The Last Stand

Prologue

An Avatar, while achieving the missioned work on Earth, always leaves behind a grand tale for posterity. Sri Ram had Ramayan and Shree Krishna, a Mahabharata. These, after serving their moral, cultural and historical purposes, remain above all an eternal testimony of the struggle of an Incarnate with the respective laws of an Age and inertia of the earth along with the ignorance of its inhabitants as He tramples the past and blazes the path of the Future. 

The work of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother seems so intricate, so hidden, so imperceptible and with such a solemn, dignified silence screening it from the world that one could almost lament the lack of an epic drama for us to cherish. Certainly, there is the divine Lila of Sri Aurobindo leading the fight for the freedom of His country, and the fascinating tale of the Divine Mother galloping across continents and worlds with a mischievous laughter, but where is that grim, tragic tale which the Earth thrives on with a peculiar kind of delight- the strife and the conflict, some betrayal and intrigue, some morbid drama which is the spice of the fallen way of being a Man. 

The tale that Earth demands exploded on 17 November 1973 with The Mother’s departure. 

This was not the first time that the Master or The Mother or the Guru of an Ashram had left Their bodies; India is not a novice in such matters. The standard response of dealing with Divine departures has been ingrained in the memory of mankind for millions of years -that grief, that shock, that heart wrenching cry of loss, that heart touching devotion, that golden hope and faith of still feeling the Divine love and presence around us and above all, a resigned, dignified acceptance is how humanity has always faced this eternally recurring event that has neither any novelty nor does it fit the definition of a tragedy.

But 17 November, 1973 did not play out in the expected manner because of the presence of one man- SATPREM and a resounding NO he uttered on that day and lived till his last day. This crazy denial was first attributed to his grief, then, to a relapse of some trauma of the Nazi camps, then to a possession by some unknown Asura. This dangerous rebel, this unrepentant heretic who committed the crime of actually believing in the victory of the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother with an implicit certitude that Death was a conquerable unreality, the next species a living possibility and a freedom from Laws an achievable eventuality. 

When has the earth ever forgiven such audacity? 

So a dose of reality was soon to descend upon him, us and the entire future generations to come- to show us all where we actually stand- the reality of the mighty iron laws, the reality of the cruel Fate that still holds our reigns and the reality of the human resistance to change. 

We begin our exploration of this epic saga, - ‘The Eternal’s dreadful strategy’ playing out between the Divine, one man, and the entire earth, with a glimpse of Satprem and his distinct worldview which forms the backdrop of this Divine Drama. 

In his own words:

From age to age, the “avatar” comes to “change the law.”

We do not realize what this “law” means because we are in it and it seems to us that it can be nothing but an improvement of our habit of being or, on the contrary, the age-old destruction of one civilization after another, only to start again a little better or take up the same old worst, with a few modifications of borders or vocabulary; and what we think “differently” is still a difference within the same animal and human law with perhaps a greater “intelligence” — but it is still the intelligence of a certain law we are confined in or limited to, as were the ichtoids under the waters. And it seems now that with the demoniac means at our disposal, the “difference” will doubtless be catastrophic and pulverizing or asphyxiating — and one starts all over again, perhaps on another planet, with means that will be those of the old law. The crab’s pincers will have acquired intelligent thumbs and forefingers to pinch the same old world.

But someone came to “change the law,” and this is prodigious and incomprehensible, for we only understand our old walls and pincers or additional ones as the case may be. This “someone” was called Sri Aurobindo-Mother.

Who understood them among the very ones who called themselves their disciples? Perhaps they were able to understand abstractly and in their minds, but what about the Means or the Power to go there? What about the path to go there, the terrestrial and material footsteps?

Then came that tragic 1973. Mother left, as did Sri Aurobindo before her; the last link of the Mystery shut itself in a tomb, after so many thousands of earlier tombs. On that first evening, a child of man, standing in front of this tomb yet to be cemented and sealed, cried out in his heart:

“WE ARE GOING TO PULL HER OUT OF THERE.”

It sounded like a cry breaking through the walls — our Walls — and touching something that is very high or very deep at the bottom of all tombs, like an all-there and all-beating Future, an Impossible exploding and piercing all the old possibles.

