Name: India - the Mother
Author: The Mother

"India has become the symbolic representation of all the difficulties of modern mankind.
India will be the land of its resurrection - the resurrection to a higher and truer life."

The Mother

February 3, 1968

Editors' Note

This book is a companion volume to India's Rebirth, a selection from Sri Aurobindo's writings and talks which presented his vision of India and the way out of her most pressing problems. India's Rebirth, first published in 1993, has generated much enthusiasm in India and abroad; it has been translated into Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam, Oriya, as well as French, and translations into other languages are under preparation.

In India the Mother, we have collected excerpts from the writings, messages, letters and talks of Mother, Sri Aurobindo's companion, who joined him in 1920 and worked tirelessly until 1973 to materialize his vision. As with India's Rebirth, we have followed a chronological order, which covers almost sixty years. The greater part of the extracts are drawn from Mother's Agenda (13 volumes), the record of the private conversations which Mother had with her confidant Satprem between 1954 and 1973. (The reader should remember that the extracts presented here have been edited for the purpose of this compilation; the integral text will be found in Mother's Agenda, 12 volumes of which have now been published in English translation.)

For Mother, as for Sri Aurobindo, India is more than a piece of land, however lovable it may be; it is the Ancient Mother, a form of the Shakti who fashions worlds and ages as well as her recalcitrant children, and pursues her goal through progress, defeat or even destruction. When the world is experiencing the last years of the West's 'long decomposition,'' when we are being compelled to understand that Man is not the ultimate product of our Evolution and that this earth is not meant to satisfy our petty destructive greeds, the dormant strengths of India's civilization are destined to shape the path of our future humanity and give the world the inner impetus and vision that the West's fast-fading glitter failed to provide.

June 1998

(Mother first met Sri Aurobindo in 1914 when she came to see him in Pondicherry, where he had taken refuge from the British. In 1915 she returned to France, then journeyed to Japan, where she would stay for four years.)

July 7, 1916

(Extracts from a speech to women in Japan, in the middle of World War I.)

If there is one field in which women have shown remarkable gifts, it is that of powers of organization. Those powers of administration had long been acknowledged in Brahminical India, the India prior to the Muslim conquest.... But in the West, Semitic thought together with Roman legislation had too deep an influence on customs to give women much opportunity to show their powers of organization....

It is certain that exclusively male politics has proved itself incapable: it has too often sunk into the search for narrow personal interest and into arbitrary and violent action. A politics of women would doubtless bring about a tendency to disinterestedness and to more humanitarian solutions.... To reduce woman's role to exclusively internal and familial occupations, and man's role to exclusively external and social occupations, thus separating what should be united, would be to perpetuate the present sorry state of things both equally suffer from.

The present hour is serious. A stern, painful lesson is being taught to nations. On the ruins now piling up, new, more beautiful and harmonious constructions can be erected.

July 9, 1917

(Mother is asked by Japanese friends for her impression of Japan during her stay there.)

... Accumulation of energy is perhaps the most distinctive and widespread characteristic in the Japanese.... If you have —as I have had—the privilege of coming into contact with true Japanese, those who keep intact the rectitude and bravery of the Samurais of old, then you can understand what Japan really is, you can grasp the secret of its strength....

[But you find] an atmosphere of tension and effort, mental and nervous tension, not of spiritual peace like what you can feel in India, for instance. In reality, nothing in Japan can be compared to the pure and divine atmosphere that permeates India and makes it a unique and so precious country, not even in the temples and sacred monasteries.... Outer calm, repose and silence are there, but not the blissful sense of the Infinite given by a life close to the One.

(In 1920, Mother returned from Japan to Pondicherry. When in 1926 Sri Aurobindo withdrew to concentrate on his sadhana, she took charge of the disciples who had gathered around him. Most of the following extracts are from conversations with disciples.)

June 9, 1929

It is often said that, if Jesus came back, he would not be able to recognise what he taught in the forms that have been imposed on it, and if Buddha were to come back and see what has been made of his teaching, he would immediately run back discouraged to Nirvana! All religions have each the same story to tell.¹ The occasion for its birth is the coming of a great Teacher of the world. He comes and reveals and is the incarnation of a Divine Truth. But men seize upon it, trade upon it, make an almost political organisation out of it. The religion is equipped by them with a government and policy and laws, with its creeds and dogmas, its rules and regulations, its rites and ceremonies, all binding upon its adherents, all absolute and inviolable. Like the State, it too administers rewards to the loyal and assigns punishments for those that revolt or go astray, for the heretic and the renegade.

The first and principal article of these established and formal religions runs always, “Mine is the supreme, the only truth, all others are in falsehood or inferior.” For without this fundamental dogma, established credal religions could not have existed. If you do not believe and proclaim that you alone possess the one or the highest truth, you will not be able to impress people and make them flock to you.

This attitude is natural to the religious mind; but it is just that which makes religion stand in the way of the spiritual life... When you stop at a religious creed and tie yourself in it, taking it for the only truth in the world, you stop the advance and widening of your inner soul.

June 30, 1929

[A disciple asks:] Isn't our material world very low in the scale of the worlds that make up the creation?

Ours is the most material world, but it is not necessarily “low down”, at least, not for that reason; if it is low down, it is because it is obscure and ignorant, not because it is material. It is a mistake to make “matter” a synonym for obscurity and ignorance. And the material world too is not the only world in which we live: it is rather one of many in which we exist simultaneously, and in one way the most important of them all. For this world of matter is the point of concentration of all the worlds; it is the field of concretisation of all the worlds; it is the place where all the worlds will have to manifest. At present it is disharmonious and obscure; but that is only an accident, a false start. One day it will become beautiful, rhythmic, full of light; for that is the consummation for which it was made.

July 28, 1929

The greatest nations and the most cultured races have always considered art as a part of life and made it subservient to life. Art was like that in Japan in its best moments; it was like that in all the best moments in the history of art.... Skill is not art, talent is not art. Art is a living harmony and beauty that must be expressed in all the movements of existence. This manifestation of beauty and harmony is part of the Divine realization upon earth, perhaps even its greatest part....

True art is a whole and an ensemble; it is one and of one piece with life. You see something of this intimate wholeness in ancient Greece and ancient Egypt; for there pictures and statues and all objects of art were made and arranged as part of the architectural plan of a building, each detail a portion of the whole. It is like that in Japan, or at least it was so till the other day before the invasion of a utilitarian and practical modernism.... In India, too, painting and sculpture and architecture were one integral beauty, one single movement of adoration of the Divine.

There has been in this sense a great degeneration since then in the world.... Art now is meant to show skill and cleverness and talent, not to embody some integral expression of harmony and beauty.

1930-31

The moment you rise to the Supermind,² you immediately perceive that the world is false and distorted.... Then how could the world be a true expression of the Divine?... We must avoid dangerously exaggerating the falsehood of this world, which is what happens to those who have risen to a higher consciousness. What happened to Shankara and others like him is that they caught a glimpse of the true consciousness, and that glimpse made the world's falsehood stand out so acutely that they asserted the universe was not only false, but a non-existent illusion to be entirely abandoned. As for us, we see that falsehood, but we also know that the universe must be changed, not abandoned as an illusion…. To express the divine Reality is truly our yoga.

August 4, 1931

(Regarding a statement by an Indian living in America, which described Gandhi and Tagore as the two most popular figures in India.)

For foreigners these two men seem to be the only ones who represent Indian genius. This is very far from the truth.... India has far greater geniuses than these and in the most varied fields, scientific, literary, philosophic, spiritual. It is true that the young people from Shantiniketan come out refined, but without any force or energy for realization. As for Gandhi's young people, they may have more energy and power of action, but they are imprisoned within the four walls of a few narrow ideas and a limited mind.

I repeat, there is better, far better in India, but this India does not care for international glory.

November 3, 1931

(From a letter.)

What you have described is pretty much the state of the whole world: disorder, confusion, wastage and misery.

It is no use lamenting, however, saying, "Where are we heading!" The final collapse, the general bankruptcy seems obiious enough ... unless ... There is always an "unless" in the history of the earth; and always, when confusion and destruction seem to have reached their climax, something happens and a new balance is established which extends for a few more centuries the life of declining civilizations and human societies in delirium.

... Oh, the horror of falsehood spread everywhere on earth, ruling the world with its law of darkness! I believe its reign has lasted long enough; this is the master we must now refuse to serve. That is the great, the only remedy.

1931-1935 (?)

(From aphorisms, remarks, brief messages or letters.)

O men! How can you utter the sublime word “Peace” when there is no peace in your hearts?

The War is over, so you say, and yet everywhere man is slaying man and Cain still sheds his brother’s blood!

In the Bible, God calls Cain and asks him: “What have you done with your brother?”

Today I call man and ask him: “What have you done with the earth?”

Humanity is a sick child always wanting what is bad for him. Philanthropy is like a mother who, in order to satisfy her child’s demands, would give him the very thing that will make him worse.

It is a mistake to consider service to humanity as the highest expression of service to the Divine. To do so is to remain far too confined within the limits of an exclusive human consciousness.

The world is deafened with useless words.

Organisation and discipline are the necessary basis for all realisation.

To know how to command well, one must first know how to obey well.

A persevering will overcomes every obstacle.

March 23, 1936

(From a letter.)

Not to take care of the material objects one uses is a sign of unconsciousness and ignorance. One has no right to use any material object unless one takes care of it.

We must take care of them not because we are attached to them, but because they too manifest something of the Divine Consciousness.

August 29, 1936

(From a letter referring to events that were to lead to world War II three years later.)

In their ignorant unconsciousness men set moving forces they are not even aware of, and soon these forces get more and more out of their control and bring about disastrous results. The earth seems to be shaken almost entirely by a terrible fit of political and social epilepsy through which the most dangerous forces of destruction do their work....

June 13, 1937

(From a talk.)

Governments follow governments, rulers follow rulers, centuries follow centuries, and human misery remains lamentably the same. It will always be so, as long as man will remain what he is, blind and ignorant, closed to all spiritual truth. Only a transformation, an illumination of the human consciousness can bring a real improvement in the human condition.

1938 (?)

(Mother was asked, "What is India?")

India is not the earth, rivers and mountains of this land, neither is it a collective name for the inhabitants of this country. India is a living being, as much living as, say, Shiva. All the countries have their own spirit and if politically you make any changes, they would be unreal. For example, although Austria has become a part of Germany, still they are quite separate and the spirit of Austria is in agony.³ India is a goddess just as Shiva is a God. If she likes, she can manifest in human form.

It is France that can connect Europe with India. There are great spiritual possibilities for France. She will play a big part in spite of her present bad condition. It is through France that the spiritual message will reach Europe. That is why I chose France for my birth although I am not French.

May 25, 1941

(In the early stages of World War II, there was understandably little sympathy in India for Britain. But Sri Aurobindo and Mother, conscious of what a Nazi victory would mean for humanity, issued in September 1940 a public message in support of the Allies, accompanied by a symbolic contribution. The following two declarations by Mother followed a refusal among certain "disciples" to understand what was at stake, and at the same time a desire by some outside disciples to be given shelter near Sri Aurobindo and Mother.)

The world situation is critical today. India's fate too is hanging in the balance. There was a time when India was absolutely secure, there was no danger whatever of her being a victim to Asuric aggression. But things have changed. People and forces in India have acted in such a way as to invite Asuric influences upon her: these have worked insidiously and undermined the security that was there.

If India is in danger, Pondicherry cannot be expected to remain outside the danger zone. It will share the fate of the rest of the country. The protection I can give is not unconditional. It is idle to hope that in spite of anything and everything, the protection will be there over all. My protection is there if conditions are fulfilled. It goes without saying that any sympathy or support for the Nazis (or for any ally of theirs) automatically cuts across the circle of protection. Apart from this obvious and external factor, there are more fundamental psychological conditions which demand fulfilment. The Divine can give protection only to those who are wholeheartedly faithful to the Divine, who live truly in the spirit of sadhana and keep their consciousness and preoccupation fixed upon the Divine and the service of the Divine. Desire, for example, insistence on one's likes and conveniences, all movements of hypocrisy and insincerity and falsehood, are great obstacles standing in the way of the Divine's protection. If you seek to impose your will upon the Divine, it is as if you were calling for a bomb to fall upon you. I do not say that things are bound to happen in this way; but they are very likely to happen, if people do not become conscious and strictly vigilant and act in the true spirit of a spiritual seeker. If the psychological atmosphere remains the same as that of the outside world, there can be no sure wall of security against the dark Forces that are working out in it the ordeal of danger, suffering and destruction entering here.

May 26, 1942

To those who quake for their skin and run away:

Why should you be in safety when the whole world is in danger? What is your special virtue and special merit for which you are to be specially protected?

In the Divine alone is there safety. Take refuge in Him and cast away all fear.

1945

(A message for the New Year.)

The earth will enjoy a lasting and living peace only when men understand that they must be truthful even in their international dealings.

O Lord, it is for this perfect truthfulness that we aspire.⁴

August 15, 1945

(That day, which was also Sri Aurobindo's birthday, saw Japan's capitulation and the end of World War II.)

The Victory has come, Thy Victory, O Lord, for which we render to Thee infinite thanks-giving.

But now our ardent prayer rises towards Thee. It is with Thy force and by Thy force that the victors have conquered. Grant that they do not forget it in their success and that they keep the promises which they have made to Thee in the hours of danger and anguish. They have taken Thy name to make war, may they not forget Thy grace when they have to make the peace.

August 28, 1945

(A letter to a disciple, following the use of the atomic bomb in Japan.)

The atomic bomb is in itself the most wonderful achievement and the sign of a growing power of man over the material Nature. But what is to be regretted is that this material progress and mastery is not the result of and in keeping with a spiritual progress and mastery which alone has the power to contradict and counteract the terrible danger coming from these discoveries. We cannot and must not stop progress but we must achieve it in an equilibrium between the inside and the outside.

August 30, 1945

(A letter to a disciple.)

I do not see that the Supramental will act in the way you expect from It. Its action will be to effectuate the Divine's Will upon earth whatever that may be. On men Its action will be to turn their will consciously or unconsciously on their part towards the way in which the Divine's Will wants them to go.

But I cannot promise you that the Divine's will is to preserve the present human civilization.

June 3, 1947

(Mother wrote this note after hearing on the radio the declaration of the Viceroy to Indian leaders, announcing Britain's final transfer of power to a partitioned India.)

A proposal has been made for the solution of our difficulties in organizing Indian independence and it is being accepted with whatever bitterness or regret and searchings of the heart by Indian leaders.

But do you know why this proposal has been made to us? It is to prove to us the absurdity of our quarrels.

And do you know why we have to accept these proposals? It is to prove to ourselves the absurdity of our quarrels.

Clearly, this is not a solution; it is a test, an ordeal which, if we live it out in all sincerity, will prove to us that it is not by cutting a country into small bits that we shall bring about its unity and its greatness; it is not by opposing interests against each other that we can win for it, prosperity; it is not by setting one dogma against another that we can serve the spirit of Truth. In spite of all, India has a single soul and while we have to wait till we can speak of an India one and indivisible, our cry must be:

LET THE SOUL OF INDIA

LIVE FOR EVER!

June 6, 1947

The soul of India is one and indivisible. India is conscious of her mission in the world. She is waiting for the exterior means of manifestation.

August 15, 1947

(A message Mother gave on the occasion of India's independence, which fell on Sri Aurobindo's 75th birthday.)

Invocation

O our Mother, O Soul of India, Mother who hast never forsaken thy children even in the days of darkest depression, even when they turned away from thy voice, served other Masters and denied thee, now when they have arisen and the light is on thy face in this dawn of thy liberation, in this great hour we salute thee. Guide us so that the horizon of freedom opening before us may be also a horizon of true greatness and of thy true life in the community of the nations. Guide us so that we may be always on the side of great ideals and show to men thy true visage, as a leader in the ways of the spirit and a friend and helper of all the peoples.

February 2, 1949

Youth does not depend on a small number of years, but on the capacity to grow and progress.... Old age does not come from a great number of years, but from the incapacity or the refusal to keep on growing and progressing.

August 4, 1949

(A message to America.)

Stop thinking that you are of the West and others of the East. All human beings are of the same divine origin and meant to manifest upon earth the unity of this origin.

December 21, 1950

When the mind grows silent, when it stops judging and pushing itself to the forefront with its so-called knowledge, you begin to be able to solve the problem of life. You should abstain from judging, because the mind is only an instrument of action, not an instrument of true knowledge—true knowledge comes from elsewhere....

The world's great disorder would in large part be neutralized if the mind could admit that it does not know.

March 5, 1951

A "sinful" mankind is a wholly Christian notion, which warps our idea of the Divine—a Divine that punishes poor people because they had the misfortune to be born as "sinners" wouldn't be very generous!

April 9, 1951

(Mother was asked, "Why is modern art so ugly?")

I think the main reason is that people have become more and more lazy and do not want to work. They want to produce before having worked, they want to know before having studied, and they want to make a name for themselves before having done anything worthwhile.

Those horrors [of the War] seem to have divided people : a minority was ready and has risen very high, while the majority, which was not ready, has sunk very low. Those are at present wallowing in the mud, which is why for the moment we can’t get out of it. If this goes on, we will move towards a new war, and then it will really be the end of this civilization—I am not saying the end of the world, because nothing can be the end of the world, but the end of this civilization, which means we will have to build another … For men are very intelligent creatures and have found a way to destroy everything, and they will use it, because what’s the use of spending billions to perfect some bombs if you are not to use them? What’s the use of discovering that you can destroy a city in a few minutes, if not to destroy it! One wants to see the fruit of one’s effort. If there is a war, that is what will happen.

August 1951

(From an article on education.)

Following the last wars and the dreadful nervous tension they have created, perhaps as a sign of the degeneration of civilization and of social decay, a growing vulgarity seems to have taken hold of human life, collective as well as individual, especially on the plane of what was people's aesthetic and sensorial life. A methodical enlightened culture of the senses can progressively eliminate in the child what has through contagion become vulgar, commonplace and crude; and that culture will have very happy repercussions on the child's character too.... Refinement, if it is sincere, gives the being a nobility and generosity that will spontaneously find expression in his way of acting and will shield him from much meanness and perversion.

August 23, 1951

Let the splendours of Bharat's past be reborn in the realization of her imminent future with the help and blessings of her living soul.

April 1952

(From an article written on the occasion of the opening of the Sri Aurobindo International University Centre.)

The conditions in which men live upon earth are the result of their state of consciousness. To want to change the conditions without changing the consciousness is a vain chimera....

The unity of the human race can be accomplished neither through uniformity nor through domination or subjection. A synthetic organization of all nations, each occupying its true place according to its own genius and the role it has to play in the whole, can alone result in a comprehensive and progressive unification that would have some chance of lasting....

Just as each individual has a psychic being which is his true self and governs more or less openly his destiny, so too has each nation a psychic being which is its true being and fashions its destiny from behind the veil. That is the soul of the country, the national genius, the spirit of each people, the centre of national aspiration, the source of all that is beautiful, noble, great and generous in the life of a country. The true patriots feel its presence as a tangible reality. In India, it has become an almost divine entity, and all those who truly love her call her "Mother India," Bharat Mata, and daily address a prayer to her for the safety of the land. It is she who symbolises and embodies the country's true ideal, its true mission in the world....

One would like to see in all countries the same veneration for the soul of the nation, the same aspiration to become instruments fit to manifest her loftiest ideal, the same ardour towards progress and self-improvement enabling each people to identify with its national psychic being and thus find its true nature and true role—what makes each people a living and immortal entity despite all the accidents of history.

August 23, 1952

Change yourself if you wish to change the world. Prove by your inner transformation that a truth-consciousness can take possession of the material world and that the Divine Unity can be manifested upon earth.

Organizations, however vast and complete they may be, can achieve nothing permanent unless a new force, more divine and all-powerful, expresses itself through a perfected human instrument.

1953

(A message for the New Year.)

Lord, thou hast told us:
Do not give way, hold tight.
It is when everything seems lost that all is saved.

April 29, 1953

Otherwise [if people sought for the truth], there would be no religion: there would be masters and disciples, people with a higher teaching and an exceptional experience. That would be fine. But as soon as the master is gone, what happens is that the knowledge he gave is turned into a religion. Rigid dogmas are established, religious rules are born, and all you can do is bow before the Tables of the Law. While at first, it was not so. You are told, "This is true, that is false, the master said ..." Sometime later, the master becomes a god, and you are told, "God said."

... Luckily for all of you [children here], you have no religion. And I hope you will never have any, because that is closing the door on progress.

May 13, 1953

It is not by fleeing from the world that you will change it. It is by working in it modestly, humbly, but with a flame in your heart, something that burns like an offering.

July 15, 1953

... If you take your thought far enough, you will see that if the Divine is truly all-powerful in this world, if he always does whatever he likes, well, I say that he is the greatest monster in the universe! Because someone all-powerful who would make the world as it is, watching with a smile people suffer and be miserable, and who would find it all quite fine, as for me, I call him a monster. That was the sort of thing I thought of when I was five. I would say to myself, "But that can't be, what we are taught can't be true!" ... You will see that this whole conception and notion you have is based on something, an entity you call God, and a world you call his creation, two things you think to be different, one having created the other, the other being subservient to the first and the expression of what the first did. Well, that is the initial error. While if you could feel deeply that there is no division between that something you call God and this something you call the creation, if you said, "It's exactly the same thing," if you could feel that what you call God (which may be just a word) suffers when you suffer, is ignorant when you are ignorant, that it is through this whole creation that he finds himself again little by little, step by step, unites with himself, realizes himself, expresses himself, and it's not at all something he wanted arbitrarily and did autocratically, but the growing, increasingly developing expression of a consciousness that objectifies to itself ... Then there is nothing but the sense of a collective advance towards a more total realization, a self-awareness and self-knowledge within a total oneness that will integrally reproduce the primordial Consciousness.

July 29, 1953

(From a talk in which Mother explains how events are sometimes formed long before their actual occurrence.)

... I will give you an example that will perhaps make it clear to you. It must have been at some point of the year 1920. One day ... I used to meditate every day with Sri Aurobindo; he sat on one side of the table, and I sat on the other side, in the veranda. And one day, while in meditation, I went into ... (how can I put it?), I went very high, went very deep inside, or out of myself (put it any way you like, it won't express what happened, it's only manners of speaking), and I reached a place, or a state of consciousness, in which I said to Sri Aurobindo, just like that, very simply, "India is free." That was in 1920. Then he asked me one question, "How?" I replied, "Without struggle, without battle, without revolution: the English will leave of themselves, because the state of the world will be such that they will have no choice but to go away."

It was done. When he asked me the question, I put it in the future, but where I saw, I said "India is free," it was a fact. But India was not free at the time: it was 1920. Yet it was there, it was done. And it happened in 1947. Which means that from a physical, external point of view, I saw it twenty-seven years later.

[A child asks.] Could you see Pakistan?

No, because the liberation could have taken place without Pakistan. In fact, if they had listened to Sri Aurobindo, there would not have been any Pakistan.

October 28, 1953

Here in India, there is an art tradition that has subsisted, the whole country is full of creations that were made at the height of the art history of the country. People live in it. The repercussion of what has taken place in the rest of the world, particularly in Europe, has not been felt much. Only those parts of India that have been a little too anglicized have lost the sense of beauty—some schools of Bombay, schools of artists, are dreadful. Then there was that attempt of the Calcutta School to revive Indian art, but that is only on a very small scale. From the artistic point of view, what you find within easiest reach is the old creations, the old temples and old paintings. All that was very fine. And it was done to express a faith. It was done with the sense of a whole, not of disorder.... Most of the works here, almost all beautiful works, I think, are unsigned. All those cave paintings and cave sculptures are unsigned. We have no idea who made them. And they didn't make them with idea of making a name for themselves, as they do now. You were a great sculptor, a great painter, a great architect, and that was all. There was no question of sticking your name on everything and making a sensational announcement of it in newspapers so no one would forget it! In those days, the artist did what he had to do, without bothering whether his name would go down to posterity or not. It was done with a movement of aspiration to express a higher beauty, and above all with the idea of giving a suitable dwelling to the deity invoked. In the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, it was the same thing.... Whereas now, there is not one scrap of painted or daubed canvass that does not display a signature to let you know, "This was done by Mister So-and-so"!

November 25, 1953

Stalin's death [on March 5, 1953], no more than Hitler's, unfortunately, has not changed the present state of the world. Something more than that would be needed.... It's of little use—it just goes elsewhere. It's only a form. It's as if you did something very bad with a shirt, threw your shirt away, and said, "Now I will do no more evil"—you go on with another shirt!⁵

April 25, 1954

Sri Aurobindo always loved deeply his Motherland. But he wished her to be great, noble, pure and worthy of her big mission in the world. He refused to let her sink to the sordid and vulgar level of blind self-interests and ignorant prejudices. This is why, in full conformity to his will, we lift high the standard of truth, progress and transformation of mankind.

April 28, 1954

Take Truth for your force, take Truth for your ref

May 5, 1954

Nothing is impossible. We are the ones who set limitations. We keep saying, "This is possible, that is impossible ; this can be done, that can't be done...." We are the ones who put ourselves like slaves in the prison of our limits, of a stupid, narrow, ignorant commonsense that knows nothing of the laws of life. The laws of life are not at all what you think, nor what the most intelligent people think. They are something else altogether.

August 15, 1954

(A note written on the occasion of France's cession of Pondicherry to India. Mother requested the government of India to allow her to have a dual nationality, Indian and French, but the government expressed its inability to do so.)

I want to mark this day by the expression of a long cherished wish; that of becoming an Indian citizen. From the first time I came to India in 1914—I felt that India is my true country, the country of my soul and spirit. I had decided to realize this wish as soon as India would be free. But I had to wait....

I am French by birth and early education, I am Indian by choice and predilection. In my consciousness there is no antagonism between the two, on the contrary, they combine very well and complete one another. I know also that I can be of service to both equally, for my only aim in life is to give a concrete form to Sri Aurobindo's great teaching and in his teaching he reveals that all the nations are essentially one and meant to express the Divine Unity upon earth through an organized and harmonious diversity.

Mid 1950s

(Various notes.)

I had an intense experience.

I saw, felt, perceived that despite all appearances to the contrary, the world is making its way towards the True, towards the day when authorities will belong to those who have the true power, the power of the Truth.

For human authority to be legitimately exercized over others, it must be enlightened, impartial and unegoistic to the extent that nobody can reasonably challenge its value.

He only who has a perfect sense of true justice can claim the right to be obeyed.

Tolerance is full of a sense of superiority; it must be replaced with a total understanding.

India must be saved for the good of the world since India alone can lead the world to peace and a new world order.

The future of India is very clear. India is the guru of the world. The future structure of the world depends on India. India is the living soul. She incarnates the spiritual knowledge in the world. The government of India ought to recognize this significance of India in this sphere and plan their action accordingly....

Divine power alone can help India. If you can build faith and cohesion in the country it is much more powerful than any man-made power. According to a very old tradition, if twelve honest persons unite to incarnate the divine Will, they can compel the Divine to manifest.... There must be a group forming a strong body of cohesive will with the spiritual Knowledge to save India and the world. It is India that can bring Truth in the world. By manifestation of divine Will and Power alone India can preach her message to the world and not by imitating the materialism of the West. By following the divine Will India shall shine at the top of the spiritual mountain and show the way of Truth and organize world unity.

January 1, 1955

(A message for the New Year.)

No human will can finally prevail against the Divine's Will. Let us put ourselves deliberately and exclusively on the side of the Divine, and the Victory is ultimately certain.

January 6, 1955

(A note.)

A day shall come when all the wealth of this world, freed at last from the enslavement to the antidivine forces, offers itself spontaneously and fully to the service of the Divine's Work upon earth.

February 16, 1955

Money is a thing you should have only when you are free from desires. When you are free from desires and attachments, when you have a consciousness as vast as the earth, then you can have as much money as there is on earth; that would be fine for everyone. But otherwise, all the money you have is like a curse on you.... It is infinitely more difficult to be good, wise, intelligent and generous, more generous, do you hear, when one is rich than when one is poor. I have known many people in many countries, and the most generous people I met in every country were always the poorest. As soon as your pockets are full, you are seized by a sort of disease, a sordid attachment to money. It's a curse, I assure you....

Everyone must find in his highest consciousness the best possible use for the money he has. And money really has value only when it circulates.... Those who, in addition, have a higher spiritual knowledge can use that force to build little by little on earth what will be capable of manifesting the divine Power, Force, and Grace. Then that force of money and wealth, that financial power I was just describing as a curse could become a supreme blessing for the good of all...

Certainly, the greatest power wrongly used can be a very great calamity, while the same great power rightly used can be a blessing. All depends on the way you use things.... It is because, in the world as it is, very few things are put to their true use, very few things are in their true place, because the world is in a terrible chaos that we find all this misery and suffering. If each thing were in its place in a harmonious balance, the whole world could progress without having to be in the state of misery and suffering it is in.

February 21, 1955

No material organisation, whatever its degree of preparation, is capable of bringing a solution to the miseries of man.

Man must rise to a higher level of consciousness and get rid of his ignorance, limitation and selfishness in order to get rid also of his sufferings.

April 1955

...Perhaps India, the land of contrasts, will also be the land of new realizations, just as she was the cradle of their conception.

April 4, 1955

(A message for the opening of the French Institute in Pondicherry.)

In every country, the best education to be given to children consists in teaching them the true nature of their country, its own qualities and the mission their nation must fulfil in the world, its true place in the world concert. To that must be added a vast understanding of the role of other nations, but without spirit of imitation, and without ever losing sight of the own genius of their country.

France was the generosity of sentiments, the newness and boldness of ideas, and chivalrous action. That France is the one which commands respect and admiration from all; it is through those virtues that she dominated the world.

