I am very pulled - not constantly, but periodically - by the need to write (not mental things) and exasperated by the fact that this Orpailleur is not published because I have not taken the time to carry out certain corrections. When I am in a good mood, I offer all this to you (is it perhaps a hidden ambition? But I am not so sure; it is rather a need, I believe) and when I am not in a good mood, I 'fume' about not having the time to write something else.

page 292 , Mother's Agenda , volume 1 , 7th April 1959

Dear Satprem,

Publisher and friend are here one in telling you that L'Orpailleur is a beautiful book whose richness and force have struck me even more this time than before when I read the first version. I cannot tell you how much your Job is my brother - in his darkness as in his light. The joy, the wild, irrepressible joy that furtively yearns and at times bursts forth, embracing all, this joy at the heart of the book burns the reader - for a few, in any case, who are prepared to be inflamed. In the end, I can't say if L'Orpailleur will or will not be noticed, if the critics will or will not bestow an article, a comment, an echo upon it, if bookstores will or will not 'sell' it (poor orpailleur!). But what I know is that for a few readers - 2, 3, 10 perhaps - your book will be the cry that will rip them from their sleep forever. To your song, another song in themselves will respond. Where, how shall this concert finish? Who knows - anything is possible!

page 360 , Mother's Agenda - volume 1 , 7th March 1960
The other day you were telling me to start this 'Sri Aurobindo' from any point at all....
Yes, can't you write that way?

I don't know. Perhaps I'm biased, but I feel that this book should flow from beginning to end.
Oh, yesterday or the day before, I had the occasion to write a sentence about Sri Aurobindo. It was in English and wentsomething like this: In the world's history, what Sri Aurobindo represents is not a teaching nor even a revelation, but a decisive ACTION direct from the Supreme.

(silence)

I tell you this because just now as we were speaking about the book and you were saying it would come all at once in a single flow, I saw a kind of globe, like a sun - a sun shedding a twinkling dust of incandescent light (the sun was moving forward and this dust came twinkling in front of it), like this (gesture). It came towards you, then made a circle around you as if to say, 'Here is the formation.' It was magnificent! There was a creative warmth in it, a warmth like the sun's - a power of Truth. And here again, I was given the same impression: that what Sri Aurobindo has come to bring is not a teaching, not even a revelation, but a FORMIDABLE action coming direct from the Supreme.

It is something pouring over the world.

Your book should convey this feeling - without stating it. Convey the feeling, transmit it - transmit this solar light.

page 91 - Mother's Agenda , volume 2 , 14th Feb 1961


I want you to have enough time to write your book, because I feel that Sri Aurobindo is interested in it - the sun that came a while ago was from him. I feel he is interested and confident you can do it.

page 91 - Mother's Agenda , volume 2 , 18th Feb 1961
Well, mon petit.

And if you really want to please me (I believe you do!), if you want to please me, concentrate on the book on Sri Aurobindo - you can't imagine how much I am interested! And as I LOOK, I see into the future (not with this little consciousness), I see that it's a thing of GREAT importance. It will have a great action. So, I want to clear the way for you now, for us to have time.

page 156 - Mother's Agenda - volume 2 , 7th April 1961

(During the two preceding meetings, Satprem read to Mother several fragments of his manuscript on Sri Aurobindo.)

You have brought me a very strange experience.

The first time you read your manuscript, I called Sri Aurobindo to hear it. He was in the subtle physical and he listened. Yesterday when I sat down to listen, I thought, 'It would be much better if he entered my brain because that way In fact, I called him; he entered my brain. It took some time; all through the beginning of the reading we were still two; then he came in more and more, more and more, more and more.... My head - my physical head - seemed to be swelling up! There was no longer space for anyone but him. It was the light ... that dark blue light of mental power (but true mental power) in the physical - the tantrics use it, you always see it with X's action, but I've never seen it this way before! My head was full, you know - full, full, not an atom of space to spare - I could feel it swelling up!


