The Mother

Agenda

Volume 12

July 14, 1971

My cold hangs on doggedly, it won't leave me....

So, what have you brought?

A question asked by Z. She has a friend in Calcutta who wrote her about the clandestine guerilla organization in Bangladesh. He told her that they need money for the training of the guerillas, for arms, clothing and other requisites, and he is asking her to write her friends in Switzerland, France, Germany, etc., to raise money. But she is wondering if she should do it. She doesn't want to do anything without your permission.

She can do it, only she shouldn't mention my name. I am not asking for anything. You see, if she asks, and then by chance.... She can do it in her own name, as a charitable work, but I should not appear, I am not asking for anything.

(silence)

It puts me in a difficult situation.... It's very difficult.

How?

People tell me everything has doubled, we are sorrily poor, we can't give you anything. Everything has doubled for me too, and I am not receiving more money.

The situation has become very difficult.

(long silence)

My cold is hanging on, doesn't want to go away.

What caused it?

For me, as I see it, it's a mixture – a mixture of contagion I caught from people who came here and made me that gift, and at the same time certain things that want to change.... You can't imagine the formations (gesture around herself), it's incredible – the formations that are whirling around me, stirring up....

I've found some letters by Sri Aurobindo (letters he sent me) in which he describes the current situation – you would think it's now!¹

Some adverse formations?

Yes, of course! Everything that ought to disappear but hangs on desperately.

For me, all those formations (more than catastrophic, mind you), for me they're nothing, they are totally irrelevant, but they do affect people, who go awry, and then.... All things considered, the repercussions on my body are really minimal.

The body sees plainly, very clearly, the marvelous protection it has, you know, it would otherwise be slashed to pieces.

(Mother goes into contemplation)

ADDENDUM

(Some passages from Sri Aurobindo's letters to Mother in France.)

May 6, 1915

All is always for the best, but it is sometimes from the external point of view an awkward best....

The whole earth is now under one law and answers to the same vibrations and I am sceptical of finding any place where the clash of the struggle will not pursue us. In any case, an effective retirement does not seem to be my destiny. I must remain in touch with the world until I have either mastered adverse circumstances or succumbed or carried on the struggle between the spiritual and physical so far as I am destined to carry it on. This is how I have always seen things and still see them. As for failure, difficulty and apparent impossibility I am too much habituated to them to be much impressed by their constant self-presentation except for passing moments....

One needs to have a calm heart, a settled will, entire self-abnegation and the eyes constantly fixed on the beyond to live undiscouraged in times like these which are truly a period of universal decomposition. For myself, I follow the Voice and look neither to right nor to the left of me. The result is not mine and hardly at all now even the labour.

Sri Aurobindo
On Himself, XXVI.

*
*   *

July 28, 1915

Everything internal is ripe or ripening, but there is a sort of locked struggle in which neither side can make a very appreciable advance (somewhat like the trench warfare in Europe), the spiritual force insisting against the resistance of the physical world, that resistance disputing every inch and making more or less effective counter-attacks.... And if there were not the strength and Ananda within, it would be harassing and disgusting work; but the eye of knowledge looks beyond and sees that it is only a protracted episode.

Sri Aurobindo
(Ibid.)

*
*   *

September 16, 1915

Nothing seems able to disturb the immobility of things and all that is active outside our own selves is a sort of welter of dark and sombre confusion from which nothing formed or luminous can emerge. It is a singular condition of the world, the very definition of chaos with the superficial form of the old world resting apparently intact on the surface. But a chaos of long disintegration or of some early new birth? It is the thing that is being fought out from day to day, but as yet without any approach to a decision.

Sri Aurobindo
(Ibid. 424 sqq)

¹ These letters are included at the end of this conversation.

Back