A utilitarian, calculating, mercantile France is not France any longer. Those things do not conform with her true nature, and by practising them, she loses the nobility of her position in the world.

There is what today's children should come to know.

May 11, 1955

The wonderful thing is the unconsciousness with which people journey through life. They don't know how to live, not one in a million does, and on they go like that, struggling along, things are fine, things are bad, and to them, all of it—bah, what is it? Just things happening.

They don't know how to live. Still, they ought to learn how to live. It's the first thing that should be taught to children: to know how to live.

September 7, 1955

[A child asks:] Mother, why is it the doctrine of all spiritual schools in India to flee from action?⁶

Because it's all based on the teaching that life is an illusion. It began with the teaching of the Buddha, who said that existence is the fruit of desire, and that the only way out of misery and suffering and desire is to get out of existence. Then it went on with Shankara who added that not only is the world the fruit of desire, but it's a complete illusion, and as long as you live in that illusion, you can't realize the Divine....

But once you have reached that inner freedom and conscious contact with what is eternal and infinite, then without losing that consciousness, you must return to action and let it influence the whole consciousness turned to action.

That's what Sri Aurobindo calls bringing down the higher Force. That is how there is a chance of changing the world, because you have sought a new Force, a new region, a new consciousness, and you bring it into contact with the outside world....

If we go back to the teaching of the [Vedic] Rishis, for instance, there was no idea of flight from the world: for them, realization had to be on the earth. They clearly conceived of a Golden Age, in which the realization would be on the earth. But perhaps after a certain decline in the vitality of the country's spiritual life, a different orientation came—it's certainly after Buddha's teaching that the idea of flight came, and that sapped the country's vitality, because you had to strive to cut yourself off from life. Outer reality became an illusory falsehood with which you should have nothing to do anymore. So naturally, you would cut yourself off from universal energy, and the vitality kept decreasing; and along with it, all possibilities of realization decrease too.

September 14, 1955

Generally, politicians cover up all their misdeeds with fine words, but the misdeeds are there nonetheless. The world is so organized that one cannot be otherwise. A man who accepts no kind of compromise could not remain in politics; he would be driven out by the sheer force of things. There will come a time when all that will change, but not yet. Politics may be the last thing to change. Many others will have to change before that. Politics is certainly one of the most recalcitrant things.

Two things are very difficult to change: finance and politics; the field of money and the field of government are the two points where man is the weakest and most attached to falsehood. So that is probably where transformation will happen last....

[Mother is asked a question about reconciliation between the USA and the USSR:] Those things are only appearances, superficial ideas and interests—"interests," not even true interests, but the notion they have of their interests.... The political attitude is very flimsy, very meagre; it's shallow, mostly words, hollow words; they make a lot of noise because they're hollow, just high-sounding words.... If the economic problem were solved ... those political differences would lose most of their support....

Does India have a special role to play in today's politics

... India has a role to fulfil in the world. But that is something ideal, requiring a conversion which, well, has not yet taken place, so far as I know. On the superficial, external standpoint, she could play her role if she were sincere. That's all I can say.

September 21, 1955

The country and all countries are flooded with worthless, badly written, badly thought literature which expresses vulgar things and stultifies you with vulgar things, thoroughly spoiling your taste through vulgar pictures. All that is because they have managed to produce things very cheaply, what they call editions "within everyone's reach." But the aim of those people isn't at all to educate people or to make them progress, far from it (on the contrary, they hope people won't progress, since if they did, they wouldn't buy their stuff anymore), their intention is to make money at the expense of those who read their literature. So the more it sells, the better it is. It may be awful, if it sells well it's very good. It's the same thing with art, the same thing with music, the same thing with theatre.... The whole earth is flooded with those things, to such a point that when someone has written a good book or a good play, there is no more place for him anywhere, because the whole place has been taken up by those things....

In America, when they speak of someone, they say, "Oh, he is worth a million dollars!" That's the highest compliment they may make.... Is he intelligent, is he stupid, is he ...? That does not matter in the least.... Naturally, America is a young nation, so it has the manners of a child, but a rather ill-mannered child. And the older countries have grown a bit too old, they can't react anymore; they wag their heads, wondering whether all this youth isn't right after all. It's all like that. The world is very sick.

October 12, 1955

Many things that man has turned into wonderful virtues I found in animals as spontaneous movements—and to their advantage, at least they weren't proud or vain. They spontaneously did things that I must say were very remarkable—remarkable with devotion, abnegation, foresight, educational sense. They did it spontaneously, without writing books about it, without boasting about it as about something marvellous. So it takes a lot to emerge from the animal, much more than people think.

November 2, 1955

Mother, you said that the Vedic age was like a promise. A promise to whom?

To the Earth and to men....

They used a symbolic language [in the Veda]. Some say it was because they wanted it to be an initiation to be understood only by initiates. But it may also have been quite a spontaneous expression, without a precise intention to veil, but which could be understood only by those who had had the experience. Because, quite evidently, it's something that isn't mental but came spontaneously—as if from the heart and from aspiration —the quite spontaneous expression of an experience or a knowledge. And naturally, a expression that was poetic, with its own rhythm, its own beauty, and which could be accessible only to those who had had an identical experience. So it was veiled of itself, there was no need to add a veil on it....

Some sentences seem quite banal and ordinary, with things apparently put in an almost childish way ... But if you have the experience, you see that they contain a power of realization and a truth of expression that give you the key to the experience itself.

November 15, 1955

(A message to India's president, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, when he paid a visit to Mother.)

India must rise to the height of her mission and proclaim the Truth to the world.

December 7, 1955

It's not the head that has wings, it's the heart. It is ... yes, this inescapable need. Nothing else matters....

It was Joy that created, it is Joy that will accomplish.

January 18, 1956

You said to Sri Aurobindo [in 1920], "India was free," but was she entirely free, or cut in two as she is now?

... There must have been the possibility for things to be different, since, when Sri Aurobindo sent them his message,⁷ he knew very well that what followed could be avoided. If they had listened to him at that time, there would have been no division. So the division wasn't something decreed, it's a human distortion. It's undeniably a human distortion.

March 21, 1956

(A note.)

The age of Capitalism and business is drawing to a close.

But the age of Communism, too, will pass. For Communism as it is preached is not constructive, it is a weapon to combat plutocracy. But when the battle is over, the armies are disbanded for want of work, and Communism, having no more utility, will be transformed into something else that will express a higher truth.

We know this truth, and we are working for it so that it may reign upon earth.

May 16, 1956

Morality is a wholly artificial and arbitrary thing, and in most cases, among the best people, it checks true spiritual effort with a sort of moral satisfaction of being on the right path, of being an honest, dutiful man fulfilling life's moral necessities. Then one is so satisfied with oneself that one stays put and stops progressing.... One no longer has either aspiration or even that elementary humility that makes you want to progress.

May 23, 1956

The first time I came to India [in March 1914], I came on a Japanese ship. And on this Japanese ship there were two clergymen, that is, Protestant priests, of different sects. I don't remember what sects exactly, but they were both English; I think one was an Anglican and the other a Presbyterian.

... Then [after a religious service in the ship's saloon], the clergyman came to ask me, more or less politely, why I hadn't attended. I told him, "Sir, I am sorry, but I don't believe in religion."

"Oho, you are a materialist!"

"No, not at all."

"Ah! Then why?"

"Oh, if I were to tell you, you would be quite displeased, it is probably better not to say anything!"

But he insisted so much that I said at last, "Just this. I don't feel you are sincere, neither you nor your flock. You all went there to fulfil a duty and a social custom, not at all because you really wanted to enter into communion with God."

"Enter into communion with God! But we can't do that! All we can do is to say some good words, but we have no ability to enter into communion with God."

Then I said, "But that's just why I didn't go: it doesn't interest me."

After that he asked me many questions and confided to me that he was going to China to convert the "pagans." At that I became serious and told him, "Listen, even before your religion was born—it is not yet two thousand years old—the Chinese had a very high philosophy and knew a path leading them to the Divine. And when they think of Westerners, they think of them as barbarians. And you are going there to convert those who know more than you? What are you going to teach them? To be insincere? To perform hollow ceremonies instead of following a profound philosophy and a detachment from life which lead them to a more spiritual consciousness? I don't think you are going to do a very good thing."

Then he was so flabbergasted, the poor man, that he said to me, "Eh, I am afraid I can't be convinced by your words!"

"Oh," I said, "I am not trying to convince you. I only described the situation to you. And I don't quite see why barbarians should wish to go and teach civilized people what they have known long before you. That's all."

And that was the end of it!

January 2, 1957

There is in India this idea of a complete renunciation of all physical reality, a deep contempt for the material world, which is made out to be an illusion and a falsehood, leaving a clear field, as Sri Aurobindo says, to the sovereign rule of the adverse forces. If you escape from concrete reality to seek an abstract and distant reality, you leave the whole field of that concrete reality at the full disposal of the adverse forces which have grabbed hold of it and more or less rule now—in order to go and realize for yourself what Sri Aurobindo calls "a zero or a void unit," to become the ruler of a nothingness. It's the return to Nirvana. That idea is there everywhere in the world, but with different forms in its expression.

Because so far evil has been confronted by a weakness, a spiritual force with no power of transformation in the material world, that effort of tremendous goodwill has only resulted in pitiful failure, and has left the world in the same state of corruption and falsehood. One must have, on the same plane where the adverse forces are sovereign, a power greater than theirs which will be capable of totally defeating them in that domain.

January 9, 1957

That conception of a world essentially evil, because it is the product of desire, a world one should escape from at any cost and as soon as possible, has been the greatest and most serious distortion of all spiritual life in the history of humanity.

Maybe it was useful at some point of time, because everything is useful in the world's history, but that usefulness is past, it is outdated, and it is time to go beyond that conception and to return to a more essential and higher Truth, towards the Joy of being, the Joy of union and of the Divine's manifestation.

This new orientation—new in its realization on earth, I mean—is what must replace all preceding spiritual orientations and open the way to the new realization.

April 3, 1957

A new religion would be something not only useless, but harmful. It's a new life that has to be created; it's a new consciousness that has to be expressed. It is something that is beyond intellectual limits and mental formulas. It's a living truth that must manifest.

August 7, 1957

These two points [politics and finance] are the most recalcitrant part. In the human consciousness, it's still the most subjected to the forces of ignorance, unconsciousness, and I must say in a general way, bad will. It's what most refuses any progress towards the truth.... To try to take up these things and transform them is really a heroic action. Well, that too is being tried, for unless it is done, it will be impossible to change the conditions of the earth....

Goodness knows for what reason (except that the worse always precedes the better), instead of taking the path of simplification, we have taken the path of complication.... Things have grown considerably worse since the last war, and are growing still worse from one year to the next.... We are so stuck in prohibitions, impossibilities, interdictions, rules and regulations, complications of every second, that we feel stifled, and there is that really wonderful idea that if we demolish everything, things may be better afterwards! It's floating in the air. And all governments have put themselves in such impossible conditions, they have tied themselves up so tightly that they think they will have to break everything to move on. (After a silence) Unfortunately, it's a little more than a possibility, it's a very serious danger. And it's not quite sure that life won't be made still more impossible by a perceived inability to emerge from the chaos—chaos of complication—in which humanity has put itself. It is like the shadow—unfortunate a very active shadow—of the new Hope that has germinated in human consciousness, a hope and a need for something more harmonious. And the need grows all the more acute as life as it is now organized increasingly becomes its opposite. The two opposites face each other with such intensity that we can expect something like an explosion....

October 23, 1957

For him who can see behind appearances, there is, hidden at the centre of this Matter—at the centre of every atom of this Matter—the supreme divine Reality working from within, little by little, through millennia, to change this inert matter into a matter expressive enough to reveal the Spirit within it.

January 24, 1958

(From a series of comments on a Buddhist scripture, the Dhammapada.)

When I read those ancient texts, I have the impression that from the inner standpoint, from the standpoint of true life, well, we have terribly regressed, and that for the sake of acquiring a few ingenious mechanisms and a few incitements to physical laziness, some instruments or machines that save our efforts in life, we have renounced the reality of the inner life....

It's quite unfortunate that one should abandon one thing to get another. When I tell you about the inner life, I am not opposed to modern inventions, far from it, but how artificial and foolish those inventions have made us! How we have lost the sense of true beauty, how we clutter our lives with useless needs!

The time may have come to continue the ascent in the curve of the spiral, and with all that this knowledge of matter has brought to us, we will be able to give our spiritual progress a more solid base. Armed with what we have learned about the secrets of material Nature, we will then be able to join the two extremes and find again the supreme Reality at the centre of the atom.

June, 1958

One thing seems clear: humanity has reached a certain state of general tension—tension in effort, tension in action, tension even in everyday life—with such an excessive super-activity, such a generalized whirl that the species as a whole seems to have reached a point where a resistance needs to burst and we must emerge into a new consciousness, or else fall back into an abyss of darkness and inertia....

This struggle, this conflict between the constructive forces of ascending evolution, of an increasingly perfect and divine realization, and increasingly destructive forces—powerfully destructive, forces of madness beyond any control—is more and more evident, pronounced, visible, and there is a sort of race or struggle to reach the goal first. All the adverse, antidivine forces, the forces of the vital world,⁸ seem to have descended upon the earth to use it as their field of action, and at the same time, a higher, new, more powerful spiritual force seems to have descended too on the earth to bring a new life here. That makes the struggle more acute, more violent, more visible, but also more definitive, it would seem, and that is why we may hope to arrive soon at a solution....

That opens roads of realization in the future, possibilities already foreseen in which a whole part of mankind, all those who have consciously or unconsciously opened themselves to the new forces, will be as if uplifted towards a higher life, more harmonious and perfect.... There will be other consequences, which will tend to erase what the intervention of the mind in life has created in terms of perversion, of ugliness, a whole collection of distortions that have worsened suffering, misery, moral poverty, an entire zone of sordid and repulsive misery which has turned a whole part of human life into something so dreadful. That has to disappear. That's what makes mankind infinitely inferior on so many points to animal life in its simplicity and in its spontaneous and harmonious character in spite of everything. Never is suffering in animals so miserable and sordid as it is in an entire portion of mankind perverted by the use of a mentality exclusively turned to egoistic needs.

We must rise above, emerge in the Light and Harmony, or fall back below in the simplicity of an animal and healthy life, devoid of perversion.

(After a silence) But those who cannot be uplifted, those who refuse to progress will automatically lose the use of mental consciousness and will fall back to an infrahuman stage.... That corrupt part of the human consciousness, which through its wrong use of the mind allows perversion, will be abolished. That type of humanity is part of a fruitless attempt—to be eliminated—just as other aborted species disappeared in the course of universal history.

June 6, 1958

All that is transformable will be permeated more and more with this new substance and this new consciousness, to such a point that it will rise towards it and serve as a link between the two, but all that belongs incorrigibly to falsehood and ignorance will disappear. This was also prophesied in the Gita :⁹ among what we call the hostile or antidivine forces, those capable of being transformed will be uplifted, they will go towards the new consciousness, whereas all that is irrevocably benighted or ill-willed will be destroyed and will vanish from the universe. And a whole part of humanity that has responded to these forces rather too ... enthusiastically will certainly vanish with them.

July 23, 1958

(A handwritten note.)

In the final analysis, seeing the world such as it is and as it seems bound to be irremediably, the human intellect has decreed that this universe had to be an error of God and that the manifestation or creation is certainly the result of a desire, the desire to manifest, to know oneself, enjoy oneself. So the only thing to do is to put an end to this error as soon as possible by refusing to adhere to desire and its disastrous consequences.

But the Supreme Lord answers that the comedy is not entirely played out, and He adds: "Wait for the last act; you are likely to change your mind."

September 19, 1958

One thing the modern world has completely lost is the sense of the sacred.

September 24, 1958

Religions are always mistaken—always—because they seek to standardize the expression of one experience and to impose it on everyone as an irrefutable truth.¹⁰ The experience was true, complete in itself, convincing—for the person who had it. The formula he made out of it was excellent—for himself. But to seek to impose it on others is a fundamental error which always has quite disastrous consequences and always leads far, far away from the truth.

That is why all religions, however true they may be, have always led man to the worst excesses. All crimes, all horrors perpetrated in the name of religion are among the darkest stains on human history, and simply because of that small original error: to want what is true for one individual to be true for the mass or the collectivity.

October 22, 1958

If you sincerely want to help others and the world, the best thing you can do is to be yourself what you want others to be—not only as an example, but because you become a centre of radiating power which, by the very fact of its existence, compels the rest of the world to transform itself.

October, 1958

Money is meant to circulate.... It is the material progress of life on earth and the growth of the earth's production that must go on expanding, enlarging, not this silly paper or this inert metal that people amass and keep lifeless.

Money is not meant to produce money; money is meant to produce an increase in production, an improvement in the conditions of life and a progress in human consciousness. That is its purpose. What I call an improvement in consciousness, a progress in consciousness, is everything that education in all its forms can provide—not education as it's generally understood, but as we understand it here: education in art, education from that of the body, from the most material progress, to the spiritual education of progress through yoga; the whole spectrum, everything that leads humanity towards its future realization. Money must serve to develop that, to develop the material base for the earth's progress, the best use of what the earth can give—an intelligent use, not a use that wastes forces. The use that allows energies to be replenished.

In the universe there is an inexhaustible source of energies that ask only to be replenished.... Instead of using what science has found so that men may destroy each other a little more effectively than they have been doing, it must be used to enrich the earth : to make the earth richer and richer, more and more active, generous, productive, and to make all life grow towards its maximum efficiency. That is the way money should be used....

It's a challenge I throw down at all the great financiers : I say that they are parching and ruining the earth with their idiotic system; and that with even less than they are now spending for useless things ... they could, oh, transform the earth so quickly! They could transform it, put it into contact, truly into contact, with the supramental forces, which will let life be bountiful and constantly renewed, instead of becoming parched, stagnant, shrivelled up—instead of becoming a future moon. A dead moon.

1958

(A handwritten note.)

Money is a force and should not be an individual possession no more than air, water or fire.

November 4, 1958

In Europe and in the modern Western world, people think that all these gods—the Greek gods and the "pagan" gods, as they call them—are human imaginings and not real beings. In order to understand, one must know that they are real beings. That's the difference. For Westerners, they are only a figment of the human imagination and don't correspond to anything real in the universe. But that is a gross mistake.

To understand the workings of universal life, even of life on earth, one must know that the gods are all beings living in their own realms, each with his own independent reality. They would exist even if men did not! Most of these gods existed before man....

There is the whole Chaldean tradition, then the Vedic tradition, and there was very certainly a tradition anterior to both, which split into two branches....¹¹ I am convinced that there was indeed a tradition anterior to both these traditions. which contained a knowledge very close to an integral knowledge. Certainly, there is a similarity in the experiences. When I came here and told Sri Aurobindo certain things I knew from the occult standpoint, he always said that it conformed to the Vedic tradition.¹² And as for certain occult practices, he told me that they were entirely Tantric—and I knew nothing at that time, absolutely nothing, neither of the Vedas nor of the Tantras....

I have recollections (with me, these things are always lived), very clear, very precise recollections of a time that was certainly VERY anterior to the Vedic times and to the Kabala, the Chaldean tradition.

November 12, 1958

The whole creation, all this universal manifestation appears to be, at best, a very bad joke if it's meant to arrive there [dissolution]. Why begin at all if it's to get out of it! What's the use of having struggled so much, suffered so much, of having created something which, in its outer appearance at least, is so tragic and dramatic, if it's only to learn how to get out of it? It would have been better not to begin at all.

[Evolution] is not a bad joke, it is not a tortuous path that brings us back, somewhat battered, to the starting point. Quite the contrary, it is meant to teach the whole creation the joy of being, the beauty of being, the grandeur of being, the majesty of a sublime life, and the perpetual development, perpetually progressive, of this joy, this beauty, this grandeur —then, everything has a meaning.

November 22, 1958

Spiritual aspiration develops very strongly and spontaneously as soon as one comes to India. Those are graces. Graces, because it is the destiny of the country, it has been so throughout her history, and because she has always been turned much more upward and inward than outward. She is now losing all that and wallowing in the mud, but anyway ... it was like that and still is like that.

November 26, 1958

(Extract from the last talk with the children at the Playground.)

In the end, the vast majority of men are like prisoners with all the doors and all the windows shut, so they suffocate (which is rather natural), but they have with them the key that opens the doors and the windows, and they don't use it. Certainly, there is a time when they don't know that they have the key, but even long after they do know it, long after they have been told, they hesitate to use it and doubt that it has the power to open the doors and windows, or even that it may be a good thing to open them! ... They are afraid of losing themselves in that light and in that freedom. They want to remain what they call "themselves." They love their falsehood and their slavery. Something in them loves it and remains clinging to it. They feel that without their limits, they would no longer exist.

That is why the journey is so long, so difficult.

1959 (?)

(A piece of advice to a politician.)

Completely give up this ordinary vulgar political practice of publicly abusing people either in speech or writing. One should wage a war of ideas so that the truth may triumph, not a war of personalities.

October 31, 1959

(A message given by Mother for Kali puja.)

We who have a common uplifting ideal, shall unite; and in this union and by this union we will face and overcome the attacks of all opposing forces of darkness and devastation. In union is the strength, in union the power, in union the certitude of Victory.

Mother Kali will be with you on this day.

January 28, 1960

Victory belongs to the most obstinate.

July 17, 1960

For about a century, the human world has been suffering from a disease which seems to be spreading more and more, and which nowadays has reached its highest pitch: it is what we may call utilitarianism. People and things, circumstances and actions seem to be considered and appreciated exclusively from that angle. Nothing has worth except what is useful. True, a useful thing is better than a useless one, but we should first be clear on what we call useful: useful to whom? To what? For what?

But increasingly, the races that regard themselves as civilized call useful whatever can bring, acquire or produce money. Everything is judged and assessed from a monetary angle. That's what I call utilitarianism. And the disease is highly contagious, for children themselves don't escape it.

At an age when they should have dreams of beauty, of grandeur and perfection, dreams perhaps too sublime for the ordinary commonsense, but nevertheless highly superior to that flat commonsense, now children dream of money and worry about how to earn it.... What becomes paramount for them is to prepare to pass their exams, for it is with diplomas, certificates and degrees that they will be able to find good positions and earn lots of money. For them, studies have no other goal, no other interest.

Learning in order to know, studying in order to understand the secrets of Nature and life, educating oneself so as to let one's consciousness grow, disciplining oneself so as to master oneself, overcome one's weaknesses, incapacities, ignorance, preparing to move in life towards a nobler, vaster goal, more generous and truer—they give hardly any thought to all that and regard it as quite utopian. The only important thing is to be "practical," and to prepare oneself and learn to earn money.

July 23, 1960

(Mother narrates a vision she has had the preceding night.)

Something interesting happened last night, exactly between ten and eleven. I was in some kind of vehicle I didn't see the vehicle, but I was in it. Someone in front of me was driving, and I could only see his back; I didn't bother about who it was : he was simply the person meant to drive.

And then, it was as if the doors of destruction had been flung open. Floods—floods as vast as an ocean—were rushing down onto something ... was it the earth? It was like a formidable current pouring down at a mad speed, with a power nothing could stop. It was brackish water—not transparent, but brackish. And it was imperative to reach a certain spot BEFORE the water did. Because if the water reached ahead of me, nothing could be done anymore. Whereas if I got there first (I say "I," but it was not "I" like this, with this body), if I got to the other side before the water, there was complete safety; and from this safe position, I would be able, I would have a chance to help those who had stayed behind.

This vehicle (I saw it, felt it by its movement) was going faster than the flood—a formidable flood, but the vehicle had even greater speed. It was so wonderful. From one place to the next, there were some especially difficult and dangerous spots, but I always got there before the water, just before the water came and barred the way. And we kept speeding and speeding along. Then, with a final effort (there was no effort really, but a will), with a final push, we made it to the other side—and the water came just behind, rushing down at a fantastic speed. We had made it....

Right at the end, there was a place where the water had to turn in order to run down—that was the Great Passage. If you got caught in that, it was all over. You had to reach that spot and cross over before the water came. That was the spot where you could get across....

Once on the other side, without even a rise in ground level (I don't know why), it was immediately safe. The current went on and on, waves after waves after waves, as far as the eye could see, but it was channelled here at the Great Turning; and as soon as it flowed past this point, the inundation was total, it spread out over something—the earth. The current turned—it turned down—but I was already on the other side. And underneath, it was all over, the water rushed down everywhere. Only, as soon as you were on the other side, it could not touch you—the water could not cross over, it was stopped by something invisible, and it turned down....

But there was a kind of conscious will in this onrush, and I had to reach the Great Passage before this conscious will. This water had a likeness to physical things, but there was a consciousness, a conscious will, and I had to ... it was like a battle between the will I represented and that will. Only when I reached the Great Turning did I see the will that impelled this water....

At the time, I didn't know what it all meant. Then this morning, I thought, "It must have something to do with the world situation."

It had all the dimensions of something almost ... the earth seemed small in comparison, you understand. It was similar to what happens here when water is unleashed on earth, during floods for instance, but on a much larger scale....

[Satprem:] Does it mean war:

I don't feel war.... Logically, according to reason, war seems inescapable. Again this morning, when I looked at this vision, I asked myself, "Will there be war?"—I don't feel it that way. But it may be worse.¹³

It didn't seem human, you understand.

I remember wandering about one night some time ago [in a subtle world]. I had gone out of India, and when I returned to India, I found huge elephants settled EVERYWHERE—enormous elephants. At that time I was not at all aware that the Communists in India had adopted the elephant as their symbol; I only learned that later.... These elephants were like huge mammoths, and they seemed to be settling down with all the power of a tremendous inertia. That was the impression: something heavy in an inert and very tamasic way, unmoving. I did not like this occupation. When I came back [into my body], I had a rather painful feeling, and for several days I wondered whether it meant war. Then by chance, in a conversation, I learned that the Communists had chosen the elephant as their symbol....

But the vision of the flood was very, very impersonal. They were forces. A feeling that floodgates had been opened, of something that had been checked, held back or prevented, and suddenly ... The vehicle and the forward movement are the sadhana, undoubtedly. I understood that the speed of sadhana was greater than the speed of the forces of destruction. And it ended in certain victory, there is not a shadow of doubt. This feeling of POWER once I was settled there [on the "other side"], a power sufficient to help others.

Those were universal forces. I can't say it means war....

A cataclysm?

Ah, that, we've already had some. From many quarters, people are proclaiming that in 1962, there will be ... Some people have even foreseen the end of the earth, but that's stupid! For the earth was built for a certain purpose, and until things are accomplished, it will not disappear.

But there may be some ... changes.

October 8, 1960

Our language is poor.¹⁴ Sanskrit was better. Sanskrit is a much fuller and much subtler language, so it was probably much better. But these modern languages are so artificial (I mean superficial, intellectual); they cut things up into little bits and take away the light that is behind.... Sanskrit was certainly much more fluid and a better instrument for a more global, more comprehensive light, which contains more things within itself.

In these modern languages, things seem to go through a sieve and get broken up into separate little bits.... I even doubt that the modern mind, built as it is now, would be able to know Sanskrit in that way. I think they are cutting up Sanskrit too, out of habit!

We need a new language. We need to make a new language. Not some kind of Esperanto!—Sounds springing from above.

We should capture THE SOUND. There must be one sound at the origin of all languages.... The words should have power—an expressive power. Yes, they should carry the meaning in themselves!

October 25, 1960

There is that old idea from religions of Chaldean or Christian origin of a God in front of whom you stand, with no possibility of true contact—an abyss between the two. That is terrible.

That absolutely has to stop.

For with that idea, NEVER will the earth and men be able to change. That's why I have quite often said that this idea is the work of the Asuras, and with it they have ruled the earth.

Whereas whatever the effort, whatever the difficulty, whatever time you may have to spend, whatever the number of lives, you must know that all this doesn't matter in the least: you KNOW you ARE the Master, you know that the Master and you are the same thing. All that is necessary is to know it integrally, with nothing belying it. That's the way out.

December 17, 1960

So many people are satisfied with their falsehood, with their ugliness, their narrowness, all those things. They're quite satisfied. When they're asked to be something else ...

January 24, 1961

I am in close contact with the whole Vedic world since I've been reading this book [Sri Aurobindo's Secret of the Veda]: I see beings, hear sentences.... A lot of things are from the ancient Vedic tradition. There were, there are constantly, Sanskrit words coming, sentences, bits of dialogue.... It's not Vedic but pre-Vedic. The experience has put me into contact with a civilization prior to the Vedas: the Rishis and the Vedas are a kind of transition between that vanished civilization and the Indian civilization which grew out of the Vedic Age. That was very interesting to notice.

February 28, 1961

You know this mental habit (which people take for mental superiority!) of lumping everything together on the same level: all the teachings, all the prophets, all the sects, all the religions, all ... You know that habit: "We are not prejudiced, we have no preferences, it's all the SAME THING."—A dreadful muddle .

It's one of the biggest mental difficulties of the age....

Then the reply [to a disciple's letter] came to me very strongly; something took hold of me and I was, so to say, compelled to write: "What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world's history is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme."

March 11, 1961

Truly, they have ruined the earth. They have ruined it—ruined the atmosphere, ruined everything! ... Even the very structure of Matter (Mother fingers the air around her), with their bombs and their experiments and their ... oh, they have made a mess of it all! They have really made a mess of Matter.¹⁵

Probably ... no, not probably, it's absolutely certain that this was necessary to knead matter, to churn it, prepare it to receive THAT, the new thing yet to manifest.

