(Bharatidi's death marked a sort of turning point in Mother's life, or the beginning of an unfortunate series: Amrita, Mother's faithful treasurer, was going to leave a few months later, in January 1969, followed by Pavitra in May 1969; then Mother's personal attendant, Vasudha, would fall gravely ill in August 1970, and finally Mother's cashier, Satyakarma, would leave in December 1970. Thus the few reliable disciples around Mother were going away—why this migration?... The atmosphere was going to change greatly: "I am surrounded by Falsehood.... They are all lying!... A general dishonesty," she was soon to say.)
She’s gone, Bharatidi.
Yes, we’ve been very sad.
I think she wanted to go, because she had arranged everything. The trouble is the place…. She left during the night [of November 7], and I spent a very, very bad night, that is to say, I suffered a lot. And I didn’t see her; she didn’t come [to Mother], but her thought was there constantly. I don’t know, I didn’t see her. I didn’t see her, I knew she had gone only when I was told.
I feel her thought very strongly.
Oh, very strongly, very strongly, and constantly. And strangely, there’s a sort of insistence on finding… (how can I put it?) what happens when one leaves—that’s what surprises me. Constantly, constantly: What happens when one leaves one’s body?
I felt the same thing.
The same thing. But it’s HER THOUGHT that is like that. And very insistent, very insistent—again and again…. So what happened?
At first, because I hadn’t seen her [after her death], I thought it was her old Buddhism and she had gone into some Nirvana. But then, her thought constantly coming like this: “And what happens when one leaves one’s body?” That’s the strange thing. And it’s SHE who’s putting the question. It’s that thought.
Yes, that very thought came to me very strongly too.
Yes, but that’s it. It’s the whole problem coming like this: what happens when one leaves one’s body? And I kept looking and looking and looking (I spent hours looking)—no Bharatidi. No form: a thought.
For me, it’s very strange, I may say that never has a being’s disappearance struck me like this one. Why? I don’t know.
I may say that I’ve never been so occupied with someone’s departure as I have been with hers—never. And constantly, “But what happens after death?…” As if… There’s only thought and no form: I don’t see her at all—not at all. I remember how she was physically, but I don’t see her. And constantly the problem: what happens…? Then I remember all my experiences, all the people I’ve seen die, all my very concrete experiences…. And why does it come like this: “What happens after death?” As if there were a sort of preoccupation: “No one will ever know” (I might translate it like this), “no one will ever know what happened to Bharatidi after her death.” And it’s SHE, it’s HER thought. I can’t say “she,” but her thought. Her thought as if she were telling me (you know how she was!), “No one will ever know what happened to Bharatidi after her death.” Like that, with her irony.
She didn’t want to come back to Pondicherry.1
No, she didn’t.
The last few years (maybe the last two years, I don’t know), she felt she was going to be converted. When she saw me, when she was sitting in front of me, she would feel she was going to be converted. And she didn’t want that. She wanted to keep her Buddhism, her nihilistic Buddhism, materially expressed as Communism.
When I said goodbye to her, she had magnificent eyes. She looked at me… luminous eyes, with such force, such beauty.
She knew she wouldn’t see you again.
Oh, those magnificent eyes…
She knew she wouldn’t see you again.
But I think it’s this: her psychic being had become conscious, and her whole mind didn’t want to emerge from its conception. I saw that. I saw it: when I held her hand like this, she would have the impression that she was going to be COMPELLED to change her conception, and she didn’t want to. So she would get up abruptly and go.
She was an indomitable being, Bharatidi.
(Mother laughs) Yes, extremely mental. Extremely mental. The vital she had dominated; the physical… It was all mental, mental, mental…. And with a sort of concentration in her mental being.
She must have had a bad night, it must have been difficult—because here it was very, very difficult, and I didn’t know it had to do with her. As soon as I knew, I went and saw there (I knew it in the morning), because it wasn’t a good place (but she didn’t care, now she’s gone out of it). But then her mind, constantly, constantly: “What really happens after death?…” And for hours! I would do something else, be busy: for hours it kept coming back…. In the end (it lasted the whole day yesterday, and this morning it was still there), this morning I told her, “Listen, Bharatidi, be quiet, and if you are quiet, you will know.” Since then, nothing anymore.
