May 10, 1967
(Satprem reads Mother an old Playground talk of May 23, 1956, in which Mother suddenly asked various questions about the pronunciation of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.)
Was there something special that triggered your questions?
At one time, I was very interested in knowing about it. I tried to recall the memory of the elements that lived at that time, but …
Yes, you say, “I wondered how they retrieved the names of the pharaohs and gods.” Then you ask, “Is the Egyptians’ language contemporary with the most ancient Sanskrit, or still more ancient?… Or is there another human language older than the oldest Sanskrit?” You also ask, “Is this hieroglyphic Egyptian language akin to the Chaldean line or the Aryan line?”
Yes, all that is very interesting, but I can’t get an answer. There’s a complete lacuna.
Had you heard sounds or what?
(After a silence) Listen, I’ll give you an example. Some two years ago, I had a vision about U.’s son. She had brought him to me (he was almost one) and I had just seen him there [in the music room]. He struck me as someone I knew very well, but I didn’t know who. Then, the same day in the afternoon, I had a vision. A vision of ancient Egypt, in which I was someone, the high priestess or I don’t know who. (Because you don’t say to yourself, “I am so and so”! The identification is total, there is no objectification, so I don’t know.) I was inside a wonderful monument, immense, so high! But it was completely bare: there was nothing, except in one place where there were magnificent paintings. That’s where I recognized the paintings of ancient Egypt. I was coming out of my apartments and entering a sort of large hall: there was a kind of gutter running on the ground all along the walls to collect water. And I saw the child playing in it, half-naked. I was very shocked, I said, “What! This is disgusting!” (But the feelings, ideas and so on were all translated into French in my consciousness.) The tutor came, I had him called. I scolded him. I heard sounds – well, I don’t know what I said, I don’t remember those sounds. I heard the sounds I uttered, I knew what they meant, but the translation was in French, and I didn’t keep a memory of the sounds. I spoke to him, telling him, “What! You let this child play in that?” And he answered me (I woke up with his answer), saying (I didn’t hear the first words, but to my thought it was), “Such is the will of Amenhotep.” I heard “Amenhotep,” I remembered it. So I knew the child was Amenhotep.[[Mother had recounted this vision before: See Agenda VI of June 5, 1965, and Agenda IV of June 3, 1963. ]]
Therefore, I know I spoke; I spoke in a certain language, but I don’t remember. I remembered “Amenhotep” because I know the word Amenhotep in my active consciousness. But otherwise, the other sounds didn’t stay. I don’t have the memory of sounds.
And I know I was his mother; at that moment I found out who I was, because I know that Amenhotep is so and so’s son (and also I looked up in history books). Otherwise there’s no connection: a void.
I always admire those mediums (they generally are very simple people) who have the exact memory of the sound and can tell you, “This and that is what I said.” That way we could have a phonetic notation. If I remembered the sounds I uttered we would have the notation, but I don’t.
I remember these questions: I suddenly thought, “How interesting it would be to hear that language!” And then, a curiosity: “How did they rediscover the pronunciation? How?” Besides, all the names of ancient history we were taught when we were very small have been changed now. They said they rediscovered the sounds, or rather they claimed they did. But I don’t know.
It’s the same thing with ancient Babylon: I have extremely precise and perfectly objective memories, but when I speak I don’t remember the sounds I utter, there is only the mental transcription.
I don’t have the memory of sounds.
So how did they rediscover them? Do you know?
Through crosschecks. That’s in fact what Pavitra explains to you [in the Talk]. They found stones with inscriptions in Egyptian, Greek and Coptic: the same text in those three languages. So they pieced it together.
Now, with the phonograph and all that, the sounds will be remembered, but at that time they weren’t noted.
I wondered what gave rise to your questions.
That’s what, the awareness that I don’t have the memory of sounds. Some people have the memory of sounds, but I don’t. So I’d be interested to know how it was. Otherwise I was always able (when I found something from the past doubtful or interesting or incomplete), I always found a way to recall it into the consciousness. But the sounds don’t come. They come as a state of consciousness that’s translated mentally, and it’s translated mentally into words I know. So that’s quite uninteresting.
Even now, even when I used to play music, the memory of sounds was vague and incomplete. I had the memory of the sounds I heard in the “origin of music” (gesture above), and when the material music reproduced something of those sounds, I would recognize them; but there isn’t the precision, the accuracy that would enable me to reproduce exactly the sound with the voice or an instrument. It’s not there, it’s lacking. Whereas the memory of the eyes was … it was astounding. When I had seen a thing ONCE, that was enough, I would never forget it.
Several other times, in visions (“visions,” I mean memories:: relived memories), I spoke the language of that time, I spoke in it and heard myself speak, but the sound didn’t stay. The MEANING of what I said stayed, but not the sound.
A pity.
(Mother goes into a meditation)
***
After the meditation, Mother tells what she has seen:
It was the symbol of the road opening up, wide open, easy – not “easy”: it’s dangerous in itself, but quite easy, one traveled on it easily. It was as if riding in a car (but these are images), and it went with dizzying speed, like a power – a power nothing could stop. You were there.
@