Matter was very simple, very harmonious, very luminous—but not complex enough. This complexity is what has spoiled everything, but ... it will lead to an INFINITELY more conscious realization—infinitely more conscious. And when the earth again becomes as harmonious, simple, luminous, pure—simple, pure, purely divine—then, with this complexity, something can be done.

April 25, 1961

(Mother is shown brochures of various proselytizing "spiritual" movements and informed that some of her "disciples" have also been bitten by the propaganda bug.)

I am surrounded by people who tell me, "I am sending your message to so-and-so, they MUST come here, they HAVE to meet you." Oh!... "I am going away," I said to myself, "I am going to hide somewhere." I've had enough. I don't want to be the leader of a group—oh Lord, no! Not at any price! It's disgusting....

The first thing I did this morning was to open this book by Alice Bailey.¹⁶ Ah, I said—well, well! Here's a person who's dead now, but she was considered a very great spiritual leader, she was the disciple of a Tibetan Buddhist lama, and she writes, "Christ is the incarnation of divine love on earth." And that's that. "And the world will be transformed when Christ is reborn, when he comes back to earth." But why the devil should it be Christ? Why does she put "Christ"? Because she was born Christian? It's pitiful.... These people just can't get out of their education.

And such a mixture of everything—everything! Instead of making a synthesis, they make a hotchpotch. They scoop it all up, toss it together, whip it up a little, use a bunch of words that have nothing to do with one another, and then serve it to you!

And they want to shove me in there, too! No thanks.

April 29, 1961

(Mother reads out her reply to a disciple who asked whether a religion could be founded on Sri Aurobindo's teachings.)

... "Men are such fools that they can change anything at all into a religion, so great is their need for a fixed framework for their narrow thought and limited action. They do not feel secure unless they can affirm,

"This is true and that is not.' But such an affirmation becomes impossible for anyone who has read and understood what Sri Aurobindo wrote. Religion and yoga are not situated on the same plane of the being, and spiritual life can exist in its purity only if it is free from all mental dogma."¹⁷

(Mother explains the principle behind idol worship.)

All this is based on the old idea that whatever the image—which we disdainfully call an "idol"—whatever the external form of the deity, the presence of the thing represented is always there. And there is always someone—whether a priest or an initiate, a sadhu or a sannyasi—someone who has the power and (usually this is the priest's work) who draws the Force and the Presence down into it. And it's true, it's quite real: the Force and the Presence are THERE; and that (not the form of wood or stone or metal) is what you worship, it's that Presence.

Europeans don't have the inner sense at all. To them, everything is like this (gesture), a surface—not even that, a thin layer on the surface. There's nothing behind, so they can't feel. But it's an absolutely real fact that the Presence is there, I can vouch for it. People have given me little things in metal, wood or ivory, representing various gods; all I have to do is to take one in my hand for the god to be there. I have a few of Ganesh (I have been given several), and when I take one in my hand and look at it for a minute, he is there.... Then there is a Narayana which comes from the Himalayas, from Badrinath.

I use them both as paperweights for my handkerchiefs! And no one touches them except me—I pick them up, take a fresh handkerchief, and put them back again.... We are on the best of terms, very friendly. So to me, you see, all this is quite true.... It has always been like that for me, always. And I have never, never had the religious sense at all—you know, what people call this kind of ... what they have in religions, especially in Europe. I see only the English word for it: "awe," like a kind of terror. That always made me laugh! But I have always felt what's behind, the presences behind....

But I rarely had an experience in churches. Rather the opposite: I very often had the very painful experience of the human effort to find higher solace, a divine compassion ... falling into very bad hands—very often....

I don't know why, but I have had this kind of experience so very often: either a hostile force lurking behind and swallowing up everything, or else man—ruthless man abusing the Power.

In fact, I have seen this all over the world. I have never been on very good terms with religions, neither in Europe, nor Africa, nor Japan, nor even here....

When I was told that the Divine was within—the teaching of the Gita, but in words understandable to a Westerner¹⁸— that there was an inner Presence and one carried the Divine within oneself, oh! ... What a revelation! In a few minutes, I suddenly understood all, all. Understood everything. It brought the contact instantly.

December 20, 1961

(About a French publisher who has just rejected the manuscript of a book on Sri Aurobindo by Satprem.)

Seen from the European angle, Sri Aurobindo represents an immense spiritual revolution that rehabilitates Matter and the creation, which to the Christian religion is basically a fall. It's not very clear how what came out of God could have become so bad (!), but anyway, better not ask for too much logic. It's a fall. The creation is a fall. And that's why they [the Europeans] are far more easily convinced by Buddhism.... While Sri Aurobindo says (in simple terms), "God created the world for the Delight of the creation," or rather, "He brought forth the world from Himself for the Delight of living an objective life."...

To the whole European mind, the whole Christian spirit, the world is reprehensible.... So the very normal, natural reaction against this attitude is to negate the spiritual life: let's take the world as it is, brutally, materially, "short and sweet" (since it all comes to an end with this short life), let's do all we can to enjoy ourselves now, suffer as little as possible, and let's not think of anything else. That is the normal conclusion of having said that life is a condemned, reprehensible, antidivine thing. Then what to do?... They don't want to do away with life, so they do away with the Divine.

July 14, 1962

The Old World is an old world, in the true sense of the word "old." India is much older, but she is more alive. Yet now she strikes me as something so rotten! They went rotten, you know, like fruits when you put a rotten fruit next to a good one: England came and stayed much too long. It made things go quite rotten. Very, very rotten; that's difficult to heal. Otherwise, what's not rotten is really fine.

But there is a place with a little something, as there is in little children and animals, a little something that goes like this (Mother imitates a fledgling poking its beak out of the nest and peering around), almost peep-peep-peep, oh, alert and eager to know: America. They have a carapace as hard as an automobile's—it has to be hammered into pieces—but underneath there's something that wants to know ... and knows nothing, nothing, is totally ignorant, but, oh, it wants to know! And that can be touched. They may be the first to awaken.

A few in India, but a more widespread movement in America....

They are stupid, stupid! They understand nothing whatsoever, and yet ... a flame of aspiration, and suddenly something awakens. And they want to know, want to investigate, want to find, want to learn, want to ... It goes like this (Mother blinks her eyes like a fledgling waking up), vibrating and searching.

(After a silence) All this is for the next hundred years. There are going to be some changes.

1900?... Well, yes, in 2000 things will take a clear direction.

July 21, 1962

[Satprem :] The other day, speaking of Europe, you said, "The Old World is truly old...." Yet you get the feeling that with the kind of sincerity Westerners have, they would progress very quickly if they understood.

Yes, they have a sincerity, on one level, which is not the same as spiritual sincerity. But they have a material sincerity, a material HONESTY, and with that, if they understood, they would progress very quickly.

But I think it will be mostly a question of individuals, not something general.

July 31, 1962

The Catholic resistance is very strong in the Old World, even in America, although there it's Christian rather than Catholic. But it's terribly strong in France: wherever there is an opening, it tries to come in and to block whatever might take a new turn.

It will give way.

September 22, 1962

(After listening to Satprem read a passage from the manuscript of his new book, "Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness," which dealt with the problem of action and non-violence.)

The way they keep smacking their lips over their ahimsait's disgusting!

October 24, 1962

(For years the Indian government had followed a pro-Chinese policy, closing its eyes to the invasion of Tibet and making repeated overtures to China. On October 20, without provocation, India suffered an offensive on the eastern and western sectors of her Himalayan border; in the following days Chinese troops moved rapidly into India. On the 26th, a state of emergency will be declared.)

[Satprem :] Do you think there's going to be war?

They're already fighting.

(After a silence) I had the vision of conflagration that always heralds war for me : I had it three or four days before they began fighting. But it lasted only for a very short time, it came to an end very quickly.

We shall see.

Very violent and very rapid.

October 28, 1962

(A message Mother wrote for some disciples who criticized India's government following China's aggression.)

Silence! Silence!

This is a time for gathering energies, and not for wasting them away in useless and meaningless words.

Anyone who proclaims loudly his opinions on the present situation of the country must understand that opinions are of no value and cannot, in the least, help Mother India to come out of her difficulties. If you want to be useful, first control yourself and keep silent.

Silence! Silence! Silence!

It is only in silence that anything great can be done.

October 30, 1962

I met a Chinese a few years ago, a man with a spiritual life. He came to meet me and talked for an hour about China. It made me understand China externally as if I had been born and lived my whole life there. I saw they were people who have attained the summit of the intellect, and with a creative power—inventors. He told me, "No people in the world could understand Sri Aurobindo intellectually as well as the Chinese." And it was luminously true. An intellectual understanding up above, all the way up.

When it comes to doing a yoga, it's another story ... That must be a purely individual question. The Chinese don't have the same spiritual intensity you find rooted in the depths of the Indian nature—it's something completely different. Here, spiritual life is something real, concrete, tangible—totally real. For the Chinese, it takes place up there, at the top of the head.

They're not going to come here, are they?

I hope not!

They are people with no sensitivity.... They are still ice-cold. Difficult.

But they might come into contact with Sri Aurobindo's thought—not their troops!! I don't know whether the new Chinese are much interested in philosophy ... It's better they don't come!

November 17, 1962

(Mother relates a vision she had just before China launched its attack on India.)

Quite recently, just before the present conflict broke out, I went to a realm in the vital world which is right above the earth, like a platform (not a mountain top, but a spot where you get an overall view, like the bridge of a ship, for instance, where the captain stands ; it was a place like that in the vital world, overlooking all terrestrial life). I went there—it was rather dark, very dark in fact.... From there you saw everything like that, in a circle. And no sooner did I arrive than a storm broke out—a terrible storm. I kept watching, and then I saw in this direction (Mother points northward), I saw two flashes of lightning, not quite simultaneous. The first one (I was looking north, I was quite conscious of looking north), the first one came from the east, it struck like a terrific bolt; and just a moment after, very soon after, another came from the west. The two didn't come together, but they fell on the same spot. It was pitch dark (everything was dark, the earth too was dark, you couldn't see a thing), and suddenly those two flashes of lightning lit up the area where they fell, making a dreadful din, and (the field of vision was confined to that area; all the rest was in darkness) ... it burst into flames! Everything was set ablaze. In the lightning flashes you could see the tops of monuments, houses, all sorts of things, and then everything burst into flames : a dreadful conflagration.

... I kept absolutely still; everything was still, calm, motionless.... And then I stopped everything, like this (Mother remains as still as a statue, fists clenched). And very soon afterwards (I can't say exactly because time there isn't the same as here), very soon afterwards, everything stopped....¹⁹ The storm's only purpose was to cause the two thunderbolts, and it stopped after they fell on the earth. And then the flames ... the whole area was set ablaze (it was like a huge city, but it wasn't a city: it was certainly symbolic of a country): vroom! It burst into flames; some flames were leaping up very, very high. But I simply did this, stopped everything (Mother remains motionless, eyes closed, fists clenched), and then looked out once again—everything had returned to order....

I believe they began fighting up there two or three days after it happened.

[Satprem Was it India that was struck?]

Yes, of course, it was India.

... And then there have been certain political problems.²⁰ All this made for a bit of work, which turned out rather well. But it's always mixed, never the full thing; there's always a result, but not THE result.... In the present conditions on earth, I think "the" result is impossible: it would be a miracle that would upset too many things. The consequences would be worse than ...

I don't know, I have the feeling that humanity isn't ready for peace and needs to be shaken up.

Yes, unfortunately it's not ready.
They're falling into a stupor.

They're falling into a stupor, lulling themselves with their non-violence, their petty morality.... Humanity isn't ready.

It's a pity.

Because it can put things back thousands of years.... For there are moments when things converge, and in this history it is rare to have a MOMENT: it stretches over long, long, almost indefinite periods of time. So to get a MOMENT that becomes something actual in terrestrial life (Mother drives her fist into the Earth) is very difficult. And if that moment is passed by, is missed

(After a long silence) But strangely enough, ever since these people began fighting up there [on the Himalayan border], the earth has been more receptive.

Yet people have fought before—people have fought everywhere, haven't they? Since the last [world] war they have never stopped fighting in one place or another: in Africa, in Asia, just everywhere. They've been constantly fighting. There was always something, constantly. This whole Algerian affair ... frightful things went on there:²¹ and all the trouble in the Congo and so forth—fighting everywhere. But ... I don't know why (it's not that I wasn't concerned with those events, they were in my consciousness), but this time two things have happened: a greater Power has descended (very concretely so, almost tangible), a great Power has descended, has been sent purposely; and also a certain receptivity—everywhere, even in the Chinese (I don't mean it is local : it's in all parts of the world). Is there, materially, some anxiety at the idea that ...? If a new world war starts, clearly it's going to be something unspeakable, frightful, frightful—whole civilizations will be engulfed. It will put a stop to life on earth in a terrible way. Is that what made people ... what has awakened some aspiration? Possibly. There's clearly a greater receptivity. I see this from the fact that whenever the Will spreads out (Mother makes a gesture of emanation), well, it has a more concrete effect, and more immediate.

The other conflicts were really very superficial, like diseases —skin diseases!... That was the impression : a very localized disease (anyone can catch it, but it's still very localized). While here, this conflict [between China and India] seems to have FUNDAMENTALLY disrupted something—profoundly. Is it because people THINK it may have a global consequence?... I don't know. Or is it really the first sign of something very ... very momentous?...

Have you read Sri Aurobindo's last letters on China?²²

Oh, yes—he himself read them to me! (Mother laughs.)

But everything Sri Aurobindo said has always come true. You know he also said (but it was in jest, he didn't write it) ... about India's reuniting with Pakistan, he told me : "Ten years. It will take ten years." The ten years passed and nothing happened—OFFICIALLY nothing happened. But the truth is (I learned it from government people), Pakistan did make overtures for a reunion, asking for a union to be re-established (they would have kept some sort of autonomy, but the two countries would have UNITED, it would have been a UNION), and it was Nehru who refused.

How foolish of him!

So Sri Aurobindo had seen it.

He had seen that it was so. After ten years, when that man who headed Pakistan died, they found themselves in great difficulty and unable to organize themselves;²³ so they sent somebody (not officially, of course, unofficially) to ask India to re-establish a union on certain bases—but they refused, the Indians refused. It was a repetition of the same blunder as when Cripps came to make his proposal and Sri Aurobindo sent a message saying, "Accept whatever the conditions, otherwise it will be worse later on." That's what Sri Aurobindo told them. Gandhi was there and he replied, "Why is that man meddling? He should be concerned only with spiritual life."²⁴

They have conscientiously ruined the country.

Yes.

Yes, as much as they could.... They have acted in an absolutely stupid way all along. Out of ambition, vanity, all sorts of things, but especially out of stupidity and a total lack of understanding—a blind vision, going no farther than their noses.

November 20, 1962

(Mother looks weary.) They're on the verge of taking Assam —things are very bad.

But what can be their reason? Why are they doing this?

I heard they're circulating maps in China showing Nepal Bhutan, Assam and all of it as part of China.

So that's their intention—to settle there.

It's not very clear why.

National ambition. To put a constant pressure on India and force it to go communist.

To impose their rule, you see—they're at the door and can enter whenever they want.

Why did they take Tibet?...²⁵

(After a silence) And all this side of Bengal and Assam is full of Chinese who settled there years and years ago; there are thousands and thousands of them, doing business. All the Communists support them, and it seems they keep a very accurate and meticulous list of those for and those against communism. (What do they base themselves on? I don't know —on what people say or do.) And the idea is that it's all going to be taken like this (gesture of encircling India).

Anyway, things look nasty.

They seem to be taking a nasty turn.

But what I find perhaps even more incredible than the leaders' incompetence—Nehru, MenorT and so forth—is that for twenty years there hasn't been a single Indian to see things clearly and speak out—there's been no one in India, no one! For twenty years there have been those two idols, Nehru and Gandhi, and then some 400 million stupefied people, with no one to see clearly. How is it possible?... No one!

But Nehru had a very good foreign press. In Europe and America, they treated him almost like a god. And Gandhi, oh, how they were ... The whole world is like that—they don't understand. They don't understand.

(After a silence) We will see.

I believe we WILL see—it's going to be now: we're going to see.

Maybe we'll see from another world! (Laughing) That may be.

They have bombs in America and Russia (China hasn't boasted about it, but they may have some too²⁶), and one bomb is enough to destroy a whole city—one is more than enough, you don't need two.... We saw what happened to Hiroshima, it was pretty bad. Well, if that was ten, then what they have now is a thousand—that's the proportion.

In other words, they've turned all their intelligence towards destruction.

Some say, "It will deter them from fighting." But that childish!

... The Supreme alone can decide. Just as He decides that this is done, so He also decides ... [that that shall not be done]. That's all. There is nothing left but He.

There's no longer any hope that a human being can give protection through his own power—it's no longer like that. If the Lord protects you, it's good, nothing will happen to you. But as for knowing what He will decide ...? For if He decides on such a destruction, it means the earth truly needs it—otherwise He wouldn't decide on it....

I know it was a very bad night; I woke up this morning completely drained of forces, and with plenty of difficulties—an it's not over yet.²⁷

... And all night long (or at least a good part of it), Indira Gandhi's thought was there, clinging to me (Indira Gandhi is Nehru's daughter, and it's to her that the jewellery was given;²⁸ it was handed over to Nehru, who passed it on to Indira). And yesterday I received a letter from her—a very (Mother searches for the word)... very amiable letter; a letter from someone who has understood that the gesture was an important element—not on a worldwide level (!), but because it was important for people to know that I have made a gesture of collaboration. But it didn't end there. The letter came yesterday; generally, of course, when it's the letter that I see, I see it BEFORE receiving it; but here it was SHE, she herself, thinking [of Mother], thinking and thinking over and over again. (With Nehru, it's always very hazy: he doesn't have a sufficient mental power for his position, he lacks the required mental power, so it's always woolly; when you tune in to him, that's the impression you get [Mother makes a blurred gesture], something not solid.) But with her, it kept coming and coming and coming. They must be feeling ... or beginning to feel that they need something other than what they have.

We shall see.

January 26, 1963

(A message.)

True spirituality is not to renounce life, but to make life perfect with a Divine Perfection.

This is what India must show to the world now.

February 18, 1963

I had stopped long ago taking care of everything—long before I came upstairs,²⁹ I told people, "See to your business yourselves." And what chaos it has become!... That, too, made worse by the fact that they stopped seeing me physically. The physical presence was simply keeping a rein on them.

It has become unthinkable.

But I must say it isn't confined to the Ashram: it's the same all over the world—especially in India ... the government has gone completely crazy. They bombard people with papers and forms and regulations and prohibitions....

You see, to govern properly, you have to be ... you have to be a sage! You should have a universal vision and be above all personal questions.... There is not one—not one.

(Later, Mother reads a note she has written)

"The most important point for everyone is to know whether he belongs to the past perpetuating itself, to the present exhausting itself, or to the future trying to be born."

March 27, 1963

All the global trends that result in "peace movements" of one kind or another, are nothing but expressions of the quest for Security. My own experience is a supersecurity, which can be really found only in union with the Supreme—nothing, nothing, nothing in the world can give you security, except this : union, identification with the Supreme.

... And the quest for Security corresponds fairly well to the global state of mind.

The nations of the world legitimize that destructive madness of the arms race by saying it's a way to prevent destruction through fear—that's futile. As an argument, it's futile, but that's the way they think. It's part of that same thirst or need for Security: nothing can be achieved except in peace, nothing can be arrived at except in peace, nothing can be realized except in peace—we need peace, individually, collectively, globally. So let's make horrifying weapons of destruction so that men will be so frightened that nothing will happen—how childish! But that's the current state of mind. It is still one of those ... in English they say "device," a ploy (it's not a "ploy," it's a means—between ploy and means) to urge the human race on towards its evolutionary goal. And for that, we must catch hold of the Divine : it's a means of catching hold of the Divine. For there is nothing—nothing, nothing exists from the point of view of Security, except the Supreme. If we ARE the Supreme, that is to say, the supreme Consciousness, supreme Power, supreme Existence, then there is Security—outside of that, there is none.

May 15, 1963

... All those things [death, cruelty, ignorance] are only goads to make the Manifestation progress and grow more intense, more perfect. If the goads are crude, it is because the Manifestation is very crude. As it grows more and more perfect and apt to manifest something ETERNALLY PROGRESSIVE, those very crude methods will give way to more refined ones, and the world will progress without the need for such brutal oppositions. It is only because the world is in infancy and the human consciousness in its very early infancy.

It's a very concrete experience.

So, when the earth no longer needs to die in order to progress, there will be no more death. When the earth no longer needs to suffer in order to progress, there will be no more suffering. And when the earth no longer needs to hate in order to love, there will be no more hatred.

June 15, 1963

It's clear that wherever there is a receptivity, the Force acts, there's no doubt.

(Mother comments on the visit Jawaharlal Nehru paid to her two days earlier, on June 13. Nehru had already met Mother twice in 1955, accompanied the second time by his daughter Indira Gandhi.)

With that visit, which we could call presidential, naturally there was a lot of hullabaloo here: everybody was excited (most people were, at any rate). The visit was, so to speak, forced on me, in the sense that I didn't want to see him—I didn't feel I was in such a state that the visit could have a capital importance. Some people had high hopes in this visit (here and there, even in Switzerland, even in America), they thought I would be able to do something. From an external point of view, it was an illusion, naturally....

He may have felt something—they are very thick-skinned, you know, necessarily so: overworked people, full of self-conceit, naturally, convinced that they know everything and can do everything (and unfortunately, they can do a lot), so the whole of life is organized so as to BLOCK all inner receptivity....

He was supposed to stay two or three minutes—he stayed fifteen minutes. I didn't say anything. Somebody who was there spoke. And towards the end, I could see (I had given him a comfortable armchair), I could see he wanted to get out of his armchair, as if to say, "Now I must go." So I simply told him, "You need a little rest"—you should have seen the man's face: immediately everything relaxed. All the while, his fingers were fidgety like this (Mother drums her fingers on the chair's armrest), two fingers of his hand moving non-stop, even though I kept putting Peace and Quietness on him, but still his fingers went on moving, because he was always active inside. And when I told him that, something relaxed in his face and the fingers stopped. But it was very late and everybody was waiting, so after a little while I let him go. It was very interesting: I simply told him, "You need a little rest"—everything stopped.

But mentally, you know ... (Mother makes a gesture: completely obtuse). There is a prince of Kashmir [Karan Singh] who came here once, a young man; he went to England, and there he wrote a thesis on Sri Aurobindo's political life, Sri Aurobindo, Prophet of Indian Nationalism, with a preface by Jawaharlal Nehru. I read the preface, but afterwards, the day after I saw Nehru—it's awful! Understands nothing, he understands nothing, nothing, absolutely obtuse. It's very kind, but written by someone who understands nothing.... I'll tell you the thing: between my first and second visits here [in 1914 and 1920], while I was away in Japan and Gandhi was starting his campaign, he sent a telegram, then a messenger, to Sri Aurobindo here, asking him to be president of the Congress—to which Sri Aurobindo answered "No."

Those people never forgave him.

Yes, he [Nehru] never understood why Sri Aurobindo did not resume his political life.

No. And then, you see, he takes Gandhi's asceticism for spiritual life—always the same mistake! There's no way to pull them out of it. Unfortunately, the entire world has caught the same idea.

Then when there was that Cripps affair, I believe it was Nehru (or Gandhi, I don't remember which of the two) who said, "He has withdrawn from political life, why is he meddling! It's none of his business." They never forgave him. That is to say, completely obtuse, unable to understand that one can have a knowledge higher than practical knowledge.

There you are.

Do you see new threats hanging over India?

The Chinese? I don't know. There's a lot of talk about them....

But the Chinese are fairly receptive, despite their Communism. They are receptive to an idea of human goodwill, in the sense that they think their political organization is the best from a human point of view, and therefore they would like the whole world to adopt it—there is a sincerity in their conviction, they believe it's the best way of life. They are not entirely ill-willed. And they are very intelligent.

At any rate, they had the power to do whatever they liked [last October, at India's defenceless northern borders], yet they did nothing.

Yes, that was extraordinary!

(Mother smiles) Not quite extraordinary. But anyway, it's proof of a certain receptivity.

They'd rather have a mental and political domination than wage war. They aren't bent on slaughtering people, you understand....

And Nehru, you see (that's what Pavitra³⁰ told me yesterday, he went to the town hall to listen to Nehru's speech), Nehru is an out-and-out social democrat who believes that the ideal organization for mankind, instead of only an "elite" being able to progress, is that the entire masses should progress (as if they wanted to! ... But anyway). It's an idea—everyone has his own ideas. But then it seems that when the Chinese attacked, it was a violent blow to his conviction: he thought it impossible that the Chinese would do such a thing (!) He was very deeply affected.³¹

June 29, 1963

(Pope John XXIII died on June 2; his successor was Paul VI.)

Catholicism has two things that Protestantism lacks: the occult sense (not only the sense, but even a certain occult knowledge), and the Mother—the Virgin. The Protestants have something the Catholics lack: the inner divine presence.

It's only through those two things that you can catch them. But

He [John XXIII] was a good man.... I think his foremost idea was to prevent war. Consciously, he wanted all Christians to love each other! (Mother laughs) A childish hope. To love each other in Jesus—whom they leave on the cross.

As Sri Aurobindo says, men ... men LOVE grief, which is why Jesus is still nailed on the cross.³²

It's magnificent, that thing.

(After a silence) With the others, the Communists, it's the opposite: they want everyone to be happy, but they have succeeded in making everyone unhappy! Everyone: previously, a few were happy and many unhappy; now they're all unhappy!

That's what they call "serious matters."

July 3, 1963

What seems ... bizarre to those who have gone beyond the petty, purely terrestrial limits—human terrestrial limits—is that belief in a SINGLE divine manifestation on the earth; all the religions are based on that, everyone says, "Christ was the only one," or "Buddha was the only one," or elsewhere "Mohammed was the only one," and so forth. Well, that "only one" is something IMPOSSIBLE as soon as you rise a little above the ordinary earth atmosphere—it appears childish. You can understand the thing and accept it only as a sort of recurrent movement of the divine Consciousness on the earth....

This much conviction they [the Roman Catholics] still have, you see, that their religion is superior to all others, their power is superior to all others, and therefore they have to be more powerful than the others. That's the main idea: "To be the most powerful." ...

In a certain state of consciousness, it becomes absolutely impossible to worry about what may happen; everything becomes visibly, obviously, the work of one and the same Force, one and the same Consciousness, one and the same Power. So that sense and will and ambition to be "more"—more powerful, greater—is again the SAME Force which pushes you to expand to the Limitless. As soon as you cross the limit, it's finished.

Those are old ideas—the old ideas of two powers opposing each other: the power of Good and the power of Evil, the battle between the two, which of the two will have the last word.... There was a time when children were entertained with such stories. They're just children's stories.

Some people (or if you like, some beings, or forces, or consciousnesses) in order to progress need to give themselves, to merge, and in total self-annihilation they attain Realization; for others the path is diametrically opposite: it's a growth, a domination, an expansion which assumes fantastic proportions ... until the separation disappears—it can no longer exist.

Some prefer this path, others prefer that one—but when we reach the end, it will all meet.

Ultimately, the one thing necessary is to abolish limits.... There are many ways to abolish limits.

And maybe they are all equally difficult.

(After a silence) That [Catholic] religion is perhaps the one I have fought the most. For a very simple reason: its power, its means of action (the power it uses as a means of action) is fear. And of all things, fear is the most degrading.

I saw two examples of this; one physically and the other intellectually (I am referring to things I was in contact with materially). Intellectually, it was a studio friend; for years we had done painting together, she was a very gentle girl, older than I, very serious, and a very good painter. During the last years of my life in Paris,³³ I saw her often and I spoke to her, first of occult matters and the "Cosmic philosophy," then of what I knew of Sri Aurobindo (I had a "group" there and I used to explain certain things), and she would listen with great understanding—she understood, she approved. Now, one day, I went to her house and she told me she was in a great torment. When she was awake, she had no doubts, she understood well, she felt the limitations and obscurities of religion (she came from a family with several archbishops and a cardinal—well, one of those "old French families"). "But at night," she told me, "I suddenly wake up with an anguish and something—from my subconscious, obviously—tells me, 'But after all this, what if you go to hell?" And she repeated, "When I am awake it doesn't have any force, but at night, when it comes up from the subconscious, it chokes me."

Then I looked, and I saw a kind of huge octopus over the earth : that formation of the Church—of hell—with which they hold people in their grip. The fear of hell.³⁴ Even when all your reason, all your intelligence, all your feeling is against it, there is, at night, that octopus of the fear of hell which comes and grips you.

That brought home to me ... the magnitude of the problem —it's terrestrial. There are Catholics everywhere: in China, in Africa among the Negroes; people who don't give a thought to these things yet are under the sway and caught by the octopus.

Another time, when I was younger, I was in Italy, in Venice, painting in a corner of St. Mark's cathedral (a marvellous place of great beauty), and I happened to be sitting right next to a confessional. One day, as I sat there painting, I saw the priest arrive and enter the confessional—that man ... completely black, tall, thin, the very face of wickedness and hardness : a pitiless wickedness. He closeted himself in there. After a short while there came a rather young woman, perhaps thirty years old, gentle, very sweet—not intelligent but very sweet—entirely dressed in black. She entered the box (he was already shut in and could no longer be seen), and they spoke through a grille. I should add that it's far more medieval than in France, it was really ... it was almost theatrical. She knelt down there, I saw her long gown flowing out, and she spoke. (I couldn't hear, she was whispering; besides, both of them spoke in Italian, although I understand Italian.) The voices were barely audible, there was no sound. Then all at once, I heard the woman sob (she sobbed in spasms), and it went on till suddenly —a collapse : she crumpled in a heap on the floor. Then that man opened the door, shoving aside her body with the door—and he strode away without a backward glance. I was young, you know,³⁵ and if I could have, I would have killed him. What he had just done was monstrous. And he was going away ... it was a chunk of steel that walked away.

