August 8, 1962 (Mother listens to Satprem read a passage from his manuscript.) It's very good. It's really excellent. Oh, it's dull, it's lifeless.... What gives you that impression? Do you happen to have one of those criticizers in you? Sri Aurobindo says we always carry with us someone who criticizes everything we do. He classifies the gentleman as an adverse force, one with an individual form. Yes, you're always saying it won't do, it's no good.... Because I feel that things should be said with another kind of force. It seems like all these sentences could just as well be put one way as another, you understand - it's not inevitable at all.... I could say things this way, b

May 29, 1962 ... But isn't this second book on Sri Aurobindo something imposed by circumstances? Is it really something that must be done, that already exists and has been decreed? Personally, I do see one. I see a Sri Aurobindo.... (silence) Almost no philosophy, nothing intellectual - almost a story. His work presented in an entirely practical and matter-of-fact way, like the talks I used to give to the children here. When I said to the children, "This, you know, is why you are here," I told them in a way they could understand, didn't I? Well the book should be like that. If I were to write (I will never write a book on Sri Aurobindo! Never, never, never - I know it), but were I

April 13, 1962 (After a perilous month, Mother has suddenly had the formidable, decisive experience, and she gives her first message. She is lying on her bed in the room upstairs, and has become quite thin. It is around ten in the morning. Her voice has greatly changed. Schoolchildren can be heard playing in the distance.) Night of April 12-13.[[ Mother gives the first part of this message in English. ]] Suddenly in the night I woke up with the full awareness of what we could call the Yoga of the world. The Supreme Love was manifesting through big pulsations, and each pulsation was bringing the world further in its manifestation. It was the formidable pulsations of the eternal, stu

November 23, 1962 (Satprem reads a passage from his manuscript in which he says in particular: "We cannot take one step up without taking one step down.") That's what I am experiencing in my body now - exactly what you say: each step forward forces you to make ... not a step backward, but a step into the Shadow. And on the physical level it's terrible. (silence) But your book shouldn't give the impression that it's always that way - that the Light can't be established on earth until all the Shadow is transformed. In fact, the very work of transformation is to change all this shadow into its aspect of light.[[Mother is alluding to the passage in Savitri where Sri Aurobindo spe

May 31, 1962 So, how was your night? The same? Not so great. The same. I had a symbolic dream (quite symbolic!) - that's all I could recall this morning.... I was wearing a very cumbersome sort of garment, full of big thorns ... Oh, horrible! ... so I couldn't find a comfortable position. That's how you woke up.... There's a strange thing that happens to me all the time, at least fifty times a day (and it's particularly clear at night). In its most external form it's like moving from one room to another, or from one house to another, and you go through the door or the wall almost without noticing it, automatically.... Being in one room is reflected outwardly by quite a

Undated (end of May) 1962 (Letter from Mother to Satprem regarding his difficulties with X) Wednesday Satprem, mon cher petit, ...... Rise above, into the Light, where everything can be seen with a calm, eternal smile - there you will be in my constant and tender company. Signed: Mother Page 155

August 11, 1962 (Satprem asks for an explanation of this sentence from August 4: "... it is easier to feel wider, higher, vaster than the world, THAN AN INDIVIDUAL. For it is easier to take everything in, to embrace and change it from outside, than to change it from inside.") Yes, it is easier (for a Being or a Force or a Consciousness) to feel vaster than the earth than an individual [[Mother undoubtedly means than TO FEEL LIKE an individual." ]] Than an individual?... (Mother laughs) It's crystal clear to me! ... It's a sort of reply to something I am translating in The Synthesis of Yoga. You know, there are these three aspects that must always be kept united in one's cons

August 18, 1962 (Concerning Satprem's new book on Sri Aurobindo, Mother foresees that again many cuts will be necessary, and emphasizes that the main point is to prevent the publisher from entrusting the book's editing to some ignoramus. And she adds:) ... But it's quite clear that these people can't grasp it; they're a closed door! Not even a door of bronze, but of bricks and cement - impenetrable. Poor Sri Aurobindo! And as for what happened here in Pondicherry, there's no need to make it very long. Because from the time he withdrew to his room (to be exact, from about the time we moved from the house over there to this one [[Sri Aurobindo withdrew in 1926, but it was in 1927

March 11, 1962 (Satprem suggests he read certain past Agenda conversations to Mother. She refuses:) You know, I've almost felt like telling you that all this Agenda stuff isn't meant for circulation. It's only for when I have come to the end - and then what's in it won't matter at all. Or else I will have gone, leaving a note saying I don't want it published ... Why! Page 114 ... and that I am giving it only to ... I will say to whom. So it doesn't matter. Actually, you could type it up just as it is on the tape. You want to read it to me mainly to get (laughing) some additions, hmm? There may be additions, but there are also some questions. I should delete some th

June 30, 1962 (Mother gives Satprem an old note to keep - unfortunately, he does not recall exactly what it was - one of those little scraps of paper, scattered about almost everywhere, on which Mother would jot down notations of her experiences; or, to be more exact, on which she concretized in material words the Force then manifesting. As a comment on this note, Mother adds.) I have experienced this hundreds and hundreds of times: one has a deep, true experience, but the mind, even the higher mind, immediately latches onto it (usually it's the higher mind) and very actively makes its OWN thing out of the experience, thus bringing in its own distortion. It comes merely as an additi