June 26, 1971
It seems war is inevitable.
Inevitable?
They’re expecting it to break out any day…. America has sent shiploads of arms to Pakistan; so before declaring war, the Indian government wants to ask America to stop their shipments to Pakistan and recall the ships on the high seas.[[America as a matter of course refused -- and sent three or four more shiploads of arms a few days later. ]]
They’re waiting for that, and when that is settled, they’ll declare war. I am informed almost directly.
But you yourself, what do you see?
(Mother goes within)
It’s very mixed. I mean the Forces on one side and the Opposition on the other are not clear-cut — it’s not like that. Pakistan is fully in falsehood, but even there…. It’s mixed, very mixed.
India too.
The Force is clearly working in favor of India, that I see, but…. What did you mean?
I meant that India too is as much in the falsehood as Pakistan.
But of course! That’s just the trouble. Not so much.
Not so much, no.
Not so much.
Indira has just … (this will give you an idea), Indira has sent me word through J., the governor, to tell me that if I have something to tell her I can do it through the governor, in a double envelope, because some people [from the Ashram] are telling her lies in my name, so … she’s starting to be on her guard.
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(silence)
It’s a mess, you know.
They’re terribly afraid of famine.
And we can barely contain that invasion. [[The invasion of refugees from Bangladesh, with an epidemic of cholera. ]] We must be very, very, very careful.
(Mother goes within)
You have nothing to ask?
I have the feeling I’m in the midst of a complete demolition.
(Mother goes within for a long time)
I have nothing to say.
(Mother goes back within,
then Satprem draws away
and Sujata comes up to Mother)
(Sujata:) Mother, when you look within the way you are now, what do you see?
(after a silence)
It’s extremely mixed. Precisely the sensation that there isn’t a clear-cut delineation between truth on one side and falsehood on the other, that it’s all a mishmash.
I have the feeling that things are held like this (gesture of being immobilized under pressure): it is willed that Sri Aurobindo’s Centenary takes place — if there were a war, it would be difficult. In Delhi, they were thinking the war would break out within a week — they had said that, again yesterday they told me it’s imminent. And at the same time there is something which goes like this (same gesture of immobilizing pressure) to keep things in this uncertain state so that Sri Aurobindo’s Centenary may have its full development — so I see that mixture of things. The feeling is that the Centenary is the major event, while at the same time the outer consciousness says that if there is war, it will be the end of
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the Centenary. There you are, that’s how it is. So I don’t see anything precise because things are like that, all intertwined…. If I see something clearly, naturally I’ll say so, but now I don’t. It’s mixed up, all mixed up — completely mixed up. And there is an insistence on us, a pressure on us to be primarily concerned with the Centenary, for that to be our primary preoccupation; not to take current events too much into account, you know. That’s what I see — not so interesting! (Mother laughs)
(Sujata:) But Mother, shouldn’t the problem of India and
Pakistan in fact be settled for the Centenary?
That’s what I was hoping for.
(Sujata:) Yes, Mother.
But nothing stands out. It would be marvelous, but….
Although to tell the truth, I am more and more absorbed with being a completely limpid transmitter than with knowing — I don’t care about knowing: just being as limpid as possible so that, at least in one place, That may manifest without too much opposition. That’s all.
We must be patient.
Not be anxious to know. One must be more eager to be an unobstructing intermediary than to know — you understand? It’s more important to keep the atmosphere as limpid and transparent as possible, more important than to know in advance what’s going to happen. That’s my position.
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