And this light was absolutely immobile - vibrationless, totally compact and ... coherent. When I see X's light, for example, there are always vibrations in it; it vibrates, vibrates, things are shifting about; out with this, not a single vibration, not one movement: a MASS that seemed eternally immobile but which was (how to put it?) attentive, listening. It was a volume with the form of the head, as if 'that' had wholly taken over the head. it was full, so full, yet with no feeling of tension or of anything resisting, none at all; there was only a kind of immobile eternity - and COMPACT, compact, absolutely coherent, no vibrations. And it increased, increased more and more, it became heavy, but with a very particular heaviness - not a weight, the feeling of a mass.

And within all this, I no longer existed. I seemed to vanish into a kind of trance, yet I was conscious - not 'I': the consciousness was conscious of what Sri Aurobindo was conscious of. And he was following the reading. But I couldn't remember anything; at the time, it was impossible to observe. I can only describe it all to you now because the experience remained for at least an hour and a half afterwards; when I left here, I began to objectify it, to see what it was - aside from that, it was merely a STATE I found myself in. But in this state there was an awareness of what he was hearing, and at two or three places in your reading he seemed to be saying (I can't be exact, I can only give the impression), Not necessary. In fact, that's what made me call this passage 'too philosophical' (although when you first asked my opinion I was in a peculiar condition, nothing was active in me). With him, it was very clear, it was almost as if there were a certain number of words about which he said, That, not necessary. That, not necessary. Not many, not often, but once in a while. Especially at the end (he was still there inside my head while you were talking), when you were saying that it's necessary 'to explain' to people; there he very clearly said, No, not necessary.

You know, he was so pleased the first day you read to me! I was seeing his force, his power inside it, and it was golden; a kind of power of propulsion was there. But of course, I know nothing at all about what you read to me yesterday; I was a bit overwhelmed by this experience! It's the first time I've had it

For a long, long time I have been asking for.... When I would say, 'Lord, take possession of this brain,' I expected something of the sort, but I was expecting it with the supramental light (which, partially and momentarily, I have had). But this! It was really.... I don't know what he did with my brain - not brain, my mental power. Probably during that period he absorbed it (I suppose that's what happened because there was no sense of difference). My impression was that as a result of this the physical cells were going to develop materially and be transformed (I think it will happen - I had a sort of assurance that it will). Because now, as I'm talking to you, I'm looking at it and I see - the effect is still there: no longer with the same overwhelming power, but the effect is there and it gives a sort of ... (it can't be compared to anything physical) ... a sort of warmth; it's not heat, but warmth. Everything is seized by it, both ears (Mother touches her head), everything - here, there, all around! Tremendous. And this immobility! As soon as one stops, it is immor ... (Mother cuts off her word), it is eternity.

It is truly bringing THAT down here [into Matter].

Well then, are you going to read the rest to me or not?

No, Mother, I feel I have to do it all over. I don't have the thread. I just have scraps here and there, bits and pieces - I don't have the thread.
But is this thread so very necessary? Because the last time you read (I can't pinpoint exactly where), Sri Aurobindo seemed to intervene each time any of those habitual coherences of reason intruded, things you probably inserted precisely in order to join passages together and make them comprehensible. It was at these junctures (I can't remember them exactly) where he would occasionally say, Not necessary, not necessary. That can go, that can go.

Afterwards, I tried to understand (I tried to identify enough to be able to understand) and I got the feeling that he finds it will be much more powerful if you don't follow normal logical lines (I'm elaborating a bit - it wasn't quite like this); rather, if you like, it is better to be prophetic than didactic - fling abroad the ideas, ploff! Then let people do what they can with them. I felt he was viewing this not only from the essential standpoint, but from the standpoint of the public, and he wanted to ensure that it doesn't become tiresome - at all costs, don't let it be tiresome. It can be bewildering, but not tiresome. Let them be hurled right into things ... strange and unknown things, perhaps, but.... For instance (this is my own style, you can take it for what it's worth), it would be better for people to say, 'He's a madman,' than to say, 'He's a boring sermonizer.' And all this was coming with his sense of humor, the way he has of saying, for example, that folly is closer to the Divine than reason!

