The Mother

Agenda

Volume 8

February 11, 1967

(Regarding Mother's “Agenda.” Satprem is sorting out a huge stack of files.)

...Now that bits are coming out in the Bulletin, lots of people are beginning to be very, very interested and want to know. They ask me, “But are you saying everything?” I answer, “Everything, that's impossible. But I am saying more.” Then, “Can't we know?” – No one would understand a thing.

When it's completely over, we'll see.

I am telling you this so you know this work isn't wholly in vain.

Oh, but I'm sure it's not in vain, I am convinced of it! I don't need to be reassured.

It will be a monument! It's better to leave it as a monument, not to publish it in bits: massive, a thick volume like this, and then... (laughing) crush people underneath! Then they won't ask anything anymore.

Do you want me to start preparing an edition (!)

No, no! When I have caught hold of the end, we'll publish it – I haven't caught hold of the end yet, far from it. Far from it.

All these lessons I am given¹ are like lashes to tell me, “There, you must be ready for anything.”

All right. It's not in vain.

Oh, surely not! These old Agenda conversations I read again once they have been typed are full of light!

I don't know.

Oh, but I know!

When she [Sujata] has finished typing, we'll see.

We fell behind a lot during my illness, when I was in that hospital.

But it was also a long period from which nothing is left. It's going to leave a gap. There was nothing: I didn't talk, didn't speak to anyone. It has left a gap.

*
*   *

Soon afterwards

I'd really like to know what it is I'm up to at night. It's never been so totally unconscious, without ever seeing you – there's nothing, complete unconsciousness.

With me too, the last few nights... And it has been deliberate: the last few nights (for a week, maybe), how can I explain?... There are no more “excursions,” I no longer go about.

Last night, for instance (I return to the outward consciousness two or three times every night), I noticed V. had gone out.² Naturally I saw the consequences and went on considering how I should manage. Well, I noticed (she went out around two; every day I get up at 4:30), I noticed that during those two and a half hours I didn't sleep (“didn't sleep,” I mean I didn't exteriorize). And I wasn't “thinking” (thank God!), there was simply a kind of consciousness watching. And time went by with such fantastic speed that I was myself dumbfounded. I thought it was going to be long waiting for the time to get up, for 4:30, but it was absolutely outside time, absolutely outside time. Yet I remained in my body.

So then, this incident made me realize that I seem to be learning a new way of resting without going out of the body. Because I was sure I was then “awake,” as it's called: there was nothing resembling sleep, and I wasn't thinking. There was only the consciousness watching, like that. But interiorized. And a will to get up at 4:30. I looked at the time once in between (there was a clock near my bed, I looked at it), it was 3:15. I was surprised, I thought, “How come? It was 2:30 a minute ago.” Then I made a slight concentration to be sure of being quite awake at 4:30. And at exactly 4:30: “How come? I've just seen it was 3:15!” It was dumbfounding, because I didn't leave my body, I know I didn't sleep, and the consciousness was perfectly still, motionless, so to say; a consciousness simply concentrated (but a consciousness with “foresight,” which sees what has to be done), simply like that, without thought.

It was so to say instantaneous.

It happens to me now and then during the day. I go into a certain state (it only lasts for a minute or two), a strange state: you are perfectly awake, perfectly conscious, and at the same time totally unaware of time and things around you... not exactly of things around you, but not conscious of them in the same way – I don't know how to explain.

¹ Recently, the illness of Mother's attendant: the only somewhat positive element among those immediately near Mother. She will have to leave Mother's service in August, 1970. After that there will be no positive elements left near Mother. Hence the following sentence.

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² Mother's attendant, who sleeps in Mother's room and had a sudden bout of fever that night.

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