November 18, 1970 (Mother gives Satprem, as every time, soup packets. Then she comments:) There has been something like a small catastrophe! It is that in Africa all Indians are sent back, or their properties are confiscated, and it's from Africa that we used to receive the cheese! (laughter) So we won't have cheese anymore ... but I still have this coming from Germany (Mother gives a tube). There has been a bigger catastrophe in Pakistan. What happened? Well, there are maybe three hundred thousand dead. What! There was a cyclone followed by a tidal wave: a huge wave, morethan fifteen feet high, which swept a whole area, and there are maybe three

May 13, 1970 R. asked me to say what we mean by religion.... (Mother holds out a letter) Sweet Mother, the notion of religion is most often connected to that of the quest for God. Should we understand it in that perspective alone? Aren't there today, as a matter of fact, other forms of religion? I had written something BEFORE I received this question. It came in English: (Mother holds out a note) We call religion any concept of the world or the universewhich is presented as the exclusive Truth in which one must have an absolute faith, generally because this Truth is declared to be the result of a revelation. Most of the religions affirm the existence of

May 30, 1970 (Mother looks absorbed) I didn't remember this book [Thoughts and Aphorisms] at all. Have you seen the latest ones? (Satprem reads) 529 - Indiscriminate compassion is the noblest gift of temperament, not to do even the least hurt to one living thing is the highest of all human virtues; but God practises neither. Is man therefore nobler and better than the All-loving? 528 - Human pity is born of ignorance and weakness;it is the slave of emotional impressions. Divine compassion understands, discerns and saves. Page 218 You answer: "To understand the divine intention and to worktowards its accomplishment, is that not the

November 4, 1970 (Satprem reads the second part of the sixth chapter of On the Way to Supermanhood: "The Tearing of Limits.") It's a whole new world. (silence) As for me, I could keep listening like that without moving for hours! It's very restful. I don't know how to explain.... It's very restful. It's strange.... You no longer feel like moving, no longer feel like speaking, nothing anymore. (Mother nods her head and goes into a contemplation) Page 367

May 16, 1970 (Mother's voice is quite husky.) No voice.... But it doesn't matter.... Can you hear me?... If you have questions, you can ask them. Things feel as if they're grating and difficult. Yes, yes. (long contemplation) I can remain like this twenty-four hours a day. Eating has become a problem.... (silence) Page 193 Sometimes one catches a glimpse of the heroism it takes to do the work you're doing.... (Mother laughs) The body is enduring enough, I can't complain. If there were a certitude, if, for instance, Sri Aurobindo said, "This and this and this is like this," then it would be very easy! But what's difficult is ... You see, you are surrounded b

April 20, 1966 Early this morning, that is, around four, I was called "somewhere," and for a long time they had been trying to establish very important communications to connect certain things, but they had never succeeded, it was always a confusion. So, last night, they Page 88 called me. I arrived there and there were roads - it was so lovely! - roads (Mother draws miniature strips) with small borders of grass and plants all along, it was so lovely, so neat, there was nothing, no disorder anywhere. Three roads converged and went farther on. "Ah!" I said, "Here's some neat work." And they answered me, "Yes, but it was made easier by the government's consent." I found the refle

March 9, 1966 There's a question I'd like to ask you. It's in fact the question I wanted to ask you last time.... When one is in that eternal Consciousness, to be with or without a body makes little difference, but when one is "dead," as it is called, I'd like to know if the perception of the material world remains clear and precise, or if it becomes as vague and imprecise as might be the consciousness one has of the other worlds when one is on this side, in this world? Sri Aurobindo speaks of a play of hide and seek, but the play of hide and seek is interesting if one state of being doesn't deprive of the consciousness of the other states? Yesterday or the day before, the whole day fr

September 21, 1966 (This conversation came about following a personal question of Satprem's, who asked Mother if he should not refuse an amount of money offered to him by the French government: a war pension. Satprem's intention was to refuse that pension, not wanting to feel tied to any government and any country for any amount of money. Mother advised him to accept that money for the divine Work.) I had a revelation, in the sense that it was more on the order of a vision. For external reasons, I was looking at the sorry state in which all countries find themselves, the truly painful and dangerous conditions of the earth, and there was a sort of all-embracing vision Page

November 12, 1966 Yesterday was Kali puja,[[ Kali represents the warrior aspect of the universal Mother. Ceremonies in honor of her take place every year around this time. ]] and in English I would say, She has been outspoken. In the afternoon, she expressed ... (laughing) her "view of things." She was displeased? (Mother nods her head) And it was amusing, because it wasn't just here, it wasn't just the earth, but it was a displeasure even at the way of acting of Nature's forces.... See this irony: yesterday morning I got a telegram - an S.O.S. from Bihar, telling me that they have no drinking water, they are in a dreadful condition of drought and deprivation, and calling for he

September 28, 1966 (The secretaries have left Mother an hour late, so that the conversation begins at the time it should have ended.) That beats all the records! And I started early - yet the work isn't done. It's insoluble. Because I try everything in my power: I start earlier, I hurry in the morning, I do the work with as much order as possible - nothing doing. And I let them know a quarter of an hour in advance: "Time is up" - nothing doing. But little by little everything is eaten up, there's no time left! No, there isn't. But at night, I sometimes work till 10:30 now, and it was agreed that I was supposed to retire before nine.... There's no time left. And in my c