May 22, 1968
Mother holds out
the text of a note:
"Through the widening of its consciousness, this
body is more or less identified with those around
it.
"Every effort made towards the purification of
one’s physical consciousness is so much less work
for this body."
If everyone made an effort…
(Mother nods her head)
* * *
I saw P.L. yesterday. He is still terribly nervous. He said he was much better, but the least thing makes his face tense up. And there’s still around him … So he must stay on to let all that be undone, cleared out, destroyed. It’s interesting, interesting things are taking place.
P.L. had an interesting dream. He noted it down so I could tell
you about it…. Very strangely, it’s a dream he had three times
in a row at a few days’ interval. Exactly the same dream, the
same unfolding….
Someone sent it to him. Let’s see.
[Satprem reads:] “It is feast day in the Vatican. St. Peter’s
Square is jammed with people. The Pope’s procession begins; I
have witnessed it many times, very near the Pope, next to the
cardinals. But instead of the sedia gestatoria [the chair in
which the Pope is carried], there is a huge elephant carrying
someone. Who is this someone? Sweet Mother? No, it’s
Pavitra…. Not at all, it’s Satprem! No, it’s the School’s direc
tor…. The more I try to fix my attention on him, the more his
face changes, as in a kaleidoscope. In reality, I have difficulty
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fixing my attention, because I strain under the weight of the
elephant, which is now entering St. Peter’s Basilica. In fact, I
am in a very uncomfortable posture, for I am not the elephant:
I am in his legs, in his nails, and his weight is very, very great,
which is why I can’t see who is sitting on him. Meanwhile, the
elephant has reached Bernini’s Baldaquin, inside St. Peter’s
Basilica, and finally comes up to the Pope’s throne, in which
he sits down….
(Mother laughs)
“On his head sits the same person as before: Sweet Mother?
Pavitra? Satprem? A teacher? I do not know. I cannot make
out the person’s body, only his changing face…. All of a
sudden, the multitude, the huge crowd there receives a tremen
dous vibration: everything is shaken, and from this change of
mentality, there springs a very powerful cry, applause towards
this Force that has just penetrated their souls – the whole
crowd is transformed…. Once the ceremony is over, the
elephant comes out of the Basilica. I stand near the door and
contemplate the endless crowd stretching far, far away. I am
curious to know how many people are there, and at the end, a
number appears on the horizon: 1,600,000,000."
This man is prodigiously receptive!
(long silence)
Three times, did you say?
Three times: on the 9th, 11th and 18th of May.
What number?
One billion six hundred million. It seems, according to him, to
represent more or less all of Christendom: not just the
Catholics, but the Christians.
That’s what I had been told. I had been told it was the first movement – the first indication, the first movement of Christendom’s conversion to the Truth. It was clearly indicated that it had been DECREED. That’s what I had seen.
I had never seen a thing like that! I told you, when I was in the
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room [where Mother receives visitors] and P. L. came in, there came something so … serious (what’s the right word?), something that had the importance and stability of great terrestrial movements, of great ages – the beginning of a great age. [[See conversation of April 3, 1968. ]] I had never felt that. That was before he left [for the Vatican]. Then I looked and saw it was decreed from on high: the beginning of Christendom’s conversion to the Truth – Christendom as a whole.
They have felt something there: I told you there was such a violent attack….
It’s mostly P.L. who has been the victim, and me in part: it touched this body. But you know, even from the most ordinary, outward point of view, the healing was miraculous. Those things [the swelling] generally last for eight to ten days – it was over in two days. That was … Even my body, though it’s used to being in contact with the forces, was wonderstruck. It was miraculous.
The concrete action of this Force, which Sri Aurobindo called the “supramental force,” its first contact and first aspect is an aspect of Truth.[[ It should be understood that the word "truth" is not used in a philosophical or moral or ideal sense: it is reality AS IT IS, the world AS IT IS without its cloak of falsehood. Real life is a "miracle." ]] As Sri Aurobindo said, Truth had to manifest first, before the Power of Love.
In comparison with the course life used to follow, it’s really something of a miracle – miracle in the sense that the speed of the transformation and action is at the very least unusual.