It WILL BE. We have to DO IT.

Notebooks of an Apocalypse - 1973-1978

The Mother’s Departure

“…one wraps oneself in Mother’s flag patriotically, but underneath there is the selfish old species which defends its rights and privileges.” - Satprem

Why did Satprem take a defiant stance in the days following 17th November, 1973?

Following The Mother’s departure, events unfolded at such a dizzying pace that Satprem - although posessing the inner conviction to take a contrarian stand - could actually do nothing to change the course of events. He remained a mute spectator, watching the charade as if in a daze. But in the years that followed, he never hesitated to expose a certain travesty that occured on 17th November 1973 in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. And in this, he behaved like a man on a Mission, for the Divine had indeed tasked him with one. 

Satprem writes in [The Mind of the Cells]

Five years earlier, in 1967, in the middle of a conversation, Mother stopped abruptly, asked me to take a piece of paper and a pencil, and started dictating in a completely neutral tone of voice, as if she were speaking from “elsewhere”

Because of the necessities of the transformation, this body may enter a state of trance that will appear cataleptic. Above all, no doctors! Do not hasten, either, to announce my death and to give the government the right to intervene. Keep me carefully sheltered from all injuries that may come from outside — infection, poisoning, etc. — and have untiring patience: it may last days, perhaps weeks, perhaps even longer, and you will have to wait patiently for me to come naturally out of that state once the work of transformation is accomplished.

Mother's Agenda > January 14, 1967

I would like people not to put me in a box and shove the body... like that, because it will be aware of it, it will feel it, and that will mean adding one more misery to all those it has had. Let them wait till it deteriorates. I am saying this to you, so you will be able to say it to others if necessary.

Because even long after doctors will have declared it to be dead, it will be conscious: its cells are conscious.

Mother's Agenda > May 24, 1969

 I seem to bring together all the resistances of the world.... You see, I have a solution for the transformation of the body but ... it has never been done before, so it's extremely ... hard to believe. I can't believe that it's that. Yet it's the only solution I see. So the body wants to fall asleep and awaken (“fall asleep” in a certain sense: I am perfectly conscious), and awaken only after it is transformed. But people will never have the patience to stand it, to take care.... Everyone will think that it's the end and they won't take care of me anymore.

Mother's Agenda > April 7, 1973

Now, two months earlier, in January 1973, Mother had had a vision and, gasping for breath, she narrated it to me: she was being buried alive. It was the third time she had seen that.

 Oh, I haven't told you: it was yesterday or the day before, I don't remember; all of a sudden, for two or three minutes, my body was seized by a horror ... the idea of being put like that into a tomb, it was so horrifying! Horrifying! I couldn't have stood it for more than a few minutes. It was horrifying. And not because I was being buried alive: it was because my body was conscious. It was considered “dead” by everybody since the heart had stopped beating — yet it was conscious. It was a horrifying experience.... I showed all the signs of death, that is, the heart wasn't working anymore, nothing was working — and I was conscious. It was conscious. We must... we must warn them not to rush to....

Mother's Agenda > January 10, 1973

Then the second time:

... Because it may be ... it may be temporary. Do you understand? It may be momentary, do you understand? Do you understand what I mean?... I feel there is an attempt to transform this body, it feels it, it's full of willingness, but I don't know if it will be capable. Do you follow? So, for some time, it may give the impression that it's all over, but it would only be temporary. It might start again. Because I may be incapable of speaking at that time and of saying it. So I am telling you.... I don't know. I don't know what will happen! There are times when it becomes so difficult that I wonder whether the body will be able to hold out. But I would like there to be someone to prevent them from doing such a stupid thing, because all the work would be lost. People with some authority must be there and say, “You must not do this, Mother does not want” — you....

