Mother's Chronicles - Book Three

26

Peril Stalks

Let us rejoin our trekkers.

"We walked, then when we reached some place at lunchtime and were hungry, we ate there. When we reached some place and it was time to sleep, we slept there, then we went on —it was quite an adventure. We didn't even know the route, we had some kind of maps. Well then, one time, far away from any town, any village, on a mountain road, we arrived at lunchtime at a sort of inn —something resembling an inn —standing all alone. It was miles from anywhere. We entered. An old man and an old woman were there . . . they looked most peculiar. They were very brisk, very alert, they had a peculiar air. Then we asked if we could eat. They said yes. They looked at us, eyed us closely, then made us enter a big room; there in a corner was a table with chairs around it, and also big benches —I

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don't know to what use that room was put. They made us eat in there. And they asked us if we wanted —they had a nice small white wine —if we wanted some. The other three said yes; for myself, I had stopped drinking any alcohol by then. They said yes. And they drank the wine; it was a light wine, they washed down their food with it. As for me, I didn't touch it. At the end of the meal they said, 'Oh, how sleepy we are! We would very much like to rest, we would like to sleep.' So they lay down on the benches and slept. Now, I had a pair of shoes on that didn't fit me and were hurting one of my big toes: this had caused an inflammation and it was painful; I wanted to bathe it in order to disinfect it. I wasn't the least bit sleepy. I sat down —there was a basin and some water —and bathed my foot. Half an hour later, the room's entrance door opened, slowly, and the old couple came in furtively." Mother made a gesture. "As I sat rather low, I was hidden by the tables, so they didn't see me. They entered on tiptoe, looked this way and that, and they were about to go up to the benches where the others were lying . . . just when they saw me —ah!" Mother gave a start of surprise to suit her exclamation. "They

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stopped. So then I raised my head and looked at them. I said, 'You wanted—?'

"They were very wily, they said, 'Oh, we came to see if you needed anything.' And they went out.

"I knew AT ONCE that they had come to steal; they had put some drug in the wine and had come to steal, they thought I too was sleeping."

She said pensively, "But the picture that came back was so vivid, as though they held a butcher's knife in the hand....

"Why has it come? I don't know.

"Things come when I have to do something about them." Things came to Mother constantly. They came from afar: far away on the earth and far away in time. Things from the past came to be put in order, to be presented to the New Light.

"This story is old almost by ... it must have been in 1910 or at the utmost '12, that is, more than fifty years. Those people were old, they are long dead — why has it come? What was there in it to teach me? I don't know.

"You see," she said, "I am convinced that basically karma is simply all the things we haven't used in

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the true way that we drag along behind us. . . . If we have totally and clearly learnt the lesson that each event or each circumstance ought to have brought, then its utility is gone and it dissolves."

But the picture she had just seen "has remained ALIVE, you see, like a living thing. What did it want to teach?. . . Naturally, always, the presence of the Grace is an understood affair—but I don't need it shown to me, I know it!

"They were far from anywhere, there was nothing for miles around....

"It was quite a scene from a movie, and all set to be shot.

"It happened in Savoy, French side, in the mountains.

"Strange . . ."

*

* *

"The presence of the Grace," yes, of course. But something else is needed for the Grace to act instantaneously. How often things that are going to happen — an 'accident'— announce their presence, and always it takes them a few seconds or a couple of minutes to

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make contact with us, "because a door or a wall or something prevents us from seeing them." Only when we can spread our consciousness far and wide can it come instantly into contact with things. That was the case with Mirra.

"I have had many such experiences," said Mother. "Once I was walking along a mountain path wide enough for only one person: on one side, a precipice, on the other, sheer rock. Three children were behind me and a fourth person brought up the rear. I was in the lead. The path skirted the rock so you couldn't see what lay ahead. It was quite dangerous besides: one slip and you fell into the abyss. I was walking in front when, suddenly, I saw with other eyes than these —yet I was carefully watching my steps — I saw a snake lying in wait on the rocks around the bend. I took one gentle step, and a snake was very much there! This spared me the shock of surprise — because I had seen it and was advancing cautiously —and as there was no shock of surprise, I could say to the children without scaring them, 'Stop, be quiet, don't move.' A shock might have caused a mishap —the snake had heard us and was already on the defensive,

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coiled before its hole, its head swaying —a viper. It was in France. Nothing happened, but with confusion and commotion, who knows?

"This type of things has happened to me very, very often —four times with snakes. Once it happened here, when it was pitch dark, near the fishing village of Ariankuppam. There was a river and it took place just where it empties into the sea. It was dark —night had fallen very swiftly and we were walking along a road, when right in the middle of a step —I had already raised my foot and was about to lower it —I distinctly heard a voice in my ear: 'Watch out!' Yet no one had spoken. So I looked, and just as my foot was about to touch the ground, I saw an enormous black cobra, on whom I was casually going to put my foot. Those fellows don't like that sort of thing! He slithered away and swam across the water —what a beauty, my child! Hood wide open, head held high above the water, he swam across like a king. I would certainly have been punished for my impertinence!"

The inner senses Mirra had taken care to develop came in handy in her external life.

"There are loads of stories I could tell; but I

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don't remember any more right now." In fact she said elsewhere, "I have so totally forgotten a whole world of incidents and events ..."

After considering the subject some more, she said, "It can happen in different ways. Quite often I was informed by a small entity or some being or the other. Sometimes the aura protected me." We shall soon see how. "All sorts of things. My life was rarely limited to the physical body. And this is useful, it's good. Necessary also —it enhances your capacities. Theon told me right from the start, 'You people deprive yourselves of the most useful kind of senses, EVEN FOR ORDINARY LIFE.' And it's true, absolutely true," Mother confirmed.

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