many people.

When you just look at Pondicherry, it's frightful.

Oh, when they are five, six... up to twelve, mon petit! There are families with twelve children. So it's really too rapid a multiplication.

(long silence)

This Consciousness which has been at work since January insists a lot on the need to become conscious and do things at will: one should be born at will, die at will, fall ill at will – will must be the dominant principle. It insists on that a lot.

I think that would change a lot of things.

(silence)

Just fancy a recollection has come to me... from the beginning of the century. I don't know why, and it won't go away. So, as it won't go away, I'll recount it to you-there may be some reason, I have no idea.

Four of us went on a trek from... I forgot from which place on the banks of the Rhone, to go to Geneva, crossing the mountains on foot, the four of us – two men, two women.¹ We walked on, and when we reached some place at lunch time and were hungry, we ate there; when we reached some place at nightfall, we slept there, and then we went on – it was real adventure. We didn't even know the route, we had some kinds of maps. Well then, once, far from any town or any village, on a mountain road, we arrived at lunch time at a sort of inn – something that looked like an inn, which stood by itself, miles from anywhere. We entered. An old man and an old woman were there... They had a most peculiar look. They were very brisk, very alert-they had a peculiar look. We asked if we could eat there. They said yes. They looked at us, eyed us closely, then let us into a big room, with a table in one corner and chairs around it and also big benches – I don't know what that room was used for. And they had us eat there. They asked us if we wanted – they had a good little white wine – if we wanted some of it. The other three said yes; as for me, I had already stopped drinking alcohol. They said yes, and they drank the wine (it was a light wine), they washed down their food with it. But I didn't touch it. At the end of the meal they said, “Oh, how sleepy we are! We'd like to rest, we'll take a nap.” So they lay down on the benches and slept. Now, I had a pair of shoes that didn't fit me and were hurting one of my big toes: it had caused an inflammation, it was painful, and I wanted to bathe my foot so as to disinfect it. I didn't feel sleepy in the least. I sat down – there was a basin and some water-and bathed my foot .... Half an hour later, the room's entrance door slowly opened, and the old couple came in (furtive gesture).... I was sitting rather low, so I was hidden by the tables and they didn't see me. They came in on tiptoe, looked this way and that, and were about to come up to the benches on which the others were lying, when... suddenly they saw me – ah! (Mother gives a start of surprise) They stopped. Then I raised my head, looked at them, and said, “You wanted...?”

“Oh,” they were very wily, they said, “Oh, we just came to see if you needed anything.” And they went out.

I AT ONCE knew they had come to steal – they had put some drug in the wine and had come to steal, thinking I too was sleeping .... But the picture that has come back was so vivid, as if they held butchers' knives in their hands!...

Why has it come? That's what I can't understand.

Things come when I have something to do about them .... This story is almost... it must have been in 1910 or '12 at the most, that is, more than fifty years ago. Those people were old, they are long dead – so why has it come? What is there in it for me to learn? I don't know... And it has remained LIVING, you know, like a living thing. What was it trying to teach?... Naturally, the presence of the Grace, always – that goes without saying, I don't need to be shown, I know it!

They were far away from anywhere, there was nothing for miles and miles around ....

It was exactly a film scene, and all set to be filmed.

It happened in Savoy, on the French side, in the mountains.

(long silence)

Strange...

¹ Hohlenberg, the Danish painter who did a portrait of Sri Aurobindo, seems to have been among them. Mother already alluded to this trek in a Playground talk of May 5, 1951.

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