At the feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo

15 November 1933

MYSELF: I feel a sort of calm and quietness. I am aware still of what I have to do. Usually all our talks revolve round persons, their actions, doings etc. Now I see that if we put a stop to idle gossip, there remains hardly anything to talk about. Besides, even if the talks were of a good kind the sense of “I”, with its pride, superiority, has a play in various guises. So, there is no further incentive to talk. Everything seems to become quiet.

SRI AUROBINDO: What you say about ordinary conversations is quite correct and that all should fall away is very necessary for the true consciousness.

MYSELF: Now, the matter of food doesn’t appear to be a problem. If anything good is sent to me the taste is enjoyable, but the former pleasure has changed its character. Once you said that these things can crop up after a long lapse. If I pay no attention to it, then what would you say?

SRI AUROBINDO: It is better to be careful in the matter of food etc.; as in the stage through which your sadhana is passing there is a considerable sensitiveness in the vital physical part of the being and it may be easily disturbed by a wrong impact or a wrong movement like overfeeding.

MYSELF: Mother, when К was overtaken by an attack of depression, I saw distinctly that he was possessed by something very black. I at once remembered the eclipse of the moon by Rahu. Just as the moon is slowly devoured by Rahu, so was he by this black something. I didn’t have visions before. Is there any truth in it?

SRI AUROBINDO: It is so seen when the inner vision is opened. It is an influence from an adverse force or from the universal lower nature (an influence more often than a possession) that brings about this violent depression and disturbance and it is seen like a grey or black cloud or form throwing itself on the adhar.

MYSELF: Mother dear, people see light, radiance etc. in your face. Not all have this faculty. Can it be then the Divine Grace that enables one to see it? Or is it an inborn gift? Does this vision open by itself by people’s contact with you or do you open it in them?

SRI AUROBINDO: What people see around the Mother is first her aura, as it is called nowadays and secondly the forces of Light that pour out from her when she concentrates as she always does on the roof for instance. (Everybody has an aura — but in most it is weak and not very luminous, in the Mother’s aura there is the full play of lights and powers.) People do not see usually because it is a subtle physical and not a gross material phenomenon. They can see only in two conditions, first if they develop sufficient subtle sight, secondly if the aura itself begins to become so strong that it affects the sheath of gross matter which conceals it. The Mother has certainly no idea of making people see it — it is of themselves that one after another, some 20 or 30 in the Ashram I believe, have come to see. None of them are big yogis, some of them are mere beginners. It is certainly one of the signs that the higher Force (call it supramental or not) is beginning to influence matter.

(15.11.33)