Satprem and Malraux

An unfinished tale

“You can also take Andre Malraux as a Western representative of a certain brilliant success. But Malraux was a failure  -  he ended up in failure. What was the practical result of all his marvelous mental juggling?

I didn't meet him, but Malraux is someone I really understood in my heart. His courage, his determination to put into action what he felt  -  it all had a meaning for me. But he was never able (it seems he struggled and fought a lot), but he was never able to go beyond his mental jugglings  -  marvelous as they may be, but... He was marvelous inside the fishbowl, but he was never able to get to the other side.

And I have the feeling this applies to every apparently successful life.”

- Satprem, My Burning Heart

*

“I had always felt that he should have understood..”

Satprem’s letter to Yolande, 29 December, 1971. 

It is clear, in the higher destiny of individuals, that Bangladesh was only a pretext for Malraux to meet his moment of truth at the feet of Mother - if he seized the opportunity. And I understand that his external hopes for dramatic and spectacular action had to collapse in order for him to face the true Motive. Under these circumstances, it is quite possible that your letter will have a useful effect. Moreover, by a kind of "chance" that always reveals the guiding Hand, it so happens that my own letter to Malraux (sent to the wrong address, Boulevard Victor Hugo) was returned to me a few days ago. I sent it back to the correct address, I hope. But I realize that if this letter had arrived while he was still in the throes of his combative dream, it would have had no effect - whereas now, our two letters combined may be of some use.

We shall see. Things and beings are guided - and all is always well. Malraux had dreamed of dying, like his heroes, in beauty, according to his own tradition, on the battlefields of Bangladesh. But this kind of theatrical escape was not reserved for him - perhaps because there are better things to do than be a beautiful hero….

18 Nov, 1974

Malraux... As I believe I have already told you, we must remain silent, not intervene, as this only serves to provoke adverse reactions. And as far as I understand, for two or three years now, he has turned his back on the future, performing mental acrobatics with outdated ideas. He is very useful where he is - let us leave him there.

27 October, 1976

Jane's idea seems very good to me. However, I have some doubts that Malraux would accept it - I tried several times to get his attention, even 20 years ago I was speaking of "The Human Condition" (title of Malraux’s book) to my Indian students at the Ashram school! I had always felt that he should have understood, but... Perhaps the time wasn't right, I don't know. In these three volumes, he would find many answers to his questions and perhaps see a large section of the wall open up

- but how would he read all this? Anyway, let Jane follow her inspiration. It would be good if, for once, a great French voice had a few words for Mother, who has done so much...

8 December, 1976

Yes, I sensed that the Brincourts would not react. They are wooden. They only understand mental trapeze exercises, which Malraux adored, and if you try to give them the solution, the real remedy, the one that will cure death and all their cancers, they cry out in medical protest, or else it is not aesthetic or literary enough. Too bad, let them fester in their dusty literature - they won't even leave behind a pretty ruin like in Thebes. Malraux is as outdated as André Gide was twenty years ago. But after Karl Marx and Mao Zedong, there is Mother.

*

“How I regret that Malraux did not live a little longer to hear Mother's Answer - not an answer in the head, just one among others, but a process, a cellular path that is the goal of all these millions of years of pain.” - Satprem, 1977

Letter to Thérèse de Saint Phalle: Satprem thanks her for her article on his book, Le Matérialisme Divin (The Divine Materialism) in her women's magazine, Votre Beauté.

2 May, 1977

Our friend Yolande, the transparent one, sent me your message about Mother in "the goal of a civilization." I am so touched in my heart that you spoke of Mother - you are the very first. And you do so with such simplicity, you saw so clearly how Malraux's questions led to Her - because ultimately, the question that Death poses to us can be viewed through the stained glass windows of the sacred - Van Gogh's black birds, the physicist's microscope, but ultimately we are led to the place of the Answer in our own bodies. All our songs and works were not intended to poeticize Death or to deny it in a so-called Eternity that mocked our little lives - nor to create beautiful civilizations that all crumbled before this single Gaze, - but to reach this suffocating point where we MUST find the Answer, that is, the material answer, for our bodies, for our cells that had once been poetic, these cells that had traveled so far over millions of years to arrive at their answer: the end of death - Victory over Death. We are at that moment in the great journey where bodies must have their Answer - not just kind spirits. It is an evolution of matter, not just of Art and momentary pirouettes. If this matter has set out on its journey, it is because it too must have its Fullness - its Truth. Mother, this is the secret of matter. It is the Path of immortality in reverse - not in the pale heavens of the Spirit but in the first stirrings of a cell in our clarified matter, unencumbered by its atomic memories. There has been no adventure more powerful, more courageous, more revolutionary, really, since we began to emerge from the age of Ptolemy. It is the last revolution. For truly, life is not life until it has dissolved death. How I regret that Malraux did not live a little longer to hear Mother's Answer - not an answer in the head, just one among others, but a process, a cellular path that is the goal of all these millions of years of pain.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for speaking of Her in such simple terms, side by side with Malraux. And I note that it was a women's magazine that first spoke of Her, because women, Mother said, will be the first to build the bridge to the next Species - "the New Species," the species without death - their bodies understand - it is the body that must understand.

*

The end of an era

"It should be otherwise."
Malraux’s last written note. 

-

November 23, 1976

Death of Malraux. The end of the mental man.

Satprem > Notebooks of an Apocalypse 1973-1978, Vol. 1

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Conversation between Satprem and Sujata, 25th October, 1986:

Sujata: But I don't know why, when Malraux left… 

Satprem: Yes.

Sujata: ... I have had the impression that, there, it is the end of a human era.

Satprem: Yes. He was also a humanist.

Sujata: He was almost the last of….

Satprem: The thinkers.

Satprem > Notebooks of an Apocalypse 1986

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20 December, 1986

If Malraux were alive, he would understand me…

Satprem > Notebooks of an Apocalypse 1986

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6 January, 1988. 

12 years after the passing away of Andre Malraux - Satprem notes the following ‘dream’ in his Notebooks of an Apocalypse 1988, Vol. 8:

I also met Malraux. I talked to him about Mantras. He was very interested and wanted to "record" what I was saying.

(This was just before I woke up - curious.)

The ones who seem most alive, it would seem, are the "dead"!

*

Brothers and passers-by
But who goes, who stays?
Only the clothing changes
Or the colour of a sky over a little, 
white beach 
Only the sorrow goes 
And a child
On a pure, little beach 
Looks with wonder
At those who come and go
And no longer recognise each other….

- Satprem > By The Body Of The Earth or The Sannyasin