The Last Stand

The Battle for The Mother’s Agenda

“The Agenda is a white LASER that burns. That is why we don’t want it.” - Satprem

What is the controversy of the lack of permission to publish the Agenda?

It is a fact that The Mother showed very little interest in keeping a record of Her conversations and made certain reservations about making the Agenda public.

I am not keen on keeping all that—it's much too personal. It involves a lot of people and a lot of things, and I don't want.... I've told it to you, that's all. Keep it for yourself—not even for the Agenda, it's not necessary.

Mother's Agenda > April 29, 1961

It is unpublishable for the time being. 

I don’t want the outside world to scoff at something sacred.

But it’s my gift to those who continue to love me.

It will be my parting gift… if I go. And I don’t intend to.

Mother's Agenda > March 13, 1962

Naturally, this mustn't be published, but it's to be kept

Mother's Agenda > August 27, 1969

But it is very curious to see the widespread outrage regarding the lack of permission to publish The Agenda when half the volumes in the Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo have been published without His permission and in some cases carrying explicit ‘not meant for publication’ notes.

Surely, the real pertinent issue is elsewhere.

Perhaps exploring what was at the heart of The Mother’s reluctance to publish The Agenda will give us a clue.

…we mustn't put it in .... That's impossible, it would cause a revolution.

…It's difficult to put that without... without something comforting.

Mother's Agenda > September 23, 1970

And which parts in the Agenda are those that cause discomfiture?

It's peoples' thoughts that are so annoying, oh!... Everybody, everybody is constantly thinking about old age and death, and death and old age and illness, oh!

Mother's Agenda > February 13, 1962

The people around me don't help. Those closest to me have no faith.

Mother's Agenda > October 30, 1964

They have put on a mask of goodwill. But the inner vibrations still belong to the world of falsehood.

Mother's Agenda > October 16, 1965

 I have the feeling of hanging by a slender thread in an absolutely rotten atmosphere of disbelief, futility, bad will. So that's how it is, a slender thread, and it's a miracle if.... They don't even understand that if this vibration of truth were to impose itself, it would mean their destruction!

Mother's Agenda > September 17, 1966

I fought and fought, but ... there are too many lies around me.

Mother's Agenda > May 5, 1968

There are minutes when the body feels it has escaped that law of death. But it doesn't last. Then people come with all their thoughts and because of that, it's a bit difficult. You know, there are a considerable number of desires that it should die! Everywhere, they are everywhere! It sees that, it sees it.... I am not quite sure that all those pains it feels all over, all the time, are not coming from ... are not the effect of all the bad wills.

Mother's Agenda > May 10, 1969

Do you know my impression? They are all old and I am the only one who is young! Provided they are what they call “comfortable,” that's all they want — and free to do some nonsense they wouldn't do in the world. Whereas you feel you COULD hasten the coming if you were... if you were a conqueror. Basically, they just don't care.

Mother's Agenda > March 3, 1971

 “She is old, she is old....” It creates an atmosphere of resistance to the change. It almost creates a conflict in the being. “It's impossible, it's impossible...,” from every side.

Mother's Agenda > June 3, 1971

If things quieten down and I can return to my normal atmosphere, it's as if everything disappears: I no longer suffer. Then back it comes from outside like a ferocious attack: people quarrel, circumstances, everything, goes awry. And all that is thrown on me, so.... There's an onslaught of falsehood.

Mother's Agenda > July 17, 1971

Yes, The Mother had repeatedly raised doubts about our ability to be able to face this daunting fact.

God indeed is Love, who sweetly suffers all - but is humanity always to remain this beast that devours one Incarnation after another with such self-righteous sincerity?

The Divine compassion and Wisdom could have wanted to spare us the burden of hearing the naked Truth of ourselves but what was supposed to be the human response to this?

“Yes; You are correct. We are not ready for it and neither do we have any urgent need to be ready for it, so please let us remain the way we are and You continue to talk to one man in your solitary room above.”

Should it not have made us mad with rage and shame of not even being capable of hearing about the New World and thus fuelled the zeal in us to be worthy of this Grace that descended on Earth FOR US.?

Instead, with touching indignation we deflected the issue to - How could Satprem publish the Agenda without Her permission? How could he assume that we are capable of receiving The Agenda?

He could do so because he had already been advocating our cause before Her each time She manifested a doubt about the utility of these conversations.