A mind so strong, and… yes, essentially rebellious.
When she came to see me, it was very interesting. She would come, she was attracted; and she knew it, once she told me, “Yes, I am attracted.” She would sit down, take my hand, then I would see her go like this (gesture of stiffening), something was going on, going on [in Bharatidi], and then… all of a sudden she would get up and go.
She told me one or two words like that, but she didn’t want—didn’t want to get out of her conception. So then, something strange must have happened to her: “What happens after death?…” And it kept coming back like that: “No one will ever know what happened to Bharatidi after her death.”
It’s curious. But I finally gave her peace. I think she’s better now.
She even told me (it was almost a conversation!), “You who know what death is, you don’t know what my death is!” (Mother laughs) It’s true, I don’t know! “You don’t know what has happened to me and what’s happening to me…. What’s happening to me? What?” I must admit it’s the first time—it has never happened in my life. It’s the first time, the first person like that.
And the contact was only with the mind; I don’t know what happened to the rest.
As for me, I was full of her.
Oh! (Laughing) Maybe she… (gesture of entering Satprem). It’s quite possible! Quite possible. I told her, “If you like, that whole part of your mind which I like very much can stay in me.” I told her, “If you are happy to come, you can.” Then I observed to see… But it’s possible, she may have come. Something from her seemed to me to go into P., that girl whom she liked a lot. I think she’s dispersed her vital, and that mentally… (gesture of entering here or there, into those who are receptive). But I told you before, there had always been a contact [with Mother], so it doesn’t make much difference. But I think that’s it.
I was full of her.
That’s it, that’s right! (Laughing) She divided herself up: communist, a communist death!
Yes, that’s it. The psychic being went away peacefully, the mind scattered. Yes, because it was her, but it was… I can’t say a “person” (there’s no person), but it was inside. It was inside, it wasn’t like something outside (that’s general). And insistent.
Yes, that’s it, she scattered herself.
(silence)
But deep down in Bharatidi, I feel something very painful. A being who suffered a lot, who was very lonely, who would have liked to love but couldn’t.
She couldn’t.
I feel I know Bharatidi very well.
Ah?
Her revolt, as you say, her independence, and that love she dominated and didn’t want to show to anybody…. When she looked at me, really there was… I can’t say, there was some thing in that look, I felt all that.
(long silence)
You remember, you gave her my note where I had written, “My love is with you,” so she replied to that (she instantly saw why I had written that), she replied, “I am not afraid of death because I know one doesn’t die.” It was M. who brought her reply back to me the next day.
Yes, she arranged things DELIBERATELY like that.
Oh, but she got herself operated on IN ORDER to die.
Oh, yes, she knew very well. She knew. She found it a convenient way to die.
She’s fine.
(silence)
She must have dispersed herself deliberately, and gone inside all those who were close to her, receptive—where there was a receptivity.
She’s dispersed herself.
In fact, to give an accurate translation of the vibrations I received (it lasted the whole day), it was, “You think you know” (I am translating), “you think you know what happens after death?… Then will you tell me what happened after Bharatidi’s death!” Like that.
Now I understand everything!
She was against individualism, and so… She didn’t want it.
Naturally, in the course of all that, I told her once (it was yesterday), I told her (said to her mind: it was her mind—not even the whole mind, now I understand it’s only a piece of it), I told her, “For you it’s like this, but it’s different for everybody.” Afterwards, she quieted down.
Yesterday, it was even very interesting, because I told her, I said to her mind, “Yes, if you like, you can settle in and make use of this instrument [Mother], but you know, you will have to renounce your preferences and prejudices!” She still used to have terrible reactions when she found that people didn’t behave properly with her. So I told her, “All that will have to go!” (Mother laughs).
But now she is quiet. Last night I succeeded in quieting her.
I don’t know if that’s what I saw, but the night she left, during the night a scene came to me: I was in a little harbor which seemed sunlit, and then I saw a huge, dark-blue wave coming, and it came as if to engulf the place where I was.
Oh!
