December 31, 1960The Mother
Agenda
Volume 1
December 31, 1960
(Mother usually improvised on the harmonium the morning of January 1 before reading the New Year's Message. She has come the day before to try out the instrument.)
Let's see... How many months has it been? I haven't touched this instrument for at least eight months! And now tomorrow I
have to play – don't feel like it. Anyway, since I must, I must!... We'll meditate on it (the New Year's Message1) – you know what it is, for we worked on it together – and then I'll see if something comes.
(silence)
This throng looks more like a chaos. A dreadful confusion. But from next week people will start leaving. The crowning day will be January 6, which is Epiphany (but we have made it into a day for the offering of the material world to the Divine: the material world giving itself to the Divine) – it will be the climax,2 and I shall then see you on the 7th. After that, we'll work hard! But until then, no work – my head's in a kind of soup... Oh, if you only knew! It's dreadful what people bring me, what they ask...
(Mother sits at the harmonium)
Oh, my dress is caught under one of the stool legs. Are you strong?
Oh yes!
Can you lift me up? I'm very heavy, you know!...
No, I'm afraid of making you capsize.
95 pounds.
95 pounds!
Yes, I was joking when I said that I was very heavy.
I thought as much!
I weigh 95 pounds. I should normally weigh 130 pounds.
(After playing)
It'll be something like that... or something else – I've no idea!
X seemed happy about his visit this time. We had long meditations of half an hour – he never seemed to want to leave at all! There was above all a kind of extremely calm universalization. An absolute and universal calm in all the cells of the body. I don't know if it was only me, but it seemed he was in the same state – unable to move, quite content, smiling. Once I heard the clock chime, and as I thought it was time and that perhaps he was ready to leave, I looked; he had removed the mala3 that he wears around his neck and I found him doing japa. As soon as he saw me looking, he quickly put it back on!
But what's most surprising is that with me, not a word, nothing, neither he nor I. And it seems to be just as comfortable for him as it is for me!
(silence)
On the 6th, everyone will finally be gone. But tomorrow is going to be dreadful; I have to sit there for at least two hours distributing calendars. And on top of that, there are all these controversies over the music they play at the library each week. Some say that it's very good, others that it's very bad (the usual things). And each party has pleaded his case. They told me that they'll give me a concert at Prosperity4 so that I may judge for myself. It's all recorded. I'm afraid it will be rather noisy... For myself, I know quite well how to get out of it – I “think” of something else! But it's going to... I can see it already. Didn't I tell you we're in a chaos? Well, I have the feeling that this is going to beat all.
How do you mean a chaos?
Noise, movement, confusion, people... Noise always gives me the impression of chaos, always.
I must say that downstairs on Darshan days people chat, look each other over, see how he or she is dressed – it's like a county fair around the Samadhi.
Yes, it's true – who's there, who isn't, how he looks, who's he with... Oh!
(silence)
And you? What news?
It's not always easy.
Why isn't it easy!?
Oh, but you know, night after night, night after night, I SEE how things which in their truth are so simple become complicated here in the human atmosphere. Really, it's so interesting; I have visions... you see, the thing in its truth is so simple it's stupefying, and then here it becomes so complicated, painful, exhausting, upsetting.
But it's enough to take one step behind to come out of it all.
I'll tell you about that... Wait, we still have three minutes; I want to tell you one of my most recent visions (but it's almost the same thing every night):
I was in my home, somewhere – a world whose light is like a sun (golden with scarlet reflections); it was very beautiful. It was in a town, and my house was in that town. I wanted to take to someone some... not presents, but things he needed. So I got everything together, prepared it all, and then loaded my arms with all the packages (I had taken my own time to arrange everything nicely), and I went out when the whole town was completely deserted – there was not a soul on the streets. A complete solitude. And such a sense of well-being, of light and force! Yes, really a kind of felicity, for no reason. And instead of weighing me down, it seemed as if my packages were pulling me! They pulled me on in such a way that each step was a joy, like a dance.
