The Mother

Agenda

Volume 8

December 27, 1967

(Mother studies an enlargement of the photograph of the November 24 darshan, which she already commented on in the conversation of November 29.)

I am beginning to think it's a sort of “prototype of a way of being.” A prototype, up above, of a way of being. I don't know, it's that and not that; I don't know how to explain.... It strikes me as a photograph of what might be popularly called a “mood” – a universal way of being.

It's very odd, at any rate.

(Laughing) We could call it a mother's way of looking at her progeny, or the Creator's way of looking at his creation!... Very odd. You see, we've always been given the picture of a smug and self-satisfied God, who says, “Excellent.” And here (laughing) it's... “My! my!”

So there.

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Soon afterwards

There is a change.... You know that ax-brother A. wrote about that priest who abused the Ashram in coarse language – the priest received a command to keep quiet and stop talking slanderously. And now it's general, no one says anything about the Ashram. Then you know that on the Pope's command, all altars have been turned around; U. was asked to do it, he did it in all of Pondicherry's churches; so the archbishop wrote a few lines, saying, “Please thank the Mother because her children have done a very good work....” It means a change, you understand. It means they've received orders.

And I got from this ax-brother A. such a nice note (because he received a basket for Christmas), but a lovely, charming little note, that is, something felt, in which he said that the best of himself always feels itself in my presence. Really an inner change.

I have a strong feeling that they've received orders from above. It gives me a great change in the atmosphere.

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(Regarding the violent agitation in South India against the imposition of Hindi, the language of the North, as the official language. This is the same agitation that had in 1965 led to an attack against the Ashram in which disciples had been injured and buildings burned down. At the time the Pondicherry lieutenant governor had not intervened to stop the rioters from attacking the Ashram. It may be recalled that the majority of the disciples come from North India. In the last few days, trains, buses, post offices have been set on fire....)

Did you notice the police at the gate?... It's the minister (a minister who came here) who sent an order to the lieutenant governor to guard the Ashram.

(silence)

If there were a way (that's what I have been working on for some time), a way to make all this youth understand that to destroy doesn't build – they can't give birth to anything whatsoever with this means. They want to change the state of things, agreed – they may not see very clearly the direction in which we should go, but that things must change is agreed – but still, this method is downright stupid.... They've thrown one more bomb at that poor Indira! She was at a university, at Santiniketan where she had gone to make a speech for a prize distribution (or something of the sort), and they threw a bomb at her. But this time, she was unscathed.

You see, that was the method of the adverse forces to prove that the creation was bad: they weren't satisfied with the creation and set about doing that – that's what they have been doing on a big scale. But it doesn't prove anything! They have established death, established destruction and all the forms of violence and hatred, anyway they turned everything topsy-turvy with the thought that, that way, the world would become a superior world – which is stupid.

And all these people now follow one another in single file, not even aware of what they're doing or why or how or anything!... They act in the name of freedom and, yes, free progress, because an attempt is made to impose an arbitrary law [Hindi] on them – the arbitrary law is stupid, but what they are doing is still more silly.

Yes, but in this case, all the politicians are the ones responsible.

Oh, yes.

The students follow directives.

I have news from behind the scenes. I know some young people who are part of these movements of agitation, intelligent young people who don't want violence – but they want things to change. And there are all kinds of very interesting things: one of them (they are young people who live with their families, I know some from different places and different types), quite recently the father of one of them, from Calcutta or thereabouts, became worried (I know the father quite well), he was worried; he called a friend of his, a high official in the police, and the friend questioned his son; then he told the father, “Your son is remarkable, highly intelligent, highly remarkable....” But then, it revealed something, that there are spies in the police, and those spies tell lies on people to get themselves noticed, so that lots of reports are false – I'd known that for a long time, but in this instance it became perfectly clear and obvious. For example, there had been reports that this boy had been involved in acts of violence – he's never had anything to do with that! The man who questioned him was entirely convinced of it, because he's a boy who can't do such things, and he said, “I totally disapprove of that.” But the police reports had asserted his involvement. So, of course, this falsehood everywhere, mingled with everything, complicates things.

It's perfectly obvious that the higher-ups are the ones responsible, because they're not genuine people: they have neither the knowledge nor the vision nor the wisdom necessary to govern.... For instance, Indira, it seems, was complaining; one of her friends (her close friends), who is a very good disciple of mine, told her one day when she was complaining (she said the people and the government were in a dreadful state), she told her, “But why don't you go and consult Mother? She will give you wisdom.” Then Indira replied, “I dare not.”¹

You understand, all this confusion, all this disorder seems to be intended to prepare people for one thing, which, obviously, has not so far even been imagined as being possible – the recourse to a disinterested wisdom in order to govern. They're all caught up in “If I do this, these people will be against me; if I do that, those people...”

(silence)

At the very bottom of the thing, two tendencies or two conceptions are confronting each other. The first says, “It's badly done: let's destroy it and we'll begin again,” from top to bottom. The other says, “It's not the way it should be: let's transform it.” These are the two things opposing each other: the effort for progress and transformation, or the brutal and stupid method of smashing everything and starting all over again, so that it goes on endlessly.

It boils down to the fight between Death and Life; progressive life, more and more divine, and Death, which systematically abolishes all that isn't divine. Because only what is divine escapes it.

But the process is... endless.

The power of progressive transformation is what must be infused into Matter.

¹ Indira will come and see Mother in October, 1969. Before coming to power, she had come once with her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, in September, 1955.

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