I don't know, I didn't hear the beginning, but certainly everything dealing with physical events [of Sri Aurobindo's life] will be expressed in a very reasonable and normal style so that there will be no danger of people saying, 'He's a half-cracked visionary!' I don't know, the first part of what you read to me was so good! Gusts of golden light kept coming. Perhaps you wanted to explain too much. You don't know what happened?

Yes, it's precisely this need to explain.
He seems to find it unnecessary!

Above all, he would like the end to be brief. That's something I felt from the very first day - let the end surge up and leave you in suspense; above all, don't try to be reasonable. An upsurge of light like a door bursting open onto a very luminous and unknown future, but with no attempt to make it tangible and approachable. I am sure of this - this impression of a closed door (people live behind doors, you know), and then abruptly the door is flung wide-open on an explosion of light and ... you are left there: sit down, look, contemplate - and wait for the moment to be ripe for venturing forth.

Above all, have no ambition to make anyone understand anything whatsoever.

But you have to make people understand the work of Sri Aurobindo - what he came to do, what his work is!
But this really is what he came to do - it's like ... an upside-down volcano.

An eruption, an explosion.

page 347-48 - Mother's Agenda , volume 2 , 15th Oct. 1961

And precisely because a large part of the book is reasonable enough, artistic, well-expressed and well-presented, it can afford a few pages (there need not be many), a few pages that are like a leap into sheer madness!

I SEE, I am looking at all that, sparkling....

So if you want to read something to me, I'm listening - I have come to hear.

No, Mother, I have to catch hold of the thread.
You have to catch hold ... yes.

Well then, concentrate, call it! Make an invocation, call it in - it is THERE, contact it. That is the thread to catch - not in the head.

But that's just it, you see-before working I always become completely silent and in that silence there is NOTHING. I could stay like that for hours!

Yes, indeed, mon petit!

But nothing comes!
Well?

Well, after a certain length of time - because after all, time passes - I have to work....
Ah, but perhaps that's not the way!

Then, obviously, I catch hold of some idea - sometimes it's the right idea, sometimes it isn't.
It's not so much a question of an idea being right or not but of the vibration of the Force.

If I say all this it's because I see to what extent Sri Aurobindo views this book as an important too] for world-wide work - from the beginning he has taken it seriously. And he is so very much HERE that it seems to me ... not at all impossible that he HIMSELF is stimulating the expression.

It's not so much a question of ideas, because all that is quite fine.

Read your final page to me. I don't care about the coherence of ideas. Read the final page for me to see whether I feel that same Force in it.

Yes, but I will have to redo all that precedes it.
You are going to do it all over? But it doesn't matter. You know what the logic of a book means to me!

You see, when I want a TRUE impression of a book, I open it at random; then I look at the first page, the last page - sometimes I read the ending, then I go back to the beginning - it doesn't matter where. What I want to know is whether the Force is there.

Ordinary logic... Read! Anywhere, the middle of a sentence, it doesn't matter!

(after the reading)

I would like to go over it all again.

Page 353

But isn't what you call the 'thread' going to make the whole thing heavy?

A thread is missing. I don't know, some people can write in bits and pieces, here and there, but not me. If I don't feel that everything behind me is completed, I can't go ahead. I need to have a flow.
Listen, think it over.... Because I'm not so sure. When I see, I see segments: a blank, another segment, a blank (Mother seems to sketch a kind of diagram in space), then an apotheosis at the end - your ending is magnificent.

It's not necessary for the whole book to proceed in the same way. The most revelatory part can be in segments (you know, just as it comes). The thread is an invisible one - the link of a Presence - otherwise it comes in bursts, and that has a lot of force.

All you've read to me now is quite fine, and it would certainly be less fine if something were there connecting it all up.

To me it's clear that some segments are unsuitable.
Unsuitable or incomplete?

Unsuitable.
Well, then take them out! Why not? It may be contrary to logic, even to higher logic, but what do we care!