Mother's Agenda > April 3 & 5, 1972

So what did we expect of Satprem? Betray this trust, this love, this sense of honour and duty that has in the past inspired men to sacrifice their lives and much more?. Did we expect him to not utter a word and bury this inconvenient Truth that was staring him in the face? Hence, Satprem came out and unequivocally accused the Earth of a dreadful betrayal - however he absolved the specific individuals in question :

“And there is no one to really blame in that formidable tragedy, each of the actors probably did exactly what they had to..” [The Mutation of Death]

As far as the prestige of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and his obligation to this institution is concerned, Satprem responds with a question:

Were Peter and Paul the disciples of Christ, or of the Vatican? Was Vivekananda the disciple of Sri Ramakrishna or of the Ramakrishna Mission? Was Marx a disciple of the Kremlin? [Notebooks of an Apocalypse (1973-1978)]

The Ashram was a spiritual laboratory of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother; where can the prestige of a laboratory lie other than in conducting an experiment successfully?

What is the problem in every wise declaration made about The Mother’s Departure?

A lot has been said about 17th November, 1973 and the status of the Supramental Work. The reactions have ranged from the Transformation being ‘postponed’ and not ‘cancelled’, to scanning through every page of Sri Aurobindo’s and The Mother’s works to prove that this can no longer be done after Their departure, to optimistically believing in some subtle physical body where the process is continuing. 

The point is not in who said what - it is in asking on what basis were such statements made. What did anyone understand of that Work which we are hailing to have succeeded or failed or postponed? The Mother’s statement to Satprem-….”you are the only one I can talk to. The others don't understand”  sounds a deafening refrain to all the wise explanations of the event.

Meanwhile, the man who apparently understood - or at least understood things differently - held on to only one certitude - that the next species will BE. 

But Evolution will take PLACE anyway.
It is the thing most inevitable there is, after human stupidity. [Notebooks of an Apocalypse - 1987]

And they said: Oh! the transformation is stopped, oh! the Hour of God has been missed, oh! the Moment is passed, the world was not ready⎯the fools! Could the pithecanthropus have ever stopped the torrent of mental evolution and prevent themselves from becoming men!? [The Mutation of Death]

Does it mean that the resistance and negation of the little spiritualists and the little materialists are greater and stronger than the evolutionary push? For we are going to change tack, without a shadow of doubt. 

Mother and Sri Aurobindo did not come to preach or to reveal: they came to DO. And they did what they had come to do. “The thing is done.” They came to extricate and free a set of cells as they are, without their evolutionary coatings or encrustations, in a corner of matter, in a corner of human cellular substance, in spite of — or because of — all the obstacles. Their bodies were the laboratory of evolution. What they did is an evolutionary operation.

Has evolution ever been known to fail?

It is the one thing that never fails, it is the most infallible thing in the world — gospels can fail, but not the cell. Once it has taken something into its “head,” or into its programme, it holds fast to it — until the next evolutionary disturber.

Mother and Sri Aurobindo are great disturbers. One just has to look to see.

We see nothing, as usual, except slogans and millions of radios and televisions around the world, shouting out falsehood-truths or truth-falsehoods, and no one understands anything anymore, except that the foundations are shaking.  [The Mind of the Cells]

And he groped in the dark till the end:

I have followed Mother's journey step by step without understanding anything, or rather, with thousands of successive understandings, and I am scarcely better off today, on page 164, than eighteen years ago when Mother first began with me. So let there be no mistake: I am not skillfully leading the reader in a direction that I know in advance and am carefully saving for the end. I do not know what the direction is! I am leading the reader "nowhere"!—but perhaps just going there will make it "somewhere." That is all. I am going blindly into that, clinging to Mother's hand on the other side of the veil and praying that She guides me in the right direction—I do not know the direction. It is an adventure into the unknown. I am writing each line without knowing the next one. No one can possibly imagine what that means.  [The New Species]

Interestingly, the world had no ambiguity and could confidently issue transformation certificates about the amount of work done. After all, ships in harbour can make any number of statements about the nature, duration, status and perils of a voyage- it is of little consequence unless one sets sail to conquer the sea. Nevertheless, we went on proclaiming that the old body has been discarded and to do more was not possible and a New Body will come.

But The Agenda does not end on this victorious note that surely is a comforting solace and neither does it end on the defeatist note that borders on appalling treachery. 

It ends with a haunting question that one has to someday have the courage to frame and face. 

Can this mystery of The Mother’s Departure and our culpability ever be resolved?

