(A little later, Mother listens to Satprem read various letters of Sri Aurobindo, then a letter she herself wrote in English during World War II about the attitude of the disciples toward Hitler and the Allies.) "The world situation is critical today. India's fate too is hanging in the balance. There was a time when India was a absolutely secure, there was no danger whatever of her being victim to Asuric aggression. But things have changed. People and forces in India have acted in such a way as to invite Asuric influences upon her: these have worked insidiously and undermined the security that was the

There's a letter from T.F. complaining about the films shown [at the Ashram] and saying that films should be instructive and show admirable things.... But for a film to show admirable things, people should live those admirable things, no?! She even wrote to me that they were a whole group of teachers who intended to write and circulate a letter asking for a change - I don't like all that. It's a small-town boarding-school spirit. So yesterday evening, I wrote an answer. (Mother reads) "We would like to be able to show the children pictorial representations of what life should be, but we still have not reached that stag

The story narrated in the film went like this: Narada, as usual, was having fun. (Narada is a demigod with a divine position - that is, he can communicate with man and with the gods as he pleases, and he serves as an intermediary, but then he likes to have fun!) So he was quarrelling with one of the goddesses, I no longer recall which one, and he told her ... (Ah, yes! The quarrel was with Saraswati.) Saraswati was telling him that knowledge is much greater than love (much greater in that it is much more powerful than love), and he replied to her, 'You don't know what you're talking about! (Mother laughs) Love is much more powerful than knowledge.' So she chall

I wanted to clarify something.... I don't know if Mona Lisa and Marguerite de Valois were your incarnations, but weren't they contemporaries!?... Yes, but I told you - four at once![[ Conversation of June 27. ]] Four at once. And, in general, they were the different states of being of the Mother - the four aspects. Generally one aspect in each embodiment (when there were four). Or else this or that aspect might have been less present in one embodiment and more present in another. Sometimes there was a fairly central presence and then at the same time less central, less important emanations. But that has happened several times - sever

Oh, listen, it was Y.'s birthday the other day. I told her to come. She came: her face was exactly like her monkey's! She sat down in front of me, we exchanged a few words, then I concentrated and closed my eyes, and then I opened my eyes - she had the face of the ideal madonna! So beautiful! And as I had seen the monkey (the monkey wasn't ugly, but it was a monkey, of course), and then that, "Ah!" it struck me, I thought, "What wonderful plasticity." A face ... oh, a truly beautiful face, perfectly harmonious and pure, with such a lovely aspiration - oh, a beautiful face! Then I looked a few times: it was no longer one or the other, it was ... it was something (wha

(The conversation is cut short at that point by a disciple who comes in to announce his friend Anousuya's death.) At what time? Just now, we just had a call from the hospital. I am asking this because V. told me she would be going there, she said Anousuya wasn't feeling well. So I looked, and ... (V. wanted me to send a line to Anousuya), I took a paper and wrote ... I don't remember the exact words, but it was: "The unshakable faith that God's Will alone is realized." I don't exactly remember, I wrote what was dictated. And at the time of writing it, I knew it was over. I didn't say anything, but I knew.

I knew how it was with her because I remember the days when Sri Aurobindo was here and I used to go downstairs to give meditations to the people assembled in the hall. There's a ledge above the pillars there, where all the gods used to sit - Shiva, Krishna, Lakshmi, the Trimurti, all of them - the little ones, the big ones, they all used to come regularly, every day, to attend these meditations. It was a lovely sight. But they didn't have this kind of adoration for the Supreme. They had no use for that concept - each one, in his own mode of being, was fully aware of his own eternal divinity; and each one knew as well that he could represent all the others (such was

There's a kind of extension of the physical senses. In American Indians, for instance, the senses of hearing and smell are far more extended than ours (in dogs too!). When I was eight or ten years old, I had an Indian friend who came with Buffalo Bill in the days of the Hippodrome - that was a long time ago, I was around eight. He was so sharp that he could put his ear to the ground and tell, from the intensity of the vibrations, how far the sound of footsteps was coming from. All the children immediately said, "I'd really like to know how to do that! " And so you try.... That's how you prepare yourself. You think you're just having fun, but you are pr

(Mother laughs) Yes! And I say: 'It doesn't matter if you don't say anything!' I knew you wouldn't! But it's going all right, it's all right. [319] Anyway, X has written to me (and to M. also), telling me he will be here on the 29th, but will have to leave on the 10th, so it won't be for very long - all because of various ceremonies.... [[Tantric ceremonies in the temple of Parvati. ]] He writes me that he's going to train someone to replace him for all these ceremonies so he can be freer to come here for longer periods. But to M. (the devil knows what M. wrote to him), he says something like, 'Yes, there is a very sorry situation in the Ash