I will try to see.... If I catch the thread, it will be all right - but I must catch it.
You have to concretely feel that Sri Aurobindo's full Power of expression is there (I don't mean the words, it's not a question of words), but the power to transmit knowledge (not mental knowledge, experience). it's constantly there. So ... an attentive silence - but be very patient, because as soon as the Force comes, something begins to stir in the mental regions. Then there is also a sort of eagerness to seize hold - and it ruins the thing.

I have noticed that the true inspiration doesn't come when one is very, very anxious, nor even when you have a very intense aspiration, but (how to put it?) ... when you succumb in a smile, and it all goes blank. Then there's nothing; but if you know how to curb

Page 354

impatience (simply delighting in His beatitude, even if ages pass - delighting in His beatitude), then suddenly, when you least expect it - flash! That's IT!

This has happened to me very, very often - suddenly, poff! And with such certainty!

Mother, give me one single indication. Don't you think I should cut out what I read to you yesterday? It would be a relief if you told me.
I don't think so, mon petit! I don't think so. I can't tell you for sure because I'm not the one who heard it - you know what I mean? No memory is operating. Were you to ask me to repeat a single word of what you have written, I couldn't do it - yet I listened to you.

I have a sort of vision in my head of parts of sentences, three or four words where the impression was what I told you: Not necessary. But it was a very minor thing. It was more an attitude, an attitude in the expression. But it wasn't disturbing.

I keep feeling that Sri Aurobindo wants the conclusion to be swift; and I myself (probably not with his power of comprehension) have a vision, a sort of feeling coming from a great height above, that the most important part of the book should be very abrupt - like breaking through a door, flinging it wide-open, and emerging in a rush of light. That's all. Now keep quiet and see what happens.

page 353-54 - - Mother's Agenda , volume 2 , 15th Oct. 1961

This book was like the initiator of the legend. Sri Aurobindo was there, Sri Aurobindo as I know him now - the eternal Sri Aurobindo I know now.

page 356 - - Mother's Agenda , volume 2 , 30th Oct. 1961

Ever since I've known that Sri Aurobindo attached importance to this book, I have been doing a great deal of 'looking.' I told you what I saw the other day, didn't I? ... You asked my advice in choosing the photos and you had picked the one of him in 'meditation' [Sri Aurobindo on his bed after he left his body]. Earlier, I had seen the photo of him young; and while I was looking at it, Sri

Aurobindo was there and he suddenly took me thousands of years into the future - I've told you about this - and said to me, The beginning of the legend. Then I understood that this was the right photo for the book.

Evidently he is making your book the starting point for all that will be thought and said and done upon earth on the intellectual plane. And I assure you that I am helping you and he is helping you!

You must ask him.

page 374 - - Mother's Agenda , volume 2 , 5th Nov. 1961

Listen, I told you once - it wasn't just words - and I thought you understood and would remember: everything I write is absolutely dependent on your work, in the sense that if you weren't here I wouldn't write another word - just letters with " I send you my blessings." Period. Not that I don't have time or can't do it, but I don't enjoy it. When we do something together, when we write, I get the feeling it's complete and has a certain quality that makes it useful. When you aren't here to write it, I feel something missing. So if you think it's useless to do this for me, I am sorry - that hurts!

No, of course not!
You do understand?

Because it comes from very high - it's not from here, not at all; it was decided on high, and a long, LONG time ago. Before you came here, I was constantly feeling.... Besides, it hadn't been so long without Sri Aurobindo; when Sri Aurobindo was here I had nothing to say, and if I did speak it was almost by chance. That's all. What had to be said was said by him. And when he left and I began to read his books (which I hadn't read before), I told myself, "Well, what do you know! There was absolutely no need for me to say anything." And I had less and less desire to speak. The minute I met you, I began to get interested. "Ah," I thought, "collaboration! ... Something interesting can be done."


None of this is random chance. It's not that we're taking advantage of circumstances, not at all; it was DECREED.

All my life I have always, always felt I had something to say, but that there had to be another instrument to say it, to give it a kind of perfection of form I myself was unable to give. Because that's not my job. It's not my job.