There are people who follow.

Are there?…

Mother's Agenda > December 18, 1968

“But look, Mother, perhaps you're receiving some protests from a certain number of people, but there are many here, many more than... well, of course I can't say ‘more than you think’(!), but who are doing their job quietly and trying to understand — there are many. And it helps them, it does them good.”

Mother's Agenda > March 3, 1971

Future turn of events show that a lot of this was presumptuously assumed on our behalf.

Yes, his actions were certainly independent and maybe egoistic but a strange sort of ego that wanted to renounce elitism and include the entire world in what was apparently exclusively meant for him.

Why couldn’t Satprem hand over the Agenda to the authority demanding it?

The distrust that Satprem showed towards his fellow seekers has often been attributed to malice, ill will or arrogance - whereas in reality one can find its source in The Agenda. There was a certain lack of comprehension around The Mother in the final phase of Her battle as has been repeatedly mentioned in the Agenda.

I saw that, in fact: I showed A. some passages from the Agenda that I had selected; obviously A. likes me, also he makes an effort to understand spiritually—well, I clearly saw while he was reading that he doesn’t understand. There was a whole part that was absolutely beyond his understanding, he didn’t understand, and what little he could catch was just a husk.

Mother's Agenda > August 23, 1963

The big difficulty is that all of N.’s experiences are in his mind. He has worked in his mind, transformed his mind; he has experiences, he’s had all the experiences—but IN THE MIND: not at all in the body. But then all that I am saying here, all these experiences I have now are in the body—he doesn’t understand. That’s the difficulty. He cannot understand. And who can?… I don’t know:

As soon as it concerns mental things, he understands perfectly well; as soon as it concerns material things, he doesn’t understand anymore. But who can understand?…

I can’t say I “understand,” but…

You feel.

Mother's Agenda > March 28, 1964

This can't be made public, it's impossible; it's not the moment, not the moment. People don't understand even the simplest things I say! I've seen that even Nolini sometimes hesitates; he doesn't get it. So you can imagine, the public!..

Mother's Agenda > October 15, 1961

But the remarkable thing is that you are the only person to whom I can speak—not that I didn't try [during Satprem's trip to France], because I had the feeling that if certain things went away, it might be a pity. I tried with Nolini and Pavitra: nothing comes out, except a sort of mental transcription.

When I called you Satprem, that's what I meant: you must certainly have the capacity to come into contact with That.

Mother's Agenda > July 22, 1964

I have a feeling that people didn't understand a thing in the last Bulletin—they didn't dare to say anything, but they didn't understand

a thing! Even those who, consciously, are supposed to understand: Nolini, Amrita, Pavitra, André... not to mention all the rest who are not as developed intellectually—understand nothing.

Mother's Agenda > February 26, 1964

….they didn't understand. They tried (they "understood," they were very interested), but I know, I saw their state of consciousness: there was something completely closed, because there is no equivalent in them. But what can be done?... Oh, I gave up very long ago the idea of being really understood—in a few hundred years people will understand, perhaps.

Mother's Agenda > January 21, 1967

I look at this body; at times it says (at times, when there is too much incomprehension, when my entourage is too absolutely uncomprehending), it says, “Ah, let me go.... Very well, leave me, it doesn't matter, let me go.

Mother's Agenda > June 15, 1968

Mon petit, you are helping me as much as you can. It's very good.... There's one thing: you are the only one I can talk to. And that's good. From a general standpoint, I am very grateful for that—you are the only one I can talk to. The others don't understand.

The others don't understand.

Mother's Agenda > May 24, 1969

Who could the Agenda be entrusted to in these circumstances?

The incomprehension of people concerned is perhaps not a comment on the spiritual accomplishments of the Ashram or the devotion and goodwill of the seekers but a certain misperception of the scale of the work to be done.

Meanwhile those disciples were still trying to work out a "synthesis between East and West," a "union of the world's religions," a high "continuity" of the world's traditions... and so on. Continuity, yes indeed, as the bird followed the reptile, but it is not by adding up the visions of all the saurians of East and West that we shall ever produce a bird's vision. Nor in adding together the Upanishads + the Gospels + the Koran, then shake it all a little.... It is ANOTHER world! How difficult it was to understand, of course. Sri Aurobindo and Mother would live for 78 and 95 years respectively without even having three disciples who understood; that is what Mother told me before she left—and there are four and half billion people in the world.