The Mother's departure on 17th November, 1973 is a muted controversy that is invoked and resolved on each anniversary - sincerely and scrupulously. But it refuses to end because we are employing the wrong tool to tackle the issue. Here, the mind is not the best arbiter as it cannot even grasp such statements without faltering:

It has come to the point where if I had no regard for people's peace of mind, I would say, “I don't know whether I am alive or dead!... If you totally eliminate that sensation, the type of relation that allows people to say "I am alive"... or "I am not alive", the distinction NO LONGER EXISTS. Well, for me, it has been completely eliminated.

Mother's Agenda > June 12, 1962

What happened in 1973 when She left this so-called life, which was no longer life, to enter that alleged death which was not death either? But of course, She was no longer "alive" — and had not been for a long time! And of course, She is not dead! You only die from this life.

So where is She?

And all this concerns a BODILY consciousness, you see, it was not her mind that dreamed of immortality: it was HER BODY that lived otherwise, perceived otherwise, walked otherwise and was... in something else. What is that "something else?" That other bodily, material thing. Another state of Matter in Matter?

The New Species

This was the basis of Satprem’s denial of 17th November- how could anyone comprehend the circumstances of Her ‘Death’ when those of Her ‘Life’ completely escaped us?

But Satprem’s accusations only made the spiritual community more defensive. How could they be accused to be obtuse - they 'the chosen ones' - they 'the devoted servitors' - they had who not reacted to Her departure in a tragic or sentimental or ignorant manner but with a spiritual equality.

'What more is asked of us?' : wonders this baffled aspiring world of sadhaks.

Countless seekers and devotees have seen Her in various subtle planes of existence, She has assured us of Her victory, Her constant guidance and Love and we continue to feel Her presence in our hearts, in our minds, in our soul - of course, She lives in our memories, our prayers - ….but physically?

We have all accepted the PHYSICAL fact. And then we wove a magnificent narrative around it - devotional and replete with all the visions and intuitions of the new age spirituality.

But none of this resolves the haunting sense of unease that lingers on even after all these decades. Who was in the right and who wrong?

This debate ends in the BODY. For you can challenge every belief, every argument, every approach but a PHYSICAL SENSATION is irrefutable. The truth of 17th November can only be ascertained in the CELLS of the body - it is not the mind or the heart, neither the thoughts nor the emotions - but this throbbing, aching , mortal, corporeal entity, which should have refused to believe that She is weak, She is ill, She needs food, She needs medicines - and finally the undeniable fact of the couch carrying Her body to be buried.

Evidently - we didn’t refuse to believe it. Because we couldn’t. No amount of instructions and counter instructions, statements and counter statements, books, letters, declarations can impose the NEW LIFE upon a physical consciousness which has not yet experienced a single sensation of it.

This is where Satprem faltered - he perceived our inability as insolence and in his passionate flight towards the Future he forgot that a blind man cannot be cured by a dose of scolding. It only increased resentment and confusion.

The Mother had said:

...each one does the best he can...

Mother's Agenda > Feb 27, 1971

….they're already doing their utmost, and I can't ask for more.

Mother's Agenda > April 7, 1973

The blame ends there.

Perhaps, someday we will exceed this ‘best’- but for that, one needs to acknowledge the fact that our best was not good enough and stop labelling the first person who challenges our ‘best’ to be a fanatic who ‘doesn’t understand the complexities of Integral Yoga’.

In any case, the human species is dying a complex death - one needs to find the next Life - fanatically or amicably - not to make new declarations - but for the body to LIVE that Immortality in each cell and the New world to declare itself.

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.

Satprem and Personal accusations

“As for me, I don’t hold the truth, I walk, that’s all — truth consists in walking.” - Satprem

Why did Satprem indulge in personal attacks and not remove the slanderous content in the Agenda?

Perhaps because he did not view things personally?

