Today we are finding that the old gods know how to transmigrate. Gandhi himself, seeing all those years of nonviolence culminate in the terrible violence that marked India's partition in 1947, ruefully observed shortly before his death: "The attitude of violence which we have secretly harboured now recoils on us, and makes us fly at each other's throats when the question of distribution of power arises.... Now that the burden of subjection is lifted, all the forces of evil have come to the surface." For neither nonviolence nor violence touch upon the root of Evil....

Page 351 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 22th Sept 1962

Have you read Sri Aurobindo's last letters on China? [[See Addendum. ]]
Oh, yes - he read them to me himself! (Mother laughs.)

But everything Sri Aurobindo said has always come true. You know he also said (but it was in jest, he didn't write it) ... concerning reuniting with Pakistan he told me: "Ten years. It will take ten years." The ten years passed and nothing happened - OFFICIALLY nothing happened. But the truth is (I learned it through certain government officials), Pakistan did make some overtures in that direction, asking for a union to be reestablished (they would have kept some sort of autonomy, but the two countries would have UNITED, it would have been a UNION), and Nehru refused.

How foolish!
So Sri Aurobindo had seen it.

He had seen it happen. After ten years, when that man who headed Pakistan died, [[This may refer to the death of Liaquat Ali, and the grave economic and political difficulties resulting in the dissolution of the Pakistani Parliament in October 1958, and General Ayub Khan's seizure of power. ]] they found themselves in grave difficulty and were unable to get organized; so they sent somebody (unofficially, of course) to ask India to reestablish union on certain bases - but they refused, the Indians refused. It was a repetition of the same stupidity as when Cripps came to make his proposal, when Sri Aurobindo sent a message saying, "Accept, whatever the conditions, otherwise it will be worse later on." That's what Sri Aurobindo told them. Gandhi was there and he retorted, "Why is that man meddling? He should be concerned only with spiritual life."[[In April 1942, when England was struggling against the Nazis and Japan, which was threatening to invade Burma and India, Churchill sent an emissary, Sir Stafford Cripps, to New Delhi with a very generous proposal which he hoped would rally India's goodwill and cooperation in the fight against the worldwide threat. In this proposal, Great Britain offered India Dominion status, as a first step towards an independent government. Sri Aurobindo at once came out of retirement to wire his adhesion to Cripps; he wired all of India's leaders, and even sent a personal messenger to Gandhi and the Indian Congress to convince them to accept this unhoped for proposal without delay. One of Sri Aurobindo's telegrams to Rajagopalachari (the future President of India) spoke of the grave danger, which no one seemed to see, of rejecting Cripps' proposal: "... Some immediate solution urgent face grave peril. Appeal to you to save India formidable danger new foreign domination when old on way to self-elimination." No one understood: "Why is he meddling?" Had it accepted Dominion status, India would have avoided the partition of the country in two, the artificial creation of Pakistan, as well as the three wars that were to follow (and which we haven't heard the last of), and the blood bath that ravaged Bengal and the Punjab in 1947 at the time of the partition. (See in Addendum an extract from Sri Aurobindo's message on the occasion of India's Independence.) ]]

page 420 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 17th Nov. 1962


But Nehru had a very good foreign press. They considered him almost a god in Europe and America. And Gandhi! ... Oh, they were.... The whole world is like that, mon petit - they don't understand. They don't understand. Nobody understands.

page 424 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 20th Nov. 1962


Yes, he never understood why Sri Aurobindo did not resume his political life.
No. And then, you see, he takes Gandhi's asceticism for spiritual life - always the same mistake! There's no way to pull them out of it. Unfortunately, the entire world has caught the same idea.

Then when there was that Cripps proposal, [[See Agenda III, November 17, 1962, p. 420. ]] I believe it was Nehru (or Gandhi, I don't remember which of the two) who said, "He has withdrawn from political life, why is he meddling! It's none of his business." They never forgave him. That is to say, completely obtuse, unable to understand that one can have a knowledge higher than practical knowledge.

There you are.


page 172-74 - Mother's Agenda , volume 4 , 15th June 1963