I listen, I answer. 'It's not satisfactory!' I told them. But they've kept to their idea, they like it. When that first storm came some time back (you remember, with those terrible bolts of lightning and that asuric being P.K. saw and sketched): 'Don't you want us to destroy something? ...' I got angry. But it was ... This influence was so close and acute that it gave you goose bumps! The whole time the storm lasted, I had to hold on tight in my bed, like this (Mother closes her fists tight as in a trance or deep concentration), and I didn't move - didn't move - like a ... a rock during the entire storm, until he consented to go a bit further away. Then I moved. And even now, it comes - from others (there's not just one, you see, there are many): 'How about a good flood?' A roof collapsed the other day with someone underneath, but he was able to escape. So roofs are collapsing, houses ... 'Arouse public sympathy, we must help the Ashram!' 'It's no good,' I said. But maybe that's what's responsible for this interminable rain. And they offer so many other things ... oh, what they parade past me! You could write books on all this! But generally - and this is something Theon had told me (Theon was very qualified on the subject of hostile forces and the workings of all that 'resists' the divine influence, and he was a great fighter - as you might imagine! He himself was an incarnation of an asura, so he knew how to tackle these things!); he was always saying, If you make a VERY SMALL concession or suffer a minor defeat, it gives you the right to a very great victory.' It's a very good trick. And I have observed, in practice, that for all things, even for the very little things of everyday life, it's true - if you yield on one point (if, even though you see what should be, you yield on a very secondary and unimportant point), it immediately gives you the power to impose your will for something much more important. I mentioned this to Sri Aurobindo and he said that it was true. It is true in the world as it is today, but it's not what we want; we want it to change, really change. He wrote this in a letter, I believe, and he spoke of this system of compensation - for example, those who take an illness on themselves in order to have the power to cure; and then there's the symbolic story of Christ dying on the cross to set men free. And Sri Aurobindo said, 'That's fine for a certain age, but we must now go beyond that.' As he told me (it's even one of the first things he told me), 'We are no longer at the time of Christ when, to be victorious, it was necessary to die.' I have always remembered this. But things are PULLING backwards - phew, how they pull! ... 'The Law, the Law, it's a Law. Don't you understand, it's a LAW, you can't change the Law.' - 'But I CAME to change the Law.' - 'Then pay the price.' page 477 , Mother's Agenda , volume - 1, 12th Nov. 1960