In a Note on the Agenda recordings, he writes:

And where to cut, what to cut? Most often, our machete fell on the pieces that were too "personal," because we still believed at that time that there was a "person" in there, when in fact there was a human representative with his particular miseries that were only the miseries of the earth. For this very reason, we cannot repeat too often how much the people or beings of whom Mother speaks in this Agenda and who escaped our machete, are only representatives of the "earthly difficulty" and in no case a particular person, as those who love and look only at the small picture would like - it is the big picture that concerns us. It is the resistance of an old species to its glorious tomorrow. Peter or Paul have no more meaning than a pterodactyl-Jacques or a salamander-Olibrius. It is the evolutionary transition that interests us and the resistances on which Mother worked to wrest the new species from the old. Wanting to eliminate this resistance to present a small golden ashram would be a historical lie as aberrant as eliminating Judas or the Mongol invasions - even Judas has his uses, even the Mongol invasions: this is how the new being is forged, by the very resistance it encounters.

So we have not always been able to erase names, nor even wanted to do so - and what does it matter: these and those will pass. A great History will remain.

In a letter written in 1981, Satprem again addresses the issue of the footnotes :

I can say in all humility that it is quite possible that today I would write certain notes differently, and it is quite certain that I would not write any of the books I have written now — because I change; otherwise, I would not be a man but a fossil. That is what Mother said about the painter Gustave Moreau: he spent his time redoing his paintings — which is silly; it is better to do another one.

So let's leave these notes as they were written, and honestly written, at the time. If they are outdated, too bad, we'll write other books. And Mother would certainly say that all these Agendas are "old stuff" – of course, because she is already far ahead.

The main thing is to do the work honestly and, through it, allow ourselves to be imbued with this Current that carries us toward something else.

(Translated from Lettres et Messages Au Nouveau Monde, September 28 1981)

Admittedly, it is hard not to squirm each time a revered name from the Ashram appears in Satprem’s line of fire. But when is the shot really fired? Except in the acute phase of crisis and during occasions when this painful chapter was invoked even decades later - people by their names are hardly mentioned as Satprem seems to have very little interest in settling any score with anyone in the Ashram. For in moments of calm, his is only a vast, impersonal, all encompassing gaze looking at what seems to be a regrettable clash of personalities but in reality a very poignant clash of cosmic forces.

One cannot even say that the samples around her were especially bad, no: they were simply the earth, the earth’s state, the earth’s breathing, the earth’s habit. The earth’s pettiness, the old catastrophic habit.

The Mutation of Death

—

I was one of those samples. involuntarily—and if I mention the kind of sample I was, it is merely to give some idea of the collection of negations that surrounded Mother. Each one was a particular negation. A particular form of death, actually.

The New Species

—

And the little world around her was the exact reflection of the big world, with denser shadows and a few rare lights, as is usual under the light source. It was the evolutionary laboratory under pressure. Everything was taking place there, on a small scale. There were no “disciples or “non-disciples,” not faithful or unfaithful ones, no good or wicked people: there were only small terrestrial samples, the old ingredients of a strange evolutionary concoction boiling at a high heat⎯was it to succeed or not? It was a little how things were. One felt that everything was there, every possibility and every marvel were there, poison and Falsehood were there (how much so!), the old terrestrial calamity, clinging death, and the Miracle … if one wished. She was there, so fragile, so vast and tranquil⎯without a shadow of a person in that small body: a formidable, quiet active witness who welcomed everything, looked at everything, good and evil, poison and nectar, who embraced all in her great, immobile white Fire, without any difference, without pluses and minuses. It was the world, her world. These were the data of the problem, and each piece of data had its immense, absolute sense, as if that small black whirl that entered her room brought all the miseries of the earth in its wake⎯everyone was one misery⎯and that sudden, mute little flame all the hope of the earth. And it was like that, each day like a great, silent Act whose actors did not know the stakes. They climbed up the stairs with their obscure little business, their microscopic quarrel out of a million quarrels of the world, their tiny pettiness out of the general pettiness everywhere⎯and who prayed for the earth? Who had that single little cry within for a true earth at last, that flame which forces the Moment and breaks the door open? ...

Was the Moment to be missed? As in 1950. The Moment of the earth?

No. What has to be will be in spite of everything, or BECAUSE of everything. [March 6, 1971] Oh, because, yes, because of all this misery, this pettiness, this ugliness, because of all that which rends our hearts and strangles us. It has to be. It has, it has to be…. It is not possible otherwise, it is monstrous otherwise. A true little prayer to trigger the Moment and open the Door. I used to go to her place as if counting the heartbeats of the earth.

