August 17, 1966
… As for me, I can’t see anymore.
The way in which I see is something very interesting – I can’t say that I can’t see anymore. It’s very interesting. Something suddenly comes alive (an object or a face or a letter or …), clear, precise, almost luminous. The next minute, everything is blurred. I seem to be told, “This is worth seeing.” So I look at it. “And (laughing) don’t bother about that”!
On the 15th, that boy, the Communist architect who was here left, because he found that “moral laws aren’t sufficiently respected’! … His very words. He left. But then, his thought keeps coming all the time – not “thought”: something from here (the heart), it keeps coming and coming. He must be quite unhappy at having left! And he asked me … It was on the afternoon of the 15th, it kept coming and it was tormented and it asked: “How can one know the Truth? What is the Truth? How can one know? …” Sri Aurobindo was there, and he said to me IN FRENCH (!):
La Vérité ne peut se formuler en mots, mais elle peut être vécue, si l’on est assez pur et plastique.[["Truth cannot be formulated in words, but it can be lived, provided one is pure and plastic enough." ]]
It’s fine, isn’t it! And the perception was so present: to let oneself be guided by the Truth all the time, like that.
Page 175
“Pure” means pure of ego, pure of all desire, all preference, all idea: all that must be gone – one must be supple, like that, and let oneself be driven along.
And he gave me the experience at the same time.
I translated it into English – so Sri Aurobindo speaks to me in French and I translate into English! It’s amusing.
***
After a meditation
How is the book coming along?[[During the previous conversation, Satprem read out to Mother a few pages from The Sannyasin. ]]
For my part, I go on dictating or hearing passages! It’s very interesting. But there’s no continuity: one sentence, one scene, two or three words…. Strange. It’s as if on a screen. And when you read last time, I recognized (how can I put it?) impressions – impressions of images and words – in what you read. But for me, it has no continuity; it’s something passing by, as if behind a screen, and at some point, toc! … contact is made: I hear or say words, I see an image. And I can see that it goes on behind the screen; then another word, another image comes through the screen. And it’s always in that sort of immense, immense place, endless, very quiet, very luminous. It’s a very pure, very quiet, very peaceful atmosphere. And something seems to fall from there as if in drops.
It’s very interesting.
It happens especially at night. Sometimes in daytime, but not for long. But at night, for a fairly long time.
Just now again, while we were meditating, the same phenomenon took place. When it came, I stopped the meditation. I was in a perfectly silent contemplation, and then it started all of a sudden (Mother laughs), so I stopped.
Page 176