* * *
After a long concentration,
Mother resumes:
There have been two little things, very little things, but amusing…. A year or a year and a half ago (I don’t remember), someone had sent me an album of photos of France, and Paris in particular, and I had looked at it; I looked at it, and as I looked, I saw a photo of the banks [of the Seine in Paris]. I saw it, looked at it attentively, in detail, saw the banks with all the bouquinistes [secondhand booksellers]. There was a bookseller in front, seated in the foreground, I saw him. Then I closed the album and put it aside. I wanted to mention it to someone and said, “Would you like to see what the bouquinistes in Paris look like? There’s a photo …” I
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turned page after page after page – not a single photo of a bookseller! I looked again and again … not a single photo of a bookseller. [[See Agenda 5 of February 5, 1964. ]] It was enough of a problem for me to view the book several more times and even to try to find an explanation. And then … M. and G. went to Paris and sent me a postcard of the banks with the bouquinistes – it was my photo! I received it yesterday. It wasn’t in the album: I received it yesterday, exactly my photo.
The other thing is about R., who had had an attack of filariasis a few years ago. He had told me about it and it had passed. Then it came back. It came back after some three or four years, very strongly, and he couldn’t get rid of it. He wrote to me complaining. I told him there was a “drop in his faith.” It appears it was the third time I’d written that to him (I knew nothing about it – I never know either why or how I write things). So he wrote back to ask me, “It’s the third time you’ve told me that, what does it mean?” I explained it to him. But while receiving his letter and explaining it to him, I did what I always do (I always do it, all the time), I put him in contact with the Lord and asked for his intervention…. He got my letter, and today he writes to me that while he was reading it, in the space of about ten minutes, he actually saw (his foot had grown twice as big, his leg was swollen, you know how it is with elephantiasis), he actually saw it shrink and shrink, and in ten or fifteen minutes it was gone! He wrote it to me this morning…. I had told him that the Force was the same, it was his faith that was no longer the same, and that was why the Force no longer had the same effect. And he writes in his letter, “I was simply reading your letter, and it went away before my very eyes!”
And this body, if you ask it, the only thing … There are two things it’s conscious of: a more and more intense adoration in the cells, oh, like this (gesture like a rising flame), and at the same time, such an acute sense of the extent to which the cells are not what they should be, of the unworthiness of their condition. Those two things are constant and constantly together. And that’s all. And when I am told of cases like this one, of disease or something else (I am told three, four, five such cases every day, things like that constantly happen – I gave you this one as a very concrete example because it’s happened just now and you know R.), the body isn’t even aware of being used as an intermediary, because it’s too conscious of its infirmity, of what it should be and isn’t yet…. It’s like that cure [of the swelling of Mother's face], it was a cure like R.’s,
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almost spontaneous: it happened all of a sudden and went away. But of course, the body is perfectly conscious of the splendor of a Marvel … a Marvel beyond all understanding.
And then, there is in the consciousness the very strong feeling – very strong – that the time has come.
I said this to Rijuta the other day: there are immense periods during which things are prepared – the past wears out and the future is prepared – and those are immense periods … neutral, drab, during which things keep repeating themselves over and over, and look as if they will always remain that way. Then, all of a sudden, between two such periods, the change takes place. Like the moment when man appeared on earth – now it’s something else, another being.
In any case, it is certain that we shall see the signs, or rather that we are now seeing the precursory signs…. I said that to Rijuta while announcing to her (she didn’t know it) that the U.S. president would go to Moscow to sign a peace treaty with Vietnam. There were three wars, one of which had stopped but wasn’t resolved: that was the war between Egypt and Israel, over which they have reached an agreement. I forget the third. And all three wars at the same time. But the most serious of the three was the war between America and Vietnam. So I said that to her; I told her, “This is a sign.”
And it isn’t a mental conception, it’s not ideas: at the time of saying it I SAW it, I saw.
Yes, something is really changing.
Those are still the precursory signs, the forerunner movements, so it’s scattered, not combined, but for one who can see, it’s obvious.
(silence)
With this latest adventure [the attack on Mother], this body has learned trust. It was very much steeped in pessimism because of its material antecedents. Certain antecedents, that is, father and mother, had been chosen for their great practicality and a very concrete material honesty, but no mysticism, nothing of the sort – deliberately. But then, it gave a kind of … not exactly pessimism, but a very sharp vision of how things go wrong. The body had that, and its faith had to struggle against a habit of expecting difficulty, obstacles, resistance; although it had complete faith in the final Victory, it couldn’t overcome the habit of expecting difficulties on the path…. This latest adventure has given it a good push
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forward: its trust is much more smiling. And the general vision is as I told you. And constantly, all the time, even at the time of the worst difficulties, all the time there is … it wells up from the cells, like a golden hymn: an incantation, you know, a call, an incantation to the supreme Power…. And with such faith! A marvelous faith.
