November 15, 1965
(For some time Mother has been giving Sujata packets of ready-made soups from Germany, Sweden, etc.)
… You’ll become cosmopolitan, my child – cosmopolitan in taste.
(Sujata makes a face)
You don’t want to? Is there something in your nature that doesn’t want?
(Sujata:) Food, ever since childhood I haven’t liked eating.
But mon petit, I have never been interested in food! I have never liked eating. When I was small, they had to think up all sorts of tricks to make me eat, to me it was the most absurd and least interesting thing. Well, I know the food of every country and have done a comparative study (!) of all cuisines, and I can be
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anywhere without it disturbing my body in the least.
It’s not out of taste for food, it’s out of taste for … (how can I put it?) the expansion of consciousness, the elimination of limits, and above all to prevent the slavery of habits – that’s a horrible thing. To be the slave of one’s habits is disgusting. Even when I was very small, that’s how it was: no slavery. I was told, “But you must do this, because that’s the habit,” and I used to answer in a very little polite way, “Rubbish!”… To do things that way because the habit is to do them that way is no argument to me – free, free, free! The taste for freedom.
You mustn’t be a little slave just because you were born from certain parents in such and such a place – it’s by chance, not fate!
(Sujata:) No, Mother, it’s mostly the sense of smell. There are certain smells I find very hard to bear.
But you must learn to bear them. Just do this: when you get a shock, stay very quiet and call – call the Lord or call me, it doesn’t matter (laughing), it has the same effect! (Don’t go about repeating this!) And then say, “Give me a widened consciousness,” that’s all. And then remain quiet. And then the next time the smell comes, you’ll notice that, oh, it’s not so unpleasant, and the third or fourth time, you will feel the Ananda behind it.
I know this from experience.
It’s quite simply a narrowness in the taste because from your childhood you have been given a certain number of things. You are used to them: “Then it’s good”; you aren’t used to them: “Oh, how horrible!” … You must learn to see why it’s there, why it’s in the world – everything in the world is for the delight of being, so the delight must be there since it’s everywhere!
You only have to find it.
(Sujata:) But it could be someone else’s delight!
(Mother laughs)
***
Towards the end
You must sleep well. Yes, I have noticed that it’s important to sleep a long time. As soon as you feel tired, let yourself drift into sleep, don’t resist. That’s important. I am saying this from personal
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experience, because all of a sudden … When there is a length of time (it lasts an hour, two hours, it depends) during which the atmosphere is all vibrant with this light-force-joy I spoke of the other day, and you are as if … it’s absolutely full, absolutely full; and then all of a sudden (gesture of inward plunge), and after a time you ask yourself, “Well, well, where have I been?…” There are times like that when you go into a sort of sleep. The first few times, I thought I had lapsed into unconsciousness (although that has rarely happened to me!), but anyway, I wondered what it meant. Then I took a good look and I saw it was a necessary period of assimilation. It’s very necessary. It’s in a sort of stillness of the cells’ consciousness that they assimilate the new force. So when it comes, don’t resist. Generally, it doesn’t last very long: fifteen minutes, twenty minutes. A period of assimilation. You know, the atmosphere is charged, charged, increasingly charged. So if suddenly you feel something pulling, don’t resist, let yourself go – it’s better not to be standing up!
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