September 3, 1967
(Regarding Auroville’s beach, where Satprem now often
goes in the evening for a stroll. The beach is some
four miles from Pondicherry.)
I find the atmosphere different.
Over there?… It’s wonderful.
Yes, but there is a very different atmosphere, I don’t know if
it’s in my consciousness.
Something is missing? … It [Mother's atmosphere] doesn’t reach up to there?
I don’t know, I don’t feel “surrounded” as I do here.
When Sri Aurobindo was here and I used to go out, I would feel his atmosphere as far as the lake. [[Some six miles from Pondicherry. ]] Then, as soon as I went beyond, it would thin out and then vanish. But I thought that there …
I don’t know, that’s my impression; it may be quite subjective,
but I don’t have the same sensation of comfort, if you like.
Because now there is such a tremendous accumulation here, you know! I am every moment marveling that nothing wrong happens to anyone. So naturally, people who are receptive and sensitive must feel a big difference…. It has really become almost concrete, you know, like that (gesture of a clenched fist). I myself feel the difference. It may be that.
***
(Regarding that same Christian lady who is trying to
come into closer contact with the Ashram.)
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Have you seen her?
Oh, yes…. There have been new developments. The last time I
saw her, I clearly perceived she was enveloped in something
… something that looked very receptive but was in fact comp
letely shut in in its own structure.
That’s right.
Then the next day she wrote me a letter. And when I read that
letter I felt I had put my finger on the Falsehood, the Asura.
The REAL Falsehood, you know, I mean the one that has caught
hold of the light and turned it into a falsehood.
Yes, exactly.
Really I said, "This is the Falsehood." And I had a very strange
reaction: I suddenly felt like taking that letter, a knife, sticking
the knife into the letter and burning it.
Well, that’s interesting!
I didn’t do it because I thought I might do her harm.
I too had that sense of Falsehood. [[Here are some brief samplings from the said letter: "... Someone said, Freedom is to be carried not like a standard but like a Cross.... In your book, there is no love for the Cross - why? From all eternity the Cross has been the form that gathers up and rises. The form that will not rise alone; the form that, plunged into a mass, rises up again only with the entire mass - the form that sticks to all the points of the compass and bleeds on all the cardinal points.... When I go to the lepers' workshop immediately after seeing you, I go and draw the Force not only to help them through financial means, a skill or friendship, but perhaps even to envisage being like them and going to the bottom of their real misery...." ]]
And the amusing thing is that I got her letter, read it, then
Sujata came into my room, stayed five minutes in it, and I saw
her go out abruptly, just like that. And half an hour later she
exhausted as if I had worked for twelve hours."
See.
Then what happened next?
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I wrote her a letter in which I said this: "… You have to see by
yourself, feel by yourself. If you are satisfied with the religious
experience that Christianity represents, I do not see why I
should disabuse you. Everyone follows the path he feels good
for him. If you came and told me, ‘I seek something else,’ it
would be a different matter and I might be able to do some
for you, and all words are useless. It is for you to feel and see."
That’s very good, excellent, really. That’s what she had to hear…. They’re all the same, they want to “profit” from others, you know. And that’s really falsehood.
This letter is very good.
(silence)
Those attitudes always end up in a crisis.
We had a Frenchwoman here, she came from Dordogne and changed her name when she came here: she was called Nivedita. She was extremely enthusiastic, very devoted, but at the same time she had remained very Christian: she tried to keep the two going side by side. Here, naturally, that gave her inner difficulties, and one day, without really knowing why or how, she went to confession – and everything collapsed. She was in despair, collapsed. I told her, “It’s better for you to go.” And she went. She went back to France. As soon as she was there, she wrote other desperate letters, and then she died.
So the nearer they draw, the more difficult the problem becomes. It’s better to … This lady has external work to do. I haven’t been too much encouraging her becoming intimate here, because one day she’ll be up against the big problem – you understand, symbolically it’s limited to one person, but it’s the big problem of Religion, as a dogma and absolute law, versus freedom, and … not many can hold out.
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