October 19, 1968 (Mother speaks these words haltingly; they are interspersed with long silences, as though dropping from far away ... perhaps from eternity.) I can remain without coughing, but because of that I can't speak.... There's nothing we can talk about. So there. (silence) The material, the physical is learning - it's learning what it is - and that's very interesting. But ... it's very hard to express. (silence) You see, I remain for hours and hours on end without speaking, and it's like a development unfolding logically, but ... This cough must be deliberate, to prevent me from speaking. Because I see things clearly.... One seems to waste one's time spea

March 16, 1968 Mother holds out a flower to Satprem This is "Happy Heart."[[Ravenalia spectabilis. ]] I am discovering the secret of it. (long silence) You feel you are constantly - constantly - on the way to a great discovery, then you make that discovery, and then you realize it had always been made! ... It's only (laughing) that you look at it in another way. This morning, there was an experience; it seemed an extraordinary revelation, and ... it's something that was always known. So you mentalize it - the moment you mentalize it, it becomes clear, but that's no longer it! You see, we say this creation is "the creation of equilibrium,"[[We may recall Agenda 4 of Novembe

January 27, 1968 Yesterday I got a letter from the director of the [All India] Radio, in which he said he wanted to make a "spectacular" broadcast on February 21; and at the end, to "crown" the thing, he asked me to give "reminiscences of my life in India"! (Mother laughs) So I've prepared my answer.... "The reminiscences will be short. I came to India to meet Sri Aurobindo, I remained in India to live with Sri Aurobindo, when he left his body I con tinued to live here in order to do his work which is by serving the Truth and enlightening humanity to hasten the rule of the Divine's Love upon earth." There, and that's that. Period. It came in English and afterwar

April 13, 1968 R. [Auroville's architect] has come for five days, and he wants to make what he calls a "district" of Auroville, that is to say, instead of tackling the problem of ten or twenty thousand people at once, he wants to start with two or three thousand, on the level of infrastructure, but above all to see how it will work: the experiment of life in Auroville.... I had thought about it, and when I spoke to you last time, that's what came: in what direction should the experiment be carried out? You see, Y. has ideas in the field of education (I am not intervening); as for R., he has ideas in the field of construction (I am not intervening); but no one has studied the problem on t

January 24, 1968 (Satprem prepares to leave Mother at the usual time, around 11:30.) It's going to be a hard month... Oh! ... The days you come are the only ones in the week when I can eat at noon. The other days, I am so late that if I take my lunch, I can't have a bath, so I skip lunch. [[Mother usually has a bath around 2:30 P.M. ]] So lunch is ... But in reality, I am very happy. No, a whole internal reorganization is going on.... We'll see. We're still in a period of transition. A sort of mechanical fixity is probably going to disappear, that's my belief; it's the first thing that will change, a sort of mechanical fixity that was necessary to ... You understand

April 6, 1968 I didn't want to make rules for Auroville, but I am going to be forced to start formulating certain things, because ... there happens to be difficulties. I don't know what to do. What I wanted to say came; it's very simple (Mother takes a written note), simply like this (it's about very small things): "One must choose between getting drunk and living in Auroville, the two are incompatible." It's not an innocent drunkenness, I mean it results in acts of violence, it verges on madness. So of course, if we start along this road, we may also say this (Mother takes another note): "One must choose between living in falsehood and living in Auroville, the two a

July 13, 1968 (Mother looks very tired.) What else? I'd have liked to ask you a question on that vision of the subtle Page 199 physical - that material vision which you have with open eyes. I'd like to know what it corresponds to: does it correspond to a supramental vision, or is it the vision a skilled clairvoyant, for instance, might have? I don't think so. (long silence) As soon as I speak about something, it goes away. So when I speak too early, I don't get the full experience. (Then Mother goes into a long contemplation, and emerges only when time is up.) It's difficult.... Difficult. Page 200

January 10, 1968 For an hour in the morning, I arrange flowers in my bathroom over there; all the flowers are kept there so I select them (I make a distribution every morning). And it's so beautiful! It's wonderful. All the flowers speak, like that, they have a life - they FEEL. And as I am very fond of them, they vibrate and vibrate. Then, as some have closed up in the night, I take them, look at them, tell them they are pretty - and they open up. Really a pleasant sight. Just look at this! (Mother holds out a rose) * * Soon afterwards Now, there has come a message for February 29 [third anniversary of the supramental manifestation]. The message for the 21st is a jest, and th

March 23, 1968 (Satprem read Mother the end of the Playground Talk of June 3, 1953, about Karma: "In all religions, when people said tha [the consequences of Karma were strict] and gave such abso lute rules, as for me, I think it was to take the place of Nature and pull people's strings.... So then they panic, they get terri fied ... - they should just go to the next floor up. What should be given them is the key to open the door. The staircase has a door, and it needs a key. The key is a sufficiently sincere aspiration or a sufficiently intense prayer.... In both there is a Page 87 magic power, one must know how to use it.... Some detest prayer (if the

September 25, 1968 (Mother gives Satprem a flower called "Transformation.") I give you the right one. Why the "right one"? I say that because there is confusion in many people's minds. When, from the standpoint of progress, for instance, I speak of progress, I mean "going from the mental consciousness to a higher consciousness," but people generally understand "to make progress materially or mentally or ..." So when they are told of transformation, all kinds of queer things come to their minds.... As for us, when we speak of transformation, we mean the supramental transformation. That's why. * * * Soon afterwards I have found some old papers (I can't read anymore