A dark-blue wave, very high.
Dark blue is the mind.
(long silence)
(Mother laughs) She’s managed the whole affair quite successfully!
(silence)
But there was in her mental formation a DEEP PITY for human suffering, and especially, especially an extraordinary Compassion. Oh, precisely for the suffering of death, for that transition, that moment of transition—the suffering of death. That used to preoccupy her very much. And that’s what was there the whole night of her death; it was a very bad night—bad in the sense that I suffered a lot, and very difficult. Didn’t sleep for one minute.
Then, when I learned she had left, the first thing that came (gesture of mental vibration): “Oh, how lonely she must have felt when she died!” And it preoccupied me a lot, until her thought told me, “Now it’s over, we won’t think about it anymore.” She must have had a difficult moment.
She even told me, “You were with me, but it was too deep….” It was in the active mind that she was.
But then, she herself said, “No, now it’s over, we won’t think about it anymore.” And all that was without form—she certainly didn’t want there to be a form! I looked for it a good deal, but didn’t find anything.
That’s it, I felt the pressure [of Bharatidi’s mind], I told her, “Very well, I’ll give you refuge, but not to your preferences.”
Very well.
But that dispersed mind, in what way will it continue to be?
Yes, in everyone: it has united. That’s what she did, mentally she didn’t want to continue to exist INDIVIDUALLY. With the psychic, you can’t play jokes of that sort—it went away. But she didn’t concern herself very much with her psychic—it was the belief she didn’t want to believe in, of course! But mentally she dispersed herself (that’s not very difficult).
But it should make a difference in the consciousness of the person into whom she’s come?
Oh, yes, it should. As for me, I told you that the contact already existed, and moreover I did it deliberately, I accepted deliberately, so it can’t make any difference in me; but in P., for instance, it may very well make a difference. To the extent of the person’s receptive consciousness, it will make a difference. For example (but this is the quite material mind), she knew Pali very well…. If there is someone receptive, it will be good. She had a good knowledge of Pali. I’d have been very happy if it had come, but it didn’t. I don’t know where that fragment went. But to be passed on, it would take someone very, very plastic, because that’s already very material.
I’ve seen instances, I’ve met people who suddenly got knowledge they didn’t previously have, knowledge that came ready-made. She must have chosen someone.
If it had come, I would have been very happy.
All that came was general ideas, overall visions, and something that absolutely wanted to convince me that after death there is dispersion.
She had a very strong mind, very strong. Perhaps a small embryo of psychic being. But it was a whole mental organization.
(long silence)
She liked me very much, but she didn’t have any trust in me! I represented what she didn’t want to know!
Yes, as Sujata puts it, it was love she was afraid of.
Oh, yes.
Very well.
Did she still have any family?… I suppose they’ve been informed?
Yes, she had prepared a dozen letters with all the addresses—to be filled in.
Letters in which she was announcing her death!
She had just written the addresses and left the letters blank, to be written. She had even prepared a telegram for someone. Oh, it was all… organized.
(silence)
You know, she sent me everything in her that was contrary to what Sri Aurobindo said—she made a nice bundle with it and sent it all to me! (Mother laughs) Never mind! I looked at it, received it quite seriously, very seriously—I didn’t send it back, didn’t sweep it away: I received it all, sorted it all out, organized it all….
But never before in the… (how many?) ninety years of my life have I been so occupied with someone’s death as with hers, precisely for that reason, because she wanted to give me proof of “dispersion”: “No one will ever know what happened to Bharatidi….”
I didn’t tell her, “That is childishness!” because, as she no longer had a body, I treated her gently. But the moment, the transition was difficult… painful. There was a painful moment when she felt very lonely. Mentally very lonely, of course. Physically, she had her little Krishna [her servant] there. It wasn’t physical, it was mental—because of her conception.
Very well.
We’ll see.
Her psychic has gone to rest.
(silence)
But if you feel in you a difference in thought, in ways of thinking, tell me! (Mother laughs)
According to her wish, Bharatidi was cremated at Vellore itself. She wanted no one from the Ashram to be present at the time of her death or her funeral. ↩
***
November 6, 1968
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