(silence)
Mother, and what’s now happening in France, what does it
mean? [[A sort of general strike by some eight million people, which began with a student revolt and the occupation of the Sorbonne University in Paris. ]]
It’s clearly the future which is awakening and trying to drive away the past.
Have you read the letters of S.’s children? They’re over there. For instance, all the students and the whole working class have joined forces. Naturally, on the mental level there’s a whole mixture of all kinds of ideas, but the Force behind … For example, the students want to completely change the method of education: they violently demand the elimination of all examinations. And they themselves are unaware of it, but they are driven by a force that wants the manifestation of a truer truth.
They themselves would rather have no violence – it seems it’s not the students who started the violence, but the police. And that’s very interesting, because the police stand for the defense of the past. When I read those children’s letters, and when later I was given the news, then there came in me (it was said very, very clearly, a very clear vision): the future. It’s the higher Power COMPELLING people to do what they must do. Between now and that (which is a long way ahead), there must be the power of an IMMOBILE number. And the vision was very clear: if millions – not thousands, millions – of people assemble together and occupy the place absolutely peacefully (simply assemble and occupy the place, naturally with representatives who will say what they like), then it will have power. But there must be no violence; as soon as one indulges in violence, it’s the return to the past and the open door to all conflicts…. At the time, I didn’t know it was the police that had started the violence; I didn’t know, I wasn’t aware of the details of the events. But it was a very clear vision: an occupation by the mass, but a mass all-powerful in its immobility, imposing its will through sheer numbers, with intellectual representatives for negotiations.
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I don’t know…. De Gaulle [[France's president at the time. ]] is open to something more than the purely material force. Is he capable? I don’t know. At any rate, he is among the best instruments.
It’s clearly (not in the detail of it, but in the direction of the movement), clearly a will to have done with the past and to open the door to the future.
It’s like a sort of revulsion with stagnation. That’s it. A thirst for something which is ahead and appears more luminous, better. And indeed there IS something – it’s not just imagination: there IS something. That’s the beauty of it, it’s that there is something. There IS a Response. There IS a Force that wants … to express itself.
France is in a privileged situation: India first and France afterwards, for reasons of … simply of receptivity. France has always tried to be ahead – which in fact is why this body was born there.
(silence)
The newspapers speak of a strike by several million people there (that’s what those children wrote). It doesn’t look like a strike at all, it looks like a revolution.
I know that. I don’t know if I have ever told you, but there has been – there has always been – an identification of this body’s consciousness with all revolutionary movements. I have always known and guided them even before news of them came out: in Russia, in Italy, in Spain and elsewhere – always, everywhere. And essentially, it was always the same Force seeking to hasten the coming of the future – always – but constrained to adapt its means of action to the state of the mass.
And now, the state of the earth would seem to be precisely such that what is at the very least being prepared (if it’s not yet actually like that) is the manifestation of the mass in a kind of silent and immobile will…. And that’s an intermediate period to reach the condition in which this mass will be held under the control and directly driven by the Power from above.
That’s where we are heading.
* * *
Towards the end
I told P.L. yesterday that whenever he feels the need to see
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me, he should let me know. Of course, it’s better if it’s not too frequent because I am terribly busy, but we’ll see. It’s necessary. It’s important.
Should I tell him nothing about his dream, or can I …?
Oh, you can tell him that I said he is remarkably sensitive and receptive; that there is a VERY DEEP truth behind this dream, despite its somewhat childish outward form. There’s a very deep truth.
Only … He isn’t a man who needs to be urged on: he’s a man who needs to be held back, because the adhar (as the Indians would call it), that is, the material clothing, isn’t strong enough for the power driving it. So that results in illnesses. He isn’t a man who must be urged on, he’s a man who has to be held back.
But he is very conscious – very conscious, even far more conscious than the dream suggests. Very conscious … For that too, the time has come for the Turning Point when all this old formidable Christian formation which has spread over the earth like this (octopus-like gesture) – and which naturally fulfilled its function, did what it had to do, came just when it was needed and so on and so forth, we know all that – the time has come when it must change in order to become the instrument of tomorrow’s truth.
And this Pope has done his work well, as well as he could.
For perhaps a long time yet, or at any rate for some time, P.L. must be the intermediary, but a somewhat conscious one – not active. He acts as an intermediary, as a link (gesture as of a bridge between Mother and the Vatican), but he shouldn’t … He doesn’t have the capacity to resist those people’s tremendous power. He should remain very still – very still, very peaceful – he should let himself live happily, then he will fulfill his function.
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