He wrote to me today: he is in full revolt. What did he tell you yesterday?
Oh!…
He was not too good.
No, not at all.
In full revolt. So at night, his heart pains, his chest pains, his head pains—pains all over. And today he writes to tell me, “Is this what you want till doomsday?” I wrote back, “What I want is just the opposite!”
I saw him yesterday and spoke to him for half an hour, but he was like… you know, like iron bars; he had decided in advance that he wouldn’t understand anything of what I would tell him. I tried to enter deep down, but … He told me (it’s an old formation on him) that whatever he wants to do he does for a while, then he meets with disaster and the thing is stopped. And he says that now he is making his spiritual effort, and he has met with disaster (I don’t know which one). Naturally, I told him it wasn’t like that at all! That it was on the contrary the sign he had reached the point when the door could open and he could transform himself. But he refused to understand. You know, when people are obdurate like that, there’s no way you can get through.
So I thought you could perhaps talk to him.
I saw him yesterday and felt it did him good, or at any rate that he listened to me….
I also felt (that’s why I mention it) that he would listen to you.
Yes, I am trying.
Then and good…. You know, when you dress iron bars like that and you say, “It’s impossible, impossible, impossible”…
The difficult problem for him now is, at bottom, all this Tantric japa he does.
But why does he go on?
Well, that’s just the problem, he can’t find the strength to break off.
Ah, that’s it: he goes on….
Yesterday I tried to tell him that this kind of discipline is very powerful and good for some, but that in fact, it’s like weaving a force around yourself more and more, in which you shut yourself in.
That’s right. Yes, exactly!
But he must find the courage to break off. That’s his problem.
He hasn’t once told me, “I want to stop.”
But that’s because he doesn’t dare. And you don’t tell him to either, so … (But of course, it’s difficult for you to tell him.)
Yesterday I explained to him the effect that this japa had on him, I explained in detail, but I don’t think he understood anything. And I told him to change; I even gave him the Mantra (because if you do that it is the supreme liberation). Instead of leaving him without anything at all, I wanted him in fact, to do that. But yesterday when I asked him, “Are you going on with your japa?” he said, “Oh, just a little.”
Actually, there are, inside oneself naturally (and consequently around oneself), forces that oppose one’s realization, and the system of those [Tantric] mantras is to look for the support of those Overmind beings against those forces, which are much more powerful than they (the gods)—the proof is that despite all their goodwill, they (the Overmind gods) have never been able to make the earth a harmonious place. We can’t help noting the fact. So I told him it was a direct fight, all those mantras are a direct fight against the difficulty, whereas … (and that’s what gave him the terrible headache he complains about: it’s dangerous, of course, it can unsettle the whole functioning). I told him to stop and use that (Mother’s Mantra). I explained it all to him yesterday. I told him he shouldn’t wage a direct fight: one must try to find the support in the force one has inside oneself, which is everywhere and can overcome the difficulty: “Instead of fighting, live in the other consciousness.” But I saw he was closed—locked in—with a hard look. He didn’t want to understand. So …
For half an hour he kept me here. It was half past twelve!
So if you explain that to him, I think it will do him good.
Yesterday evening, it got through to him, I touched something.
Certainly!
But…
So the result: he told me this morning, “I couldn’t sleep the whole night, my heart pains, a pain somewhere else” (in three or four places), “I can’t eat, impossible”—well, a most tragic picture, and asking me, “Do you want me to be like this till doomsday?”
His problem is to break off from that Tantric business.
No, there are two problems. There is that one on the level of action, and then there is a tre-men-dous pride in the whole family; a terrible pride, it’s a formation…. That’s what was in him yesterday, as if coagulated. So I told him, “Have a little more humility, a little more modesty.”
One doesn’t want to abdicate, you understand.
It’s the sense of being nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing when you are in front of … call “that” what you will, it doesn’t matter (one may start from the idea of consciousness and go up to the Supreme Lord, it doesn’t matter). But it’s the concrete feeling that as long as you want to remain shut in your little person, you are nothing, while if you abdicate that little person, you become everything. That’s what they don’t understand. Pride is simply … You have a contact with inner eternity, inner omnipotence, but you are shut in your little ego, so the ego imagines itself to be That, and then it asserts itself—sits down and refuses to budge: a colossal I. It’s precisely the supreme Truth (laughing) in its deformation.
I tried to make him understand that yesterday, but not like that, I put it very nicely!
One certainly sees that: with those who are the very opposite, who grovel on the ground, there is no stuff, you can’t do anything with them; so you have to try and give them a little self-confidence. But that’s nothing. While with those others you can do something, but … oh, they become furious with you!
The contact with the great Asuras, the first Asuras, is like that: the full consciousness of their formidable power, their marvellous capacities—they forget one thing, it’s that they deserve no credit for it, it’s not their exclusive property! So they cut the connection and become instruments of disorder and confusion.
This one, the Lord of Falsehood….
To the human consciousness, those things are terrible, but seen from up above, they make you smile. I remember, when I met him during the war (I had ruined his work with Hitler, then I met him), I told him, “You know quite well that your time is over.” He said, “I know it, but until I disappear I will wreak as much havoc as I can.”
Childishness.
