It seems the Gospel announces a great battle for this year….
For this year, in the Gospel!
Not this year, but it says there will be a terrible battle before the second coming of Christ…. I know nothing about that myself! But a lady disciple in Holland has written a letter: it seems everyone there is terror-stricken, there’s panic all over the country (!) and they say it’s the year of the battle. And here in India (not concertedly, of course), astrologers have said that September and October are months of a terrible battle (maybe not a war, but a battle) between Truth and Falsehood. There in Holland, it seems it’s like in the year 1000: they gather for meditations, entreaties, collective prayers…. Well. And here, it’s the same thing, they are panic-stricken.
But battle there is. You can’t move a finger without waging a battle.
I’ll give you a very down-to-earth example: the government owes me 175,000 rupees, I absolutely need it, it’s six months since they should have given it. Two weeks ago, they sent me a paper to tell me, “Here it comes.” I was relieved because I had payments to make before the end of the month. But the paper was just the promise of a check, and now all payments are over, they’ve stopped paying for this year!… That sort of thing, you understand, and EVERYTHING is like that. If I didn’t need money, I wouldn’t care, but it’s “Deepavali,”1 then a house to be paid for, and one thing coming on top of another. So that’s how it is: for the smallest thing you have to wage a battle.
It’s like with Auroville: a whole part of the government is absolutely enthusiastic, but there are three or four individuals here, in Madras State, who are dead against, and they have a terrible action: they stop everything. Some ministers (as usual) come, are received, they give you a promise, saying, “I am with you, you’ll have everything you want”; they leave the room and send a telegram to their assistant: “Don’t sign the papers.” That kind of lie, you understand, everywhere.
But the amusing point: here they are Hindus, over there they are Christians, and they both came together with the stars to say that it’s this year, right now.
And what do you think of it?
What do I think of it? I have been feeling the battle for a long time—the sordid battlefield, a battle of nastiness which manifests everywhere as much as it can…. For me, there is only one remedy, that is to be still—still—and to let the storm blow over without moving.
They said we would have a war with the Chinese in September: that, has been averted.
October isn’t over, we’ll see. But battle there is, and I said so at the start of the year; I said it’s a year when one must absolutely take the decision, and then hold out.
But sometimes you feel it would be better if outwardly it exploded.
(Mother shakes her head) Not with what they have discovered now. Not with what they’ve discovered—that’s what holds them back, besides: they could destroy entire cities … in two minutes.
But the Russians have sent spacecraft to Venus, they took four months to reach, and in those spacecraft were radio-like communication systems that send news, and a device to collect the soil and analyze it—all of it just machines. It reached Venus, and now they give the news every day: “Here is how it is on Venus.” (Mother laughs) They are rather amazing! The Americans were content with the moon—you get to the moon quite soon, in two months, I think, maybe less than that. But the Russians took four months to get to Venus and it arrived there, they got the news, it works with electrical devices.
Yes, but on the earth it doesn’t work!
On the earth!… A humorist wrote an article in which the Americans had reached the moon, and while they were looking around, they suddenly saw people coming towards them: “They’re Moonlings!” They couldn’t understand each other (they could speak to each other but couldn’t understand); but one of them spoke English and other languages, and so they discovered that the Moonlings were Russians! That was very funny.
Well, I don’t know very well, I read the Gospel long ago, but I don’t remember, I didn’t know a great battle was announced in it. I know they announced the Last Judgment when all the people who were buried will rise and appear before the Lord God seated in his armchair (Mother laughs), who will tell them whether they are … (Laughing) He will put some on one side and others on the other side!… I am not exaggerating, that’s how it’s written.
(Then Mother gives flowers) This is my delight. My delight in life.
***
Soon afterwards
The doctor has had another fall (just on the eve of his birthday), he fell and hurt his arm, it seems there’s internal bleeding. This morning he told me it would take more than two months to heal…. But it’s everywhere, with everything, everything: people fall ill just when they shouldn’t (and they are cured when it’s not necessary they be cured!). A generalised little malice, constantly, you understand. I tell them (the invisible beings), “You are stupid,” but they’re very happy to be told they’re stupid, they say, “They must be quite upset to say we’re stupid!”