Incidents of that sort have left me with a peculiar impression. The stories of the Inquisition had already given me a sufficient ... But there was a time when I might have said, "No religion has done more evil in the world than this one." But I am not so sure now. It's one ASPECT of that religion.

It's yet too human a vision of things. I prefer—I prefer the vision of the Lord telling the Asura, "Go ahead, keep on growing and growing and growing ... and there will be no more Asura!" (laughing) That's better.

(After a silence) Fear is not a negative thing: it's a very "positive" thing, it's a special form of power that has always been used by the Asuric forces—it's their greatest strength. Their greatest strength is fear.

I can see: whenever people are defeated, it's ALWAYS through fear, always.

... In France, all those who have an awakening, a spiritual need, rush back to the Catholic religion. Which means the octopus still has a great deal of power there—a very great deal.

(After Satprem remarks on the lack of response to his book on Sri Aurobindo in France:) With France's intellectual quality, the quality of her mind, the day she is truly touched spiritually (she never has been), the day she is touched spiritually, it will be something exceptional.

Sri Aurobindo had a great liking for France. I was born there—certainly for a reason. In my case, I know it very well: it was the need of culture, of a clear and precise mind, of refined thought, taste and clarity of mind—there is no other country in the world for that. None. And Sri Aurobindo had a liking for France for that same reason, a great liking. He used to say that throughout his life in England, he had a much greater liking for France than for England!

There is a reason.

August 7, 1963

... Outwardly, difficulties are coming back, in the sense that the Chinese seem to be seized again with a zeal to conquer—they are massing troops at the border.

Yet it seems quite unlikely they will attack.

Then why are they massing troops [along India's northe borders]?

Blackmail.

Obviously, but ... The result is that the Americans said they would come to help if they attacked. Even the Russians said they would help.

Well, we don't know. I SEE those great currents : they're like currents of madness that catch hold of people and things.... At bottom, it may be really a rather acute conflict between the Yes and the No, that is to say, between all that struggles to hasten the coming of new things and all that refuses—refuses with increasing violence.

August 13, 1963

(A note.)

I do not readily use the word "God" because religions have made it the name of an almighty being, foreign to his creation, outside of it. Which is not correct.

Yet, on the physical plane, the difference is obvious. For we are still all that we no longer want to be, while He is all that we want to become.

August 28, 1963

(As his book on Sri Aurobindo is again turned down by a French publisher, Satprem remarks on the lack of openness in France.)

... How will there be a breach there one day?

Oh! ... You remember that aphorism of Sri Aurobindo's?...³⁶ I understand VERY WELL what he means.

That will be the day of the great overturn.

A little child ...

I didn't want to comment on it.... But it's true.

Because they're impregnable. Those people are impregnable.

Mentally.

It's not mentally that you can make them yield.

Then how?... It's either by force—violent force—or else by a miracle (what they call a "miracle") that will leave them ... dumbfounded.

Those people are entirely vulnerable (by vulnerable, I mean defenceless) to spiritual force. The day when it manifests physically, there will be a debacle.

Even here, with these people who through their tradition are so accustomed to the Power, the true spiritual Power, when it just manifests a little, they ... they tremble all over. But there they deny it ... which means they are completely defenceless.

I don't know when it will come—I don't know, it may not be soon—but one thing I know: when it comes, there will be panic—you know, THE Panic.

And in a panic, you can do something.

(After a silence) The Americans are more open, because they have remained more childlike—they think they know everything on a material level, but they also know that there are things they don't know. While the others ... they are "beyond childish religious beliefs," of course!

It's not even true, for as soon as a little something stirs within (gesture at the heart centre), they plunge back into their Catholicism.

Anyway ...

September 7, 1963

It's much easier to answer out-and-out materialists who are convinced and sincere ("sincere" within the limit of their consciousness, that is) than to answer people who have a religion! Much easier.

With Indians, it's very easy—they're heaven-blessed, these people, because it takes very little for them to be oriented in the right way. ³⁷ But there are two types of difficult religion, the Christian religion (especially in the form of Protestantism), and the Jewish religion.³⁸

The Jews are also out-and-out materialists : you die, well, you die, it's over. Though I haven't quite understood how they reconcile that with their God, who moreover is Unthinkable and must not be named ... but who, seen from the standpoint of a vaster truth, seems (I am not sure), seems to be an Asura. Because it's an almighty and ONLY God, foreign to the world —the world (as far as I know) and He are two completely different things.

It's the same with Catholicism.... Their God made the world out of nothingness?

That's right.

Then it's the same problem, the same difficulty. It's quite simply incomprehension.

And in fact he sent his son to "save the world."

Then his son doesn't belong to the creation?

He is the son of God—not so the others.

He is the ONLY son of God?

Yes, of course!

They've twisted everything.

There's nothing to be done with religious people.

No. And it's not good to try either. If they cling to a religion, it means that that religion has helped them somehow or other, has helped something in them which in fact wanted to have a certitude without having to seek for it—to lean on something solid without being responsible for its solidity (someone else is responsible! [Mother laughs]), and to leave their bodies in that way. So to want to pull them out of it shows a lack of compassion—they should just be left where they are. Never do I argue with someone who has a faith—let him keep his faith! And I take great care not to say anything that might shake his faith because it's not good—such people are unable to have another faith.

September 18, 1963

(Mother first shows a note she wrote following an experience:)

"This world is full of pitiable miseries, but of all beings those I pity most are those who are so small and so weak that they are compelled to be nasty."

It is impossible for any change, any change towards perfec tion, even in one element or one point of the earth conscious ness, not to make the whole earth participate in that change Necessarily.

Everything is closely knit together. And a vibration somewhere has TERRESTRIAL consequences—I don't say universal, I say terrestrial—necessarily.

Which means there isn't one aspiration, not one effort that isn't useful seen from the terrestrial standpoint (from the individual standpoint, this has been obvious for a very long time), but seen from the terrestrial standpoint, there isn't one effort —not one effort towards the Better, not one aspiration to the True—that does not have terrestrial repercussions, terrestrial consequences.

November 12, 1963

(For its Republic Day issue of 1964, The Illustrate Weekly of India sent Mother a questionnaire, which was published under the title: "The State of the Nation—The Mother answers.")

1) If you were asked to sum up, just in one sentence, your vision of India, what would be your answer?

India’s true destiny is to be the Guru of the world.

2) Similarly, if you were asked to comment on the reality as you see it, how would you do so in one sentence?

The present reality is a big falsehood―hiding an eternal truth.

3) What, according to you, are the three main barriers that stand between the vision and the reality?

(a) Ignorance; (b) fear; (c) falsehood.

4) Are you satisfied with the over-all progress India has made since Independence?

No.

5) What is our most outstanding achievement in recent times? Why do you consider it so important?

Waking up of the yearning for Truth. Because without Truth there is no reality.

6) Likewise, can you name our saddest failure? On what grounds do you regard it as so tragic?

Insincerity. Because insincerity leads to ruin.

November 23, 1963

Kennedy has been assassinated, that means the possibility of war.

He was one of the instruments for the establishment of peace —it's a setback for the entire political history of the earth.

But probably, it means basically that things weren't ready: some parts would have been overlooked.

But I had been told this a few weeks ago, last month, while I was conducting a general survey. I heard someone who said ("someone" is a manner of speaking, I know who it is): "Kennedy won't be able to do it." I thought the instrument was too small, I didn't think of this.

And then five of our air force chiefs have been killed in a helicopter crash—helicopters never crash, and they were the best possible pilots. It's an act of sabotage—the Communists are doing a lot of sabotage. So that makes two accidents in a row.

... Anyway, there we are, we have only to wait, endure, and broaden more and more.... What lends force to the opposition is superstitious ignorance—superstitious in the sense of a sort of faith or at least of belief in Destiny, in Fate. It's ingrained, as if woven into the human substance. They have the same superstition, the same superstitious belief in what is favourable to them as in what is unfavourable, in the divine Power as in the adverse power—it's the SAME attitude. And that's why the divine Power doesn't have its full force, and also precisely why the adverse force has so much power over them, because it's absolutely a movement of Falsehood, of Ignorance—of total Ignorance.

... So there is the good destiny and the bad destiny; there is a divine force which one regards as something entirely beyond understanding, whose designs and aims are perfectly inexplicable, and the submission, the surrender consists in accepting—blindly—all that happens. One's nature revolts, but revolts against an Absolute against which it is helpless. And all of that is Ignorance. Not one of all those movements is true—from the most intense revolt to the blindest submission, it's all false, not one true movement.

I don't know if it's in Sri Aurobindo's writings (I don't remember), but I hear very strongly (not for me, for mankind):

AWAKE AND WILL

Naturally men take "will" for their own whims, which have nothing to do with a will—they're all impulses.

"To will" means "to will with the supreme Will." And it's as if it were the key that opens the door to the future:

AWAKE AND WILL

But beware of willing the wrong way because that's no longer a will, it's a whim—don't confuse the two. Will with the supreme Will.

We shouldn't hunch our shoulders—it makes us grumble terribly within ourselves and it's useless.

Oh, (Mother holds up her head) that feeling of the head rising above all that, of emerging above ...

And even this body, which has been worked on and kneaded for years ... It's in the subconscient of the body. And so that was the answer, it was said to the body:

AWAKE AND WILL

November 27, 1963

Kennedy's death has triggered all kinds of things.... As though it had served to trigger one of the movements of transformation of the earth.

There are landmarks of that kind.... Those things are like milestones on a road; the Chinese revolution [in 1911] was like the first milestone, opening up the road. Well, Kennedy's assassination is one of those signs, one of the landmarks—I've been told this.

(After a silence) I remember having asked, "But the earth, the human earth, is it really still so tamasic that it needs tragic events of the sort to awaken its consciousness?..." And I was answered, "Still far more tamasic than you think."

The intelligences that have emerged into a higher light are like stars scattered over a perfectly dark sky—perfectly dark.

But this "trigger" you mention, Kennedy's death, will it precipitate things in the sense of a "shake-up"?

Yes. Its effect is like an electrical discharge that shakes up the tamas, shakes up inertia.

January 18, 1964

(Regarding a new American disciple.)

... Oh, are they conceited! ... And puffed up with their superior realization—they were born to HELP the earth. They have such goodwill! They want to help the whole earth, (in an ironic tone) help the earth. They come here, but instead of asking themselves what they can learn, they come TO HELP; they come to bring some order (there's "no order"!), to set right the things that are wrong, to bring some practical sense into these nebulous minds!

The other conceit seems to me more serious than the American one—the European conceit. Because they really think they are very intelligent. The Americans want "to help"—they're children. But the Westerners are "sages" of the intellect; so it takes some doing to penetrate their minds!

There's nothing they need to learn.

I have very little contact with those people.

Well, exactly! They are the ones: a fortress. It's the entire European "elite."

Especially the French, no?

The French very much so, but almost everywhere in Europe: the Germans, the ...

The Italians don't think they have a superior intelligence.

But the Germans, the English...

Oh, the English, that's a different phenomenon! Anything that isn't English is worthless! (Mother laughs) The English alone are practical, the English alone are intelligent, the English alone know how to live, the English alone are powerful, the English alone ... In short, there are only the English, the entire earth ought to be English....

The English ... (laughing) the only thing that rehabilitated them in the world's history is that Sri Aurobindo went to study in their country! But he clearly said that during his studies there, his whole feeling of intimacy was with France, not England.

Oh, the English ... No, the English haughtiness certainly isn't just a legend.

January 31, 1964

(A message:)

The only hope for the future is in a change of man's consciousness and the change is bound to come.

But it is left to men to decide if they will collaborate in this change or if it will have to be enforced upon them by the power of crushing circumstances.

So, wake up and collaborate!

March 7, 1964

France is a black hole in the atmosphere.

Atmospheres are very interesting.... Yet there is an IMMENSE possibility there. But it is buried, as it were.

There are far more possibilities there than in England.

There is a possibility in Russia, too, but of a different nature —mystic, a great mystic possibility there. When the mystic spirit awakens there ... It has been repressed, so ... (gesture of explosion).

It seems they have now allowed baptisms [in Russia]: they've made a special organization for people who want to be baptized! A special place, maybe a building, I don't know, where all those who want to can be baptized. It used to be done secretly—now it will be a State organization. So those people had made progress, they had emerged from all the superstitions of the past, and now here's their new "progress" : they fall back into the pit! They are taking up again the old burden of all the old superstitions....

March 18, 1964

(Mother reads a note she wrote in connection with a quarrel at the Ashram's handmade paper factory:)

The Employer to the Employee

"Nothing lasting can be established without a basis of trust. And this trust must be mutual.

"You must be convinced that it is not only my good that I am aiming at, but also yours. And on my side I must know and feel that you are here not merely to profit but also to serve.

"The welfare of the whole is dependent on the welfare of each part, and the harmonious growth of the whole is dependent on the progress of every part.

"If you feel you are exploited, then I too will feel you are seeking to exploit me. If you fear that you may be deceived, then I too will feel you are seeking to deceive me.

"It is only in honesty, sincerity and trust that human society can progress."

It's just the opposite of the Communist theory—all the Communists preach to them: "If you have the least trust in your employer, you are sure to be deceived and to -become miserable; doubt, lack of trust and aggression must be the basis of your relationship." It's just the opposite of what I am saying.

March 21, 1964

(The following remarks were prompted by a letter from a doctor and disciple, who had just undergone a brain operation in the USA, and who complained about the carelessness with which he was operated on.)

... And they want to come here to teach everything to the poor Indians who know nothing!

If they cure him, it's all right, but I have my doubts.

... Those Americans are nothing but bluffers—they bluff, bluff, bluff for everything. They come with grand airs, they will right all wrongs, correct all mistakes, enlighten all minds —and they're just at ground level.

Those doctors, when you fall into their clutches ...

(After a silence) And here he kept complaining that his nurses weren't up to the mark—now he'll understand! At least, after that experience, he will understand that what's here is exceptional—they always have to go outside to have this experience, they aren't sensitive enough to feel that here there is something that isn't found elsewhere. In order to compare they have to go elsewhere, and then be "tortured" a little.³⁹

It's too bad—that's the way the world is, it needs to be tortured to understand that there is something else.

June 10, 1964

(A disciple asks Mother fora message about India's future.)

The future of India is luminous in spite of its present gloom.

July 29, 1964

(A note in answer to a question on the map of India at the Ashram's Playground, which was drawn by Mother herself in 1951, with her symbol in brass fixed on it.)

The map was made after the Partition.

It is the map of true India despite all fleeting appearances and it shall always remain the map of true India, whateve people may think.

August 8, 1964

(Mother shows two notations of the same experience. The first, of April 24, is as follows:)

"Suffocated by the shallowness of the human nature we aspire to the knowledge that truly knows, the power that truly can, the love that truly loves."

The same experience came back to me later; it isn't another "version" or another way of saying it, it's the experience that suddenly came back so acutely, so intensely (Mother reads her note):

"Human beings are so powerless, so imperfect, so incomplete!

The "incomplete" was the strongest of the three—so incomplete!

"Only the all-powerful rule of Truth and Love upon earth can make life tolerable."

It's like a continuation—but it didn't come as a continuation: it's the experience that came back. As if something in the consciousness OF THE EARTH felt an urgent and irrevocable need for this change—for the change, for the new creation. As if the consciousness of the earth ... The aspiration grows so intense, you know, so acute, so constant, so concentrated—under pressure—that something has to burst....

It's the consciousness OF THE EARTH pushing away like that, absolutely disgusted with what is there, and feeling the need for ... for THE THING to come.

August 14, 1964

I make a point of reading an Indian newspaper every day. .. You get a sense of a great decomposition.

The country? Oh, but it's rotten! Oh, it's in an appallin condition.

But what's extraordinary is that there's nobody! There's no opposition, there's nothing.

(After a long silence) It's a subject I don't talk about, first because it's understood that we do not concern ourselves with politics; I made the decision not to concern myself with politics until WE do it, that is, until we are in power. But in spite of this, since the day of liberation (already seventeen years ago to the day—seventeen years!), I have ceaselessly repeated,

"These people are going to ruin the country. They have neither consciousness nor knowledge nor will, and they are going to ruin the country." Every time, whenever they made a blunder, I repeated the same thing.

Now the country is ruined.

The famine is much worse than it was when it was supposedly "tragic." Now it's terrible. There's not enough to eat; the country is so large, there's so much uncultivated land, there are so many people without work ... and there's not enough food for everyone! And they've closed the borders: they stop the food from coming from outside, and there's not enough for everyone to eat.

But then, the number of stupid ideas these people have tried out to mend the situation—it's unbelievable! And each blunder has made the situation worse. Now it's extremely serious.

Sri Aurobindo said (he said it to me in an absolute way) that nothing could be done as long as WE weren't the government —not that we were going to start governing in person (! ), but that those who govern should be people who "receive" and obey. He also said that he expected that in '67, not only in India, but in the whole world, governments would begin to receive the supramental Influence. And obviously, he expected things to become EXTREMELY bad before that.... They're bad enough in the world: people are fighting everywhere, people are being killed everywhere—in Indonesia hosts of people have been murdered, in Cyprus hosts of people have been murdered. Anyway, it's an undeclared war, but it's everywhere.

And here, there's TOTAL corruption—total, to such a point that ... I'll give you an example. The government meddles in everything, you can't move a finger without its permission: you can't leave the country, you can't enter the country, you can't send money out, you can't open a shop, you can't ... nothing, nothing, nothing, not even plough your field without its permission. They meddle in everything, which in itself is pretty stupid. And then they make regulations—the more regulations you make, the more disobedience it creates, naturally.

People no longer grow crops because it's too complicated and with all those taxes (they've scores of taxes to pay), it costs them much more than they can earn. And as there isn't enough food, there are naturally individuals who try and hoard as much as they can to sell it for as high a price as possible.

... So there are two possibilities: violence, or Transformation. Violence means invasion or revolution—it's hanging in the air, it could break out any moment. The government ... Nehru wasn't worth much, but still for the masses he represented a certain ideal (which he was quite incapable of living up to, but anyway ...). After him, it's finished; the present prime minister [Lal Bahadur Shastri] is a man with great goodwill, who has no character, to such a point that in the presence of difficulties he falls ill—he's ill! Ill, he can't work! That's where we are....

But you get the feeling that in a country like this one, which in spite of everything is receptive, if one great man (I mean, of great spiritual value) arose, everyone would follow.

Exactly! They send me delegates, they send me people to ask me, "What should we do?"

I told them, "I lack a man."

If I had one man, I would see to everything. But I can't do everything myself.

But that's just the question: how is it that in this country one man hasn't arisen, a man you would support from behind?

I think it's the result of having been under the domination of another country for such a long time. People have lost interest in politics (people of value, those who weren't after personal gains). I think that's why.

Because I feel very clearly that if one man with a bit of sincerity arose, it would be enough ...

Yes, yes

... for everyone to follow.

Exactly! I tell you, if I had one man and I told people who asked me, "Here he is, follow him," the work would be done.

... But the situation might have to get even worse, until they are quite desperate.

All I would need is one man who had an absolute trust and was receptive, with a power of execution.

Those I have are too old.

But, you know, when it's necessary, the man turns up.

Among the young.

It's not impossible.

We'll see.

At any rate, they are conscious.... A considerable number of ministers, generals, governors (even ministers of the Central government) are writing, not positively to ask for advice, but to ask for Help. They're not asking for advice yet (and on the external level you can't give detailed advice, you can only give general ideas). But there are some things they SHOULD NOT be doing.

How to get out of it? They have tied themselves up in knots....

Yes, it's general—everything is rotten.

But everything is rotten because they've made regulations everywhere! Everywhere, everywhere, for everything. And appalling complications, incredibly stupid. It's unthinkable, you can't believe they're true. Regulations far more restrictive than parents give their children! Children have a greater freedom of movement than people here. There is a WILL to control which is so stupid! It's unthinkable.⁴⁰

And it's done almost openly. For instance, they have millions and millions to spend, given them by the Americans—they've forbidden the Americans to give A SINGLE CENT without their permission! And they will give their permission only if they have complete control over the spending....

Anyway ... it means the Moment is going to come, and then ...

One thing is obvious, it's that if everything had gone very well, with good results, the need for a higher Help would never have occurred to them; they would have become puffed up with statistics and with satisfaction with their capacities.

October 7, 1964

The whole world is undergoing an action ... which for the moment is unsettling. It seems that the number of apparently "mad" people is increasing considerably. In America, for instance, all the youth seem to be seized with a kind of curious giddiness, which for reasonable people would be disquieting, but which is a sure indication that an uncommon Force is at work. It is the disruption of all habits and all rules—it's good.

For the moment, it's a bit "strange" (!), but it's necessary.

October 17, 1964

(On October 15, Khrushchev was ousted. The next day, October 16, China exploded its first atomic bomb.)

Yes, what is this "resignation" of Khrushchev going to do?

It looks serious. It would seem to be a revolt....

Does it mean a regression?

Oh, a VIOLENT regression.

It's serious.

Things were on the mend between America and Russia (at China's expense! It was very funny).

This is going to demolish everything.

(After a silence) You get an impression (it's precisely the impression I bring back from those activities of the night), the impression of a building cracking—all over. Exactly like just before the collapse: it cracks all over.

Besides, if you ... take a look and wonder, "What's going to happen?"—a black hole, you can't see anything. And when I say, "What's going to happen?" I don't mean what's going to happen on earth, but through what combination of circumstances or sequence of events is the new creation going to take place?

There is an entire part of the earth's past history that, ultimately, is totally unknown to us. They have indeed made so-called discoveries, but ... all those stories, I don't know how much of them is true.

Have they really discovered? I don't know. Do you?

We probably know a little bit of history starting from a particular cataclysm. But how many cataclysms have there been?...

Yes, how many cataclysms have there been?

Now, for great upheavals men want to do without Nature's help. It seems that five nations have atomic bombs, and the bombs of just one of those nations are enough to ... vrrf! destroy the earth. So if all this (because it's new, after all) suddenly gets out of control ... They don't know how long these things can remain in waiting: if all at once they start exploding—can you see that! (laughing) In all the countries, all the bombs going off at the same time!

Poor earth.

It's worse than a Deluge. All in all, the ways of the earth were more gentle, Nature was more reasonable.

... The historical period is very short. Already, as it is, it's very uncertain, but very short.

Perhaps the conscious effort of the Vedas came after thousands and thousands of years of research, studies, civilizations that didn't leave any trace? Because they have more or less calculated the time of the coming of man on the earth—a few million years, no? How much?

One million, I think. ⁴¹

Out of that million, we know 5,000 years, you see that! Poor little ball! How vain we are! We think we know everything.

October 30, 1964

... A kind of certainty, deep down in Matter, that the solution lies THERE—this is very strong, very strong. Oh, what fuss, what fuss, how vainly you have tried!—Go deep enough within, stay quiet enough, and then THAT will be. And you cannot understand it: it only has to BE.

You cannot understand it, because you are using instruments that cannot understand. It can't be understood: it has to BE. When you are that, then you will be it, that's all, there won't be any more problem.

... All the great Schools, the great Ideas, the great Realizations, the great ... and then the religions—that's still lower down; all of it, oh, what childishness!

November 14, 1964

Recently, one day, I suddenly ... I am extremely sensitive to the composition of the air, from my earliest childhood: "airs," if I may say so, they each had their own taste, their own colour and quality, and I would recognize them to such a point that sometimes I would say, "Oh, the air of ..." (I was a child, of course), "the air of this country or the air of that place has come here." It was like that. I was extremely sensitive to the quality of pure air, that is, without the elements that come from the decomposition of life and especially from the places where people are crowded together. It was like that to an extremely sharp degree: for instance, if I was moved from one place to another, I could be suddenly cured of an illness from the change of air.... Not very long ago, I said, "There's something new in the air." And something very unpleasant, extremely pernicious; I felt that that something (I didn't say anything to anyone, naturally) had a peculiar, extremely subtle odour, not a physical one, and had the power to separate vital vibrations from physical vibrations—that is to say, an extremely noxious element.

Immediately I set to work (it lasted for hours), and the night was spent counteracting it: I tried to find which higher vibration could counteract it, until I succeeded in clarifying the atmosphere. But the memory remained very precise. And very recently (maybe a day or two ago), they told me that the Chinese had ... tested a certain kind of atomic bomb.⁴² When they told me this, the memory of my odour abruptly came back.

Which means that those vibrations travel very far—the physical vibrations stop at a certain distance (although they go much farther than is believed), but the vital vibrations that are behind (the "nervous" vibrations, if one may say so) must extend TREMENDOUSLY far.... It's the vital contained in Matter —it's like the phenomenon of radiation. It's a violent liberation of something contained in Matter. Like radiation. And it spreads out.... They only perceive a certain quantity, but there is all that is behind, which spreads out and has its action. You see, they observe, for instance, that cows are poisoned and their milk isn't drinkable for a certain time (it happened in England), but that's the most crude and outer phenomenon—there is another, deeper one, which is FAR more serious....

(After a silence) Very well, we will see.

I always say, "We will see," because ... in reality, I am not worried, not worried at all, I am very sure—very sure. I have such an absolute certitude that the Wisdom that acts in the world is infinitely superior to all that we can imagine. We are like ignorant and stupid children in front of "something" that acts with a CERTITUDE, and so luminous, so luminous. With a superharmony that turns into harmony the things that seem to us the most discordant.

So when I see the anxious human thoughts trying to know (Mother smiles)—"Don't worry, we will see." And when I say, "We will see," I have the joy of a certitude that what we will see will be a thousand times more beautiful than anything we can imagine.

I read a line in "Savitri" [Sri Aurobindo's epic] that struck me very much, because I saw a connection with what you said the other day about the coexistence of Falsehood and Truth: "And earth shall grow unexpectedly divine."

That's right! That's right ... unexpectedly divine.

And even the most sceptical will be compelled to see that something is changing, that it's not the same thing anymore.

Sri Aurobindo said (he said it to me personally and he wrote it), "The time has come." Because he went away, people thought he was wrong; that was the general effect, they said to themselves, "He thought the time had come, but he went away because he saw he was wrong."—That's rubbish.

Mid 1960s

(Various notes)

Do not pretend—be.

Do not promise—act.

Do not dream—realize.

God gives Himself to His whole creation; no one religion holds the monopoly of His Grace.

All countries are equal and essentially one; everyone of them represents an aspect of the One Supreme.

In the terrestrial manifestation they have all the same right to a free expression of themselves.

From the spiritual point of view, the importance of a country does not depend on its size or its power or its authority among other countries, but on its response to Truth and the degree of Truth it is capable of manifesting.

Democracy was needed and useful some hundred years ago; but now it must be surpassed if a step forward is to be taken towards a new creation.

February 25, 1965

[A disciple writes:] "Mother, I pray to you to save India from the Indians."

[Mother's reply:] Yes, it seems rather necessary!

March 10, 1965

(A month earlier, the Ashram was attacked by rioters, ostensibly as part of an "anti-Hindi agitation." Several buildings were looted and set on fire, and a few Ashram residents suffered injuries. The following note is in relation to those events:)

Behind all the destructions—the big destructions of Nature—earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, cyclones, floods, etc., or the human destructions—wars, revolutions, riots—there is always Kali’s power and upon earth Kali works for the hastening of the terrestrial progress.

Whatever is Divine not only in its essence but also in its realisation is above these destructions and cannot be touched by them.

In all cases the extent of the damage gives the measure of the imperfection and must be taken as a lesson for indispensable progress.

April 28, 1965

(A letter from a disciple:)

Sweet Mother,

Why is India, which has such a rich past and the promise of such a brilliant future, in such a miserable condition at present? When will she emerge from this pitiful condition and reaffirm her greatness?

[Mother's answer:] When she renounces falsehood and lives in the Truth.

May 5, 1965

(A letter from a disciple:)

Sweet Mother,

... The Divine often advises or tries to guide man, knowing very well that His help will be refused. Why then does He do it?

[Mother's answer:] The Divine always informs, but it is rare indeed for men to listen to Him. Either they do not hear Him or do not believe Him.

Men always complain of not being helped, but the truth is that they refuse the help that is always with them.

June 1965

(A message to a movement for world union launched by a few disunited disciples.)

If you want peace in the world or upon earth, first establish peace in your heart.

If you want union in the world, first unify the different parts of your own being.

June 18, 1965

"One" is wondering if, really, it won't be necessary to have an American occupation here, which would have the double effect of converting the Americans and making the Indians make some progress.... Practical progress is what they would make, as the Japanese did. And the Americans are now the disciples of the Japanese: from the point of view of Beauty they have made wonderful and absolutely unexpected progress. If the Americans came here, they would be converted, they would become ... oh, they would understand spiritual life. Only, of course, it wouldn't be too pleasant (! ) But it's the surest method—it's always the dominator that learns the lesson from the dominated. The Americans might become the most militant spiritualists in the world if they occupied India. Only, the Indians would have a bad time.... But they would become very practical, they would learn to put order in what they do—which they quite lack....

It's troublesome. It's something in suspense [the American occupation]. In my active consciousness, I don't want it. First, it would take a long time—it always takes a long time. A lot of time wasted, a lot of suffering, a lot of humiliation. But it's a very radical method.

At any rate, if a new domination is indispensable, it would be INFINITELY better for it to be by the Americans than by the Russians because what would be learned from the Russians is an UNNECESSARY lesson: it's community, the truth of community—the Indians knew it before the Russians (the Sannyasins were the ideal community); they knew it before the Russians, so they have nothing to learn there, it would be perfectly unnecessary. And to tell the truth, I am completely indifferent as to whether or not the Russians become spiritualists, because the Russians, in their soul, are mystics—they are AT LEAST (at least) as mystical as the Indians. So all their community and Communism is pretentiousness. It would be no use—no use at all.

