March 29, 1964 Satprem, my dear child, People are raining like locusts! On Tuesday, I have to see four of them before you. I will try to rush it, but I am telling you so that you take your time and don't hurry. With tenderness and blessings Signed: Mother (Two lines from "Savitri" sent along with this note, on the occasion of March 29, the date when Mother and Sri Aurobindo first met ... fifty years earlier:) Page 103 Because thou art, men yield not to their doom, But ask for happiness and strive with fate. (VII.IV. 507) Page 104

January 22, 1964 (Mother looks tired and seems to have a cold. First she quotes from memory a note she has written in English:) The true purpose of life: to live for the Divine or to live for the Truth, or at least to live for one's soul.... That's the minimum. And then: And the true sincerity: to live for the Divine without expecting any benefit from Him in return. I said this yesterday or the day before, because I was very angry with the Ashram people! ... We are going through a very difficult period financially, and so, you know, people ... they respect you only as long as you have money; when you have no more money, they don't respect you anymore - and they find it so s

July 31, 1964 (Satprem files all sorts of loose scraps of paper - Mother's "notes" - and stumbles on this one, which he reads aloud:) "They consent to worship a god only if that god suffers for them." That was in connection with the new Pope's election, and with Christ on his cross (Mother remains silent). They [the Catholics] are furiously active in France. Yes ... Oh, but there has been something new here. Very recently, three days ago, a messenger from the Pope came to visit Pondicherry and, naturally, to meet the archbishop. There was a public reception - and the archbishop invited people from the Ashram officially! ... Z was Catholic and he went, and it seems the deleg

August 15, 1964 (Message for Sri Aurobindo's birthday) Avoid the imagination that the supramental life will be only a heightened satisfaction of the desires of the vital and the body; nothing can be a greater obstacle to the Truth in its descent than this hope of glorification of the animal in the human nature. Mind wants the supramental state to be a confirmation of its own cherished ideas and preconceptions; the vital wants it to be a glorification of its own desires; the physical wants it to be a rich prolongation of its own comforts and pleasures and habits. If it were to be that, it would be only an exaggerated and highly magnified consummation of the animal and the human nature

February 13, 1964 (Satprem kept note of the following conversation despite its episodic character, for it is, alas, a good illustration of the kind of innumerable microscopic "avalanches" that assailed Mother from every side, daily.) H. was so very vexed because I had this work done by Sujata that she has broken off all relations with me! ... Except that she sends me letters of abuse every day! She wrote that she will no longer have anything to do with the work, with this, with that, with me, and she is sending everything back. Vanity.... I expected it a little.... You can't think of such things in advance, but when I spoke to her I thought she was going to be Page 57

May 17, 1964 (From Satprem to Sujata) St-Pierre Of course, Nature is wonderful, the sea is so beautiful, the climate delightful, but ultimately, when I close my eyes and meditate, I feel something fuller and more solid than all the degrees centigrade on a pearly sea. In reality, I spend my days waiting for my hours of japa-meditation, it is the real open sea, the peace that refreshes. It is something, and if it is nothing, it's a nothing that is worth everything. Yet there is no progress of consciousness, I don't see anything, least of all you - you tell me that you know the reason, I would really like to know what it is. I cannot understand why I am so blocked (my Western atavism?).

May May 2, 1964 (From Satprem to Sujata) St-Pierre I am in silence, gazing at the sea. In fact, I am not in Brittany, not in St-Pierre, not in France, I am in Air-India's waiting room, waiting for July 18.... I am neither happy nor unhappy - I am nothing, I am as if anesthetized, counting hours and days in my waiting room. During my japa-meditation, perhaps I exist a little Page 115 more: instead of a nothing, it's a super-nothing - you see, Nirvana is at the door if you don't hold my string firmly in your hands. Why do I have to write all those lines in ink when it would be so much simpler to think of you, and lo! I would be with you, I would see you.... Our human life

January January 8, 1964 (Mother shows a sketch she has just drawn to illustrate the passage in "Savitri" in which Sri Aurobindo speaks of the "sardonic rictus on God's face.") I wanted to see this "sardonic laugh" of the Lord! So I looked, and instead of a sardonic laugh, I saw a face ... with such a deep sorrow - so deep, so grave - and full of such compassion.... It's after that that I said (you remember, it was over there, [[In the music room, on December 31, 1963. ]] I was seeing that): "Falsehood is the sorrow of the Lord." It was naturally based on the experience that everything is the Lord - there is nothing that cannot be the Lord. So what is this "sardonic" smile? ... I w

May 14, 1964 (From Mother to Satprem) Satprem, my dear little child, This onslaught of doubts [[Not Satprem's, but the expression of a general skepticism. ]] you are referring to is part of the general work. It is a very direct way of acting on the atmosphere. You ask me if I see you. You do not come to me in a subtle body, but I am with you very concretely, so concretely that I see through your eyes and speak through your mouth. In this way, you made me meet people whom I don't know at all physically and have strange conversations with them. A useful preparation is certainly going on. Through repeated, everyday experience, I am increasingly convinced that all disorders in the

July 25, 1964 (After reading Sri Aurobindo's "Hour of God" in front of a microphone for the Ashram people:) ... I don't know why they wanted me to read this - it's something quite terrible ... quite terrible. For December 1st they've organized an entire performance at the Theater, with recitation, dances, tableaux vivants, to illustrate it [The Hour of God]. When things happen in that way, I always take them as organized by the Divine for the general progress. Rarely does there come a precise indication: "No." When it's "no," it's categorical. But I always see (Mother draws in the air movements of forces) that things move with a very supple movement: they seem to be heading Pa