March 7, 1961The Mother
Agenda
Volume 2
March 7, 1961
(Mother arrives late... as usual. Crossing the corridor was like crossing through a jungle and has taken her almost one hour.)
How long it has taken me... oh, it's disgraceful! I'll have to start coming down at 9 a.m., but then I won't get anything done upstairs, that's the problem.
But Mother, the earlier you come down, the more of your time they'll take!
Anyway....
I have brought you a whole discourse! (Mother gives Satprem some flowers) First, the goal of the Vedas: Immortality.1 That was their goal: the Truth that led to Immortality. Immortality was their ambition. I don't think it was physical immortality – but I am not sure, because they do speak of the forefathers and this refers to the initiatory tradition prior to the Vedas as well as the Kabbala, and immortality on earth is spoken of there: the earth transformed – Sri Aurobindo's idea. So although they didn't explicitly state it, perhaps they knew.
(Mother gives more flowers) This one is more on the personal side: Friendship with the Divine,2 the friendly relationship you can have with the Divine – you understand each other, you don't fear each other, you're good friends! And this one is a wonder! (Mother gives Divine Love Governing the World3) What strength! It's generous, expansive, without narrowness, pettiness, or limitations – when that comes....
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(After the work, towards the end of the conversation:)
I've been feeling lazy! I have received an abominable avalanche of letters, three-quarters of which are useless – but I have to look at them to know whether they're useless or not, so it takes up my morning before coming downstairs. I usually translated The Synthesis of Yoga in the afternoons, or answered questions, but nowadays I go into concentration at that time: I don't do anything. I want to cure my legs.
I am determined to cure myself – they told me it was incurable. The doctors poison you to cure you (as they poisoned our poor S.), and that's no cure! When they don't feel the need to show off in front of the patient, they openly acknowledge that it isn't at all sure that their medicines cure: they merely make you inoffensive to others! But I don't believe in it – I don't believe in doctors, I
don't believe in their remedies and I don't believe in their science (they are very useful, they have a great social utility, but for myself, I don't believe in it).
I knew when I caught it: it was at the Playground.4 Certain people poisoned me with a mosquito bite – the instant the mosquito bit me, I knew, because it so happens I am a little bit conscious! But I controlled it like this (gesture of holding the disease in abeyance and under control), so it couldn't stir. Probably it would never have stirred if I hadn't had that experience [of January 24] and the body didn't need to be made ready. For the body to be “ready,” a host of things belonging to the dásyus, as the Vedas say, can't be stored inside it! These are very nasty little dásyus (laughing), they have to be chased away!
When the disease came back, I said to myself, “Very well, this means it must be dealt with in a new way.”
(silence)
The body is waging a magnificent battle, oh, a magnificent battle! And it's faring quite well.
It's a rather difficult business and could last a long time: I don't want it to stay dormant and then resurface with the next attack of this or that. So I am proceeding slowly and cautiously, which means it takes time: I concentrate and work on it for one hour after lunch every day. (I used to do my translation then, but since I'm at least two or three years ahead of the Bulletin, it doesn't matter, I won't be delaying the work! I have almost finished “The Yoga of Divine Love”; now there's only “The Yoga of Self-Perfection” – that's quite a job, oh!... I miss it – this translation was my pleasure.) But the work on the body is useful – something must be attempted in life; we are here to do something new, aren't we?!
But were you bitten like that “by accident”?
No, no, it wasn't by accident, but because....
Mon petit, I don't claim to be totally universal, but in any case I am open enough to receive.... You see, given the quantity of
material I have taken into my consciousness, it's quite natural that the body bears the consequences. There is nothing, not one wrong movement, that my body doesn't feel5; generally, though, things are automatically set in order (gesture indicating that Mother automatically purifies and masters the vibrations coming to her). But there are times – especially when it coincides with a revolt of adverse forces who don't want to give up their domain and enter into battle with all their might – when I must admit it's hard.... If I had some hours of solitude it would be easier. But particularly during the period of my Playground activities, I was badgered, harassed; I would rush from one thing to the next, one thing to the next, I had no nights to speak of – nights of two and a half or three hours rest, which isn't enough, there's no time to put things in order.
Under those conditions I could only hold the thing like this (same gesture of muzzling the illness or holding it in abeyance).
All the same, wasn't it a mosquito that bit you?
Yes, it was a mosquito.
It was a mosquito but there was an INSTANTANEOUS, localized poisoning. It was... hideous! I knew it when I got the bite and I tried... but it was at the Playground, I was busy and I couldn't do anything about it until an hour or an hour and a half later. Then it was too late, it was already circulating in the blood.
I have had three bites like that, but not of the same thing; I knew this last bite was filariasis. It was on the arm. Since my legs are covered when I am outside they don't get bitten; but my arms....
Long ago when Sri Aurobindo was still here, I was once bitten by a mosquito that had just come from a leper. He was sitting on the street corner, although I didn't know it at the time (I was in my bathroom, just opposite the corner). Suddenly I was bitten here, on the chin, and I knew IMMEDIATELY: “Leprosy!” Within a few seconds it became terrible – hideous! I did what was necessary at once (as I was in the bathroom, I had what I needed). Then I suddenly got the impulse to go and look out the window – there was the leper. And I understood: the mosquito had been kind enough to fly from him to me! But in that instance I was able to check it right
away (it lasted three or four days) – I say “check” because they claim leprosy sometimes takes fifteen years to surface, so.... But now it has been more than fifteen years (Mother laughs), so it's finished!
No, the difference, the great difference, is that when one is conscious, the thing is KNOWN immediately and one can react.
That's all, mon petit.
Yesterday I sent you something (there wasn't much of it, just a taste): it's a bit of the pistachio puree they make for me. Concentrated food.6 It's funny – I have got it into my head to make you a gourmand! (Mother laughs) Good-bye, mon petit.
1 Gomphrena globosa (purple Amaranth).
2 Canna indica, small red flower.
3 Brownea coccinea.
4 Until 1958, Mother went daily to the Ashram Playground, from 5 p.m. to 9 or 10 in the evening, to see people and give her direct spiritual help to some 2,000 disciples who passed before her one by one.
5 Mother is referring to the movements of consciousness, both good and bad, of those whom she has accepted as disciples and taken into her consciousness.
6 Mother was already seeking the “new food.”