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The Mother

Agenda

Volume 9

December 11, 1968

(Mother reads out the message she intends to give for the new year, 1969:)

No words – acts.

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(To Sujata:) What do you want for your birthday?

I want to offer myself more integrally.

Offering is you – giving is me!

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(Then Mother listens to Satprem reading an old Playground Talk of July 22, 1953.)

These are things I would certainly no longer write now!... But anyway, they are true on their level (gesture at ground level).

(silence)

The experience is continuing and becoming increasingly conscious and almost practical. When someone comes, I seem to see... almost to measure the quantity of veils preventing him from seeing and feeling the supreme Consciousness. It has become very interesting: someone is in front of me, I look at him or her, concentrating and concentrating and concentrating until the contact with the supreme Consciousness is established, and I can measure the reaction: with some, when they are here, it's very difficult to make contact; with others (and it's very unexpected, it has nothing to do with what one may think – it's extraordinary, extraordinary!), with some others, instantly it goes hup! like this (gesture of piercing a veil) and contact is made – sometimes with quite unexpected people; with others who do the sadhana, who are quite consecrated, who... it takes such labor! It's really interesting. Really interesting. But then, some people, once contact has been made, won't budge anymore! (I doubt they are aware of what it is, but they won't budge anymore.) Others, on the contrary, start going like this (tremulous gesture), they wouldn't mind leaving! (Mother laughs) It's hugely interesting!

I remember the time when I used to speak of a “bath of the Lord” which I gave [people] – that business seems to me quite outdated, it's not that! It's... The Lord is there, everywhere and always! (I say “the Lord” so as to avoid making lengthy sentences, but sometimes I say “the supreme Consciousness” to be less – what shall I say? – less childish, because all that is childish, everything we say.) But the experience is becoming more and more wonderful.

How far away I was when I spoke like that [the 1953 talk]! How far away I was.... It was a mental transcription. Well, it doesn't matter; it amuses people. They understand that; what I may do now, they don't understand. And then...

There still remains the habit of saying “I,” but I think that's because otherwise, expressing oneself would become very difficult. But I don't think like that, I don't know what that “I” is; what speaks is... it's the consciousness which is specially concerned with the work of this body. You see, this body is used for a work, and there is a Consciousness delegated to be specially concerned with that – that's it a bit more precisely, but we can't always be making sentences!

But how interesting it is!... At times, oh, it becomes so beautiful! And at other times it's so difficult! It takes such a labor, and sometimes (laughing) with people who have the finest reputation!... It's really interesting. I am myself surprised.

(silence)

As soon as one speaks, the consciousness goes down. But that's not necessarily to make itself understood, it's because the consciousness is too subtle for the words at our disposal.

(long meditation)

I don't know if I'll ever be able to say things in an expressive way... for the time being, words are terrible veils.

The body is something very, very simple and very childlike, and it has that experience so imperatively, you understand, it doesn't need to “seek”: it just has to stop its activity for a minute and... it's there. So then, it wonders why people haven't been aware of that since the beginning? It wonders, “Why, why have they sought all kinds of things – religions, gods... all kinds of things – when it's so simple!” So simple, for the body it's so simple, so self-evident.

All those constructions – religions, philosophies... all those constructions – are a need of the mind to... “play the game.” It wants to play the game well. While the body is so simple, so simple, so obvious! So obvious, so simple: “Why,” it wonders, “Why, why have they been seeking all kinds of complications... when it's so simple?” The very fact of saying, “The Divine is deep within you”... (it remembers its own experience, you understand) is so complicated, while it's so simple!

It can't explain, can't express, there are no words, but it has a sort of conscious perception of... (Mother makes a slight twisting gesture with the tips of her fingers) what distorts and veils. And that's what has become reality for all human consciousnesses.

It's hard to express.

For the body it's becoming such an obvious fact.... It wonders how one can think otherwise, feel otherwise? It's so obvious.

(silence)

You can't imagine the impression I got while listening [to the 1953 Talk]! I felt as if I were going back many lives in time!...

It's helpful.

Helpful...

But people need methods to “make contact,” that's the whole thing!

So many useless things in those methods!

Well, yes! Because they instantly get shut inside those methods.

Yes.

Oh, above all it's this “I,” this huge I in everyone, which comes – comes to falsify everything. But the body is beginning to wonder how, how one can... how? It's not a thought, it's a sort of sensation, I don't know, of perception (language is BELOW its consciousness; it says “I” out of habit; maybe out of need to make itself understood, but mostly out of habit), and the “I”...? It's so conscious that there's ONE I (gesture with one finger pointing above).

(Mother smiles, shakes her head and remains silent)

Very well. We must wait – patience, patience – until everything is ready.

in French

in German