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

August 17, 1963 (Mother prepares another aphorism for the next "Bulletin.") What aphorism do we have? It's about "renunciation." There is that thing I said: acceptance and struggle - both together. What did he say about renunciation? 94 - All renunciation is for a greater joy yet ungrasped. Some renounce for the joy of duty done, some for the joy of peace, some for the joy of God and some for the joy of self-torture, but renounce rather as a passage to the freedom and untroubled rapture beyond. And your question? I always hesitate to ask you questions, because it sets you on a certain line which isn't necessarily what would come to you.... (silence) I never had m

December 11, 1963 There was in the Subconscient a frightful battle in the night from the 8th to the 9th - oh! ... It was like a return of the attack on me when you went to Rameswaram (long ago[ [In 1958. ]]); X said it was a Tantric who had made that formation (it happened on December 9 too and I was very sick, I didn't go out). Well, it was an attack of that kind. I don't know if it comes from the same ... I can't say "person," but from the same origin of forces. And very violent, during the night. It went on during the meditation on the 9th: for the first time during those meditations, there was a tremendous battle, in the Subconscient. And the body was in a state ... a not too happ

September 18, 1963 I had an interesting experience the day before yesterday. In a very concrete way, there was the consciousness that everything is the Lord and that everything is His will, His action, His consciousness and so forth; at the same time, the perception of the world as it is ("as it is," anyway ... as we feel it). And as there was no longer any notion of good and evil and all that, there was a sort of almost candid surprise, a very spontaneous surprise, not thought out, at reprobation, anger, disapproval, scorn for all the people who are called "bad," who do evil and have bad will. It seemed so strange that one could lose one's temper because of that! Then there arose

July 17, 1963 Nolini told me that every day since the Force has been on the increase, there's a shower of letters from people who cry out their misery, whether moral or material. It's a general cry for help, and, he told me, "The remarkable thing is that no one asks for material help," they all ask for my blessings and say (because they have faith) it brings them relief. He said, "It's the identical note in almost all the letters." Contacts with the outside have increased considerably; formerly, it was only with people who knew me, but now it's with scores of absolutely unknown people. During the part of the night reserved for the work (generally between 2 and 4:30 in the morning ... i

June 15, 1963 I've received a letter from a friend in France who speaks at length of someone who has written three volumes entitled "Gnosis." Ohh! That person lives in Switzerland, he's a Russian named B.M. He has a center with disciples. I asked for his photograph and I'd like you to help me understand what type of man he is. (Mother studies the photo) He is an intellectual, at any rate - clearly not a spiritual man. He may have some vital powers (that's generally what gets hold of people). Yes, an intellectual, an idealist. Page 169 Do you have his handwriting? No. He's terribly well-mannered, that's what bothers me! (laughing) A well-mannered gentleman! I had t

July 10, 1963 (Regarding the English translation of "The Adventure of Consciousness":) ... What's impossible to translate is the musical rhythm of the sentence - that's impossible. Because the English rhythm and the French rhythm are very different in character, and if you translate literally something that has a poetic rhythm in English, it may not come out poetic at all in French. So a translation is a translation, we have to settle for it.... But there will still be quite enough ideas left to do people some good! Yes, but sometimes it becomes quite jerky. The French has a staccato, powerful rhythm, so in English it gives an impression of small bits cut and pasted together. But an

November 13, 1963 (Regarding an old Playground Talk of January 8, 1951, in which Mother said: "The history of the earth seems to be a history of victories followed by defeats, and not of defeats followed by victories.... [But] in truth, the movements of Nature are like those of the tides: things go forward, then backward, then forward, then backward ... which implies, in universal life, even in earthly life, a progressive advance though apparently broken with retreats. But those retreats are only an appearance, as when you take a run in order to jump. You seem to move back, but it's only to enable you to jump higher. You may tell me that this is all very well, but how do you give a ch