The Mutation of Death

A revolutionary in a condemned cell had once said: “When the Fate of a nation is being decided, the Fate of individuals should be forgotten.”

Could he have imagined that when the decisive moment arrives, when the destiny of an entire species is to be determined, when the fate of the whole edifice of an Incarnate’s Work hangs in the balance - individual name, deed, prestige of human egoes would seem to matter so much that it clouded everything, including the issue in question?

And what is the issue in question? It is a change of species - and not about making idle speeches on a Supramental race or ‘holding space’ in paid workshops for the fragile human ego. It is instead about fighting a merciless war against each grain of falsehood in the present human species and accepting a complete annihilation of the old way of being a ‘human specimen’.

If Sri Aurobindo’s demand that man “must be surpassed… for he is an imperfect beginning”, is to be fulfilled, then what is the purpose of this ferocious defence of a humanity that is meant to be transcended - even at its highest?

It is understandable that we shall undergo this Transformation at our own pace and in our own manner - but the END being pursued cannot be forgotten along the way : “a revolt against the whole universal Nature” - Sri Aurobindo and “We must conquer death” - The Mother.

The Goal cannot be re-calibrated to better suit our present capacities - we have to rise to its height & fulfil its requirements.

So maybe one should slay with love, but slain you will have to be O Man.

Why couldn’t Satprem tone down the aggression and be more tolerant in his reactions?

Satprem appears to have a profound empathy for human misfortune but none for human weakness & pettiness - especially when it ferociously defends itself. He was looking for a RADICAL CURE of our human malady and the ruthless surgeon of the new world could not be the gentle nurse of the old one.

Satprem himself had expressed certain reservations before The Mother in 1969 concerning his 'hardness' when dealing with the world:

And when I speak with them, very strangely, there's a sort of warrior in me, and some people give rise to reactions: I feel like striking. Sometimes it's quite brutal, I don't know why. It comes and strikes. With others, on the contrary, I am very tranquil. Some tell Me, "You're hard!"...

Has it always been like that? It's not since this new consciousness came? Since the beginning of this year?

Last year, too.

Because I've noticed that in this Consciousness there is something like that: suddenly it comes, oh! and it feels like striking.

Mother's Agenda > April 2, 1969

On a second occasion when he expressed similar reservations, The Mother replied-

As for me, I have trust. I have trust in your reaction.

Mother's Agenda > September 20, 1969

Nevertheless, his way of reacting was obviously neither common nor comfortable.

Satprem’s close aid Yolande had also perhaps hinted at being more ‘humane’ towards the rest of the world- to which he responded-

This is no longer the time for humanism; it is a time when humanity itself is at stake, its future or its death in the great Suffocation that is strangling the world. So...

So we need to know where we stand. We need to know what we want.

And have the courage to want it. The foremost quality of the New World is Courage, as Mother has said often enough. To make and create this Future, we must have the soul of a Hero, as Mother has also said. So we fight. 

And if, in our hearts of hearts, we know that the Enemy itself is the Divine in hiding, if we know that the executioners and traitors and countless Liars are there to forge our own strength and our own unity and our own purity - and that even Death is there to compel us to discover what lies behind its mask - that is no reason to embrace death and lies and the various gangrenes that attack the Body of the Earth. One day Sri Krishna came to the battlefield with Arjuna and tore the Kauravas to pieces. You don't play with the Kauravas: you kill them. Only our weapons are no longer the external sword: they are the inner sword, courage, purity, transparency—and without compromise.

Everything we give to the Enemy, in thought, word, or deed, is a betrayal of the Truth of our soul. We are in the time of Battle, Yolande. That is all I wanted to say to you on this little terrace, and Mother's warriors, the rare little sparks who believe in Her, are too few in number for us to bend, to be accommodative , and to lose our blood.

If you truly understand this, if you have that courage and that understanding that comes from the heart and not from the head, then your journey will have been beneficial and we will meet again for the work.

(Translation of Lettres a Yolande, 7th July 1976)

Brutal - yes; but is this a fanatic speaking?