An American occupation is a drastic method, but ... Oh, when I see here the extent to which they can be imbued with the English spirit, oh, it's hideous—I don't like the English. And the English ... the English have learned the maximum from the Indians, but for them the maximum is nothing much. The Americans want to learn. They are young and they want to learn; the English are old, stale, hardened and ... oh, so conceited—they know everything better than everyone else. So they learned very little. They benefited the maximum, but that's very little; their maximum is very little....

It seems more likely that the Chinese would be the ones to come here, rather than the Americans or Russians?

Than the Americans ...

Circumstances seem rather ...

No, the Americans can come here to "save" India from China.

(After a silence) To be under Chinese domination ... it's better to die first. They are ... from the point of view of sensitivity, they are monsters. They are monsters.

... No, there's no wavering between the two. The Chinese, the Chinese domination over the earth is ... it means the earth hardening, the earth growing cold like the moon. Oh, that would be dreadful.

Ah, goodbye.... We don't want catastrophes.

June 23, 1965

(Mother gives a note she has written "about the government.")

"You leave free hands to the bandits and take insulting measures against the honest people.

"It will be like that so long as the country is not governed by the wisest people.

"The wisest people are those who can freely and correctly read the hearts and the minds of men."

July 1965

The best way to help the world is to transform oneself by an integral and intensive yoga.

July 26, 1965

(In reply to a question of a teacher suggesting that India, with her "special responsibility towards herself and towards the world," should encourage national education Mother approves, and adds:)

India has or rather had the knowledge of the Spirit, but she neglected matter and suffered for it.

The West has the knowledge of matter but rejected the Spirit and suffers badly for it.

An integral education which could, with some variations, be adapted to all the nations of the world, must bring back the legitimate authority of the Spirit over a matter fully developed and utilised.

August 5, 1965

(Extracts from Mother's answers to a few questions from Ashram teachers on what an Indian education should be.)

What is India's real genius and what is her destiny:

To teach the world that matter is false and impotent unless it becomes the manifestation of the Spirit.

National unity is a cause for worry in the whole country. What is the Mother's vision in this regard? How will India fulfil her duty towards herself and the world?

The future of the world tends irresistibly towards the unity of all nations. But for the unity of all nations to be possible, each nation must first realize its own unity.

India is much preoccupied by the linguistic problem. What should be the correct attitude for us in this regard?

Unity must be a living fact and not the imposition of an arbitrary rule. When India will be one, she will have spontaneously a language understood by all.

A teacher must absolutely possess the qualities and the consciousness which he wants to see his students acquire.

I would like the Government to recognize yoga as a subject of education, not so much for us [at the Ashram], but because it will be good for the country.

Matter will be transformed, it will be a solid base. Life will be divinized. Let India take the lead of the movement.

September 11, 1965

(On September 6, after months of clashes in the Kutch desert and on the Kashmir ceasefire line, Indian troops enter Pakistan. Karachi calls for help from the "Western allies." New Delhi orders a general mobilization. On September 16, China will declare its support of Pakistan. On the 19th, the Security Council will enjoin India and Pakistan to cease fire and the USSR proposes a meeting at Tashkent. On the 22nd, India and Pakistan will order a ceasefire. On the 25th, China will reiterate its claim to 90,000 square kilometers of Indian territory.)

Will the Indians have the courage to hold out against the pressure from the Americans, the British, etc.? That's the most difficult. The most difficult part isn't the military part, it's politically to hold out against the pressures from all those people who say, "You must make peace."

But they aren't sincere.

That's the trouble, not one of these nations is sincere. They pretend, they strike a pose, but it's not true.

They say (they say lots of things, but there is always the distortion of something true), they say that America outwardly preaches peace, but clandestinely offers money to people who declare war on certain governments. I don't know if it's true.... Everybody tells lies, but behind all those lies there is something.

I don't know.

... Some people see, and rightly so, an analogy between this war and the war of the Gita in which Arjuna had to fight the members of his own family. They say it's the members of the same family that are now fighting, and perhaps in fact in order to ...

What I felt strongly was that something had to erupt: it was too absurdly tense and devoid of truth.

I don't know if I told you that the day before it was known that it had really become a sort of war, the night before that, I had an experience that has occurred to me only two or three times in my life, always in similar circumstances. This time, I wasn't expecting anything, and in the night, there was in the TERRESTRIAL atmosphere, with a concentration on India, a sort of ... something I might call a "pressure of the Supreme." It's as if the Supreme's Consciousness were exerting a pressure, and it produces a certain type of stillness with a solidity and a consistency not found anywhere else. You know, it's even more solid and substantial than the most inert inertia. And it's the pressure of the Supreme Power. It's almost intolerable or unbearable for Matter, for material substance. And it goes like this (gesture of massive descent), absolutely impossible to budge, and at the same time you feel it's the Supreme Power. Well, it lasted for hours that night, and I was extremely attentive in order to know what it meant. And the next day, I was told that something like a war had suddenly broken out: all that friction that had been there for years had suddenly taken that form.

So it is clearly a very exceptional intervention that has brought this about.

But while I was having the experience, there was absolutely no awareness of the goal, the motive, the purpose, nothing: it was like this (same massive gesture taking hold of everything), a sort of absolute, without explanation.

I've had this two or three times in my life, in the most serious terrestrial circumstances.

That's why; the next day, when they told me what was going on and asked me what I felt, I simply answered, "It's serious."

It can only be serious.

September 16, 1965

(At the height of the war between India and Pakistan Mother gives this message:)

It is for the sake and the triumph of Truth that India is fighting and must fight until India and Pakistan have once more become ONE because that is the truth of their being.

September 18, 1965

(Mother first reads out her message of September 16. It may be noted that Mother had at first written "shall fight," then, in the afternoon, changed "shall" into "must.")*

... A member of UNESCO has asked a stupid question, something to this effect: "There was a time when India represented the spiritual consciousness" (or "taught the spiritual consciousness," I don't remember now), "but now that she is engaged in such a war, who will play this role?" So instead of replying to the question, because I might have told him a thing or two, I answered what you've just read.

[Satprem:] Of course! All those Europeans ... for fifty years they have been told about Gandhi, so now they don't understand!

That's right. Let your throat be cut without saying a word...

[Sujata:⁴³] Long ago, you said, "If there is another war, it will be over India."

Yes, that was long ago.

But when the division between India and Pakistan took place, Sri Aurobindo wrote very strongly: this division MUST go somehow or other, "by whatever means," he said.⁴⁴ And to me he said, "If they can't agree on doing it, they will fight."

[Satprem J And yet, if we give credence to official declarations from Delhi, they don't at all intend to go right to the end. They only intend to "adjust" the border a little.

... They are all afraid.⁴⁵ Afraid of world opinion

Yes, exactly.

...So China has sent her ultimatum.⁴⁶

I don't understand why they give advance warning, by the way. If I were them, I wouldn't.

No, they don't intend to do anything.

They don't intend to do anything?

They want to intimidate without doing anything, and they want to know how the world will react. And America reacted immediately.⁴⁷

(After a silence) In Pakistan, there was a firing system of the latest American model, in which they take aim with, I don't know, electrical systems, and they can fire several thousand shots in ... anyway, it's frightening; and shots that reach exactly where they want. It's quite an organization. They've become very efficient. It was given to Pakistan by the Americans. And it had to be destroyed. So one of the Indian pilots went and crashed his plane into it. Naturally, the plane crushed everything—he too was crushed. But the installation was demolished.... People here are capable of such things. If they feel what Sri Aurobindo says in this letter I have just given you, that "the leader of our march is the Almighty," if they feel that way...⁴⁸

That's what made the strength of the Japanese in the past. That's what makes the strength of people here, once they are convinced. That's how the Japanese took Port Arthur;⁴⁹ there was a sort of ditch around the fortress, as there are in fortified places, and because of that they couldn't get in; well, they let themselves be killed till they were able to walk across on the bodies: the bodies made a bridge by filling up the ditch, and then they walked across.

People who are conscious that death isn't the end, that death is the beginning of something else, it gives them a strength that these Europeans cannot have.

Clearly, circumstances are arranged to help us move on.

September 25, 1965

(The United Nations Security Council has issued an ultimatum to India and Pakistan for a ceasefire.)

Have you read the report of the United Nations session?

Yes, about the ceasefire?

I haven't read it: I have been told about it. But through certain things, I have been put in contact,⁵⁰ and they seem to be a united expression of universal falsehood.

Their common ground is petty schemes and petty biases, preconceived and MICROSCOPIC ideas on the usefulness of divisions among countries so that no one country may dominate the others—nothing but absolutely superficial things, and completely false, moreover. And no sincerity, no mental honesty, no sincere goodwill—nothing. They decided in advance that Pakistan was right and India was wrong.⁵¹

Unfortunately, those phantoms seem to strike terror into the people in Delhi.

Not quite. I have direct news from Delhi [Mother holds out a telegram]: "I am deeply grateful says Shastri." That was following my message ["India must fight..."].

And in a Parliament session (I don't know if it was a Parliament session or a cabinet meeting), they were told that the true goal of India is to re-create the country's unity, and that the second goal is to give Tibet autonomy and independence. And that these are the two things India wants. And that, somehow or other, they will have to be.

Now, what are they going to do? I don't know.

September 25, 1965

(Following the Security Council's ultimatum, India accepted the ceasefire as of September 22.)

They don't understand anything. It's a disgusting sight.

And as false as can be: they keep on fighting, only they are pretending not to.

They are all so pleased with what they've done, they are chortling with glee.

No, they're not pleased.

You think not?

Yes, I know!

It reminds me of 1939, Chamberlain coming back from Munich: "Peace in our time"!

Yes, exactly.

At the UN, they are chortling with glee, they're very proud of themselves [for the ceasefire]. But here, they aren't glad. They are especially furious at Britain.⁵²

... The Russians have called on Shastri and the Pakistan man [Ayub Khan] to meet in Russia [in Tashkent], and it seems they have agreed with the Americans.... So perhaps we are going to see something interesting.

The rapprochement between Russia and America is something I have been working on for years. I thought I had succeeded, when Kennedy was assassinated; and at the time, Khrushchev was well-disposed—both gone! One is assassinated, the other dismissed.

Now we'll see.

If nothing comes in the way, there may be somethin interesting.

But one doesn't see any solution other than military. The problem must be solved, mustn't it?

There could be the solution of Pakistan becoming a part of India again.

Yes, but that's not possible unless they are swallowed up.

They may come to it without being forced. This fellow [Ayub Khan] is impossible.

Oh, yes, he is impossible.

Yes, but he isn't immortal.

The mentality there will be hard to change. The Indians have missed the opportunity.

Yes. Ah, yes, this was the opportunity.

(After a silence) This man who is heading Pakistan doesn't represent the whole of Pakistan. There is a whole part of Pakistan that favours union with India.

Really?

A large part.

And there's nothing to say that if they feel protected, helped and supported, in fact by Russia and America, they won't push for reunion. With masses, you know, it's only a question of a current of thought: it's not reflection, not reasoning, just a current of thought.

I don't know, we shall see.

... The world isn't ready. That's the worst part.

The world isn't ready.

So then, if it is Kali, it means everything back to the melting pot, and with the means at their disposal, that may mean having to start the whole civilization from scratch again—how many centuries wasted?

What has come down to us from the civilizations that disappeared?... Nothing. Nothing, not even one exact bit of information.

All that, all this Matter all the time going ... (gesture of rising and being swallowed back), making effort, producing forms, producing an element that can manifest consciousness, and then, brff! (gesture of being swallowed back) And again (gesture of rising), and back it goes again—what a terrible waste! A great waste.

... If even one very small aggregate of cells could succeed in having the complete experience of transformation right to the end, that would be more effective than great upheavals—much, much more effective.

But it's more difficult. Much more difficult. And it doesn't cause big dazzling "events" that make a great to-do.

Yes, it's linked to the general state of the world.

Absolutely.

And there really doesn't seem to be any progress. The feeling, on the contrary, is that men, heads of state, human consciousnesses are getting more and more petty.

Yes, perfectly correct.

Pygmies. It strikes me how in twenty years all that has been growing more and more dwarfish.

That's perfectly correct. But I mean that according to my vision ... upheaval [i.e., Kali's intervention] still belongs to the old method—it's accepting that the world hasn't changed. While this sort of apparent shrinking is in fact perhaps the proof that the earth consciousness has changed and is putting pressure on what resists, which gets smaller and smaller, but harder and harder.

Harder and harder, that's right.

As if all that's conscious and living were being extracted and what remains becomes more and more stony.

September 29, 1965

One has the feeling that this Pakistan problem is symbolic, and that until it is sorted out, India will not play her role in the world.

That's right.

And it's through this symbol that the hypocrisy of "Gandhi's India" and all her errors must at the same time be swept away.

Absolutely.

You said you had received indications?

Material ones: letters, people, things ... I can't talk about that.

A political movement.

The message ["India is ONE ..."] has gone about everywhere, and has been accepted.

It's better not to talk about that.

We'll be really glad when it's sorted out ... because it's a lovable country, this!

It's predestined.

There aren't two like this one; it is true that there aren't two countries alike, but the others are all sorts of different things on the same plane, while this is found only here.

It's something you breathe in with the country's atmosphere.

I had this experience very, very strongly. When I left here [in 1915], as I got farther away, I felt as if emptied of something, and once in the Mediterranean, I wasn't able to bear it any longer: I fell ill. And even in Japan, which outwardly is a marvellous country—marvellously beautiful and harmonious (it WAS, I don't know what it is nowadays), and outwardly it was a joy every minute, a breathtaking joy, so strong was the expression of beauty—yet I felt empty, empty, empty, I absolutely lacked ... (Mother opens her mouth as though suffocating) ... I lacked the important Thing. And I found it again only when I came back here.

October 13, 1965

(From a letter to a disciple.)

India ought to be the spiritual guide who explains what is happening and helps to hasten the movement. But unfortunately, in her blind ambition to imitate the West, she has become materialistic and neglectful of her soul.

October 16, 1965

The other day again, an American painter, who is here and has read Sri Aurobindo's books, wanted to do a portrait of Sri Aurobindo (he never saw him) from photos.... They all make a mystic Sri Aurobindo with narrow temples, like that (gesture tapering upward), a long mystic face, because they can't get out of their Christianity! For them, of course, the Power, anything that expresses the Power, oh! (gesture of repulsion) For them, spiritual life is sacrifice, it's the God who sacrifices himself: he renounces the joys of the earth and sacrifices his existence to save mankind. And they can't get out of it!

November 10, 1965

(Mother hands Satprem a brochure, "Spiritual Unity of India," in which quotations from Sri Aurobindo and Mother on the partition of India have been gathered, in particular Mother's declaration: "India must fight until India and Pakistan have once more become ONE. ...")

It has gone around India.

Thousands of copies have been distributed in India. And many newspapers have written about it. It has made a lot of noise in the country.

But they don't seem—the leaders at least—to have understood at all.

The prime minister has fully approved. But he is a weak man. They are afraid of the United Nations.

Oh, they're afraid of everything.

But to the United Nations I have sent a lot of messages: lots of people there have talked about it. They are quarrelling. There at the United Nations, it has kicked up a din. Only, the Americans are quite unrivalled in their stupidity! All the more so as they are puffed up with conceit—they are convinced that they are the leading nation of the world, so that puts the final touch to stupidity. But anyway, they are not alone at the United Nations and it has made a lot of noise, it has shaken people up a bit.

But unless outward circumstances COMPEL India to reunite with Pakistan, they won't budge.

But it's being prepared. It is being prepared. It's going to break out all at once.

The impression is that if India isn't pushed from the outside isn't forced to re-create this unity, they won't budge.

The army is completely with us. Besides, it seems (I have been receiving a great many letters, I've again received some these last few days), it seems they had truly miraculous instances of forces intervening, of people suddenly turning into extraordinary heroes.... There were marvellous things.

If, at that point,⁵³ they hadn't stopped, it would have been easy.

Oh, absolutely! It's really sad.

That's just what those fools were fearing!

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, because we always see just one side of things; even being in contact up above, one doesn't have the vision of the whole every minute. So, as for me, whatever happens I say, "It's all right—He knows better than I do."

He knows better than I do.

No, it's necessarily the best ... in the given conditions—the earth isn't in a marvellous condition, far from it—but in the given conditions, it's the best. It prepares something far more complete, far deeper, far more integral than all that we can imagine. This is indisputable, there's no discussing it.

November 20, 1965

(On Mother's table lies a magazine showing a large photo of President Kennedy with folded hands. This is the second anniversary of his death, on November 22, 1963.)

Was he a religious man?

He was Catholic, I think.

Oh, Catholic!

Ah, that's why he died.... You know he was truly in favour of freedom, and not only freedom but union. And he was receptive. You know how he worked for the Blacks there (moreover, that's the external cause of his death). But he was the one I counted on, not without reason, as he had shown signs of assent to a union with Russia to establish peace on earth. Talks had already started and they had seized the opportunity of China's aggression against India. Naturally, that wasn't quite to the extremists' liking, and in the atmosphere, the force which for centuries has acted behind the Catholic religion wasn't at all in favour of that plan; so things "worked out" well and they killed him. The other one in Russia who had responded, Khrushchev, didn't die because he left in time!

January 14, 1966

(A few hours after the signature of an Indo-Pakistan agreement at Tashkent, India's prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri died, officially of a heart attack.)

There was this sudden death of Shastri. To me it was obvious. Strangely enough, I was told (long ago) that they were to meet in Russia, and when I was told that, I spontaneously answered, "If he goes there, he will die." (I never knew why, but that's how it was.) ... In between, someone met Shastri about my message [of September 16, 1965] and he answered that for him it was the expression of the truth, but ... "What can I do about that? I am a small man." That's what he said. After that I kept quiet, and when I was told about the conference, I thought, "We should at least get the 'best' out of it"—I "charged" him to the full. But I "charged" him as if he were a powerful man.... That's dangerous!

But I knew the time at which they were in conference, and all of a sudden, in the middle of the night, I was woken up with a start by someone calling for help—it was him.

The next day, early morning, I was told he was dead. It didn't strike me as "news"! I said, "But of course! It goes without saying, that's how it is." And it seems (I heard all the details afterwards—long afterwards, in the course of the day), it seems the going was very tough and when the talks ended in what he considered to be a success (it was obviously the "best" (!) that could happen there), he was exultant and quite happy;⁵⁴ then he went into his room and after a few minutes, opened the door and called for a doctor, and in no time it was over. That's probably when he called. But it was decided a very long time ago.

There was nothing to be "exultant" about! They lost what little advantage they had gained during the war.

Yes (Mother shakes her head). It seems that was the best they could conceive.

I find it sad.

No, it's the continuation of the same story.⁵⁵

... For the moment, everything is in suspense.

But it [Shastri's death] was necessary. If something was to change, it was necessary.

Certainly.

Because he wasn't a bad man, of course.

Oh, no!

He was very small.

... The resistance of the forces of Falsehood has reached a climax, they are in a state of acute violence—acute.

March 19, 1966

(Two months earlier, on January 19, Indira Gandhi was nominated prime minister of India.)

... In India things don't look good.

That's where the nerve centre is. It's very sad, it's not pretty.

It doesn't look good.

And that poor woman truly does the best she can with goodwill, a goodwill that tries to understand all sides at the same time. She really does the best she can. Inwardly I support her as much as I can, because ...

It is true that up till now, the government has multiplied blunders of such stupidity! ... It seems a child with common sense wouldn't have committed such blunders. And naturally, even in those who have no bad will or vengeful feelings, it creates an unpleasant tension: you can't do anything anymore, you're bound on all sides! Whatever you do, there are oppositions and prohibitions everywhere. So people no longer know what to do, nobody can do anything anymore.

They have ruined the country, starved it.

... It's pitiable.

(After a silence) But up above, "one" really isn't in favour of havoc.

One isn't in favour of havoc?

(Mother makes a gesture of vigorous denial) It's a waste of time.

All the more so as men have perfected such means of destruction that it could mean centuries lost, not just a few years. Entire civilizations to rebuild.

No, "one" isn't in favour of that.

It's a seething of something very dark, very dark.

... What's lamentable above all is the way men confuse power with violence. That sort of ignorant feeling that thinks power must manifest as violence.⁵⁶ Violence is an asuric deformation. True power acts in peace—a peace like this (gesture of massive descent), which nothing can disturb.

March 26, 1966

The ordinary consciousness lives in a constant quiver, when you notice it it's frightful! As long as you don't notice it, it's perfectly natural, but when you notice it, you wonder how people don't go insane, it's a grace. It's a sort of tiny tremor (same microscopic and very rapid gesture), oh, how horrible!... And it's the same with EVERYTHING: world events or natural or human upheavals, earthquakes and tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, floods, or else wars, revolutions, people killing each other without even knowing why—as they are doing at the moment: everywhere something pushes them on. Behind this "quiver," there is a will for disorder that tries to prevent Harmony from being established. It's there in the individual, in the collectivity, and in Nature.

September 7, 1966

(Mother is facing severe financial difficulties.)

We have an awesome budget; we have the budget of a small village—no, a small town. It's a budget of twenty-six lakhs of rupees a year, you understand. And then, all those who used to give me money (people who had businesses and so on) have been ruined by the government's wonderful actions. So they can't give me any more. They give what they can, they are very nice, they make great efforts, but ...

The only ones who could give me money are the scoundrels! (Mother laughs) They have plenty of money, stolen from everywhere, but they don't want to give it!

It doesn't matter, it'll only last for a time.

There is a sort of wind blowing, like a gust of great confusion; a very dark confusion totally deprived of intelligence. Discernment, clear-sightedness, even enlightened common sense, seem to have disappeared everywhere. It's a phase to go through.

September 21, 1966

For external reasons, I was looking at the sorry state in which all countries find themselves, the truly painful and dangerous conditions of the earth, and there was a sort of all-embracing vision showing how nations (men taken as nations) have acted and are increasingly acting in a growing Falsehood, and how they have used all their creative power to create such formidable means of destruction, with, at the back of their minds, the really childish notion that the destruction would be so terrible that no one would want to use them. But they don't know (they ought to know, but they don't) that things have a consciousness and a force of manifestation, and that all those means of destruction are pressing to be used; and even though men may not want to use them, a force stronger than they will be pushing them to do so.

... I have understood that Auroville⁵⁷ isn't just a creation of idealism, but quite a practical phenomenon, in the hope ... in the will, rather, to thwart and counterbalance the effects—the frightful effects—of the psychological error of believing that fear can save you from a danger! Fear attracts the danger much more than it saves you from it. And all these countries, all these governments commit blunder upon blunder because of that fear of the catastrophe.

All this is simply to tell you that if nations collaborate in the work of Auroville, even to a very modest extent, it will do them good—it can do them a lot of good, a good that can be out of proportion to the appearance of their actions.

You speak of the imminence of a catastrophe, but still Auroville will take some time to be realized?

No! I am speaking of the countries' collaboration in CREATING something. It's not when Auroville has been completed: it's the nations' collaboration in creating something—but creating something founded on the Truth instead of a rivalry in Falsehood's creation. It's not when Auroville is ready—when Auroville is ready, it will be one town among all other towns and it's only its own capacity of truth that will have power, but that remains to be seen.⁵⁸

No, the point is a combined interest in building something founded on the Truth. They have had a combined interest (combined without any mutual liking, of course) in creating a power of destruction built on Falsehood; well, Auroville means diverting a little of that force (the quantity is minor, but the quality is superior). It's truly a hope—it's founded on a hope—of doing something that can be the beginning of a harmony....

What's proving to be the most refractory (and the irony of it is wonderful) is ... the United Nations! Those people are outdated, oh!...

Besides, even quite outwardly, that fight between India and Pakistan [in September 1965] was clearly initiated and driven, that is to say, set in motion by and under the impulsion of the forces of Truth that wanted to create a great "Asian Federation" with the power to counterbalance Red China and its movement. It was a federation that, as a matter of fact, needed the return of Pakistan and all those regions, and which includes Nepal, Tibet, also Burma, and in the south, Ceylon. A great federation with each country having its autonomous development, perfectly free, but which would be united in a common single aspiration for peace and fight against the invasion of forces of dissolution. That was very clear, it was willed—and it's the intervention of this United Nations that stopped everything.

I am not saying anything officially; because I have said and always repeat that politics is in complete Falsehood, based on Falsehood, and I am not dealing with it, meaning that I am not in politics, I don't want to be—but that doesn't stop me from seeing clearly! ... People have come and asked me (from every side, by the way) for my opinion, view or advice; I said, "No, I don't deal in politics." You see, all diplomacy is absolutely based on a DELIBERATE Falsehood. As long as it is like that, there's no hope : the inspirations will always come from the wrong side; inspirations, impulsions, ideas, everything will always come from the wrong side—which means the inescapable blunder, for everyone. A few rare individuals feel that and are aware of it, and they are half desperate because nobody listens to them.

November 9, 1966

Buddha represented the height of abolition. He led to abolition and represented the height of abolition. Very well, but ... That's when the summit was reached, when the summit was seen. But we must come back down.

... As soon as you are there and in contact with the Divine, he tells you, "Go down! Don't stay here, it's not your place!"

But, you know, I am desperately struggling against all those who conceive of spiritual life as ... brrt! you go off. That's only the beginning. As for me, I always answer with the story of Buddha: as he was about to enter Nirvana, he suddenly realized that the earth had to be changed ... and stayed on.

I remember, once, it was with Madame David-Neel.⁵⁹ It's very interesting. She came to give a lecture (I wasn't acquainted with her, that's where I met her for the first time), I think it was at the Theosophical Society (I forget). I went to the lecture, and while she was speaking, I saw Buddha—I saw him clearly: not above her head, but a little to the side. He was present. So after the lecture, I was introduced to her (I didn't know the kind of woman she was!), and I said to her, "Oh, Madam, during your speech I saw Buddha there." She answered me (in a furious tone), "Impossible! Buddha is in Nirvana!" (Mother laughs) Oho!... "Better keep quiet!" I thought.

But he really was there, no matter what she thought!

November 19, 1966

Yesterday I wrote something in French, but it was under the pressure of Sri Aurobindo's consciousness. He said (Mother takes a note and reads):

"According to the law of men, the guilty must be punished. But there is a more imperative law than the human law: it is the law of the Divine, the law of compassion and mercy. It is thanks to this law that the world can last and progress ...

The vision was so clear. It was such a clear vision.... If you follow this law of the guilty who must be punished, then little by little, with the unfolding of things, everything should be punished! (Mother laughs) Nothing would remain! So Sri Aurobindo said:

"It is thanks to this law that the world can last and progress towards Truth and Love."

The guilty must be punished! ... It's always the same idea; men always have that idea: the guilty must be punished—but where does that lead to??

... It was all clearly seen: men always believe that the guilty must be punished, that it's the way out of the difficulty, but the true way is compassion and mercy. It's not that you are ignorant of the true movement and the false one, but you have SPONTANEOUS mercy, effortlessly—and at all times. The vision was very clear that this is how progress is possible—if the fault were always punished, there wouldn't be anyone left to progress!

November 30, 1966

Men are really imbeciles: what they don't understand they hate. Instead of saying, "I don't understand this, so I won't bother about it, that's all," no, they hate it! They want to destroy it.

There is clearly a great movement.... Yesterday again I saw a man who was governor of Madras for a while. He came here and asked me, "Is there a solution?" And he added, "We are all praying that you may give it." I answered (Mother smiles) that I had nothing to do with politics. But he represents a whole category of people in India who now think that there is indeed only one solution, which is precisely an attempt to realize a higher life.

December 24, 1966

From every side they ask the question (they are all like that), "What IS the Truth? What do you mean when you speak of the Truth?"

They want a mental definition of the Truth....

Truth cannot be expressed in the mind's terms. That's the point. And all the questions they ask are mental ones.

Truth cannot be formulated, it cannot be defined, but it can be LIVED.

And one who has completely dedicated himself to the Truth, who wants to live the Truth and serve the Truth, will know EVERY MINUTE what he has to do : it will be a sort of intuition or revelation (more often than not wordless, but sometimes also expressed in words), which will every minute let him know the truth of that minute. And that's what is so interesting.... They want to know "the Truth," but as something well defined, well sorted out, well established; and then you are nice and quiet, you no longer need to seek! You adopt it and say, "This is the Truth," and then it's rigidly set—that's what all religions did, they set up their truth as a dogma. But that's not the Truth anymore.

Truth is a living, changing thing, which expresses itself every second and is ONE way of approaching the Supreme. Everyone has his own way of approaching the Supreme. There may be some who can approach Him from every side at the same time, but there are those who approach through Love, those who approach through Power, those who approach through Consciousness, and those who approach through Truth. And each of these aspects is as absolute, imperative and indefinable as the supreme Lord himself is. The supreme Lord is absolute, imperative and indefinable, ungraspable in his entirety, and his attributes have that same quality.

Once one knows this, he who puts himself at the service of one of these aspects will know (it's translated in life, in Time, in the movement of time), he will know every moment what the Truth is—that's very interesting—or he will know every minute what Consciousness is, or he will know every minute what Power is, or he will know every minute what Love is. And it's a multiform Power, Love, Consciousness, Truth, which express themselves innumerably in the manifestation, just as the Lord expresses himself innumerably in the manifestation.

January 1, 1967

(Message for the New Year.)

Men, countries, continents
The choice is imperative:
Truth or the abyss.

February 15, 1967

The most bloodthirsty god is the most popular, I think. All the slaughters, all the horrors, all the tortures that have been committed in the name of God.... Oh, when I was just five, I was revolted by that "God" who really was a wicked character and caused bloodshed.