The New Species

The basic incomprehension stems from the fact that nobody (including the one who is writing these lines) is fully aware of the enormity of the task Sri Aurobindo and Mother have accomplished, and thus nobody is aware of the value and of the historic, universal role of what They left behind them - what ape could be aware of Einstein's role and value and what would a tribe of Neolithic men have done, if, by miracle, they could have held the secret of the vibration that transforms Matter? ..A certain tribe of anthropoids was faced with a prodigious power, what were they going to do with it?
...Imagine for a moment that this tribe, in the midst of which Sri Aurobindo and Mother worked, used the tremendous secret not to make a super bomb, as they did not even know that it was a bomb (thank God!) but to concoct a spiritual panacea in the best Gandhian tradition, as it is the summit of what anthropoids understand and are able to understand. That is, the Secret smothered, the true transforming Power yoked to a profitable, honorable ideology for every purse, to which thousands and millions of men and millions of millions would bring their contributions as they did after Christ. As a matter of fact, all that makes for a lot of money and a lot of power that we cannot predict, any more than the first catechumens could have predicted Rome or the first Gandhians the Indian hierarchy. And meanwhile, the evolutionary Secret is buried, perverted, confiscated for the benefit of yet one more ideology, triumphant and lucrative.

Notebooks of an Apocalypse (1973-1978)

Can there be An Agenda without Satprem?

Now that the Agenda is an irrefutable public document, perhaps Mankind wishes to remove a certain ‘unflattering presence’ from the Agenda. Interestingly, the ‘‘personal slander” in the Mother’s Agenda - the footnotes and Addendums by Satprem - forms less than 1% of the total content; additionally it finds its general basis in the main text which is a transcription of The Mother's words. So what or who exactly are we attempting to contextualize or censure here and thereby actually proving once again Her comment on human censorship - “they cut out and remove all that bothers them and leave only what suits them ”… [Oct 14 1964]

Savitri exposes the human falsehood almost as much as the Agenda, but it is so sublime that humanity revels in it without even noticing that it has been annihilated. “God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep” has not invoked a single protest from any wise men, who triumphantly continue spreading their wisdom - with this very quote in hand.

But it is The Agenda alone that makes us contrive such ingenious approaches such as making an “essential agenda” worthy of being an “eternal scripture”.

This seems to be the mind's humbly conceited plea to the Divine - “Be a Golden Peak so I can sing your glories; Be a Golden Ray so I can admire your beauty - but never dare to be a Golden Sword that rips me apart. For then, I shall have to prune you to make you worthy of being a theory that entices me, a lecture that educates me, an epic that adorns me - anything except the Fire that destroys me.”

After Sri Aurobindo's departure in 1950 there was (and still exists) a very powerful hostile "formation" against the Mother: Sri Aurobindo, yes; the Mother...? Sri Aurobindo's philosophy, yes; the Mother's searching and pitiless white Light on the human compromise with Falsehood..? When this indomitable Ray was put into the coffin, another very powerful "formation" of the hostile forces (not a human formation, mind you, but a direct action from the power of Darkness which now dominates the world) sprang up: the Mother, yes maybe; but the Agenda.? Mother's talk on Evolution, yes maybe; but the coming to grips with the root of falsehood in ourselves and the black gluey fingers everywhere…?

The cunning, gluey powers have even a last righteous mask: the Agenda, yes; but Satprem's distortion..? There is no more "Satprem", there is no more a writer or even a "confidant of the Mother" - all this is dead. There is a crying soul, there is a bleeding child who is desperately trying to bring into his flesh what She wanted so much for the Earth. This child does not care a damn for the approbation or the mud of the world. He cares that Her suffering and agony do not go in vain.

Notebooks of an Apocalypse > March 20, 1984

A senior sadhak in the Ashram had once remarked that 'Agenda is a gift but the hands that bring it to us are unworthy'. So are we to forget that the hands which bring the Agenda to us belong to the person whose ears received the words directly from The Mother. This is like saying that everyone except Arjuna is a worthy authority on the Bhagawad Gita.

And how does one make an edited Agenda without Satprem - whose very existence caused the Agenda to see the light of the day?