***
Soon afterwards
I told you I was in constant touch with the teachers. A “conference” is going on, and here (Mother holds out a paper to Satprem), there is an interesting point:
“Your difficulty comes from the fact that you have still the old belief that in life, there are some things high and some things low. It is not exact. It is not the things or the activities that are high or low, it is the consciousness of the doer which is true or false….
That is the interesting point.
“If you unite your consciousness with the Supreme Consciousness and manifest It, all you think, feel or do becomes luminous and true. It is not the subject of the teaching which is to be changed, it is the consciousness with which you teach that must be enlightened.”
(July 31, 1967)
Then, Y. asked me questions on De Gaulle (Mother gives another paper):
“So long as one is for some and against others, one is necessarily far from the Truth.
“All present politics is based on falsehood, and no nation can entirely escape this falsehood.
“De Gaulle has an embryo of inner life, he knows that there is a force higher than the physical and mental forces—and that is why he is more receptive than many others.
“But he has ideas, principles, preferences and so on, and as such, he can make gross errors as any other human being.
“It is through this whole jumble and chaos that the Truth-Consciousness is at work everywhere, on all the points of the earth at once, in all nations, all individualities, without preferences or distinctions, wherever there is a spark of consciousness capable of receiving and manifesting It.”
(July 29, 1967)
***
(Mother reads Satprem a quotation from Sri Aurobindo:)
“To be perpetually reborn is the condition of material immortality.”
Sri Aurobindo
That’s excellent.
***
A little later, following a meditation:
That’s how it is. Day after day, almost hour after hour, as the Power comes back … You remember, I once said it had gone completely,1 and that was true, it had gone completely in order to leave the body absolutely to itself, for its conversion, we could say; but once there had been in this body consciousness the same aspiration and the same ardour of consciousness (with a far greater steadiness than in any other part of the being; there are no fluctuations as there are in the vital and mind, it’s very steady), once that was established (through kinds of pulsations, not distant from one another, first on one detail, then spreading out and becoming generalized), since then the Power has been … I can say it has been coming back. But at each stage of that return, all the old difficulties appear to be waking up again,2 they seem to spring up again (they had completely fallen asleep, you understand), and each time, this body consciousness feels a sort of surprise, at once astonished and distressed that the presence of the divine Power, the divine Consciousness, the Truth-Consciousness, should give rise to all those difficulties, which are essentially difficulties of ignorance and inertia—the incapacity to receive. And it comes back as memories, like that (gesture from below), like a snake rearing its head. And every time, everything in the physical consciousness has the same call, “Why? How can these things be when You are there!” That’s the astonishing thing: “Since You are there, how can these things be?”
Till now, in the majority of cases, this has signalled a conversion, a transformation, an illumination (depending on the case), but this case we were just talking about (the Tantric apprentice) came precisely as a result of that return of the Power (I knew it; he told me yesterday, but I knew it when he had his revolt). And all that came was just all the old revolts, all the old movements, which were previously so strong, so widespread, so ESTABLISHED, and had been as though halted in their expression by the withdrawal of the Power. So everyone was slumbering in his condition. Then, as soon as the Force started coming back and working again, it all woke up.
But it’s not the full Presence yet, not the complete Presence of the being, which, through an incontrovertible omnipotence, changes things. And then, the body, with something so very moving in the simplicity of its prayer and its childlike astonishment, asks, “Since You are there, how can that be?…” And all that is ready to be transformed is transformed. But it isn’t yet … (how can I explain?) the compelling thing (gesture of irresistible descent), the absolute authority that nothing can resist—it’s not that, not yet, far from it.
There’s no knowing how much more time it will take.
All that is on the point of changing changes.
Otherwise, the slow underground labour, invisible, almost imperceptible, continues.
(silence)
The interesting point is that this body spontaneously, immediately and effortlessly—spontaneously—tries to find in itself, in the body’s cells (it’s a whole WORLD! A whole world), the cells try to find in themselves, “Oh, where is my incapacity? Where is my helplessness? Where is … even my bad will or my stupidity or incapacity to understand and adhere?” Like that. And always the same answer, “Give everything, give everything, give everything…. I don’t understand, I cannot understand, I don’t know, I cannot know—I cannot do anything, I am incapable of doing by myself: everything is for You, do it.”
They try and try, everything tries to give itself perfectly, per-fect-ly, that is, without exception—everything, everything.
It’s a sort of … not anxiety, but above all a vigilance, as if they were on the alert: “May we do nothing but what You want, think nothing but what You want, feel nothing but what You want, say nothing but what You want….” Constantly, uninterruptedly, night and day, whether in the middle of activity or in the middle of rest, “To be what You want, to feel what You want, to do what You want, to exist … without distinction.”
The slightest pain, any discomfort, the slightest clumsy gesture, the slightest thing, and immediately, “Ah! (with a start) This isn’t You.”
(Mother goes into a contemplation)
The subtle physical seems to be more and more transformed. There is still a mystery between the two. A mystery. They are coexistent (the physical and the subtle physical bodies), and yet … (gesture of a lack of connection), the subtle physical doesn’t appear to have an influence on this (the body).
Something … Something to be found … something.
At the time of the serious ordeal of March 1962, when Mother's life seemed to be in danger. ↩
It should be noted that while Mother appears to be referring to her own body, these are collective difficulties in the disciples. ↩
***
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