... But you know, there are still so many fanatics—more than we think. You would think all that has disappeared with modern development—not at all.

The farther I go, the more I have a perception of a Harmony. A harmony, that is, a vision of the Whole in which everything is in its place: qualities, movements, even forms. It's something being worked out, a vision being worked out. Yet outwardly, it's apparent chaos.... It's the transition from one to the other that's difficult. The disequilibrium is what prepares a new equilibrium.

We are in the middle of the chaos.

And the only solution at such a time is to draw back, as it were (gesture of drawing within), and hang on unshakeably to something higher, fasten on to it while the hurricane passes by. Then you can go through.

February 22, 1967

(Referring to Mother's message for the New Year, a disciple asks why "the choice is imperative." Mother's reply :)

Because we are at one of the "hours of God" as Sri Aurobindo puts it—and the transforming evolution of the world has taken an accelerated and intensified movement.

March 22, 1967

(Two replies from Mother to certain self-righteous disciples who complained to her in the name of the "Truth":)

"Truth is not a dogma that one can learn once and for all and impose as a rule. Truth is as infinite as the supreme Lord and It manifests every instant for those who are sincere and attentive."

"Were Truth to manifest in such a way as to be seen and understood by all, they would be terrified by the enormity of their ignorance and false interpretation."

March 29, 1967

(An answer to a question, "What is youth?")

To be young is to live in the future for the future.

To be young is to be always ready to abandon what one is in order to become what one ought to be.

To be young is never to admit the irreparable.

(Two other notes from Mother:)

One is always deeply disgusted at one's own faults when one encounters them in others.

Europeans attach the greatest importance to the words uttered.

Indians are much more sensitive to the feeling, which more often than not those words veil.

March 31, 1967

(Extracts from Mother's answer to teachers at the Ashram school, who proposed a research project on the theme of "India's spiritual History.")

Till the birth of Sri Aurobindo, religions and spiritualities were always centred on past figures, and they were showing as "the goal" the negation of life upon earth. So, you had a choice between two alternatives: either a life in this world with its round of petty pleasures and pains, joys and sufferings, threatened by hell if you were not behaving properly; or an escape into another world, heaven, nirvana, moksha....

Between these two there is nothing much to choose, they are equally bad.

Sri Aurobindo has told us that this was a fundamental mistake which accounts for the weakness and degradation of India. Buddhism, Jainism, Illusionism were sufficient to sap all energy out of the country.

True, India is the only place in the world which is still aware that something else than matter exists. The other countries have quite forgotten it : Europe, America and elsewhere.... That is why she still has a message to preserve and deliver to the world. But at present she is splashing and floundering in the muddle.

Sri Aurobindo has shown that the truth does not lie in running away from earthly life but in remaining in it, to transform it, divinize it, so that the Divine can manifest HERE, in this PHYSICAL world.

April 5, 1967

(Mother begins by writing a note to the School's teachers:)

"It is the division between 'ordinary life' and `spiritua life' which is antiquated and obsolete."

... Have you read his question? Read it again to me.

"... It seemed to me that almost all the teachers were anxious to do something so the children would become more conscious of why they are here. At this point, I said that in my opinion, telling the children about spiritual things often had the opposite result and that those words lost all their value...."

"Spiritual things," what does he mean by spiritual things?

"Spiritual things"!... They teach history OR spiritual things, they teach science OR spiritual things. That's where the stupidity lies! In history, there is the Spirit; in science, there is the Spirit—the Truth is everywhere. And what's needed is to teach it not in an untruthful but in a true way.

... I am going to answer him, "There's no such thing as 'spiritual life'!"

It's still the old idea. Still the old idea of the sage, the yogi, the sannyasin, who represents spiritual life, while all others represent ordinary life—but it's not true! It's not true, not true at all.

... In all things Falsehood and Truth are there, mixed, everywhere; in the so-called "spiritual life," in the sannyasins, the swamis, those who think they represent divine life on earth and all that, there is also that mixture of Falsehood and Truth.

... For the children, precisely because they are children, the best would be to inculcate in them the will to conquer the future; the will to look ahead always and move forward as rapidly as they can towards ... what will be. But not to drag along, like a millstone around their necks, the burden of a whole past weighing down on them....

The main point, what is most important, is to get rid of that division. And they all have it in their minds—each and everyone of them! The division between living a spiritual life or living the ordinary life, having a spiritual consciousness or having an ordinary consciousness—there is only ONE consciousness!

In most people it's three-quarters asleep and distorted; in many it's still quite distorted. But what's necessary isn't to leap from one consciousness to the other—it is, quite simply, to open one's consciousness (gesture upward) and fill it with the vibrations of the Truth, putting it in harmony with what must be here (up there, it's from all eternity), but HERE, what must be HERE: the tomorrow of the earth. And if you weigh yourself down with a whole burden you have to drag along ... if you drag behind you all that you should let go of, you won't be able to move forward very fast.

Mind you, knowing things from the past of the earth can be very interesting and useful, but it must not be something that binds you or holds you back. If you use it as a springboard, it's all right. But ultimately, it's rather secondary....

(After a silence) It would be interesting to formulate or work out a new method of teaching for the children, taking them very young. Very young, it's easy. There must be people (oh, we would need remarkable teachers) who have, first, sufficient documentation on what is known, so as to be able to answer all questions; and at the same time, at least the knowledge, if not the experience (the experience would be better) of the true intuitive intellectual attitude, and ... naturally, the capacity would be still preferable, but at any rate the knowledge that the true way to know is mental silence: an attentive silence turned towards the truer Consciousness, and the capacity to receive what comes from there. The best would be to have that capacity; in any case, they should explain that it's the true thing—give a sort of demonstration—and that it works not only with regard to what must be learned, the whole field of knowledge, but also with regard to the whole field of what must be done: the capacity to receive the exact indication of HOW to do it. As one progresses, it turns into a very clear perception of what must be done, and the precise indication of WHEN it must be done. At the very least, as soon as the children have the capacity to reflect (it begins at seven, but around fourteen or fifteen it's very clear), they should be given some first hints at the age of seven, and a complete explanation at fourteen, of how to do it and that it's the only way enabling you to make contact with the deeper truth of things; that all the rest is a more or less clumsy mental approximation of something you can know directly.

The conclusion is that the teachers themselves should have at least a sincere beginning of discipline and experience: the point is not to pile up books and just keep repeating them. That's not the way to be a teacher—the whole earth is like that, we can just let it be like that outside if it enjoys it! As for us, we aren't propagandists, we just want to show what can be done and try to prove that it MUST be done.

When you begin with very small children, it's wonderful! With them, there's so little you have to do: you just have to BE.

Never make a mistake.

Never get angry.

Always understand.

Understand and see clearly why this movement took place, why that impulse, what the child's inner constitution is, which point needs to be strengthened and brought to the fore. That's all you have to do, and then leave them: leave them free to blossom, just give them the opportunity to see many things, touch many things, do as many things as possible. It's great fun. And above all, do not try to impose on them something you think you know.

Never scold, always understand, and, if the child is capable, explain. If he isn't capable of receiving an explanation, replace the false vibration by a true one (if you are yourself capable of it). But that ... that's asking of the teachers a perfection they rarely have.

But it would be very interesting to draw up a program for the teachers, and the real program for study, starting with the very small ones—they are so plastic and anything leaves such a deep imprint on them! If they were given a few drops of truth when they are very small, they would blossom out quite naturally as their being grows.

That would be a lovely work to do.

April 15, 1967

(Regarding a statement made a few days earlier by U Thant, secretary-general of the United Nations.)

There's a Burmese (you may have heard of this) who has just received a "peace prize." He has written an article in which he says what everybody knows, but also what everybody forgets : that if all the money wasted on preparing means of destruction were used for the progress of human wellbeing, it could work wonders. And he adds (I can't quote him exactly): for that to be done, men—nations and men—should stop distrusting and fearing each other, and should live in the sense of unity. And he says, if, for that, HUMAN NATURE HAS TO CHANGE, it's high time it changed and we must all work for that to happen.

I am extremely happy to hear this. Here is a man who has caught the true thing.⁶⁰

May 24, 1967

(After listening to a letter by Sri Aurobindo of 1935, on Russian Communism, spirituality, and "the fallacy of Karl Marx.")

Things are moving fast at present. He saw clearly: things are moving on as he said, now they are going at a gallop.

And the Americans!... They claim they want to launch a "disarmament campaign," but they themselves don't feel the possibility of it: they are full of fear and distrust; so their "solution" is to sell arms to everyone! (Mother laughs) With the idea, first, of making money, and then of making countries "equal"!

May 26, 1967

(Regarding the New Year message: "Men, countries, continents! The choice is imperative: Truth or the abyss." A disciple asks Mother, "What is the meaning of 'abyss' in your New Year Message?" Mother's reply:)

Right now there is a great tension. They have all taken positions as if to start war. It is the blind passion that men put into their international relations.

At the base of it all there is fear, general distrust, and what they believe to be their "interests" (money, business)—a combination of these three things. When these three lowest passions of humanity are brought into play, that is what I call "the abyss."

... People believe that the Grace means making everything smooth for all your life. It is not true. The Grace works for the realization of your aspiration and everything is arranged to gain the most prompt, the quickest realization—so there is nothing to fear.

Fear comes with insincerity. If you want a comfortable life, agreeable circumstances, etc., you are putting conditions and restrictions, and then you can fear.

May 30, 1967

(Tension has been rising in the Middle East; Egypt's president Nasser has called for "the destruction of Israel." The Six-Day War will break out early June.)

Poor Israel...

Oh, it's disgusting! There's another disgusting story.

Oh, yes!... That business is trumped up from start to finish, and India—India ...

Bah!

India goes and gives her support to that fellow [Nasser]. It's sad. What they've done is a villainy.

I've got a letter from someone (not from Israel) who writes to me that there is such a spirit of brotherhood and collaboration in the country, so strong, the like of which he has never seen anywhere else.

Humanity is preparing to do very nasty things, it seems.

Yes. But that India, which ought to be the mouthpiece of something a little truer, should ... It's sickening, really.

Oh, that's because the natural tendency here is against the Muslims, so those who think they are superior say one should be above one's dislikes: "Let's be with them." (Mother laughs)

There's the logic of it.

(After a silence) They lick the boots of the Muslims.

June 7, 1967

(A few days earlier, Mother was asked for a definition of the Divine. She replied: "The Divine can be lived, but not defined. The Divine is an absolute of perfection, eternal source of all that exists, whom we grow progressively conscious of while being Him from all eternity.")

I have something to add to what we said the other day about the Divine. Someone asks me, "And whatever is God?" So I have replied:

"It is the name man has given to all that exceeds and dominates him, all that he cannot know but is subject to."

I am intentionally not giving any definition. Because my lifelong feeling has been that it's a mere word, and a word behind which people put a lot of very undesirable things.... It's that idea of a god who claims to be "the one and only," as they say: "God is the one and only." ... That was what had made me a complete atheist, if I may say so, when I was a child; I refused to accept a being, WHOEVER HE WAS, who proclaimed himself to be the one and only and almighty. Even if he were indeed the one and only and almighty (laughing), he should have no right to proclaim it! That's how it was in my mind....

At any rate, I have given what I find is the most objective definition.... Here I wanted to fight against the use of the word which, to me, is hollow, but dangerously so.

(The conversation turns to the war in the Middle East)

We had here an American, a very nice boy who, before he came here, was a paratroop instructor in Israel's army.... When those two [Israel and Egypt] started quarrelling, he wrote me a letter in which he explained that, and also paid great compliments to the Israeli nation, saying they had achieved a really remarkable sense of brotherhood and cooperation. That was his impression of the country. And he said that if war broke out, he would like to go back there to help them as much as he could. So as soon as they started bombing each other, he decided to go. He left yesterday evening. And I saw him in the afternoon, before he left.

While he was here, Sri Aurobindo ... (how can I explain?), the impression is that Sri Aurobindo "concretizes" (he is always here, but at certain times he seems to concretize, as though ... [Mother makes a gesture of gathering or condensing]. *That's really the impression: he concretizes and starts speaking). So then, first Sri Aurobindo said to him (but there was a whole WORLD in it), "My blessings are with you."

The man was very touched (I didn't tell him it was Sri Aurobindo; I spoke, you understand, it was my mouth that spoke then, but it was Sri Aurobindo who spoke). Then I concentrated, and Sri Aurobindo said with great force :

"All the countries live in falsehood.
If only one country
stood courageously for truth,
the world might be saved."

Towards the end of the day, when I was alone, I began asking Sri Aurobindo precisely what he meant. Naturally, his hope is that the country that "stood for Truth" would be India—for the moment, she is very far from it. But ... And since the subject was before me, I asked him how he saw the terrestrial possibility in a harmonious future.

Then he said to me—it was very simple, very clear: "A -federation of all nations and countries without exception, all continents. A single federation : the federation of all human nations of the earth." And a group—a governing group—consisting of one representative from each country, the most able man from the standpoint of political and economic organization. And nothing of the proportional question that would give large countries many representatives and small ones only one—one representative for every country. Because every country represents one aspect of the problem. And they would sit in rotation.

It was a vast vision, not so much with words as with a vision....

You see, every national entity has a right to free and independent existence, provided it doesn't interfere in the free and independent existence of all other entities. Ambitions, territorial expansions—of course, all colonies and all of that—must be swept out of the picture.

... For the moment, at any rate, all diplomatic relations are based on falsehood—and the crudest falsehood at that: it's recognized as a necessity and the only way out. That's how they consider it. So that's what must be abolished to begin with.

(After a silence) There is a group in the new Indian parliament, a group of people dissatisfied with the position taken by India, who have declared their wish to act according to Sri Aurobindo's ideal and instructions. And they've asked if we could send someone from here to hold conferences in Delhi.... It's a "group"—naturally not the whole parliament.

It's something to be envisaged.

But the difficulty is to find the "someone," because it should be a man who knows Sri Aurobindo thoroughly to begin with, who is capable of receiving his inspirations directly (a very difficult condition), and has at the same time a very strong character with a power—a contagious power—and a force that can arouse the inert masses.... For years I have been looking for that man, without finding him.

There was a man who would have done—not fully well, not with enough breadth of mind to fully understand Sri Aurobindo, but very straight and strong—he was assassinated in Kashmir.

Assassinated?

He is the one who came here when we wanted to have a conference for the opening of the University; he presided over it.⁶¹ A rather tall man, and strong. I forget his name. But it was in Kashmir that he was assassinated (not officially, of course: he "fell ill.")

It wasn't perfect, it was a stopgap, but anyway he would have done. But now ... Among the young people whom I don't know?... What is needed is power combined with that breadth of mind capable of understanding Sri Aurobindo's inspiration and transmitting it; and along with that, vital power. The two things together.

June 20, 1967

(A note from Mother to a visiting member of a commission of the ministry of Education. The official stuck Mother's note on the first page of his report.)

For the Government of India, one thing is to be known: does it want to live for the Future or does it stick desperately to the past?

August 12, 1967

They've asked me for a message.... On the 19th, the prince of Kashmir, Karan Singh, is holding in Delhi a big meeting of all the members of the parliament and the government to tell them that there is only one policy worth following, that of Sri Aurobindo. And he wants a message from me. Here it is:

"O India, land of Light and spiritual knowledge, wake up to your true mission in the world. Show the way to union and harmony."

I deliberately didn't use the word "peace"; I said "harmony." I don't want to say "peace," because for them, "peace" means telling other nations platitudes so as not to fight (!). So I don't want to use that word.

(After a silence) Things are very bad. But in reality ... in reality that's very good, because it awakens them to the need to do something. There's no longer any security anywhere....

They've lost all their values. Yesterday I met the vice-chancellor of Bangalore University;⁶² can you guess what they teach in psychology at the university? They teach Freud and Jung! European psychoanalysis! In this country where there is THE knowledge, where there is everything, they go after...

They're mad. No, the English made them thoroughly rotten. Those two hundred years of British rule left them completely rotten. Naturally, another effect is that some people have awakened, but they don't know anything; they know nothing either of administration or of government or anything—they've lost everything, and whatever they know is what they were taught by Britain, which means an absolutely corrupt business. So they don't know anything, they don't even know how to make a decision.

But still, they are beginning to think that they should ask for help from those who know.... So that opens the door.

We'll see.

If things had gone quite well ... Now the country is ruined, people are completely ruined, there are only a few bandits (I know them) who, on the contrary, are bursting at the seams, but all the others are ruined because ... because the government doesn't know how to do things, it governs with ideas, and what ideas! Ideas they picked up in the West again, which they don't understand and are already bad enough for the West, but here they become pestilential.

But now they're beginning to think that perhaps that's not the way!

September 13, 1967

(About the Christian conception of hell.)

... The amount of harm that conception has done in the world is frightening, frightening: the idea that if you commit a serious fault, it means hell for ALL ETERNITY, do you hear!

It's horrible.

It's a dreadful, monstrous notion.

When you look at it as it is, outside all routine, when you look at it as it is, it's a monstrous notion—I don't know what demon invented it.... If you were told, "You'll have to spend a few years in hell to expiate," that would do—it's not charitable, not generous, but anyway it's acceptable; but that idea of "all eternity"—an ETERNITY OF HELL—is something monstrous! It's a wholly diabolical idea.

And that's what frightens them. Even when consciously they don't accept it, it's there in the subconscious.

It is said ... (but I am not sure about this, because it was simply repeated to me), a Catholic panjandrum to whom I spoke my mind quite plainly, answered me, "In the College of Cardinals, they are taught the truth and told this is not true." I said, "God bless the cardinals, but their first duty should be to destroy this ... monstrous formation."

October 7, 1967

Sri Aurobindo once said (jokingly, as it were), while talking with those around him (I was there and we were talking about Christianity and the "new Christ"), he told them, "Oh, if the new Christ comes, the Church will crucify him!"

... Why are people hypnotized by the past? It's strange. The thing was very interesting when it came, of course, very necessary; it had to come, it did its work—but now it's over.

They don't know how to move on. They just sit down like that—"Now I've found it! I'll sit down and won't budge." (Mother laughs)

Sri Aurobindo always used to say, "I don't want people to do the same thing with what I have said...."

One must always go farther.

... A "leading light" of the Church said to me [in France], "But what do you know! You belong to the universal Roman Church." I told him (laughing), "Well, I don't mind, that doesn't bother me!"

But they're a nuisance with their Church!

(Mother laughs) They're like that.

Rome!... But Rome was a non-existent foetus when there had already been millennia of wisdom.

But Rome is nothing! I don't know why in Europe they attach so much importance to this whole affair....

The world begins with them

Even from the standpoint of culture, Rome was far inferior to Greece.... I don't know why—but it's the case of all the Latin countries, I think.

They put everything upside down.

... And when they are too small to swell themselves up, they enter religion and swell it up: they turn it into an enormous thing that dominates the world.

Ah, never mind, if they find it amusing ...

(After a silence) What do these people call "sin," to begin with? What is sin? When I am told about sin, I answer, "You know, sin is not being Divine."

So the whole world is in sin!

October 19, 1967

Too many, too many people are in the mind: mental difficulties and more mental difficulties.... You can't get through (impenetrable gesture). It's an endless process. And that's what makes those ... oh, 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!

... (About a hibiscus) How beautiful it was! Like this (same gesture of fervent aspiration): a thirst, a thirst for the Divine, a thirst for the Divine. All those mental ratiocinations and complications, it all goes round and round in circles. Yes, it does bring about what's now taking place [in the world]: a sordid conflict, really sordid, between Falsehood and Truth.

And the government is rotten. People whose very 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. Now there is Kali, 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.

(After a silence) We have reached a climax, because the impression is really that mind is triumphing over Matter, and it is convinced of it. Convinced—they go everywhere at their own sweet will, they know all that goes on everywhere ... and they don't even know what goes on inside themselves.

November 11, 1967

(From a conversation with teachers regarding Indian languages to be taught.)

Everybody should learn Sanskrit. Specially all those who work here should learn it.... Each and everyone, whatever his place of birth.

Not Sanskrit on a scholarly level, but a Sanskrit ... (how should I put it?) which opens the door to all languages of India. I think it's indispensable. The ideal would be to have in a few years a modernized Sanskrit, that is to say, a spoken Sanskrit, like the Sanskrit you find behind all languages of India. That was an idea of Sri Aurobindo, we spoke about it. Because now, of course, English is the language of the country as a whole, but that's abnormal. It's very good to facilitate relations with the rest of the world, but just as every country has its own language, India should ... But then here, the minute one wants to have a language for the whole country, everybody starts quarrelling. Everybody wants his own language to be the one, which is stupid. But Sanskrit, no one would object to it, and it's a language more ancient than the others, in which you find the sounds, the "root-sounds" of many words.

That was something I studied with Sri Aurobindo, which of course is very interesting. There are even those roots that are found in all languages of the world, root-sounds that are in all languages. Well, that is what should be learned, what shoUld be the country's language. Every child born in India must know that, just as every child born in France must know French.... Even now, people get bogged down in quarrels, which is a very bad atmosphere to build anything. But I hope a day will come when that is possible.

As for women, in principle women are the power of execution. We should never forget that.... For execution, you are the ones who have the power of execution in every detail, along with the whole power of organization. I am at present inculcating that in our women members of Parliament—you know that we have women in the Parliament, and I am teaching that to them: Do not be subjected to men. You are the ones who have the power of execution.

December 27, 1967

(During violent anti-Hindi agitation in South India particularly in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry: trains, buses, post offices, etc., are set on fire....)

If there were a way (that's what I have been working on for some time), a way to make all this youth understand that to destroy doesn't build—they can't give birth to anything whatsoever with this means. They want to change the state of things, agreed—they may not see very clearly the direction in which we should go, but that things must change is agreed—but still, this method is downright stupid....

You see, that was the method of the adverse forces to prove that the creation was bad: they weren't satisfied with the creation and set about doing that—that's what they have been doing on a big scale. But it doesn't prove anything! They have established death, established destruction and all the forms of violence and hatred, anyway they turned everything topsy-turvy with the thought that, that way, the world would become a superior world—which is stupid.

And all these people now follow one another in single file, not even aware of what they're doing or why or how or anything! ... They act in the name of freedom and, yes, free progress, because an attempt is made to impose an arbitrary law [Hindi] on them—the arbitrary law is stupid, but what they are doing is still more silly.

Yes, but in this case, all the politicians are the ones to blame.

Oh, yes.

The students follow directives.

... It's perfectly obvious that the higher-ups are the ones to blame, because they're not genuine people : they have neither the knowledge nor the vision nor the wisdom necessary to govern....

You understand, all this confusion, all this disorder seems to be intended to prepare people for one thing, which, obviously, has not so far even been imagined as being possible—the recourse to a disinterested wisdom in order to govern. They're all caught up in "If I do this, these people will be against me; if I do that, those people ..."

(After a silence) At the very bottom of the thing, two tendencies or two conceptions are confronting each other. The first says, "It's badly done: let's destroy it and we'll begin again," from top to bottom. The other says, "It's not the way it should be: let's transform it." These are the two things opposing each other: the effort for progress and transformation, or the brutal and stupid method of smashing everything and starting all over again, so that it goes on endlessly.

It boils down to the fight between Death and Life; progressive life, more and more divine, and Death, which systematically abolishes all that isn't divine. Because only what is divine escapes it.

But the process is ... endless.

The power of progressive transformation is what must be infused into Matter.

February 3, 1968

(Mother reads a message she has given for Auroville inauguration.)

I asked, I concentrated to know what had to be said. And all of a sudden, Sri Aurobindo gave me a revelation. That was something interesting. I concentrated to know the why, the how and so on, and all of a sudden Sri Aurobindo said ... (Mother reads out a note):

"India has become the symbolic representation of all the difficulties of modern mankind.

"India will be the land of its resurrection—the resurrection to a higher and truer life."

And the clear vision: the same thing which in the history of the universe made the earth the symbolic representation of the universe so as to concentrate the work on one point, the same phenomenon is now taking place: India is the representation of all human difficulties on earth, and it is in India that the cure will be found.... I often used to wonder about it (not "wonder,"" but there was a tension to understand why things, here in India, have become such a chaos, with such sordid difficulties, and all of it piling up), and instantly, everything became clear, like that. It was really interesting.

February 14, 1968

(About an Indian guru who has risen to fame in the USA.)

There are lots and lots of such people now. I've already told you about three or four. And each of them has thousands of followers, who probably don't understand anything of what he does! But the impression one gets is of something that ... works up the dough, like that (gesture).

You catch hold of one tiny bit, one angle; you pierce a kind of little hole through which you can see on the other side, and with that you stir thousands of people.

So long as it's not exclusive, that is, so long as the man or woman (whoever they are), the guru, doesn't come and say, "I alone am the Truth" (meaning the others don't know, I alone know), so long as they're not like that, it's quite all right. When they're enlightened enough to tell you, "Yes, I've caught hold of one little bit, I am giving it to you, but all other little bits are good" ... But even if you put all the bits together, you are still far from THE Truth.

February 21, 1968

(A message from Mother broadcast on All India Radio on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday.)

It is not the number of years you have lived that makes you old. You become old when you stop progressing. As soon as you feel you have done what you had to do, as soon as you think you know what you ought to know, as soon as you want to sit and enjoy the results of your effort, with the feeling you have worked enough in life, then at once you become old and begin to decline. When, on the contrary, you are convinced that what you know is nothing compared to all that remains to be known, when you feel that what you have done is just the starting point of what remains to be done, when you see the future like an attractive sun shining with innumerable possibilities yet to be achieved, then you are young, howsoever many are the years you have passed upon earth, young and rich with all the realisations of tomorrow. And if you do not want your body to fail you, avoid wasting your energies in useless agitation. Whatever you do, do it in a quiet and composed poise. In peace and silence is the greatest strength.

February 28, 1968

The Force is there, present as never before; what prevents it from descending and being felt is men's insincerity. The world is steeped in falsehood, all relationships between men have so far been based only on falsehood and deceit. Diplomacy between nations is based on falsehood. They claim they want peace and on the other hand arm themselves. A transparent sincerity in man and between nations will alone permit the coming of a transformed world.

March 28, 1968

(From a letter.)

Politics and so-called justice are still, in humanity, what is most closed to the Truth. But their turn for conversion will also come, perhaps sooner than we think.

April 10, 1968

The truth is that money belongs to no one. This idea of "possession" of money is what has perverted everything. Money shouldn't be a "possession": it's a means of action, which is given to you just like a power, but you have to use it according to ... what we might call "the Donor's will," that is, impersonally and with foresight. If you are a good instrument in the spread and use of money, then it comes to you, and it does so in proportion to your capacity of using it in the right way. That's the true working.

... The true attitude is this : money is a universal force meant to do the work on earth, the work needed to prepare the earth to receive the divine forces and manifest them, and it must come into the hands (the utilizing power, that is) of those who have the clearest vision, the most general and truest vision.... Money belongs to no one: money is a collective property that only those with an integral and general, universal vision must use.

... All the intermediaries have proved incompetent: theocracy, aristocracy, democracy, plutocracy—all that is a complete failure. The other one too is now giving proof of its failure, the government of ... what can we call it? Democracy? (But democracy always implies the idea of educated, rich people.) That has given proof of its complete incompetence.

It's the reign of the most equally shared stupidity.

Yes, that's right! But I am referring to the system all the way down, socialistic or communistic, which represents material needs.... But all that ... all that has been tried out and has given proof of its incompetence. The only thing that could be competent is the Truth-Consciousness choosing instruments and expressing itself through a certain number of instruments, if one can't be found (just one isn't enough, either, that one would necessarily need to choose a whole collectivity). Those possessing this consciousness may belong to any class of society: it's not a privilege arising from birth, but the result of personal effort and development. In fact, that would be an external sign, an evident sign of change on the political level: no question anymore of classes or categories or birth (all that is outdated), but those individualities that have reached a higher consciousness would have the right to govern, whatever class they belong to—and no others.

That would be the true vision.

But all those participating in the experience would have to be absolutely convinced that the highest consciousness is the best judge of the MOST MATERIAL THINGS. You see, what has ruined India is this idea that the higher consciousness has to do with "higher" things, while it's not interested in lower things and knows nothing about them! That's what has caused the ruin of India. Well, this error must be completely abolished. It's the highest consciousness that sees the most clearly—the most clearly and the most truly—what the needs of the most material thing should be.

With this, we could try out a new kind of government.

April 20, 1968

(In reply to a disciple's question on the acceptance of spirituality in mankind.)

The opposition between spirituality and material life, the division between the two has no sense for me as, in truth, life and the spirit are ONE and it is in and by physical work that the highest spirit must be manifested.

May 18, 1968

There are long, long, very long periods during which things are prepared; there is, afterwards, a very long, very long period during which things develop, organize, settle and bear consequences ; but between this and that, there is a moment when things are done, when they happen. It's not always very long (sometimes it is, at other times it's very brief), but that's when something happens. And that "something" is what will give the world a new development. Well, we are just—as it happens, we are just at such a moment. Which means that if we are (people, most of the time, are blind), if we aren't blind, if our eyes are open, we WILL SEE, we will see things.

May 22, 1968

(This is the time of the "May Revolution" in France, in which millions of students and workers brought the country to a standstill. One of the slogans of the students was: "Be real istic demand the impossible." Student uprising followed in many other countries, from Asia to America.)

Mother, and what's now happening in France, what does it mean?

It's clearly the future which is awakening and trying to drive away the past.

... For example, the students want to completely change the method of education: they violently demand the elimination of all examinations. And they themselves are unaware of it, but they are driven by a force that wants the manifestation of a truer truth.

