Amrita's Correspondence with The Mother

8 December 1933

Mother,

For the purchase of the two houses we are interested in buying, I have been negotiating with the owners or their representatives for some time now. Hours and hours, with wholehearted devotion to You, I have mixed with these outsiders, now cajoling, now persuading, now influencing them and so on. But one of them, Sri Ramalu, went too far this morning in insisting upon his foolish demands after the agreed amount has been paid by us.

Later, when I suggested to you that the deed could be annulled, you laughed at me. I swallowed whatever was hurled at me. But, Mother, even now, we can have back the entire amount we have paid.

It is the absurdity of the proposal that shocked me. To have taken so much trouble and when one has succeeded, suddenly to undo everything! It would be mere folly. The very idea of it seems to me grotesque.

It was like receiving blow upon blow from you. I thought that you found it difficult to trust me.

Nonsense! It was not at all for such a reason.

I still feel that the deed should not be annulled. After all the Notary has not yet put his signature on it. I already told you that this is quite out of the question. I never thought of it, even for a second. It would be the last of absurdities.

Mother,

I would like to be freed from meeting the outside people for various types of work. I am very much shaken. From tomorrow shall I stop giving money to Satyen for the daily expenses? And why should I keep other people’s money in my safe? Money is troublesome, Mother, and I am made of such poor stuff. Please save me.

What is all this? . . . When Pavitra told me this evening that you had wept at 3 o’clock, I was moved and felt great pity — but now I see that these were tears from wounded “amour-propre” and not from the heart anxious for progress . . .

So, you would like better to throw all the work away from your shoulders (not even thinking of the difficulties to which it could put me) rather than accept the idea that you have to make a progress and that you will make it?

You ask to be saved. There is only one way: remain firm at your post; recover your lost faith, and where you see now the sign of a lack of trust in you and of unjust or, at least, undeserved severity, recognise the action of the Divine Grace labouring to make you rise above this condition of impotent and confused humanity, into a state of clear, luminous and powerful Consciousness.

8 December 1933