(Regarding the Auroville beach, where Satprem often goes in the evening for a stroll. The beach is some four miles from Pondicherry.)
I find the atmosphere is different.
Over there?… It’s wonderful.
Yes, but there is a very different atmosphere, I don’t know if it’s in my consciousness.
Something is missing?… It (Mother’s atmosphere) doesn’t reach up to there?
I don’t know, I don’t feel “enveloped” as I do here.
When Sri Aurobindo was here and I used to go out, I would feel his atmosphere as far as the lake.1 Then, as soon as I went beyond that, it would thin out and then vanish.
But I thought that there …
I don’t know, that’s my impression; it may be very subjective, but I don’t have the same sensation of comfort, if you like.
Because now there is such a tremendous accumulation here, you know! I am always amazed that nothing happens to anyone. So naturally, people who are receptive and sensitive must feel a great difference…. It has really become almost tangible, you know, like that (gesture of a clenched fist). I myself feel the difference.
It may be that.
***
(Concerning once more that same Christian lady who is trying to get closer to the Ashram.)
Have you seen her?
Oh, yes…. There have been new developments. The last time I saw her, I clearly perceived she was enveloped in something … something that looked very receptive but was in fact completely shut in in its own structure.
That’s right.
And the next day she wrote me a letter. And when I read that letter I felt I had put my finger on the Falsehood, the Asura. The REAL Falsehood, you know, that is, the one that has caught hold of the light and turned it into a falsehood.
Yes, exactly.
Really I said, “This is the Falsehood.” And I had a very strange reaction: I suddenly felt like taking that letter, a knife, and sticking the knife into the letter and burning it.
Oh, that’s interesting!
I didn’t do it because I thought I might do her harm.
I too had that sense of Falsehood.2
And the amusing thing is that I received her letter, read it, then Sujata came into my room, stayed for five minutes and I saw her go out abruptly, just like that. And half an hour later she told me, “But what’s the matter in your room? I suddenly felt exhausted as if I had worked for twelve hours.”
You see.
Then what happened next?
I wrote her a letter in which I said this: “… You have to see for yourself, feel for yourself. If you are satisfied with the religious experience that Christianity represents, I do not see why I should disabuse you. Each one follows the path he feels is good for him. If you came and told me, ‘I am seeking something else,’ it would be a different matter and I might be able to do something to help you. But until then, I really cannot do anything for you, and words are wasted. It is for you to feel and see.”
That’s very good, excellent, really. That’s what she had to hear…. They’re all the same, they want to “profit” from others, you know. And that’s really falsehood.
This letter is very good.
(silence)
Those attitudes always end up with a crisis.
We had a Frenchwoman here, someone from Dordogne and who changed her name when she came here: we called her Nivedita. She was extremely enthusiastic, very devoted, but at the same time she had remained very Christian: she tried to keep them both going together. Here, naturally, that created inner difficulties for her, and one day, without really knowing why or how, she went to confession—and everything collapsed. She was in despair, collapsed. I told her, “It’s better for you to go.” And she went. She went back to France. As soon as she was there, she wrote other desperate letters, and then she died.
So the nearer they draw, the more difficult the problem becomes. It’s better to … This lady has external work to do. I haven’t encouraged her too much to become intimate here, because one day she’ll be up against the big problem—you understand, symbolically it’s limited to one person, but it’s the larger problem of Religion, as a dogma and absolute law, versus freedom, and … not many can hold out.
Some ten kilometres from Pondicherry. ↩
Here are some brief samplings from the said letter: "... Someone said, Freedom is to be carried not like a standard but like a Cross.... In your book, there is no love for the Cross—why? From all eternity the Cross has been the form that gathers up and rises. The form that will not rise alone; the form that, plunged into a mass, rises up again only with the entire mass—the form that sticks to all the cardinal points and bleeds on all the cardinal points.... When I go to the lepers' workshop immediately after seeing you, I go and draw the Force not only to help them through financial means, a skill or friendship, but perhaps even to envisage being like them and going to the bottom of their real misery ..." ↩
***
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