May 18, 1966
(After Satprem has read to Mother a first few fragments from the “Sannyasin”)
I like your way of writing.
It’s restful.
But when you write a novel, you must build it up; in other words, there are all those unnecessary things you have to put in to reach certain points, and that’s what’s troublesome! All those futile things you have to present just in order to demolish them.
I find it very restful to enter the region of elegant form, harmonious form, it’s very restful.
This material mind – which is organizing itself, which has learned to fall silent, learned to pray – has a sort of spontaneous need or spontaneous thirst for beauty, for a beautiful form. I see this at night, because its need expresses itself in a setting and with events – encounters and events – and the setting is always extremely vast and very beautiful, very harmonious. And the people who move about do so harmoniously, too. And in the morning when I come out of that, I see the progress, the direction of the development; well, it has a sort of spontaneous need for a beautiful form.
Just now, while listening to you, it relaxed all at once, it rested in a satisfaction: “Ah, at last….” And it isn’t at all mental: it’s … (how can I explain?) the harmony of form.
Music does it an enormous lot of good – but not classical music, not a music that follows mental rules. Something that expresses an inner rhythm, the harmony of an inner rhythm…. One rarely comes across a music like that.
And it’s the same thing with words. The sound of words is immediately restful.
Will you read it again for me? Read it again.
(Satprem shakes his head, he is ashamed)
***
Page 111
Soon afterwards
Have you heard of the drugs?…[[Mother is referring to LSD, a derivation of lysergic acid. ]] Have you seen pictures?… I saw pictures…. People are hurled utterly defenseless into the lowest vital, and, according to their nature, either it’s horrifying or they find it marvelous. For instance, the fabric covering a cushion or a seat is suddenly filled with marvelous beauty. So it lasts for two hours, three hours like that. Naturally, they are quite mad while it lasts. And the trouble is that people call it “spiritual experiences,” and there’s nobody to tell them that it has nothing to do with spiritual experiences.
There is an Italian here, whom I saw the other day with his wife (his wife is nice; he has long hair and a mystic air … “mystic” is a way of speaking: mysticism for a theater stage). I didn’t find them very interesting, but they intend to stay here for three or four months. And today, he has written me a letter in French. And in that letter there are many things; first he says he had an experience here – and those people are terrible, mon petit, as soon as they have the slightest experience, they’re scared! So naturally, everything stops. But that’s beside the point. Then, in that connection, he says he took that drug and he describes the effect (Mother shows Satprem a passage of the letter):
“The second time, with a normal dose of LSD (lysergic acid), as I rose in that luminous situation, I had terrible visions, the walls of my room came alive with thousands of malignant and desperate faces that persecuted me till night….”
There.
And it goes on. Then he says he had an experience here, and he’s scared.
But anyway, it has given me one more proof…. I saw pictures in Life (there were photos): you feel you’ve stepped into an insane asylum. But he had the experience, which proves that his vital … Of course, it’s the images recorded in the subconscient (images of thoughts, images of sensations, images of feelings recorded in the subconscient), which become objective: they rise to the surface and become objective. So it gives the exact picture of what’s inside you!
Page 112
If, for instance, you have a sensation or thought that someone is nasty or ridiculous or doesn’t love you, anyway, opinions of that sort, it generally surfaces in dreams; but there [with drugs], you aren’t asleep, yet you have the dream! They come and play the game of what you thought of them: what you thought of them comes upon you in their form. So it’s an indication: for those who see smiling, pleasant, beautiful things, it means that the inner, vital condition is good enough, but with those who see terrifying or malicious things, or things like that, it means the vital isn’t pretty.
Yes, but isn’t there an objective vital in which those visions have nothing to do with your own subconscient?
Yes, there is, but it doesn’t have the same character.
Not the same character?
You can know it only if you go into the vital FULLY CONSCIOUS: conscious of your own vital and conscious in the vital world as you are conscious in the physical world. You go there consciously. Then it isn’t a dream, it doesn’t have the character of a dream: it has the character of an activity, an experience, and that’s very different.
Because there are indeed those worlds of the vital where you are persecuted … terrible worlds, worlds of torture and persecution, aren’t there?
Ninety percent subjective.