They themselves would rather have no violence—it seems it's not the students who started the violence, but the police. And that's very interesting, because the police stand for the defence of the past. When I was given the news, then there came in me (it was said very, very clearly, a very clear vision): the future. It's the higher Power COMPELLING people to do what they must do. Between now and that (which is a long way ahead), there must be the power of an IMMOBILE number. And the vision was very clear: if millions—not thousands, millions—of people assemble and occupy the place absolutely peacefully (simply assemble and occupy the place, naturally with representatives who will say what they like), then it will have power. But there must be no violence; as soon as one indulges in violence, it's the return to the past and the open door to all conflicts. At the time, I didn't know it was the police that had started the violence; I didn't know, I wasn't aware of the details of the events. But it was a very clear vision: an occupation by the mass, but a mass all-powerful in its immobility, imposing its will through sheer numbers, with intellectual representatives for negotiations.

... It's clearly (not in the detail of it, but in the direction of the movement), clearly a will to have done with the past and to open the door to the future.

It's like a sort of revulsion with stagnation. That's it. A thirst for something which is ahead and appears more luminous, better. And indeed there Is something—it's not just imagination: there IS something. That's the beauty of it, it's that there Is something. There Is a Response. There Is a Force that wants ... to express itself.

France is in a privileged situation: India first and France afterwards, for reasons of ... simply of receptivity. France has always tried to be ahead—which in fact is why this body was born there.

(After a silence) The newspapers speak of a strike by several million people there. It doesn't look like a strike at all, it looks like a revolution.

... Now, the state of the earth would seem to be precisely such that at the very least what is being prepared (if it's not yet actually like that) is the manifestation of the mass in a kind of silent and immobile And that's an intermediate period to reach the condition in which this mass will be held under the control and directly driven by the Power from above.

That's where we are heading.

May 29, 1968

There's a letter from X [a teacher] complaining about the films shown [at the Ashram] and saying that films should be instructive and show admirable things. But for a film to show admirable things, people should live those admirable things, no?!

She even wrote to me that they were a whole group of teachers who intended to write and circulate a letter asking for a change—I don't like all that. It's a small-town boarding-school spirit. So yesterday evening, I wrote an answer. (Mother reads:)

"We would like to be able to show the children pictorial representations of what life should be, but we still have not reached that stage, very far from it. Those films are yet to be made. And for the moment, films more often than not show what life should not be, and do so strikingly enough to give you a disgust for it.

"That too is useful as a preparation.

"Films are allowed in the Ashram not as entertainment but as part of education. The problem is therefore that of education.

"If we consider that a child must only learn, know and be aware of what can keep him pure of all lower, crude, violent and degrading movements, then we should eliminate at one stroke the entire contact with the rest of mankind, beginning with all those accounts of wars, murders, conflicts and deceits that are called History; we should eliminate the present contact with family, parents and friends; and we should constantly control the child's contact with all the vital impulses of his own being.

"This idea is what led to monastic life shut in a convent, or to ascetic life in the cave or the forest.

"This remedy has proved to be totally ineffective and has not pulled mankind out of its quagmire.

"According to Sri Aurobindo, the remedy is altogether different.

"We must face integral life with all that it still entails in terms of ugliness, falsehood and cruelty, but while taking care to discover in ourselves the source of all goodness, all beauty, all light and all truth, in order to consciously put that source in contact with the world so it may transform it.

"That is infinitely more difficult than fleeing or closing one's eyes so as not to see—but it is the only really effective way, the way of those who are truly strong and pure and capable of manifesting the Truth.

"You can show this letter to those who share your indignation."

They need to be shaken a little, oh, they're goody-goody!

June 3, 1968

I have just seen some twenty people.... There was Orissa's Chief Minister.... He is a nice man. The people from Orissa, they are nice people; of all provinces, they are the ones who seem the most eager to forge ahead, to change something.

And Bengal? Isn't it ahead?

They're a bit ... fanciful. I mean, they talk a lot—they talk very well! Those from Orissa are more practical—they're generous, a very generous nature: they give a lot.

Bengal ... they know, or feel, that they are the country intellectual leaders, so they are puffed up with themselves. Me, I like simple people.

July 3, 1968

(All India Radio asked Mother for a message on India's condition.)

I said this

"It is only India's soul that can unify the country.

"Externally the provinces of India are very different in character, tendencies, culture, as well as in language, and any attempt to unify them artificially could only have disastrous results.

"But her soul is one, intense in her aspiration towards the spiritual truth, the essential unity of the creation and the divine origin of life, and by uniting with this aspiration the whole country can recover a unity that has never ceased to exist for the superior mentality."

I put, "the essential unity of the creation and the divine origin of life." That whole formula, I know, was an attempt to express the thing without using the word "God," because ... There was in my life a period of at least twenty years during which those words used to make me bristle, so I understand very well the feeling it evokes in people. Later, it was Sri Aurobindo who made me rise above all that; but it's because he pulled me very high up that I rose above all that, otherwise, on an intellectual level, it didn't do at all. It evokes the narrowest religiosity, and ... it won't do.

July 10, 1968

(A note on education)

According to what I know and see, in a general way, children OVER FOURTEEN should be left independent, and should be given advice only in so far as they ASK for it.

They must know that steering their own life is their responsibility.

November 13, 1968

Lots of people from the United States are coming here at the moment, and they bring news of an appalling crisis over there, a crisis of discouraged pessimism.... The whole youth seems to be in a woeful state of depression and discouragement.

They've discovered all that was hollow, false, unreal in the old way of seeing life, and they haven't found anything to replace it with.... A few rare individuals (we get their letters, or they come here) say that they came across Sri Aurobindo's teaching and found it to be the salvation. But they are very few. And the majority of people don't understand—they don't have the intelligence needed to understand.

So everywhere they're sinking back; there has been an effort to emerge from that exclusive search for personal satisfaction, and it has led to extravagances; but now the very absurdity of those extravagances has become apparent, so they're sinking back very low, and they haven't found—they haven't found the true path. Because it's not a mental path.

Everywhere there is still the cult of the mind, that's the terrible thing.

January 1, 1969

(Message for the New Year:)

No words—acts.

January 29, 1969

Going by the echoes from Europe, you get a sense of a huge balloon swelling and swelling more and more (economically, financially, mechanically) and about to burst—it has to burst ... into something else. And the Mind is part of this balloon.

Yes, yes, it's the Mind that seems to have swollen as much as it can, almost to bursting. It's exactly that.

I was wondering about this: Will it take ... a complete bankruptcy of the Mind for people to understand?... Will it burst to end in a zero?

February 12, 1969

(A message.)

Be more eager for truth than for success.

March 12, 1969

These last few days, there were elections here [in Pondicherry] (an awful mess), and I was put in contact with all that.... And there was a whole series of very interesting experiences. There was a very acute sense of all the conventionality in -political parties, because under a single political flag there are the most opposite opinions, each one in the name of the same principle! So it became so clear, so clear!... And then I saw to what extent it's really an illusion—a complete illusion; politics is something ... in the name of the same principle, people do absolutely opposite things! In the name of the same political principle. Everyone is anxious that HIS party should have the upper hand—and it appeared to me that it didn't, matter in the least! It was only people's quality of receptivity that mattered, and also their level of consciousness. As far as the party was concerned—anything.

April 9, 1969

Life could be so marvellously simple and beautiful.... Man has really made it idiotic.

April 17, 1969

(Excerpts from words noted down from memory by a minister close to Indira Gandhi, who paid a visit to Mother.)

... There is only one country in the world that knows that there is only one Truth to which everything should be turned, and that is India. Other countries have forgotten this, but in India it is ingrained in the people, and one day it will come out.

We must all recognize this and work for this. India is the cradle of the Truth and will lead the world to Truth. India will find its real place in the world when it realizes this.

... To be a true servitor of the Truth one must forget all one's personal desires and preferences and have only the thought to serve the Truth.

It is only women who know how to use this Power that comes from serving the Truth.

The laws of man cannot stand before the laws of the Divine and ultimately it is the laws of the Divine that will prevail.

... I know the conditions of the country. Even if one person could put himself faithfully at the disposal of the Truth, he could change the country and the world.

April 19, 1969

(Following serious riots in West Bengal involving the army.)

... The previous days, I had seen all kinds of catastrophic things. (I didn't know what the situation was.) When I was told, I instantly knew: I saw the Chinese HERE. Yes. It stirred me a lot, a lot. And with HORRIBLE things, horrible. So I had to send someone immediately to tell her [Indira], "For heaven's sake, support the army." It's India's only hope. The army is good, but it's not supported. But that shouldn't be told, because I am not supposed to concern myself with politics, so ...

But it seems that in three States the Communists WANT the Chinese to come. That's dreadful. The Chinese, you can't imagine what it is.... Horrible! They're horrible. With a cold, terrible cruelty.

So it's been very, very difficult these last few days.... Then I understood why I had seen all those circumstances—for several days it was all about India, and I saw it was serious, very serious....

But this increasingly growing Chinese monster, one doesn't see what will be able to stop it.

Yes, that's right.

One doesn't see, except, of course, a nuclear cataclysm Otherwise, everywhere it only wants to devour.

Yes.

... China is extremely intellectual; if the Chinese intelligence were captured by Sri Aurobindo's thought, it would be ... That seems to be the sole, the only hope.

... America is extremely interested in Auroville. Russia is extremely interested in Auroville. The Chinese ... nothing, absolutely nothing, no response.

They are ... I don't know how to ... The impression is of something stonelike. It doesn't respond.

(After a long silence) For ... for years, even from the time Sri Aurobindo was here, there had been the vision—an inner vision—that India is the place where the fate of the earth will be decided. So the two opposite possibilities are there. As if it were said that if there were war, it would be over India; that the world conflict ... (how can I put it?), the ISSUE would be played out over India. But will the Force of Peace be sufficient to prevent war? There's the whole question. But the whirl of forces is here, over India.

The Consciousness has given a great rapidity of movement to circumstances. But then, it's becoming urgent. And ... oh, falsehood, duplicity ... oh, everything seems to be rising to the surface—it's hideous. Will the Force of Harmony and Peace be strong enough to ... to digest all that? I don't know.

There is always this inner will to ... (gesture of pressure to establish peace). As if it were, I can't say a last conflict, but it's becoming ... it's becoming immediate.

It's like a conflict between the forces that want to destroy the earth and the terrestrial transformation. If those forces can be checked, can be mastered or rendered powerless, then the earth's progress and transformation will go on soaring up—magnificent! But now ... monsters seem to be coming up from every side to prevent that.

(After a silence) It's exactly as if we were sitting on top of a volcano: either the volcano must fall extinct, or everything is going to blow up. That's how it is.

May 3, 1969

All the methods—which we may call artificial, Nirvana included—all the methods to get out of it are worthless. Beginning with the fool who kills himself to "put an end" to his life: that's ... of all stupidities, that one is the biggest, it makes his case still worse. From that up to Nirvana (where one imagines one can get out of it), all of it, all of it is worth NOTHING. Those are different stages, but they're worth NOTHING.

... But salvation is PHYSICAL—not at all mental, but PHYSICAL. I mean it's not in escape: it's ... HERE.

... It's not that it's veiled or hidden or anything: it's HERE.... All the rest, including death and everything, really becomes a falsehood, that is to say, something that does not exist.

June 28, 1969

(A note.)

The West expresses more than it really knows.
India knows more than it really can express.

August 2, 1969

(About someone from the Vatican who is in contact with Mother and wants to work for the unification of Catholics and Protestants.)

That's not the thing needed, because it would have strengthened Christianity—division takes away some of its power.... All that gives strength to Christianity is not good. Christianity hoped to dominate the earth, and it's this division that prevented its domination.

August 9, 1969

UNESCO want to publish a brochure on "tolerance," and they wrote 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.

(The conversation turns to India's fast-growing population.)

There would be one way, that is 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,its frightful.

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

(After a silence) The Consciousness 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.

August 16, 1969

(Mother is asked for a message on Sanskrit and how to give it a new life.)

I see no need for any message. Messages only convince those who are already convinced.

It would be better to learn Sanskrit and try to make it a truly living language.

August 16, 1969

From every side it comes like that (gesture of waves of onslaught). Now they want to force me into politics ... and it's an unspeakable mud pit! I've never seen it as I now do, because now I SEE : I see people, things, reactions, what goes on.... It's so disgusting!... Sri Aurobindo had always told me, "We must keep out of politics," and I kept out of it.

From every side they're asking me for blessings ... and I give blessings to everyone!⁶³ (Mother laughs) But I warn them, I tell them, blessings TO DO THE WORK. Each of them is asking for himself to be victorious, but "that" doesn't budge. All that I've done (because I have been dragged into it) is to ask for what happens to be the best for the country's future—it has already had enough difficulties! I mean, there were two centuries of servitude under the British: that has left them com-plete-ly rotten. So it's enough. They would need to pull through. Oh ... unimaginable, it's unimaginable.

... I think democracy ... Already at the age of ten, I found democracy to be idiotic (there, in France), but anyway ... It's idiotic there, in France (but that doesn't matter), but at any rate I don't think democracy is AT ALL, at all an organization in accord with India's spirit—not in the least. And the proof is that it's not at all the collectivity of people that controls things, it's a few scoundrels who push themselves forward, saying, "I represent this, I represent that...."

(After a silence) Unfortunately, the new invader would be China, and that ... that would be frightful.

But you know that in "The Ideal of Human Unity," Sri Aurobindo says in black and white that the next battlefield would be India?

Yes, yes.

*That the conflict would take place in Asia, with India as the first battlefield.⁶⁴

Yes, I know very well, we spoke about it together before he wrote it. I know very well.

(After a silence) There's a Chinese in Shantiniketan [Tan Yunshan] who once came to see Sri Aurobindo; I know him, he spoke to me. He is a philosopher. He had properties in China (he lives in India) and gave everything to the Communists, saying, "I give it to you so you don't have to take it"!... He told me personally [in 1939], "China is a very intelligent country; they would be able to understand Sri Aurobindo's writings, and I see NOTHING ELSE that could save the world from confusion."

And they're cutting off the heads of all the intellectual there,⁶⁵ they're demolishing a whole generation—stultifyin a whole generation.

Yes.

(After a long concentration) When one is assailed by the vision of this disorder and this confusion, there is only one thing to do, it's to go into the consciousness in which one knows that there is only ONE Being, ONE Consciousness, ONE Power—there is only ONE Oneness—and all those things take place within this Oneness. And that all our petty vision, our petty knowledge, our petty judgments, our petty ... all of it is nothing, it's microscopic in comparison with the Consciousness that rules over the Whole. And then, if one has the least sense of why separate individualities exist, maybe it's only to enable aspiration—the existence of aspiration, of this movement, this movement of self-giving and surrender, of trust and FAITH. The faith that there lies the raison d'être of the make-up of individuals, and the aspiration to become THAT in all one's intensity and all one's sincerity.... That's the only thing needed.

That's the only thing needed, the ONLY thing; the only thing that subsists. All the rest ... phantasmagoria.

It's the only thing effective in every case: when you want to do something, when you cannot do something, when you act, when the body can no longer act ... In EACH and EVERY case, that alone—that alone: make conscious contact with the Supreme Consciousness, unite with it, and ... wait. There.

Then one receives the exact indication of what one has to do every minute—to do or not to do, to act or to remain still. That's all. Even to be or not to be. And it's the only solution. More and more, more and more this certitude is there: it's the ONLY solution. All the rest is childishness.

I feel, I feel that agitation, like this (Mother feels the air), phew! It whirls about in the atmosphere!

Poor humanity.

September 14, 1969

(After his election, President Giri paid a visit to Mothe She gave him the following message:)

Let us all work for the greatness of India.

October 6, 1969

(Indira Gandhi came to see Mother. Mother gave her the following messages.)

"Let India work for the future and take the lead. Thus she will recover her true place in the world."

"Since long it was the habit to govern through division and opposition.

"The time has come to govern through union, mutual understanding and collaboration."

"To choose a collaborator, the value of the man is more important than the party to which he belongs."

"The greatness of a country does not depend on the victory of a party, but on the union of all the parties."

October 11, 1969

Oh, a few days ago I was told a frightful story—what depths humanity has sunk to ... it's unbelievable. Have you heard this story of the slaughter of baby seals?

When seals are born (a certain species of seals), they're all white, and they remain so for a few weeks, then they lose their hair and turn grey—grey or yellowish, like their fathers and mothers. And as it's the fashion to wear all-white fur coats, some people ... It's organized by some trader or other: seals gather at the time of giving birth, there's a place there, in the North, on an island, where they gather in their thousands, and each mother gives birth to a single child. So those people go there in boats, fully equipped, and when the seals are born, they kill them—thousands of them at one go. It takes ten or fifteen skins to make a coat. And they slaughter them. But then, for the carnage to be cheap (you understand, it shouldn't cost too much), they club the animals on their heads, then with big butchers' knives they skin them on the spot—skin them while they're still alive....

That is to say ... it seems they shriek, you know, they aren't dumb.... It seems the mothers (they've just given birth, you see, they're suckling the pups) try to defend them—so to prevent them from seeing what goes on, they put out their eyes.... Well, when I was told that, I saw a humanity sinking into .. an abyss of ignominy.

... Why, why? And those women who wear that ... all those animals' suffering, all those animals' horror, their terror—they wear all that on their backs. And it doesn't give them nightmares! ... Unbelievable.

It seems the fashion is to go dancing wearing a stole made of two or three skins of those poor beasts....

People are getting insane!

It's only ONE example, one sort of epitome. But this IGNOBLE consciousness is everywhere on earth.... I saw it like that. But it's one thing that has as if crystallized to awaken the reaction.

Oh, those little ones ...

Seals are highly evolved animals, they aren't among the unconscious ones. There was one on the cover, with eyes staring at you like that, it was delightful!

It's not so much for those poor little ones, because they have a special protection (all that's conscious in them is like that, cherished). It's the ignominy of humans : they must become conscious of their ignominy—they find it quite natural.

This world is revolting from one end to the other. There's nothing—I would keep nothing of this world, nothing.

(Mother laughs) No, this isn't revolting (Mother lays her hand on a bouquet of roses near her). This is ... a really and truly beautiful adoration.

Yes, without humans, it's quite fine.

Oh, it's the humans, because even animals aren't so disgusting.

Not at all.

A beast like a tiger or a lion kills only when it's hungry. But to make money—this is to make money.... With the women, it's unconsciousness; I am sure the vast majority of those who wear that, if they were told, "You're wearing on you the skin torn from a living and shrieking animal," it would give them nightmares—the vast majority. Very few would say, "Why should I care!" Very few.

But the brutes are the ones who're getting rich.

October 15, 1969

(Mother shows the following note which was given to seven or eight members of Orissa's parliament:)

"Socialism, like all political parties, belongs to the past and must be surpassed if we want to serve the Truth."

The most comical part—that is, the most extraordinary—i that they all agreed! I thought they were going to be furious They all said, "Oh, this is fine, we'll adopt it...."

Their conviction wasn't very deep!

November, 1969

(A message.)

To listen is good but not sufficient—you must understand.

To understand is better but not yet sufficient —you must act

November 13, 1969

(From a letter.)

Love of Nature is usually the sign of a pure and healthy being uncorrupted by modern civilization. It is in the silence of a peaceful mind that one can best commune with Nature.

November 19, 1969

There are no words that can express the magnificence of the Grace : how everything is arranged for things to move as fast as possible. Individuals are miserable insofar as they aren't conscious of "that," as they take a false position with regard to what happens to them.

November 22, 1969

(Mother shows two messages she has sent to Delhi.)

"Money is not meant to make money, money is meant to prepare the earth for the new creation."

"The men of finance and the businessmen have been offered the possibility to collaborate with the future, but most of them refuse, convinced that money is stronger than the future.

"Thus, the future will crush them with its irresistible power."

(Then a note about unmanageable children.)

Some children are wicked, with a wickedness ... really unbelievable inventions and the teachers don't know what to do. So I wrote a lot of things, but among them, one, I think is important:

"A child must cease to be wicked because he learns to be ashamed of being wicked, not because he fears a punishment....

That's the first step. Once he reaches it, then he can progress one more step and learn the happiness of being good, the joy of being good. But that I didn't write.

"In the first case, he progresses; in the second he goes down one rung in human consciousness.

"Fear is a degradation of human consciousness.""

I think that's very important. Because EVERYWHERE, people are convinced that punishment is what ... Horrible!

December 10, 1969

Certainly, a great step will be taken when it becomes natural for man to seek to perfect himself instead of expecting perfection in others.... That reversal is at the basis of all true progress. The first human instinct is, "It's the fault of circumstances, it's people's fault, it's ... See how this fellow is, how that fellow is, how ..." And it goes on indefinitely. The FIRST STEP, the very first step is to say, "If I were as I should be, or if the body were as it should be, all would be perfectly all right for it." If, to make progress, you wait for others to do so, you can wait indefinitely.

That's the first thing that should be spread everywhere.

Never lay the blame on others or on circumstances because whatever the circumstances may be, even apparently the worst, if you are in the true attitude and have the true consciousness, it doesn't matter in the least for your inner progress, not in the least—and I'll say, including death.

That really seems to be the first lesson to be learned.

January 1, 1970

(Message for the New Year.)

The world is preparing for a big change. Will you help?

January 3, 1970

The bankruptcy of religions was because they were divided —they wanted everyone to follow one religion to the exclusion of all others. And all human knowledge has gone bankrupt because it was exclusive. And man has gone bankrupt because he was exclusive. What the New Consciousness wants (it insists on this) is no more divisions. To be capable of understanding the extreme spiritual, the extreme material, and to find the meeting point where it becomes a true force.

January 17, 1970

... Everywhere, everywhere, Man (Mother puffs herself up Man swelling up....

FIRST they must understand: abdicate. Then we will see.

January 28, 1970

(A note to someone in distress.)

It is when all appears to be lost that all can be saved. When one has lost trust in one's personal power, one must have faith in the Divine Grace.

February 7, 1970

(About several French students who set themselveon fire to protest against the war in Biafra.)

In fact, it is a protest against this society, this false society without future.

Yes, what's going on on the earth is really ugly.

Yes, it's ugly.

(After a silence) A few days ago, I had the visit of a woman from Vietnam, whom I had already seen many years ago. So she came back and saw me. She sat down in front of me (a small woman, short and plump, very sweet), and she said, "I have come because we have been at lwar for twenty-five years...." And there was such sorrow in her atmosphere, it was ... oh, so pitiful! "For TWENTY-FIVE YEARS we have been at war," she told me, "so I have come: can we hope for peace?..." And I felt ... (Mother closes her eyes.)

It's like that: they are so proud because they go to the moon, and they are slaughtering each other on the earth.

(After a long silence) There are many things I understan now.... When I am in the terrestrial consciousness, there are GREAT waves of something so miserable, so ... so pitifully sorrowful.... It comes in waves. Then, if I am perfectly quiet, still, doing nothing, in response to that the Force descends like this and enters, penetrates into that. And it does a lot of work.

March 25, 1970

What we may call the "reign of money" is drawing to its close. But the transitional period between the arrangement that had existed in the world till now and the one to come (in a hundred years, for instance), that period is going to be very difficult—it Is very difficult.

... How? What will it become? I don't know. Naturally, the government's calculation is completely wrong: they are ruining the country more and more! So they are in a really critical situation. But it's a long time since people began to discover that all those taxes are simply the ruin of the country, nothing else.

They do many totally useless things. All that will disappear, but ...

Either divide the earth into lots of small bits, each bit up against the other, or else ... We need a world organization. But by whom? It should be by people who have at least a world consciousness! (Mother laughs) Otherwise it can't work. So ... there are going to be a hundred very difficult years, very difficult. Afterwards, maybe we'll emerge towards something.... The problem is always the same: those responsible should be people with a universal consciousness, of course, otherwise ... Wherever there is a personal consciousness, it means someone incapable of governing—we can see how governments are, it's frightful! *

May 13, 1970

(A reply to a disciple's question about religion.)

We call "religion" any concept of the world or of the universe which claims to be the exclusive Truth in which one must have absolute faith, generally because that Truth is supposed to be the result of a revelation.

Most religions assert the existence of a God and spell out the rules to follow in order to obey Him, but there are also Godless religions, such as the socio-political organizations, which, in the name of an Ideal or of the State, claim the same right to be obeyed.

Man has the right to pursue the Truth freely and to approach it freely, in his own ways. But each one must know that his discovery is good for him alone and is not to be imposed on others.

1970 (?)

(A note.)

To think that communism is the Truth is to make the same error as all religious fanaticism and puts communism on the same level as all other religions ... very far from the Truth.

May 16, 1970

(About nuclear weapons.)

Sujata asks a question: "If India called the Divine, would it not be a more effective way of stopping China?"

Un-de-ni-a-bly! (Mother laughs) Undeniably.

They don't have faith!*

May 23, 1970

The country seems to be falling apart, so there [in Delhi] they asked me what should be done. I told them ... that the ONLY salvation for the country, the ONLY thing that can unify it, is to adopt Sri Aurobindo's ideal for the country—he had a plan, he very clearly saw how the country should be organized, he said it to me. It's there, if one reads his books seriously, one can see it.... So I said ... that the whole country should know Sri Aurobindo's thought and will. And his Centenary [in 1972] is an excellent opportunity. They asked me, "What's the way out of this chaos?"... The difficulty is to find upright people. So they need to be educated—they don't even have a NOTION of how one can be! In what Sri Aurobindo wrote, they will find all they need to organize the country, and much better, I tell them, infinitely better than what I may say, because he knew the country infinitely better than I do, and the mental formation and everything.

May 25, 1970

(Two days later, Mother had a conversation with a few disciples on the same subject.)

What must be done to pull the country out of its difficulty? Sri Aurobindo had foreseen all the troubles and given the solution.... It is to organize the country beyond politics. And that is the only way. In politics there is only fight and ugly fight—ugly. And it has become so bad.

He was telling me always that things would become worse and worse, because it is the end of this age. We are entering into an age when things must be organized differently.

Because we know what will come, we can help to make it come sooner and with less turmoil. There is no hope in going backward; it would make things last endlessly. We must go forward, absolutely, and go beyond, beyond party.... It is time for transformation. We can't cling to the past.... If people could understand and realize his programme, the country could be very strong, very strong.

... Politics is always limited by party, by ideas, by duties also—unless we prepare a government that has no party, a government that admits all ideas because it is above parties. Party is a limitation; it is like a box: you go into the box (Mother laughs). Of course, if there were people with the courage to be in the government without a party—"We represent no party! We represent India"—that would be magnificent.

... All this turmoil is because the country must take the lead, must rise above all these old political habits. Government without party. Oh, it would be magnificent.

May (?), 1970

(Remarks from Mother noted from memory by a disciple.⁶⁶)

We should bring a large number of women into the Parliament. And we should organize centres for women all over the country—"Shakti centres."

What is the most important thing that we should do in India?

The first thing that you ought to do is to change the Constitution in such a way that those people who combine honesty and capability should come to power. Normally, people who are honest are not capable, and those who are capable are not honest. Therefore it is very important that people who combine these two qualities should be able to come to power.

June 6, 1970

(Two notes.)

Work, even manual work, is indispensable to the inner discovery. If one does not work, if one does not apply one's consciousness in matter, it will never develop. To let consciousness organize some matter through one's body is very good. To put things in order around oneself helps to put things in order in oneself.

One should organize one's life not according to external and artificial rules, but according to an organized inner consciousness, because if one leaves life without imposing on it the control of a higher consciousness, it becomes hazy and inexpressive. It is a waste of time, in the sense that matter remains without conscious utilization.

August 1, 1970

I heard you said that the Chinese threat to India was "inescapable"?

No, things are completely distorted. I said it was "serious." Because they aren't aware, the government wasn't at all aware of the danger. So I had them warned. But I didn't say it was "inescapable"; I said it was dangerous—if it were inescapable, I wouldn't have done anything!

You know that Calcutta's walls are covered with slogans : "The Chairman of China is our chairman." The atmosphere is like that.... But there have been remarkable things : for instance some young people from that pro-Chinese movement [the Naxalites], who want the Chinese, have written to me to ask me if that is right, if they should be like that, saying, "We'll do as you say." So it shows that in any case the Influence is strong. There are signs ... there is hope. No, it's not inescapable. It's dangerous, but not inescapable....

One wonders what will have the power to pull India out of all this political pettiness.

They must be pulled out of politics.

Sri Aurobindo said in black and white what they should do.

December 15, 1970

(Mother is asked for a list of languages to be studied at Auroville.)

Tamil.

French.

Simplified Sanskrit to replace Hindi as the language of India.

English as the international language.

(About this time, Mother made the following remark to Kireet Joshi:)

If only one language is taught, it should be international. But for the general development of students, several languages are needed.

Sanskrit should be the real national language. It is only Sanskrit which will be ultimately acceptable to the people of India. Sanskrit is the only language which creates an equal handicap for all the parts of the country, so that nobody has a natural advantage over others in learning it. When I speak of Sanskrit, it should be simple Sanskrit, but not "simplified."

When India goes back to her soul, Sanskrit will naturally become India's national language.

February 13, 1971

(A message broadcast on All India Radio.)

True freedom is an ascending movement, not a surrender to lower instincts.

True freedom is a divine manifestation.

We want true freedom for India so that she may be an example for the world and a demonstration of what humanity must become.

March 6, 1971

True spirituality is VERY simple.

March 31, 1971

(Five days earlier, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman declared the independence of Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan. West Pakistan retaliated with wholesale massacre and the arrest of the Bengali leader. By mid-April, the Pakistani army will be in total control of Bangladesh, causing a huge influx of Bengali refugees into India. India will intervene only eight months later, in December.)

I got news from the government today. They told me they were trying to agree with America before granting official recognition [of Bangladesh].⁶⁷

Good.... Yes, its about time. But India shouldn't need America to do that!

