November 4, 1967
(Regarding the storm that coincided with Kali Puja.)
Your home isn’t flooded, is it? In the room over there, water fell on the table beside my chair, so I put a flower pot and gave people all the wet flowers!
Has Kali calmed down?
(Laughing) Maybe she got dampened! She laughed…. She can laugh, too!
***
(The conversation turns to Mother’s Playground Talks –
“Questions and Answers” – from 1950 to 1958. Satprem
is preparing their first publication and complains
that he cannot trace the original texts:)
Q was quite free in her movements, there are even some Talks which she destroyed – she didn’t like them!
For a long time I used the Talks Q had left, until the day when I
realized they were totally truncated. Then I finally discovered
another collection, but I have also realized it wasn’t the abso
lute original. So every time it’s a huge work to collect every
thing together again in order to reconstruct the exact original.
But who did the recording?
In the beginning it was a "wire recording"; as there wasn’t
enough material, it used to be transcribed and then erased. Bu
t if at least the original notation could be traced … Only, the
"original" I’ve found was altered, it’s not the original anymore!
Oh, when one speaks, one makes all kinds of mistakes, the sentences are unfinished …
But that doesn’t matter! I have noticed (because I’ve been
Page 363
doing this work for years now), I’ve noticed that even when a sentence is incomplete, it’s worthwhile to leave it as such, incomplete, because there is a kind of inner rhythm in what is said which is destroyed if you don’t leave the thing as it is.
Oh, I was able to tell when it came from above…. It wasn’t always the same: on certain days when I spoke, it wasn’t the consciousness here, it would come like that (gesture of descent), and even when, as you said, the sentences were unfinished, it was all expressed with a conscious Will.
On other days it was much more superficial – it was unimportant, of far less value.
***
Mother goes into a
long contemplation
A very difficult time.
(long silence)
In full work and … nothing to say, it’s impossible. Impossible.
The most difficult thing in the material world, here, is to fight against the result of all those millennia of experiences that have created a sort of pessimistic and defeatist consciousness – a general consciousness, you know, like this (gesture enveloping the earth). It isn’t formulated in words, but for that consciousness it can be translated thus, “Yes, we don’t deny the existence of all those divine things, but they aren’t for us, they’re for …” (gesture to the heights)
Quite miserable. A sort of general state like that, quite miserable. And that’s the thing, you understand, that’s what all those who had experiences on the heights saw, and they said, “It’s hopeless.”
It’s not hopeless, not at all (of course not), but it demands a constant, constant, constant vigilance and care.
(silence)
So there, we’ll see.
At the same time, the work has become (the “work,” not the true one: the external work, the number of people, letters …), it has become tremendous…. I can clearly see the reason for that, it’s because (silence) … circumstances come in order that the body
Page 364
loses the sense of personality. But it’s very difficult.
Very difficult.
It can do it very well, but in its most conscious part.
Page 365