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December 13, 1967

Did you feel the earthquake?… It was in the morning of the day before yesterday, at 4:30. I didn’t feel anything. But some people felt it and told me. Over there it was quite bad. [[In the Indian state of Maharashtra. ]]

My mother reached Bombay on that day and felt it. All the

dogs were howling; for three seconds houses were shaken.

A small town has completely disappeared. [[The village of Konya. ]] But it’s strange…. I wasn’t asleep but was outside my body, so I didn’t notice anything. It didn’t wake up my body.

But it must have been very weak here. I was awake but didn’t

 feel anything.

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(silence)

Is there something behind this earthquake?

I don’t know what it is…. I don’t really know what it is, but the day before, in the evening (I forget what I was doing, I was busy), there was suddenly … Often there are small vital entities, I think, or vital forces (but to me those things are without force or power), and a small vital entity showed me the memory of an earthquake: about 1922 or ’23, we had an earthquake; I had gone out with Pavitra, we stood talking (we were on our way out, it was in the afternoon), when suddenly, hop! up we jumped into the air, the two of us.[[ This was probably in 1934 (when an earthquake devastated the state of Bihar), for Pavitra came to Pondicherry only at the end of 1925. ]] We knew what it was because we had got used to it in Japan. I said, “Oh, an earthquake.” It didn’t last – a few seconds and it was over. I had completely forgotten it, and it was as if one of those beings came to bring the memory back, with at the same time, “And what if there were another one?” “Oh,” I said, “what nonsense!”

Just the evening before.

Then I wondered, “What? Are these earthquakes set up by beings of this sort?…” I don’t understand. With rain, I know: there are conscious beings, quite small, that is, limited to a single function, and you can negotiate with them if you want there to be rain or not (they move about, you understand). But as for earthquakes … I don’t know, it seems to me a considerable result for entities that appear to be doing it just for fun….

Strange.

I can’t say, they have no form, you don’t see any forms, but they have a consciousness that can express itself and is translated in our own consciousness as words, and more particularly images – images and wills.

But I remember, I didn’t take it at all seriously, I said, “But this doesn’t make sense! It doesn’t make sense, there’s no reason for it to be!” And that seems to have been sufficient because, in actual fact, nothing very serious took place.

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