If I didn't tell these things to you, they would all vanish, and that's a fact. Because I have no opportunity to tell them to anyone else – as you can well imagine! Tomorrow there will be something else and something else again the day after, and it all recedes into the past and has none of the relevance the present has for me.

Yes, for YOU it has no relevance – but what about the rest of us!

Well then, for it to be kept I have to see you.

Yes, exactly!

If I don't see you, it won't be kept. The results remain, but the experience itself vanishes.

Mother's Agenda > June 27, 1962

…

Listen, I told you once—it wasn’t just words—and I thought you understood and would remember: everything I write is absolutely dependent on your work, in the sense that if you weren’t here I wouldn’t write another word—just letters with “I send you my blessings.” Period. Not that I don’t have time or can’t do it, but I don’t enjoy it. When we do something together, when we write, I get the feeling it’s complete and has a certain quality that makes it useful. When you aren’t here to write it, I feel something missing.

…There was absolutely no need for me to say anything. And I had less and less desire to speak. The minute I met you, I began to get interested. “Ah,” I thought, “collaboration!… Something interesting can be done.”

None of this is random chance. It’s not that we’re taking advantage of circumstances, not at all; it was DECREED.

Mother's Agenda > June 27, 1962

Agenda is a BLOCK that has to be accepted or rejected in its entirety, as a chronicle of the Divine’s struggle with the human species. On each page of the Agenda - WE ARE ON TRIAL.  The individuals mentioned there are only representative shadows - replaceable names - including Satprem. The resistance of the human species - in one form or the other- in one name or another- is what is being poignantly discussed under what has been described as "irrelevant gossip" or "serious accusations" or "indictments of individual frailties". Even today - each reaction, each twitch, each acceptance or denial in the individual reader, is an indictment of our state of consciousness and consequently the Earth’s.

Mother accepted EVERYTHING. The destiny of the world or the sordid quarrel of this one, it was all the same, without priority. It was the SAME thing. At every instant it was the destiny of the world, everything was the destiny of the world.

The Mutation of Death

And if it was possible for The Agenda to exist without Satprem then what prevented The Mother from speaking to a tape recorder in the solitude of Her empty room.

Me, I have nothing to say; if you have something to ask, I can speak a little.”

Mother's Agenda > April 18, 1970

But, you see, when you are here, I can express these things because your atmosphere is conducive to expressing them.

Mother's Agenda > July 19, 1972

No inclination to speak unless you put questions. 

Mother's Agenda > February 19, 1972

Every step that Satprem climbed to reach Her room, every word that he uttered in that room, every tear that he shed at Her feet, every hope and despair that he expressed - he did it on behalf of the entire earth - for he embodied a human aspiration that predates us and him.

Who else but a human representative carrying the burden of all our possibilities and impossibilities is answering these questions?

I don't know what's going to happen. What's going to happen? Do YOU know?

One day it will be glorious.

Mother's Agenda > June 15, 1968

Would this, as it is, THIS (Mother pinches the skin of her hands), would it be capable of being transformed by the Force? Can it be done? — We'll know when it's done and not before!

As for me, I find it quite possible.

....

CAN Matter do it?

But of course, surely it can! Surely it can.

Mother's Agenda > March 25, 1970

I know very well that it's the time when... It's the time to make the Attempt, but will it succeed? That's the doubt. Is it destined to succeed?

To me it CANNOT... it cannot but succeed!

Why can't it?

Because you are the body of the earth!... Because this is really the Hope.

Oh, isn't that poetry?

Of course not, Mother! That's how it IS. One just has to see: the outer world is more and more infernal.

Ah, yes, that's true.

…Thank you. 

Mother's Agenda > September 12, 1970

But you see, my physical, my body is deteriorating very rapidly—what could stop it from deteriorating?

Mother, I do NOT believe it is deterioration—it's not. My feeling is that you are physically being led to a point of such complete powerlessness that the most complete Power will be forced to awaken....

Ah!... you're right.

That Power will then be COMPELLED to come out.

Or else I could... I could leave this body, no?

Ah, no, Mother! No, Mother, it must be done NOW.

….I don't speak out of "faith," Mother; it's really like something telling me: that's THE WAY.

Mother's Agenda > May 19, 1973

The Divine judgement about our state in 1959  was a cryptic ‘Not ready’ but confronted with the probing questions of the Supreme examiner - our representative tried to do his best.

Divine Justice will do the rest.