October 5, 1963 Yesterday I had a very curious experience which left me with a bizarre feeling.... It was a construction - a huge construction. It resembled one of those huge hotels they build nowadays, with inner courtyards and all sorts of things. And I had my room right at the top. (It called to my mind an old experience I had had.... Do you remember that "big hotel"?[[See Agenda 1, July 3, 1957, p. 104. ]] It was somewhat like that.) And everyone there was APPARENTLY full of respect, of obedience, of thoughtfulness ... but everyone was going his own sweet way - that's nothing new. At first, I was downstairs (my room was way upstairs, I don't know how many floors there were), and

April 22, 1963 (Letter to Mother from Satprem) Rameshwaram, Monday, 22 April Sweet Mother, I arrived here yesterday. So far I have spent most of my time struggling against a horrible impression in my heart, my thought and my body, so strong that if I could, I would catch the first train home today. I have never had such an impression here. I almost wired you to call for your help. I shall try to "hold out" here as Page 118 long as is decently possible, then will leave as soon as I can. On the material level, the conditions are as wretched as possible - in a word, complete barrenness in complete squalor. My body isn't too brilliant, but I hope it will get better. On

September 21, 1963 (During the conversation, Mother envisages the possibility of reading out a message, if any comes to her, on the occasion of the second anniversary of the Supramental Manifestation, on February 29, 1964. Then she adds:) ... Provided I can speak. Yes, I was kindly informed that I won't be able to speak any more. What do you mean? Oh, the adverse forces always make all sorts of suggestions. I was told that I will lose the use of speech - (laughing) that'll be all the better for everyone! (Satprem does not seem too appreciative) This is how it happened: the other day, the doctor brought some canaries, a cage of canaries to show me. All over the world

February 23, 1963 (Regarding a dream, or rather an experience of Sujata, the notation of which unfortunately was not kept.) She went to Sri Aurobindo's home in the subtle physical - the thing is true, real, concrete, as concrete as here. As soon as I got her letter, I saw: that's where she went. Besides, I knew she had gone there. Plenty of people go there and are unaware of it! They forget. But she had a nice memory. She goes there very often at night, very often, but generally people forget. Simply for want of training. If you train yourself, you remember quite well. There are small holes in the consciousness, gaps, and when you go through such a gap you forget. You may

June June 3, 1963 (Mother prepares to read a letter of Sri Aurobindo in the original English.) Do you understand when I read? Certainly I do! But it will tire you.... No, it doesn't tire me. (Mother reads) The body-mind And there is too an obscure mind of the body, of the very cells, molecules, corpuscles. Haeckel, the German materialist, spoke somewhere of the will in the atom, and recent science, dealing with the incalculable individual variation in the activity of the electrons, comes near to perceiving that this is not a figure but the shadow thrown by a secret reality. This body-mind is a very tangible truth; owing to its obscurity and mechanical clinging to past

January 14, 1963 So? Have you come with a question on these aphorisms? There aren't many questions to ask. I count on the question to set off the movement, because for the moment there's nothing. More and more it's like that: I know what I must do at the time of doing it, I know what I must say at the time of saying it. I don't try, though once or twice I did try just to see - useless, nothing comes. But when it has to come, it comes as if a tap were opened - effortlessly, without my having to do anything, it just comes. So for the moment, nothing. Read me those aphorisms again. 81 - God's laughter is sometimes very coarse and unfit for polite ears; He is not satisfie

February 19, 1963 (An experience Mother had the day after the last conversation, on February 16:) It was really very interesting. Afterwards it's just a memory, no longer the thing.... It concerned the creation of the material world, the material universe, in the light of the conception of the Supreme in love with His emanation. But the vision was all-embracing, as if I were on the other side - the side of the Supreme, not of the creation - and saw the creation as a whole, with the true sense of progress, the true sense of advance, of movement, and the true way in which all that doesn't belong to the future creation will disappear in a kind of pralaya [[Pralaya: end of a world, apo

October 16, 1963 (Mother first reads two lines from "The Debate of Love and Death" in "Savitri." She would like to put them as epigraph to the conversation of September 7, the dialogue with a materialist.) Listen to this: O Death, thou speakest Truth but Truth that slays, I answer to thee with the Truth that saves. (X.III.621) It's beautiful! So the materialist ... "O Death, thou speakest Truth...." What can he reply? It's the Truth! *** (Satprem first decided not to publish in full the following conversation on Tantrism. Then, after Mother's departure, when he saw that same Tantrism trying to spread through Auroville, he changed his mind and decided to publis

August 10, 1963 93-Pain is the touch of our Mother teaching us how to bear and grow in rapture. She has three stages of her schooling, endurance first, next equality of soul, last ecstasy. As long as we are dealing with moral things, this is absolutely obvious and indisputable: all moral pain, when you know how to take it, shapes your character and leads you straight to ecstasy. But when it comes to the body ... It's true that the doctor himself said ([laughing], the doctor [[The "doctor" is not an abstraction here, but the person who watches and will watch over Mother up to the end. ]] symbolizes Doubt with a capital D) that if you teach your body to bear pain, it grows more and

March 19, 1963 After a meditation with Mother: When you meditate, are you conscious of going from one state to another? ... No? Because at the start, there is usually that vibration with all the colors, though with blue strongly predominant (the color I have come to call the "Tantric power in Matter"); that's immediately with you, it's a sort of normal state of concentration. Then afterwards, you seemed to recede or stretch out into a vast Immensity of very quiet silvery whiteness - very quiet and unbroken. Like a receding from outer life and a stretching out into that state. And then there comes down - literally comes down - a very intense golden Page 89 light, very intense