Ninety percent subjective. Regularly, for more than a year, every night at the same time and in the same way, I entered the vital to do a special work there. It wasn’t the result of my own will: I was destined to do it. It was something I had to do. So then, the entry into the vital, for instance, is often described: there are passages where beings are stationed to stop you from entering (all those things are much talked about in all books of occultism). Well, I know from experience (not a passing one: an experience I learned repeatedly) that that opposition or ill will is ninety percent psychological, in the sense that if you don’t anticipate it or don’t fear it, or if there is nothing in you that’s afraid of the unknown and none of those movements of apprehension and so on, it’s like a shadow in a picture, or a projected image: it has no concrete reality.
Page 113
I did have one or two real battles in the vital, yes, while going to rescue someone who had gone astray. And both times I got blows, and in the morning when I woke up, there was a mark (Mother points to her right eye). Well, I know that in both cases, there was in me, not a fear (I never had any fear there), but … it was because I expected it. The idea that “it may well happen” and my expecting it caused the blow to come. I knew that in a definite way. And if I had been in what I might call my “normal state” of inner certitude, it couldn’t have touched me, it couldn’t. And I had that apprehension because Madame Théon had lost an eye in a battle in the vital and had told me so; so (laughing) it gave me the idea that it was possible, since it had happened to her! … But when I am in my state (I can’t even say that, it’s not “personal”: it’s a way of being), when you have the true way of being, when you are a little conscious and have the true way of being, it CANNOT touch you.
It’s like the experience of coming across an enemy and trying to hit him, and then none of the blows hit and whatever you do has no effect – it’s always subjective. I’ve had all the proof, absolutely all the proof.
But what is objective, then?
There ARE worlds, there ARE beings, there ARE powers, they have their own existence, but what I mean is that the form their relationships with the human consciousness take depends on that human consciousness.
It’s the same with the gods, mon petit, the same thing! The relationship with all those beings of the Overmind, with all those gods, the form those relationships take depends on the human consciousness. You can be … The scriptures say, “Man is cattle for the gods” – but that’s if man ACCEPTS the role of cattle. There is in the essence of human nature a sovereignty over all those things which is spontaneous and natural, when it’s not warped by a certain number of ideas and a certain amount of so-called knowledge.
We could say that man is the all-powerful master of all the states of being of his nature, but that he has forgotten to be so.
His natural state is to be all-powerful – he has forgotten to be so.
In that state of oblivion, everything becomes “concrete,” yes, in the sense that you may have a mark on the eye (it can be expressed by that), but that’s because … because you allowed it to happen.
It’s the same thing with gods: they can rule your life and torment you quite a lot (they can also help you a lot), but their power
Page 114
IN RELATION TO YOU, in relation to the human being, is the power you give them.
That’s something I have learned little by little for several years. But now, I am sure of it.
Naturally, in the evolutionary curve, it was necessary for man to forget his all-powerfulness, because it had quite simply puffed him up with conceit and vanity, and so it was completely distorted and he had to be given the sense that lots of things were stronger and more powerful than he. But essentially, it’s not true. It’s a necessity in the curve of progress, that’s all.
Man is a potential god. He thought he was a realized god. He needed to learn that he was nothing but a puny little worm crawling on the earth, and so life planed and filed him down in every way till he … “understood” isn’t the word, but anyway, felt to some extent. But as soon as he assumes the true position, he knows he is a potential god. Only, he must become it, that is, he must overcome all that isn’t it.
This relationship with the gods is extremely interesting. As long as man is dazzled, in admiration before the power, beauty, realizations of those divine beings, he is their slave. But when they are, to him, ways of being of the Supreme and nothing more, and when he himself is another way of being of the Supreme, which he must become, then the relationship is different and he is no longer their slave – he is NOT their slave.
Ultimately, the only objectivity is the Supreme.
There, you’ve said it, mon petit. That’s the point. Exactly the point.
If we take the word “objectivity” in the sense of “real, independent existence” – real, independent self-existence – there is only the Supreme.
***
As Satprem prepares to leave:
So do I have to wait till the book is finished before I can hear it?…
(Satprem makes a face)
You know, when I listen to you, I seem to be lying down, stretched out on something that moves forward very gently and regularly,
Page 115
with the vision of a very luminous and harmonious atmosphere.
That’s the immediate effect it has on me.
The education of the new mind. It would be fine if it became an instrument of beauty!
Yes, but inspiration is hard to pull down!
(Mother laughs)
Page 116