This lasted the whole time I was crossing the town. Then I came to a border, right at the beginning of another part where I was to take my packages; there, just a little below me, I saw a house under construction – the house belonging to the person to whom I had to deliver these presents (the symbolism in all this, of course, is quite clear).
As I approached the house, but still from some distance, I suddenly saw some men busy at work. Then instantly... instantly this road which was so vast, sunlit and smooth – so smooth to the feet... oh, it became the top level of a scaffolding. And what is more, this scaffolding was not very well made, and the closer I came the more complicated it got – there were planks jutting out, beams off balance. In short, you had to watch every single step to keep from breaking your neck. I began getting annoyed. Moreover, my packages were heavy. They were heavy and they so saddled my arms that I was unable to hold onto anything and had constantly to do a balancing act. Then I began thinking, “My God, how complicated this world is!” And just at that moment, I saw a young person coming along, like a young girl dressed in European clothes, with a hat on her head... all black! This young person had white skin, but her clothes were black, and she wore black shoes on her small white feet. She was dressed all in black – black, all in black. Like complete unconsciousness. She also came carrying packages (many more than me), and she came hopping along the whole length of the scaffolding, putting her feet just anywhere! “My God,” I said to myself, “she's going to break her neck!” – But not at all! She was totally unconscious; she wasn't even aware that it was dangerous or complicated – a total unconsciousness. But her unconsciousness is what allowed her to go on like that! I watched it all. “Well, sometimes it's good to be unconscious!” Then she disappeared; she had only come to give me a demonstration (she neither saw me nor looked at me). And looking down at the workers, I saw that everything was getting more and more complicated, more and more, more and more – and there wasn't even any ladder by which to get down. In other words, it was getting unbearable. Then something in me rebelled: “Ah, no! I've had enough of all this – it's too stupid!”
And IMMEDIATELY, I found myself down below, relieved of my packages. And everything was perfectly simple. (I had even brought the packages along without realizing it.) All, all was in order, very neat, very luminous, very simple – simply because I had said, “Ah, no! I've had enough of this business! Why all these stupid complications!”5
But these are not “dreams,” they are types of activity – more real, more concrete than material life; the experience is much more concrete than ordinary life.
I have had hundreds of such examples... It's not always the same scene. The scenes are different, but the story is always the same – the thing, in its truth, is absolutely luminous, pleasant, charming; then as soon as men get involved, it becomes an
abominable complication. And once you say, “No! I've had enough of all this – it's NOT TRUE!” it goes away.
There have been similar stories in “dreams” with X. I saw him when he was very young (his education, the ideas he had, how he was trained). And the same thing happened. I was with him... but I'll tell you that another time...6 And then at the end, I'd had enough and I said, “Oh, no! It's too ridiculous!” and with that I left the house. At the door was a little squirrel sitting on his haunches making friendly little gestures towards me. “Oh!” I said, “here's someone who understands better!”
But later I observed, I saw that this had helped drain him of all the weight of his past education. Very interesting... Night after night, night after night, night after night – plenty of things! You could write novels about it all.
1 “This wonderful world of Delight
waiting at our gates for our call,
to come down upon earth.”
2 Original English.
3 Mala: a kind of necklace of wooden beads with which one repeats a mantra.
4 The room where Mother distributed to the disciples their needs (soap, paper, etc.) on the first of each month.
5 Mother later discovered that this world of complications is the symbol of the physical mind.
6 Mother later narrated the end of her “dream” with X:
“It was his house, and it was rather complicated to enter. I was saying a mantra or japa when X came along; he had a... a terribly reproachful air! Then he smelled my hands: ‘It's a bad habit to wear perfume. (Mother laughs) You cannot live a spiritual life when you wear perfume.’ Then I looked at him and thought, ‘My God, does he have to be so backward!’ But it annoyed me, so I said, ‘Very well, I'm going.’ When I got near the door, he started saying, ‘Is it true you have been married several times, and that you've been divorced?’ Then a kind of anger entered me (laughing) and I told him, ‘No, not just once, but twice!’ Thereupon, I left. All the old ideas...
After that was when I saw the little squirrel.”