It's against China, you see. China is the only country that supports Pakistan.

I think the whole world is waiting for India to recognize Bangladesh in order to follow suit—they're waiting for it.... Because a lot of people are dying there.

Oh!... (Mother makes a gesture of horror) it's dreadful.

Yes.

It's a slaughter.

Yes. And every day they [West Pakistan] send troops and tanks and planes. It seems to me ... I don't know ... there's no time to lose. [After a silence] India should have the courage to intervene, Mother.

(Mother goes deep within, then, after a long time, makes a gesture as if to say, "What can be done?" and goes back within) This very morning, they asked me what they should do, but they only do ... They ask, but they only do what they think.

We'll see. I have only one means, you know, it's ... (gesture of pressing the Force on the world). All I can do (same gesture) is to put pressure with the Force.

April 1, 1971

(A message.)

We are at one of these "Hours of God," when the old bases get shaken and there is a great confusion; but it is a wonderful opportunity for those who want to leap forward, the possibility of progress is exceptional.

Will you not be of those who take advantage of it?

April 3, 1971

(A note sent by Mother to Indira Gandhi:)

The urgent recognition of Bangla-Desh is imperative.

April 7, 1971

... West Pakistan has written to Russia, saying that India had better not help [Bangladesh] because ... that would mean war. Russia has informed India. And China has clearly taken a stand in favour of Pakistan.

So it may get very nasty.

It has to be finished once and for all, Mother.

Both England and America are still like this (vacillating gesture).

For them it's Pakistan's "internal affair."

Yes.

... It's far more serious than it seems.

Yes, Mother. [After a silence) But, Mother, I have the feeling that India is the symbol of the world's battle, and the new Consciousness cannot be established in the world until India has regained her unity.

Yes.

It's obvious that India is the symbol of the New World in the making, so India must be "one," symbolically, in order for the New World to be built....

Yes.

Consequently Pakistan has to disappear.⁶⁸

But of course!

There's no doubt about that. So this must be the time.

But they've already missed one chance [in 1965].

Yes, they've already missed one chance. But now they shouldn't miss this one.

But India herself is divided.

... Such an ardent faith would be needed ... but ... (gesture of something crumbling into dust between her fingers).

You understand, the Force is so active.... Lies that had gone on for years have become visible here too—the mixture is everywhere.

We would need a force of truth so great as to be capable of overwhelming all that.

(After a silence) For me, the Victory is certain, but I don't know if it's tomorrow or ... (gesture into the distance).

I don't know which path we shall have to take to get there.

Victory is certain, that's obvious, but which path will we have to take?

And it very much depends on our individual position, that's what they don't understand. We must cling, cling so tightly to the Truth that nothing can touch us.

April 14, 1971

(Pakistani troops have launched their attack on Bangla-desh, sealing almost the entire border with India, while China is massing troops at India's North-eastern borders and declared its support of Pakistan in the event of an "interference" from India.)

The situation is ... terribly dangerous. There's only ... It's only by clinging desperately to the Divine—but to the purest and most powerful Divine—that we can avoid a ... general catastrophe. It's terrible.

The impression is that there isn't one minute to lose, that we should constantly, constantly cling to the Divine to compel him to descend here. Otherwise ... otherwise it's terrible.

...

China ... A long time ago (a long time, more than a year), I saw that intention of China. Now they've got their chance. And China, that means the whole of India—brff! (gesture of being submerged) No, I tell you, only the Divine can save. There must be a divine intervention, that alone can save—something extraordinary, abnormal, unexpected. Otherwise ... otherwise ...

April 19, 1971

(In reply to questions on Hindi or Sanskrit as India's national language.)

Hindi is good only for those who belong to a Hindi-speaking province. Sanskrit is good for all Indians.

Sanskrit ought to be the national language of India.

April 30, 1971

(A message in relation to Bangladesh.)

The situation is serious. It is only a strong and enlightened action that can pull the country out of it.

May 1, 1971

(A few days earlier, Mother received a minister from Andhra Pradesh who is facing a strike by some four hundred thousand workers. The workers had written to Mother requesting her to ask the minister to have pity on them....)

... The gentleman came, gave me flowers, took my flower, and then ran off! I didn't have a chance to do anything.

I wanted to tell him this:

"Most of the suffering is due to men's ignorance.
"We must have compassion and help them."

But I didn't have a chance to tell him. He seemed to be a man ... (gesture like iron). I don't know what's happening, but it's like that everywhere, everywhere.

Yes, everywhere. One really gets the feeling that the world is in complete turmoil.

Yes, oh, yes!

And individuals too.

... And then the impression that order must be restored WITH THE HELP OF THOSE WHO HAVE CREATED THE DISORDER. It came to me very strongly. That's what I am trying to do in Delhi, by using the man who was the cause of the teachers' strike.⁶⁹ He came to see me, and I said to him (his dismissal from the school started the whole thing): "I am putting you back in the school so you restore order!" And he accepted. I think it can be tried out.

... Instead of resting on the foundation of ordinary goodwill and all the moral and social rules—all that, brrm! collapsed—we must rise above, find the divine Will and the divine Harmony. That is what we want. As for those who rebel against the ordinary order of things and the ordinary social conventions: well, prove that you are in contact with a higher consciousness and a truer truth....

We must ... we must take a leap upward.

All those who seek to restore order pull back towards all the old ideas—that's why they are unsuccessful. But that's over. It's over. We are going upward. Only those who can go upward can act.

May 5, 1971

(In connection with the Russian translation of a book by Satprem.)

I have great hope in the Russians. I don't know why.... They've done an experiment and have realized the futility of the thing.

May 8, 1971

(Regarding the worsening crisis in Bangladesh. Refugees are pouring into India, soon ten millions of them.)

... And I heard also that you said that if Indira didn't recognize Bangladesh, there would be even more serious consequences in the future.

That's what I think.

That's what you think, yes.

It becomes more difficult each time.

Each time they put the thing off ... Oh, if only they had done it immediately, it would have been very good. Now, it's five weeks already.

Yes, five weeks.

It's already more difficult. If they put it off again, it will be even more difficult.

Naturally, she thinks I don't have all the facts—that goes without saying!

She knows better than you, obviously! But if she had some little inner discernment, she would understand that you have a wider vision of things.

Yes, but that ...

You see, there are different ... (what shall I say?), it's like "layers of conditioning" (gesture of different levels), and I always try to lead people to the highest layer so that things happen without too much difficulty; but they always insist on being on the lowest layer, the nearest one. So that causes ... that's how things get complicated.... And so things have to follow the path (meandering gesture), and it's endless.

Well, it means the world isn't ready!

(After a silence) It will take another few hundred years.

... Humanity is still very small, very small, very small.

Yes, it feels like that.

But even those who might have a power ... Look how it is: certain people could have a power, they would just need to have the true inspiration—but they're afraid of it! They reject the true inspiration, because they think that things have to follow their "natural" course—so-called "natural."

Humanity rejects the true miracle. It only believes in ...

... They have chosen, they have chosen the path of the snail. So that's how it will be.

There are moments—what Sri Aurobindo called "the Hour of God"—there are moments when the TRUE, the true miracle is possible; if that moment is missed, then the world will go ... at its snail's pace.

And it's hard—a lot of suffering, a lot of complications.... But faith, who has faith? True faith.

[After a silence] But, Mother, I have a hope.

Yes?

I have a hope. There is something I feel as a strong possibility, more and more so.

What?

All the youth, those who are sixteen, seventeen or twenty now, who appear to be going completely mad, well, in reality, all those young people NO LONGER WANT the present Machine—they don't want it anymore. So they do foolish things ...

Oh! ...

They take drugs, they do all sorts of foolish things.

Oh, even worse than that, they've become murderers.⁷⁰

Yes, there are all sorts of things, but in spite of everything, I feel it's a good sign, that the movement is going to grow more and more and that the whole Machine of the men of yesterday is going to collapse—the social and political Machinery and all the rest.

Yes, you're quite right. But when it collapses, it will crush many things. That's the point; it's true, that's what is going to happen, but when it collapses it will crush many things.

... I have the feeling that all the so-called lost youth aren't lost at all! They only need to be given the true word.

Yes, but who's going to give it to them?... There has to be someone to say it.

Yes, there should be a Vivekananda for Sri Aurobindo! [Mother laughs, very amused.] ... That's what you should call for, Mother: a great inspired man.

Ah!

That's what you should call for.

But I have been calling him for a long time.

Yes, Mother, a great inspired man with physical strength

Yes, oh, yes!

(After a concentration, Mother returns to Bangladesh:) It's a world event. It's not the event of one country, it's a world event. And that's why ...

May 12, 1971

(Regarding Bangladesh)

I have been told fantastic things, for example, that Pakistan desires India to declare war because it would immediately call for China's help; and that Pakistan is already receiving arms from America through Turkey....

But America has quietly resumed giving economic aid to Pakistan.

Then ...

They're resuming it quietly, discreetly, but they're resuming it. Their intention is to put Pakistan back on its feet.

But then it's all over!

Yes, everything has to be started over.

They're mad!—They're all mad, mad, mad....

(After a silence) Which means that they [India] missed the first chance [in September 1965]; they've missed the second chance; now we don't know when it will come again....

Has anyone told you what's going on in Ceylon?

No.

No one told you anything about Ceylon!

No.

But that's amazing, it's very important, Mother. For the last month, about forty thousand students have been waging guerrilla warfare with the government, and they are being massacred by the government.

Oh!

So they have taken refuge in the jungle and they're waging guerrilla warfare. Thousands have been arrested, all students. But then the extraordinary thing is that India, which is not intervening in Bangladesh, has intervened in Ceylon, sending helicopters and boats to help the government stop ...

Oh! ... Oh, that's the last straw!... Oh! (Mother covers her-eyes in dismay.)

They are creating a terrible karma for themselves!

Yes, they're heaping troubles on their own heads.

(Long silence, then Mother shakes her head and goes within.) The latest argument is that Pakistan wants India to declare war so it can call China to its aid, you see.

But, Mother, we shouldn't forget that India betrayed Tibet: When Tibet was invaded by the Chinese, Nehru kept his mouth, eyes and ears shut and did nothing to help the Tibetans. All that is the continuation of Gandhi's teaching—this false politics is being perpetrated by Gandhi's sons.

No, you see ... you see, they go and fight on the wrong side in Ceylon.

No, it's not that—it's much worse than Gandhi. (Mother goes within for a long time.)

All that isn't very encouraging.

(Mother shakes her head) No, it's more terrible: there is a VERY catastrophic formation over India, and they're pulling it down, the fools!

(After a silence) But it's already a long time since I saw China invade India, even South India. And that's the worst of catastrophes.... One can expect ANYTHING from the Chinese—every possible horror. I saw them—all, everywhere ... horrible!

I saw the Chinese in this room.

But several times during the last years that thought has come to me, Mother—several times it has come to me.

But that's the end of everything. It means it will probably take centuries before things can begin again.

... And the Chinese are VERY intelligent. (Mother goes within a long time.)

Mother, the problem is to find out how one can counteract all that, because in 1950 already, Sri Aurobindo told the Americans: If you yield in Korea, you will be led to yield every position point after point. Sri Aurobindo said that in 1950. Well, since 1950, we have yielded every position, point after point, and now India is completely encircled by China —point after point we have yielded: Kashmir and Tibet and all that—we are encircled by the Chinese. And we go on yielding [in Bangladesh]. So how to counter all that?... For example, Mother, the Americans are quietly resuming aid to Pakistan because they say, their reasoning is, if we don't give aid, then we leave the whole Pakistani territory to the Chinese.

That's sheer ... [madness].

We'll see.

June 9, 1971

There's a rush of adverse forces. An enraged rush. But the Response is beginning to come—it's only a very small beginning.

(After a silence) I was asked for a message for the whole of India [in connection with the Bangladesh crisis]. I gave one:

"Supreme Lord, Eternal Truth Let us obey Thee alone and live according to Truth."

July 17, 1971

They've made a mess, you know, with this whole affair [of Bangladesh], in a dreadful way—dreadful. Now, they've worked out something: the Americans are trying to come to an agreement with the Chinese—that's the last straw!—to help Pakistan massacre people.

Yes, one has the impression that America is doing the politics of the adverse forces.... Do you know that the president of the United States [Nixon] is going to China?

Yes, of course.

And they're not trying for a rapprochement with the Russians, rather the contrary.

No, oh no!

Which means they're doing everything just the wrong way.

Yes.

July 21, 1971

For me, the practical beacon is very simple: it's the Divine. That's the only concrete thing for me.

... We could say that nothing knows—nowhere and nobody. But there are those who aspire (how could I put it?), who have the will, the inclination, the aspiration, the need to know —to know and to be—and then all those who don't care, who potter along with their little or big life—whether it's a head of state or a sweeper makes no difference. It's the same thing, the vibrations are the same.

August 11, 1971

(Mother shows a note she has just written.)

"When men become disgusted with the falsehood they live in, then the world will be ready for the reign of Truth."

(Then another note she conveyed to K. K. Birla, a leading Indian industrialist.)

"Truth is within men's reach, but they care nothing about Truth."

September 18, 1971

Everything is like this (hanging gesture), everything. Up there [on the border of India and Bangladesh], they're ready to fight, and they're forever waiting to be told to fight. The armies are ready, everything is ready, and they're waiting. Everything is like this (same hanging gesture).

What are they waiting for?

For the government to give the order.

But the government won't budge!

Yes (Mother smiles), yes, it will. It will be forced to move. But it resists.

Someone came here from the government, sent by a "commission," and through him the general in command of the armies⁷¹ came into contact with me, and he asked for my blessings. They are all ready. They're waiting—they are told tomorrow, tomorrow, always tomorrow. I have news from there.

October 27, 1971

... People are going mad. I don't know how long it will last, but there is a wind of madness everywhere. They talk only of killing. It's as if ... (gesture showing the onrush of vital forces on earth). Oh, the world has become repugnant.

Division is very strong.

But an ABSOLUTE sincerity is required for those who want to work.... We need an ABSOLUTE, you understand. We must reject anything in us that says, "Oh, it will come, it will come...."

November 27, 1971

(All India Radio has asked for a text on Sri Aurobindo on the occasion of his Centenary.)

Basically, what would be good is to say, "Sri Aurobind came to tell the world the beauty of the future to be realized. And then, explain it.

"He came to give—not a hope: a certitude of the splendour towards which the world is moving...." That's exactly all the experiences I've had lately. And I see Sri Aurobindo's letters, that's what he says. "The world is not an unhappy accident, it is a marvel moving towards its expression."

I think that's what the world most needs now, a word that gives it the sense of what is to be realized—of what will be realized. And then, to awaken in each one the desire to collaborate.

To understand oneself and convey it to others.

The world needs an assurance of beauty—of the beauty to come. And Sri Aurobindo gave the assurance.

December 4, 1971

(On December 2, after Pakistan warplanes bombed several Indian airfields, India launched a general offensive against the Pakistani troops.)

So they've declared war.

Yes, it's done.

It began, yes, yesterday.

The ministers in Delhi have prepared a brochure on Sri Aurobindo, and they've asked me for a message. I sent this:

"Sri Aurobindo came to announce to the world a glorious future and opened the door to its realization."

[After a silence] Will they go to the end this time, withou stopping halfway?

Don't know ... It seems serious.

We get news from the front, from a general who is at the front.

... The trouble is that India's rulers have not yet admitted in their consciousness that India is ONE; they have not yet admitted the non-existence of Pakistan, that's the trouble.

(Mother nods her head, then goes into a contemplation.)

December 8, 1971

(Mother gives Satprem a note she has just written.)

Our human consciousness has windows opening onto the Infinite. But generally men keep the windows tightly closed. We must open them wide and let the Infinite penetrate us freely so as to transform us. Two conditions are required to open those windows.

Ardent aspiration.

Progressive abolition of the ego.

The divine help is assured to those who set to work sincerely.

December 11, 1971

(Regarding the following aphorism of Sri Aurobindo, which a few years earlier Mother had declined to comment.)

"Europe prides herself on her practical and scientific organisation and efficiency. I am waiting till her organisation is perfect; then a child shall destroy her."

But what did he mean?

I don't know.

Naturally, only the power can be destroyed, because the earth isn't destroyed.

No, the earth isn't destroyed, but a civilization can be destroyed.

Yes.

Well, he says, "Europe will be destroyed."

Yes.... But what child? What child?

(Mother remains absorbed) Right now, I don't know.

I have the feeling that it came as something absolutely true an absolutely true prediction—but I don't know.

Earlier you had said it was better to omit it.

But now, on the contrary, my impression is that it SHOULD be said.

I don't think the time has come yet—I mean, "come" for the realization; the time has come to say it, but not for its realization.

"A child ..." maybe it's the child of the New World?... With a smile, he'll bring it all down.

Yes, quite possible—quite possible.

(After a silence) It contains a frightening power.... Something awesome.

You can't imagine the power contained there, it's really as if the Divine Himself spoke: "I am waiting...."

December 15, 1971

(Mother first shows a note probably written in connection with the ongoing war.)

"Difficult periods come on earth to compel men to overcome their small personal egoism and to turn exclusively to the Divine for help and light. The wisdom of men is ignorant. Only the Divine knows."

It came imperiously.

Something in me wanted Peace and Harmony, and ... I was feeling a sort of constraint, and that came. It came imperatively—evident, imperative. Without that, men would never have progressed—they would never progress.

(After a silence) This war is very absorbing.

The war?

Yes, it's night and day, night and day....

Unfortunately you get the impression that in the West [the Western front along Kashmir and Rajasthan], they don't want to do anything. Indira has declared that India had absolutely no interest in the disintegration of Pakistan: "Not at all interested." They want to liberate Bangladesh and that's all.

(Mother remains absorbed for a very long time) This war is ... I am constantly, constantly occupied.

We get letters from the front; several generals and high-ranking officers say they feel my presence all the time. And it's true, I am occupied all the time.

Have you been told that the Americans are there with their nuclear ship?

They're not there yet, it seems. It's not quite sure—they sent it, but it's not quite sure [that they will intervene]

They're completely mad.

That would be a real disaster.

They're mad—and stupid.

Yes. That president must be removed.

Yes, oh, yes!

The one they want to put in his place is a friend of India. But no one likes that ... [Nixon], only a minority follow him—not everyone.

He should be ... (gesture of sweeping away).

You can arrange that!⁷² [Mother laughs a lot.]

... I am constantly occupied.⁷³

December 18, 1971

How are you? What's new?

Well, they've stopped fighting in the West ... [Mother nods her head] which means it's not the end of the problem.

Again it won't be for this time.

It won't be done that way. I've seen how. It won't be done through battle: the different parts of Pakistan will demand separation. There are five of them. And by separating, they'll join India—to form a sort of confederation. That's how it will be done.

Yes, it will break up from within.

That's right. That's how it will be done.... What I saw isn't what has occurred, because it was seen years ahead. But that doesn't matter, it's all right.

We are always in a hurry, because life on earth is short, but when you see how it is all seen ... (vast, general gesture). But it's beautiful, and much better! It takes more time, but it's much better.

One of the things foreseen is the conversion of America, the United States, but it will take time.

The conversion of the United States.

Already, most of the country is against that president, but it has to become strong enough for that ... policy to disappear.⁷⁴

Which means, as always, that things have to go to absurd lengths for people to understand how false it is.

Yes. Yes.

December 29, 1971

I have received a letter from Indira.

Oh, really? [Mother hands an envelope, Satprem reads out the letter:]

Revered Mother,

Through these critical months I have thought constantly of you. I can find no words with which to express my gratitude for your support. Your blessings are a great source of strength. Our difficulties are not over. (Mother nods her head) The American administration is most upset that its calculations were so completely wrong, and they will use their power to try to humble us and specially to create division between Bangla Desh and ourselves.

I think our nation has taken a step towards maturity. Yet there are many who look only to today. If India is to be great we must improve the quality of the minds of our people. I know that this is your desire. In my humble way I am trying to do what I can.

With respectful regards,

Yours sincerely,

Indira Gandhi

That's good, indeed.

It's good. So I replied this:

To Indira

With blessings.

India must be proud of your leadership.

Let the country take its true place in the world for showing the way towards the supreme Truth.

with love

Mother

It's good she has this attitude.

Yes, it's good.⁷⁵

But there are still many difficulties.

Oh! ... Oh, it's a scoundrel who's become the ... [president of Pakistan, Bhutto].

Oh, you mean that one!

Quite a scoundrel. And he's killing his own people. Some teachers have been executed because they had a different opinion. He's committing atrocities in his own country.... In a way, it's what is needed to show the falsehood of the thing [i.e., the division of Pakistan and India].

And yet Pakistan's new president is putting up a democratic faҫade.

By murdering people!

Several provinces of West Pakistan have rebelled against the people he had put in place to govern them.⁷⁶

We'll see.

(After a silence) Things are moving fast.

January 1, 1972

... But we're plainly heading for the disintegration of Pakistan.

January 2, 1972

(From a message.)

The future belongs to those who have the soul of a hero. The stronger and more sincere our faith, the more powerful and effective the help received.

February 8, 1972

(From a message to some presumptuous Western newcomers.)

From the spiritual standpoint, India is the leading country in the world. Her mission is to give the example of spirituality. Sri Aurobindo came on earth to teach this to the world.

This fact is so obvious that a simple, ignorant farmer here is closer to the Divine in his heart than the intellectuals of Europe.

February 12, 1972

(A note to a visiting Western woman who wanted to teach in a "religious school.")

One must not confuse a religious teaching with a spiritual teaching. Religious teaching belongs to the past and arrests progress, while spiritual teaching is the teaching of the future. It enlightens the consciousness and prepares it for the future realization.

Spiritual teaching is above religions and strives towards a total truth. It teaches us to come into direct contact with the Divine.

April 12, 1972

(Mother gives Satprem this note)

"No human will can finally prevail against the Divine's will.

"Let us put ourselves deliberately and exclusively on the side of the Divine and the victory is ultimately certain."

Strange how human nature resists that. Ordinary human nature is such that it prefers defeat with its own will to victory in another way. I am making amazing discoveries these days—just amazing.

Human stupidity is abysmal. Abysmal.

The Force seems to be going like this (gesture of drilling), deeper and deeper, towards the subconscient. There are incredible things in the subconscient—incredible. I spend entire nights seeing them. And it goes down and down ... IMPERATIVELY.

So the human subconscient cries out, "Oh, not yet, not yet—not so fast!" And that's what we have to fight against. It's a general subconscient.

Naturally, the resistance brings about catastrophes, but then people tell you, "See! See how your action is beneficent—it brings about catastrophes." Unbelievable, unbelievably stupid.

Ah, we don't have faith! The moment one has faith ...

We say, "We want divine life"—but we're afraid of it! The moment the fear disappears and we are sincere ... really, everything changes.

We say, "We want nothing more of this life," but ... (laughing) something in us clings to it!

Yes!

It's so ridiculous.

We cling to our old ideas, our old ... to this old world which must disappear—we're afraid!

... For me, the best remedy (I mean the easiest) is: what You will—what You will, in all sincerity. In all sincerity. And then—then understanding comes. Then you understand. But you don't understand mentally, not here (Mother touches her head).

What You will.

April 26, 1972

(A message sent to Indira Gandhi.)

India shall take her true place in the world only when she will become integrally the messenger of the Divine Life.

August 9, 1972

The interesting thing in man is that materially speaking, he is ... a mere nothing, a second lost in eternity—a farrago of impotence—but from the standpoint of consciousness, he has the capacity to understand. His consciousness is capable of coming into contact with the supreme Consciousness. So naturally there are all those who wanted to go back to that Consciousness, but Sri Aurobindo said: the point is not to go back, it is to make the world capable of manifesting that supreme Consciousness.

September 6, 1972

(The day before, at the Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes have been killed by Arab terrorists.)

The world seems to be engulfed in a sort of violent chaos. They're fighting at the Olympic Games! An athlete was shot to death. That's how it is.

Yes, they killed an Israeli.

Yes, the Arabs did it.

These Muslims have something quite ... something that must disappear, Mother. They're so fanatical!

They are very violent.

Yes, fanatical.

Very violent.

I don't know what they represent in the universal economy of things, but they really seem to be ...

Force.

Force ... They spend their time stabbing each other.

(After a silence) You see, they are convinced that there's life after the body's death—to them, the body's death is in no way the end of life.

They believe in some sort of heaven, but that's all.

(Laughing) Yes, a murderers' heaven!

January 20, 1973

(On January 18, Mother received the Dalai Lama. Mother had long ago admitted a number of Tibetan refugees to the Ashram and Auroville.)

I'd be curious to know what you felt with the Dalai Lama?

A truly benevolent man. Buddhist benevolence, you know, and he practises it marvellously.

He seems to have no ... no selfishness in him. That is to say, a constant concern to do the right thing.

... According to what I was told, he was happy with his visit.... He is a young man....

Very benevolent—he's very benevolent.... He has a very light presence, very light—he doesn't impose himself at all.

I felt a very strong man—very strong. And harmoniously strong; his right arm was bare, you know, it gave the feeling of a great quiet force....

What about Tibet, did you see anything—do you see anything for that country?

I told him Tibet would become independent again. He asked me when. I said, "I don't know."⁷⁷

Sri Aurobindo's idea was an independent Tibet within a sort of great federation with India.⁷⁸ But when will it be? I don't know.

Tibet was locked in a lower Tantrism; the Chinese probably came to free them from their imprisonment ...

Yes

... in that lower Tantrism. When that cleansing is over (with much damage, unfortunately), maybe they'll become free again?

(Mother nods her head)

(The Dalai Lama's questions were put to Mother by Kireet Joshi, who in turn conveyed Mother's answers back to the Dalai Lama.)

[Dalai Lama:] It is my dream to have the perfect economic development of Tibet, the perfect organization, the efficiency that we find in Communism, but all this based upon, founded upon the Buddhistic qualities of Compassion and Love, so that the people in power do not degenerate into corruption. What is Mother's view of this dream, and whether such a thing will be realized in Tibet?

It is not a dream. It will naturally be. But the time it will take, I do not know. This is something like what Sri Aurobindo has said about the Supramental.

Truth, Love, Compassion will give a basis to the new creation. It is not birth but the value of men that should give the right to authority.

If the teaching of Sri Aurobindo can spread over the world, and if there is the full manifestation of the Supramental, then the Supramental will be the power of the liberation of Tibet.

It is bound to come, it will come; but if it goes as it is going now, it will take hundreds of years. But if the Supramental is manifested, it may come quick. Quick does not mean ten or twenty years—that would be almost miraculous.

[Kireet:] But the Supramental is now working very power fully.

It is, it is working. It will be manifested with enough power when the right people have the authority.

For the moment, it seems that the opposition, the falsehood attacks with full power before dying. Never, never have men lied as much as they are doing now. It seems the old habit comes spontaneously. But it must be broken.

We are at a very—what we could call an unpleasant moment of the history of the earth. It is interesting because the action is very powerful, but I can't call it pleasant....

[Dalai Lama:] As for myself I have no desire to continue in power in a government. For I feel that government involves so much of conflicts of parties, and the necessity of taking sides with one party against the other....

One can govern without taking sides. That is the mistake of all the governments; they reduce their capacity tremendously.

But beyond the mind, there is a higher and deeper consciousness—they would find a Consciousness in which one can make use of all the capacities. It is a question of the consciousness being broad enough, so that each capacity can be put in its place in order to make a general harmony.

(Dalai Lama:) There is goodwill, there is sincerity among people all over the world, but the number of such people is not large. Will they be able to have an effect to change the conditions of the world?

It is bound to change; it is bound to change. Only, if people are sincere it will shorten the time; it will go faster if people are sincere.

The first and indispensable step is to stop all falsehood. Falsehood is all that contradicts in us the Presence of the Divine.

(A message.)

Before dying falsehood rises in full swing.

Still people understand only the lesson of catastrophe. Will it have to come before they open their eyes to the truth?

I ask an effort from all so that it has not to be.

It is only the Truth that can save us: truth in words, truth in action, truth in will, truth in feelings. It is a choice between serving the Truth or being destroyed.

February 21, 1973

(Message for Mother's ninety-fifth birthday.)

The more we advance on the way, the more the need of a divine Presence becomes imperative and indispensable.

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India - the Mother

Editors' Note

1916-1950

July 7, 1916

July 9, 1917

June 9, 1929

June 30, 1929

July 28, 1929

1930-31

August 4, 1931

November 3, 1931

1931-1935 (?)

March 23, 1936

August 29, 1936

June 13, 1937

1938 (?)

May 25, 1941

May 26, 1942

1945

August 15, 1945

August 28, 1945

August 30, 1945

June 3, 1947

June 6, 1947

August 15, 1947

February 2, 1949

August 4, 1949

Part Two (1951 – 58)

December 21, 1950

March 5, 1951

April 9, 1951

August 1951

August 23, 1951

April 1952

August 23, 1952

1953

April 29, 1953

May 13, 1953

July 15, 1953

July 29, 1953

October 28, 1953

November 25, 1953

April 25, 1954

April 28, 1954

May 5, 1954

August 15, 1954

Mid 1950s

January 1, 1955

January 6, 1955

February 16, 1955

February 21, 1955

April 1955

April 4, 1955

May 11, 1955

September 7, 1955

September 14, 1955

September 21, 1955

October 12, 1955

November 2, 1955

November 15, 1955

December 7, 1955

January 18, 1956

March 21, 1956

May 16, 1956

May 23, 1956

January 2, 1957

January 9, 1957

April 3, 1957

August 7, 1957

October 23, 1957

January 24, 1958

June, 1958

June 6, 1958

July 23, 1958

September 19, 1958

September 24, 1958

October 22, 1958