I am not “right” and I don’t know if I am wrong. I have no reason on my side and I don’t know if I have any excuse for what I did, wished or tried — it happened just like that. I have prayed a lot. And if I am wrong, I still pray. When I was doing the worst idiocies in my life, as I was approaching the bottom of the hole and had no longer anything to put forward as an excuse, I told the Lord, as in a cry from the depths of my soul: “Even in hell, I will love You.” Even if everything falls upon me, even if I am wrong, if I am the lowest of the low, I will keep saying I love You, I love You, I love You.

And so it is so warm that you love truly and forever. And you are at the end of all misery. It burns. Everything is burnt. [Notebooks of an Apocalypse (1973-1978)]

Yes - his fire unleashed a cascade of events whose wounds and murmurs still haunts this community of seekers. Yes - there are casualties, there is agony, there is devastation - it was a battle after all. The current terrestrial conditions govern all human endeavours - which monument has ever been sculpted without breaking stones and which arrow ever taken off without friction? And yet, we only celebrate the Goal being pursued for in THAT is the Glory - all else is sadly dispensable.

Was Satprem usurping the role of a Guru?

Satprem has been accused of becoming a 'Guru' by his detractors; at the same time, some of his ardent followers resented the fact that he was not being one. Both Satprem's words and deeds prove that he had never assumed the mantle of being a spiritual guide or 'Guru'.

I will be neither the new pope of a new religion nor the guru of any city whatever, even if it were Auroville — I will disappear without a trace.

But the Work will be established.

Notebooks of an Apocalypse > Dec 7, 1976

Satprem has no "interest" in life, neither in money, nor in being a celebrity; not as a "guru" nor as anything — because, would you believe it, he woke up one morning naked and dead, at the age of twenty, in a concentration camp yard. After that, we no longer want anything — we are dead once and for all to a certain world. After that, we need only one thing: a true food, or we die with our boots on. And it's because he had this need of a true food, of something that fills truly, that Satprem exists and continues to live — for nothing else. It's for that that he lived near to Mother — for nothing else.

Notebooks of an Apocalypse > Oct 11, 1979

I was not meant to be a "guru"; nowadays even a Vivekananda would be lost in the blast and glare of the TV and loudspeakers — this game is self-defeating; one wave is soon engulfed by the next one. It is all a chaos of stars for no heaven and no light anywhere.

Notebooks of an Apocalypse > Feb 11, 1982

To put things simply: I am neither a schoolteacher nor a "guru." All my life, I have fiercely refused to do that. This place is not an "ashram" and I don't have and don't want to have "disciples" — not even Pierre. The only "Master" and the only "Teaching" are the inner need or inner thirst which leads to the Source naturally, and it is the Source itself that gives you all the “explanations" and directions to follow. The only "teaching" is the one that you will find in The Agenda with the great Force that lies behind and will lead you, if you are sincere.

Notebooks of an Apocalypse > Apr 16, 1983

And even a decade later we find the same refusal from Satprem:

The work that is done in the body is difficult — it is a wonderful grace and... a little overwhelming. And then, it is no longer the time of "gurus" — I have always wanted to follow the future, change, the unknown to be embodied. No guru can put you in touch with that. Only the Supreme Mother can give you what is necessary for you, what you can bear.

(Translated from Lettres et Messages Au Nouveau Monde, August 1992)

Satprem was neither a theorist nor a propagandist - he was a WORKER intending to build the bridge to the New World. And to hew the way through an unknown forest, one does not need disciples - one needs only a machete.

And perhaps a few collaborators.

What right did Satprem have to do the things he did, to say the things he said?

Finally, a very persistent question can still haunt our minds - What vain-glorious assumption led Satprem to believe that he solely was an heir to the Work of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother? What official position did Satprem have to challenge those in authority?

The answer to this is found by probing our terrestrial history - Who has ever attempted to change the course of Destiny with a notarised copy of a legal certificate?

What right did Vercingetorix have to challenge Caesar and Demosthenes to rouse Athens? What right did Patrick Pearse have to disturb the peace of Ireland and Bobby Sands to inflame its prisons? What right did Joan of Arc have to hold the banner of France and De Gaulle to pick the fallen sword of honour? What right did Gambetta have to impose the Republic and Jean Moulin to die defending it?

And yet, what of value remains in this miserable saga of the two-legged worm called man, if such names and deeds are erased from its History?