What I can bring to the world are flashes - something that goes beyond, above and through everything that is presently manifested. But I don't have the patience for the concrete, fixed, material form. I could have been a scholar, I could have been a writer, just as I could have been a painter - and I have never had the patience for any of it. There was always "something" moving on too swiftly, too high and too far.

So I greatly appreciate beautiful written form. I love it. There were periods in my life when I read ever so much - I am quite a library! But it's not my job.

Of course not! You didn't come for that....
I like the form of your expression very, very much. It contains something deep, very supple and polished at the same time - like a lovely, finely chiseled statue. There is profound inspiration and a rhythm, a harmony, which I like very much. I really enjoyed reading your first book [[L'Orpailleur (The Gold-Seeker). ]] - the kind of enjoyment that comes from discovering beautiful forms, an original way of looking at things and expressing them. I appreciated it tremendously. Immediately, spontaneously, I ranked you as a true writer.


page 124-25 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 13th March 1962

I don't recall whether it was last night or the night before, but I saw you with him, the two of you were busy with the book. And Sri Aurobindo was pleased. When I saw him (I was there, seeing the two of you), I thought, "Well, if Satprem could see this (laughing), at least he'd be pleased for once."

Well, yes!
In a place full of light.

Now, read me the next part.

I don't know why, but I'm more and more unconscious.
Unconscious?

Oh yes, more and more. Previously I used to remember a little - now nothing. Nothing! It's funny.
It's because you're not going to the same place as before. You understand, you're going to places (laughing) you're still not very used to. The link isn't well established.


But I did see you, and you were very concrete - it wasn't an image!

And as I told you, I even remarked, "Well, if he were conscious of this, he'd be pleased."

I should say so!
(Mother laughs) Besides, you looked completely at ease, right at home. And Sri Aurobindo was ... he was satisfied.

It's something.

He is pleased - he's pleased with you, with your work.

It will come all at once, mon petit, like the music. One fine day, poof! You'll find yourself talking with him - then you'll be happy.

That's true!
page 430-31 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 27th Nov. 1962

As Satprem is about to leave, regarding his next novel, "The Sannyasin":

Do you have something to say?


There's a question I have been asking myself for some time, and I would like you to solve it for me.... I am supposed to write a sequel to "The Gold-Washer" - or rather, they're expecting it, and also I thought I should do so. But I really wouldn't like to do it from an arbitrary decision. I would like ... You understand, I wouldn't like it to be "me" who decides.
You told me that some time ago! [in the "dream" state]

(Banteringly) I took a look and saw what you wanted to write, but I won't tell you!

I saw two things, which were, so to speak, concomitant, or superimposed (they occupied the same space). One seemed to me to be what you wanted to write, the other seemed to me to be what you will write. It was the same book, but it was very different - very, very different. Yet it was the same book. I even saw images, I saw scenes, I saw sentences and I saw almost the entire story (if it can be called a story). It was very interesting, because one was matt and concrete (there was a kind of hardness in it, it was precise), while the other was vibrant and still uncertain, and there were sparks of light in it that were calling down something, that were trying to make something "descend." And one was endeavoring to take the place of the other.[[In fact, Satprem wrote By the Body of the Earth or the Sannyasin two years later, in 1966. The first Sannyasin he conceived was like a Greek tragedy - quite implacable and, naturally, tragic. ]]

So I followed that very closely, and then, when the work was finished (gesture as of a screen being pulled up), it went away, as always.

But I didn't mention it to you because I didn't want to say anything; I wanted to see what would happen.

I have the feeling that you will write the book only when that ... that old garment has fallen off - when the other has taken its place.

I don't know, it was a few days ago, not very long ago, maybe a week or two, I don't remember (I never keep track of time), but anyway I had the feeling it was something being prepared in your subtle atmosphere, and that when the time has come, it will simply go like this (gesture of a vertical fall), it will drop down on your head (!), and then you will feel the urge to write.

And I was waiting for that.

page 199 , Mother's Agenda , volume 5 , 18th Sep - 1964