And I saw … Yesterday was the doctor’s birthday, I gave him a meditation (he had asked for one). Before the meditation, he asked me very sweetly, “Oh, I would like peace in my whole body, my body doesn’t have peace.” I put Peace. For a quarter of an hour he was blissful, then there suddenly came (gesture floating in the atmosphere at a rather low level) something like a cloud, and he had a kind of unconsciousness: miserable, miserable, so miserable—he was appalled. So I had to stop the meditation. And it wasn’t him: it didn’t come from him, you understand, I saw it (same floating gesture). As for me, I see it, so it doesn’t matter—I see it, I even see the nature of it, the suggestions it gives and so on. It comes with such power that I am compelled to see it—I see. So there is only ONE solution (so far): the absolute stillness of the supreme Force—but no retaliation, simply like this (inflexible, still gesture). Then, after a time, it exhausts itself and falls away. But one must hold out, and few people are able to hold out—it’s hard. It’s hard—it’s nasty, mean, like that (gesture at ground level), and VERY MATERIAL, very material: it touches the cells, disturbs the order. The body starts feeling ill at ease, uneasy: “What’s the matter?” Ill at ease. And it’s like that in everyone; when they ask me what it is, I tell them, “Keep still—peace, peace, peace, peace, like that.”
If you try to reply, it’s much stronger than you: it comes in, and then the disorder is inside and you fall ill. Or you fall to the ground like the doctor.
Hideous, absolutely hideous.
***
(Soon afterwards, Mother remains concentrated on the photo of a European lady vaguely connected to the Ashram.)
… I don’t feel. I have no contact—I have a contact with everybody, but I mean there’s no special affinity: the psychic appears to be completely asleep. It’s vital and intellectual. The psychic is asleep, or absent, in the background, not moving.
Her difficulties must be mostly of a mental order.
What can save all that?
It’s precisely because there are too many people like this that the earth is in difficulty! Too many, too many people are in the mind: mental difficulties mental difficulties…. You can’t get through (impenetrable gesture) it doesn’t go through, it doesn’t touch. It’s an endless process. And that’s what makes those … bang! those battles, wars, conflicts necessary.
You know, an ardent faith, a psychic aspiration, a fervour, a self-giving, instead of being forever turned in on oneself, turned in on oneself…. A self-giving, that’s what is needed to save the world!
(silence)
Mental faith isn’t enough, psychic fervour is necessary—self-giving, self-abnegation.
The body itself is learning that every time it thinks of itself, there’s a small catastrophe—not “catastrophe,” but I mean on the body’s scale: a cellular catastrophe every time there is even a slight turning in on itself. It must forget itself completely, forget itself, and most importantly, it must not try to find support, comfort, understanding, help or anything of the sort (horizontal gesture all around)—only there (gesture with palms open upward and the two hands forming a kind of upside down triangle): the only support is the Divine. The only support. The only help, the only responsibility. All the rest…. There isn’t one thing coming from or towards a human being that isn’t mixed; and the moment it’s mixed, it means conflict.
This is a time of extremes, even extremes in the downright material. Did I tell you both the other day that I had received the first flower of a plant which visibly was supramental power—a flower like this (gesture), a hibiscus? And yesterday there was the first flower of another plant, also a hibiscus, this big, snow-white, with such a colour at the centre! An indefinable colour, it can’t be described…. It’s golden pink, but so beautiful that you wonder how such colours can be physical. A flower this big (gesture, about fifteen centimetres), the first flower was yesterday. And that was VISIBLY (it expressed itself, you know) the Victory of Love, the Power of Love…. It’s as if all this physical Nature were, oh, like this (gesture of intense aspiration), trying—she tries, and there is a Response. They are blessed not to have a mind.
It was beautiful. It doesn’t keep, otherwise I would have kept it to show it to you. How beautiful it was! Like this (same gesture of ardent aspiration): a thirst, a thirst for the Divine, a thirst for the Divine. All those mental ratiocinations and mental complications, it all goes round and round in circles. Yes, it does bring about what’s now happening: a sordid conflict, really sordid, between Falsehood and Truth.
And the government is rotten. People whose tactics and principle of action are falsehood: to deceive and deceive and deceive. And naturally, to deceive themselves.
You know that these are the Puja days: there were Durga’s days, and there will soon be Kali’s day. So then, all the Powers are like this (gesture ready to strike), at the slightest hint they would charge down. And one is obliged to hold them (immobilizing gesture), to take great care not to have the least indignation, otherwise …
And the supreme Consciousness above, looks on, and so … That’s the supreme Smile.
I told you about the meeting with Durga. Kali is there, waiting. And naturally, it’s the great power—the great power, a power … you understand, they are stronger, more powerful than this teeming humanity, so if you let them loose … As for me, I want Love to be victorious RIGHT NOW—she will have the victory, she will, but … not after so much wastage.
(silence)
We have reached a paroxysm, because the impression is really that mind is triumphing over Matter, and it is convinced of it. Convinced—we go everywhere of our own sweet will, we know all that goes on everywhere … and we don’t even know what goes on inside ourselves.
The festival of lights in India. ↩
***
October 14, 1967
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