The Mother
Agenda
Volume 9
November 13, 1968
It's really an interminable work. It's this certain... (what should I call it? We can hardly call it “mind”), this mind of the physical.... It seems it's being educated. But it's an interminable work.
For instance, its habit of building possibilities, or foreseeing (we can hardly call it “building” or “foreseeing”... it's a sort of very dark thing deep down) possibilities and imagining events, with the whole pessimistic and dramatic side shown in all its ridiculousness. So then, I don't know, it's obviously to learn to control and direct that, but... At first sight, it just has to be swept away, it's absolutely useless: you waste your time with it and make a bad job. You fill the atmosphere with a quantity of thoroughly disgusting formations with pulp-fiction imaginations.
There is an attempt at control, but all that is still very, very dark.
(long silence)
Lots of people from the United States are coming here at the moment, and they bring news of an appalling crisis over there, a crisis of discouraged pessimism.... The whole youth seems to be in a woeful state of depression and discouragement.
They've discovered all that was hollow, false, unreal in the old way of seeing life, and they haven't found anything to replace it with.... A few rare individuals (we get their letters, or they come here) say that they came across Sri Aurobindo's teaching and found it to be the salvation. But they are very few. And the majority of people don't understand – they don't have the intelligence needed to understand.
So everywhere they're sinking back; there has been an effort to emerge from that exclusive search for personal satisfaction, and it has led to extravagances; but now the very absurdity of those extravagances has become apparent, so they're sinking back very deep, and they haven't found – they haven't found the true path. Because it's not a mental path.
Everywhere there is still the cult of the mind, that's the terrible thing.
In Europe it's terrible! They would have the intelligence needed to understand, but they're shut inside their mental
fortress.1
Yes.
There's an attempt to bring Sri Aurobindo in, but they don't want him. They know better, they know everything!
(long silence)
The difficulty, too, is that there have been so many false prophets and charlatans of Hinduism and of “Asia's Truth” that the true thing can't get in. It's full of charlatans. The atmosphere is as if rotten....
(Mother nods her head)
It's teeming with swamis, with this and that.... So what can the Truth do in all that?
(Mother goes into contemplation)
Interminable work, that's all. That's the impression this body has. It's at peace. Interminable work.
And it doesn't have... (how should I put it?) a clear vision of the path or the process, so... It only understands one thing: never forget, never at any time, not even for a second, what it calls “the Divine” and wants to reach. That's all.
And then, from time to time, there are flashes, like flashes from the Grace, absolutely wonderful.... But they last for one second.
(silence)
Not very encouraging.
There's only one thing: like a building up of force... a force that MIGHT be a Power. I do feel it's slowly, slowly building up.... So then, maybe that's what is vibrating... and maybe there's an impatience to act? I don't know.
But it's not precise yet.
And a very clear awareness of all the obstacles, of all that's against, of the general attitude. With the very clear perception that... one must remain veiled. Exactly. This is the time when one must remain veiled. That's all.
But saying it makes it far more precise than it really is.