May 23, 1961 (Satprem inquires about Mother's health.) It's obviously a type of filariasis which obstinately refuses to go away, but anyway.... It causes only one inconvenience now: it makes the legs very weak - very weak. I go through what seem like terrible gymnastics to climb the stairs. Other than that it doesn't Page 212 matter. From time to time it pricks, it stings, it bites, it swells up - but it's nothing. X said it would go away completely. The doctor said, 'It will not go away.' So my body is observing the phenomenon! (Mother laughs) * (Mother reviews some earlier 'Questions and Answers.' In one of them - dated November 14, 1956 - someone had asked if maste

February February 4, 1961 Here, I have brought you two flowers. They have two different yet very typically Indian fragrances: this one is Straightforwardness, [[Ixora arborea (Torch Tree). ]] and this is SIMPLICITY. [[Hymenantherum, a tiny yellow flower like a miniature daisy. ]] I have always found that this one (Mother holds out the Simplicity) has a cleansing fragrance: when you breathe it, ah, everything becomes clean - it's wonderful! (Mother breathes in the flower's fragrance.) Once I cured myself of the onset of a cold with it - this can be done when you catch it at the very beginning. It fills you completely, the nose, the throat.... And this [Straightforwardness] is right

March 27, 1961 (Mother brings along a note she had written the same morning concerning a meditation with X, the tantric 'guru.') 'The extreme subjectivity of experiences is very disconcerting. 'Yesterday, while waiting for X, I was as usual in communion with the Supreme in his aspect of Love. Suddenly I felt X arriving and spontaneously, like a Veda, a movement of gratitude for his great goodwill arose from my heart, and it was formulated as a prayer to the Supreme: "Give him [X] the bliss of Your Love and the joys of Your Truth." 'For a long time X has said nothing about his meditations with me, but just yesterday he told N. that he had some difficulty at the start

October 30, 1961 (The day before and at the beginning of this conversation, Satprem read aloud some passages of his manuscript relating to the Veda. Then Mother chose the photograph of Sri Aurobindo for the frontispiece. She speaks slowly, as though from a great distance, in a semi-trance.) That's how I first saw him, at the head of the staircase. (silence) I had an experience while listening to you read; it was as if I heard, 'The beginning of the legend ... the beginning of the legend....' It's rather strange. He is there and the atmosphere is full of a sort of concentration of force, and there are these two things: 'This is how legends come into being ... how legends b

July 7, 1961 (Mother gives Satprem a white zinnia she has named 'Integral Endurance,' then an allamanda or 'Victory,' and finally a flower of 'Supramental Victory.') Here is an Integral Endurance. But ... victory. Victory. And this one is Supramental Victory - that is, victory in ALL details. It grows in huge clusters of many, many flowers. There. And I go on reading.... 'On Himself'? Yes - the explanation of his yoga and of what he wants us to realize. After reading it yesterday evening I said to him, 'How do you expect it to be done in this!'(Mother laughingly indicates her own body.) 'No, no, no!' he replied, 'That's not it! What is needed now is to learn how to last. W

January 22, 1961 (Mother had been unwell the past few days. She speaks here of the causes behind the physical disorder.) Ah! How are you? You're the one who should be asked that! I'm all right. All right? ... I saw it last night ... oof! It was a kind of artificial hurricane created by semi-human beings (that is, they have human forms but they aren't men). They created the storm to cut me off from 'my home.' But everything and everyone was disrupted - it must have been going on for a rather long time. Finally last night it became quite amusing: I kept attempting to get to 'my home' which was up above, but each time I tried to find a way everything was blocked by ...

April 25, 1961 (Mother comes in with a book by Alice Bailey, 'Discipleship in the New Age,' which had recently been sent to her. Pavitra is present and shows Mother a brochure he has received, 'World Goodwill Bulletin,' and protests against this proliferation of movements all claiming to work towards 'world union,' and proselytes making so-called 'spiritual' propaganda without having found, within and by themselves, the true spiritual foundation. Mother goes on.) But these people just can't get out of their education! Here is a lady [A. Bailey], quite renowned, it seems (she's dead now), who became the disciple of a Tibetan lama ... and she still speaks of Christ as the sole Avatar

October October 2, 1961 1 was holding one of these flowers [Integral Generosity [[Impatiens balsamina. ]] ] in my hand when I saw Z, and I explained to him what I meant by 'integral generosity.' The effect of the ego, I told him, is to shrivel the being. It's the cause of aging, it dries you up - the being shrivels under it like a withering flower. And as I was speaking to him, the experience came; all I remember now is the idea, but the idea is nothing - the experience itself was there. I know that at a certain moment I was making the distinction between the two states, between the person - the individual, personal being - turning towards the Lord, imploring Him to reveal His Will

January 31, 1961 (Concerning the experience related on January 24, of the supramental Force reorganizing the activity of each center of consciousness. The experience ended in a deep trance: 'I slipped into trance...') I neglected to mention something very important. At the moment of my coming out of the trance, I had a very concrete, positive perception (not a mental understanding, it didn't come from the being's intellectual part, the part that understands and explains everything and Is symbolized, I think, by Indra; it wasn't in any way conveyed through that higher intelligence, it wasn't mental). A kind of perception (not really a sensation, it was more than a sensation) of the

M o t h e r's   A g e n d a   September 10, 1961 September 10, 1961 (Concerning the tantric guru:) Has A. spoken to you about this? ... X told him that you were the bridge between him and me (he even spoke in English): 'Oh, Satprem was the bridge.' (Mother smiles) And a second later he added, 'But now we don't need it anymore!' (Mother laughs merrily) I was much amused! * (A little later, regarding the book on Sri Aurobindo:) Anything one can write is so flat, so flat in comparison with what one perceives! Yes, in comparison with Sri Aurobindo's contact (the vibration that comes from him, if you like), it always seems meager, always flat. Even the most ... you know, spiritual experiences th