For a very long time now I have been watching all the phases of the subjection to mental functioning come undone, one after another - for a very long time. That night was the end of it, the last phase: I was leaving this subjection behind and rising up into a realm of freedom. You had been very, very helpful, as I told you. Well, this latest experience was something else! It came to make me look squarely at the fact of our incapacity!

Can you imagine!

One thing after another, one thing after another! This subconscient is ... interminable, interminable, if you only knew ... I am skipping the details-such stupidity, oh! This person I won't name, who so clumsily prepared breakfast, told me, 'Ah, yes, Sri Aurobindo is a little ... morose today, he is depressed.' I could have slapped him: 'You fool! You don't understand anything!' And Sri Aurobindo, although he didn't want to show it, was completely aware of our incapacity.

(silence)

Now I should say-if it's any consolation - that each time something like this comes into my consciousness at night, things go better afterwards. it is not useless, some work has been done - cleaning, cleaning, cleaning out. But there's quite a lot to do!

To wind it all up, I went to Sri Aurobindo's room - an enormous, enormous room, but in the same state. And he appeared to be in an eternal consciousness, entirely detached from everything yet very clearly aware of our total incapacity.

He hadn't eaten (probably because no one had given him anything to eat), and when I entered, he asked me if it was possible to have some breakfast. 'Yes, of course! I said, 'I'll go get it,' expecting to find it ready. Then I had to hunt around to find something: everything was stuffed into cupboards (and misplaced at that), all disarranged - disgusting, absolutely disgusting. I called someone (who had been napping and came in with sleep-swollen eyes) and told him to prepare Sri Aurobindo's breakfast - but he had his own fixed ideas and principles (exactly as he is in real life). 'Hurry up,' I told him, 'Sri Aurobindo is waiting.' But hurry? Impossible! He had to do things according to his own conceptions and with a terrible awkwardness and ineptitude. In short, it took an infinite amount of time to warm up a rather clumsy breakfast.

Then I arrived at Sri Aurobindo's room with my plates. 'Oh,' said Sri Aurobindo, 'it has taken so long that I will take my bath first.' I looked at my poor breakfast and thought, 'Well, I went to so much trouble to make it hot and now it's going to get cold!' All this was so sordid, so sad.

And he seemed to be living in an eternity, yet fully, fully conscious of ... of our total incapacity.

page 130 - Mother's Agenda , volume -2 , 17th March , 1961