Yes, Satprem had no right to make this solemn promise to the Divine on behalf of the human race - We shall conquer, Mother - and neither to repeatedly assure Her that - It is possible.

Yes, this was revolutionary audacity - but what is Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga if not the most audacious REVOLUTION ever dreamt of upon Earth? And humanity ought not canonise this dream to rob it of its SUBSTANCE. Hallowing Their Names only to convert Them into passive icons blunts the revolutionary edge of this endeavour.

Sri Aurobindo must have held no illusions about the travesty that men and time would one day make of the Divine Truth He embodied and hence he described in detail the expected Fate of Avatars in Savitri:

Their sun-thoughts fading, darkened by ignorant minds,
Their work betrayed, their good to evil turned,
The cross their payment for the crown they gave,
Only they leave behind a splendid Name.

How to ensure that the Work of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother doesn’t meet the same bleak end is the one question none of us seem to be asking and we have already reached the end of the trial of Satprem.

Post-script 

"And is this my sin before men, to have taken Him at His word?
...
Lord, I have staked my soul, I have staked the lives of my kin
On the truth of Thy dreadful word.
Do not remember my failures,
But remember this my faith.”

- Patrick Pearse > The Fool

There is no hero or villain of this epic. There is only an attitude that tends towards the Future and another that defends the past. And both have their own legitimacy. It is not for our limited minds with its prejudices to judge whether the revolutionary wave is superior to the reactionary one in a given epoch of time. Nature in its supreme wisdom decides and events bear witness to it.

But the facts are simple.

A certain Truth was perceived, an attempt was made to impose it, it met with fierce resistance in accordance with the law of strife still ruling terrestrial events. Therefore, unpleasant word were spoken, unforeseen agression was unleashed.

Seeing the world conditions then and now - seeing how the tale is still playing out - perhaps it was a premature step. But there is no blazing trail without such a step - unsure, ungainly but filled with a passionate Will.

There is no right path, there is no right action: there is only this Fire in our hearts, and we will reach our goal not because we think correctly, but because of our Fire... In this world, you can't be right. You can only have the Fire or not. And let the Divine Hand change your mistakes into greater progress.

Notebooks of an Apocalypse, 1984

What redeems Satprem is his determination to CHANGE that very Law which could not allow this tale to unfold in a beautiful, harmonious, unanimous manner.

What redeems Satprem is his unflinching pursuit of the path of the next species which will automatically ERASE all the false ways of being, including those that he embodied.

Five years before his own departure Satprem writes a parting note that still throbs of the same wound, the same determination and the same certitude. Yes, he remained the same uncompromising man- perhaps, the truly irreconcilable men are simply lovers of Truth.

Mother is gone, it is unacceptable, I had to find, continue Their Work in this old carcass that will soon be 80 years old...
I am ready to "last and endure" for 8,000 years if necessary—God willing, it will be "this time," as Sri Aurobindo said.
I don't care about all the wisdom in the world as long as I am a New Being in a New Body and on a Earth of Truth. And I don't need all their successes, which are always an old failure; I don't need "me-myself"; I need Something Else that will be the fullness and joy of this endless Evolution that must surely land "somewhere." Yes, it is a daily BATTLE.

(Translation of Lettres a Yolande, 21 September, 2003)

Thus, there is no ‘defence’ of Satprem - neither for the present nor for posterity. For none of this will matter when the Supramental Race is achieved.

A monkey might have fought the battle to become Man in accordance with the law of his nature - but once the victory is achieved, we don’t go on to defend the ape, nor erect memorials in his name, nor ensure his glory - we simply live the new life as Man.

And neither is there any ‘cult’ of Satprem that can rally around his name to start a crusade against the world. For his flag is a blazing fire that will burn friends and foes like.

Thus, the sword that Satprem wielded can only be picked up to pierce OUR OWN falsehood - “dig a hole in the carapace of our own habits”. [Notebooks of an Apocalypse (1973-1978)]

So, to the world which so passionately abhors or adores this phenomenon called Satprem - one can only say - Surpass Satprem and become the next species.

There - and not in vain calumny or glowing tributes - lies the worthy end of your hate or love.

As also the logical culmination of the Supramental Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother.