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Satprem
Notebooks of an Apocalypse
Volume 2: March 1978 - 1982
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Apocalyptic (literature)
For a modern mind, the word "apocalypse" means a great world disaster. But in fact, it is the transcription of αποκαλυψιζ a Greek term which simply means "laying bare," "unveiling." Uncommonly used in non-religious Greek, it appears rather often in the biblical translation of the Septuagint, where it refers to a "laying bare" in the material sense, but above all, in the figurative sense, to the "revelation" of human or divine secrets.
To Sujata
with whom, step by step, we went through those terrible ordeals, supported by
our sole love for Mother
and our desperate will to continue Their Work until the end
Contents
मा
On
March 22, 1978, Sujata and I left Pondicherry for good: "free at last!" and took
refuge in the Nilgiris in South India. But it was only in July, 1981 that I
would complete the materialisation of the thirteen French volumes of Mother's
Agenda.
The battle of the Agenda was continuing.
The yoga of the cells was taking shape.
I could not yet believe that I had started walking this "impossible" path of the New Body, but I was right in it! Without being aware of it, I had not ceased to be in it since that day of November 18, 1973 after Mothers departure, only I took the blows and strove to bear them and go through them one by one. But they had to touch my body in a direct and deadly way for me to realise that, after all, it was "like Mother." For the Experience does not consist in going off into a wonderland though wonders are always there, as if invisibly supporting all things but on the contrary it consists in crossing abysses and bumping into every Negation possible, all the Walls our Matter is made of, in order to un-cover the Marvel that changes everything. And nothing is better than heart (and other) attacks for us to discover how our system works and in what grip these poor, miraculous and marvellous cells are, and to catch hold of the key to life-or-death there, and beyond, the key to the other side of all that.
*
Sujata and I thought we had found the perfect refuge at
last, in those mountains, out of reach of the cruel forces 
and
the hideous poison that we had swallowed in Pondicherry day after day.... Far
from it! The battle of the Agenda took on even crueller dimensions which
embraced the whole of India and further unmasked the game of the Forces. It was
not until 1982 that Navajata would definitively lose his case in the Supreme
Court of India, where he tried to have it recognised that "Sri Aurobindo is a
new religion."
This time (but probably even before I became aware of it), Forces that we could call monstrous and tantric, of the lowest kind of black magic, came to attack this body directly. Luckily, the visions of the "New Consciousness" showed me, very concretely and with an unthinkable precision, where the blows were coming from and what all this was about.
All the same, Sujata and I deposited our will with a notary in Ooty. It was in March, 1981.
Those blows had become so deadly and I was being so exactly targeted that we contemplated leaving India. A first time, then a second, we tried to cut ourselves off from everything and to leave incognito, first to Ceylon and Kerala, then to the Pacific, to an island as uninhabited as possible, in order to continue the work "in safety" what an illusion! But we had to go through that illusion too.... As if one could cut oneself off from the terrestrial whole! In fact, we have to go through everything down to the last grain or the "last atom" of what we call the "human being," or rather the human animal for Man is yet to be, he is to be discovered and to become in these very cells, laid bare and stripped of all their genetic and atavistic and medical clutter.
"Become the human being," the Vedic Rishis had already said some ten thousand years ago.
That is the "apocalypse".
Satprem
18 June 1999
April 1, 1978
(Letter from Satprem to his mother)
Harwood
My beloved little mother,
We ran about and roamed throughout South India, in
search of a haven of peace, and just as we were despairing of finding the true
place, we suddenly discovered a marvel, in the Nilgiri Hills. A built-up
village, just as ugly as all the cement shacks that proliferate all over India,
with their babies, and we were contemplating moving on further, when we took a
small road ... a pathway winding through tea plantations, then a forest, a
marvellous pocket of primal forest, gigantic mimosas, eucalyptus trees, then a
small clearing and there was the house, on the hillside, all embraced by
the forest and the silence with a meadow around it and lots of birds. A forest
full of birds and butterflies, deer too, pheasants and monkeys which steal the
wild berries while grinding their teeth. A marvellous, pure and soft silence, as
if this house in the middle of the clearing were cradled by Nature. No human
vibrations. And yet it is only three kilometres from that village. It is the
place. Its name is "Harwood." We are all delighted. Our friends in Delhi
bought the house for us. Then we returned to Pondicherry one last time, to move
house clandestinely in the night, with the help of our friends from Auroville,
and ah! whew! What a relief not to breathe that perfidious and poisonous air any
longer, I was sick with all that hatred around me. Sujata and I are like school
children on holiday after these four years of misery since Mother's departure.
We are going to build a place where Mother will be able to be truly, in
the joy of working ah, an end to all those Churches and long-clawed
spiritualists: pure, simple air. Without any fuss one works for Mother, that's
all. How I would like you to come and see our new place! It is at an altitude of
2,000 metres, but as we are near the tropics, the temperature is 
relatively
moderate, though cold at night: we light a fire in the evenings. Winters are
very cold, but not as much as in the West. I have rescued my white pigeons from
the Pondicherry shipwreck: they fly about in the meadow around us. There are
peach trees too. We are going to plant apple and pear trees. It is so beautiful:
the big clearing is on the hillside with terraced "gardens" which slope down to
and are surrounded by the forest for the moment, they are not "gardens" but
grass for the cows. But we are going to make a paradise of it. Even our Lakshmi
has followed us here with her cow, dog and calf! And we have already formed the
embryo of a team of friends-workers: we are going to publish the Agenda
in English, in French, in German and Italian. Harwood will become the new place
from where Mother will be able to radiate, without dogmas and without spiritual
businesses. We will then be a first nucleus with sweet Sujata, always smiling,
who is regaining her songs and a new youth. Everyday we go exploring the forest
and discover new places; there are little streams flowing under trees whose
leaves are of all possible colours, high ferns, and if we walk up the mountain,
above the house, there is nothing but woods of mimosas and eucalyptus trees, and
we can breathe so blithely!
We are organising ourselves, but it's a little like
camping, we have to go shopping three kilometres from here: would you believe
it, we have a watchman called
Victor1 who runs errands for us and does small jobs in the house.
But it is a very modern (!) house, there is even a telephone, already installed,
two floors, even the furniture is there, but everything has to be renovated and
arranged; the roof has to be repaired as well as the bathrooms we are having a
good time! Now try to imagine a second paradise there, two hundred metres from
the first one, at the end of the small hillside path, after Harwood; one
suddenly emerges into a big alley strewn with violet flowers, then a white
column 
supporting
a bit of roof, and the sky, the sky everywhere, an immense house essentially
consisting of a veranda with small windows, like a boat right in the middle of
the sky it is the end of the mountain, the end of the forest, everything
abruptly falls away down to the Tamil plains, two thousand metres below. As if
viewed by a seagull. It is "land's end," as Sujata called this place. Wind, a
lot of wind. Tea plantations lower down, big hundred-year-old eucalyptus trees
above, and this ship's cabin on the edge of space. It's
Land's End, "the end of the earth."
So we intend to live there finally, when the owner has lowered his price a little. It is perhaps Delhi's Institute that will buy the piece of land. So our team of workers will have more room in Harwood, while Sujata and I live in our spaceship. That is where we are going to set up our splendid press. And from where Mother will radiate over India and over the world. There is much work, much joy, and a team of joyful workers who are building the Future, that very beautiful Future that Mother saw and wanted and that we can build, if only we consent to joy instead of consenting to misery and suffering. That's it. A whole program for the Earth!
........
Our friends from Paris will soon be joining us here. I need warm clothes that our friends will bring us, but I thought of something that would be very useful and which I would like very much to have: can you have a good Breton cloak made just like yours, with that kind of jacket inside which keeps you so warm? It would be splendid here. Can you arrange that for me as soon as possible? Exactly the same style as yours. So I will have the impression of walking with you in this country that is not the moors but is the beauty of our large and free heart.
I am so happy, I am recovering my youth, as if shaking off years of misery. Sujata and I kiss you very tenderly.
See you soon?
In any case, we are together
and
walk forever
in a great
realm of peace
where the heart is free and happy
Satprem
April 2, 1978
(Letter to N., in Auroville)
The air is better here. It was becoming a little suffocating there. Well, I think I will soon be able to get back to my real work, once our camping here is better organised. Here? Where? It is the secret of our peace I hope that it will last (!). And I think that my departure was necessary for Auroville too. It is best that everyone finds his direct contact with Mother, without any intermediary. Intermediaries are the old plague of religions. Sri Aurobindo and Mother came precisely to bring the Divine directly into Matter, or rather to wear away the hard layer that veiled this immediate Presence from our eyes. Now we must open our eyes (and ears). Everyone must strive to listen and to see. Nothing impedes the contact and the right inspiration, except the ego and the mental complication.
Besides, you know well, and all of you know, that I am not leaving you, wherever I am. I continue the work, the same one, yours, ours, that of the new Earth. Auroville is one of those places: we must grow many Aurovilles and open many hearts to the simplicity of the Marvel.
Such is the part I have to play. But you are dear to my heart above all others. I have gauged your heart, your devotion, and I clasp you in my arms, we continue.
The Victory is in every pure little gesture.
With tenderness to all
my brothers and sisters
Satprem
April 4, 1978
Registered letter from Andre Morisset to the Institute. Our white pigeon chased by blackbirds and drowned in the septic tank.
Strange how things communicate unbeknown to us.
April 7, 1978
A lorry arrives at Land's End: three trees cut.
During the night a hail storm, we carry the beds onto the veranda.
Hailstones on the beds.
Even "the heights" are attacking us?
April 8, 1978
The timber merchants come to cut the trees of Land's End (in order to raise the prices). Negotiations with the owner. His hideous wife. Telegram to Micheline.3
April 9, 1978
It
looks like war. No water. Mud everywhere. Mother's trunk soaked, as well as my
papers. Last night, a rain storm, beds like in a shipwreck. No dry wood. As if
one wanted to chase us away from here.
April 10, 1978
Deed for the purchase of Land's End signed in Ooty.
*
(Letter to Micheline)
Harwood
Dear Micheline,
These last days were like a fury in the "subtle" worlds in fact since March 30 or 31, with a "peak" on April 4, when one of our white pigeons died, attacked by blackbirds, chased and ... drowned in the septic tank! This is the nauseating sign of M. & Co. I don't want to go into details. And the other night, rain and a hail storm, with hailstones even on Sujata's bed through the holes in the roof we are repairing. But the force that attacked this house and has been continuing to attack it for ten days or so, is strangely "focused," like a baleful beam. Yes, "they" must indeed understand the importance of this place and that if we manage to establish a solid base here, it's their end. Hence the fury. Everyone here feels or "sees" it. But it is almost charming compared to Pondicherry: we have some free air to breathe, the body is light, without this millstone around our necks and that kind of physical suffocation I used to feel.
So, of course, the attack was simultaneously launched
on Land's End (I had felt it for several days and I was as if worried about this
place). "By chance," on Friday, the 7th evening,
as we were coming back from our walk through the forest and the tea plantations
below Land's End, we heard a lorry coming into Land's End: they loaded huge
tree-trunks. I loosened the driver's tongue: three trees cut. At this stage, I
still thought that it was limited and that the owner wanted to earn a few
thousand rupees for his everyday expenses, but... first you can imagine how
heartbreaking it is, those people should be publicly whipped, it is really the
reign of the
Shudras4 for whom nothing matters but money and they
devastate the earth, everywhere. But the next morning, "by chance," we saw half
a dozen woodcutters coming out of the forest and crossing the meadow in front of
Harwood why did they go that way, right before our eyes? Truly the Grace looks
after everything. I questioned those workers: they were going to cut all the
trees of Land's End! Land's End's timber had been sold to a wheeler-dealer for
8,500 rupees. We rushed to Land's End with Roger to see the damage: three big
trees had already been cut, plus seven medium-sized ones. More than
sixty-year-old trees, gigantic eucalyptus trees.... Oh, if you could see that
hole in the little wood of Land's End, those torn stumps.... Then I grabbed the
dealer by the throat and offered him 13,000 rupees in cash for all the wood that
he had bought for 8,500 rupees and not one more tree cut. We dismissed the
woodcutters. There only remained the corpses of two trees that they could not
load into their lorry the day before. Then we took on that loathesome owner
(meanwhile, Sujata and I had sent you a telegram): an obvious blackmail to
oblige us to buy his property for one
lakh5 rupees, which is fabulous, as the repair work amounts to
more than 50,000 rupees the house is not worth more than 60,000 rupees. But
the house stripped of its forest is out of the question and I would not wish to
enter this devastation. Living trees, so beautiful, which took
so much time and love to grow, and then bang, for 8,500 rupees. I shall not
dwell on the horrible discussion with this individual and above all his witch of
a wife: two days of negotiations rapacity, hearts of stone. Sujata was there
like Kali. (...)
Without Land's End, it was the ruin of our plans. We needed these two houses to shelter our team, plus the machine and the installations. Harwood was of no use without Land's End, we would have had to leave India. If this didn't work out, it would have been a sign for me that there was nothing to do but to leave India and create our centre elsewhere. (...) Well, there is a grace called Micheline. In the meantime, I had phoned to Delhi, but it was difficult for them to buy two houses one after the other. I was ashamed to knock on doors in this way and it was with sadness that Sujata sent you a telegram. We had never asked for money in our life. Oh, among the attacks of this last fortnight, all my old formation of Sannyasi came back: I who dream to live half-naked in a lonely hut, without seeing anybody, I was faced with this crazy house (Harwood) under repair, with a thousand domestic problems, and was about to buy a second crazy house, even crazier. If I was not certain that Mother was leading me and that She has a plan here, all this would be mad and more than mad for any sensible person. For four years I have not ceased taking insane decisions without knowing why or where I am going, or whether I am right or wrong. That is how things are. So the Sannyasi in all that is put to a severe test. You know, one slams the door and goes off to the forest, so lightly but there is Mother's Work, I cannot just drop everything. So I continue. Then there is Micheline and I sent a telegram to Micheline. All the same, Sujata and I embrace you with gratitude but for you, once more, the Work would have been endangered or stopped.
... I intend to get on with my real work right away,
this second volume of the Agenda. I forget to tell you that I have
received such an enthusiastic letter from C.P.N. 
Singh6
regarding the marvellous machine. There will be no difficulty for the import
license. The most difficult is the custom's duty exemption: Kireet and C.P.N.
are moving heaven and earth, but the political climate here is very uncertain,
not to say chaotic. C.P.N. is under C.B.I. (the secret Indian police)
surveillance, which does not make things easier. We expect Indira to be arrested
before long if it happens, it will be the signal of a big upheaval. But I
think Mother weighs all her steps and nothing will happen before all the pieces
of the jigsaw puzzle are exactly in place, our centre included.
One last thing is worrying me. Following Andre
Moris-set's registered letter, X told me very frankly that it had sown a kind of
uneasiness, to say the least, among all our friends in Paris: reactions of
confusion, almost of panic. One must understand once and for all that those
people's action is coupled with an occult action very recognisable by those who
know a little or are a little sensitive: their letters, their acts are
invariably accompanied by a vibration of fear. Such is the power of these
people. That is how they reign over the Ashram. Around all their acts, there is
a kind of muted threat, gluey and insidious, which has no human origin and makes
up all its "occult" force. Fear, threat and blackmail are the instruments of the
Asura. For four years now, I continually see this vibration playing on all sides
and doing its damage. When Barun + Counouma wrote to Laffont, it literally
created panic and confusion in the whole publishing house: they stopped the
printing of the first volume of the Agenda, then took it up again, then
stopped it again, as if they no longer knew what they were doing. Tantrics know
perfectly well how to handle this 
dirty,
very effective little vibration. Confusion and fear are its immediate effects.
When they write letters, their letters relay this vibration. So really, one must
not fall into this trap at the first opportunity. One must look at things coolly
and call Mother. Theirs is exactly the power of ghosts. They are ghosts, as in
haunted houses, and they give you shivers down the spine ... if they can, and
you no longer know what you are up to. One must not accept that. One must kick
them out vigorously. It is very sticky and insidious, but may the devil take
them! Mother is stronger than all their dirty tricks otherwise, I would have
been dead long ago. So courage and clarity and
peace. Peace and clarity. And it all
dissolves like miasmas from a marsh.
... Take heart. We are seeing the end of it the end is always difficult. The Asura struggles like a dying man. He tries all that he can before dying. But he will not succeed.
With you
very deeply
with my heart full of gratitude
Satprem
Mother shoves our noses into Matter pitilessly and in every detail. Probably it is right where the game is being played out!
April 15, 1978
(Letter from Dr. Hubert Mourot)
Venice
Ascension Day, 1978
Here the sky and the water celebrate a strangely beautiful marriage.
Just tell Satprem that these verses written when I was 18 haunt me and keep me alive:
At
the summit of each summit
There is always
An arrow that runs
Towards freedom.
Questions come again and again:
What summits? What arrow?
And what freedom?
I embrace you.
Hubert Mourot
*
(Answer from Satprem)
Yes, Hubert, at each minute the summit must be over passed. There is no summit, there is only an arrow running towards its goal, and its only goal is to tend towards....
I know nothing about great realisations, I only know that fire burning inside, that thing that tends like a plant toward the sun, and sometimes I think I perceive that this need for sun, is the sun itself in me, this need for softness, is Softness itself loving in me, and that the Goal is here at every moment it was Him who brought me to Him. Then everything is so light and soft, and deep as the infinite and free, because never more can anything or anyone, neither life nor death, alter this inalterable sun. And it is full of love at each instant, because it is the only thing that is.
May 7. 1978
Vision
I go down to the centre of the Earth: "the path of the world."
May 8, 1978
We
take possession of Land's End.
Twenty years ago to the day, I became a Sannyasi.
Sometimes, I well understand why.
May 11, 1978
Beginning of the renovation of Land's End.
May 19, 1978
(To Micheline)
Delhi
Dear Micheline, I am here to attend the first meeting of "Auromitra"7 with Tata and the other trustees of Auromitra, including Bijoy Nahar, Sujata's uncle. From now on, Auroville can receive money without it being misappropriated by the S.A.S. fakers.
You are much in my thoughts. I know that the turning point you are reaching is a true one, difficult and painful at times, but what does Mother want really? She wants her children to be pure, straight, offered, and She puts them to the divine test in order to deliver them from the old world they carry in themselves. It is the hour we have waited for for so many lives, we have prayed a lot to serve at this Hour. So we must have the courage to go beyond many things and to throw off many old weights Mother wants us to be light, her new world is light and devoid of memory.
... But you, at least, Micheline, painful though is the trial,
have the courage to offer it and to keep to your way. It is the Moment of all
moments when one must offer everything. Then the trial turns into a
broadening of consciousness, into a greater lightness, a greater transparency.
And you, Micheline, have that chance or that Grace to serve this terrestrial
Work more closely. So we can safely throw everything into that great Work and
Mother will take care of us. It is the best way to help circumstances, whether
they are personal or general. I trust you. Open your hands, give everything to
Mother and rush into the New World.
.........
But I wanted to talk to you about Bibi Heyman. I felt that she had a role to play in our work. She is pure, simple, true. I don't know what her qualities and practical abilities are, but I know the quality of her soul. All the activities of our Institute must spontaneously spring from this quality of soul. Nothing is more effective. It is not a question of determining "roles," but of vibrations which must be put together and which spontaneously, automatically, will create unexpected circumstances and arrangements. I would like what Bibi represents to be there among you, and let's see what will come out of this whole range of vibrations. Whatever dissensions or difficulties there may have been in the past must melt in the new crucible. Let's leave the egos and the little individuals, and let's see what will come out of a few pure vibrations. Practically, I don't know how it can be managed, but you could simply welcome her into the field of work, tell her about what we are doing and little by little, spontaneously, she will see how she can practically collaborate....
*
24-5-78
Please excuse this somewhat disjointed letter that I
began in Delhi and am finishing today in Harwood. I am snowed under with work.
Here we are preparing the place forty workers or so are on the site at Land's
End. I think that the
heavy work will be completed within three weeks and there will be a little
corner to shelter us. I am trying, somehow or the other, to complete volume II
of the Agenda.... I am confident that everything will go well. The
trustees' threatening letters and blackmail don't upset me Mother walks on
irresistibly. We must, oh, we must be a handful of people without ego, without
personal reactions, given to That such a handful can perform miracles.
I rely on you and B. to be the heart and soul of our Work there. Courage and
trust
All my tenderness
Satprem
May 24, 1978
(Letter to N., in Auroville)
It was very good to feel your love and joy. The living presence of Auroville is shining in the surrounding night. It is very moving to feel that. Mother is pleased. We must really understand that we are in the hour of the great Possible: not to build a small world or even a better world, but another world. How does one become the next being after man? If we asked ourselves the question with enough intensity and constancy, perhaps the Passage would open.... What an adventure! This is what Auroville is. You understand, what matters is the intensity of the question. Everyone should be like a very intense question, but so quiet, so firm at the same time.
I trust you. Truly, I love you. You are my brothers, my sisters. We are walking together, here or there, toward Mother's great Country, toward the true Earth at last.
With much love to all, how I would like to embrace each of you!
Satprem
May 29, 1978
The
avalanche of mud. The pamphlet of the S.A.S. against me.
May 31, 1978
That is my vision of the other day: the descent to the centre of the earth, "the path of the world."
June 18, 1978
On the pacified earth
Nothing was left
But a crickets' song.
June 24, 1978
Harwood's well collapses. Sent Agenda II to Paris.
July 3, 1978
(Letter from Satprem to his mother)
Harwood
My beloved little mother,
...You have a solid family. But my tenderness goes mainly to you, whom I feel so close through all times and tribulations. We are walking together, we have always been walking together and will continue to do so. The more one walks, the more eternal one feels, you know, just like the bay when it is all smooth and shimmering,.
My Nilgiris are for the moment like a building site, with thousands of repairs, wells that are collapsing, a bottomless pit where money is concerned. But we will get to the end of it. There is this vast space in front of me, two thousand metres below, and the Tamil plain, almost pink, at the bottom. I only feel well in vastness, as in my little Bagheera. Oh, things have changed so little in forty years, you simply find yourself like the same child as in the beginning, the same seed, a little wild and crazy.
I kiss you very tenderly
Satprem
July 7, 1978
(Letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English)
... I have not written sooner because I am overworked and over worried with our many tasks. Besides I am also preparing all the cassettes of the 1st and 2nd volumes of the Agenda, which will be released when the second volume comes out in France.
Our well is still collapsed and filled with earth and
stones. I am still trying to get a tube-well from Coimbatore. The people
there are postponing their coming from week to week. We draw some muddy water
from the nearby forest. Also the extra-money sent by our friends in Paris one
month ago is still blocked somewhere. (...)
But we progress irresistibly in Mother's work. The materialization of the Agenda is going faster and faster with its inevitable world consequences. When the machine is here, we will take up the English part of the work. Plenty of work. (...)
In spite of all these material problems, we work hard on the real thing. It is strange how our material difficulties crop up side by side with the progress of the Agenda. On one side, I have the proofs of the Agenda to read, and on the other side I am plunged into collapsed walls, cracked septic tanks and what not, which reminds me of Sri Aurobindo: "I have been digging, digging, long and deep..."
The whole country is also digging into the Mud, the world Mud till the bed of the "golden River" is reached.
You are in my heart all the time. It is a grace that you are here with us.
With my deep gratitude and love,
Satprem
July 8, 1978
Fainting of my douce. I thought she would not return.
July 19, 1978
End of the boring of Harwood's well = a thin stream of water.
What does it mean?
July 20, 1978
Second
visit to the Police in Ooty. The depths of blackness.
*
The initiation of my Douce. She says (with another voice):
"A being of great Beauty
who seeks to incarnate,
it is the only solution.
Only You can.
It is time to take the true position.
A great Beauty
that flows onto the world,
is the only solution.
Violence is everywhere,
not only in India,
in the world.
We do not see the intensity yet."
July 23, 1978
No water in Land's End. Two wells bored, dry, black granite. Meditation under the mechanical drill. The big spiritual illusion.
July 31, 1978
Nilgiris = enough.
August 4, 1978
L.'s
departure. Alain A. [a worker from Auroville] ill. Alone.
August 5, 1978
Alain's departure. The generator breaks down.
August 9, 1978
(Personal letter)
Wednesday evening
... I am making an effort to write to you. It is past 7
in the evening, I no longer go for walks since your departure. I have just tried
to pump up water (to Harwood), but there is not enough power. We have water at
times, when there are no air bubbles in the pipes. The flow seems tiny. In any
case, there is not enough water to go up to our room. Then the super switch
installed by Arul is going wrong one more super rush job. A generator would be
needed to run Harwood's pump.... Lastly, the generator of Land's End broke down
for good! Like that we don't have to worry about making it work! I made an
urgent phone call to Madras (Monday) to ask them to send us a mechanic. They
answered "naliki" [tomorrow, that is to say, after the flood]. I made a
second urgent phone call today, they answered, "naliki". Then I had the
bad idea of asking Arul to change the side of the gas inlet of the new burner we
bought together. It was painful to see him dismantle everything. At 1.45 p.m.,
he had almost succeeded in putting the different parts into the same place as
before, giving up finding the knack
for changing sides you should have seen him with the pipe on my chair and his
foot on the pipe as a vice.... Well, we will have to go to Ooty or Coonoor to
have it repaired one more object out of order. Yes, and they have "repaired"
the boiler of Land's End after demolishing the stand, which they took to
Pandyan Industry. Then they brought the thing back, battered and reassembled
a little crooked, but this afternoon at 3 p.m. it seemed to work, except for a
missing valve. Your superb electric water-heater is still lying on its side in
the storeroom, without a valve or anything but it is relaxing to see it like
that. So the workers are leaving the day after tomorrow, Friday. I have spent my
time running after painters and coolies from morning till night at Land's End.
The result is a little more successful than with the machines, but you have to
urge them on a lot. Above all, we spent two days trying to clear up Alain's
chaos, empty the storerooms, the garage a frightful waste, pillage, disorder.
Fleas are charming after all. I understand why it cost us a fortune and why
Alain was ill I am happy he has gone, it was so shameful to treat material
objects as he did. He is charming and I like him very much, but.... Oh! what a
mess Our two rooms are ready today, as well as magnificent bathrooms for the
day when the water accepts to come. We are dead-beat. Letters are piling up, I
have not even read the mail Micheline brought. There too it is a frightful
chaos. I have not had three minutes to give to the true work. We have just put
Mother's symbol on the pediment symbol? Of what? Tomorrow, we will fit the
door of the machine room. I am dazed. Money is running through our fingers like
sand, I don't even know how to keep count anymore. On Friday, at last, they will
all have left. There will be silence. We will be waiting for the generator
mechanic. Kafka is charming. But all the same, if we have to depend on a
generator to draw up a few buckets of water to Land's End, it is rather strange.
I no longer know anything. I don't even know how to pray, to call anymore. I
walk, one step after the other, like an animal in the fog. Satprem
no longer exists. There is a sort of body which is fed up with it, that's all,
and which will be relieved when it all stops. I no longer even think of leaving
this place, I no longer think at all. To leave would still mean another world to
move, to shake up. I am in hell up to my neck, without being able to move to one
side or the other. It will stop one day, which is all I know. But what is
surprising is that everything has vanished: Mother, Sri Aurobindo like a
distant memory. Really, it is just like in the camps a kind of inner
devastation, nothing remains upright anymore, except my two legs (moreover, one
of which is not improving). Last night, I had a peculiar dream (was it a "dream"
or something else?). I had to have an eye-operation (I know that my left eye is
bad, but it was the good one that was operated, the right eye), so they cut out
a big hole with scissors, but I did not feel anything, I only felt they were
cutting (it seems that I had a beginning of cancer, which is why they had to
cut). I let them do it very docilely. In the end, they took a pair of pliers to
extract the eyeball. It was over. So I found myself with but one eye, facing an
iron post, there was nothing but an iron post in front of me, that was all I
could see. And it was so sad and so sordid that I began to cry in front of my
iron post. That was all.
Ah, I was forgetting, it seems there is a piece of "good news": yesterday, I received a one-year extension of stay in India. I think I would have been relieved, had they told me to pack up within eight days, just as I was relieved when the Ashram trustees expelled me and called me back from the Himalayas. But, no, I stay in India. That's it.
I embrace you. Everything is all right. One day, it will all end up well.
Satprem
August 10, 1978
Land's End = the evil hell.
The
second clang of the gong.
The only way out is my leaving this body.
August 11, 1978
End of the building work in Land's End; the workers leave.
"The horrible thing," as Mother would say.
Worn out, broken, nullified.
August 13, 1978
(Personal Letter)
The generator man came from Madras yesterday.... The
whole of Arul's [the electrician] "aerial" installation is an absolutely
makeshift job. What's more, Arul was absent, because he had "work" to do
elsewhere.... He arrived this Sunday morning at noon, simpering (after the 11
o'clock mass). I did not want to see him, or else I would have slapped him in
the face. The others rob us brutally; this one robs us with a smile, that is the
only difference. So yesterday, from 3 in the afternoon till 8.30 in the evening,
with Sujata and the mechanic from Madras, we strove to understand, in Tamil,
what exactly the electrical problem was, running from the house to the
Shola9 and from the Shola to the generator and from the generator
to the Shola.... My heart was like an old saucepan. We took note of the
mechanic's tests, paid (dearly), then it was 8 p.m., no taxi, so I walked the
poor fellow to the village in the night. So it is the whole of Arul's
installation that is to be overhauled
or re-done.... By the way, he brought his bill (without mentioning what you gave
him as advance) and asked for [an extravagant amount of money].... He pulled a
long face when I mentioned the advances you gave, but all the same, he took the
pump you generously left him and all the electrical equipment that was
left in Land's End, saying it was his own. The same scenario took place again
with the painter and the supplier.... In brief, though I spent six to seven
hours a day on the work site at Land's End, the last days saw the worst looting
on all sides. Two pots of paint are left, a few hammers and chisels and all the
unusable old scrap iron all the tools have been joyously taken away by the
Auroville workers, along with all the pots and blankets.... They left nothing,
not a usable plank, hardly a few bulbs. A complete pillage. And naturally the
bill from the two Auroville workers did not mention any of the advances they had
been given. I did not argue, I paid the taxi, the transport of "their toolbox"
by lorry, the bus, the bonus, etc., like an impotent and idiotic maharajah....
All in all, there is nothing left of all the money Micheline left. A bottomless
pit. I spare you the details. And this morning, Bobby is leaving us: he was
stealing milk from us, buying it from his friends instead of from the
cooperative, and adding water to it.... The Land's End work site is closed for
good at last, it is a relief. We have still to find a capable electrician. It is
August 13, it has been going on for five months less nine days. Sujata manages
to fetch drinking water from the village and buy the essentials. We continue to
bathe in muddy water mixed with machine oil. The pump can be run three times a
day: eight minutes, five minutes and five again, to get nearly half a tank,
which is enough for the two of us, our clothes and dishes. We time the pump to
avoid draining it and getting disastrous air bubbles. It's a completely crazy
life, you cannot imagine, for you have seen only the "cream" of the situation.
Now it is naked and brutal absurd. Killing, too. Well, the pack of wolves has
gone off, sated. Only our carcass is left. The last bills
have been paid. It is windy outside, as in November. But where is "India"? And
Satprem? He has been so hammered that he no longer knows anything. This is
perhaps what Mother used to call "the horrible thing." We don't realise to what
extent our aspiration is nurtured by a certain thought, an "ideal," a goal, a
hope in the future but when there is no future it is today, it has no idea,
no hope, it lives like a tired body, just a body with no thought inside.
Everything else, Mother, Sri Aurobindo, the new species, are like the lost
memory of something that existed once, but what exists now, today, except this
weariness, this mad world, these thieves to be confronted, these thousands of
meaningless and sordid things? What is left?
The "Divine" is yet an idea. In the concentration camps, there was the hope of
getting out of it but how do you get out of this? There is no way out, except
death or I don't know what strange miracle. It is such a complete devastation.
There is no Satprem anymore. There is a dead-beat body which will never
completely recover from this devastation. What shall I cling to? To what past?
the past is actually past, it is over, it no longer exists. I am in the Now,
dark and naked. "Memories" are worthless, it is the present that should be,
and it does not exist, it is nothing at all, it pounds and toils and grates. It
is not even a question that comes up, this "question" which made a fire within
it is something which looks at a collapse, looks on and on without
understanding. It has collapsed. Nothing is standing, except my two legs which
are not too solid. And the weariness of saying all that. One feels like
remaining seated and silent in front of this nothingness: yes, the wall. A Wall.
Nothing to say. I don't even wait for a way out of that where is the way out?
What way out? How does one go out of this body other than by dying? To die is
the old dream that goes on. I stop my letter now. Please excuse this nonsense. I
loved you well when I was in a state fit to love.
S.
August 15, 1978
For
three days a tempest of icy wind. No electricity, no more water supply.
August 16, 1978
(Personal Letter)
... I think I have rounded my cape of hell. It was last night, something shifted in my consciousness, I don't know why, there was nothing more and nothing less. In fact, outwardly, it is rather "less": a tempest of icy wind for four days, electric power and telephone posts pulled up, many trees uprooted, no water, no electricity anymore and the wind that blows down onto our beds and all over the room, showers of debris and plaster. It is awful. But something shifted within I don't know where, for everything is the same or worse than the same. Like an Assurance, it became acceptable at once. But how dreadful....
So I am sending you the proof sheets that I have managed to wrest from the situation. The rest (the end) will follow rather quickly, unless there is another catastrophe but nothing can be more catastrophic than what we have already been through. I have decided to move into Land's End on August 18 there is neither water nor electricity, just as in Harwood, but it will be less dirty. We will have water carried from the Shola. I am awaiting news of a good electrician to reinstall the whole line between the house and the pump. But if you consider things closely, all that is very hopeless. Yet something in me is no longer desperate. Perhaps the remnant of the pure Breton of God. But....
Satprem
August 20, 1978
Anne's
and Robert's arrival.
*
(Letter from Sujata to Micheline)
Dear Micheline,
The current has gone. I take advantage of it to be with you a little.
You know, Micheline, the courtyard behind is as beautiful as can be, with the cherry tree overflowing with flowers, like a light-pink mass, and the mimosas radiant with gold. And the fragrance circulated by the wind, the joy of the birds. Small, very small birds flit about from branch to branch, swinging and making flowers fall to the emerald green lawn.
Unfortunately, it is destructive man who reigns outside. Whether they are old or young, trees are cut down every day. Blows and more blows that we hear, women and more women whom we see. To the west side and to the south side. Twenty, thirty trees on every side. Day after day. And several times a day. Where there was no visible path, we can now see hills or villages in front of us.
Do you remember the mountain we climbed? Well, its face is all burnt. It is so sad, Micheline. They razed everything. They pulled the roots out to make charcoal. Mimosas in full blossom, like a golden flow, all-all burnt.
......
Satprem is going on with his tale. Immersed and absorbed. It is very difficult for him to give his whole mind to anything else.
That's it, Micheline, I kiss you very tenderly.
Sujata
August 23, 1978
My
leg injured. Haematoma, phlebitis.
August 25, 1978
(Personal Letter)
Yesterday, I finished the proof-reading of volume II,
and water came to Land's End. The day we entered Land's End, on the 18th,
the electricity came back after eight days of interrupted connection. Good
signs? But I don't pay attention to signs anymore. The true good piece of news
is Anne's and Robert's arrival, as if a turning had been taken, once and for all
toward ... what? Harwood was immediately renamed by Anne: Happywood. We
were about to buy a new copper line, when Robert thought of trying to weld all
the joints of the old line as a result, the engine is working, although with a
lower voltage (it works with the generator, of course, not the municipal line).
So we are draining the well, cleaning and draining the rusty pipes, but we are
winning the game it will be really won only when we have a well in Land's End
and a hand pump. I have written to the water diviner in Coimbatore and asked him
to come on Friday September 1. We will also see if there is a possibility to
bore a well in Happywood. Anne is turning the whole house upside down, moving
and re-moving all the furniture from one room to another, scrubbing down the
floors and the walls she exults. (...) Micheline, marvellous with financial
patience, is going to help us fill all the "gaps" of Happywood and finish the
repair work in Land's End. (...) Within ten days or so we should face the last
round of this battle of our settling what a battle! But things have strangely
swung round from the day I decided to move to Land's End at any cost (it was in
the evening of August
15, in the midst of the storm, I wrote to you about it). And I don't know why, I
felt we had to be alone, Sujata and I, to face the last trial you had to
leave. The cape has been rounded at last with some damage. Yes, my leg is
failing me. I think it is phlebitis. Curiously enough, even before I took the
decision to move to Land's End, when you were still here, a thought, or
suggestion, passed through my mind: if you enter Land's End, it is in your body
that "they" will strike. It is the last degree; it descended progressively all
the degrees of hell down to the most material one, the body. It reminds me of
Mother: "it's the turn of the lower centres," but without being at all sure that
it has a yogic meaning in fact things have hardly any meaning anymore: they
just are, one after the other. They have only to be gone through. In any case, I
will have walked as much as I could. It's probably due to an excess of
gymnastics between the Shola and the generator. All this is surprisingly
symbolic, but I only "say" it to myself, that's all; it does not correspond to
any transforming reality unless one transforms me in spite of myself (after
all, this is perhaps what is happening to the whole world). Well, five days
after our moving to Land's End, something snapped in my leg and then a sharp
pain (yes it snapped I remember now, it was just when I was pointing out the
place for the waste pit at Land's End: I jumped onto the little path, and
crack!) If I force myself to walk, after ten minutes it becomes bearable and I
can go on, but it is the change of position (or of blood pressure in the veins)
that is ... difficult. So here I am, half disabled. I think of my friend
Rimbaud. We have walked a lot. (...) Since '73, I have been running a lot, and
these last weeks, it was a real pentathlon (it was completely mad). At times, I
would get cramps in my leg, because of the bad circulation, but it was under
control and to tell the truth, I did not believe in it (besides, I don't know
very well in what I believe, neither in life nor in death nor in god nor in the
devil, perhaps in goodness knows what, which we call something else and which
creates a fire within all the same;
that is almost sure, or else I would fall down dead outside of the nightmare).
I finished the proofs of volume II yesterday evening. These years 1961-62 are so full of current meaning, so it seems to me, and yet I see nothing but blackness in the external situation. One has not the impression that anything is being transformed, but rather that everything is falling to pieces inside and outside from the teeth to the heart, and the head is so stunned. Well, I have become reconciled to Land's End.... In any case, I am nailed down in the trap, I will have to get out of it in one way or another. I am going to start volume III immediately.
... What a strange path, all the same! It is like a shaggy-dog story. Many times I have told myself that if I did not have this solid Breton realism, I would have fallen into a definitive and naked revolt. It is naked all the same, but accepted.
My ship's cabin is wrapped in clouds. All is silent in this end of the world. Sujata is off to the village with Anne through the forest (Anne with her inseparable rucksack). The Japanese cherry tree is in full blossom behind the house and the mimosas tumble down in cascades. It is very beautiful, I must say. Especially my room: it looks like a solid packet of silence all wrapped in light. There is only "I" still like an incomprehensible spot in all that. But the only thing we have to do is to reach tomorrow.
Satprem
Sujata in her big room looks like a small picture from elsewhere, very small, very white and nearly sacred. In the evening, when she switches on her small lamp in the niche and the white light falls on her bed, it seems to come from I don't know what antique scene, as if she were there between two worlds.... Perhaps we are really between two worlds and there is someone who must build a bridge?
August 28, 1978
Last
journey to Pondicherry for consular matters. My second leg damaged (the knee) on
the platform of Madras station. An agony. Oh! never to go back there.
August 30, 1978
Back to Land's End.
A page has been turned.
September 1, 1978
(Personal letter)
... For the first time in many months, or years, things
have a semblance of order and harmony. It seems we have crossed over to the
other side of the mountain. It was high time. The price is this disability.
Nothing but a supramental grace, I think, can undo or repair this demolition of
my leg. And both of them nearly gave up: on the platform of Madras station, the
other leg went. I was hopping on one leg, it was a long way, then I must have
made an awkward movement, the knee of the left leg took a wrong position, the
nerve of the articulation was pinched, an awful pain. I spent two tortured days
walking on neither leg in Pondy offices, in Jipmer, then in the Madras
Immigration Office. I suffered a lot, especially the last day, when the pain was
constant. But that horror of Pondicherry.... Truly, I prefer my demolished leg
to that bath of poison. Nauseating.... I felt like vomiting in the car when I
left from there. Oh! never to hear of those people again "to hear of" means
immediate contact and you swallow them "as if" they were there.
I prefer the physical hell I went through at least, it is sound, if I may say
so. Well, my second leg recovered on arriving at Land's End. But the other
one.... I am writing to you lying on a deck chair (please excuse my
handwriting), but even so, there are a thousand steps to take to fetch one thing
or another, put a log in the fireplace.... One cannot be always calling for
help. I think this condition will last for a long time another kind of battle.
But that poison from there.... Now I wonder how I could go through that without
dying. In fact, there is a formidable faith somewhere in the body, or else I
would never have held out. Besides, since that evening of August 15 when
something swung over in my consciousness, I live in a state of complete
surrender (in fact, I am not worried even about my leg, except that it bothers
me!) Everything seems to have collapsed on every side, a complete shipwreck, so
we are at rest, there is nothing to "save" anymore. Were I to die in three
minutes, it would be all right; if I go on for fifty years, it is all the same
on any side it is the same hellish thing so long as it is not totally,
materially changed so long as we are not in the next species. And I well
understand this: nothing will change truly, neither heaven nor hell, so long as
Matter is not changed. It is there that everything takes place, it is the
key to all paradises and hells, both equally false, it is the place where the
Thing is taking place, where, perhaps, the true paradise is taking shape,
without any useless ecstasy and stupid phlebitis. To pass over to the other side
does not change anything, it has been that way for thousands of billions of
years. You understand, this poison that I have swallowed for nearly five years
in Pondicherry is precisely the world's horror to be abolished. As long as the
root of this horror is not pulled out, nothing will ever be healed or perfect,
in any heaven and any universe. It is clear to me now. I mean that I understand
materially, with my senses, if I may say so....
... Oh! I wish I never had to relive those five years
of hell since '73 Mauthausen and Buchenwald were charming in comparison.
I now understand why I went through that. For it to never exist anymore upon
earth.
But all the same, it is a strange period.... I spent a whole night seven hours is a long time in a state that was not sleep at all, for I had exactly the impression of a sleepless night, without the least second of sleep or rest, and yet it was not a waking state since I was unable to get out of the situation a sleep that was not sleep at all, and a wakefulness which did not resemble the waking state. And the situation, which lasted for seven hours non-stop and which I was unable to get out of, was as follows: I was in a room that seemed to be my room (?), a rather bare, wide, clean room with a yellow floor, and an individual who resembled the big storekeeper of the village, had a number of indescribable things carried into the room (that is, they had no meaning in my external waking consciousness, they were like chairs or tables turned upside down, of which I mainly saw the feet), in short, things I did not want in my bedroom. So I took them out of my room, he brought them in again, I took them out, he brought them in and so on for seven hours!!... Enough to drive you mad. And I was not sleeping! And I was not able to get out of it either!
It seems that it is the physical mind. But what crazy
gymnastics! And why do I do all that, or why do I live all that? As if I were
only going through an awful negativity, without ever seeing the positive side of
these various nightmares and everything is a nightmare, in this or that
form. Such is the situation. So I begin to look at those people who have
"illuminations" or "spiritual experiences" with the eyes of an astounded owl I
understand nothing anymore about two thousand and five hundred years of
spirituality. And I don't understand the first word about the other thing.
Between the two, I move and remove crazy things out of my room. And I can't
honestly say to myself that I am in transit to another species because I don't
see anything, not a single little hair of the next animal, except that the
present one is deteriorating and has all the appearances of a formidable failure
a resounding one, you know, and in every detail.... Well, imagine our
Aigueperse10 friends, or even any friend of ours reading this,
they would say: Satprem is done for. And it actually seems so. But I don't give
a damn about being done for, so....
My room now is like a big cabin surrounded by a luminous haze. I don't know where it is travelling to....
Tomorrow, I will start the "Summary" of volume II and emerge into a new mysterious period. As for me, I am a complete nonentity, but everything has been accepted, whatever it may be. I am peaceful, as if after a shipwreck.
Satprem
September 9, 1978
End of the Summary of volume II.
A very light quivering of timid joy?? As if everything were in order at long last.
September 11, 1978
(Personal Letter)
I am a little ashamed to send you such a long Summary,
I don't know why I persist in doing so or cannot help doing so. We could
condense and give only the essence, but there is something that wants
things to be done in this way. Never mind.... I have been doing crazy things for
so long and it is not getting any better! It seems I have lost all control of
everything. There is even something whispering in my ear that I should add to
the Summary, in chronological order, the world events that I had put together at
the beginning of
the book; by doing so, the correlation would become more visible. It is like a
book within a book! Well, again, never mind.
I would like so much for this Agenda to be marvellously finalised for centuries to come. This Summary worries me. I should lose the habit of being worried.
Please forgive my handwriting again, I am writing to
you in my deck chair. But the leg is much better, I can move without the
impression that the leg is going to burst apart. The "column" of Satprem-Shola
is less heavy it must be something in Satprem s overhead line that has voltage
leaks. I no longer know where my overhead is, anymore than my head
it seems that things take place lower and lower down, without my being able to
do anything. Everything seems to take place as in Mother's scheme, without
anything that indicates the smallest transformation, quite the opposite! The
more one goes on, the more one becomes the contrary of all one had expected, how
curious. Sometimes it is even painful. Well.... No surgery for my leg, no, I
don't believe in it. In 1972, before he committed suicide, my brother had
painted exactly the same picture as Aigueperse and he even added the pleasure of
a possible embolism with the formation of blood clots. I have not got any
embolism as yet. I have even run a lot since 1972. Perhaps I will run again? A
"minor" operation, yes, that is exactly what he said, but there are all the
surroundings to inhale the hospital air is already lethal in itself (in
Vellore, I breathed death and I had to struggle to drag myself out of their
"care"). Mother had said "no operation." I can't imagine myself on a table any
more, enough of all their tricks above all, I don't feel like living with
their medical blessings, what we need is another kind of blessing, or else it is
not worth living. What do I care about a dozen embolisms? As for walking ... I
wish I could fly (do they have a trick to make flying legs?). Strangely enough,
I see or rather feel Rimbaud as if I were feeling all he felt in his
hospital in Marseille I must have lived that. So the operation has already
been performed, I am not going to have it again.
Sometimes there is a softness here, like a quivering of timid joy. This room is very pretty. I have not stopped for years and years. Perhaps Mother stuck me in this deck chair purposely?... Finally, perhaps Mother has something at the back of her mind? Anyway, I am reconciled with my fate here. Now everything has slipped from my fingers.... In the big patio behind, the Japanese cherry tree is like a pink cataract.
Satprem
September 15, 1978
Start of the third volume of the Agenda.
September 21, 1978
Volume II with Laffont.
*
(Letter to Micheline)
Dear Micheline,
I can sense your thoughts. I wanted to give you a sign
since long, but I am overburdened with work and besides, the body has had to
struggle with various difficulties. A kind of onslaught since I decided to move
to Land's End but it is a good sign, it means that we are progressing and
"they" are not happy. (...) All we need now for the jigsaw puzzle to be complete
is the confirmation of the arrival of the Machine the physical consciousness
is much like St. Thomas, it needs evidence. For five years I have spent my time taking
blind decisions, while my physical consciousness has not ceased harassing me,
demanding material evidence that naturally came only much later. A strange walk
absolutely the virgin forest. When you reach the end, you know, it is clear,
but meanwhile, it is a tree plus a tree plus a tree in a nothing that is an
immensity of pathless forest. You open up the path by walking it. It is all
right afterwards. At the time, you get a little out of breath!
Well, what is marvellous finally is that there are friends and brothers who are trusting enough to follow these nocturnal zigzags we don't have the appropriate eyes to see in "that night," which is only the night of our present physical eyes. If things were clear, it would probably be the same old routine on the beaten tracks of the old world. In the Ashram, everything is of course perfectly "clear"! I'm joking, they have caught the eternal Mother with their clothespins well, this eternal Mother makes me walk without my even seeing the tip of her little finger probably it is She who is holding me at the end of her clothes-pins! Please excuse my language, I don't know at all how to speak anymore, this too no longer works in literary or spiritual terms, it is very chaotic. Well, one walks, even without a leg it is exactly how it is. But truly She makes us do quite impossible things. And She must be laughing on top of it. I am sure She is laughing at me. If only I could hold her....
I am right in the middle of volume III. Not a minute to spare. That's how it is. I want or would like three volumes to be released in 1979 you see the programme! Plus volume I of the Agenda in English, plus The New Species and The Mutation of Death in English. And in Italian too....
... Land's End is hewing quite one hell of an unknown
path in Tomorrow's virgin forest. The future will tell. Perhaps Mother wants us
to laugh a little instead of taking everything so seriously.... In fact, I am
carrying the whole thing on my shoulders, apparently, and if the physical
consciousness could be persuaded that it is not its thing or responsibility but
that of the great Mother, it would be simpler
and joyously easy.... So we go struggling along until the physical ego vanishes
and brings to light what was always there.
Such is the situation.
I also wanted to tell you that I found our meeting very good. There was something very new in you that was not there or apparently not there (or not yet there) when I saw you in Paris. I don't know, something from the soul, simple, direct and soft straight, very straight. A true moment, wasn't it? As if you had taken the leap forward, and come what may that is probably how Mother can take us by the hand. As long as we lean on old things, how could She take our hand? So keep those eyes on the future and throw everything into that.
With tenderness
Satprem
September 23, 1978
(Letter to Carole Weisweller)
Dearest Carole,
Your letters are very pure, I like them very much
that is, we like you very much! I can readily sense the difficult period you are
going through. Not to be able to help those whom we love is painful. But I think
it is an appearance; things follow a deeper law, and alone in a room you can
make the movement of your heart radiate, it has an action only it takes a long
time for us to see the material effects. But one cannot have a vibration without
it reaching its goal, it is inevitable. Especially when it is a selfless
vibration. We should have faith that everything, down to the smallest
detail, follows the movement of a minute Wisdom that knows the reason and the
necessity for the detours and always wants the best.
All our thoughts of love help inevitably.
People don't understand unless they get a blow or a bomb on their heads, then it
is visible, but the force of the soul is infinitely more powerful, far-seeing
and radical than any bomb or any blow you can't know, for instance, how all
your love helped me marvellously in silence, through all the difficulties. It
carried me. And if we are only a few who silently, purely and truly want the
change of the world and the reign of Beauty, it must occur you can't
imagine the extraordinary divine efficiency of a few beings like Carmen,
Micheline..., in brief, this small nucleus that we are. Only look at the
enormous task we have completed, without it seeming much, since the day when the
first volume of Mother was clandestinely printed at Macmillan's in Madras. We
had everything against us, they even tried to kill me, and we went through it
all. We have come a long way. The soul's force, simple love, matter a lot. It is
even what lasts longer than all the rest with its flamboyance and showing off
that pass like a straw fire. And I think that a few, in some silent place in the
Blue Mountains, or rue Greffulhe, or Place des Etats-Unis and in Rome and Irun,
are actually materialising the new world, yes, this fairytale of Mother and Sri
Aurobindo.
There is a passage in your letter that touched me a lot, where you say that your life is "useless" no, no, Carole, it is not true at all. What you are, your mere existence, has its full value. I believe in you, and first of all I love you, that is, Mother too must love you, don't you think so? We are all "in preparation" for something it takes long, it is slow and very blind, nothing seems to move but it moves formidably, and we too. Is it possible that Mother is not leading us toward something? What happens or seems not to happen at the moment does not matter, our faith in the future contains, in itself, all the future you are this faith. Your presence is tremendously useful to the work.
And furthermore you say: "It's very hard to get up
every morning without having anything that impels you to do.... " This too
touched me very much. Listen, why don't you write this
script for the film on Mother, gratuitously, for nothing and nobody, "just like
that," for love, for the joy of loving? With the three volumes, you have all the
material required. And I have the impression that if you succeed in
materialising that, alone in your room, it will automatically find its own way
of realisation it will oblige the circumstances to model themselves on what
you have done.
You could make a marvellous film on Mother, if you
present her not as a saint, but as what She was, and really is: the greatest
Adventuress in the world. You remember that story of Mother, as a small girl who
sprang on the tip of her toes through the grand salon, a big, light leap over
the carpeted and gilded old world I see the film opening like that, this big
leap Mother is the one who leaps through all appearances to seize hold of the
marvellous Reality. And that dance of the atoms which revolutionised everything
in her head, her empathy with trees and animals, the unfolding of past times and
that of the future, that tireless quest to find the Secret, track down the old
tricks; and Tlemcen, the great blue Note bursting forth, the world exploding
like impressionist pictures. And Theon, Richard, all the dangers She went
through with a laugh, all the phantoms She pierced through to reach the Reality
of the earth. Then Sri Aurobindo like a minute of eternity: alone in front of
that coffin Satyavan whom She went in search of in death. Then there is this
vertiginous, double world where images of Mother pass through: assailed by all
those little Judases, those people who thought She was old and senile, a kind of
saint to be worshipped, while She was hewing a path in the future and was so
young, younger than all of them all those people who believed in death, wanted
death, forced death on her, while She was tirelessly pulling down the Marvel
onto earth, the great supramental ship, the living fairytale, space turned
upside down, time turned upside down, death turned upside down there would be
marvellous cuts to make from Her prophetic words, so full of hope for the earth
the earth, her great love. Take her experiences,
project them into images, with all this little crowd of obscure worshippers
around her, pushing her into death, refusing her laughter, her joy, her humour
that upsets all their small ideas. Two superimposed worlds. The struggle against
the old species. Pranab's voice: No, I don't want the earth that says
no. Oh, Carole, a terrible and marvellous film. Then that "death" of Mother:
those people wrapped in black or white veils who don't want to see the Marvel,
who don't see that She is alive, more alive than them all! Then this body in the
silence of the tomb, emitting its radiations and whose every cell vibrates and
vibrates, shattering the old world this light little girl leaping through the
old wall of death, while the high priests and priestesses officiate on her tomb
covered in flowers: there is even a "donation box" hanging on the Samadhi for
contributions to the new Church and She laughs and laughs: What? You want one
more Church? The Church of the old chimpanzees. I even imagine one could create
a kind of mythical character, who would not be Satprem but a human
representative near her, to whom She would show her experiences while
narrating them, to whom She would bring alive her fairytale, to whom She would
appear young and full of laughter, and who would see her young, light,
marvellous, and who would believe in the fairytale then suddenly She is
carried down, "dead," to the big decorated hall, before his astounded eyes: She
is smiling at him, She is there: "You will tell them." And the lid of the coffin
is lowered over her head with a last sunbeam while he remains there, very small
and white, looking and looking at the dreadful masquerade. And they expel him in
the end because he believes in the Marvel and sees her alive. Oh, Carole, you
should make a film that would be terribly and marvellously
truthful: both terrible and marvellous. A formidable Adventure of the new
species, of the new vision. With real actors, not a photomontage of Mother's
photos, no: to reconstruct things with living characters who would incarnate.
To make a film without caring about impossibilities
or possibilities you start anywhere and Mother will take your hand and bring
you to her marvellous Forest. A fairytale, terrible and marvellous. Every
morning, you get up with that, you live with that: you vertiginously plunge into
Mother. You make a film as nobody did before, that even Jean
Cocteau11 never dreamed of! Much boldness is needed, courage of
all sorts impossibilities are only a challenge for us to establish the
marvellous possible. Mother will give you all possible inspirations, go ahead,
plunge into this adventure without caring about producers and film-makers your
making it will oblige everything else to follow. And don't take advice from
anyone go ahead with all your soul. You must have the courage to synthesise
the data and turn them into myths a great myth becoming true. Everything is
symbolic, the characters are symbolic. You must relive all that, make it live
again as if it took place 2,000 years ago, without caring about the petty
present individuals or what people will say or think of it wrest it from its
present, tiny reality, in order to change it into a great Symbol of the
transformation of the Earth. Yes, there is Theon, Richard, Pranab, the great
shadows of Death, all that resists and refuses or only wants the old way, the
whole old species thrashing about. No, She is not a saint, She is a great
Adventuress and hers is a formidable Adventure. She who wanted to conquer death.
Orpheus. And death is not in the small subterranean passages but all around, in
everyday life and everyday people. We are in
death and She is the one who strives to pull us humans out of our everyday
death. We believe in laws that do not exist, and She cries to the Earth: Wake
up!
Go step by step, Carole. Each step will take you to the next. Simply, you begin, and you will see where you end up. Pull away from the present and the so called "facts" and turn all that into a great Myth. It is not "Mother's Life" that must be recounted: it is the Legend of the New World.
There,
I embrace you very tenderly. Please excuse my disjointed sentences, what must be
caught is the
momentum, the marvellous movement of Mother the great Ballerina, who goes
through the false appearances of our intellectual prison. And with your film,
you will help the New World to be.
With you
very tenderly
Satprem
P.S.: You know, it is Sujata who saw you making Mother's film, and it is Sujata who saw, as the first picture of the film, this little girl taking a great leap through the salons of the old world. That is the film: a leap into the Future.
September 27, 1978
(Personal Letter)
A tidal wave of clouds has engulfed the whole plain in its bubbling foam, we are floating, very blue, above this white cataclysm. Land's End is a strange place.
......
What does all that mean? Since yesterday or the day before I've had a kind of sensation that Land's End means something I don't have many ideas anymore and they are all contradictory, but under the skin there is a kind of acquiescence and gratitude at the same time. In brief, I am becoming reconciled to this damned place, which is very beautiful, I must say. And I am waiting I am in a state of waiting, as it were.
... When will it breakdown? That is what I am waiting
for oh, not specially in Pondy: the radical breakdown. Then a great frothy
snow will spread all over the world and one will have to be light. If the true
world really arrived what
a hell of a surprise for the ashram pipe band! As for me, I don't know, I am
waiting for the day I will have a great laugh. Meanwhile, let's get to work.
This materialisation of Mother here is very important. And these few people who
live only for that. A place where there would be no other vibration than this
one. Perhaps it is what will hasten the tidal wave of the new world. I feel that
this silent work here, by a few persons, has a meaning. For two days, I've even
had the impression that Mother and Sri Aurobindo have perfectly arranged it all.
.....
We are going to be witnesses. That is what I feel. At Land's End, we will have a ringside seat, and how! I think that many surprises are in store for us. We are going to discover, step by step, that all they have said is true.
Satprem
October 4, 1978
(Personal Letter)
Your long letter, despite all you have on your
platter.... First, your vision is perfectly exact: I have no roof on my head
anymore, they have razed my "house," and I am camping in nothing at all (the
steppes), though the cherries are very good (which reassures me!). As for those
threatening tigers = ghosts. One laughs and they vanish. I think Mother wants us
to learn to laugh. I have the impression of a very new phase taking shape in
silence, as if after a long illness. Curiously enough, I could walk, I have
spent my whole life walking, and now I can stay for hours without moving in my
chair I don't even feel like moving anymore. How strange! I feel like letting
myself be carried along in Infinity, without anything, nullified and full. I
really think that I have years of poison to eliminate, as well as a whole habit
of battling even the battle was part of the old razed house.
Above all, there is a need: no more vibrations. No vibration at all. All
vibrations are perceived, felt as a Falsehood. So Land's End reveals itself to
be a marvellous place plunging into the sky, without anything that moves. Even
my question the question melts away here. I look (or avoid looking)
upon that whole life behind me as a hell, where there was only Mother's little
beach (not just any beach, I must say). What have you done? nothing. What have
you become? nothing. I have only exhausted the excess. And now there is only
... yes, as you say, a small tent in a wide, luminous, almost padded steppe. And
what are you waiting for? the Miracle, nothing less. And I don't even await it
for "me" I don't even know where this "me" is but for the world. A big
cataract that will sweep away all this organisation of phantoms. So, a seagull,
yes, I agree, or even a small lizard but not a man, never, never more a man,
enough of that job. And Sujata in the next room, like a light bird, polishing
the floor, with now and then a little song, crystalline, as if in eternity. Two
funny birds perched on the cataclysm of the worlds a delicious cataclysm. That
apart, I am "working," yes, but it is still a way of making a hole in the wall
(of the old world) until the moment when ... wooof! the cataract spurts out
superbly and oh! what fun then. And if I am mad, there is no harm in being mad
with things as they are nowadays. Rather be among the weightless madmen than
among the heavy ones, who will sink with their whole load of desires. Will you
come and join our weightless camping? Or will it be too empty without any
"serious" work?! Besides, we are waiting for the Machine and have a whole, very
serious programme. Who knows? Even baskets full of cherries for truant
schoolboys.
As for Mr. Thierry de
Scytivaux12... (let's be serious) who has interviewed heads of
states I don't know if the State will still be on the map but, well, that's
no way to behave. So I take hold of my mental goat rope to drag myself as hard
as I can into that mess. A priori, I see nothing that can shatter the stars. A
posteriori.... Maybe he could go and interview Mr. Hua and drop a word in his
ear that Mrs. I. is preparing a dirty trick for the fanfare, and that Chinese
Xylophones could enliven the concert of the democratic forces with a few well
placed firecrackers which would create quite a panic it would be interesting
to see. And ask him for 12,000 yens? (...).
I have nothing serious to say
yes keep well
and come camping with us.
Satprem
October 5, 1978
(Letter to two Aurovilians)
You have completely misunderstood the meaning of my
last letter. I have never thought that the meaning of Auroville consisted in
living like individual sardines in a collective tin nor that the unity of
Auroville lay in everyone living on the same model, at the same place, and
making their genuflections at the same hour even Marx's egalitarian heavens
never dreamt of such an intransigent communism or communitarism. And if the
Supramental and the ideal of a Gnostic community must be that, well, off to
Kamtchatka with the little polar bears. I am myself the most individualist of
individualists and stay carefully "on my own", and yet (it seems) I work
perfectly well for the community of Auroville and that of the world by trying to
communicate the meaning and the force of the work of Mother and Sri Aurobindo
through my own means. Unity, yes, in an infinite diversity. And each one by his
own particular means. Sri Aurobindo himself said that the highest state for the
human community at its peak would be "divine anarchism," and not, phew! mental
authoritarianism. But this
higher anarchism or supreme individualism could not exist except on one basis:
the disappearance of the selfish little individual into the divine Person who is
at the centre and is everybody's Person. There, we are perfectly
one, and it is the only place where we are
one, there is no other, and no "trick" will ever replace this primordial
and surgical operation. It is the only possible government and the only possible
community, because it is the only thing that unites and that
knows. So it is not a question of being in Aspiration or in Snarga or in
Pantin, but within in this unique place where everything meets, and of making
the small egos and the big ones melt away there. I don't doubt that B. gives his
cows, his milk, and goodness knows what to the rest of the Community, but that
is not the point. I don't doubt that B. and C. are different from X, Y, Z who
live in Aspiration or in Pantin, and so much the better! If we were all alike,
it would be a frightful bore! That is not the point. What I felt in your place
(apart from its qualities and beauty and all the external things) is probably an
individual "self" a little stronger than the others, something that strongly
delimits itself and this too, is an indispensable quality, because what the
Divine asks for is not wise and worshipping little sheep, but for strong, rich
beings, endowed with active qualities. For these strong, fully-formed
individuals, it is more difficult than for others to give themselves to the
Divine and make the limits melt away. It is more difficult, but the result is
richer. Sri Aurobindo even said that one must have "a bit of the titan" in
oneself so as to offer one's titan better and keep only its purified dynamism.
So there, B. and C. are struggling with this strong, fully-formed part of
themselves, this "individual monument," rather violent and tempestuous, but
rich, which must melt away into Something Else. The difficulties that arise with
our brothers are only there to help us put our finger on the sore spot there
is never someone's "fault,": there is a progress to make, that's all.
But to call Kali, as C. does, is still a selfish
violence that calls
for another, stronger violence. All that has to melt
into tenderness.
This Tenderness is Mother. She does not break anything: she makes things melt.
And when everything has completely melted within, there is no more opposition anywhere and everything meets harmoniously. The external oppositions are always the image of our own opposition. When it is tender within, everything is very tender.
I embrace both of you.
Satprem
October 10, 1978
(Personal letter about the French Sociιtι des Gens de Lettres13)
The man of letters greets you. I suppose it is inevitable. It reminds me of Franηois,14 during an excursion in the Loire Valley, filling in my arrival card at the hotel when I saw myself as a "man of letters," it gave me a little shock and I looked at that strange animal, as if I were suddenly caught in their entomologist s box with my little label. Well and truly dead. "But that's what you are!" said Franηois unrelentingly! Alas, I am not yet. A sort of nothing projected into the future, an arrow toward some goal. Well.... I received a letter from the Societe des Gens de Lettres, at Seuil when the Orpailleur15 was released, and I never answered. I am writing to you, though I'd rather be silent absolutely silent, as if all words were false. Strange how False everything seems.
...
Spent yesterday morning in Coonoor (dentist), the teeth too are giving way,
nothing holds on to me anymore. The leg seemed better, but as soon as I walk, it
starts twisting veins again I don't feel like walking anymore. The dermatitis
on my back, which was almost cured, started again furiously after a day in
Pondicherry! Strange. The medicine from Paris is ineffective; probably this kind
of infection is not in their catalogue. Whenever I am in silence, everything
goes marvellously well. The impression of being like a plant that absorbs and
absorbs the silence. That's all.
Satprem
*
(Letter from Sujata to friends)
You are wonderful ...or rather, in case you should protest, let's say that Mother is wonderful through you. She loves playing with the most disparate elements! and making an homogeneous whole out of them. Never short of marvels, our little Mother. What does She have left up her sleeve?
...So good work to you all.
Sujata
Here, the climate is turning to winter. Cool at sunset, but what a splendour! How beautiful it would be, if we could take bits of sky for the walls and floor of our rooms!
October 13, 1978
Oh! to stop being human!! om.
October 25, 1978
(Letter to friends in Paris)
...
We are all very united in this funny adventure, not always so funny, but well,
its very negativity makes for a kind of ineluctable positivity in the end. No
doubt, if a few people are like that, so completely turned to Something Else,
Mother must ultimately use this ferment to grow something out of it. What eludes
us is the sense, the direction or the way of this new growth. But there is a
difference: earlier on, I was pondering a lot over this other species as if over
a "problem", as if there would suddenly be a formidable intuition. But now it is
as if the sensation were beginning to consider it. I don't dare to say
the body, but a skin-deep something that truly is beginning to grow antennae or
goodness knows what, but it looks, and it tends toward and it asks itself. It is
no longer an expected intuition, but an expected sensation, as if suddenly,
something could change its density and could see things clearly. I very much
feel the need to immerse myself again and again in this Agenda, this
vibration, with the impression that it does all the work secretly and that
something will happen "at the end" (an end no matter where). After all, Mother
needs a human support to perform her operation and why should she not choose
those who would be only too pleased! The main thing is to ask only for that. One
has to be a complete out-law, suspended in nothing and extraordinarily
attentive. I am ready to leave this skin in three seconds, but this superfluous
life which wants nothing of this life, why not make gratuitous use of it?
Basically, that's how it is: the "tent" is there, at skin level, the whole house
has gone. Well. Then I see a weightless Robert, perfectly gratuitous, climbing
on the roof to put coal tar, screwing the bathroom pipes together and doing all
kinds of improbable jobs without effort, and a perfectly fanciful Anne with all
kinds of
improbable little fairies and elves scrambling up her tresses all that
together must amount to something, don't you think? Mother, who always feels
like laughing, should be able to find a Playground there, less boring than that
of Pondicherry, shouldn't she? I have the mounting sensation that this damned
Land's End is not so damned, after all. But a long-long bath of silence is
needed to completely shed our old cloaks. Here, sometimes, everything is
extraordinarily between two worlds, with a sea of clouds letting hardly a few
blue crests through, and the great plumber emerging from the mist like a
laughing god of the future. Why not?
It is this "why not" that is growing.
So we are all on tenterhooks for phone calls from Delhi
will it come, or not? This damned Machine must pass through all the
departments of India. After the police, it is now the department of electronics,
but as there are also optical parts in it, it may have to pass through the
department of eyeglasses and various points of view, who knows? Well.... Kireet
wants to bring the Bulgarian President's daughter here, around November 15....
There is still the Machine and the deus ex machina. I think that "one" is
waiting for the machine to be here in order to start "the red evening of the
West" and the "black night of the East" (these last words are mine) out of which
the golden dawn of Mother will emerge. The time of the great sweeping is drawing
near. It is not possible, not possible for things to continue to run like
old clockwork. Lately, I've had the repeated sensation that Mother put us here
in a safe haven for us to continue the work. All that is meticulously
planned, to the minute, I feel it. And this Machine, for me, remains the Sign.
In fact, my protestation against this place is now becoming a kind of divine
sign in reverse! One desperately tried to compel me to pack up and go. But
Mother stuck us here purposely. After having spoken to me for some
eighteen years, She was not likely to leave the second round to chance and to
the Breton whims of her impolite son. Though had I been polite and
well-mannered, I would have fallen
right into the trap of the right-minded Ashramites. She made a mule of me in
just the appropriate dose.
My tirade is over. (...)
I am closing this interminable letter. I still have building work going on, half the floor of my room is demolished. The masons are desperately mixing red paint into the lemon yellow cement so that the two halves of the room look alike! We ran to Coonoor and Coimbatore looking for the same orange powder, but they had only this lemon yellow! And we are struggling with short circuits everywhere. Arul has joined the wire ends together in pipes and as finally, we have put all the pipes into the walls, we have to break the walls, or (what Robert is going to do), abandon the pipes drowned in cement and make a new installation on the outside... decidedly charming. A general and impudent dishonesty.
... I take leave of you, I am tired. I had to shuttle between this letter and the masons' buckets of paint.... I long for a life so completely different, where one will no longer have need of a super this or super that where one will be naturally beautiful, with a house the colour of one's soul, without paint pots.
Satprem
October 30, 1978
Fifty-five years of misery.
November 6, 1978
A crushing weariness in the back.
*
(Personal letter from Sujata, originally in English)
Hi,
here's the latest! We are all swimming (well, nearly!). It's been raining and
raining and raining. Now, to the profuse kindness of the rain-god Indra, Pavan
the wind-god has brought in his frolicsomeness (and please don't mind my
English, I am as full of fancy and fantasy as all the rest).
To all the troubles of Robert has now been added: the collapse of the Chinese wall. Yes, our "muraille de Chine," behind Happywood, the one erected by so gentle Mani. Boom-bam-ghrrr ... down tumbled the stones over the tube-well, knocking asunder some water pipes on the way and burying both the wells under tons of mud. So now the whole process has to be gone through again. If only we had Aladdin's lamp, even his ring would do, to command a giant, it would be so much easier, don't you agree?
November 8, 1978
Indira wins the elections [legislative] at Chikmagalur.
November 11, 1978
(Personal letter, following the cyclonic visit of a Parisian friend)
The second cyclone dispelled the first one. How can one
live in such a vibratory state? For two days, I felt my whole spine going on
vibrating and vibrating.... What bludgeon blow or what else will free human
beings from this constant
state of vibration? Truly, I think it will take a physiological, world-wide
traumatism. I cannot understand how, collectively, we will move on to the next
species ... unless a very physiological catastrophe occurs. The other state is
silent like that of a pigeon or a tiger, or any other animal nothing moves,
except when necessary. So one breathes, feels and sees things clearly. (...) The
repair work in Land's End is drawing to an end. Roger dropped in on us
unexpectedly (he was in Delhi), rushed down by C.P.N., who was worried about the
disastrous news in the papers about the Nilgiris in fact, Land's End, so
exposed apparently and projecting over the void, is extraordinarily protected,
much more than Happywood, and much warmer. So silent too, in spite of all the
workers in the world strangely silent. It would seem that there is something
here, that an ancient yogi or Rishi has done a long tapasya [discipline]
here and it remains as if impregnated with silence. I "made" Nandanam, I poured
tons of Mother's vibrations into it. Here, it seems to have been already done.
Obviously, one cannot move to another species without this state, which is
absolutely devoid of vibrations. Any vibration is a falsehood, like when you
burn your fingers while moving a
log.16 It is painful. And then sentimentality, "good" vibrations,
are as painful as the others. It is the same world, on the right as well as on
the wrong side. Well.
.....
Z [a worker from the Institute who is complaining]?
Yes.... It is "the fault of the adverse forces," it is so easy. The Agenda
will hammer him until he understands that the adverse forces are the Lord who
wants us to progress and break through our little walls or break our foot, if
we refuse to toe the line. And all those stories of "magic" too, it is also the
Lord kneading us and giving us just the right dose for us to acquire the
consciousness of the Lord. If we were perfectly pure, perfectly
that, we would be without wounds
and immortal. One has to be like a breeze ... a divine breeze. No "group leader"
of the Institute, no. Everyone has his part, his place, that's all, and all
works as a whole haven't they heard Mother: "I am not the leader of a group,
it's disgusting!" Do you imagine me as a "group leader"? Let everyone work
according to their abilities, and darn it, Mother will do the rest....
Sorry to hear that Carole has not received my last letter, which was important, I think. Something came to me so clearly, that she should write the scenario of the film on Mother I did not see an accurately "biographical" film, respectful of the contingencies and of the present characters: I saw "the beginning of the Legend." The legend of the new world. To extricate oneself from the narrow facts, projecting it a thousand years ahead, and make a formidable, legendary film which would show this Adventurer of the new species struggling against all the wolves of the old world. You understand: not the Holy Mother of Pondicherry. And one must not be afraid of putting all the little Judases and Barabases in it even Satprem, why not. An epic. One does not give a damn about the present little individuals and what they will think or not, and one makes a great film of the new species. A symbol. Not a historical exactness, but a magical one She wanted a fairy tale, He wanted a fairy tale, and they strove to create the fairy tale despite all the old apes.
.....
Indira victorious as expected, but she will not return
to the previous conditions, India must be purged. I think it will hasten the
necessary chaos. I see less and less how things will take place, but they
will take place. The Americans (and the French) do so many silly things with
the Chinese they arm China, it's crazy! So, you see, if their terrible little
game develops according to their wishes, it would mean that Russia would be
forced into some foolishness, beaten, eliminated, and then the Americans would
be "victorious" with their "victorious" Chinese allies. The world
divided between China and the United States. They are crazy. They don't know
what China means that is, the West and the whole of Asia swallowed up. I
cannot see how Mother will unravel this bobbin so that a new species may emerge.
I cannot believe in the long-slow solution, so painfully generous with human
lives. All the same, "the first sign of the movement of transformation" (Mother
said) was China (1906). What does that mean? As for me, I persist in
saying that the first sign of the realisation of the transformation is the chaos
in India and the purge of India. It is the first place to be purged. So how do
you solve this terrible equation? Unless Mother's "miracle" happens but for
the miracle to happen, men have to want it, don't they? They shoved her into the
tomb.
But if suddenly, a light, disturbing vibration comes and takes possession of men, like a plague in reverse, and they can no longer find their bearings, so much so that they lose their human heads.... There?!
Anyway, we have reached that point. We are going to see. And why am I launching into all these useless speeches? It is an obsession with me, this tomorrow of the earth. (...)
That's it. I think that even the "tent" is sinking, so let's say nothing of me. All vibrations hurt.
Satprem
November 15, 1978
My last white pigeon from Nandanam dies.
The importation of Mohini18 granted.
Thirty-fifth anniversary of my arrest.
The Reversal of the obscure forces is beginning.
November 18-19-20. 1978
Visit
of Ludmila
Zhivkova19 to Land's End.
On November 19 (or 20), while sipping her tea at the "Wellington Club," with her eyes wide open, she sees an emerald green lawn opening out or plunging into an intense blue sky, and exactly where the house of Land's End stands, covering the whole spot, a pagoda in the shape of the golden Buddha. At once, Ludmila thinks or sees or hears: "the place where a divine work is to be accomplished."
December 4, 1978
(Letter to Kireet Joshi)
Dear Kireet,
I don't know (the letter from Frederick that you have referred to me)... If they said they intended to buy eight acres to grow potatoes, I would understand! because it would be a little creative, or at least nourishing (!). But eight acres to erect buildings for an abstract "Centre," it seems to me ... yes, not very productive. But I am not really supposed to judge these things, they must be old enough to know what is necessary. You see, they are lacking milk and the most basic necessities in Auroville so they would do better to devote their minds to creating productive activities rather than building offices, don't you think so?
Please excuse me, and don't think that this is an "opinion." Our friend Tata and Bijoy Singh will judge far better than me.
We
are waiting for Mohini....
With much affection.
Satprem
December 8, 1978
(Letter from Satprem to his mother)
My beloved little mother,
Here you are in this dark Paris, I'd rather you were in Saint-Pierre, it would reassure me. December 15 is drawing near [my mother's eighty-third birthday], I would like to surround you with much love and gratitude. I have quite the impression that we belong to the same, indestructible world. We say the "Bay," but it is a very true material translation of this world: vast, soft and luminous. Here in these mountains which are so different, I have the impression of being fully there with you. But it is vast and luminous, without any vibration of human agitation you plunge there, you can look on indefinitely, and it is as if the soul knew no more bounds or age. That was what I liked in my Bagheera. It is our country forever. How I pity the poor humans who don't have that. But my heart would be happy if you could come once and see my new place? Is it impossible? But I well know that it is not essential and that we have met again without any borders.
Here the winter has started. I had forgotten the cold,
though it is not like in Europe. Every evening, I light a big fire in the hearth
Sujata is near me and it is good and soothing to look at the fire, like gazing
at the sea. I walk about with your cape, it is good and warm. You know, this
place is like a promontory surrounded by lawns and flowers, as if at the end of
the world, at the end of all paths, and plunging into an immense valley
surrounded by blue mountains.
There are still many flowers: azaleas galore, of every colour some are as big
as trees, and all kinds of flowers which I can't name, but many geraniums whose
solid red I like, charming hollyhocks: some are all white with just a touch of
pink and such a fresh, pure fragrance. In the season, we have a huge Japanese
cherry tree with pink flowers. And behind, overhanging the house, a full wood of
mimosa and big eucalyptus trees. In fact, the entire place is an immense forest
of mimosa and eucalyptus trees. It is so quiet and smells so good. Here I can
work in peace it is such a relief not to live in the hatred of Pondicherry
anymore. Never will I go back to that place. And here we have deer, boars, black
grouses all kinds of birds. Down below the house, there are tea plantations,
very green like a high, well-combed lawn, then the forest, with a cascading
little river. This place is truly very gracious and it is miraculous in the
middle of these mountains devastated by men the entire Nilgiris and the entire
Himalayas have been stripped of their trees by the human tidal wave: they plant
potatoes. So this place is a miracle for how long, I don't know, with this
devastating human proliferation. But I feel that Mother and Sri Aurobindo
chose this place for us, so that we would be protected in our work. They
don't abandon those who love them. In fact, after all the cyclones in my life, I
am at peace, as if in eternity. Our small team is working.... A kind of Noah's
ark perched on the mountains, so protected from all the world's disorders. It
will take many more disorders and demolitions before we can emerge into a new
era. It is the great purification of the world and like an immense divide which
is becoming more and more apparent between those who aspire, who are truly
alive, and all the old, dark shrivelled up ones, so dark. The difference between
the dark ones and the living can almost be seen with the naked eye. It is this
difference that seems more and more pronounced and visible. In short, we are
ready for the world's turning point it is coming. We are working for it. And
your family is very alive. May your beacon stay with us for a long time;
it is very soft and very good. I surround you with all my love.
Satprem
December 11. 1978
Vision
Mother: "We are going to pass the bac [abbreviation of baccalaureat exam, bac in French is a ferry boat] together." Mother naked. "The stark Mother."
December 15, 1978
(Letter to Micheline)
At last the customs were passed yesterday in Delhi
Mohini is free. The resistance was strong as expected. It is like a race
against events, they have decided to arrest Indira; the "judgment" will be
passed on the 18th (what a masquerade!) and then ... then we shall
see. Mother is only waiting for everything to be in its proper place. When the
Puzzle will have completely fallen into place, we will see the picture.... It is
the same Movement, isn't it? But Mother protects her soldiers. In fact She has
marvellously guided us since her "departure," only every step seemed to be
blind, hence the anguish of the "subjects." The meaning of Land's End is
unveiling itself bit by bit. She holds our hand. I saw her a few days ago: She
was completely naked. Mother without any veil can the world bear that? The
stark Mother. And She told me: "We are going to take the tests/exams
together." It was the future tense.... But this "together" warmed my heart. We
are going Well, in any case,
we are going there. Mothers Island is close. You are with us, we are all
together, here or there.
... The house is being adorned little by little, simple but beautiful. Oh, I did not tell you a very interesting thing: for three days in a row I received the Bulgarian President's daughter, who is the Minister of Culture in Sofia. There was a great need to establish a relay for Mother behind the Iron Curtain. Now it is done. There too we will have an Institute, in a special form. These were three days of good work. She: very receptive, reading the first volume of Mother in English. And she has a rather exceptional gift of vision since a car accident which smashed in her skull and drastically upset her life (strange how we need accidents to move to the true path....). Well, one morning, at the Wellington Club where she was staying, she was all astounded to see a strange spectacle with her eyes wide open: instead of Land's End, there where the house is located, she saw a gigantic golden pagoda, which did not have the shape of a pagoda, but of the Buddha: a golden Buddha, in the middle of a deep blue sky, with green grass everywhere on the ground, like Nature's emerald. It covered the whole present place of Land's End.
But I had always noticed that this place had a very surprising quality of solid peace, which did not exist in Happywood, as if they were two different worlds; and this solidity of luminous peace was there even when forty workers were on the site. It struck me a lot, I used to tell myself that perhaps some yogi or Rishi had done his tapasya here. And now.... Interesting.
Satprem
December 17, 1978
Mohini
(the photocomposer) moves into her room in Land's End.
"The United States decides to establish full diplomatic relations with China."
December 19, 1978
Indira under arrest (decision of the Parliament).
The beginning of the great Purge of India.
December 29, 1978
At last my room is finished.
January 1, 1979
Two huts below Land's End.
The attack.
January 2, 1979
Two hundred "Sinhalese repatriates" expected below Land's End.
January 8, 1979
A lorry of posts for the huts thirty-five families expected with goats, dogs, transistors, excrement and the devastation of the forest.
Mohini there for barely twenty days.
*
(Letter to an Auroville woman. Note in the margin: "Not sent, except to the Devil!")
The game of the Asura is always the same, throughout
all of human spiritual history: it catches a bit of the Truth, and with the very
force of the Truth it has swallowed, it develops its Falsehood. The danger of
the Falsehood is not Falsehood, if I dare say, but the portion of Truth that has
been swallowed and that helps strengthen the Falsehood. The true Asura is not
the "devil" whom everybody knows is dark and wicked, but the little saint who
uses the Truth and utters the words of Truth for his selfish ends. In the name
of Christ's "Love," more than one "heretic" was imprisoned and tortured and
burnt. In the name of "nonviolence," they betrayed the true Shakti of India and
encouraged a mass
of spiritual calves who meditate seated on the rot of the country. The greatest
crimes and the greatest betrayals have always been committed in the name of
Truth, it goes without saying. In the name of Mother and Sri Aurobindo and the
"Ideal of Human Unity," they imprison some Aurovilian brothers and hire dubious
lawyers. In the name of this much-vaunted "Unity," they expel Satprem from the
Ashram, take away the visas of the dissidents or the rebels, and at the same
time, say: let's embrace Navajata, let's embrace Shyamsundar let's embrace one
another, we are all "One," aren't we? No, little one, I don't know if it is the
"Truth," but it is mental rot. The "spiritual" arguments of the person you speak
of smell bad it is a corpse of the decaying Truth. You must choose, you must
know what you want and on which side you stand. It is this courage that is
needed. During the war too, we heard more than one traitor, in the name of the
"Unity of France," proclaim collaboration with the troops of the Gestapo.
Unity is all very well, but we have first to deserve it: you don't create unity by putting a viper in your pocket, or else it will bite you and so much the better, if you are silly enough to put a viper in your pocket.
Truth is not something that is like a fried egg: it is something that becomes itself and conquers itself. Unity is not something that exists like a pair of spiritual slippers. It is something that becomes itself and conquers itself at each instant against a thousand enemies.
So let's become and conquer as Rishi Agastya said:
"Let us have the taste of even all the contesting forces,
Let us conquer indeed even here,
Let us run this battle-race of a hundred leadings..."
(Rig-Veda I. 179)
That's it.
Satprem
January 9, 1979
(From Sujata to the same Aurovilian)
You
know how much work Satprem has. He gave me your letter.
Do you know that there are three categories of people? a) Those who learn through observation, b) those who learn through explanations and, c) those who learn through experience. So it is for everyone to choose their own way of learning.
a) I must say that Mother gave many a demonstration of facts to you all in Auroville, so that you could learn through observation (of course, I am speaking of those who did not have the experience themselves).
b) Satprem wrote and wrote again to all and each one, explaining the way of forces, how they act. He did this unrewarding work with much patience, much tenderness for his brothers and sisters of Auroville. Now he must go beyond. I say: too bad for those who did not know how to take advantage of it.
c) Now for the third category. Well, let them go, and may they have a nice trip! If it is still necessary to explain to people that "a scorpion or a viper bites, you know, and their bite is very poisonous," it is a waste of time. Let them have their experience of being bitten. Then perhaps they will understand? Who knows? Everything is possible.
No, the only solution is to get out of this mental porridge. If the pure flame burns within, everything is clearly perceived. It is not through mental argumentation or vital effervescence that one can approach Mother. It is through the sincerity of the soul.
Hoping that Auroville will get out of its mind and enter its heart once and for all, I send you my very affectionate thoughts.
Sujata
Satprem
embraces you.
January 18, 1979
(Letter to Micheline)
Yesterday, one month to the day after Mohini's arrival,
one more person came to enlarge our team: Keya (my former Canadian secretary,
who has professional experience of the functioning of electronic typesetters).
We already have three work shifts in place from 7 in the morning to 7 in the
evening, now we are going to gallop. Before long I will be able to tell you
exactly, but volume III of the French Agenda will probably be ready in
April, as well as volume I of the English Agenda, and we will bring out
the six volumes that were scheduled for this year. In this decaying world, to
work for something positive is very refreshing, perhaps the only positive thing!
It is a grace to be here a grace immediately threatened, for, and that's where
one can clearly see the play of forces, twenty days after Mohini's arrival, the
local government was preparing to settle some three or four hundred refugees
from Ceylon just below Land's End, with babies, goats and transistors; and the
only water source that barely supplies Land's End in other words, the
devastation of the forest and the whole place transformed into an immense
stinking shantytown. A calamity. These forces know very well what they are
doing, what they want and where to strike. Telegram to Delhi, we did everything
we could, Kireet rang the alarm bell of all the possible authorities we are
waiting for the result.... I think that if Mother has put us here, She will know
how to thwart this attack too. It has been a step-by-step battle since 1973 we
can thus gauge the importance of the Work. I am confident as usual at the last
minute, Mother brushes aside the phantoms (as at Delhi customs), but it truly is
a "last minute." Then
you understand that you are really doing something Positive you even
understand how the materialisation of this Agenda hastens the Earth's
events and the forces, even if the
Agenda were never to be distributed. It contains the seeds of the
destruction of those forces, they know it, and they rush in. What is there is
the power to change the world. And in a kind of astonishment, as if
facing a mystery, we look at this little team of rare beings, here and there,
who carry such a formidable Work in their hands. Mother has freed me (us) from
so many pitfalls since her departure that She will certainly continue! And I
remember Sri Aurobindo: "I'll help him (Satprem) all through." It
takes on its full meaning now. Well, that's it. I think that what allows us to
face such a task is the simplicity of our hearts the more helpless we are,
like children, the stronger we are! I am so totally incapable of doing anything
that they must be capable of doing for me!
Now, the second part of the program. We have to
visualize a little ahead. So in two or three months we will have the French
Agenda + the English one ready for printing. India is the battlefield No. 1
(United States = No. 2). So we are likely to have to start again the impossible
race we experienced at Macmillan in Madras, when we were clandestinely printing
the three volumes of Mother. The ashramite octopus is still present, with
ramifications in every corner (especially at the printers and booksellers). My
first impulse (in the past and even recently) was to have our "Mother's printing
press" in Auroville. But I gave up this idea (regretfully). It would amount to
throwing ourselves into the lion's jaws: they would create all the judicial,
economic and other possible traps, joyously supported by "the forces that know
full well." It is so easy to light a fire, easy to create labour disturbances. A
categorical No came. Even the Aurovilians are an unknown quantity. I have no
doubts about them, I trust the future and think that their difficulties forge
them and oblige them to become, but ... there are too many "buts." I cannot take
the risk of seeing the Work put legally under
lock and key, or destroyed by means of a petrol can. Auroville is a tiny point
of the work upon Earth Mother takes care of them, but clearly She does not
want Her work to enter this dubious whirl. I am the first to regret it, for it
was my first idea as early as 1974, but it's like that. The earth comes before
Auroville. For the same reason, it had been contemplated setting up this
"Mother's printing press" in Delhi, but both Sir C.P.N. Singh and myself
rejected this proposal: the Work must be materially, physically, gathered up and
enveloped in one place, which is like Mother's Bastion, without leaving any
possibility to the play of forces which will immediately intervene if there is
any physical distance between the composition and the printing of the books.
Precisely, these forces know perfectly well how to use all the petty physical
phenomena and create, along the route of the post or of the lorries, all kinds
of "unexpected" incidents that come and block the Work with a "trifle."
Everything must be physically grouped here, up to the stage of the distribution
after that, birds can fly and come what may, it is no business of ours
anymore. It is truly Mother's Bastion, if we are touched, then everything is
touched. Of course, had I chosen Kamtchatka or the far end of the Himalayas
instead of the blue mountains, I would have been attacked there and targeted by
the forces there all the same, but if Land's End is the chosen place, the
defence will be there. It is not an act against Auroville (!) nor despair
of Auroville, but a simple and occult act of security.
So I wrote to Tata in order to get some information about the possibilities of purchasing a second-hand offset press (Heidelberg model) in India. Importations are decidedly lengthy and hazardous. I am waiting for the information.... It is essential to materialise and precipitate Mother into the atmosphere of India it is even more urgent than in France. We have already organised a "rotation" from 7 in the morning to 10 at night non-stop you see we are getting going! There is no time to lose....
Our very gracious team embraces you it is really a
happy little
world and a "Playground" that will delight Mother, after the prison of
Pondicherry.
Tenderly
Satprem
P.S.: No, I don't despair of or have any doubt about Auroville, in spite of its childish quarrels and games but they need a serious lesson, and I think Mother is giving them that lesson. What is disastrous or regrettable is not so much their childish quarrels and dissensions, but the sad fact that those two hundred or so brains have been there for so many years on that plot of land, some two hundred young men on two feet, without having found the means of supporting themselves independently through what ignorance or laziness? If there are no hands ready to work, there is no heart, no flame, nothing, except empty words. First of all, the Aurovilians need to learn to work, to create. After so many years, do all those "men" and women really need to beg for alms from mummy and daddy? It is the lesson of their penury. It is no use swallowing up millions of rupees or dollars, because they will be truly swallowed up those men must find their own means and first of all find their own quality of men before dreaming of supermen. Instead of cultivating potatoes, they cultivate meetings. This is the sad, simple truth. If this situation persists, they go to their destruction. What killed the Ashram is that it is crammed with lazybones. There.
S.
January 22. 1979
Vision
Vision of Saint Genevieve (!!)
(She
protected Paris against the invasion of the Huns, in the 5th
century.) Why do I see her?
February 18. 1979
Vision
Little "air pockets" are opened in my body (!).
P.S. February 19: "My" body (or the Earth's body?) like
a dead skin all over it, in which there were lots of little tears or
semicircular openings, like a small moon (
),
as if very regularly, almost systematically incised, letting another layer of
skin show under the dead skin, red, or like a red body (a rather dark red).
It is bursting everywhere (?).
February 22, 1979
(Letter to Micheline)
Your wonderful paper brought by Yolande.... I feel a little ashamed to use such beautiful things. I am used to scribbling anything as I can, and I "can" not a lot these last weeks. We have to struggle to advance with a few more pages of the Agenda and I can no longer answer letters besides, something in me does not want to answer anymore. It is no use sending me letters from Paris, except if there are some precise points (whether they are addressed to me or not, please open and sort out). I am engrossed in the situation of the world. The world is the only thing that interests me (well, I am in it it is more and more suffocating), all the rest....
It is Tata Press in Bombay that will print our books,
until we
print them ourselves. Impossible to import machines.... I don't want to
intervene because it is not my business, truly, and I cannot look after
everything I told C.P.N. that I did not want to be a member of the new trust
that we plan for Mother's printing works. I don't want to be involved in the
commercial side. I am here to project Mother's Work, to materialise it, and be
immersed in the world in a certain way as for the rest.... My "true work," Sri
Aurobindo would say, I understand well. I think that everything goes towards
chaos with hurried steps and that Land's End, finally, will be the "safe" place
to continue the Work a little "outside" of the perturbations. I breathe violence
and an oppressive cruelty in the world. It will be more and more like that,
until it changes course.
......
Sorry for these material things, a little broken up and incomplete. We are working. We are together. In this insane and suffocating world, we knock at the doors of the future.
With tenderness
Satprem
March 7, 1979
(Letter to Micheline)
A few words just to tell you my affection. A lot of work. The battle of the Ceylon refugees is going on (the Collector from Ooty will come to visit and decide on the situation ... in two weeks).
Carole left some 1200 Rupees for Land's End, Happy-wood on your behalf yes, "Happy End" is not bad! I wrote a letter finally to the President of the Societe des Gens de Lettres, with all the required flourishes how all this is old-old. That is the news, in brief. I am in the middle of volume IV of the Agenda (in July).
...
How everything is simple with you. But a generous sample was needed in the human
species absolutely, totally and simply generous one sample. It
represents something that is very important in the Game. We will keep you
informed. It is such a marvellous Grace to see each element in its proper
place, so inevitable. It is truly a Divine sign (if we needed one).
......
This Land's End, after having resisted so much, is a marvel of beauty and peace truly, it is Mother's place. Sujata noticed that this big round lawn at the edge of an abyss of open sky strangely resembled her vision of "Mother's Island," where we landed after the wreck of the big liner.... In any case, we are materialising with all our might we are one with you.
Tenderly to you all
Satprem
April 3, 1979
(To the aforementioned Aurovilian)
Just a few words to tell you my deep tenderness. Don't torment yourself. You take the difficulties upon yourself too much instead of passing them on to Mother. You must learn to give her the problems: it's Yours. All this human madness, this human confusion you give to Her: it's Yours.
It is not for you to solve the problems or to give yourself a headache or a stomach-ache: it is for Her. You, you have only to keep on repeating and repeating: Yours, Yours, for You, it is You. You pass on to Her the difficulties.
After all, it is Her business, isn't it? Your business is only to repeat the mantra and say: "Yours, Yours," in the midst of the general disorder,
and
it is the best way of helping
With my tenderness
Satprem
April 4, 1979
They hang Bhutto.20 The beginning of something.
April 7, 1979
(Letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English)
Dearest Companion,
I am greatly relieved but not surprised to see that we
are of the same perception. Now it seems quite obvious that we would have been
trapped, had we persisted in our plan to print the Agenda here in India.
I can feel more and more painfully, even in my body, the whole atmosphere of the
continent it is suffocating. The whole pβtβla [the subterranean worlds
or hell] has taken possession of most of the beings, supposedly human. Small
"Pranabs" are ruling here and there with a mind that resembles a military
tin-trunk, and no heart. When cruelty is not there, baseness and smallness take
the place either there is a lack of Shakti slumping into darkness and Tamas,
or there is a cruel, distorted Shakti. This condition cannot last too long. It
is bound to come to destruction. I wonder how Mother will work out this tangle
of semi-truth and falsehood without destroying the whole species. War never
brings any solution
to the real problem. I rather believe in economic chaos which affects people
right in their bellies, and it may be, one day, the veil will tear apart and the
impact will be so tremendous that all those living below a certain level of
Truth-frequency or vibration will simply drop dead. All this seems rather
apocalyptic, but we are right in it. All this is known to you. It is more and
more painfully felt in the body.
...Meanwhile we should prepare ourselves in India. Translations into the various Indian languages are needed. This takes a lot of time certainly one year's work for one Agenda. Do we have the right people for Bengali, Hindi, Gujarati, etc.? An Indian team should be constituted. Also we must earn some money for our Mother's Institute, not only for subsidizing the various translators, but for launching our campaign in India sometime next year when the Agenda comes back from the West. (...)
I must leave you, dearest Companion, lots of work are waiting. You are constantly with me and with Sujata. Is there any hope that you come here?
Please keep well, we need you so much.
With deep love,
Satprem
May 5, 1979
Davide, Italian TV. "The end of the pygmies."
May 5-6, 1979
Vision
Mother naked, one more wound.
We
are sliding to the ground (?).
May 21, 1979
The only solution: Manifest Yourself.
May 31, 1979
(Letter to Micheline)
I seldom write, but you and each of you there share my affection and are in my thoughts. Mother puts everyone marvellously in his indispensable place. (...)
I progress step by step in these Agendas, obstinately, as if in another sort of typographical forest.... The Presence is here, so powerful. We are led. We must find this path of the new world indeed this path. A few among men must find the means. We must find the means.
May Mother hold our hands very tightly.
Satprem
*
(From Sujata to Micheline)
What a joy yesterday! I saw volume III in the forest, near the little spring, when Robert came back from the post office.
And yesterday morning, there was the function for the completion of the Potala [our guest-house]. We all met to see the engineer do the puja.
Then yesterday evening, like the blessing of the sky, a light rain shower.
And your message with the narcissus. I am so touched. Filled.
I
embrace you, dear, dear Micheline, very tenderly,
Sujata
June 1979
In reply to a letter from Micheline, who wrote in particular: "Hardly a week goes by without a visitor to the association asking us if we know Guru X, Mother Yor Mother Z (so-called reincarnations of Mother or con-tinuators of Sri Aurobindo's work), what we think of them and whether we acknowledge them as such."
I read X's letter about "Mother-Meera." There will be other ones. Here is what I have to say:
Everyone is free to believe what they like. But "to believe" is so easy, mind you, it exempts you from becoming yourself. Since a few Christs and others, men have spent their time saddling one Avatar then another with the care of making the progress for them. One "believes" and one is exempted from everything else. And when the Avatar is there, fully alive, one crucifies him or shoves him into the grave for he is really a little disturbing with his exact Light. History goes on and men remain the same as their crass.
"Mother's reincarnation"?... She is still healing the wounds men have inflicted on her. Perhaps She is a little fed up with the Pondicherrians, no? Is She going to shut herself up again in a yellow dungeon, under the supervision of some little Pranab? To be surrounded by worshippers who will not understand Mother No. 2 any more than Mother No. 1 or Mother No. 10,000 one keeps going round and round in circles, but who wants to become the other species in his flesh, the one that has lost all its human illusions?
The "reincarnation" of Mother, yes: in every sincere heart, in every right effort, in every conscious gesture in every place where there is an effort toward.
And
when we have all overcome our stupidity of little worshippers, then perhaps we
will see
her, but we need eyes to see the Truth, even eyes in our bodies. It is
not She who has the need to reincarnate, it is we who need to get out of
our idiotic incarnation.
So let's smile about all that. Men need a certain dose of illusions and "tricks" to take their little steps of progress if they were put directly in contact with the naked Truth, they would burst. Let everyone go his own way and catch his little trick or his big trick the main thing is to go to the end, where there is no trick left. But we, I mean the Institute, have nothing to do with all this "spiritual" puppet show we are here to publish Mother's Work integrally, that's all. But neither 13 nor 230 volumes will remove the scales from the eyes of those who, truly, don't look at themselves in anguish and with an almost painful intensity, with such a poignant question, saying to themselves: what is man, what is he, where is he going? what power has he? Or who doesn't look at this Earth, this poor Earth, painful and malefic and cruel and so small, oh! so small, asking themselves again, with this pain and this poignancy: but Earth, this Earth ... where is it going with its burden of falsehood and cruelty and unconsciousness is it going to change? Or are we all going to burst once more without truly getting out of it? Ah, who wants, who truly wants things to change and, first of all, to change himself? This is the reincarnation of Mother, in the burning intensity of the question that She is asking the entire Earth and in each heart. Mother burns there, Mother is there, in this burning.
Everything else is circus.
Then finally they expel this poor "Meera" (I mean the Pondicherry Ashram) as if she were Mother's "rival" all that is so ridiculous, ridiculous in two respects: Sri Aurobindo does not expel anybody, and Mother smiles: yes, may you all become Me ... then the Earth will go on a little better.
But good Lord! become.
So, happy journey to Meera and happy journey to whoever:
as for us, we want to become, that's all. And no fuss.
Satprem
June 15, 1979
The police come to Land's End to inquire, sent upon a request from Pondicherry (Nava).
June 16, 1979
(Letter to J.R.D. Tata)
Dearest friend,
I wanted so much to write to you, at once to thank you for all the pains you have taken to get that printing press for us, and to apologize for changing all our plans. I am a little ashamed. The truth is simple: faced with all those difficulties and delays that seemed to assail our enterprise, I asked myself: why? Then I understood clearly, as if Mother were telling me: "You must not print in India because instantly those Ashram people, Nava, etc., will take you to court and manage to block the distribution of the Agenda." Now, English is the key to the distribution throughout the world. I have thus decided to print the English volumes in Paris, and from there we will send the books to the United States where we will try to find a good distributor, if not a publisher. Consequently, the money that was kept for India had to be sent back to Paris. Such is the situation. Those evil-minded people cannot take me to court in Paris or in the United States, but they can do it here corruption is everywhere. You know something about it....
Besides, I am beginning to be attacked right here. The
police came yesterday to my home, sent by the Pondicherry Foreigners'
Registration Office (how did they know my address?) to enquire about two
ex-Auroville members of my work team here, Roger Toll, an American who
translates the Agenda into English, and N., a French woman who works for
me. As a result, both of them are obliged to leave. My work is disorganised.
Obviously, Nava and the Ashram have denounced them to the police. It is a sordid
and abominable world. I think that they are preparing something directly against
me, perhaps to obtain my expulsion from India. Everything is possible. You know
full well that today in India all that represents a little bit of honesty and
truth is hounded like a criminal.
But I love the true
India, and I want to stay in India, and I will struggle right to the end,
because the battle of the world is in India. And this Agenda, even if
people know nothing about it and don't understand, represents and incarnates the
Power that will open the doors to a truer world. That is why the Enemy is so
dead set against this work. He knows that these books contain his ruin. The dark
forces that hold this poor India in their claws seem to triumph, but in fact
they are desperate. All the old values are collapsing and all our moralising old
sages, like Gandhi, are a caricature of truth; all our philanthropic and social
means are a caricature of the true remedy; all our riches are robbed and
plundered the avid and crude
"harijan"21 reigns; even the Earth, this poor land of India, is
devastated, stripped of its forests and riches,
but because the best remedy we know, the best intelligence we know, the
best power we know and the best morals we know are only the reverse of the same
Evil, the golden side of the same powerlessness and the same rot, which assail
and almost constitute the life of mental man. It is everything that has to be
changed: the
best as well as the worst,
something else must emerge from this unfortunate evolution and it is
Something Else that is emerging from this dark Nothingness. We had to
reach the Zero point for this Something Else to be able to emerge. Each species
in evolution was able to emerge from an impossibility which threatened to
engulf the old species. When everything becomes impossible, it is because
another Possible is about to emerge. As long as you think that you can or you
know, there is nothing to be done: you go round in circles within the
possibilities of the old species. The new Species is the impossibility of the
old species. We are at that point. And there is a key, there is a Power, there
is a hope. The dark Nothingness that we are living is not hopeless; on the
contrary, it is full of the true hope that we are going to get out of our old
remedies at last, which are only the reverse of our Illness. We are at the end
of everything: just as the tadpole, one day, reaches the end of its fishbowl
and it does not know that it will become a frog, it does not even know what a
frog is. Our terrestrial fishbowl is cracking. Our marvellous and honest West
was only able to invent monsters who can only live by becoming more and more
monstrous. We are at the end of an evolutionary cycle and the Force is with
those who will seize hold of the secret of the Transition to the next species,
the true human species, for we are still but intelligent and evil-minded gnomes.
We are not yet men. The next species is not
an improvement upon the old gnomes, it will not come from a super-quality of the
old gnome qualities it is Something Else. Power and Hope are with those who
will discover what the quality of the next species is and what thing, within
the old species, contains the seed and the lever of the next species. There is a
lever, there is a seed of Power each species contains the portent and the
possibility of the next species we have to find this Seed, this Lever, this
Power at last. Such is the only "sensible" enterprise in this era of general
decay. Such is the goal of the Agenda. Such is the Power it contains.
The key is there.
No,
it is not a matter for geneticists and biologists who know only the science of
the old species and the mechanism of the old species what can they know other
than the laws of their tadpole bowl? There is another law, there is a marvel in
the open air, outside of this fishbowl, and all our physical laws will vanish,
just as the laws of the fish vanish for the mammal that breathes in the open.
There is another air for Man. We have to find the new law or else it is
without hope, it is the triumph of the dark, old nature of the harijan-tadpole
or the scientist-tadpole, the two poles of the same suffocation.
What I say here is not a matter of "faith," it is the most sensible matter in the world. Nothing is more sensible than Evolution and nothing is more inevitable.
So, dear friend whom I love very much, I wanted to tell you of that hope, I wanted to tell you that the work is being done in spite of all the obstacles and all the dark appearances. It is not a matter of millions of years that we cannot afford to wait for anymore. It is not a matter of a "mysticism" that bit the dust as noisily as our "science" is now biting the dust. It is neither an "oriental" matter nor a western one it is a total matter, an Earth matter. And a few on this Earth must understand and aspire. This aspiration is the very Passage, the very Power of the other species in fact, it is the other species itself that aspires in the old. Without this need to get out of the Fishbowl, there is no frog. A few must incarnate this need to get out of our human mental bowl. The means of the future do not exist it is our need for the future that makes the Future emerge. And if a few on this Earth understand and feel in their hearts the formidable Adventure that we are, they will open the door for the others. A few are enough. We must be a few to understand and aspire.
And in my heart, I feel deeply that you are with us, that you belong to this Future, and that we walk together.
There is a great hope, truly.
When one has lost everything, there remains That.
May
there be enough hearts together to incarnate the need of the Earth.
With my deep affection,
Satprem
Do you know one thing: the present Earth is as if wrapped in a veil. But a veil can be torn away. One day, the veil falls and everything is different. And the earth will be different.
June 17, 1979
Vision
The tantric attack.
My head thoroughly scoured and covered with a verdigris powder.
The small formations of every colour.
Now I can understand my headaches, "like a painful headband."
June 20, 1979
Volume IV (Agenda) sent with N.
*
(To Micheline)
... It seems that we have reached an amicable agreement
about the huts and the "Harijans," the inhabitants accept to move further away.
Their "land" and all the land below Land's End will be converted into a forest
area and nobody will be allowed to build anything there. It was high time: from
some 10 huts last year, they have become twenty-two.
You see the progression. There remains the practical implementation.... In fact,
it is a concerted attack on all sides and at every level, from these Harijans
and repatriate Sinhalese to all the rest.... The enemy is not pleased at all
that's a good sign. The headaches I have had for so many months, like a painful
headband, seem to be disappearing. Those people are disgusting to use such
shameful means, but Mother had seen worse and She used to absorb all this
poison. I have absorbed a lot of it since her departure. But this negative side
of things vanishes in front of the marvellous positive in fact, it has been a
miraculous story since Mother's departure, with help at each moment and a
detailed protection, a minute organization. It is a pure miracle, in all the
details of beings and circumstances. You are one of those miracles....
Satprem
July 3, 1979
(Letter to Micheline)
If I did not know deeply that the Divine uses
everything, including our mistakes, to reach his Goal, I would be very perturbed
and worried about this false start of volume III,
Jaigu's22 broadcast missed as a consequence, the tape of volume
III mislaid, therefore the release of volume IV postponed and that of volume V
put off to next year.... We must face facts. When a Force is launched, if it is
hamstrung at the outset, it cannot be repaired, things cannot "work out": they
are spoiled. Each thing has its time; if we miss the Time, the thing is
missed. There is an occult aspect, or to say it more simply, an inner aspect of
the play of forces that should be understood. We speak of "Mother's battle," but
where is the battle? It is not enough to say: "Mr. Anceau [from Robert
Laffont's technical services] will do this, Mr. whatsisname will do that, and to
each one his responsibility" no. Responsibility is a certain inner presence,
awake enough to be drawn precisely to where there is a crack and to plug the
thousand little pitfalls that the Adversary is sure to create everywhere and at
every level. It is not enough to "give the packet" of films to Mr. Anceau: there
is a certain way of being with these films and a certain kind of will
which acts and remains in the atmosphere like a small electric buzzer, makes
things move and warns you. It is not a question of feeling your own incapacity
and your lack of this or that, it is simply a question of vigilance and
consciousness we are surrounded by adversaries who never miss an occasion. If
you have, present in you, the small spark of Mother, these things must be
annulled and dissolved automatically. (...)
All those around you should understand and feel what I am saying here. There is no consoling ourselves or burying our heads in the sand by saying: Well, it will come out a little later and we are going to patch-up Jaigu's broadcast the time was missed. This volume III, and our every movement, are part of an immense chessboard of which you-we see only a microscopic, badly-lit corner, but there is an immense whole which is held together by invisible threads and the false movement here shifts or distorts lots of things there and there and there. Since the end of 1973, I have been living by the hour and sometimes by the minute, as if everything depended on the exactness of each task, for it is an immense chain indeed and one had to be on time at every step, and with an ultra-awakened consciousness. This is the "battle."
Once again, it is not a question of super yogic
abilities yogic abilities fail like everything else. What does not fail is
that within, this little aspiration for doing the task exactly. And for
that, we must not lose sight of the hierarchy of things, if I may say so, not
get into a muddle with a hundred
or a thousand problems of detail although every detail is important. But first
comes first. When one lets a baby out on the street, one keeps an eye out for
lorries and motorbikes there is a mother's instinct, isn't there? and she
don't lose sight of her kids. It is a little like that within. It does not
prevent us from thinking that we have to go to the grocer's too, but there is
something that
prevails in our consciousness.
Please excuse this long speech. At the very least, we must learn from our accident. There, offer this to Mother, together with the others who are working, offer this, so that She can put your consciousness in order.... This is the lesson to be drawn. Everything is a lesson. The Institute is not an administration, it is a battlefield. Each little task done exactly as it must be, at the right time.
That's it, I stop my lecture, but truly, the hour is rather serious in the world. It is a very close game.
Satprem
July 8, 1979
Second visit of the police: we are "near a military camp"! (Wellington).
July 9, 1979
(Letter to J.R.D. Tata, originally in English)
Bien cher ami, [dearest friend]
Things are taking a serious turn. I don't really know what can be done in a practical way since the whole system is corrupt; whatever may be done at the top will dubiously cross intact and reach the lower levels. You will understand.
Yesterday
the 8th
we had a second visit from the police at my place. This time, they wanted to
enquire about Mother's Institute of Research. They came by order of the
Pondicherry Foreigners' Registration Office. The main pretext for this enquiry
or the "official" target was, as last time, the American Roger Toll, who is
translating the Agenda into English the real target is myself (and the
Institute and Sir CRN. Singh). The Pondicherry people (Ashram + Navajata) want
to destroy my work and get me expelled from India.
After a tough discussion with the policeman, we managed to be allowed to read the official note from the Pondy Foreigners' Office to the Ooty F.R.O.. The note reads thus:
"Roger Toll is a man travelling a lot in India. (...) In view of the proximity of the military camp [Wellington], some care should be taken to see his case. Therefore could you obtain the necessary information about 'Mother's Institute of Research?'"
You see...
The police insisted in knowing whether we had other "Institutes" in India and abroad the implication was clearly a spy ring. Repeatedly, Navajata has told everybody that Roger Toll is a C.I.A. agent. Roger is on his "wanted list" but the real object is the Agenda work, Satprem, who by the way, has his one year visa expired since last May. I have made an application for a one-year extension and I am waiting. (...)
Je vous aime beaucoup [I like you very much].
Satprem
July 11, 1979
(Letter from Satprem to his mother)
My beloved little mother,
Your
letters are soft and luminous just like the bay. I can't help regretting that we
cannot walk together physically in the forest and through the tea fields. Like
you, I feel at once this distance from other beings and this immediate
proximity, as if we lived in a very sweet, very wide place in the world, in the
heart of each thing, as it were, but light years away at the same time, and in
the Eternal forever. Life is no longer shut in a body or in a certain number of
years. We have walked together on the banks of the Nile or the Bay and looked at
the same shimmering of the sky on the water, and we will look at still other
rivers but at the same sky always. I saw Franηois again several times lately
he was boating. It was a sort of hull that he had built himself. You see, we
always sail here and there the old pains leave us, there remains this
sweetness. I think that in the coming evolution this frontier between our world
and the others will get thinner and disappear; the consciousness will sail in
any world and everywhere without forgetting, then death will be like an old
story of primitive ages, and religions will vanish because there will be this
living Sweetness everywhere. At bottom, we are "baby men," not complete men yet.
We are now living the end of the dark Cycle, the old falsehood struggles, but a
new light already filters through the bursting of the old world we are with
this Future, we are helping to create it. That is why you put me on earth. Like
you, there is something in my blood that is untamed and rebellious, something
that goes beyond all the small frames of their old world we are preparing a
new navigation for the world, another way of being, free and vast, and yet so
similar to that which I knew as a child in my Bagheera, or you on the
coast. Yes, I am your "little one" from all time and for all time.
My tenderness never leaves you
we have not finished
together
Satprem
Mama,
I embrace you very strongly. You are very present.
Sujata
July 12-13, 1979
Vision
The derailment.
The last wagon which pulls all the others down into the precipice.
July 15, 1979
Morarji's downfall.23
July 18, 1979
(Letter to Micheline)
Everyone here is a little out of breath, except for
marvellous Mohini, who has worked 23 hours out of 24.... At last the
tool of our next conquest is finished and fashioned. You know the importance
Mother attached to the United States. We will have to protect, like a Cerberius,
the release of this first English volume which means that nobody, not
even our best friends or the Institute members, must have a single copy of this
book in their hands before it has been taken by an American publisher or firmly
accepted by an American distributor. Or else, you know how it goes, the book
will go directly into Pondicherry's hands, and they will do as they did with
Laffont: threatening letters to the American publisher, spectre of a lawsuit,
etc..., which will discourage any American publisher. We will not find a man
like Laffont anywhere, ready to resist all blackmail. (...)
Same instructions for the Divine Materialism in English, which will follow very quickly.
......
That's it. We smile and progress step by step. Little books which are going to change the world.
With truth
and much love
Satprem
July 20, 1979
End of Agenda V.
July 23, 1979
(Letter to Gloria of Auroville, whose husband had just been seriously injured in a mysterious nocturnal attack.)
What has happened to you personally and to Auroville makes
me feel very sad. But at the same time, I've had the impression that it was a
great and good turning point. You see, bad things are never totally bad, because
it is the Divine who drives the world, not the devil. And if he sends us the
devil, it is for us to learn to be more divine until the day we are truly
pure, then the devil will vanish because he will not be needed anymore. You see,
we are at the critical moment when there will be no compromise anymore: one has
to choose totally and absolutely. For years now Auroville has been given all the
necessary time to open its eyes and see things clearly. Now, we must be
clear, without any ambiguity. Our only salvation lies in totally
trusting
Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Auroville has opened its doors to all the lies and all
the illusions, thinking it was clever and strong enough to absorb everything and
marry all the opposites.
You have accepted Nava, X, Y and Z, forces of money, tantric forces and Auroville is like a fly in a cobweb, struggling with forces that are more considerable than expected. You are all very childish, you think that one can create "spiritual unity" with everything, play with everything, you delight in great words, but behind there are forces that are cleverer than you and that use your silliness and ambiguity to slip into your house and decompose you from within, divide you and blind you blind above all.
It is time Auroville understood that there is no
compromise but one single hope and one single solution, which is to be
pure, to clean your house of all those cobwebs and understand that there
is but one power, one protection and one solution: Mother, Sri Aurobindo, and
they alone. You think that you can play at being little tantrics with
impunity, but you don't know what forces you are inviting you are being had,
like flies in a cobweb. You think that you can come to an understanding with X
or Y, but they wrap you in their honeyed filth until you are all well and truly
divided and understand nothing anymore. I have been repeating the same thing for
years now. When I denounced Nava and the S.A.S.
for the first time, eighty percent of the Aurovilians cried out in indignation
the truth is coming to light bit by bit. But now it is time you threw out all
these fakers, or else it's you who will be eaten. And you will be hit on your
heads until you have understood. It is you yourselves who open the door to the
Enemy, in the name of spiritual unity, or the sacrosanct money-power or in the
name of Tantra and all the sacred texts of India. But who wants Mother
pure and simple, Sri Aurobindo pure?
What force do you want, what protection do you want? That of Mother, Mother's mantra, or little tantric mantras to get little powers and play the charlatans in public? Don't you understand what you are opening the door to?
Twice they tried to kill me. Once, in the canyons. There were three of them, and I was like a child in front of them, there was only Mother's Mantra beating in my heart. And they could not touch me.
A second time, they wanted to kill me.... [Here, several lines crossed out with a violet felt-tip pen.]
Do you understand now?
Are you going to continue playing with all that, or to clean all this falsehood from your house?
It is time.
It is high time.
I embrace you, little one, and I trust you all.
We are together in the struggle against Falsehood.
Satprem
August 1, 1979
The beginning of Gringo24
August 20, 1979
The
tantric attack continues.
August 27, 1979
(Letter from Satprem to his mother)
My beloved little mother,
I've let August 15 and the Saint Bernard go by without writing to you but I am so present near you and, believe it or not, I am immersed in a new creation a tale for children this time! Or rather, a legend. I am so absorbed in it, with, as well, the publication of Mother's Agenda, that I don't really know which way to turn and in which world I am a world of beauty in any case, but it is difficult to pull down Beauty onto the earth. If I reach the end of my enterprise, you will certainly be the first one to read me there. Perhaps I will have finished by the end of October, for my birthday, if everything goes well.
My Nilgiris are quiet and beautiful. All the mimosas are in bloom, we walk in a forest of mimosas; the path that leads to the house is like a great arch of yellow and fragrant bouquets. And it is the season when my big Japanese cherry tree is weighed down with its flowers like a pink cataract, with hundreds of little hummingbirds which come to get drunk on the nectar. What a grace to be in this place of beauty, amidst the tide of thickening obscurity. I work, I am in peace, and try to bring a little beauty to rejoice men's hearts. You are so close.
With my love
Satprem
P.S:
I forgot to tell you something that is rather curious about this "dream" in
which Franηois told me: "I'm coming back," with such a joy.... In my dream,
which I have noted down, Franηois told me (or a voice behind Franηois, I don't
know) a word, or a name that I did not understand, and which was like his new
name. The word that I noted down was "Corent." It means nothing and I thought at
once of Corentin. But your latest letter tells me about a little Laurent! Is it
not then this name which I have not heard properly?! In my notebook, on October
17-18 (night) I wrote down: Franηois: "I'm coming back." Corent. Strange.... You
write to me that Laurent was born on September 18, that is, one month earlier.
But it is not uncommon for the soul to wait for the baby's physical state to be
completely sure and established before entering the body. Well, I don't know,
but it will be easy for you to quickly understand or feel whether there
is something there that corresponds to Franηois. It can be felt, the heart
understands gropingly. Life is full of mysteries and everything is marvellous
we uncover the marvel bit by bit.
September 19, 1979
End of Gringo.
September 29, 1979
Dental abscess.
The tantric Muslim.
September 30, 1979
(To Micheline)
Only
yesterday have I completed the revision of my "tale," and I am writing to you
without losing time. It was an avalanche of work (I am also into the last pages
of Agenda
V) and then a bad dental abscess that lasted ten days and ended yesterday with
extractions and yesterday night I saw a tantric Muslim relentlessly repeating
mantras. Once again "they" have hired the services of those nasty people. It
gives bad days, but they must feel lost. After all, if the forces are so dead
set against our work, that's a good sign! (...)
The Meera25 affair in Canada.... What right did this Canadian Association have to use Auroville's name in order to raise funds for ends that have nothing to do with Auroville it is embezzlement, pure and simple. We won't enter into the sentimental or truthful issue: they are free to do what they want and think what they want, but in that case they must create their own "Meera's Association" so that nobody is misled.... Are they there to help Auroville or to help Meera or goodness knows what zany reincarnation of Buddha tomorrow, of Krishna the day after and of Sri Aurobindo in a few days hence? The abyss of human silliness is unfathomable, as Sri Aurobindo said more than once. Well....
Rachel is right. It is always the same old story everywhere: they use Mother's name, Sri Aurobindo's name, Auroville's name or the Agenda's name in order to run their own little business. They are all like that....
I embrace you hastily.
Satprem
October 7, 1979
(Letter to an Aurovilian)
I
have read that infamous letter of the S.A.S. s kicking out P. in the name of the
"Ideal of Human Unity" (with police backing). Is there anyone in Auroville who
can still be blind?
But I want to tell you one thing: we are now reaching the end of the battle; these are the last days or months. They are vanquished. They are desperate and act like desperate men. Keep your faith and courage despite all appearances and soon, yes soon, Auroville will be free. What is absolutely needed is that a few pure beings keep their love, their faith in Mother.
They think that She is dead! They think that Sri Aurobindo is dead! But soon, when all the circumstances are ready in India and in the world, They will show us the Marvellous Truth that they have prepared for the Earth and all those ghosts will vanish like rats. The last days of the battle are the most difficult, but only our Flame, our love for Them can draw us to the other side nothing else.
May trust, faith and the Flame be with you.
tenderly
Satprem
October 11, 1979
(To my Italian friends)
We are in a time of Confusion.
Each one brandishes his idea, his recipe, his
irrefutable feeling. Each voice contradicts the other which contradicts another
and everything is an enormous Contradiction. Money rules behind the ideologies,
and spiritualities are a facade.
Churches proliferate, Sects proliferate, Falsehood proliferates in all languages
and under all labels. But the simple man, plain man, who only has a heart and a
need to fill this heart not with words or ideas, but with a little light and
clear air which makes us breathe better, live better, love better what does he
have to live on? What does he have to live better?
The only thing that fills, is the experience not the neighbour's: one's own. One doesn't discuss the juice of the grape: it nourishes. It must be tasted. All the rest, is speeches.
Satprem has no speeches to make: he wants to feed people. It's his "job," if I may say, ever since he began writing books to circulate a little living and light air to swell the heart and the breast. That's not debatable: we taste and we are fed ... or we are not and if we are not, we leave it, that's all. It's simple.
Satprem has no "interest" in life, neither in money, nor in being a celebrity; not as a "guru" nor as anything because, would you believe it, he woke up one morning naked and dead, at the age of twenty, in a concentration camp yard. After that, we no longer want anything we are dead once and for all to a certain world. After that, we need only one thing: a true food, or we die with our boots on. And it's because he had this need of a true food, of something that fills truly, that Satprem exists and continues to live for nothing else. It's for that that he lived near to Mother for nothing else.
So, what's it all about?
It's about bringing to Italy a little living air and
true force. Mother's Agenda is that force, is that air, is that active
food. And it's to spread it that we founded this "Institute" in France. The
labels matter little to us: we can call it Institute or inn. It's not the name
that matters, it's the food that we find there. We do not want a new "Centre"
for making speeches and meditations: we want the means to distribute to people
the pure, integral Force that the 13 volumes of Mother's
Agenda represent. And how to do it? For that, it's necessary that a certain
number of individuals, first of all, interest themselves in this food, then find
the way to distribute it on the market. It's simple and obvious. It is necessary
to translate and print. This Agenda, there has not been a more important
document on earth than since Darwin and The Origin of Species. It's a
document of experimental evolution: which is the procedure, the path, to pass on
to the next terrestrial species that is being created, whether we want it or
not, through all the confusions and all the pains of the old world. It's
Mother's experience, pure, simple, crystalline. So how do you want to help in
the publication and the distribution of this particular food? Does it interest
you? That's the only question.
And practically, how to gather together those who want to help in this work?
Once again, we don't care at all about "labels," but an organisation is needed, a point for gathering and for the organisation of the work. We need to raise funds, to print and to distribute the books, to find the publisher or the distributor, etc. and first of all, to print one book, a single one. With the proceeds from the sale of the first book, we will be able to print the second and so on but we must begin somewhere. Like in France, this enterprise has no lucrative aim nor even a"spiritual" one: we are only depositories of a precious food that we would like the greatest possible number of people to taste. It's simple and clear. The "Institute" or the organism, whatever it may be, is there simply to ensure that the funds are utilized for the work, without benefiting any individual, any new "Church," new "association" and any little "chapel." It's an organism for practical distribution.
If this enterprise interests you, I propose that our
friends in Italy, first of all write to our Paris Institute to say that it
interests them. Next, these ten, twenty or fifty interested persons gather
together in Italy in a place that we will fix, and there, that the persons agree
to form a working body that
will be in charge of allotting the tasks and raising the necessary money, as we
have done in France.
It is not a matter of seeing big, but of walking, step by step, one book after the other, and to give to Italy a little of that lively and living Force that Mother's experience represents.
Do you want to collaborate?
It's urgent.
And with my heart, I say to my Italian friends that I love them very much.
Satprem
October 25, 1979
Written to Giscard [d'Estaing].
November 9, 1979
(Letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English)
(...) One thing keeps on troubling me day after day, it
is India's condition. I have no doubt that if things are allowed to follow their
natural course, Indiraji will come out with an absolute Victory but.... It is
not merely a matter of "taking over" from this rot, it is a matter of
drastically changing the whole rot which has contaminated every layer of India,
from top to bottom. Is Indiraji ready for such a drastic change? My feeling is
that if we are not prepared to make this drastic and total change, it
will be imposed on us by the power of "crushing circumstances," as Mother puts
it. India has to be purified. If we have not the courage to make this
purification, it will be forced upon us. No, it is not a matter of "taking over"
from this Dark Force there must be
somewhere, in one heart, the absolute determination to operate a vast and
radical change. Is Indiraji ready to throw all these politicians and
"democratic" pretence into the dustbin? If she is not prepared, the Supreme
Force will not allow her to simply "take over" it will create other hard
circumstances by which it will attain its Aim, which is to cleanse India and
make it really enter through the door of the New world. A new world is not a
continuation of the old world, nor even an "improvement" of the same old rot.
Satprem
December 5, 1979
(Personal Letter)
I keep you company while you are at Laffont's and the
oil wells await in the warmth of the earth's belly. Gringo looks on, scratches
his head and wonders whether the black eyes are going to roll on the ground at
last. In short, it is a matter of sweeping away all this Mocracy of the world
without sweeping away the Earth at the same time. What does Sri Aurobindo say in
his big, green armchair? It seems that the conjunction is good, but.... Gringo
is also a kind of sign. He must be here right on time, must he not? And there
has been this formidable derailment it was rather tremendous just before the
sweeping away of Morarji Desaο: the first wagon into the precipice. All the rest
must follow, don't you think so? That's it, that's it, it is not possible
otherwise. Why do I feel that this Gringo is a kind of symbol in the middle of
all that? Well. So, you are going to rescue the American top hat, or what? And
the Ayatollah's hat and all the little hats no, but for once it would be
funny. And let's not forget the enormous
Turban26 of a certain "near dustbin."
Robert suggested a cerebral virus that would suddenly make all the leaders of
the world gaga not too bad, if the Divine had a sense of humour. But dash it,
let's have done with all that! It would come in the nick of time for our Shola
which is vanishing at top speed into little piled up logs at four rupees a kilo.
Nothing new, as you can see, but I wait for the hour of the formidable laugh, on
that day we will split our sides, to make up for nine hundred centuries of
waiting. And Rani will stamp her feet. I wrote to Yolande at the beginning of
the year: 79 = the year of the great fissure. Will I have to cut my tongue out?
... This "concrete peace," this change of level that
you have "laboriously" carried out. When it is in the body, it does not move any
more, it is a state. With that, you are well-equipped to cross all the
tropics or the Parisian or American Antarctics. The temperature is constant. In
fact, you are king. Now you have to learn the utilisation in Matter: the
mechanism.... What is very difficult is to stop being aware of yourself, even
physically. As long as you can see yourself or know yourself being, things are
as if subtly twisted. In the state of complete oblivion, it works very well. One
learns with practice. Obviously, it is a state in which one "wants" nothing, so
it takes place very naturally, without creating the smallest reaction in anyone.
In this transparent neutrality, you are in the other bodies too and you
spontaneously feel, or your body feels what it has to do and how and at the
right moment. It is very spontaneous and in symbiosis with the spontaneity of
the other (or it creates spontaneity in the other). All this cannot be explained
with words and reveals itself only with practice. But the key is truly this null
transparency that wants nothing, knows nothing, can do nothing and opens its
eyes wide like a child simply, one is in one's "concrete peace," and it all
goes smoothly. All the same, it is the age of the cave-man there, is it not?...
How strange, this kind of anthropoid endowed with philosophy and mathematics,
but a perfect anthropoid all the same.... And everything seems false. One wonders
how they can function in that cloud of unreality. Well, it is very good after
all, you can measure the path covered. As for me, I plunge more and more into
the non-path. Everything looks like a kind of dubious divagation, except what
takes place directly in the body. Well, I gaze and I gaze and wait and wait.
In fact, the next step is to move from the "concrete peace" to the "concrete knowledge."
The last step must be the "concrete joy," when we are there, we will fly.
Excellent program.
......
The TV here? You give me the shivers. Truly, I am going to call for a good flood. You can see this horde in Land's End? In my room? They press the button and I must reel off photogenic and prophetic wise things. But I don't dare say no, I am always afraid of not doing the work. Well, let's see if the flood will be on my side or the oil shortage. Hey, John, the generator does not work anymore! Crumbs! says Gringo.
... Here, we still hesitate between clouds, rain, and sometimes a shy sunbeam (rarely).... No, what is awful is the unrestrained devastation of the Shola if nothing comes to stop those rats, there will remain only a scoured soil with Harijan slums. It is ineluctable. Something must absolutely happen I who have always believed in the miracle.... Yes, to write is a way of pounding against the Wall. I pound and pound....
Satprem
December 12, 1979
(Personal letter)
Good news: Greece is going to open up. Please find enclosed
the letter of this "Victoria." I've had a very good impression and answered with
all the force, so that the Movement could be triggered there. Country after
country, we must conquer the Earth for Mother and Sri Aurobindo. A seed is
enough in each country. So give this first messenger of Hellas a warm welcome.
N. burst into Land's End this morning and is leaving tomorrow morning.... She is very courageous. I like it.
Here, for three months now we have been in the mist! I am happy this month of November that was so difficult, is over. I look at the world. Will it be the long, unending path? I cannot believe it it is not possible! I feel the physical urgency of the change in an almost suffocating way. The other day, I came upon a few statistics that sum up my suffocation perfectly well. It took millions of years to reach the first billion men. It was in 1830. It took a hundred years to reach the second billion men, in 1930. It took thirty years to reach the third billion: 1960 and it took fourteen years to reach the fourth billion: 1974.27
Here, we can see that very concretely. Each of them makes twelve babies. It is frightening. Rats are said to leave the boat in distress, but when it is an ocean of rats? And at the same time at the same time I feel the concrete growth of Mother in such a palpable way. I who don't see anything and who am as thick as a brick feel Mother almost as if She were physically present in my room (or anywhere, in fact). There are moments when it is not less intense, less concrete than when She took my hands and went off for three quarters of an hour, carrying me away into an immobile ocean of fire. I have the impression that my mouth, my face are full of it, it is massive. So?? What is going to happen? It seems to me that I am here looking at the world like a kind of ray of light that sweeps the night in search of the least rift where is the fault?
Of course, one drills. We must drill America. Each book drills
a hole, but.... There must be a certain conjuncture somewhere, unexpected.
I keep repeating. But it is a way of pounding against the Wall.
... I remain pensive. I had noticed in fact Laffont's doubt: "Will Gringo touch those who don't know Mother's story?" but it seemed so strange to me that I did not waste time worrying about it. Then your letter opened my eyes more brutally "keys?" But damn it, what is hidden and esoteric in all that?! I thought that any literate Hottentot would be able to understand that there was no need to "know" anything, except to follow the thread of the story. Not a single minute did I think of the Ashram I was thinking of the terrestrial evolution! I was seeing an ocean and suddenly they cut a little fishbowl out of it. I had not seen this fishbowl! Tell me, is Gringo truly for the Initiate? Was Candide for Voltaire's Initiate? I don't know, I am going to try and write an explanatory introduction, but I cannot understand yet what I have to explain. Well, I will see what my pen will be able to say, perhaps tomorrow, and I will send my exegesis to Laffont, but all the same.... After all, perhaps I am the only Hottentot among all those electronics engineers of the intellect. I find myself more and more "candide" [naive].
... Besides, I trust everything except this flow of rats that does not appeal to me in the least. Tell me, it makes quite a few rats.... What are we going to do in all that?
But please, Mahasaraswati and Co., spare me the TV team.
Satprem
January 19, 1980
(Personal letter)
...
In fact, I am perhaps writing the "appropriate book" for Italy, the United
States and even France. The Mind of the Cells, rationally conceived in a
pocket book format, to fling the essentials of the discovery in people s faces.
Only, until the book is finished, I will not know whether it is a cat, a dog or
a little rabbit. But it is rather an exhausting task, though charming compared
to the anguish of the Trilogy which I went through with my eyes closed. I think
that I am getting very old lately. Besides, the very day I wrote the
introduction to the book, I was hit by one of those mantras Mother spoke of,
which projects everything outside of the body and could have been deadly. I
literally doubled up under the violence of the shock (centre of the navel) and I
heard a whistling sound, like that of an arrow. I spent a day lying on my bed
and it was over. Two days before, I had "seen" the Turban, and the day before
Sujata had also "seen" this Turban sending me "things," with a repeated gesture
of his hands (very dirty hands). Perhaps he has the kind collaboration of some
tantric. Well, it is passing, everything passes. But the body is tired and a
little out of breath. It does not matter, we will continue until the end and the
end will not come one minute earlier than expected, so....
......
What you lack, in fact, is a more direct and living
contact with your soul. You are above all or primarily in contact with your
higher being, impelled by the soul force from behind: it is an indirect contact,
from the soul toward the heights, then you catch hold of the heights to descend
again into action it is not the direct soul-matter contact, it makes a detour
up above. I understand this well. But the almost infallible exactness of the
action with others comes when
it is the soul that perceives directly; and it never creates
anti-reactions or negations instead of hitting it, it makes the obstacle melt
away without our noticing it, and when it is better not to act, it keeps silent,
does not move. It is this direct circuit that must be developed. It is also much
stronger and surer. But you have an old "Pharaonic" and colossal "atavism" of
the heights, so it is more difficult to get free (I know something about it!).
In the beginning, Mother used to say that to go into me She had to make a
"looping" from above so, you see, you are not the only one. But once you have
this direct contact, your life will blossom a great deal, like a flower in the
sun, it will relax and become simpler. It also gives a softness and a warmth of
a particular quality you know all that, but you must live it. I have nothing
to say about the world's situation, which you must know. Those Americans are
more and more crazy. (You know, or rather you don't, for I preferred to keep it
secret as long as the action was in progress: in October, I wrote to Giscard
[the French President] regarding China and my letter was handed over to him just
before the Afghanistan affair, a few days ago I'll show you this when we meet
again.) The Falsehood is struggling to the bitter end. This year is crucial. I
don't yet have C.P.N.'s plan of action for India, but he must have his plan and
carry it out one by one (I'll try to put our Shola in one of these "one"s.). I
received a charming telegram from Robert Laffont about Indira's victory and he
adds that I must "not worry" about Gringo, everything is all right this
Robert is charming.
......
In fact, we should have a team of translators here.... There is so much urgent work (if the little Chinese don't eat us before).
Satprem
I am expecting the hurricane Yolande any day now she wanted to make me go to Delhi in order to meet Giscard I declined.
January 28, 1980
The
knell has tolled for me.
I must have the time to finish my work.28
February 15, 1980
End of The Mind of the Cells.
February 16, 1980
(Personal letter)
So I wrote this book going flat out. I am worn out. It's like a race against death (of the world). It's a tight race. This book must come out very quickly, but....
And I would like to have your feeling about the book as
a whole. I don't know what it is worth. Sometimes, while writing it, I had the
impression that it was very important, something that would have an irresistible
power over the rational mind. But one deludes oneself. In any case, I tried to
discard all poetry and all revelation in order to write a concise, convincing
and rational book. It brings nothing more than the Trilogy it even gave me the
occasion to see how this Trilogy was well conceived and rather miraculous in a
way, for I wrote all that in the dark, without knowing the path forging it
under my pen. Well, I saw nothing more while writing this Mind of the Cells
only it is presented in a more coherent way. I have focused the beam. At times
too I've had the feeling that this book would revolutionize consciousnesses
a little like Darwin's book. But I have no illusion. I did my job, that's all.
Happy to have finished it. (...)
There is such weariness in my head and my body that I don't know very well what to say to you. Letters, letters, always letters.... I understand Sri Aurobindo more and more, that is, in my body.
Generally.... Yes, I knew, it was obvious, that Indira would come back,29 but I also felt that nothing would really be done. Of course, we will be better protected, but that's all. Symbolically, little Navas will continue to proliferate and the Ashram will continue to spread everywhere that we are making a false Agenda and to sell its true Agenda. And of course, we don't know how many people, after reading my books, innocently write to the Pondicherry bookshop, asking for Mother's Agenda. It is an absurd and pernicious situation. But what to do? What makes me sad is that Delhi will do nothing. So ... what does it mean? What will it take to shake up this India? And this America?
As I was finishing my book yesterday, they were burning the land below Land's End so that the Harijan colony could grow potatoes. The horde attacks. The Shola is disappearing at top speed. What to say? It is blatant. But when will the world cry out?
And at the same time such a crushing and almost physical feeling that the time is nigh.
......
I remain with the impression that the main element of
the American Institute has not been found yet, that the true key is not yet
there. But it does not matter, go ahead with this materialisation of the
Institute.... Don't trust appearances: a Pourna, if turned in the right
direction, can do a formidable work. You look at people too much "from above the
head," you lack the more direct perception of the soul. It is part of the things
you are being taught ... a little painfully. Besides, you must learn the secret
of this
flexibility which knows that everything changes and is remodelled at every
moment it is this "vertical time" that you are not fully aware of. So you are
inclined to go your horizontal way like an arrow. No, it is the arrow at each
moment! You must open a fresh eye each second, without any "pre-existent idea,"
and everything can be remodelled, everything is remodelled. Our rigidity from
cause to effect, from the idea to the execution, creates a wall and prevents
circumstances from being modelled. Our ready-made plans erect a terrible
barrier.
But don't be afraid, go ahead. Even our "mistakes" are used by Mother: she is teaching us our job. You know, sincerity is such a wonderful thing that it rectifies everything and turns all our detours to the best. So, be trustful, only try not to be devoured and veiled by what surrounds you.
Satprem
March 1, 1980
(Personal letter)
... I have the impression that there is not one day to waste I wrote this book [The Mind of the Cells] in thirty-one days. The proof-reading was just finished yesterday, on February 29. Coincidence.
The book has 195 pages. Chewable?
... I was sure that there was a companion for you, I even prayed for that. It seemed to me that it would help you get out of your supra-conscient geometry to find the tip of the soul. But don't go and cram in your geometry of Mother at the heart level let your companion find and feel by herself. She will feel very well without any commentary. You cannot force things, or else they rebel one day. Please excuse my half-humoristic, but very affectionate reflections.... The detours always go straight to the goal....
......
The
American Institute? I don't feel anything very concrete, but it will come in due
course. Always beware of the arbitrary what is brought about by circumstances
is always the best sign.
All seems to be still in limbo. Perhaps this Mind of the Cells will trigger the action?
Here in India.... Nothing concrete. C.P.N. has accepted to become the Governor of Uttar Pradesh (in Lucknow) in order to help Indira out, and I think it is a "deal" according to the terms of which he will have a free hand to present radical decisions to Indira. But there's the rub, precisely we don't know what can be done. I think that this is the big problem: one doesn't know how to handle the octopus. Its tentacles are immense, everywhere. And "they" are very well defended by the "law," even by the Constitution of India. Another means must be found but which one? Unless Mother makes them do the necessary mistake.... I don't like this "posting" of C.P.N. to Lucknow at all, I have somewhat the impression that it is a trap. We shall see. Eventually, nothing happens but what She wants.
For seven years now, the most concrete thing has been the books that we release. This is inexorable. We don't understand to what extent Sri Aurobindo and Mother are a revolution. Now I have to complete Agenda VII in thirty days! It must be in Paris on April 3. I have the impression that I am a sort of quite worthless and quite worn out machine.
Satprem
March 3, 1980
(Letter to J.R.D. Tata)
Dearest friend, ever present,
I need your advice. The news from Delhi is rare, but as
far as I can understand, nothing decisive has been done as yet
to put an end to the scandalous situation of Auroville and of that Ashram which,
under cover of spirituality, runs its international business and slanders me in
every country. The reason for Delhi's inaction, it seems to me, is that they
don't know what to do. Apparently, Nava and Co. are very well protected by
the law and even by the Constitution of India besides, to leave the matter in
the hands of "the law" amounts to leaving it to the general corruption. What
means have we apart from the interminable and dubious legal means? What solution
do you suggest? Obviously, they have changed the heads of Government, but not
the countless corrupted cogs of the machine. I don't even know if anything can
come and change that, except a radical ... and divine upheaval. It would seem
that our friend C.P.N. Singh has accepted the heavy sacrifice of this post of
Governor in U.P. so that he could have a decisive action in Pondicherry even
then, we must be able to propose to Indira a solution that will not put her in a
bad position.... What solution?
I fight for this world of pain.
You are in my heart.
Satprem
March 28, 1980
(Letter to N., in France)
... As I had well foreseen, Indira's return will
perhaps prevent the worst from happening, but will not really change the
structure of India, rotten to the core and at every level. Millions of little
Navas, all brothers, are swarming like maggots in cheese. I don't know what
catastrophe it will take to uproot all that. The Aurovilians childishly believed
in an immediate miracle. They must learn the sole miracle of Mother there is
no other. Apart from that, the situation is very black everywhere. It is the
same with my poor Gringo, which
has disappeared at the bottom of a hole. It is not easy to bring a little beauty
to the Earth that scarcely wants it We continue all the same. The years become
heavy..
Satprem
April 7, 1980
A pimple in the eye (instantly broken out in the eye, when Robert put the "fakers'" file in my hands curious, it was there in three seconds).
Volume VII left for Paris. I am in volume VIII. Everything seems quite blocked to me. I have difficulty living, but it will go on as long as They wish.
Delhi keeps silent. Everything seems to be shrouded in a thick cloud.
April 10, 1980
This anguish and this pain.
April 13, 1980
One loves one's own dream of beauty,
one loves one's own dream of love,
one is alone to love one's dream.
But it is God in us who dreams of his next world,
and prepares it.
April 19, 1980
(To an Aurovilian)
What
matters is to be there.
It is neither a question of eliminating India's corruption nor of being five or five hundred to build the Matrimandir nor of reaching such or such result it is a question of being there. Not in Rome or in Berlin or in Paris, but there. Being this persistent and obstinate little flame amidst the general darkness is enough. To be there and to burn there. And the mere presence of this flame is enough to automatically elaborate what must be elaborated. We must not look at the results: the flame will produce all the results that we cannot understand.
We must last and endure and burn on and on.
One day, the dawn will come.
I am with you.
Satprem
April 22, 1980
Arrival of the German TV, Troller.
April 25, 1980
(Letter to Micheline and N.)
I could not write to you earlier. I have just spent
three full days being filmed and interviewed by the German TV it is
exhausting. And since apparently Towarnicki has not been able to reach an
agreement with Troller, he will come separately and we will have to do all the
work again. I am expecting them any day. Well, Troller's film will be what it will
be, I don't know, but he says it will have fifty million viewers.... Land's End
was invaded, and all my personal life, down to my room, is being served up to
the public Perhaps it is the sign that the time for withdrawal is over or that a
form of life is coming to an end. I am attached to nothing, except to That.
......
I'd like you to know that there was a terrible mess in the photocopies of the original manuscripts of the Agenda 1967. Really, we should try to do things more consciously. In fact, we must learn to put consciousness into our every gesture. Then every gesture is exact and nothing is ever forgotten, even twenty years later. Matter begins under our very hands.
*
Now to answer your questions. "Transcendental meditation?" Once again, Mother uses everything. "Sometimes, you reach the Goal faster with a devil than with a god," she would say. I think that Mahesh Yogi seeks his own lucrative transcendence above all and that he belongs rather to the family of little Theons. But it is a good thing to sow Mother's perturbation in all that.
In the particular case of that sincere boy who wants to
follow Mahesh, the only thing we must warn him against is the occult mixing of
mantras. Let him meditate as much as he wishes, in the transcendental way if it
can do him any good, but a Mantra is a vibration of Forces, it is a power. One
must not mix that any old how, or else it is like chemistry, it produces
explosions. It is for him to choose under which influence he wants to put
himself. But all that must only be said to sincere people who ask the
question truly-As for the others, leave them to their T.M., and Mother will
stealthily slip in, in spite of all their transcendences what matters is that
She comes in. You know, things always get done in spite of all that people may
think. So there is no point in dogmatizing, excluding or preaching let Mother do
her work without people being aware of it.
*
That's it. It is a difficult time and strangely blocked everywhere. But one day, the resistance will give way. The great grace is to have, somewhere in the world, a solid and sincere nucleus like the one of rue Greffulhe [the office of the Institute]. It is a great assurance for me and for the work. You can't gauge the importance this little corner of solidity and fidelity has for everyone. But I can gauge it and embrace you.
Satprem
April 26, 1980
Towarnicki's arrival (interview: Sept Jours en Inde) [My Burning Heart in English].
April 30, 1980
(Letter to N.)
I think of you. I also ask myself questions for you.... Although I am in the midst of a difficult whirl it is so hard to speak of oneself in front of a mike and to evoke the past, and why always this "Satprem" who must push himself forward, when he would like to vanish with the clouds and the wind? It is so awful to be regarded as an important person! I am really doing my share of duty, and I have difficulty being in this skin. Well, I am going to "Towarnick" three or four days more after having "Trolled" and turned like a conscientious German donkey. Sometimes, one feels like packing up and going or rather not packing up but pfft! You disappear.
But
you see....
Satprem
May 8, 1980
(Personal letter)
Impossible to write to you earlier. Once again, I have gone through the ordeal by fire. Four days of shooting with the German TV (right in my room and from every angle), then seven days of interview recorded by Frederic de Towar-nicki for France Culture and also for a national magazine (I don't know which one). Ten hours of recording. Phew!... It is a little frightening. But the manager of the German TV, or rather the director (and his wife) went through an unexpected ordeal too and were not the same when they left as when they came here. (...) From now on I have (or Mother has) reliable friends in Germany everything had been blocked for a long time there. But it is so frightening to speak about yourself when you would like to disappear all of "Satprem's life" went by. Then, finally, when you have said "everything," you have said nothing at all. I don't know why I am successively emptied of all substance (with Gringo, and before that The Mind of the Cells), as if I had to hurry or throw everything overboard (including my private life here) before ... before what? Or what for? It is like the end of a cycle.
C.P.N. has woken up and has just written to me after three or four months of silence. He says that Navajata is now "checked" so long as he is not dead or in prison, nothing is "checked." And there are millions of little Navajatas in India. None of the two fundamental problems will be touched by Indira: overpopulation, and the corrupt bureaucratic octopus. So...? But I knew that from the beginning. So let's wait for all that to break up.
As
for me: a deeper and deeper weariness.
I am trying to bring Russians and Bulgarians to Auroville (but silence, please). We must play the game and try the impossible until the end. The two obstructed countries in the world = India and America.
... If there were there a true statesman, I would try to make the Russians and the Americans converse through Bulgaria. But where is the man? I think that men hardly listen now to anything except crushing circumstances.
I have the impression that Kennedy30 is more open and would be more accessible, but what are his chances? And it is far. If only I could make him touch Mother, the Force....
You see, all this is full of suspension marks. I look on and on and probably the Divine does what is needed very well, but all the same, we are here to help him a little. I would hold the rest of my life of little account if it could be of any help.
......
What a funny life....
The translation of Le Mental des Cellules [The Mind of the Cells].... I am happy that you follow that closely. The "explosive" financial question is very sad. Will there not be one American to give a bit of money how incredible! Not a few thousand dollars out of their millions and billions of dollars? What does it mean? A few Americans must give. It is very important for them. Has C. given anything? It would do him so much good people don't know what invisible forces they trigger with a simple little gift. The Monster has all the millions of dollars and how much for the fragile little light of the new world?
But the deep, occult truth is that Micheline must not be the only one to finance everything once again. A bit of American money is needed, oh! absolutely needed, or else it will be bankruptcy (bankruptcy for them).
And
beware always of your tendency to "withdraw" life is a challenge. We
must accept the challenge every time under all its appearances. I told you this
one day at Maitre Mercier's door, do you remember?
Satprem
May 31, 1980
(Letter to Micheline)
Dear Micheline,
Yesterday evening, Sujata read to me the beginning and the end of your article on me in the Cornets du Yoga [Notebooks of Yoga]. It touched me very much, I did not know that anyone could speak of me so kindly and with so much heart. Micheline has a straight, clear and warm heart. In fact, ever since I met you, you have dared even more to be the heart you are. I saw your mistake (not serious) between Lakshmi and Kali the marvel of the Indian conception is precisely that the pitiless warrior is also the one who loves. She slits the adversary's throat and she loves. I've always had a particular affinity with Kali, like Sri Aurobindo... "Let me not be subject to these gods, O Kali." (You remember this aphorism of Sri Aurobindo?). Neither by the gods nor by the demons by nothing. Then there is an even vaster love, at the far end, like Mother crushed by pain, with her hands open there is nothing more to slit. This is the Great Mother.
But there are still some battles to wage.
Together in the battle
And in love
I embrace you
Satprem
June 7, 1980
(Personal letter)
My
silence is not an estrangement.... It is a rather hopeless period, which may
hide a new leap forward for us and for the world. I have grown much older
since your departure. I have carried or endured many things without seeing their
meaning I have often been told that I was finished. This "finished" does not
upset me, I don't expect anything for myself, but I expect so much for the
world. The United States is off on a mad curve. I think it is a good thing that
you are there, simply to be there. In each country, the one who does the
work embraces the difficulties and the resistances of the country he becomes a
symbolic being. Everything seems to be in league, nothing responds, it is so
petty and miserable. But perhaps the meaning is simply to go through. To go
through, that's all. Like in a storm. For seven years it has been for me an
interminable crossing. Sometimes one has the impression that the yoga is not for
getting better and better but worse and worse. It is a bottomless worse,
apparently. We have only to go down to the bottom. And we are so powerless in
all that that we have only to burn and to burn, like a flame of pain for all
this pain of the earth.
......
The German TV? Mother has made a conquest. I like
Georges Troller very much, and his wife, Kirsten, is rather exceptional. They
should start editing the film before long. But I think there will be few words
from me it is for a German audience. On the other hand,
Towarnicki31 has recorded a flood of words! Some two hundred
pages! The vibration is sometimes rather interesting. I got down to putting
all that into paragraphs and printable French. I have the strong impression that
these are my memoirs from beyond
the tomb. That is how they bury you. The future is a mystery. I have the
impression that I am reaching the end of something, but of what?
Laffont = still silent. I must trouble him terribly. Satprem will not succeed in "making a name" for himself. If only he knew how little I care about Satprem! But, for Her, I would like this damned skin to be of some use.
India = always the same black hole.
Satprem
June 17, 1980
(Letter to Kireet about Auroville, originally written in English)
Very dear Kireet,
I appreciate the crystal clarity of your letter on
Auroville very much. It makes me grasp the sickening hold of the S.A.S. on
Auroville even more strongly. Mother's plan for Auroville has become a mocking
in the hands of hostile forces and if you have read Agenda VII dated
September 21, 1966, you must have realized the vastness of Mother's plan for
Auroville as an occult means to avoid another world war and divert the forces of
destruction. Then we understand what is at stake there and the real forces
behind Navajata & Co. This handful of people simply block and thwart Mother's
effort to avoid another world war, this is that. For this very reason, I
recently wrote to Sir C.P.N. Singh that we should do something to persuade Mrs.
Zivkova to send a team of young Bulgarian and Russian students or
researchers to Auroville. By hook or crook, we must try to unblock this
situation and start things moving in the right direction, since Mother clearly
wanted Russian and American people to shake hands and speak together in
Auroville. If we can start the dialogue somewhere in Auroville, we will
occultly start the unfreezing of this perilous situation as exists now between
America and Russia. It is an occult process and action. We must start somewhere,
however modest and unassuming may be the starting point. Do you understand? If
we wait till Auroville is "in order," it will be too late what I suggest is
the real way to put Auroville in order. If Auroville fulfils its mission and can
bring together some Russians and Americans, automatically it will bring the
destruction and collapse of the very forces which oppose this move and are there
in Auroville to oppose this move. Let us start on a vast scale and with the real
purpose, not piecemeal and with small details. We do not grasp enough the occult
play of forces, we put the cart before the bullock. (...) We must
understand the occult play, we must understand that the Mighty Mother is
behind us and our action. We are weaklings imagining that Mother is powerless
and that we must do something to help Her! We proceed like faithless asses. We
do not trust the real thing. We do not know that Mother, the Mighty Mother, is
simply there waiting that we awake a little to the greatness of the Purpose and
that we condescend to have Faith in Her. In fact, this
Agenda of September 21, 1966 was so much in my mind that one evening I felt
from within that I should go myself to Sofia, speak with Mrs. Zivkova with the
real strength and obtain from her a meeting in Moscow with some people who
matter and there too outpour Mother's Force on their heads. Since that
particular evening, I have not felt the pressure to start the material procedure
for writing to Mrs. Zivkova and getting my visa but the thing is there,
somewhere above my head, waiting for I don't know what "click."
Now you understand the real perspective. If we start things moving in the right direction, we will completely alter the situation in Auroville itself, instead of playing the game of the hostile forces, which is to delay and hamper the real action by all means. We cannot foresee what will happen then and how the picture will be changed in such a way that all our calculations will be upset. (...)
Now
try to see the whole problem from this wider angle have faith in Mother's
real power and have the courage of this faith.
With fraternal love, always,
Satprem
July 5, 1980
End of Agenda VIII.
July 11-12, 1980
Vision
The huge rock which detaches itself from the mountain.
("Our fathers by their words broke open the strong and stubborn places," says the Rig Veda.)
July 16, 1980
(Letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English)
Dearest Companion,
Sometimes companions may differ. In any case they have a right to tell each other the truth as they see it.
Surely, the deepest truth is understood by you and by me without difference, but the way to achieve and realize is seen differently, as it appears from the recent events or rather non-events.
......
About one month ago I wrote to Kireet: "India wants to
do nothing." It is not that some rare people do not try to do something, but
their effort is always thwarted and the means
they choose is always wrong. Another example of this fact, a symbolic example,
is the story of our Shola. The Prime Minister says and everybody says: no more
tree cutting, and I personally write two letters to the Forest officer, one
letter to the Collector and another letter from Sujata to the same Collector
nothing is done. I have written also to my Companion on this subject some six
months ago when Indiraji came to power, but my Companion replied: "Wait
patiently." Trees will not wait, they are cut daily and only a skeleton of the
forest remains. This is exactly what is happening in every sphere, including
Navajata. Wait patiently till nothing is left.
Thus Mr. Navajata has his reign assured and he will go on reigning in spite of all our goodwill. Our goodwill is foolish indeed.
Meanwhile we may create big Institutes, gather crores of rupees and draw up four or twenty-point-programmes, but they are just white elephants and they will lead us nowhere because the root of the problem will not be tackled. (...) Indeed we are helpless puppets unless we change our means and ways.
It has now become perfectly clear that a whole array of
black forces are behind Navajata, a huge wealth and a Tantric backing. This fits
exactly with Mother's description in Agenda III of May 15, 1962, when She
spoke of a physical organization around a false Sri Aurobindo, trying to
establish a new and merciless Religion in the name of Sri Aurobindo, with the
help of Tantrics. This is exactly what Navajata is doing. He is there to spoil
and distort and ruin Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's work, and at the same time to
ruin India if possible, he will try to become the ruler of
India.32 This may sound far-fetched, but the fact is that the
whole Indian bureaucracy from top to bottom has been there to help his mischief
for the past seven years, and that in spite of Indiraji. Each day the fellow is
getting stronger and stronger. For seven years every action of ours has been
stopped. We are facing a grave danger.
There are two ways of action. One is the political way, the one which we have adopted long enough and which has led us nowhere and which will lead us nowhere at any time of the future. This is the way of intelligent calculation: if I do this, I shall obtain that; if I move this fellow, I shall be able to move this other fellow and so on; and if I accept the onerous and painful burden of governorship in Uttar Pradesh, I shall be able to obtain this and that.
This is a fallacy. We will be always blocked in our action for one excellent reason or another. Always something will surge up to demolish our calculation and meantime months and years are wasted, which is exactly the strategy of the Enemy: to gain time.
The other way is the Divine way: no calculation, we start something, anything, any small first step, and we trust that the Divine will seize our small action and change it into a tempest and a victory. This is exactly what we have not done.
So my Companion, Indira is very busy with her grief33 though she may find time to recognize Kampuchea and after some weeks or months some other event will defeat us. We have not the courage to seize on the Divine and trust Him and Her; we think that our small calculations are more clever than They. We are no warriors, we are behaving like chartered accountants. Mother has repeated enough that the time of Politics is gone, finished we don't believe Her. We have no faith. (...)
Satprem
July 20, 1980
(Personal letter)
Your
plane has just taken off, I come to keep you company, I feel your heartbreak
the road continues. But this Presence within, so warm, imperious and ineluctable
is the haven, there is no other. Everything is black, one does not see anything,
but that within burns, it is so existent, the only thing that exists. All my
life and each second of my life since I was twenty, I have lived as at that dawn
when steps resounded in a corridor: this second when you are nothing anymore but
a little thing, agonizing with being. I don't know the future; the past casts
its shadow over me but I know this throb of being, it is my forever for ever
and ever. I don't know if there is anything else to discover. With that, one
goes on and you go on our paths can meet and divide, but we go together in
that being of softness and warmth, and we will continue going, close, very
close, when all memories have vanished, whether they are from Thebes or India.
May you and your companion learn to walk together in this sole softness of being
where the Eternal lands like a bird on the sands. Then you look at this world of
painful existence from far, far away, and something burns like a love, so
strong, for all this pain that comes and goes.
Satprem
July 25-29, 1980
Delhi-Lucknow journey.
July 27, 1980
(Personal letter)
Governor's
palace in Lucknow
I occupy the suite in an imperial apartment reserved for the Prime Minister, with a huge bedroom flanked by two bathrooms-swimming pools and a little side room for my clothes, just what is needed to dress two hundred people without forgetting the dining room, the sitting room, the study and a special apartment for my fancy wife phew! And four of them, with turbans on their heads, file in to bring me my breakfast (one can also have a complete bath in the finger-bowls).
That apart, the situation I found here is as serious as possible (although the divine Aristophanes must laugh as usual). First C.P.N. is very weak, almost exhausted: every night, between 11 and 12 p.m., he is "attacked" gnawing pains in the heart, oppression, and the usual suggestion: "Now it is a heart attack, you've had it, that's certain." And it is so much in the atmosphere that yesterday afternoon around 5, without my knowing anything, a "thought" went through my head: "Well, did C.P.N. not die during his nap?" A rotten atmosphere, which of course exhausts his body a lot. In Land's End, those things are filtered and express themselves through this kind of wear and tear, but here they are in the raw. I grasped it all with much energy or rather one grasped it.
Such are the facts. What I "knew" inwardly is revealing itself, but on a rather impressive scale.
First, Nava was informed in London three hours after the file was given to the Ministry of Defence....
And that's not all. The wife of the Minister of Defence
who got N.'s file is also a fervent disciple of N.'s.... Kireet met her: blind
or blinded, possessed by the "spirituality of N. who opened for her "the doors
to Mother and Sri Aurobindo," in brief, the noblest cause one can struggle for, etc.
And women, women everywhere ("influential" ones, of course) who are all under
N.'s influence it is a well-known tantric "trick."
We all know the rest: infiltration everywhere (but on a rather frightening scale) and fantastic amounts of money he even recruits the ministerial secretaries and bribes them before they retire (or after) and takes advantage of every cog in the wheel and of everyone's connections. Tomorrow, Kireet will take N.'s file, which we recovered, to the Law Ministry, but a whole troop is waiting for him in order to dexterously muddle up the legalities. Let's see.
There remains Indira herself (she met N. two days ago). There C.P.N. used a word that he rarely utters: "I am afraid she has changed," not because of N. (I don't believe for one second that N. can have the smallest power over a Shakti of such calibre), but because Sanjay's death has thoroughly shattered her faith in Mother and in God or any god "Why did Mother not protect my son?" In short, she reacted to this death like an ordinary mother. Personally, I think that this is a temporary phenomenon and that what was wanted was not only to remove this dubious son from the way, but to oblige Indira to go deeper, beyond her grief, down to the true source and the powerful spring of her true mission.... which has not even begun yet. She was not brought into the world to be Mr. Sanjay's mother, she came for something else and Mother supports her so I have every confidence that she will pull herself together again and find her true mission. But meanwhile.... It is this waiting time that is dangerous and difficult. N. struggles like the very devil and grows greater every day. Time is short. Obviously, N. wages a battle that is vaster than Auroville and he has his eye on the Government of India.
Indira knows. She is not blind apart from her grief
and that "loss of faith." C.P.N. has decided to meet her in a few days he will
understand at once if she has really "changed." Until now, she was in the fog of
mourning. He told me this and words mean something in his mouth: "If the
situation changes, we will change our methods." (...)
Such is the situation in a few words.
I have just been told (Sunday morning) that C.P.N. has had his first good night for a long time. One should break this formation, but I must leave tomorrow, I can't linger too long away from Land's End, there is so much work.
Satprem
July 29, 1980
Back to Land's End with the flu.
The false English Agenda at All India Press?
July 30, 1980
(Letter to Sir C.P.N Singh, originally in English)
Dearest and much loved Companion,
My heart felt our meeting intensely and I have felt even more when we parted. I could see you alone, so alone, without anyone to whom you could speak. I can see you now in your chair, in your room, pondering over the great problems and challenges from every side. I feel your deep dedication and resolve and unflinching will. My love goes out to you and my profound respect. We truly are ancient companions in Her battle. Our love for each other is beyond expression.
This battle for Her message in the world has assumed a
new dimension as you have understood from my telegram on my arrival at Land's
End. All India Press and the Ashram, so it seems, are bringing out a fake
English Agendo. by truncating our French original. This is the most
serious attempt since Mother's departure. The Asura wants to
distort Mother's Message at all costs and spread a false new Veda in the world
this is exactly what has happened with every Avatar and every new religion in
the world history. (...) After trying to encircle Indiraji and to corrupt her
ministries in order to paralyse and disrupt Indiraji's action, and eventually to
take over India's government, they are now trying to build a world-scale
religious faηade with a fake Agenda behind which they can hide their
demonic purpose it is indeed an even greater and more subtle danger than
Hitler's grand design. Indiraji's future and India's destiny are at stake. The
new world and new consciousness and new Force are threatened to be swallowed and
disfigured. Will Indiraji understand her real mission which is not to perpetuate
the old democratic fallacy presently ruining India, but to seize on the new
Force and discover new ways and establish the new world? a new Order? This is
precisely the real question hanging behind the apparently small problem of
Auroville and of a fake Agenda.
All this you understand very well. But will Indiraji understand?
......
As a consolation, I have just received from my French publisher, Mr. Laffont, a wonderful letter about The Mind of the Cells he is enthusiastic, he has discovered and felt the immensity and the newness of Mother's experience. He textually writes: "It is an immense Message, a book which can have a tremendous and exceptional impact in the consciousness of the public.... " Since a man like Mr. Laffont can have such reaction, it means that a big barrier has been broken with this book. Let us see.
Well, it seems that everything is coming to a head, on all fronts. We have to act fast. I have trust and faith that the Asura will not succeed we are there for that.
With all my heart,
Satprem
August 3, 1980
(Personal letter)
As
usual: we are walking in the dark. For seven years now I have been walking in
the dark.
......
Will the Message be engulfed and distorted once again? You see, it is not even the fact that the Agenda will be truncated, it is not even that: it is the fact that this Power that the Agenda represents will be in the grip of those fakers who will reduce this Power to themselves and to the Religion that they are going to build or want to build. Really, Mother will not allow that?! If She has led us this far, she will not leave us halfway.... Have you read Perseus the Deliverer, by Sri Aurobindo? Sujata pointed out to me what an extraordinary description it is of all that has happened since Mother's departure Andromeda is the Agenda, the child of the new world. And the cruel old religion which wants to dismember us.
In any case, things are moving, the rock is working loose. If it is negative, it is necessarily positive too. (...)
Satprem
August 6, 1980
Yesterday evening, C.P.N. met Indira.
I think things are going to move they are already moving. But damn it, how that rock is hard to loosen!
August 7, 1980
(Letter to an Aurovilian)
You
are a little like Auroville's heart. Even its suffering, discouragement and
impatience are part of this beating heart we must go on beating, that's all,
whatever the appearances may be. What is wrong with Auroville is that it lives
too much in appearances so today everything is marvellous and full of hope,
tomorrow it is abominable and hopeless, and again the kaleidoscope turns and
consciousnesses turn like little puppets. One hopes that the S.A.S. is about to
disappear, then one gives up hope.... It is like clouds passing over the sea:
everything shines, then everything grows dim again. In fact, Auroville lives in
its Mind and its desires the Mind can be idealistic and noble, the desires can
be just and generous, but all that is mere human porridge and there is no way
out, it will go on for 4677 years until men are fed up with their admirable
ideas and precious feelings. Apes too were very fond of their precious
gymnastics in the trees.
But truly, the ABC of the new world is to learn how to live in another profundity of being, where appearances do not touch any more than clouds touch the deep sea. On this foundation, this profound and immutable solidity, we can begin to build another being otherwise, we will always build a circus.
Of course, those crooks must disappear, the Matrimandir must be built, Auroville must be free but free for what? for lots of little puppets who will go on with their puppet speeches and their puppet feelings. Who will be in Auroville? Who will meditate in the Matrimandir the same old men?
Auroville will not progress an inch until it
understands that it is its heart that must change and that everything is a
pretext for obliging it to work out this profound change. Is there any point
at all in one more town? one more temple? if
it is not to live there in another way, with another consciousness.
Auroville's battle is only a very small symbol of the battle of India and the battle of the world are you going to free the world, purify India in a few days? Do you even understand that your own inner purification, transformation and liberation are the most powerful help that you can bring to India and to the world? This is the battle that you must wage within yourself and each day, instead of turning like weathercocks with the slightest appearances.
India is in a serious situation, as is the whole world; there is an immense corruption, like that of the S.A.S. before your eyes it is not in a few days or a few months that Indira Gandhi can clean up India's huge stables. But you can help by becoming more and more what Auroville must become: a place where a new consciousness and a new way of being on Earth will be born. If you yourself change, everything else will change faster but if you remain the same idiotic little humans, how do you expect other even more idiotic humans to change?
Will Auroville understand that it is a laboratory? the place where a new consciousness is being worked out. The "liberation" of Auroville is first of all the liberation of the small consciousnesses that are contained in Auroville. (...)
It is time you got out of these stupid and obscure little appearances in order to plunge a little deeper into the soul, where one really understands what is happening behind appearances. There one understands beings and circumstances and what they really are. And from there one can act to change things.
Auroville must plunge into its soul and get out of appearances.
Auroville must stop cheating with its goal and become truly what it has been created for.
Satprem
August 9, 1980
(Letter to J.R.D. Tata)
My
publisher, Robert Laffont, is going to bring out in book form the Seven Days
of talks that I had with F. de Towarnicki.
Of course, these fragments are the outcome of previous
talks and will not tell you what my "hope" rests on ... that hope that you are
very gently contesting. But it appears to me more and more that this "other
consciousness" is the sole hope in an increasingly frightening world which has
no way out. I struggle to spread this Message. The Forces that assail Auroville
are the very same ones that assail India they are tremendously powerful. They
also assail Mother's Agenda of course! This microscopic Auroville and
almost unknown and misunderstood Agenda symbolically represent the only
Force that opposes the formidable rot and decay. Mother's Agenda and
Auroville are the symbolic battlefields of the new World. Just imagine that two
thousand years ago Christ had come with an altogether different message and
another transforming power, and that 2,500 years ago Buddha had come with an
altogether different message and another power to change consciousnesses and
then the Navajata and the Ashram of that time had come and engulfed the true
message and twisted the true transforming Power in order to turn it into a rich,
powerful and political Church. Well, this is what happened and what is happening
once more in History all "messages" have become big spiritual "businesses" and
more or less fanatical Churches, and what could have really transformed humanity
has been carefully censored, distorted and imprisoned. There we are today. And
what I could not make my dearest friend Jeh understand is that Mother and Sri
Aurobindo do not represent one more "teaching" or one more "spirituality," but a
real transforming Power.... Had a big ape of yore been told that this futile
little vibration of a thought was
going to create an Einstein and upset the world, he would not have believed in
this transforming Power. Now, it is another incomprehensible little cellular
vibration that is striving to change the world. And this Agenda is the
key that will make man participate in his own transformation instead of letting
the "phenomenon" unfold unconsciously, after much damage, much pain and many
catastrophes, as it was at every evolutionary transition. And Auroville is the
laboratory of this new consciousness.
So the true battle appears in its true perspective it is that of India and of the world. Is rot going to triumph once more?... Indira Gandhi is encircled. India is infiltrated. No, it is not a battle between two giants, Russian and American, but a battle between corrupted and blind old apes here and there, and a little vibration, very fresh and new, which can change the world's destiny and open an unexpected door where there is no way out.
Satprem
August 11, 1980
(Fragment of a letter)
Here, things are dreadful with falsehood and inertia the truth is that India wants to do nothing.
We act.
August 14, 1980
Mud, mud....
August 15, 1980
(Letter from Sujata to an old disciple who was in charge of the Ashram electrical service. Originally in English.)
Bulada,
Your letter, inviting Satprem and myself to come back to the Ashram with Counouma's blessing, came. It took my breath away. You are now over 80 years old, so I was reluctant to reply. But it is so full of hypocrisy, and ridiculous to boot, that I decided to put plainly some facts.
You say that you consulted Counouma when you wrote. Who is Counouma? The managing trustee of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram (poor Sri Aurobindo!). And what did this Counouma do as such? He locked out Satprem from his house and home;34 he "expelled" Satprem from the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo; he denounced Satprem to the police. And now you say that "he will be very glad" if Satprem came back because he is keeping Satprem's house. Why this shameless lie? (...) Surely it must stem from the well-renowned courage of the Ashramites in general and of the "senior sadhaks" in particular.
Not a single protest by any "devotee" of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother when Sujata's home was locked by the trustees of the Ashram during her absence and on her return she had to spend the night outside. Who is Sujata? A child of 9 who came to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and spent her youth and middle age serving Them.
Nolinida, Dyuman, Harikant, trustees all, knew this
Sujata from her childhood, she has worked intimately with them, but they
colluded with Counouma to lock her out. Yet they knew Sujata's place in Mother's
heart, and in this way they repay Her trust in them. Pradyot, another trustee,
was admitted to the Ashram much after Sujata. And of course,
the so-called "senior sadhaks" like Amal Kiran [=K. D. Sethna], Nirodbaran,
Tehmi, and the "senior devotees" are such cowards that none dared open his mouth
to lodge even a single protest. Yet every single one of them was ready to pounce
on Satprem because he would not betray Mother. Like a pack of wolves all these
people were ready to tear Satprem to pieces, because he had the courage to say
"no" to their meddling and distorting Mother's Words. What did these self-styled
"senior sadhaks" (or any sadhak for that matter) know about the private
conversations which Mother called Her Agenda that took place between
Mother and Satprem over the years? Yet these same "senior sadhaks" wanted to
censor this Agenda for what design and purpose of their own only
they know. (...)
Frankly, the Ashram is full of 99% shams who care only to get their meals and a roof over their heads and gossip and put on a mask of spirituality for the gullible public, but where none has the courage to stand up for Truth. And if someone does stand up, like Satprem, he is "expelled."
I have put things passionlessly, merely stating some facts.
You are an old man now, Bulada, over eighty, so what have you to lose by an act of courage?
I dare you to put this letter on the notice board for all and sundry to see. But knowing fully well the extent of your cowardice, I am pretty certain that you will not do so nor even show it to anybody.
Well, I need not say anything more.
Sujata
The night of August 24-25. 1980
Vision
A cataclysm: a mountain crushed under a formidable silent
pressure, about to explode. Like the big foldings. The explosion will shake the
Earth.35
August 25, 1980
One walks: one step, then another.
*
(Personal letter)
There, just as expected, Nava's file had not even left the Ministry of Education to go to the Law Ministry and Nava got an injunction to stop everything (please find enclosed a copy of the telegram sent by Nava's lawyers). But now it is the Government of India that is attacked, so let's see....
So, I wrote to Kireet, and while I was writing, it all became suddenly very clear: Auroville is a facade for Nava, behind there is a huge plot and designs that go far beyond Auroville it is India that is targeted, a takeover. And Nava is not alone.
Last night, during my first hours of sleep, I had a
strange vision: a cataclysm. There was a huge mountain, in front of me, and
under I don't know what push from behind, this mountain was being crushed and
slid down, about to explode. Something like the vision of a big folding of the
Tertiary era. I saw the phenomenon unfolding, and when this crushed mountain
would explode, I knew it would cause
an earthquake. Hastily, with Sujata, I left a kind of building in which I was,
expecting this earthquake. It was a rather fantastic spectacle in a complete
silence: this mountain sliding down, swelling, and about to explode. It was
strangely similar to what I saw when you were still here: this huge rock
detaching itself from the mountain but here, it was the whole mountain which
"detached itself." What does it mean?... We will see! But surely it means that
something is moving on the earth or within the earth.
That aside, N. and M. are here.
Satprem
August 29, 1980
We don't know what kind of bogeyman may show its face in the future. Let's hope it will be the new species!
I feel as if I were pushing walls. It will break eventu-ally...
August 30, 1980
(Letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English)
Dear Companion,
As I am writing this letter, Agenda I [in English] is coming out in the States and is being flown to Pondicherry and Auroville. This is a momentous step on the occult plane which is bound to have strong repercussions on the material one.
As usual, India is asleep and dealing with non-events.
Again I have to challenge you. I understand that floods, riots, communal
disturbances [in Uttar Pradesh] or the visit of the UNESCO's general Secretary
are matters of national or international importance but they are non-events, puppets
passing by and ripples on the ocean; after two hundred years, we will still have
this kind of stuff. Nothing has happened really. But I say that the release of
one Agenda is an event such as does not occur in thousands of years and
which will have an indelible imprint on this Earth and change the course of
History. This is a fact for those who have their eyes open.
So what is being done, for God's sake??
If I tell you that Mother is not happy with this situation, it is an understatement. She is fed up with this lethargy and lack of understanding of the real priority.
One month ago, I wrote to you about the printing of the Agenda in India no reply. Three months ago, Sujata wrote about these 1000 copies of the Agenda lying in Paris no reply. Things may be given on a platter, even Mother may come herself who cares? And seven months ago, in February, I believe, I wrote to you: "By May we could start the Agenda in India" no reply. A sheer waste of precious time. And you fight against riots, disturbances and what not, while all the time the real remedy and real change is in your very hands.
Now here is my challenge: either you really take the thing in your own hands, or I take it in my own hands, but for sure things are going to move. I am not going to do the japa of Lucknow any more....
Here is my programme:
[There follows a series of practical steps for the printing and the distribution of the Agenda in India.]
Now excuse me, my dear Companion, but a deep inner urgency is felt and strongly hammering me. I do not act out of personal desire or impatience. For the past one month I have felt Mother pressing hard on me, as if this publication of the Agenda in India was the most urgent thing to be done which has the power to bring a real solution to this drifting country. It was deeply felt that a plot is developing, as I have told you in my latest letter. We must act promptly we have wasted many months. (...)
You
may be angry with me, but I love you all the same and in any circumstance.
Satprem
September 5, 1980
India is decidedly hopeless. I thought that my letter to C.P.N. would shake him up there was a certain force in it and look at his telegraphic reply without any answer on any point, completely avoiding the question. Not a word about the Agenda.... Here, everything seems to be engulfed in a swamp. (...)
I had written to C.P.N. (one more letter) and I told him: "If Indira refuses to go to the root of the problem and is only used as a facade, we will rapidly go towards a bloody anarchy." There is neither a single day, nor a single corner in India without riots and violence Gandhi's reign is at its height. Sri Aurobindo is not accepted in India. The Ashram is full of fakers. Indira Gandhi says that she wants to do something for Auroville and then....
One can still move walls, but a swamp?
I am tired. I continue.
Satprem
September 7, 1980
In fact, I am the "invisible" whipping boy of all the actions that are triggered as much in India as well as in America or elsewhere it puts ten thousand years on my shoulders; the day when this weight will vanish, I will laugh like a god.... and go up in smoke!
September 14, 1980
(Letter to Micheline)
...
It is very comforting to feel you there oddly enough, it is almost physical,
as if certain beings were a rest for me, when most of them are a problem to
solve or a point to be driven home, or ... Well, thank you for being.
But I will go on until the end, my life can burn for Mother. I feel as if I were running the last race, a little out of breath.
Pray for me. Fortunately, Sujata is here.
Satprem
September 16, 1980
(Letter to Kireet, originally in English)
Dearest Kireet,
Here is an important piece of news to be communicated to Sir C.P.N. Singh:
Mr. Tata himself, with our friend Yolande, went to Tata Press with the parcel of our films of the Agenda I and The Divine Materialism and asked to arrange the best possible conditions for our books.
This means that India is taking Mother's work into her own lap at last Mr. Tata himself carried the films.
......
I am with you, dear Kireet, and this means that my consciousness and whatever Mother has put in me or with me is beamed and projected onto you.
And I love you.
Satprem
September 25, 1980
(Letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English)
Dearest
Companion,
......
As for me, I have been pushing walls and walls in a constant inner concentration for months. I have come to the point where my body is fed up and where I wonder if my efforts would not be better used outside India, leaving this country to whatever fate Mother wants for it. My inner feeling is that my time is running short, do you understand? In this short time which is left to me, a number of things are still to be done. (...)
While preparing Agenda IX, which I have just finished, I came across these words from Mother:
"When you want to please people, you let things go as they are, waiting for Nature to impose her progress upon man. But this is not the truth of the creation. The true mission of man is to impose his progress on Nature."
There is something of this in my heart struggling against time and inertia, for an unwilling India.
I am deeply with you and even when I fight against you, my heart is equally full of love.
Let Her Will be done.
In Her, my home,
Satprem
September 26, 1980
(Letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English)
I must add this to my previous letter. One thing has to
be understood by you if we are to work together. There is a
fundamental difference in the method of action of the West and of the East: one
may be silly, but it works; the other may be wise, but it does not work. (...)
The Western principle of action is to set the force into motion and keep it
moving. Blunders, contradictions, counter decisions may crop up on the way, but
it does not matter the force is moving, the momentum is there, and eventually
it will reach its true destination. Moreover, through these very blunders and
contradictions, the path is cleared of unsuspected obstructions or we oblige
things to spring up and to show their noses. The Force is moving and it will
reach its goal, gaining strength from its very errors.
The Eastern principle is to wisely ponder, deliberate, foresee, calculate the possible obstacles and then act, but usually when it acts, it is too late, and meanwhile new events have cropped up which completely change the wise deliberations and finally nothing is done, or very little. (...)
The whole sickness of India and of Indiraji is that they do not set the Force into motion, they are afraid of mistakes, but one day this kind of "wisdom" may fall on their noses with a bloody crash.
Please excuse me for my blunt and straight statements. I do love you. I do love India. I do love Indiraji. But I find that one of the greatest sins is not to use the Force when it is given to one India has a formidable Shakti and it is behaving like a frightened dwarf.
Satprem
September 30, 1980
(Letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English)
Dearest Companion,
On my way to Madras [for meeting our lawyer] I made a
frightening discovery not exactly "discovery," because I knew of the fact from
a French doctor friend, but when one is actually faced with the fact, it makes
one aghast.
Herewith an extract from Pranab's talk at the Playground, a few days after Mother's departure (this comes from Mother India magazine). There is mentioned in this talk the drug which they were continually giving to Mother. This drug is siquil.
Now I entered a pharmacy, asked for Siquil, took the pamphlet and read it....36
I have no words left. I knew it. I have always known that they had killed Her.
Satprem
October 10, 1980
(Personal letter)
Yesterday, I finished Agenda IX, down to the
last comma, and I am getting my breath back to write to you. In a few days, I
will be fifty-seven I want this year to be
the last one like that. I feel as if I were shut night and day in a nightmare
which I never leave. Especially since the release of this English Agenda,
it seems to have stirred up a huge swamp, and all kinds of things are coming out
of it. To think that I
loved India so much.... Had I not all that work, I would immediately pack my
bags. Well....
Satprem
October 20, 1980
A remote island? Hiva-Oa.37
October 29, 1980
Why this rock-bottom of pain?
*
(Personal letter)
I can see you pacing the streets of New York at night,
alone. I know this situation well. And you see, at this the end of my 57th
year, I still find myself, sometimes, looking at an Atlas and setting out for
the devil an atlas has always accompanied me everywhere. But of course, this
is not the way to get out of it. Sometimes, rather astounded, I look at all
those heads of mine that they have photographed [Towarnicki and Co.] I did not
know that I had such a head on my shoulders. At times, too, I feel like changing
heads. I am an expert in various lives, I have a lot of unaccomplished
professions and so many worlds within that anything
might happen and I love Mother, so I close my monkey box. And I go on. The
only way of being in all that is to burn to light a fire with all the evil and
all the good. So light a little burning fire in the night of the United States.
The only way is to be there, that's all.
I had rightly guessed or co-felt the wave of "friends" who landed on you. But there is a grain of truth in your "attackers," or rather they can also teach you something it almost seems you want to convert them! There lies the mistake, if I may say so. Leave the "disciples" to their comfortable ideas; you won't be able to cleanse them. We are not interested in those ones, but in the others. So why waste your energy struggling against these phantoms, leave them to their beloved ideas and use them occasionally to circulate the Agenda. There is no point in putting the Ashram on trial.... In fact, you give importance and a new energy to the Ashram by attacking it: let them crumble into their own dust. Truly, it is not these ones that we want to bring to Mother. What matters are our own positive acts, and each released Agenda unmasks those fakers a little more ... for those who want to understand. (...) The invisible battle is the one which determines the material battle in the end. By "coincidence," on October 24, the very day I sent my packet to Muthanna [our lawyer in Madras] the C.B.I. [Central Bureau of Investigation] had just raided the S.A.S. in Pondicherry. Some suppressed angers and wordless arguments have a devastating power and some silent prayers, too. As for the puppets' show on the outside ... well, it is only a puppet show. And a spiritual Punch has a double hump.
In fact, everything is grating rather awfully since the
day I saw this huge rock detaching itself it is grating in me, in you, in
Kireet and everywhere. But perhaps it is a good sign, it means that the
Adversary is not pleased (we all have our little adversary's corner ... to make
progress). On the positive side too, the Governor of Pondicherry, that rascal,
has been replaced a few days ago, and two or three days ago
the Governor of Madras, another rascal and a friend of Nava's, was
unceremoniously dismissed. Let's see what will come after.... But I am sure that
our English Agenda and my journey to Madras played their part in all
that. When things will move in the United States, they will go very fast. So,
don't waste your energies answering the little "friends."
I found your letter to X very moving but there too a kind of intention of converting the "disciples".... One never converts anyone, brother! they convert themselves ... or not. But one is this is the most powerful weapon. One is and one stays firmly at one's post... in spite of all the charming maritime roads that zigzag through the atlas. Oh, it is not the sum of the "good" Satprem that makes Satprem, but the sum of all the others that creates a contradictory burning this burning is Satprem. It is the burning residue.
Nothing to say, really.
I have a vague impression that Navajata's collapse will represent a turning point toward the positive. In 1961, Mother told me "like that": "in twenty years." Do you remember?... But the Turning point? Mother told me: "You will go until the end" (by the way, I answered her: the end without you, how could it be!?). I would like to change heads completely it is too frightening to look at your own photo. And the fact of being stuck there, in one head I would rather have a spare head, with a few humming birds in between and various pirates, bears and cormorants. We live in a damned fixed world.
Satprem
October 30, 1980
I only ask to finish the work.
Undated, 1980
(On scribbled scraps of paper in the Notebooks of 1980, I found these almost unreadable lines, which I transcribe just as they are.)
A
song far off, behind
the plains of India.
A child there. I am
this child. I am
this old man. I am perpetually born,
was it yesterday,
at this very minute? I am
so old, so old that
these plains echo in me
like the primal backwash
of an ancient sea on
a forgotten continent.
I remember. I
remember, it was very distant
like this song, it was
very close, right now.
It was always. Am I
this old man? Am I
this child? I am
what is listening and listening. I am
what is gazing on and on,
until my soul breaks out
in a smile, in an
old pain, in the
old pain of the world, its
eternal smile. Am I going
to die? Am I going to gaze
again, to listen again?
A song is dying away there with
the sun on the plain. Tomorrow,
tomorrow it is all the same
I
am there in that which
no longer moves. It was yesterday,
it was tomorrow. I listen to
a never-seized unknown
that makes me be again and again
I am a child who smiles,
an old man who smiles.
I am, I am. And this
passing second lingers,
shivering in my heart
like the cry of a
never-seized gull I pass by,
I pass, I stay, I am
always, with the dying sun, with this song
that dies and this tender smile
that remains, on this child's cheeks, on
this old man's lips, I
don't know.
October 30, 1980
(Extracts from a letter to Carmen)
Three days ago, on the 27th, I received a letter from Kireet, who explains all his problems with the Law Ministry to obtain the takeover (or the nationalisation) of Nava's Sri Aurobindo Society it has dragged on for months the Ministry in question resists, finds excuses and finally refuses (meanwhile, lakhs of rupees are poured into this by Nava). (...)
On the 24th, the C.B.I. raided Nava's house
in the Ashram, the S.A.S's office, Madanlals (the manager of All India Press)
and lastly the Bharat Nivas in Auroville ... where they discovered,
in the basement, thirty-two bags of "papers" that Nava, warned by his spies, had
had the time to hide. It was the first victory at last and the first hope of
liberation for Auroville.
But simultaneously, as I told you, the Law Ministry definitively refuses any action to takeover the management of the S.A.S. ... and proposed instead the takeover of Auroville by the Government of India!... and Kireet accepted after asking C.P.N.'s opinion but not mine. He simply sent me a letter dated the 23rd, which I received on the 27th. (...)
So what does this takeover of Auroville by the Government of India mean? I suppose that, as usual, they are going to build a beautiful "spiritual" facade with a governing board of Auroville, including, first, a representative of the Government, then a representative of Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's spiritual heirs, that is, the Ashram (which until then had not had any opportunity to set its dirty feet in Auroville), then a representative of Auroville and a few crowned and cultural representatives such as Karan Singh and other "spiritual" or "cultural" puppets, who naturally will be just Nava's and the Ashram's playthings and Auroville in all that, no one will be any the wiser! (...)
And it is irremediable, because one can protest and fight against Nava, but one cannot fight against the Government of India.
Which means that it will be the "big business," with the blessing of both the Government and the Ashram. B.T. [The "Turban"] is precisely in Paris for the big Franco-Indian trade fair. (...)
Of course, I don't know the details of this "takeover"
perhaps I am mistaken and there will not be all these "representatives," but
the Government will be there and everybody knows that this Government is corrupt
Nava can do what he likes with it! Even B.T. gets "missions" from Indira's
Minister of Trade (there too we tried to intervene, but....). In India, there is
always a "but." Perhaps C.P.N. will
make up his mind to pick up his phone at the sight of my latest telegram,
but...??
There. A happy birthday.
Yet, already months ago, Tata himself wrote a long letter to Kireet and C.P.N., to warn them against such a manoeuvre...
I cannot believe that Mother will not thwart their tricks in the end, but at what cost?
Satprem
P.S. November 1st
I think that Auroville has had a narrow escape! But what a battle to get things into people's heads! Well, following Mother's wishes, Auroville will be an "international city" at least I hope so, according to Kireet's latest telegrams. Read and you will understand. But all that is still nebulous, I am wary of ridiculous last-minute ideas. If this continues, I will become a telegraphist, it will be simpler.
love
S.
November 9, 1980
(Personal letter)
... We must think big, because Mother is great. I don't
doubt that your efforts will succeed you took that American country on your
shoulders, but its first resistances hide an opening as nowhere else. That's why
I don't want "friends" (or I want very few) and little groups of
spirituality-seekers. I want a scientific and universal Mother only it is the
coming science.... No, we must hew new paths, find new doors in fact I have
the impression that your path is secretly all mapped out. What matters is your
faith, your effort, your prayer amidst the refusals. Everything else will come.
As for me, I am keeping an eye on Kennedy, as I
already told you. It is the future of America, when it will be rid of its ghosts
and monsters. I would like very much that Kennedy and Zivkova meet and through
them, almost without their knowing it, that these two phantom enemies become
aware of their own phantom and laugh! Auroville can be this pretext that's why
it has been created. But your faith must be like a clear sword, without question
of vacillation: let Mother pass directly through your presence She will do
everything else.
Meanwhile, America is entering the era of the devil. To be done with the devil, the best means is to give him power so that he hangs himself it is a dangerous game. The soul of Nixon had not really been exorcised. It is coming back, darker than ever. Kissinger is going to lead the deadly dance he is the nastiest devil I have ever seen since Hitler: Hitler was a vital devil. This one is a mental one he laughs at everything and everybody and regards humans as pygmies for his play. A fat and libidinous devil. He is perfectly disgusting. And the Agenda, silently in that. The two opposites ... naturally. I don't know what divine strategy or divine "catharsis" will turn this dangerous darkness into a new life the Divine must have an unexpected trick indeed. And you are there, in this situation. It has a meaning, hasn't it? A hell of a meaning. You must see big and understand big. And lots of patience.
But things are turning, it is obvious, even if there is
some last burst of darkness. After all, perhaps my mountain's collapsing and
rolling has a meaning. Things are on the move in the depths of the earth. Here,
as you know, Auroville is slipping out of Nava's claws, with difficulty, but
irrevocably. Even more symbolic, I think, is the story of this young girl from
Ashram Press, named Antu, who sent Pranab a letter of several pages to protest
against the oppression she even had her letter duplicated. There, too, things
are secretly moving. That a girl takes the first step does not surprise me. The
other woman in Delhi is surrounded by her huge mafia, but there is a Will in
her, it is perceptible. The octopus feels that
it is threatened and is weaving an enormous "formation" to topple Indira or
strangle her Kissinger's America is going to pour its dollars and forces into
the big media in order to demolish Indira. The devil joins the devil,
everywhere. They will arm and push Pakistan in order to exasperate the Russians
and drive them to war. India will be encircled, with subversion at home. Yes,
1981 will be the Turning Point. Pakistan and Bangladesh are delighted with this
victory. What will come out of all that? It is truly the last purge of the
devil. And similarly, our Agenda is discreetly about to come out in
Bombay. Once again, India is at stake.
Ann, scatterbrained and excited, has just brought me a telegram from Kireet: "Crucial things finalized. Final formalities likely to be completed by Monday. There was fierce and shattering opposition when there intervened sheer miracle of Mother's grace.... "
I don't know what this miracle is, but there will be a Miracle ... for the world.
That's it, brother. Look in the true dimension, always.
Satprem
P.S.: There is a thing that I want you to keep in your consciousness: Canada. We must have a man there and catch up with Mother again, who has been completely distorted in that country. It should not be difficult.
November 10, 1980
(Letter to Indira Gandhi, originally in English. In fact, this letter was never given to Indira by the person who should have done so.)
Madam,
A few things have come to my inner understanding, which
you may be equally aware of. Please excuse me for my audacity.
As you know, the "opposition" is slowly building up a powerful occult formation against your regime I say "occult," because other forces are behind. This is tangible, one can feel that there is more than the human element behind, and it is all the more dangerous. It is a slow return to the situation of 1977.38 Those people have powerful means in financial terms, aided by a deeply corrupt Bureaucracy. In fact, it is a huge octopus. All this you know.
Now, on the horizon, a greater danger is slowly emerging in the person of Mr. Kissinger. Since Hitler, there has not been a greater danger. While Hitler was a vital devil, Kissinger is a mental devil also aided by formidable means in financial circles. For him, humans are mere pygmies for his play. He hates India, seeing her divine value.39
It is evident then that this man will not only encircle India and build up a fire circle in the west and east of India, whipping up the war against Russia [in Afghanistan], but he will first of all sow the sedition in India, using the elements that you know and specially the huge Bureaucracy which is, at heart, a negation of your effort. When this man is in the saddle, it will be already very late or too late for countering the formidable and hypnotic propaganda he will leash out against you.40 I say "hypnotic," because nowadays masses are hypnotized.
But you have in you something that is stronger than all
their hypnotism and financial power a purity of the soul and
Mother's strength behind you. Should you choose to appeal to this real strength
and real soul of India, people will respond.
But for that, one should not give time to the Enemy to weave a huge
screen between you and the people the hypnotic screen of propaganda and
rumours and agitation. You must not be cut off from the people by this screen of
falsehood. Action must be taken before the sedition already there has time to
develop into an uncontrollable force fanned and aided by Mr. Kissinger.
The problem is: what action?
Material action can only be built on spiritual action. This first spiritual action is to be aware of your real Mission and to get connected with the realizing Force I repeat, Mother is behind you and whatever seems impossible to you, She can make it possible. A new Force is at work in the world, and everywhere we see this confrontation between the old methods and ideas and the new thing but no one has seized on the real lever. You can, if only you discard all the old principles, political and pseudo-democratic, which have failed and are failing everywhere. The only Principle is the faith in the Divine and in your Mission which is to establish a new India, not this corrupted society yearning for material comfort and non-doing. The people will understand you if you speak the real language and if you connect yourself with the real Strength. It is not a half-way job it is truly a radical and drastic job which is at your door and which you must tackle before it is too late and believe me, Kissinger is your ruin and the ruin of India.
How to deal with the millions of Bureaucrats who are there only to paralyze your work? and the millions of Politicians who are only there for selfish ends and ever-ready treason? Already they murmur that you are a dictator you will not convince them, you will not gain them over to your side, because indeed they side with the Enemy. "Democracy" is a front for their rot and corruption they thrive on "democracy."
Then, you have to change over to something else.
This
is your mission.
The people are with you.
Mother is with you.
An even greater disaster than the one of 1977 will overtake you if you do not seize on the short time which is left before uncontrollable forces take hold of India and of the world.
Please forgive my audacity.
I think that the soul of India is greater and stronger than all democracies and all oppositions but one must speak the language of the soul and one must have the courage which springs only from the soul.
Dare, and Mother will help you.
In Her love,
Satprem
*
(Letter to Auroville after the takeover by the Government of India. This letter was taken to Auroville by Sujata and read to the assembled Aurovilians. Originally in English)
Sisters and brothers from Auroville,
I send this letter through someone who is my own heart, this is to tell you the earnestness and importance I give to the following:
As you know, Mother has left two legacies: 1) The Agenda, 2) Auroville.
For seven years now, we have fought for preserving the purity of this legacy. You know a little only a little of the fierce battle for the defence and independence of the Agenda. You know much more about the battle for the defence and independence of Auroville in fact, it was one and the same battle against the same obscure forces. You have been courageous and resilient. After the freedom of the Agenda, comes now the freedom of Auroville. I have fought for both. If I were satisfied that the purity of Auroville were preserved, I would not write to you.
All
sorts of possibilities came up, which were all snares and traps open to outside
manipulations. The one needed thing was that Auroville could develop freely on
its own lines, without external interferences, and at the same time protected
from such interferences.
The government takeover was the only formula for cutting off the S.A.S. s tentacles. This central government takeover would have been a poor gain if, again, Auroville were not protected from the new machinery. Indiraji and a few others have devoted considerable time and attention to the problem and it was found eventually that only an international advisory Council would provide the needed safety for Auroville against any possible interference from any possible machinery. Thus the government takeover would function under the vigilant eye of an international body which will see to it that Auroville can develop freely on its own lines according to Auroville Charter and ideal.
This international body is in the process of constitution and we will see to it that it brings together the East and the West on an experimental field of peace, just as Mother wanted it. Auroville is the place where Russia and America and all countries must shake hands and try to become something else than candidates to destruction. (...)
The only danger is your own discord.
So now it is the occasion for Auroville to work and behave as one body.
But even more it is the occasion now to become what Mother wanted of you, to create a truly new man, able to receive the new Force and to shape himself and his life according to this new Force and not according to his little mental ego. This is the time when the soul must come in front, not the tongue. Perhaps you don't fully realize that if only a few sincere men try, really try to change themselves, they can change the world. This is the true meaning of Auroville not a new city, but a new heart. A place for the evolutionary change of humanity.
In this effort, in this prayer, in this burning need
within for
a really new world, I am with you.
Satprem
November 15, 1980
Thirty-seven years ago.
November 17, 1980
Seven years ago.
November 27, 1980
I am strangled with poison to leave, to leave....
November 29, 1980
Rijuta41 gives up the English translation of the Agenda.
*
(Personal letter)
The situation is as follows:
......
Even before the Council of ministers met to decide the
takeover of Auroville, Nava had already set the Calcutta Court
in motion and obtained an injunction [against the enforcement of the takeover].
(...) Well, Kireet fought well in Calcutta and won his case ... not for long:
four days later, Nava set the Supreme Court in motion and immediately got a
verdict in his favour on the grounds that the S.A.S. is a "religious
organisation" religion is the last refuge of the Asura. The Supreme Court is
also the last refuge of the opposition to Indira Gandhi. We have obtained a
review of the judgment and the Aurovilians have signed a petition which will be
defended by the best lawyer, kindly provided by Tata but... In principle, it
will be on January 21. I have offered to go personally to the Court and testify
against Nava. I believe that they will give a ruling on the fate of Auroville
... but.
It is this "but" that I would like to examine with you.
We have not triggered the central lever, the true Force behind: the Agenda. If we did not succeed there or have not done there what must be done, what is going to happen? Can we succeed in Auroville, if we did not succeed there? In brief, can India succeed in getting out of the trap, if it ignores its central driving force?
For months I have seen the situation developing in India, that is, millions of little Navas swarming here and there. Slowly, that same situation has become pregnant with negative energy, as it did in 1977, when Indira was overturned. There is agitation everywhere, propaganda and newspapers paid by little Navas, are fiercely campaigning but it is more than a campaign: it is a "formation" in the occult sense of the word, that I can sense, feel in the air. And as the economy and all the foodstuffs are in the hands of businessmen who are Nava's friends and brothers, they are strangling the country to slowly arouse a "popular movement." When Mr. Reagan and his accomplices are here, we can expect millions of dollars to be poured into India, as in '77, to topple the "henchman of Moscow" that Indira is said to be.
What then?
The
subversion is so palpable, the danger so palpable that one morning,
unexpectedly, I took this pen and I wrote a letter to Indira in which I put all
the Force to tell her what I had seen and that we have to act before it was too
late I don't think that it was "I" who wrote. That was on November 9. I sent
my letter to X, asking him to give this letter to Indira's secretary. I told
her: "We are facing a great danger," that was all.
A few days ago, I phoned X my letter had not yet been given. He was very "busy" "I'll see tomorrow or the day after." But it is like the Tamils' Naaliki. (...)
So, the two main levers, the double central action: the Agenda and my letter to Indira got lost in the cotton-wool of Delhi. I don't know how many letters I have written to Delhi as well as to Lucknow and I have spent "tons of energy," as Mother would say, but....
I don't know what conclusion one can draw from it for Auroville and for India. (...)
Nobody wants to understand.
The last "test" is the Auroville case, which should be decided on January 21 if Nava's "religious institution" wins, then ... then woe to India and perhaps to the world.
I have the impression that I am struggling all alone, and I look at that "mountain" which slowly slides down ... and is going to crush ... what?
For months and months I have pushed against walls with a fierce energy, and now it is as if there were no more "walls" to be pushed and I were looking at a formidable Mass that is ineluctably collapsing on itself is it the Divine who is moving, with last-minute tricks, or the devil? But it is as dark as can be. I am strangled by it. India is killing me.
Tibi
Satprem
December 1, 1980
The
New Auroville.
Let's meet at Hiva-Oa.
December 10, 1980
(Letter to Micheline)
Enclosed is the latest article of The Indian Express. So the Upper House of the Indian Parliament has debated about the Auroville decree and all the opposition has shown itself. The masks are beginning to drop. The extent of the Plot is revealing itself. It is a formidable plot. I don't know as yet who is the boss whom I saw one day behind Navajata, but it appears more and more clearly that the entire world of Finance is against Indira, and the new religion of Auroville is against the new World of Mother and Sri Aurobindo.
... But perhaps the divine design is more complex perhaps we have to go on to the end, to the "core" of the problem; that is, a few pure souls facing the huge army of Falsehood. Perhaps we have to reach the point where Auroville will be truly true, without anything else.
So I don't know if we are going to win the legal battle, but another, more formidable battle may be in preparation ... a battle in which not only Auroville but the very soul of India is at stake.
We are going to see, I think.
Satprem
*
(Letter to an Aurovilian)
Indeed, there was not a single voice in the Ashram to defend
Sri Aurobindo and say that Sri Aurobindo is not a religion not a single voice.
So it is the "foreigners" who fight for Sri Aurobindo and for the soul of sleeping India.
Auroville may well be the last Kurukshetra.42
Yes, Mother had seen the cruel and merciless religion which would try to settle on the world in the name of Sri Aurobindo a false Agenda and a false Auroville. The Ashram and the S.A.S. walk hand in hand like robbers.
India is full of little Navajatas.
It is the big plot. The reign of the fakers is trying to establish itself. But even if we are only a handful of "foreigners," even if the legal battle is lost, we will win the battle of the soul. For Krishna is with us. Sri Aurobindo will triumph
and the true India
through the courage of a few rebels and
Auroville will be free.
Only what is truly true and purely pure has power in this Hour.
With you
Satprem
December 17-18, 1980
Vision
Saw two black vehicles which came to run me down, one after the other the leap into the void. The fierce roar of the engine. The army of ants. My worn-out feet.
December 18, 1980
End
of volume X of the
Agenda. Phew!
December 23-24, 1980
Vision
Nava's snakes.
An abscess in my mouth.
December 26, 1980
Rijuta wants neither my "fallacious" and "misleading" words in the Agenda, nor "to participate in a conspiracy against the Ashram."
May Your Will be done.
There is nobody in the Ashram.
*
My face swollen. No dentist.
*
(Personal letter)
Here is the latest "dose" for the year. They are all relentless. There is nothing to "respond" to Rijuta, she collapses at the first blow. So, there is nobody in that Ashram? Well, I'll have done all that I could for the French, and if it is the only country and the only language, it will be better than nothing. What can I do?
A few days ago I received some very nasty snakes, then I saw Nava, and the next day I had an abscess in my mouth, which became a kind of tumefaction, and there is no dentist because of Christmas and New Year's day.
Sent
Kireet a telegram saying that I was ready to appear in person before the Supreme
Court, with or without a lawyer (I hope that it will be with a face a little
less disfigured). We will go on until the end. But we feel such a pain in our
heart.
Satprem
*
(Letter to Rijuta, originally in English)
Dear Rijuta,
Your letter makes me very sad. These forces would be only too happy to get you out of the Agenda work. They will throw at you all their irrefutable arguments shall I refute these forces? For seven years I have been doing this job. The fact that I still live today is perhaps my only argument, for those forces are so cruel that only love can bear what I had to bear for seven years. And now, Rijuta? There is so much sorrow in my heart that I have nothing to say. Do as you feel and wish I have nothing to say. May Your Will be done, Lord.
Satprem
*
(Extracts from Sujata's letter, originally in English)
No, Rijuta, there is no "conspiracy against the Ashram" (to quote you), there is only weariness at the unending, stupid blindness of people and amazement at their cowardice.
... Satprem would have been very happy to consecrate his time and energy to constructive work, which is huge enough in all conscience; you don't realize how tiresome it is to have to fight at the same time these backward-pulling forces.
One thing I would like to make clear once and for all:
Satprem, along with a handful of people have devoted their whole being to render
to Mother a little of the Love that
She poured down upon us so unstintingly.
May this New Year 1981 bring to you a clarity of understanding.
Sujata
December 29, 1980
(Letter to Mrs. Russel, an American woman, originally in English).
Dear Mrs. Russel,
Your name has become familiar to me through my little sister Suprabha43 not your "name" really but something which vibrates in my heart like a good companion and comrade. We need no fuss but Truth, simple and naked.
It has been (and it is) a real fight for freedom ever since Mother left our eyes specially for the freedom of the Agenda. You have no idea. America is very central for Mother's battle, because Americans are those among the nations who want to realize and give a concrete body to what they think they have to think the right thing, that's all.
So, I am very touched by your concrete gesture of giving some money for the printing of the Agenda. You are the first American to give. How much Mother appreciated those who concretely give. It is not a matter of thousands of dollars, but even one dollar given with a pure heart can have a decisive dynamism of its own and tilt the scale in the right direction. I wish I could give you some of Mother's love but I can give you whatever goodness is in my heart.
Satprem
January, 1981
Release
of Sept Jours en Inde.
January 6, 1981
Last letter of appeal to Rijuta.
January 22, 1981
(Personal letter)
... There were many invisible claws during the "battle of Rijuta," and now everything seems to have subsided: they have swallowed their prey. I wrote a last letter to Rijuta to try and save her (her as a being, independent of the Agenda), but the ashramite "formation" was stronger it is an octopus. Exactly what Mother described when speaking of Catholic churches: the same sensation, of the same nature. Sometimes I wonder whether, after the release of volume XIII, I should not throw down the gauntlet for the last time, a "J'accuse" in the manner of Zola, which would once and for all ruin their attempt at religion.... We'll see.
Satprem
January 28, 1981
(Letter to Kireet, originally in English)
... The sooner we can hold this first meeting of the Council
[The International Advisory Council of Auroville], the better. Mrs. Zivkova is a
crucial and central figure of this council and she must
come physically to Auroville.
......
A place where some young students of the East and the West, from behind the Iron Curtain and all other curtains will try to understand first, then to experiment how a new species is produced among these desperate and self-destructing Homo Sapiens. This is a truly international problem and everybody, from any creed or non-creed, can agree on this necessity of some sort of experimental evolution not a new "idea" among the billions of rotting ideas, but a new dynamism, a new experiment on human evolution, a new hope in this otherwise hopeless world. How is the next man or the next being on earth produced? Then all the "curtains" will fall in front of this real problem.
......
And let me point out and emphasize: it is not at all a question of millions of dollars or millions of roubles money is a rotting thing. Auroville does not need to be rich, on the contrary, it would be a curse for Auroville. We need not call for money but we must call for young blood ready to experiment on the field. And just enough money to carry on. Let Auroville grow spontaneously and develop its own necessity around the central fact of a handful of young people of all nationalities who try, who are willing to try this unknown adventure. Then Mother will seize on these few hearts and good wills and draw out of them unexpected results disproportionate to our small effort. For this is the Hour when even a small effort can work out tremendous and lightning results.
Yes, we may build "Pavilions" of each country, but the
real cement of these buildings is the common effort toward a new consciousness
and a new way of being. "Buildings" are a mere excuse in fact the whole of
Auroville is an excuse and a faηade for building up a new consciousness. Once
Auroville is nicely built with all its avenues and alleys and beautiful
Pavilions, then we can run away and try to build another Auroville in some other
part of the world because the fact of building
is the necessity, not the town. We are building a new being. (...) With much
love,
Satprem
February 19-24, 1981
Delhi-Lucknow.
Mrs. Zivkova.
February 20, 1981
(Letter to the Aurovilians, originally in English)
Delhi
My friends and brothers,
I want some deeper understanding from you.
We are not here for small things, not even for a "big Auroville," but for a more portentous thing.
Certainly, the first aim is to lend our body and soul to the new Force so that it can remould our humanity. But there is also a world-meaning in Auroville. This new humanity, or whatever it is, is not a personal achievement, not even a group-achievement it concerns the whole of humanity. If this world of ours is blown to smithereens, then there is no humanity at all. Giant powers are confronting each other. And what can we do about it? What can Auroville do about it?
Here you have to understand a little the world-meaning of Auroville beyond our small affairs.
And I say that we can do something. By a unique
Grace as never
happened in recent History, the so-called Iron Curtain is opening up for us.
Mrs. Zivkova is coming to Auroville. Mother had long, long prayed for such an
opportunity. She had repeatedly said in her Agenda that "Auroville is a
chance for humanity to avoid a Third World War."
So, please do understand in your heart and body the deep significance, the vast significance of Mrs. Zivkova's visit don't talk about small things, don't think of small things. Think of the great thing, the great chance. Have a real Prayer in your heart, widen your small horizon and rise to the occasion.
You know, we are here to tread a new path in our own body-consciousness. We are here to open our small humanity to a new experiment. It is not a matter of creed and dogma and philosophy and policies; it transcends all ideologies whether capitalistic or socialistic, all religions and all atheism, all races whether white or black or yellow. We have to survive, and we can only survive if we change our human structure. On this point every human being can agree, whether from the East Bloc or the West Bloc. And we are here to attempt this experiment in our soul and body. Here all ideologies can meet, all creeds or non-creeds can meet. And this meeting-point is Auroville.
We must call Mrs. Zivkova and other representatives to come from America or Africa, with our deepest heart, call them to share in this Human Experiment, this new evolution, and to send from their countries a few human samples who will join in this Experiment we cannot succeed unless it is a world experiment. The Iron Curtain or the Dollar Curtain or the Bamboo Curtain and all the curtains can fall only if we find the central Point where all the human barriers melt into a deeper Necessity.
We know what this deeper Necessity is and we are here
to try it. Let the new wave start from one point at least, from one small corner
of the world. Let us try together the New Being. Let us change this catastrophic
wave menacing to engulf the world into a new wave of creation and hope. Instead
of confronting the old international ghosts of terror and war, let us confront
our own deeper Humanity with its own future and its own challenge. There we can
all unite and there we can all try. This is the real world-meaning of Auroville.
My prayer is burning with yours,
Satprem
February 22, 1981
(Letter to Micheline)
Lucknow While the loudspeakers and shehanais resound under the palace vaults welcoming Mrs. Zivkova whom I met the day before yesterday in Delhi I am trying to gather a few scraps of clear thought to give you the latest news. What a circus! Tomorrow, I leave for Delhi-Bangalore and our mountains.
I have made an important discovery (which is not
exactly new, because I suspected it inwardly, but the material facts are very
eloquent). So, I believed that Delhi our friends had a certain power owing
to their intimacy with Indira, but that they did not use their power or were
afraid of using it hence my "fury" and my pounding on the walls. Now I realise
that they have no power! Not only can they do nothing, but Indira herself has no
power! They are besieged by a million and millions of little Navas who have
settled down everywhere in the slightest nook, from top to bottom, during the
previous regime. Not a single direct decision from the Prime Minister can be put
into execution without being immediately blocked, distorted, and when ten
obstacles have been overcome, ten thousand new ones arise justice, finance,
commerce, police, everything-everything is in the hands of a formidable mafia
overflowing with money. It is not Indira who has the power, it is Navajata & Co.
It is a thousand-headed
Hydra. Indira has to bang her fist on the table (which is not in her nature) and
express a categorical, irreducible and repeated will for a single decision to be
executed and Indira does not have the will (although regarding the
takeover of Auroville she was very categorical, and how many obstacles had to be
overcome, and it is not over). In fact, it is not even the problem of Auroville
or of the Agenda: it is the problem of the whole of India. But I knew
very well that Navajata was precisely the symbol of India's decay. It is the
whole system that should be changed, broken; but Indira has a "democratic"
atavism, so deep-rooted that it is a bit of her that one should break for this
Machine to be broken. She begins to realize that if she does not act she will be
engulfed or paralyzed by the Hydra and she still seeks democratic means to
change the democracy, but there she comes up against her own ministers and her
millions of "followers" who are precisely the ones who benefit by the democratic
rot. If she tried to touch the Sacred Machine, not only would she have all her
enemies against her, but all her friends as well! It is all of India that is
tarred with the same brush. The only solution is a military coup d'ιtat which
she will never dare. But I think it is my hope, my secret hope that
Mother is going to arrange material circumstances in such a way that Indira will
be obliged to act. If she is not forced to do so, if she has not got a knife to
her throat, she will do nothing and India will be doomed to decay with the
triumph of all the little Navas and Counoumas.
So I am no longer angry with C.P.N. & Co I realized that they did what they could, but that in fact they could do nothing. It is not inertia, it is powerlessness. You cannot get angry with a paralytic.
On the other hand, if we do nothing or can do
nothing, the others are not afflicted with the same paralysis. That's where we
are a little amazed by their formidable infiltration everywhere. To give one
recent example, I have just heard in Delhi from Pratibha [a deputy in Parliament
and C.P.N.
Singh's eldest daughter] that Pourna had met with a lot of politicians and led a
whole politically well-organized campaign with "influential" people to explain,
as Mother's grand-daughter, that the Agenda was a fraud of Satprem's,
that Satprem had illegally "smuggled the tapes out of India" in complicity with
"certain people" (meaning Tata). In brief, that I had stolen and distorted
Mother's message for lucrative ends, etc., etc. Why this political campaign?
What are they preparing? It was not quite clearly said, but I vaguely understood
that they announced a "true"
Agenda to rectify Satprem's imposture. And this campaign was so well
organized, backed up by "proof" (or so they said) that not only Pratibha but
C.P.N. Singh himself thinks that I have really "smuggled" the tapes out,
breaking the law though naturally, they side with me, they will fight on my
side if necessary without hesitation.
This is one example among so many others.44 Naturally, it is to be expected that my declaration to the Supreme Court in the Auroville case will be instantly contested: the testimony of a robber who, to boot, has been expelled from the Ashram is worthless. (...)
26 February
At last I am done with this circus. But I've come back to find myself faced with 400 pages of proofs of volume XI to see in a few days. So I finish this letter in haste. (...)
A suggestion from C.P.N.: four hundred acres of land in U.P. and funds to build a "true Auroville without any shadow." I did not hit the roof, because I have become wiser, but I answered that "the Shadow" was precisely the thing to be overcome if it is not overcome there, where will it be overcome?...
The only really positive thing of this journey are my
three meetings
with Mrs. Z. (one in Delhi, two in Lucknow). A remarkable woman indeed,
infinitely superior to Indira in quality. In fact, the most remarkable person I
have ever met: a vast intelligence + vision + indomitable and immediate energy.
You spend one hour with her and you emerge refreshed it is she who
gives. A clear force, full of joy. Mother has never had a better instrument. We
spoke of things that I can't tell you here.... But
silence. Her name must absolutely not be mentioned around us she would
run too serious a risk....
This encounter is a gift from Mother. If that exists, there is some hope for the world.
But India?... I met Pratibha, Indira's friend, who gave me a significant answer. I told her again of the growing danger in which India finds herself and I said: if Indira does not act quickly, she will be faced with an uncontrollable situation. Answer from Pratibha: "What can we do? We have to follow the procedures. "
So I have learnt my lesson once and for all with Delhi: there is nothing to be done. I was angry as long as I still thought that something could be done, but we can do nothing. So we have to focus on the only thing that we can do: to try and organize an independent Mira Aditi45 in Auroville, so that the Agenda is not at the mercy of those politicians.
Of course, Micheline, I understand very well what you mean and what Carole would like: a "Bernard Pivot" [T.V.] programme on The Mind of the Cells. But to start this circus all over again? My body is no longer at all what it was in 1977.... You understand, to say things simply, I would like to finish volumes XII and XIII as soon as possible after that, it will be "time out" and why not, I will be available. But I must finish my essential task, I must go through to the end with this Agenda. (...)
Satprem
March 4, 1981
End
of volume XI, sent to Paris.
*
(Letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English)
Dearest Companion,
Yes, we are inseparable.
It was really good to meet you. We are linked by Mother's message if it were not for this Work and this Message, life would be a truly miserable affair. Frankly, if it were not for Her, I would leave. I have still two more volumes to complete. (...)
In Lucknow, I could feel your fatigue, and also your wound. I am deeply sorry I have never wanted to do harm to anyone in this life; I have myself too much suffered. But my heart is pure, this you know. Of late, I have been quite worried about the turn of events and consequently very impatient, even angry which is a weakness. I feel very much that my time is short, perhaps very short. For eight years now I have worked non-stop and gone through many anguishes; there is a deep inner fatigue and weariness. I am always ready to fight, but this last fight in the sordid quagmire of this country has worn me out.
I wish that I could have explained to you the reasons
for my doubts and impatience. Until this journey to Delhi, I thought that we
had the power, but that we did not use it or were afraid to use it hence my
banging the doors. But I have discovered that we have no power: they have
the power. There is not a single Ministry that is not thoroughly infiltrated by
our enemies, perhaps not even one Minister or Secretary who is not opening his
doors and ears to the Enemy. We are paralyzed. When I understood this, my anger
was gone. Indiraji had not the courage to clean the Stables; the only good thing
we can tell about her is that it would be worse without her. My only hope now is
that Mother
will create some intolerable or perhaps crushing circumstances which will oblige
Indiraji to act. Otherwise, it is hopeless. She has not the courage or the will.
She wants to "follow the procedures," as Pratibhadi says, but she will be
destroyed by these "procedures" and these millions of traitors in her own
surrounding, unless Mother comes with a helping and perhaps brutal Hand. Such is
the lesson I have learnt in my journey. So, now, I don't try anymore to ask "why
don't we do this or that?" I know that we can't do. It's simple and tragic.
(...)
Certainly you must feel as I do. The only thing to be done now is to hurry to go to the end of my work while there is still time. That will remain for decades, the rest will pass.
......
I am always with you. I have learnt my lesson. Only love remains in my heart.
I embrace you, my inseparable Companion.
Satprem
March 7, 1981
Heart attack.
I refuse to die.
March 10, 1981
(Letter to Alain Bernard, Auroville)
You are often in my thoughts, although I don't have the leisure to write. Even today I am obliged to dictate this letter to Sujata because I am not in very good health. You are close to me, in my heart and in my consciousness.
I have been very worried about Auroville for many years
but more particularly of late, for now it is not so much an outer
enemy that we must confront as an inner difficulty coming from human egos and
where there is ego, there is the seed of decay. Everyone seems to be saying "I"
think, "I" feel, "I" believe, etc., it is nothing but disorderly, mental hot
air. Mother said so many times: "One must let oneself be flattened until one
vanishes, one must abdicate the little person, or else it is the old round that
goes on and on.... " I well understand that this mental ego is necessary as long
as there is nothing to replace it, but at least in Auroville, a first effort
should be made to try and listen to the soul first. Instead of rushing at any
impulse, one could try, each time, on each occasion, to be a little silent and
try to understand what the soul would say. One can try to call Mother in
this silence and understand what She would want. Or else it is the old
hopeless story.
Certainly, the old democratic majority system is only a temporary device which is doomed to disappear in the new world. Of course the ideal would be a government of wise men: a few persons with a silent vision and without preferences or desires. Perhaps we have not yet reached that stage. But we must never forget I repeat, never forget that it is our true aim and sole salvation, otherwise it will be the race for political power with swarming, and more or less well-intentioned little egos, but even "good intentions" are almost as worthless as the ignorant ones. In her last years, Mother would say: "The reign of the Divine must come, oh, how it must come, I am in a hurry...."
Yesterday evening, I heard about the latest good intentions of a number of Aurovilians, for getting rid of undesirable people in Auroville. And it's true, these bad seeds must leave before they contaminate the ignorant. In fact, ignorance is the only illness. If one knew, one would understand, one would love, and the obstacles would melt away. But ignorance can only disappear in the quiet softness of the soul.
While waiting for the government of sages, there should
be one voice that can speak in the name of Auroville, it is our
sole salvation for the time being, or else there will be this Auroville and that
Auroville and nobody will understand anything anymore and eventually it is our
enemies who will benefit from it. This voice should try, oh how it should try to
be a little clear and loud in its tranquil power of the soul. (...)
The best way to combine spirits is always to mix them into the material stuff, for it is in matter and in the small things of matter that consciousnesses can meet rather than in the abstract rigidity of the mind's little compartments. Thus "ideologies" will be rubbed together, they will soften and wear down, through the calm contact of matter. Consciousnesses unite better in matter than in ideas which are all false as long as they do not spring from the quiet necessity of the soul. (...)
The government of the soul must be born, oh how it must be born in Auroville, it is more urgent than ever.
I love you all and I toil and work beside you.
Satprem
March 11, 1981
(Letter from Sujata to Micheline)
Do you feel better? No more flu, I hope. Gone, volatilized? But wouldn't it be better if one (= you) could rest without needing an illness as an excuse? But curiously enough, I have seen that most of the time and for most people this physical mind of ours cannot let go of worries; it needs the body to be ill in order to leave the being in peace. Curious.
I can see the same phenomenon in Satprem.
I am going to tell you.
On March 7, at mid-day, he had a heart attack.
Until 3 p.m., it was "touch and go," that is, the situation was very precarious.
His heart nearly gave way. He was facing Death. But
a deep will to finish his task before leaving got the upper hand. He knew how to
refuse death.
From 3 p.m. on, the game began to be won. But it was slow, almost imperceptible. The night of March 7-8 was really bad. But on the 8th, from 4-5 a.m. onward, I felt that things were going better, that the danger had passed.
Of course, he is as weak as can be. The least effort leaves him out of breath.
All the same, he accepted to stop writing letters himself and to dictate them. Nobody realizes all that he puts into his letters when he writes all the consciousness, the energy. Well....
One more thing: on the night of March 7-8, his neck was very painful.46 Does it mean that the blood could not go up or down? Or what exactly? Obviously, the circulation was affected.
He feels better. Every evening, we walk up to the top of Happywood.
Please find enclosed a note from Satprem, which he dictated to me this morning, it is about the pain in his legs.
Sujata
*
(Note dictated by Satprem for Micheline)
For about two years a certain phenomenon has been
occurring very frequently and more and more often during the night. It is as if
all the nerves in my legs were painful. Particularly since the 7th.
It is at times a kind of torture, as if hundreds of nerves were pulled and
exasperated, and the body feels like thrashing about in all possible ways to get
rid of this pain. Sometimes it lasts for two, three hours, keeping me awake.
Certainly, there must be a subconscient origin and a work at that level, but
perhaps there are also physical
means and physical causes. If a somewhat clever doctor understood, he could tell
me what could help my body a little and relieve it maybe it lacks vitamins, I
don't know. I don't want drugs but something simple and natural which would cure
these pains.
It is never during the day that I feel this pain, only in the night when I lie down to sleep.47
March 15, 1981
Beginning of volume XII.
*
(Letter dictated to Sujata for Micheline)
Would you try to get some medical advice (perhaps from Aigueperse, but I absolutely don't want anyone to know my difficulties)? I don't want to see or consult any doctor, nor above all enter the medical atmosphere. I want only some simple advice, or if need be, a few adjuvants to help my heart. In brief, things are as follows:
For about two years, my heart was over-strained and I
knew that it was not well. On the 7th, as I was finishing my work at
noon, I began to feel two painful lines, as it were, rising from each side of
the back of my shoulders to the neck and the occiput. It became like two
somewhat burning
lines,48 then I felt this pain in the heart as if the valves did
not work well or the blood had some difficulty circulating, then I felt the two
jugular veins (I don't know if it was exactly that) but two distinct lines, as
if a little burning and compact, which rose from the neck to the back of the
cranium, so it seemed. In brief, the blood had difficulty going up or down, I
don't know. The pain increased in the heart and I was constantly panting as if I
had much difficulty breathing and it could stop at any minute. I gasped for
breath during all the afternoon of the 7th and all the night of March
7-8. I could not lie down, because the pain increased immediately, especially in
the neck, where it was like an iron collar. I could not turn to the right nor to
the left because my heart hurt as soon as I moved. The sitting position seemed
to be the best. There was also a kind of fever (it was intermittent) which came,
more particularly in the head. I had the impression that all that could be
blocked at any second.
This is the description in a few words. I am better now, but this panting has a tendency to come back and I feel my heart like an object which is not in a normal state, it remains fragile.
Don't worry, we will go through to the end of the work. When this happened on the 7th, I began with this surrender, then I refused the surrender, I refused to die: I said that I wanted to finish my work. So, if this moment has been crossed, there is no reason why I should not go on until the end. But of course it remains very fragile and it would be better if I could devote my energies solely to finishing my work without being pulled too much here or there (in fact it is neither Paris nor New York nor the rest there that "pulls," on the contrary, but it is above all Delhi and Auroville that cause the difficulty, that is, India).
If one looks at the positive side, I think it was a
means of purification that Mother gave me to rid me of a number of useless
things and to open me up a little more in the eternal direction, independently
of bodies and circumstances. So everything is well in fact, everything is
always well and nothing
happens but at the exact hour.
... Sujata is my heart and she suffers a little with my heart, but her quiet faith supports me.
When you add up everything in a life, there only remains what you love.
Satprem
P.S.: I am going to begin volume XII this morning.
The night of March 16-17. 1981
Vision
I am walking on a long-long footbridge suspended in mid air, of which I cannot see the far end. There is hardly enough room to set foot (perhaps 12 centimetres wide). I can see myself from above, very small, walking perilously. Then suddenly a grey iron bar appears across the footbridge. Simply a bar. To go over it is impossible. I try to go underneath, but as I bend down, I start getting dizzy and my heart pounds. The vision stops here.49
March 22, 1981
Perception that it will become more and more difficult as I progress with volumes XII and XIII. They will try everything to stop me.
Occultly, it has already been done. But physically, on my body.
March 24-25, 1981
Vision
They
try to kill me. This white, cruel hand, which relentlessly strikes my neck, with
the edge of the hand. All the force of murder and of cold, relentless
cruelty.50
March 25, 1981
(Letter from Sujata to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English).
Respected uncle,
Namaskar.
This is to tell you something that happened last night. It was during the first part of the sleep.
Through the haze of my sleep, I heard Satprem almost "screaming," if I may say so. I jumped out of my bed and ran to his room. During that space of time I heard him 3-4 times more, although slightly subdued in tone. By the time I reached his bed-side he was awake.
This is what he told me (in French):
"I was having a 'nightmare' which wasn't one. I saw a hand, a white hand, trying to strike at my neck with a will to kill me.
I have passed through concentration camps and all but I never saw such manifest cruelty as expressed by that hand. It was horrible, horrible. It was a white hand, pallid. But what cruelty and murderous intent. It was repeatedly striking at my neck with the edge of the hand (as in karate)."
As a matter of fact, his first heart-attack on the 7th
instant had started with a pain in the neck rising from the back of
the shoulders to the nape and upward.
All this leads us to think that this is a black-magic induced heart-attack.
When finally I went back to bed, the time was 11.30 p.m.
Although he continues to feel his heart, he is going on with his work, at a slightly reduced pace. This is the volume XII of the Agenda; 1971, the year of Bangladesh.
Daily we go out for a short evening walk. (...)
Sujata
March 28, 1981
Ooty testament.
Return from Ooty. The horde of children coming out of school a thousand million soon. The forest is doomed to destruction.
March 30, 1981
7.45 p.m. This time, they tried to kill Sujata.
Two hours of battle to keep her. As if her breast was being torn apart.
A page has been turned.
April 2, 1981
(The felled tree.) Every time you are sad, you let the adversary's knife enter your heart.
*
(Letter to the Cooperative of Auroville)
Jean-Marie conveyed to me your big envelope for the Agenda.
You
cannot know how touched I was. Immediately, I put it at the feet of Sri
Aurobindo and told him: "You see, it is Auroville that gives this for Mother's
Work."
You did this with your hearts, but you don't well assess the importance of the gesture that you have made. It is very important. It is as important as the laying of the first stone of the Matrimandir. It means that your material being has understood a little what Mother's presence on earth means. It is like a direct bridge that you have thrown between your physical being and the Grace of the future.
What you don't know, perhaps, is that these Agendas are not books, are not a teaching, are not even experiences; it is beyond all that, more powerful than all that: it is Mother's body. It is her living Force to transform the world. Without it, there is no Auroville. Without it, there is no new world. It is not a book. It is a powerful radioactive ore. You can read it and understand, or not understand, or understand a little what is in it, but it does not really matter; what matters is that you touch this book, that you touch this Force and come into contact with the Force that can transform. This is what the Agenda is.
And Mother liked so much the material gesture of "giving," yes, banknotes. Money is precisely the Adversary's hideout it always goes to selfish ends, even if appearances are altruistic. But to give to Mother is a concrete act which is more important than all philosophies, speeches or even the cloudy or less cloudy feelings in which one envelops things. To give means to make your body participate.
So I am sure that your gesture has a deep meaning for the future and that it is a promise and a blessing for Auroville.
Perhaps what you don't know either is that this
Agenda symbolizes a little (or perhaps a lot) the battle of the New World.
It is a formidable battle, of which Auroville is only a small reflection. Two
thousand years ago, what could a few men understand around a being called
Christ? What did those few men know of what the seed sown by Christ was to
become? What do we know today of Mother's and Sri
Aurobindo's meaning? Will this seed be perverted once again, imprisoned in a
religion, shut up in a politico-spiritual power? Or else will it freely and
integrally fructify and radiate with its living Power to change the earth?
This Agenda is the whole battle of the future. You don't know what battle, really....
Today it is in India that the battle of the World is taking place. It is absolutely essential that the Agenda spreads in India and wakes its sleeping soul. This is what can save India and Auroville. You don't know all the material and invisible obstacles. But your gesture is very important in this battle.
So, I want this money to go to the work of the Agenda in India. If you want to go on with your effort in the future, I would like your offering to be given anonymously to the Cooperative, when you wish, in a special envelope reserved for the Agenda. It is not at all a question of giving two rupees or two thousand rupees. It is the question of your material awakening to the meaning of the Agenda. It is not superfluous money that you give, it is something else, which cannot be numerically measured. (...)
I love you, I am your brother from all times and for all times.
Satprem
April 3, 1981
Electrocardiogram = no heart attack!
April 4, 1981
(Letter to Micheline)
I have a good piece of news for you.
Yesterday,
I went and had the electrocardiogram that Yolande asked for. There is no heart
attack! Not a trace of it in the electrocardiogram, that is, no physical
trace. But....
This piece of news left me puzzled. Of course I wondered what all that could mean. Because, to tell the truth, my body does not feel as if it has completely pulled through. It has been (or is) very shaken. But one thing is sure, a corner has been turned.
I don't know how to explain....
I have been through all kinds of trials in my life: in the camps, typhus, tuberculosis, then that peritonitis and all sorts of things about which we say: "I nearly died of it." But each time, never did I feel that ... never did my body feel that it was going to die! Perhaps it was traversing death, but it was not going to die. But this time, it felt that it was going to die. It was as if death had put its finger on my body. It shook it up very much and left a sort of imprint or uncertainty on it.
It is an experience that I have not finished understanding, so I prefer not to develop or mentalize it. But one thing is sure, something radical took place in my body. Something that has completely changed my basic equilibrium the basis on which one usually functions and which creates a kind of habitual trust, trust in life, trust... in its working. Something there has been (how could I say it?) touched or changed or shaken, I don't know.
What does it mean? I don't know yet.
In any case, it was obviously ... yes, one of their nasty magic tricks. They are very skilful. Sujata has sent you the note that she wrote to C.P.N. to tell him what had happened to me a few days or a week ago, I don't know anymore.
It was a rather terrible experience. I scarcely feel like repeating it, but that hand exuded such a cruel, relentless force of murder.
It was quite an experience.
In fact, for months (particularly for one year, this
terrible year
1980) I had felt death a lot, or death-wishes around me, but it was a kind of
constant, invisible struggle, behind a ... as if behind a curtain: something
that went on constantly, day and night. In my external consciousness, I knew
hardly anything, but it created a kind of constant, very grating struggle
indeed, and it wore me down, of course. And what happened on March 7 was the
culmination, I don't know. Well, had the Grace not been there, I would not have
stayed, that's for sure. But when it came, there was a will, I don't know, a
will or a prayer or whatever, and I said: "I want to finish my work."
Obviously, it was a will to destroy me. And I nearly "went for it," as they say, that is, I nearly made my surrender and said: "May Your Will be done." But it was the Asura's will.
There is not much to say.
I can't weigh things very well yet, but something has changed. Outwardly, in any case, it made me feel the necessity of disconnecting myself from many things, mainly external relations: correspondence, etc. in order to exclusively devote myself to completing these two volumes. Their attacks are not over and I felt clearly that the more I advance (or the more we advance, or the more the world advances in these last two volumes), the more difficult it will become. But we will win, there is no doubt about it. Only, we must not spread ourselves too thinly.
But the good piece of news in all that is that the day they stop their machinations, there will be no physical trace in my body. This is important. Suddenly, it will withdraw from me like a veil of shadow, like a shadows grip. Then I will be fresh, perhaps.
So you don't have to worry, we go on with the work.
We must pray.
And we must understand that the so-called personal
difficulties, or seemingly personal, have nothing to do with our weaknesses or
so-called qualities. They are part of the battle of the world. It is a big wave
of destruction and those who remain standing are the ones who ... I don't know,
those who
love, those who hold on, those who want "something else." Above all, one must
never mistake all these attacks, whether they are psychological,
physical or whatever, for personal attacks: they are part of the great movement
and of the great tempest. When you know that, you don't take it out on yourself
so much, you reproach yourself less, you understand that it is the great Battle.
Our sole Power is to last, endure and go through it, then to burn, burn, burn
all that is impure, burn all that encumbers, and then move forward. And we will
go to the end.
In practical terms, I keep your medicines preciously near me. If some crisis comes again, perhaps they will help. I have the impression that, medically speaking, Aigueperse's diagnosis is right and that it was, apparently, a kind of attack of angina. But these are external symptoms. In fact, it was something meant to kill me. But I don't disregard your remedies. I take those glucose pills every day and I don't know what else. My legs too are better since I have discovered that vitamin B stopped this kind of neuritis I had in my legs. It was simply a question of vitamin B. So much for the external appearances, what is meant behind them, I don't know either.
But precisely, the big lesson of it all is that they are appearances only, and all, all is an appearance they are formidable appearances. There is not one true thing, not one true diagnosis, not one true symptom, not even one true sensation. There is only one Reality, a Divine one, behind all that. Everything else is falsehood: a medical falsehood, a falsehood in your own body, a falsehood in your head, of course, a falsehood at every level, with all kinds of frightening or marvellous appearances, but they are nothing but appearances. Even when it seems that you are going to let drop your body, it is still an appearance.
There is but one Reality, a Divine one.
And the sole solution is to cling to this Reality, come what may. And to believe in this Reality alone, whatever the appearances may be.
Finally,
"That" alone exists. All the rest are phantoms without reality and which have no
power but the reality that you allow them to have.
Perhaps we must stop believing in death.
Well, we continue. And you must not worry, or perhaps you must worry about the whole world, but that's all. And it is worrying indeed. But there too, whatever the appearances may be, we are heading for victory. There is no doubt about it.
That's it.
We are together.
We love one another.
We'll continue right to the end.
Satprem
April 5, 1981
Really alone.
There is nothing but the Supreme.
April 12, 1981
Cruel and cold forces. How much time left? It is an onslaught, as if to tear me to bits.
April 13, 1981
The vile and cruel article against me in The Hindu.51
Everyone lies.
The night of April 16-17, 1981
Vision
An
asphyxiating, toxic cloud, which rushes and envelops a house where I am.
Big billowing clouds.
April 19, 1981
Eye-ache, headache, toothache for days.
April 24-25, 1981
Second attack.
Lord, let me continue until the end.
April 25, 1981
(Letter from Sujata to Micheline)
Today is Saturday, March 7 was another Saturday.
This sentence helps you guess what I mean, doesn't it? Yes, Satprem had this "angina" once again.
It began last night around 9.30-10 p.m. Pain spread throughout his neck and right shoulder. After that, it came to his heart. Then the two sides of his neck were caught up. At times, he did not know what hurt more, the heart or the neck.
All that pain continued almost non-stop until past 9 this morning.
At
4 a.m., he tried out some Trinitrine, first one tablet, then a second after a
quarter of an hour. The pain did not diminish.
This time I could observe something that he did not have on March 7: shivers. It came and went again and again. I did not look at the clock but offhand I would say: twenty to thirty minutes. After that, it stopped. His hands were sweaty too.
After nine it began to subside.... Now he seems to sleep. But he keeps tossing and turning.
Satprem called me only at 3.20-30 this morning. I was in the middle of a dream with Giscard. He was eating French papaya. I timidly offered him an Indian papaya. He hesitated but did not want to refuse outright, so he took a mouthful very carefully. Then I saw him pushing his French papaya away, taking the one I had offered him and eating it with delight... I awoke, then went back to sleep. He was still sitting on the ground (since the beginning) and had an atomizer in his hand with which he dampened the floor around him an unpolished cement floor!! I told him it was the only good French thing = French perfume. But while saying that, something in me corrected: "No, not all perfumes."
This is approximately when Satprem called me and I hurried to him. (...)
Sujata
April 29, 1981
Arrival of the Mind of the Cells a beautiful book.
The night of May 3-4, 1981
Mother watches over me.
May 4, 1981
(Letter dictated by Satprem to Sujata for Micheline)
Here
is my own "clinical" description, which will complete the one that Sujata gave
you in the letter which does not seem to have reached you.
It began at 9 p.m., just when I was going to bed. The pain started in the back as it did the last time, but it was more localised at the level of the right shoulder and rose to the neck. Then the pain spread all over the higher part of the back, as if with each breath I felt two lines or two veins or two arteries, I don't know, painful and somewhat blocked, almost exactly level with the clavicles, but in the back and rising to the nape of the neck.52 Then pains started in the heart and I had great difficulty breathing, as if my breath were very short and hampered. The pain in the heart became particularly acute when I tried to turn on my right or my left side. I noticed a thing that I had forgotten to tell you. During the first attack, there were very acute constrictive pains at the level of the sternum, but I thought that it was my old unusual hernia, which I have had for years in the esophagus, right where the digestive tract joins up with the stomach. I thought that the constrictive pain came from there; but in fact, it came from higher up. Now, during the second attack, this constrictive pain was noticeably less perceptible and sensitive.
It was only around 3 a.m. that I decided to call Sujata and it was only at that moment that I made up my mind to take a first dose of Trinitrine, then a second, with no apparent effect but perhaps I had waited too long and the attack was already at too advanced a stage to be checked.
From 3 a.m. on, it became very difficult and
exhausting. I
began to feel chilled (which did not happen during the first attack: my whole
body was shaken by shivers and my teeth were chattering). At one point, I felt
that I was about to faint and I told Sujata: "I think I am leaving." Then she
said "No" very strongly and the fainting stopped, the shivering progressively
subsided. I was literally shaking with cold. Sujata tells me that my hands were
completely frozen and sweaty. She says that those shivers lasted for about
twenty minutes. Around 6-7 a.m., I felt that I was over the worst. At once, I
said to myself that if there was a third attack I do not know how things would
turn out.
Now I am trustful again. We learn the hard way.
I forgot to tell you that when those shivers came, Sujata gave me some of the whisky that Yolande had brought and it helped at least, I will have learnt to drink whisky (!).
Now I am fine, except that I get very easily tired and am immediately out of breath as soon as I move. When I am a little too tired, there are sometimes pains around my heart.
... Reasonably and incorrigibly, I smoke ten cigarettes a day. But I have given up cigars (so, I am very wise).
Walking does not make me tired, on the contrary, I have the impression that it does me good, as long as I go slowly.
It is very difficult to know what is due to their magic and what is due to weakness or a natural flaw which allows their magic to act.
I am confident.
Satprem
*
(Letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English)
It is good to feel that you are there.
Yesterday Kireet conveyed to me, on the phone, your offer of a refuge unknown to anyone. I understand well that the main strength of our enemies is their knowledge of my physical home it helps them to target their attack more accurately.
I
confess that immediately after the last attack, on 24-25th April, I
felt strongly that I could not survive another attack. It was violent enough.
(...) Then I thought that I should leave India and finish my work before they
get me out of the picture.
This is or rather was the position. Now I feel somewhat differently, perhaps because I am out of the immediate danger. When one is in it, then it looks different. I know and feel the menace hanging over my head, but something keeps telling me: "It is not possible that Mother will leave you at the mercy of those cruel people, it is not possible that you will go before finishing your task it is a lack of faith." Also there is some truth dawning in my body since these two attacks; it is too early to speak of it, but it is a sort of physical sensation that only the Divine is real, that only the Divine acts and decides, that there is no such thing as "black magic," there is only "divine magic." All depends on the physical faith of the body; if it believes in the ghosts, then it is killed by the ghosts; if it believes only in the Divine, then there is nothing whatsoever, except an experience to teach to the body the real attitude and the real divine life. So it is a thin thread and one can be thrown to one side or to another real life or death depending on this physical consciousness. I don't know whether all these experiences are willed by Mother or ... what? I cannot believe that those cruel little magicians are the masters of my destiny. At the same time, I know how it feels when one is in the midst of these cold shivers.
For the time being, there is a stubborn sailor from Brittany in me who refuses to accept defeat. I shall go to the end of this volume XIII and will not budge, even if I am going to die. Either there is a Divine Truth and it is just as well to die with this faith than to run away and save my life with the faith in the devil. Surely my God is greater than these little magicians. And if it is really my time to leave the body, then it is perfectly O.K. At least I shall have tried my best.
I
can't help feeling that Mother wants me to learn something, not only through
this Agenda, but through direct experience. (...)
I am finishing the last pages of volume XII. I will start right away volume XIII. I don't want to waste a single day. There is no question of slowing down or delaying the schedule. I feel that world events are preparing fast and that I must be ready in time. And perhaps also my very work and completion of the Agenda help to prepare whatever is to come. I feel that India is going down and down and that only a miracle can save her from the gross misdeeds and unhappy karma she has been piling up over her head. Auroville will not be freed through any legal process all the legalities are in the hands of the Enemy. In fact, the whole of India is in the hands of the Enemy and Indiraji won't do anything unless the knife is at her throat.
In these conditions, I feel that something might happen sometime around the end of July, when I shall put the last full stop to volume XIII.
If it comes to this, then I shall envisage leaving the country, because there is no point in remaining in the midst of the chaos. Meanwhile I will not budge from Land's End and the hell with those magicians.
The body is fragile. Daily I take a short walk. I get easily out of breath. But something in me is gaining faith in the way of the Divine. Let us see.
I embrace you. We are deeply together in this battle. Mother will win. Keep well. We need you.
Satprem
May 5, 1981
This note suddenly came to me like an irrefutable, physical evidence:
The day they closed the door on me, they killed her.
May 6, 1981
Thirty-six
years ago, I was released from the camps. What for?
May 9, 1981, 9 P.M.(!)
(Letter to Auroville Cooperative)
I am dictating these few lines to Sujata.
... The first thing to do, I think, is to stop any money filtering into Auroville through unofficial channels. It is the source of infiltration into Auroville.
You can tell the Cooperative on my behalf, if they think it is right. I mean especially those who get money from S.S [Shyamasundar]. It is a source of betrayal and division. But there are probably other sources that you must know better than I. In fact, the Cooperative alone should be the source of the maintenance or "prosperity" of the Aurovilians.
We must take advantage of the short respite that is
given to us to establish solid foundations and clean up the ground. Perhaps the
first "legislative" act of Auroville would be to establish, in a few generally
accepted points, a sort of material code to determine the material
conditions and material qualities that one must fulfil or possess to belong to
the community of Auroville, apart from the ideal and spiritual conditions
formulated by Mother. In a previous letter, I tried to suggest a few of them. If
this basis is generally accepted, it will immediately close the door on a number
of dubious or unwanted elements. It would perhaps even be a good idea to ask
these vacillating or dubious elements to express themselves on the few material
points that would make up the practical code of Auroville. In this way, those
elements would have their backs to the wall and would be obliged to choose. The
least pretext for division should disappear
so that no one could hide behind a "spiritual" cloak in order to continue their
own little business. In a few words, one must not mistake a chameleon for a
penguin, it is that simple.
The "spiritual" may remain vague and hazy, but the material is very exact and demanding and no one should be allowed to slip away from a few material points, clearly understood and expressed. That is where all the sources of division can be caught red-handed.
So what should be firmly established is the very role and quality of the Cooperative. There must be a central and centralizing organ, endowed with the power to act according to a few material points generally admitted. These few points must be also acknowledged and admitted by the administrators of Auroville.
It's certain that in the near future I hope so Auroville will no longer need "rules" because it will have gone beyond in its consciousness. Meanwhile, we must give ourselves a good scrubbing and know what we want.
Work well and take heart.
Satprem
Allow Sujata to add: common sense above all.
May 11, 1981
End of volume XII.
May 15, 1981
Beginning of volume XIII.
May 15 (?) 1981
(Note in Satprem's papers regarding those heart attacks. I have tried here to gather the implications and first conclusions of this capital experience.)
...
Then something answered not through words, but facts. One experience,
then a second, a startling one: I nearly died of it. It is in death that one
touches the secret of life, there is no other means, or else it is the old life
that continues. The first experience took place two months ago, the second,
twenty days ago. As if Mother wanted to give me an answer, after all but the
answer is never what we expect, that is why we don't see things clearly; if it
were "clear," we would already be on the other side. The other side is not at
all clear for this side. So Mother put me in death twice, with all the signs of
a "heart attack." The second time, the body became chilled and I began to slip
away ... I don't know where. There was no fear in me: it was a "phenomenon," and
after all, there was this love in my heart. Then the "phenomenon" subsided
each "crisis" lasted for twelve hours or so, enough for me to be fully aware of
it, enough to seem "long." It was long. In these cases, minutes draw out. I did
not call a doctor, I don't believe in medicine Mother taught me the lesson
well. And yet there was this "threat of death" over my head it could come
again a third time, and the third.... To die is not difficult, but to await
death is heavy. It was heavy. Then I yielded to our friends' pleas: I had an
electrocardiogram
not a trace. So either I am insane and I have hallucinated, hallucinated
twice but an hallucination real enough to let the rope run out or death is
an hallucination ... which we take seriously, thus we die for good. And what if
all of life, all its misfortunes, accidents and cancers were an hallucination
... which we take seriously or not? If you believe in it, you go to the left; if
you don't believe in it, you go to the right. Medicine and science and the whole
holy caboodle of
our mathematical civilization side with the left. It lives on this left side: it
is its mortal theorem. Then a mere little thread which is the end or I don't
know what, or love, a certain gaze from elsewhere which does not take it all
very seriously and ... phew! you move to the right side. But the right side
does not look like much; it even looks exactly like the left one: our two feet
are in it, it is our everyday life; it is not miraculous, it is not amazing; you
could even call it "chance" or "good luck," or simply an hallucination. All the
same, you have moved to the right side. And what if the
whole of life depended on this small thread? If the whole transition
depended on this mere trifle? But in that case, in that case.... It is a
"perpetual miracle," as Mother would say, it is the end of "laws." There are no
laws left; there is only this miraculous little thread that pushes you to the
right rather than to the left, into a perpetual and shadowless life without
phantoms or into this constant death at any turn of the road. It is as you
wish. It is so imperceptible that it is like nothing, and yet it makes a...
colossal difference. The door is there, only we don't see it. Perhaps the
transition consists in simply becoming aware of its being there, in pushing it
and entering the world of the non-ghosts. We are within the ghost. We are
in the ghost-life: the true life is not yet born. The true life is to realize
that there are no ghosts a hallucination in reverse. A de-hallucination of the
world. Then you are in it, it is "as usual," with a mere small difference
... which seems derisory.
Mother went "to the left," by all appearances. Why?... This last Agenda will perhaps reveal it to us.
But there is something to find, no doubt about it.
May 17, 1981
(Letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English).
Very dear and precious Companion,
I
have read and reread your last long letter. It was good to feel your concrete
presence and help. I agree fully with your description of the tantric
"technique." My body feels better, though not too sure of itself. I follow your
advice and take rest from time to time. I am not surprised of the attacks on you
it is a crucial time. It looks as though the whole vital world or patala
[subterranean worlds] has taken hold of the Earth. We are very few to understand
what is really at stake. (...)
More and more India is isolated and encircled. I should think, as Mother said, that one of the greatest falsehoods is "public opinion" this is one of the greatest ghosts to be extirpated from Indiraji's consciousness. None of our enemies will be thankful for our assuaging them and mollifying them. Whatever we do "democratically" will be only used by them for gaining more and more ground, till the day they feel strong enough, with outside help, to overthrow us either we overthrow them or we are overthrown. It is that simple. Truly, as you say, the darkest hour is knocking at our gates either we are faster than our enemies or we are done with. Kβlo gacchati53 indeed.
I appreciate your invitation to Nainital and I can visualize the beauty of the place, but truly if I were to go there, it would be only to see you. "Tourism" has no more charm for me. (...)
We need you, my very precious Companion. Our task is not completed. This is the most difficult part of the battle. I pray for you also and I keep you in my heart with all my love. Sujata is near me like a solid rock on which I can rest. We both embrace you.
Satprem
May 18, 1981
(Extracts from a letter to Micheline)
...
This sentence in your latest letter touches me a lot, when you say that this
volume XIII is only a step and that there is the whole process.... In all
simplicity, Micheline, I don't pretend to do a yoga of the transformation; my
sole, unique desire is to do what Mother wants, as purely as possible.
Undoubtedly, there is a will in me to "hold on" until the end of this volume
XIII, after that.... After that, it is not a question of having the will or not
to continue I would like to do what She wants, it is the surest way to be
happy and in peace, to put things simply. I don't know if all those "accidents"
are part of a transforming process Sujata thinks so and her faith, so quiet,
is a powerful support. Doubtless, my basic equilibrium has been thoroughly
shaken and I am groping toward something else, which is a very radical way of
learning one has no choice! (Everything goes to pieces, my teeth one after the
other, my eyes fortunately, there are only two of them!) But I don't want to
mentalize these things, I must live them or manage to live them. I must
understand. I must assimilate all that and I don't want to have any "idea" about
it. I remember Mother: "I don't know if I am heading for the transformation or
for the end."
In any case, one result is sure: Mother and Mother's experience are becoming very alive in me, as if totally understood.
As for the rest, it's in God's hands.
Satprem
May 19-20. 1981
Vision
A being hanged by the feet, upside down, very white,
with his
skull shaven; naked, lifeless, the colour of a dead body.
I look on. A dark form is meticulously driving nails into each toe, between the nail and the flesh. The white being has no reaction. Then nails are driven all around his head, his forehead, neck, temples I can see the metallic glitter of the flat nail heads around his forehead like a crown. A cruel, weird atmosphere. Diabolical.
As I become conscious, I realize that this hanged white being looks like me but younger, like at the time I was a Sannyasi. I feel nothing in my body: I watch in a kind of amazement and horror. The white being does not move at all, he seems as white as a corpse.
While coming back from the dentist's, I look at this scene again and suddenly, I understand: a wax doll. I am the doll. They are driving nails into my body, all over. I tell Sujata in the car, at 6 p.m.
It is monstrous.
June 4, 1981
Visit of Aigueperse (the great heart surgeon).
Not a single physical trace.
June 5, 1981
(Personal Letter)
Mother has given me a striking demonstration. Dr.
Aigueperse came to see me. He examined me, did an electrocardiogram, took an
X-ray nothing. Not a trace. And all the symptoms were there (especially during
the second attack), not only symptoms but the sensation, pain, and those mortal
shivers. In brief, everything was there. And nothing.
So I find myself, suddenly, in front of a somewhat fabulous
horizon, as if on the threshold of something. Mother often told me: "No exterior
sign is a proof," even the most complete disorganization means nothing. She told
me and kept repeating that all appearances were false, that all our "sensations"
are "fabricated" I had "understood" all that. But I find myself faced with a
fact, and suddenly, it is the body that understands. So it is ... rather
strange. I have the impression of having lost my old bearings and of finding
myself in front of a world of possibilities. As if, truly, all our laws were a
fabrication of our distorted consciousness. I can still hear Mother telling me:
"I have all the symptoms, without the illness." In other words, if for
one second you believe in the "illness," you get the illness for good, or death
for good. It is just a very narrow crest where you pass from Reality into
falsehood, from the symptom to the illness, for good. All depends on your
acceptance. You accept the illness, you accept death. And it is so narrow that
at a point I felt that I was tilting or shifting over to the other side, that is
to say, that I was fainting and withdrawing from my body, and it was Sujata's No
that stopped the plunge. But truly, on one side there is Life forever, as much
as you wish, and on the other side there is the old habit of dying and being
ill. So I thank those "magicians," everything is marvellously organized; if you
take it badly, you are done for; if you take it in a positive way, you leap
ahead you take hold of the adversary's knife to leap further.
My body remains a little fragile and wobbly, as if it no longer knew very well which way to turn, but something is turning I don't want to say anything more. It is now a question of assimilating and seeing how things develop. But all the same, these are strange moments....
One last thing: there is no Satprem's "successor," just
as Satprem is not Mother's "successor" we all are the successors. There
are those who understand and those who are bogged down in the past, that's all.
But Mother is ready to give the secret to all and the experience to
all, according to each one's capabilities and faith and receptivity. You understand,
She came to give that to the world, to open this possibility for the
world not for one or a few chosen ones. It is at
everyone's disposal.
Satprem
June 9, 1981
(Extracts from a letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English).
... There is no such thing as "illness" or "death" and all the bodies can enter another Law, a divine Law, if only they consent to shed their fears and wrong hereditary beliefs.
So Mother has given me an overwhelming and almost fabulous proof of what can be done and how it can be done. (...) Now the path is clearer and it is a drastic change in my body consciousness. More I cannot tell at present. Let us see how things develop.
I am deeply engrossed in volume XIII, with all its wrenching and sometimes horrifying content. I relive all this with a deeper and new understanding. It is a terrible experience. Sometimes I also feel that the whole world is going through this volume XIII at the same time as I do. Everything seems simultaneously ominous and burdened with a wonderful Possibility it is a small, very small line to tread between an old dying world and something new and yet incomprehensible.
I am deeply with you, I share your struggle, we are shoulder against shoulder and we move on toward the unpredictable Goal of the ages....
Satprem
June 10. 1981
Vision
In
a dream, I said to Sri Aurobindo: there are centuries of sorrow in men's hearts.
And I was crying, crying....
June 14, 1981
June 17, 1981
America is going to deliver F16 planes and five trillion dollars to Pakistan before October, '82. They are insane. And Haig [the American Secretary of State] in China, to sell arms. All this is the sign of the inevitable catastrophe. Something must happen for it not to be inevitable.
June 18, 1981
Reading of April 7, 1973, Pranab's anger. It is abominable.
June 20, 1981
End of the reading of the Agenda.
June 21, 1981
Last
text of the
Agenda: Et nunc.
Solstice.
June 22, 1981
While listening to the Heroic Symphony of Beethoven with Sujata: Franηois there. Why? A note. Each being is a note. A universal concert.
June 24, 1981
(Personal letter)
Just a few words to "console" you for this unfortunate
Eastern Philosophy."55 It proves that the American hypnotism
is working very well learn to use it without falling for it! I had already
noticed in connection with this or that piece of advice from this person or your
enthusiasm for that one, the booksellers, etc... that there was a hypnotism and
that you fell easily into the trap. Simply learn the lesson and be watchful.
Their fashions and imperatives pass on like their cinema actors and the latest
TV sensation, and ... Mother remains. It is for us to impose what we see. But I
have also noticed that finally you did not give in when they wanted to trim the
Agenda to fit their standards. So to comfort and amuse you a little, I am
going to narrate a little vision that I had months and months ago, when you
arrived in America and began your prospecting. It was the "new consciousness"
that sent it (I did not want to tell you at the time, but you
will better understand its piquancy now). So we were in America in a fashionable
American restaurant, when suddenly a waiter came up to us with a tray, and on
this tray, there was ... a marvellous, enormous cherry, steeped in liqueur and
coated with chocolate the whole of it so cleanly wrapped in a transparent
little plastic jar. I seize hold of this succulent marvel, carefully remove the
plastic wrapping, and ... my chocolate cherry instantly begins to melt and
spread over the tablecloth it melts, it melts, and I find myself (you won't
believe it!) licking the tablecloth, a taste of rough cottony cloth but not
the slightest trace of chocolate, even on the tablecloth; everything had melted,
disappeared, evaporated. Then I told myself: well, this is the American
illusion. Splendid appearances, and you find yourself ... licking blotting
paper.
... You don't know how little I feel like starting the circus over again [in the West]. In fact, I am really fed up with it. I would like to move on to a new existence, to live something else you understand, live.
Well, it will be as She wishes.
......
I still think of my "mountain" that rolls and crushes. It seems to me that we are coming nearer something, but what? how?
Volume XIII is coming to an end ... me too, I am at the end of something.
Satprem
June 25, 1981
New onslaught of the Harijans on Land's End, as I begin the proof-reading of volume XIII.
June 28-29, 1981
Toothache.
Horrible pain.
One more tooth.
July 2, 1981
(Letter to Micheline)
... Yes, certainly, Mother/Satprem are not in the bad books indeed how awful! But they belong to the future and all those old men, Herbert and Co.,56 will fade away like mere dust. Our field of action is the Earth, and the divine Force is with us we must not forget this. And with gratitude.
... But I lament a little (though "lament" is a ridiculous way of saying it) the fact that nobody speaks of this Mind of the Cells but nobody spoke of The Adventure of Consciousness for ten years, so.... I tell you, the future is on our side, there are other forces than the small, more or less comprehensive puppets of the moment and it is that which remains. We do not look like much, but we are the warriors of a great battle, and when all their dust has settled, that will remain.
Speaking of "battle," can you imagine, I have lost five
teeth since the beginning of volume XIII! It is not glorious, it is rather ugly
and painful, but that's how it is. These last few days, I had a tangerine in my
mouth! Then suddenly I saw the Turban go by. They must have got down to it from
several sides, each one according to his capability. But all of a sudden I
understood the mechanism, because a long time before the first "heart" attack,
that is during all of last
year, I often felt heart pains or "tiredness" (along with a formidable onslaught
of death-suggestions more than "suggestions," you understand: it was there).
Then in March the real attack came but then I suddenly realized that it works
like making a bomb: you store energy day after day, then you suddenly, phfft,
you put a match to it and bang, the "crisis" breaks out. I know what the "match"
is. But that's how it works. And now all those pains in the heart and tiredness
I had all of this past year = disappeared! All the same, it is a strange
profession. But it teaches me formidably, almost cellularly I might say, but in
any case in my Breton skin, that all appearances are illusory there is
something else that decides.
So, I am finishing volume XIII.
But one more prayer (!), please don't tell anybody that I am completing or have completed volume XIII, because they will all pounce on me: ah! now Satprem is "available", so.... I really need silence and peace to understand my new direction.
......
It is time I stopped this letter and went back to the end of '72 it is somewhat terrible to relive all that. But the world is quite terrible, particularly this America, which is completely mad.
Satprem
July 6, 1981
L. dreams about my decision to leave.
July 10, 1981
Vision
I
am driving a Cadillac at full speed, very powerfully, on a road full of
potholes, enormous and black holes.
July 12, 1981
Today, July 12, 1981, I have completed the Agenda.?
July 14, 1981
Volume XIII is taking off for New York.
India Book House cancels the contract for the distribution of the Agenda in India.
*
(Personal letter)
July 14, four years ago,57 and now volume XIII is taking off we have knocked about a lot together. I feel like embracing you, that's all. I am like a big question mark looking at the future. I don't feel like writing or "saying" anymore, but I so much yearn for something else. Something is dying in me with the end of this Agenda Mother is a challenge, first of all.
So, in the fertile ruins, once again....
Satprem
July 15, 1981
(Extracts from a letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English)
I
have been worrying about your health you know that I am always ready to fly
like a lightning at the least call or need. Attacks are coming like waves upon
waves. Since the beginning of volume XIII, I have painfully lost five teeth, and
I know that it is not due to physical causes. But there is a more serious cause
of concern which prompts this letter. I need your advice.
Abruptly, India Book House has sent a letter dated July 8, cancelling the contract of distribution of the Agenda in India. The pretext invoked is the poor sales of volume I. They have started the sales only six months ago. It is well known that the Agenda is not a book of "sensationalism" made for an instant best-selling success. They knew very well from the start that the Agenda would be a slow but sure-selling book. (...)
My first reaction was: this is a bad omen for India. Here is a treasure-book brought to India on a golden platter and they refuse it. How can we counteract this threat to the whole English Agenda in India? (...) I feel that there are reasons and pressures at play, other than the purely material reasons. Volume II is due to reach Bombay within two weeks. If we have to find a new distributor, then we must act very quickly. (...)
July 20, 1981
I love the Lord.
At Your Service.
July 21, 1981
Death
of Ludmila Zivkova.
Probably during the night of Sunday 19. (I saw her.)
They have liquidated her.
July 23, 1981
The air is full of claws.
*
(Letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English)
Dearest Companion, most close to me,
My heart cried when I read the news of our friend's
death in the paper. No, this is not possible they have killed her. Never in my
life have I met with such a beautiful Instrument, such a pure and divine Shakti,
so joyful and full of possibility for a terrestrial work. I still cannot accept
this death, it is a crime, it is a loss for the Earth. And it is one more sign
that this "obstinately asuric" humanity must go through the sword and fire of
purification. There is no doubt in my mind that three quarters of humanity are
simply rats proliferating in a human skin. As Mother said: "three quarters of
humanity are "obsolete." How and when are we going to pass through the ordeal? I
don't know, but I have no doubt that the time is near. How much Mother had
prayed for an Instrument such as our friend Ludmila, and hardly is it found that
the bridge is broken. Humanity does not want any bridge. What I am witnessing in
India is just the same horrible imposture as in every other country in the
world, under a different mask, a mask which is all the more repulsive as it
takes on a "spiritual" appearance but there is no real spirituality in India,
there are only spiritual rats proliferating by the million and doing business
in the garb of spirituality. Then where is the soul of the world? Where is the
redeeming element? I am not despairing, I have the firm belief that the New
World and the New Species will be, but certainly not before the Earth is
cleansed of these rats. Our very first symbol is the so-called "Sri Aurobindo
Ashram." Let us not be in doubt: they have killed Mother, just the same as they
have killed Kennedy and killed Ludmila the same force. But at least on one
point, the Imposture will be and is being unmasked. Thousands of copies of the
Agenda are circulating at least in France, in one country of this world.
Volume XII and XIII expose, thoroughly and in detail, the crime of the whole
Ashram, and specially Pranab's. Tape-recordings will soon circulate for
everybody to hear by themselves.
In fact, in the midst of all these horrible happenings, one positive sign is there: I have completed the Agenda, volume XIII has flown out of India toward New York for printing. I could complete the task. Whatever happens in the world, the sacred Veda of the Kali Yuga58 is safe and whole. Now they can destroy me and I laugh. My task is done. And I must say that without you I don't know if I would not have met the same fate as Ludmila. You are my great Companion and your presence will be remembered forever in the great Book of Destiny and in the heart of the Divine.
Now my hands are empty and I feel completely void. For
so many years I have fought and striven one-pointedly for only one thing and
this is ended. Twenty-five years ago, in 1956, Mother recounted me her first
experience of the Supramental world for 25 years I have lived every minute of
my life for this single Purpose. And now.... I am plunged in utter nothingness
with a big question mark. Have I finished my task? It would seem that the time
for writing and writing and talking is past now facts must speak out. Now we
have come to the Fact. Now Mother herself must come out of the tomb where
they have confined her, and She must walk
in the streets of the world. Only this prayer remains in my heart for the
rest, I am in the dark. I need a lot of silence now to understand from within
what is to be done and if there is anything to be done.
For the present, I have still one task to complete with the Italian television. (...) I profoundly dislike this kind of display of myself, it is so much against my nature I like solitude and real work in the background. Somehow I have to bow to this modern necessity. Also I know that my French publisher and all our friends in France, Europe and America would like me to come and make the circus I would like to disappear in fact, without leaving a trace. All my being rebels against this kind of circus, though it might be useful. But don't you think that the time is past for all this talking and showing and lecturing and even writing books and books? I don't want to be a "guru"!! I don't want to be a "writer" or to be "famous" I want another world. Well, I do pray, and please pray for me so that I can understand from within what is the real need of the hour. (...)
I pray for your health.
With all my love,
Satprem
July 28, 1981
Zheroism.
July 31, 1981
(Personal letter)
I am under the impression that we are in the last days
and that we are about to reach Montparnasse station, to wards
which we have been galloping for eight
years.59 This race becomes heartrending, how to express it.
First Ludmila.... It must have been during the night of Sunday 19 that they killed her. I have such a pain in my heart, it is inexpressible. Yet I would like to tell you, to cry out many things before it is too late that's why I took this pen, gritting my teeth. I wish I could keep silent and hide like a wounded animal. And at the same time, I know that what is wounded and tortured in me is the human remnant, but I don't know very well where the "human" stops, it is a little as if I had the torn earth in me. As if I was reliving all that Mother went through, it is staggering at times all her smiles, silences, small cries and moans take on such a terrible, poignant and physical meaning. If you were here, perhaps I would tell you, but even that is not sure, because I have difficulty in speaking.
Ludmila came here three days in a row, I sat her on my
bed, and she looked continually toward Mother's photo on the small table at the
foot of my bed there was such a thirst for knowing in her being, such a joy,
she was in the revelation, with such a joyful and limpid force, as if she were
about to enter Matter at last and grasp the Negation in order to change it into
a divine cry. She was going to do. She was going to give Lenin his true meaning
(and how she saw things clearly! she saw Sri Aurobindo's work through Lenin a
Lenin whom we do not know, who was one of the instruments of the world's
transformation, and undoubtedly, there was something of Lenin in her, but a
Lenin suddenly discovering the "Divine Materialism"). She was going to do
Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's work there, to draw the Bolshevik world out of its
obsolete experience she had the Force, such a joyous and clear force, I had
never seen that even Indira Gandhi is a confused and semi-obscure child
compared to this Shakti. And then they kill her, at 39 when she was just about
to start her work. What
does it mean? You understand, she was not only a woman with a tremendous force:
there was something of Mother, an emanation of Mother there. Yes, as Sujata
says, it was an "attribute" of the supreme Mother that was there. And they
killed her. They
can kill her. What does it mean?
They killed Mother, they killed Kennedy and they killed Ludmila. What does it mean for the Earth?
Yes, I think I have understood one day, it crossed my
mind like a flash: "she took the blow for you." But I have finished,
while she was going to start! Then she went to Auroville and especially she went
into this Asuras' den to "get the blessings of N. and Co."... She was marked.
Now I know that this "physical organization" armed with a tantric power
to establish a false Sri Aurobindo on Earth exists what Mother had seen. It
took a supreme Protection for me not to be killed and I am being torn to bits.
But I don't care, the work is done. So, why her? She was Mother's number
one instrument in the world at the present time you cannot really understand,
you have not seen. But I know. It was Ludmila who suddenly made me
touch and see what Sri Aurobindo wanted to sow through Lenin (Lenin was
there, alive!) and how she had come to finish this incomplete, distorted
work and redo the true Materialism. You understand, I would have given my life
ten times to save this particular life! And I know, I know that she got the blow
because she had come in contact with me ("me," or rather what I represent). She
died seven days after the end of volume XIII. I don't understand. And she was so
pretty! I mean that her figure reflected such a pretty inner beauty, as Mother
must have been at the age of thirty-nine. In Lucknow, in February, she told me
(speaking of me): "We are on a very dangerous crest, but we will pass" and it
was so obvious that she would pass (as for me, I felt death on me) and
she was the one who did not pass. I feel sick at heart, I cannot accept it. And
we spoke about this coming July 26, it was her birthday and it was also on July
26, 1961 that Mother had said: "In twenty years." This "coincidence" made
her so light hearted! She died seven days before.
So, where is this Earth going?
Not for one second do I despair of the final Victory, but what will we have to go through to reach it?
It is urgent, this volume XIII must be released we have been rushing for this for eight years.... To wait until next February is now out of the question. I want it to come out by November at the latest. (...)
I don't know what will happen, I am no seer, alas. But I have been functioning to the minute for eight years now. Something will happen, it is not possible otherwise. Symbolically, the day when I started volume XIII, there was a new onslaught of the Harijan colony below Land's End to take hold of all of the land. There were six huts three years ago. Now there are twenty-two double huts. Each Harijan makes twelve little Harijans what could stop this tidal wave? It is the same onslaught of barbarism everywhere: over there, they have neckties and electronic push-buttons, it is the only difference. But they are rats in human forms. There are no men. (...) The Shola has become a clearing: in one year, at this rate, there will be nothing left what will stop this?
And your vision of Reagan sitting on the ground in a
corner and disregarded by everyone, while some fellows were communicating with
one another by means of walky-talk-ies, is the exact picture of it. It is
exactly that. Reagan is a clown, a facade, and behind, there is the world of
Finance and Armaments which runs the affairs, in other words, the Asura. I never
understood why they dismissed Kissinger (and Nixon), since they are carrying out
his policies. If you want I can tell you what I really think or perceive: when I
turn to Russia, I don't feel, I cannot sense the Asura there (though he is
everywhere, in fact, but he is not active there). I feel the Russians as a
doomed people: they are caught up in a kind of fatality (all the more so since
Ludmila has gone). But on the other hand, I formidably feel the Asura behind the
current American policies. They are preparing terrible
catastrophes with Pakistan and against India. The "whirl of forces," as Mother
would say, is more and more over India. Ah, if only we had a Ludmila at the head
of India.... I did my best to ring Indira's alarm bell, but nothing responds.
She is Nehru's daughter, that's all: she does not have the courage of her own
Shakti she is like India: no courage, except when she has a knife at her
throat. What knife will it take?... But despite all, I still believe in
"Mother's miracle," I think that She is going to find something that nobody had
thought of, something that is going to radically put the terrestrial house in
order, without further useless bombs. But what? Time is terribly short.
As for me, I am being torn to pieces, you can't
imagine. I am going through unthinkable tortures, sometimes I feel like crying
out. I can't tell you all that, it is indescribable, but it is abominably cruel.
I know, I see cold headedly that it is the all of the old humanity that is
attacked and tortured in me were I pure and divine, nothing would touch me. It
is as if I had suddenly taken on all the weight of the Hostility that was thrown
at Her. It is awful, there are no words for it. I understand everything.
Everything. But then if one man must make the new species someone
must do it, of course, it will not be heaven-sent and on a plate who will be
able to do it? If one has to go through all that, uproot all of the old humanity
in one's own skin, undergo this whole misery, undergo, undergo all that....
There are moments when I feel so wounded, as if my whole body was bared am I
going mad? Then I feel like disappearing, packing my bags (or rather nothing at
all, no bags) and going to hide somewhere like a wounded animal then what? I
see clearly that there is nowhere to go. Are we going to go on vacation
while the earth is dying? It is just not possible. But it is not possible on any
side. So I am here, rooted to the spot, going through all this horror. There is
but one solution and only one, it is to become the next species but how is a
next species created? Do you know? Unless it is created when nothing is left of
the old one, and one has nothing to
do but let oneself be hammered and hammered till one can't take any more.
But to talk about it is still to make a "drama" out of it. We'd better be silent. We'd better be. I don't know, I can only measure all that is not that and is desperately crying out. You know, you need to be a hero, simply not to leave. And I understand Mother so much, it is as if I were living Mother, as if I were living all that She went through but what is the way out? I don't know. One only sees all that is wrong, all that hurts, all that cries out. Ah, I understand why I was prepared by the Gestapo, but the Gestapo is mild compared to this mud, this cold and perfidious cruelty. And it is as if I touched everything directly. So, when someone puts a paper from those people in my hands, or simply talks to me about them, it is as if I were suddenly in the shoes of this "Turban" or of all those people it is unbearable, it could make you cry out. You feel like you were lacerated. I should keep silent, it's no use speaking. But that's how things are. Then I am beset with all the old dreams: but why don't you take a nice sailing boat, then up sails, lad, and run before the wind! And nobody-nobody-nobody.... One is as much torn by oneself as by all the rest. Everything-everything is shattered, torn, uprooted, down to the bottom.
Yes, I understand: "Apocalypse" means "laying bare." It is the laying bare of the earth one is laid bare. That is, one is flayed alive, and what will come of all this, apart from cries and mud again? I am living the apocalypse. That's it. It is very difficult for me to tell you all that.
Then your vision: "The decision to leave has been taken." Unless it has been decided up above, what can I decide? Radical and obvious circumstances would be needed for me to decide something. I cannot flee the battle, can I? So, I have only to bear. Besides, where could I flee to? Is there any place where there is no Barbarism? (except a boat on the sea, with its own barbarism aboard). We must change, that's it. (...)
So, I have only one solution, to pray to Mother so that She
may show me the way. Otherwise, I will not move come what may and whatever
happens. We have to
be-to be, there is no other solution.
Satprem
August 7, 1981
(Letter to P., of the Auroville Cooperative)
I have read these statutes [of a new organisation for Auroville]. The idea seems good to me. The "Government of Auroville" must indeed be set-up, in other words, you must have done with those dubious and subversive elements who say that they represent a "third position" or whatever, and who under the cover of being "unbiased" or "neutral" are simply playing into the adversary's hands. Auroville must have one voice. In this sense, the idea of a trust is very good, if legally feasible. (...)
The only point that seemed vague or weak to me in the wording of these statutes, and which could be slightly revised, is the point 6 concerning work, "the freedom to work".... Work is the essential, material foundation of Auroville. It is through work that the new consciousness develops, not through meditations. It is in work that the unity of consciousnesses is forged. As early as 1910, while envisaging the formation of "divine communities" (Deva Sangha), Sri Aurobindo insisted upon the primary necessity (not secondary) for these communities to become self-sufficient by their work. Mother insisted upon it countless times. Thus, you cannot let this point 6 remain as vague as it is now. It is for you to find a satisfactory formulation, but I suggest that you incorporate the following quotation from Mother:
Work,
even manual work, is indispensable to the inner discovery. If one does not work,
if one does not apply one's consciousness into matter, it will never develop. To
let consciousness organize some matter through one's body is very good. To put
things in order around oneself helps to put things in order in oneself.
Agenda XI, June 6, 1970
Like that, you will get rid of a whole category of lazy and "spiritual" chatterboxes.
Satprem
August 9, 1981
The great Plan. Mother's Island.60
August 10, 1981
To bring back the Fiat of the Supreme Transcendences, so that this Falsehood may disappear.
August 13, 1981
Death
of Panditji (my ex-tantric guru from Rameswaram), on August 5.
The reversal of the current?
August 16, 1981
Mother tells me: "I'll give you your boat. Wait until I arrange favourable circumstances."
My life began like that and will end like that.
August 17, 1981
We need nothing but You.
August 18, 1981
Mother tells me: "In the perfect immobility of the Mind, things change, without trying."
The night of August 23-24, 1981
Vision
A huge vehicle, whose wheels are higher than me, tries to run me over. I pass under the car, its tyres just brush against me.
The
forces want to destroy me.
August 26, 1981
The only solution is the Divine. There is no other. To change.
To become the other thing.
All solutions are disastrous, except what You want.
September 4, 1981
R. s presumptuousness.
Everything is disintegrating.
On every side, it is the same thing.
September 10, 1981
(Letter to an Aurovilian)
What you say is essentially true, but not very practically true, judging by the circumstances for eight years since 1973.
It is true that the sole power of our sincerity should
have obliged the undesirable elements to leave or change. And I think that, to a
certain extent, we have succeeded, because eight years ago Auroville was a kind
of muddy soup where all sorts of people, more or less unconscious and more or
less undesirable, were paddling about: mongooses were embracing snakes and were
bitten in the name of "human unity"
it remains to be seen whether it was the unity of poison or the unity of
truth? Then there were a number of slugs who sided with neither one nor the
other and simply left their trail of sticky and spiritual slime to embellish the
situation and try to take the place of the other two I don't know what is
preferable, slime or venom, or if the three put together would make up another
soup or potpourri which, at the end of a few generations of Aurovilians, around
the year 2000 or after the Deluge, would perhaps make up an ideal Auroville?
As for me, I think that our enemies have helped us a
lot: in eight years, there has been a tremendous progress in the Aurovilians'
consciousnesses they have begun to open their eyes, to see things clearly,
to put each thing more or less in its right place: you know who is Leon and who
is Chameleon. This is a huge progress. The undesirables have helped us see what
was desirable to know what we really want, in short: slimy cat stew, or what?
So, now, eight years later, you want to experience the cat stew again, in order
to see if it will make for human unity in the end? "To pull out the snake's
fangs," you say. Just try a little! For a few thousand years various prophets
and Avatars have come to try this operation. But all the same, in the end, at
the end of the painful story, poor humans began to see things a little more
clearly and to let themselves be a little less entangled by the devil which
means that in the year 1981, everything has been more or less unmasked, laid
bare: one can see the little devils publicly swarming everywhere; they had to
drop their false spiritual haloes and false whiskers on the way one knows who
is what. This is the real progress of the Earth: it is not that it has swallowed
or transformed the undesirable, but it has reached the point where it begins to
know or guess the only Desirable thing. Apocalypse,
αποκαλυψιζ, does not only mean "to reveal," it means laying bare.
It is the time of the laying bare. The clothing falls off, whether the snake's,
the chameleon's or the baboon's, and one knows what is there, one is what
one is and nothing else.
And if you are
not, woe betide you!
Thus in Auroville, this is the situation, when all the masks have more or less fallen. It is the immense progress that Auroville has made. Now, what are you going to do with those unmasked ones? To be "neutral"? But it is not neutrality, it is slimy cat stew, as I have already told you! To expel them? But we are not the Gestapo! Then what?
Then it seems to me that the necessary, very necessary cleaning can be done in a very simple way: the Aurovil-ians can agree on a number of material points (I don't say spiritual, I say material), as, for example, no personal profits, no personal money, no drugs, no "prosperities" this way and that, but a single cooperative centre allotting the necessities and receiving donations, etc..., you can make a list. Then automatically, you will see a number of little slugs and medium-size snakes saying no-no-no. And the sorting out will be done. Those who don't want to follow the law of Auroville will have to go elsewhere to make their own law. The main thing is to know what one wants. It is no longer a question of hiding behind a spiritual cloak and pompous words, but of defining a few simple, material points, which will go to form the practical code of Auroville, that's all. Then you accept or you don't accept, but you cannot at the same time brandish Mother's flag and do your own little business or distribute money here and there to sow corruption. What Mother said about India's corruption can be perfectly applied to Auroville: "You know what happens when a rotten apple is put next to a good one? England came and stayed much too long, it made things go quite rotten." (Agenda III, July 14, 1962). You must know if you want to let yourselves be contaminated and go rotten in the name of "human fraternity," or if you want to put your house in order and keep it clean. We "expel" no one: we put in front of everyone the choice between cleanliness and rot.
It is simple.
It is clear.
It is a question of smell.
Satprem
P.S.: You must not mistake the softness of a rag for the "softness of the soul," for Kalki61 too is armed with a sword.
P.S.2: In fact, one of the great confusions in Auroville (and almost everywhere) is of a mental and pseudo-spiritual order. Many people seem to forget that there are different planes of reality or consciousness and that what is true on one plane is not, or not yet so, on another plane. Thus it is true on the supramental plane that everything is Divine, but on the material plane, it is not true that Sri Aurobindo and Mr. Guruprasad [a Secretary of the S.A.S.] are equally divine. It is also true, on the supramental plane that everything is equal in the Divine, a grain of sand or Alexander's exploits; but on the material plane, it is not true that the coolie and an Einstein are worth the same. It is true on the supramental plane that everything is one and fraternal, but it is completely false to believe, on the material plane, that the cleverness of a crook is equal to the skill of an engineer and that snakes don't swallow little birds. These are simple truths that many seem to ignore. What is true is that this plane of truth, supramental, is trying to infiltrate the material plane, despite or through the material darkness, but its first action when a drop, a small supramental drop goes down into this quagmire, is to show the mud its true face and the little aspiration its true power but it is not true that this mud and this aspiration are equally divine, although the suffocation of the mud can lead us to aspire for pure air.
The truth, simple, supramental and material at the same
time right where both meet is that everything, in this world, is here
to awaken the aspiration of the Divine in Matter to the Divine in Matter,
because everything is the Divine that has forgotten Itself. But you must
not confuse those
who aspire with those who oblige you to aspire by strangling you if you are
strangled, there is nobody left to aspire and to remember.
September 12, 1981
The Supreme Court of India postpones to the second half of October Nava's court case. Nava, who wants to make them declare: "Sri Aurobindo is a new Religion."
To delay and to delay is the eternal tactic of the Adversary.
September 13, 1981
Hell on every side, even here. To let oneself be engulfed in the Supreme, there is no other way.
September 15, 1981
Vision
The electric "plug."
I am the plug.
September 16, 1981
All of life's threads are being torn out.
September 22, 1981
(Letter to Micheline)
Yes,
this race to arrive at
Interforum62 on the 21st is quite the sign of Mother's
Hand: right at the last minute. And when we know the end of the curve, then we
will realize that this exactness is miraculous, for we have been running for
eight years to be there at the right minute, not one more.
With my love
Satprem
*
(Letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English)
Dearest Companion,
For the past two months, ever since I have completed
the Agenda, I spend most of my time in silence and concentration, trying
to understand the path and what is willed from me. It is a deep silence and the
pressure of the Force is imperative, almost solid but no reply, although the
pressure in itself and the power of concentration are a kind of reply in
themselves. I have the feeling that I have something to discover which is not
yet known in the human consciousness and which must be some living experience of
what is said in the Agenda. The gates are still closed. It is truly the
unknown a difficult unknown, full of suggestions and calamitous voices to
which there is no reply except this tremendous Power or Pressure, like a silent
wall of luminous strength. There is nothing to be done, except to go on. Also
there is a sensation, almost a physical sensation of impending and drastic
changes or upheavals. Sometimes I have the feeling of being a sort of "plug" or
"electrode" of the Divine world into this darkness of Matter. Nothing is told
to me and nothing revealed simply I am a "plug." I hardly talk to anyone and
hardly write any letter there is nothing to be told, it is to be lived and
experimented, and I have to go through.
One thing must be told to you. As you know, both volumes XII and XIII are ready. Suddenly I have taken the decision to release them both simultaneously, without waiting for February next for volume XIII. This strategy was sort of imposed on me. Thus the last two volumes of the Agenda will come out next week in Paris, in the first days of October. Then both volume XII and volume XIII will reach India and Pondicherry around October 15th.
......
Let us see what happens. I have done my duty, completed the job now only remains the unknown. (...) This is the hour of courage and Divine grace for the strong in soul.
We are deeply and closely together. We have come now on the real battlefield.
I embrace you,
Satprem
P.S.: I shall inform Kireet only of the near release of Agenda XII and XIII. He is a courageous warrior in our Battle.
September 23, 1981
(After the German TV, some Italian friends had asked to make a film on Satprem, who first refused, then gave in.)
Land's End
Brothers,
Don't hold it against me. My decision is not personal
at all and goes beyond temporary circumstances. Always in this human existence,
it has been the habit that disciples whether they were Rembrandt's, Christ's
or Mr. Jung's
don the Master's mantle and make their own little or big affair with the one
who had sown the new seed it's lucky when they don't turn it into a Church.
The Master has spoken, then they unwind the same bobbin a few rungs lower down,
at the popular level, in front of the various microphones and cameras of the
world. You write books, give lectures, get awards and end up in the dictionary
but your body, just like all the others, ends up in the cemetery. It is true
that Mother called me Satprem but I don't want a Satprem's mantle on my
shoulders for perpetuity. I don't want to be shut in anywhere, not even in
"myself." I live if I die at each step. I was a gold digger, it's true, and also
a prospector, a tantric, a sannyasi and what not, and Satprem. But I am null and
at zero point, as I was some fifty years ago, when I listened to the little
breakers on the Coast. That is where I am: in this nothing that wants to be
born. I am always this nothing that wants to be born to what? I don't know.
When you know it, you are already imprisoned and only good for the dictionaries.
I want to tend toward this "something" without Satprem's cloak or a Samaritan's
cloak on my shoulders and perhaps Satprem is only this tension.
And then, really, that time is now over. Mother told us that there was a new species to be born we will not create it in front of the television cameras or by answering Mr. Chancel's [a French journalist] questions. I don't know at all how it is created I know nothing, less and less. I don't even know if it can be created at all and I have no pretence. But this zero, this painful nullity, which has so much need to be and listen to the breakers and all the little breakers of the world until it bursts with infinity or something something at long last, that I know, yes. What will it produce in the end? A monkey, a seagull, a little seal, a periwinkle, I don't know, but I need to be this sole pulsation. And if it happened to produce a new species in the end, at least we would have done something. But there is no need to say it we should do it.
I
have completed my work of a scribe it was a fabulous grace, but it is over. I
am finished with Satprem. I am finished with the "writer," the "disciple." I am
done with all work. Now, I am my own, unknown secret That's all. And if I don't
become it, I die.
You: Boni, Davide, Micheline, along with other brothers and sisters, you have not finished your work this is the fabulous grace that has been given to you. Do it with courage, tenacity and love. And in the end ... well, we will see what will be in the end but there will be no Mother's dictionary, that I can assure you: there will be a... resounding fact. Let's prepare this Fact, with love, each of us in his own way.
Your brother
Satprem?
September 25, 1981
Sprained wrist.
Violence is going to come to India (the Harijan colony below Land's End shifts the boundary stones and storms upwards). We'd better take Mohini away (along with ourselves).
September 26, 1981
To move to an empty space somewhere?
The nothingness.
As it was in Delhi in 1949, in Cayenne, in Rio, Dakar and Zinder ... and in Hiva Oa.
September 28, 1981
(Letter to an Aurovilian, originally in English)
I
know nothing of economics, for all my life I have had a permanent hole in my
pocket. Whatever I needed Mother gave me, including forbidden cigarettes in the
Ashram she was wide enough to understand the limits of each one and the
necessity of errors for progressing. If we shut the truth in an ideal little
box, then beware of mummies. This is the difficulty with any "system," however
wonderful and "new" it may be tomorrow it will be already old. So I have no
panacea for Auroville's economic and financial system.
The truth is simple, as usual: we need no system but a new Man and these difficulties and "problems" are precisely meant for forging this new Man, not for imprisoning him in an ideal formula. Let him become what he should be, then automatically the ideal "formula" will flow at each second and change at each second. Certainly, before that we will need some crutches on the way, some do's and don'ts, but the working out of these passing necessities are precisely part of the elaboration of the new Man so, why should I interfere like a sort of Pithya or super-professor.... ouf! I love Aurovilians and I love them enough for not delivering oracles to them I am a simple man trying to become something else, with a hole in my pocket. I am all for trying.
It is true, just "like that," out of the blue, I spoke
to Mother about these
"coupons de travail,"63 because she was looking at the problem,
but today I would never dream of suggesting anything of this nature. In
fact, do you know what I would dream of now? I would dream of a "Santa Claus
system," of a dozen Santa Claus', who would put their beards together and try to
give to each Aurovilian whatever they ask, naturally according to the
resources available, and I would expect each Aurovilian to ask only for what
he truly needs, with the perfect understanding that the need of the one is
completely different from that of the other and that even a futility may be
necessary for some, even an error. We are completely stupefied by the
egalitarian and moralitarian systems nothing is equal, not even two leaves
from the same tree. This is why all mechanical systems, however useful they may
be, fail in the long run. Money in cash, coins, "coupons" are part of the
mechanical system: this much is worth that much. How are you to equate ten
minutes of silent and "useless" meditation with ten cubic meters of earth dug
out for a well? The only possible "coupon" is
sincerity. This is the only currency in Auroville. The normal rule in
this sad world is because there are some thieves, let's put everybody in jail.
Let us reverse this sorry condition.
Indeed all systems have failed in our world: communism, capitalism, socialism and even (or specially) gandhism and rightly so, a holy prison is nevertheless a prison. The only free place is in the heart of each individual being and as long as this free place does not become the law of the collective body, we will go on stumbling and falling. In other words, we have to become living souls, there is no other "system" or solution. Meanwhile....
Yes, there is this "meanwhile." We are growing souls
not equally evolved, but in each of us, we suppose, there is a common and equal
elementary quality which is sincerity. One
need not be an Einstein or a yogi to have this quality. If the capacity to
correct one's errors and the will to see clearly and not to delude oneself if
this central quality is there in Auroville, the rest is easy and we know it is
there, these eight years have sufficiently demonstrated our sincerity. Thus we
come back to our "Santa Claus system": according to the resources available, a
few men chosen among the wisest or among the most sincere will decide with the
collective approval what project should be given priority and try to give each
one whatever he needs. A government of the wise-men. But as we know, these wise
men are not completely
wise, which is the story of the growth and evolution of Auroville. We will go on
stumbling and groping and changing till we have reached this wisdom of the
heart, which is the only free place in this world.
And never forget that the divine Hand is always there to help miraculously and beyond all imagination and human calculation: a little drop of simple sincerity suffices. We are wrong if we suppose that we have to do all the work.
With love,
Satprem
September 30, 1981
All the pain of the world.
To leave is a painful illusion.
To stay is another illusion.
October 2, 1981
Release of volumes XII and XIII in Paris.
October 4, 1981
To pull Her out of there. To awaken the Sleeping Beauty.
October 5, 1981
Sometimes one man has to carry the burden of the world.
October 8, 1981
A
terrible violence in the terrestrial atmosphere.
My body is exhausted.
October 11, 1981
(Letter to Micheline)
Really forgive me for the brutality of my yesterday's note, I am totally impossible but truly, too, I love you very much. So, from the bottom of my heart, I embrace you and tell you that I am an insufferable animal, but loving all the same. In fact, I never stop struggling, you understand, for eight years everything has been a battle, each day is a burden of this or that misery, so....
The fact is that there has been a complete
misunderstanding [about the release of volumes XII and XIII of the Agenda.]
(...) All that is symbolic of the awful jamming of the terrestrial atmosphere.
You have no idea. Over Land's End, it is a whirl of furious forces that want to
destroy everything, claw and ravage everything. For eight days I have been
(symbolically) fighting with this poor Lakshmi (my servant, who is a kind of
natural medium) so that she does not go mad she was going off the rails,
rambling and saying that mantras were thrown at her. In short, it is a battle in
the invisible, until it soon becomes visible. Everything is grating and is
terribly painful. There is an awful violence in the terrestrial atmosphere. I
remain as quiet as possible in all that I spend my days in silence and
concentration (except when I have to write). A concentration which is like a
Mass of Sri Aurobindo's power he is formidably here, I have never felt such a
mass. Fortunately so, otherwise I think I would be torn to pieces. Knowing all
that and having foreseen all that, I did not want this Italian TV to come and
trouble the atmosphere and open doors I was not able to prevent
it, everyone thinks of their own affair and of course they would have said that
I was very selfish had I said no. But it does not matter, I am convinced that
everything is guided and that it will be as They wish.... I tell you, I am sure
that everything is all right finally. In the meanwhile, I have to go through
this storm. I have no sign that Sujata and I should move and I will not move
without an order or an obvious sign then we will pack our bags within ten
minutes. But I have the feeling that we must be here until the end, whatever
this end may be. This terrestrial life has become such a nightmare of shootings,
assassinations, hangings and tortures that truly it must stop and if Pranab is
a representative of those cruel and arrogant forces, well, let him come and let
the Truth be.
I embrace you with all my heart, and please forgive my excessive or stormy language it is as if I were on a ship's deck, in the midst of a storm.
Satprem
P.S.: Oh! Micheline, your mariner's pullover has arrived at the same time, with sea shells in the pockets! These shells move me so much, as if they were coming out of a fairytale of my childhood... it is so far, far away. When will I see the sea again? Will I see it again?
October 12, 1981
It is fully accepted: whatever it may be.
October 13, 1981
The Consul of Pondicherry insists on a return ticket for Sujata's visa. We are bound hand and foot on all sides. A prison.
A
divine strategy or a diabolical strategy?
I would like to go far-far-far away.... And all this world keeps me in chains. Tomorrow the Italian TV, the day after L., then, then, then.... Oh! desirable damnation.
October 17, 1981
Departure of the Italian TV.
October 21, 1981
You know and You lead.
October 22, 1981
Or is it you who does not have the courage to jump into the void?
October 29, 1981
Third heart attack.
October 30, 1981
(Letter from Sujata to Micheline)
Yesterday evening, Satprem told me that for some days
his heart has been beating irregularly. Then yesterday afternoon it
pounded and pounded. During the night, his neck and back were very painful. He
breaths conscious of each breath. He seems to be gasping for air. This is to
keep you informed, not to alarm you. Satprem tells me that it seems to be the
same scenario as that of a few months ago (March 7, first
attack).64
Sujata
*
Sujata in the tea field: decision to leave.
November 2, 1981
Arrival of volumes XII and XIII in Pondy and here.
*
(Letter to Micheline)
The parcels of Agendas have just arrived!
I cannot write to you at length, but I must tell you a
few important facts. I have just been shaken again by a third heart attack. It
was in the evening of October 29, and on the 29th it had been a
pounding assault all day: "You are going to die for your birthday, you are
going to die.... etc." Charming. Same scenario as the two previous times (pains
in the neck, etc.), but this time, it seems that the body has learnt something,
for I recovered in two days and yesterday I climbed the tea fields. But all the
same.... It is obvious then that the culprit was not Panditji (at least in my
particular case) and this is precisely what was shown to me: a "white hand,"
very white, which did not resemble an Indian hand at all moreover, it is
hardly the way I see Indian tantrics. Well. But Sujata thought it was a little
too much (I spare you the kind of hell I have been living for three
months but in reality, it is eight years). I also wondered what I was doing
here, in this place which is now so notoriously public and targeted. In short,
we have decided to leave probably in the morning of November 10. We did not
want to decide anything "permanent" and for a good reason: we know nothing, we
are completely in the dark but Sujata said "like that": three months.
Certainly, it will help my body a little to recover. Since your last visit, it
has suffered a lot from a relentless and above all cruel onslaught it is
terribly cruel. Now I understand Mother so well.... But above all, a less
assailed and more limpid atmosphere will help me to better "understand" I hope
I have a great need to understand what I must do the next step (if any).
Then Sujata too has been through a lot and she never complains but her body is
obviously weary.
It is clear that for our "moving" to be useful, it must remain secret, that is, everyone must think that we are in Land's End, or else it is a waste of time and effort. So don't hold it against me, if I don't tell you our destination. Even if it is in one person's consciousness, it tends to spread invisibly.
......
We are rather like wandering Jews.
I don't know how long this new adventure will last, nor where it will lead us or whether it is illusory in truth, I know nothing, everything is like a black screen.
In that nothing, it burns intensely.
But it is long-long....
Let's hope that things will crack up at last in Pondicherry. Those cruel phantoms have lasted long enough. And let the future be.
Satprem
*
(Extract from a letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English)
......
My prayers are always with you.
In silence, I am going through a lot of things which bear some resemblance to Mother's experiences and ordeals I understand a lot of things now.
November 6-7, 1981
Vision
The crossing of the sewer.
November 8, 1981
The second of the condemned man.
Scenario: the Odyssey of a cell?
November 10, 1981
Departure from Land's End.
Exploration of Ceylon.
November 23, 1981
End of Ceylon's exploration.
Sujata: Kerala or Pacific? Decision: Kerala.
The night of November 25-26, 1981
Departure
from Colombo and return to India for Kerala.
Vision
Meeting with Indira, very affectionate, who embraces Satprem. (Is it India that embraces me?)
November 27, 1981
Trivandrum.
Exploration of Kerala.
December 2, 1981
Back at Land's End.
It is like that because it is like that.
The night of December 3-4, 1981
Vision
I extract a thorn from very deep in my right thumb and two or three smaller ones.
The night of December 4-5, 1981
Vision
Pursued
by "Pranab" (symbol of these Forces).
A "Mother" tells me to go to South America!
I must learn Spanish...?!
December 8, 1981
Nothing but illusions.
All the voices are false.
Back here like an old man who has nothing but death to expect.
Not once did She come and clasp me to her heart.
So?
Did I deserve to be so deserted?
This departure was a last burst to attempt to live.
Sujata did not want to leave India: my "protection," she said.
"Tierra del Fuego"? Pitcairn?
December 9, 1981
Where is Satprem in all that?
Where is Bernard?
I've lost everything.
*
If God does not want to tell me anything and if they leave me to my fate, before January 1st I will determine my own fate, for better or for worse.
*
And
I love the Lord, in any case.
December 12, 1981
My Douce s fifty-sixth birthday.
"You don't see Mother
because She is there,
in you....
It was She who looked at me
with your eyes."
Yes, She is there.
*
The junction is made.
*
Attempted heart attack.
The pain: disappeared.
December 14, 1981
The New Auroville
Treasure Island
Rimbaud and Jules Verne rediscovered
Reunited on Mother's Island.
*
(Letter to Sir C.P.N. Singh, originally in English)
Dearest and most valued Companion,
... Step by step, I can see how materially (not to
speak of the
heart) you have made my task possible since Mother's "departure."
"Departure" is a very stupid word, for indeed a very important experience came to me. "Experience" is not the proper word, because it is not a passing thing leaving behind some luminous trail; it is a change in my being. It is yet too early and not advisable to speak of it, and it is linked in some way to our recent journey out of India. The change of atmosphere with its usual whirl of hostile forces targeted on me has helped to clarify a number of things this journey was beneficial, though very tiring and most disquieting regarding a certain "explosive" India. I need not enter into details.
What I could say is that this experience, or rather change, contains the seed and potentiality of every possible hope it is full of a great Hope. Mother's work is not lost and left for later centuries. More I can't tell for the present. Moreover, it is not a matter of "telling," it is a matter of fact which has to develop.
For the rest, my physical situation or location here in Land's End is not yet clear to me. In a way, coming back here is coming back to a certain rut; for instance, the day before yesterday, on December 12, I had another heart attack, or rather attempt at heart attack (the fourth one since the beginning of this year). This means that I am again entering the field of their dark beam of ill-wills. This time, the attack was dissolved in a matter of a few hours, and somehow, now, with this new change in me, I feel that nothing can happen to me except what is willed by Them. Those stupid ghosts cannot touch me anymore for ghosts they are. I belong to another world, a new world.
So I keep wondering whether the Blue Mountains are my
final place and destination. As yet, I have no decisive answer, but a doubt.
Much will depend on the general situation in India (and in the world). I
cannot think or feel that this situation will improve and mend it is bound
to deteriorate more and more until India and Humanity at large
reach a certain stage where everybody will have to undergo the Change or die.
This cannot be far away, judging from the explosive condition I have witnessed
recently in India (and elsewhere). At this point I feel very sadly how much
Indiraji could help in the great Change if only she understood properly what is
at stake and had the courage to break with the past. But she is too
democratically-minded to take the needed steps I suppose that she does the
best possible job in the present circumstances, but how much we need someone who
would be capable of drawing down the Future instead of perpetuating the dying
Past! Faith is not there India has lost the faith.
So I am waiting for the outer circumstances to show me which way I should take physically or geographically. (...) For the moment, I am hanging precariously between two worlds, but with a new faith and a great hope. (...)
Satprem
December 18, 1981
(Letter to Micheline, brothers and sisters)
A long story.
A great Plan is taking shape.
A meaning at last.
I must go back in time: five terrible months since this
July 12 when I completed the manuscript of the thirteen volumes of the Agenda,
and this question: what? what? Really I have never been at the bottom of such
a hole. Everything was called into question, especially myself. Had I not once
been destroyed by the Gestapo, I could never have borne this second destruction
more serious, because it was everything that was destroyed. Of course, my soul
was not destroyed, but what did it have to do in the world? And it was so cruel,
for me, to be obliged to confront the television and the rest when, within,
there was this abyss. Not
even an abyss: a burning nothing. That was
all. And everything was false the whole world, all the ideas nothing but
illusions. Except this thing burning in the depths, but which meant what? I had
completed my work, and then? To go on writing, televising and rambling on?
I was in this state when the third attack came for my "birthday" Sujata decided that we should leave ... for Ceylon. As for me, I would have liked to go far, far away to the devil if possible. Not to be imprisoned in this old net anymore.
So we reached Ceylon, Colombo, the Immigration Office
Kafkaesque scenes: my papers were checked in a first office, second office ...
six offices, each one with its rubber stamp, then everything started over again
after lunch: first office, second office.... But it was nothing compared to the
nightmare that was awaiting us outside: tourists, tourists everywhere, thousands
of tourists, German, French, American.... We found the whole Boul'Mich and New
York there, and the big woman with a fig leaf on her genitals and her hanging
belly, who distributed buns to the crows while her husband took photos of this
eternal instant, as in Venice among the pigeons. And how many dollars do you
have? Cupidity everywhere, organized robbery, girls and boys selling themselves
to the tourists. A terrifying pollution. We fled to the east coast of Ceylon,
because it was supposedly the "off-season" (the monsoon in the East) and without
tourists. We went from one end of Ceylon to the other and arrived in Trincomalee
everywhere the French, Italians, Americans, everywhere-everywhere, down to the
smallest corner, each with their underwater fishing or surfing equipment. And
dollars, always dollars: two bananas = 20 rupees, 1 dollar! We fled further,
toward the South: Bat-ticaloa, and on the way, a small place: Kalkudah. A hotel
with "cottages" scattered on the beach. Tourists, too. But we were dead beat, we
settled in room 17. Then I let go of everything: all the same, there was the
sea, the sound of the surf. I stayed there gazing at the sea, gazing and gazing
as if
I breathed life without understanding anything anymore. I walked, and all at
once there were rocks, seagulls, the sea with a white rippling I could have
cried. Never did I look at seagulls like that, me an old seadog. Those flocks of
seagulls, that white surf, it all came from so far, so far away, to beckon to a
dying man. It lasted a few days. I came back to life a bit. But what could we do
there, in that room 17, with all those tourists? There was nothing in Ceylon but
a western nightmare spread everywhere. Our dollars were running out. Where to go
to? And what what meaning? It was so burning in that nothing what an
illusion! A world of illusions.
Sujata decided: "Let's go back to India and explore the
Kerala coast, perhaps we will find something there?" We flew to Trivandrum as
for me, I would have liked to go far-far away, to the devil if possible, but
there was not even a devil to go to any more. In Trivandrum, Sujata thought:
let's explore the South, go down to Cape Comorin (on the way, someone had spoken
to us of a place on the coast named Muttom). We left Trivandrum, but Trivandrum
is endless, all in one block miles and miles of never-ending town-villages. We
found a small path, a little before Cape Comorin, and emerged onto a coast
dotted with rocks, real rocks cliffs! Then a cement factory right in the
middle. But it did not matter, we could leave the factory aside, we were so
thirsting for a quiet place there were a few isolated bungalows overlooking
the sea. They seemed white and "possible," although dilapidated. We inquired....
The bungalows belonged to the Salvation Army! In fact there was an
office. The "Commander" with the stripes of the Salvation Army, offered us a
small place after the Monday service we could stay there until the next
service. But the Salvation Army in ... Vedic India, it was a little too much.
Neither Sujata nor I wanted to be housed by the Salvation Army. We took to the
road again. It was disturbing, this first meeting with India through the
Salvation Army furthermore, an "International Ashram" was about to settle in
Muttom and had
already bought land. Here, it was no longer tourism, but something else. We went
down to Cape Comorin but where was Cape Comorin? The most sacred place of
India after the Himalayas.... There was no Cape Comorin at all! disappeared
behind an enormous dung heap of concrete built by Birla: "The Gandhi Memorial,"
then hotels right down to the coast. We went closer and discovered rocks at
last: thousands of pilgrims on the rocks, like the seagulls of Kalkudah in
Ceylon, but not so pretty. It was 6 p.m., night was falling, Sujata and I were a
little weary we wanted to sit for a while on the beach, out of the way. We had
not been seated for three minutes when we heard whistles and voices in the
half-light. We did not move. I was so thirsty that I had taken a can of beer (I
who hate beer!) it's incredible going to Cape Comorin to drink a can of
beer! right where Vivekananda went to meditate. Whistles again, policemen came
up to us and asked us to clear off: "Don't stay there, there are robbers and
thieves" at Cape Comorin!
We went back up the coast, in quest of dinner and a
room. No dinner, all the hotels were full except a room with filthy walls and
mattresses, and three chappatis with a cup of tea. This time, I decided:
"Enough of Cape Comorin, we go back to Trivandrum" Sujata was relieved. She
was also sad and silent, as if she had just witnessed a desecration an awful
desecration of India. We drove through the night and came back to Trivandrum.
The next day, I decided: "We are going to explore the North of Kerala." We take
the road to the North.... hundreds of kilometres of uninterrupted towns and
villages, a population explosion as I had never seen before, lines of cars on
the road, bumper to bumper, and sometimes big pockets of rice fields with white
egrets, and again millions and millions of swarming people. I did not lose
heart, not yet, I spoke to Sujata of the "Breton explorers" and I told her that
the Bretons worship the divine Mother unknowingly, since they worship "Marie"
and there is also Sainte-Anne, their patron.... Three minutes later, we were
stuck behind a lorry with its name written in big letters:
"Anna-Maria" Anna-Maria on the roads of India, in Kerala, three minutes after
I spoke to Sujata! This is the most amazing "miracle" I have ever come across. I
began to think of Mothers "web."
Then we were engulfed again by the swarming millions, a Marxist meeting in Allepey no sea, only villages and villages. I was forgetting: on the roads, dozens and dozens of lorries filled with people vociferating political slogans, with loudspeakers and flags of the Congress or of Karl Marx. And we went on: Cochin, Calicut.... This time, it was heart breaking. Then Tellicherry, it was the end. There they offered us a dirty room and a meal that never seemed to come. I remained seated by the seaside and said farewell to the sea. Then I told Sujata: "We are going back to Land's End."
We drove in silence for a long time. It was rather awful. We passed through Mercara, still in silence, then the Nilgiris. It was on December 2. Sujata felt a great pain in her heart and I was in a kind of nothingness. Robert and Anne welcomed us marvellously, so warm and overflowing with joy but behind, there was a terrible silence in our hearts. It took days to digest that and try to find ourselves back with our two feet on the ground, but it was all cracking up. We were in a great cracking-up. We were back to square one. For Sujata, it was like a physical cracking-up of India; for me, it was the cracking-up of everything. There was nothing left, there was no answer that above all: no answer, Mother did not answer.
Then my heart began to hurt so much, I told Mother: But you won't tell me anything? You spoke to me so much and now you abandon me? And suddenly, there was such a cry in my heart, I told her: I have been toiling for eight years and not once did you come and clasp me to your heart!
It was the biggest black hole in my life.
And the next day, something happened. It was on December 12, Sujata's day. An answer.
*
December
19 I continue. Excuse this saga, but you must have a complete picture, because
what happened after is very important for us all.
I will not tell anyone what happened on this December 12. It is a secret between Mother and me. But how I find the Agenda again step by step!... What I can say is that this experience (it is not an "experience": it is a fact, a radical fact, which changes everything), this "fact" contains the seed of a great Hope. As if a marvellous horizon were opening up: everything is possible. You understand, what Sri Aurobindo and Mother came to do is not "lost," it is not postponed for centuries it is there. We have only to become aware of it. On this December 12, I became aware of it and it is such a dull and stupid way of saying something ... which is impossible to say. And all pains are soothed oh! I had a real pain, you know. But I had to make this detour indeed, I understand it. So, this December 12 is the basis of everything else. Yes, what is needed is an intense cry in the heart, and how many rounds and detours, and burning nothingness to arrive at that cry.
I was still in the middle of the "fact" when Robert came and spoke to me of that "Turban" [Auropress], of Germany and of the contract for the Sannyasi, when suddenly, I felt a very acute pain in my back, in the top of my shoulders, as if one were pushing in a needle there, then it spread around, the heart was as if seized in this grip in brief, the old scenario, it was the fourth attack. At once I understood, as if it were obvious, that that "Turban" was the origin of all these attacks. This time, it took only a few hours to dissolve truly, those people are definitely phantoms for me. They have no more reality, like the three scoundrels in the canyons it does not exist, it is something else that exists, something that is so formidable and so simple. Yes, another world. It doesn't touch there. There is still a long way to go, but the thing is there, in the seed, and it must inevitably open up.
But
why did it come only now?
Two days later, on December 14, something else happened, which came about so simply that it seemed quite innocent, but capital, as if it was a logical and obvious consequence.
Robert was repairing my chimney. I was seated there, near my bed, and a little absentmindedly, I was watching him take the tiles off, replaster, adjust the system which pushes the smoke outside. Then suddenly, I started watching with a lot of interest, as if it were not really me who was watching, but Mother. She was extremely interested and full of "appreciation" or approval, as it were for this job well-done, this harmony with Matter filled her with satisfaction. It was so strong that I nearly told Robert: "If I were to leave, I would take you with me." I restrained myself. And in the end, when everything was well in order (he was still crouching in front of the chimney) I went near him and I said (I could not help saying), it was Mother who was saying: "You will be part of the new world." Robert smiled as he usually does and asked me "if there would be leaking chimneys in the new world." That's just like Robert. I answered: "No, but there will be a comprehension of Matter."
That's all. He left and I went for a walk in the
forest. Then a whole group of scenes passed through or unfurled before me. I
said to myself (but it was not "saying," it was like a living and real cinema),
I saw these qualities I saw Micheline, I saw Boni and Laura and a few others
those material and exceptional qualities of a few beings who represented the
best of what the human race had produced ... and now we were at the end of the
story. Ceylon, Kerala, it was as if someone had made me put my finger on the two
poles, at the end of the human history it ends, it explodes. It is truly the
end of a world. It cannot go on like that And I "said to myself": To
build a new world, we need a combination of these "qualities," a human
representation one cannot do that by oneself. All aspects are needed, or a few
main aspects, which make up a full world. And I could see the urgency. And then
there was this
experience of December 12, which was like my promise. 1 considered this Land's
End and I could not imagine twelve persons let's say twelve there, in these
mountains. What would they do? The transformation cannot be done by sitting
cross-legged and concentrating on oneself on the contrary, it is an expansive
movement. An activity is needed, through and thanks to which the "other thing"
can surreptitiously slip in. Then I saw an island, the sea. The sea is active,
it is a challenge, you have to grasp it, invent, create. The mountain is passive
and immobile. I could not imagine ten persons here, going round in circles. Then
the whole scene came with a kind of smile and joy: instead of being here,
gritting our teeth, counting blows and being constantly pulled into those
phantom stories and all those old stories (however generous and "serious" they
may be) why, at the end of this human cycle, could not a few join together in a
concentrated, accelerated effort, to call "the other thing" like a last cry of
men on this boat in distress? An island ... I don't know where, in the Pacific?
(but it is secondary). It was the idea behind Auroville (it was the idea firstly
behind the Ashram). But why not create a "new Auroville"? An Auroville more
concentrated, more conscious more accelerated above all. That does not in any
way detract from Auroville as it is: it will go on its way, and the Grace
willing, it will reach the experience but Mother has a thousand ways to do
things: in fact, everything is her way! And
why would She not have a smiling, light way a gracious one at last without
all these phantoms and this centre of an abominable human pollution, which
invades everything. Why not a sunny place with a few sunny beings, but
who understand.
And I could see the whole story, all those human
attempts throughout the ages, all those never-achieved legends: there were the
Cathars and the Knights of the Round Table, Rimbaud, Jules Verne and Treasure
Island a thousand legends from all countries and all ages. And all those
sorrows and pains, those closed doors and dashed hopes, because the
time had not come yet, and all those tragic deaths.... And it was as if, in that
forest where I was walking, I could see or feel all those vanished gazes which
came to smile over my shoulder as if I were, as if we were their hope.
And suddenly it was like a formidable responsibility or a formidable challenge but a smiling one. And what if we were their cry at the end of History? Truly a few beings who have understood and who throw everything everything into this last human adventure. That is what Mother wanted! That is what Sri Aurobindo wanted!
I came back from my walk and told all that to Sujata who listened to me in silence by the fireside. And she nodded Sujata is like a mirror of Mother near me (but it is better than that!). And she told me: "In India, there is a very old belief or knowledge that says, "each action has a place." There was Balicourt, which represented an action with Mother; there was Nandanam, which represented another action, and then Land's End to materialize the Agenda. And now it is another action for each action, there is a chosen place. Well, we have travelled the length and breadth of the Nilgiris and the mountains all the way from Periyar to discover this miraculous place. Mother led us. Certainly She will lead us again to discover the other place.
Then we began to pore over maps, but this time it was not "Treasure Island" that we had to find but "Mother's Island" and without Matrimandir. The place where She dwells, quite simply.
Our experience in Ceylon had shown us that everything
had been spoilt by tourists Tahiti, the Marquesas Islands (Hiva Oa), all that
is polluted. But nonetheless, there are many islands in Oceania. My finger was
wandering over the map and I had the feeling that perhaps the region around
New-Caledonia might be less contaminated, because Noumea is a place for colonial
middle-class people awful. We could use Noumea as a base for scouring and
probing the area: there are the New-Hebrides and further on the Horn Islands and
... what not? If we had a boat, we could explore more
easily. I said to myself that Sydney was not far and that Australians build many
sailing boats a second-hand sailing boat? In short, I was sailing and Sujata
was sailing with me by the fireside.
Two days later, Sujata told me: why not speak to Robert? I spoke to him. "It is like a door opening on the sun," he answered. He too felt that he had started going round in circles in Happywood. Of course, he told me at once what I knew: "But if we take Boni, Michel ... all of their work will collapse." It is obvious. But pioneers are needed, we must find the place and when we are ready, circumstances will be ready.... I cannot foresee any war, although everything is like an enormous cauldron about to explode and it would only take a mere cat passing by the most futile and benign incident for everything to burst. But I have a kind of repeated impression that things will end up in economic chaos: the great paralysis. Everything stops. The big Machine stops. Then a formidable sorting out by the pit of the stomach.
But these are speculations. Be that as it may, one day, perhaps in a not too distant future, circumstances will be ready and there will be perhaps twelve men to utter the cry of the Earth (...)
Robert will be a Robinson Crusoe worthy of the best legends: Each one has his "fixed idea" and with a little of a Druids or Great Druidess' magic potion, perhaps it will work. I don't know, there seems to be a Smile behind all this.
But there is a Hope.
There is a promise.
There are doors ajar, as it were.
As for the rest, I don't know, it is in God's and in Mother's hands.
I stop my saga and embrace you, along with the brothers and sisters of a great hope and of an adventure worth living.
Satprem
P.S.:
The day when I recounted to Sujata my great scene in the forest, she showed me
this Bengali text of Sri Aurobindo's, which she had just found. Here is the
English translation (it is in a Bengali introduction to the Gita):
"The elements of evil that are going to be destroyed in the course of the world's evolution are precisely the ones that are eliminated through an inordinate growth in the Kaliyuga."
Written in 1909, 72 years ago....
The night of December 20-21, 1981
Kireet: "The Government is beginning to wonder what you are up to."
The night of December 22-23, 1981
Vision
I am in Mother's big Humber. I am in the front. I cannot see who is driving. It was very smooth, fast, without bumps powerful, silent, all windows closed. I did not see where I was going.
December 23, 1981
(Letter to Micheline)
... It is true that a Plan is taking shape and that
very-thing is going to move quickly now. The era of Land's End is probably over
for every action, there is a chosen place. The
transition to the next stage is always a little painful, but the worst is over
the corner has been turned ... toward the unknown. When the Plan becomes
clearer, I'll tell you and certainly, I'll need your help once more.
Now, we must go toward another concretisation.
Silence is necessary. Any stirring up disturbs.
With Sujata, I embrace you very tenderly.
1982: the door is opening.
Satprem
The night of December 28-29
Vision
Violently attacked and chased by Nirod.65 (Pranab is there, but assists without attacking).
Such a deep disgust, and a lassitude of all that.
Each time, you think that it is the bottom of the darkness, and each time there is something darker.
December 31, 1981
A great lassitude of beings all beings. I would like to be alone with my soul and the seagulls.
January 3, 1982
I
have paid my debt to suffering.
Like Shiva Nilakantha,66 for eight years I have swallowed their poison if I leave, they will have to swallow their own poison and die of it. In fifteen days I will have left India (to where?).
January 4, 1982
The final onslaught.
Keya-Robert.
I must go before being completely torn to bits.
January 6, 1982
Marriage.
January 9, 1982
This pain is of a greater intensity in order to try and change the pain of the earth.
Now I must change myself.
January 13, 1982
I've
made quite a journey ... in my head.
I've shaken all the bars of the prison ... in my head. Now I have only to sit down right here and forget everything.
Twelve persons on an island is eleven too many.
There is only one island ... in my head.
January 20, 1982
(Letter to Micheline)
It was difficult to write these last days and yet there
is something special to say to each of you, and above all a special relationship
one cannot write "collective" letters. And there is that great difficulty of
speaking without it going around the whole world and what is simple becomes an
affair of state! Well, I am resigned and I know that you love me enough to
understand. So, it really seems that we are going to leave Land's End. This
place has served well and is crammed full with a force Ludmila had clearly
seen this "golden Buddha" that enveloped the place. It is not without questions
that I prepare to leave I am full of questions and that is my old torment. I
think that Mother's "censor" was a little boy compared to mine! First, one can
ask oneself what is the use of running to the other end of the world? If it is a
question of getting out of the fishbowl, what difference is there between the
Nilgiris and the Tierra del Fuego? Well, there is no use holding forth: I've
realized that the true reasons that drive you to act have little to do with the
apparent reasons that make you decide. Other forces move men and circumstances.
So, apparently there is this vicious circle of enemies and even friends (!). You
know that on December 30, I had to give yet another interview to Jean de Beer,
and when leaving, this good man, sent
by Jaigu [of France Culture] promised to come back with a team from French TV.
You see, it is like that, endless and repetitive. Already I had to make a
considerable effort to let myself be filmed and interviewed by David. It gives
the impression of "ageing" that Mother must have felt after all those
"Conversations" at the Playground. You say to yourself: all the same ... is
there nothing better to do? And I am still obsessed (to the extent of
visualising it almost concretely) by this "Web" Mother spoke of: if one
point changes, everything can change! This is rather formidable. The
"Anna-Maria" on the Kerala road almost gave me the shivers, or rather it made me
feel
giddy.67 Then, there is the vicious circle of "enemies" (who, in
fact, draw energy from your own resistance). The "attacks" continue; last night
again, I emerged from a nightmare where people wanted to kill me and upon
"waking," I had this strange pain in my back and my heart for days now this
pain has been coming and going, disappearing and reappearing all of a sudden. It
is like latent heart attacks which never come to anything. Which means that
their force is more and more worn out, or that my body reacts better. But all
that is also as repetitive as an old refrain. But tiring too.
But I wonder whether, behind all the apparent reasons
that prompt me to leave, there is not another reason, a true one. I have the
vague impression that "one" does not want me to stay in India anymore because
there could be a few big cleanups I am thinking of that mountain that I saw
move, as if crushed by gigantic forces, there was to be an earthquake in the
end, and with Sujata, we had to leave the building where we were; on the
threshold, Sujata told me: "It's going to rain, we should take raincoats." I go
back into the house, grope my way through rooms streaked with lightning or
short-circuits, and at last found, in my bathroom,
the umbrella that I had bought in France. A "French umbrella." It was more than
one year ago.... Is the mountain going to move?
I don't know.
... But as Sri Aurobindo would say, "solvitur ambulando." It will be neither "ambulando" nor "navigando" for nowadays it is too costly to walk (!) or navigate. So we will grope our way if this adventure is true, the place already exists and is waiting for us. It is for us to discover it.
There are so many other material and practical "unknowns" that it makes you feel giddy the best way to shake off giddiness is to set out without further ado. Sujata and I were married (on January 6) to try and pass through the prison bars of visas and consulates. It was charming, but that's another story (which I related to Carmen68). I don't know if the bars will give way, but we do our best (if you knew what gymnastics I must do with Bombay to thwart Pondicherry....). These are insane stories, but precisely we are going to work for a change in this general insanity. A small link in the web.... it would be interesting.
There we are. Sujata fears nothing and yet it is not that easy for someone who spent more than forty years of her life in the Pondicherry Ashram.... As for me, I sometimes wonder if I too am not insane, but given the four billion and a half specimens, one more or one less will not make a big difference. If Sujata can still find a few cashews and nuts to nibble, it will be alright.
A problem remains a real one: that of secrecy. If everywhere people begin to know where I am, there is nothing else to do but to go hang oneself elsewhere (but where, elsewhere? In Alaska with Anne!?). Already my departure to Ceylon gave rise to so much talk that it is discouraging. And immediately, it becomes a grandiloquent "affair," when it is so simple, very simple and quite natural. (...)
I don't have any address to leave since I don't know
where we
are going, but if the Grace wants us to find the place, I will leave you my
degrees of longitude and latitude. Besides, there is not much more to "say"
but to do.
But I wanted to embrace you, because you have been such a sister for all these somewhat terrible years.... From one side or the other of the globe, we hold hands and continue.
Satprem
The night of January 25-26, 1982
I have seen Death.
January 27, 1982
My soul yearns so much to fly away to a land of absolute light and love.
January 31, 1982
Vision
Night: a white pigeon came and landed on my heart. It was so sweet.
February 1, 1982
(Letter addressed to Georges Trotter, of the German Television, just before Satprem's departure for... his illusory island, illusory at least for the time being.)
Brother,
Yes, I will perhaps end up as a bird! Who knows? I've always asked myself why evolution did not stop there! But probably one has to find the next bird....
To you, I would have many things to say. But I have more and more difficulty writing. And I am leaving. Yes, soon, in a few days maybe for the unknown.
I would like to tell you what I am going to do you are truly a brother to me, I don't know why, but it's like that. Deep down, I feel much love for you, with a kind of profound comprehension of what you are and who we are. As if we were sharing this being, but very-very deeply. No need to explain: it is a fact.
So I've had enough of idealizing ... I want to realize.
I've had enough of televising and interviewing I want to see, to be, to touch, to become. One has to get out of the old round as much with friends as with enemies. One has to be in the presence of the Thing naked, raw. Then you move on or you don't move on to the Other Thing. If you don't, it does not matter, you only drag yourself down; but if you succeed, what a difference ... perhaps a formidable difference for the world. Don't you think so? If a single man could work out the Passage if he really worked it out. It will have to start one day somewhere in one man. It will neither drop from heaven nor from the TV nor from the latest book we must make this other bird. And if it is an illusion, I'd rather die from this illusion than from another one. Cancer is at everyone's disposal.
And I imagined that one day we could all find ourselves together or some few so that we could work out together, attempt together this last adventure of the human species.
First we have to find the place.
You understand: not an Auroville with a "Matrimand-ir"
no: the place where it can be done. The few of the dying human species who
utter a last cry and make the ultimate attempt. A corner of the world which
would be like "Mother's
island" or the island of the new species where it begins to really stammer in
a few old chimpanzees' bodies who are fed up with being chimpanzees.
They all expect me to continue writing books for perpetuity to hell with it!
I understand Rimbaud very well.
So, I am leaving.
Hail to the future.
You understand, everything is possible, if only a few men feel that it is possible. It is the time of the great New. There are smiles on every side, if you know how to smile with them.
I don't know how things will be, except that I am going to pack my bags in a few days, but I am taking you with me, in a corner of my heart, and if one day I see that it's interesting, I will let you know where I am.
I embrace you.
Satprem
I embrace you.
Sujata
February 2, 1982
When a big soft wave covers the world and there is nothing left but a bird song on the old fears.
February 5, 1982
The cormorant all alone on its beacon.
February 7, 1982
(Letter to Micheline)
...
M-N, settled in Land's End, are getting the hang of things. Robert-Anne are
still vague about their projects, but are going to leave India I told Robert
that our experience was only possible in a totally positive atmosphere (God only
knows how Mother suffered from all the "impossibilities" and negativities that
surrounded her!) and that they could join us at the right moment if Anne
subscribed unreservedly.
All is very mysterious, Micheline but we are going toward Mother. This is the only certainty. A few men and women must make the passage. I can still hear Mother: "Sri Aurobindo has opened doors, and when we are ready, we will go through these doors"... we, who?
Satprem
February 11, 1982
Ma, it is toward your island that I go, otherwise all this is insane.
*
(Extracts from a letter of Satprem to Sir C.P.N Singh, originally in English)
... How I remember our first meeting in Nandanam at one glance you had understood everything. Nobody in this world has understood as deeply as you have. No, it is not out of laziness that you did not write to me of late; you have such a burden on you and nobody with whom you can share this I deeply feel. How lucky I am to have one Sujata near me.
Your letter is also very comforting and reassuring for
me when you write to me: "As long as I am alive, I am prepared to help anything
that you do anywhere that you may decide to live." Your trust in me is like a
balm on my tormented heart it was such an anguish to reach that decision to leave
India and I have been assailed by so many voices and doubts. Truly one has to
walk in the dark, and only afterwards one realizes that the path was correct. I
will try to tell you something of what I have seen.
I had two possible options. One was to continue on the same line, i.e., write more books, go to Europe and America, appear more and more on the TV and give more and more interviews. Also to go to the Butler Palace69 was part of this same line. But a feeling grew in me to the effect that the time of lecturing and writing was past and even obsolete. I was not meant to be a "guru"; nowadays even a Vivekananda would be lost in the blast and glare of the TV and loudspeakers this game is self-defeating; one wave is soon engulfed by the next one. It is all a chaos of stars for no heaven and no light anywhere. A feeling grew in me that the time had come to do, or to try to do, and not to speak and explain. If only one or a few human beings could bring into their cells something of the new Force, that would make a bigger difference to the world than all the books and TV together. Also more and more I have felt that I should be out of the public gaze, that the work should be done secretly. More and more I have felt the need of an utterly positive atmosphere unassailed by friends as well as by foes an atmosphere where the work could be done freely without the old ghosts which plagued Mother ceaselessly. Then, slowly, it dawned upon me that if Mother had held my hands for so long, then surely something must have filtered through and why not try? My work for the Agenda is now finished let me try to live the Agenda. Never such a presumptuous idea came to my mind before, but slowly it became to me the only sane idea and the only possible path; it became more and more imperative.
......
The new world cannot be built by only one man, but
suppose we were a dozen people representing the best of what
Humanity has produced, a dozen men and women who have come to the end of the
human curve and understood totally that they have to go beyond humanity and find
out what Sri Aurobindo and Mother had seen a dozen human beings who would be
like the last cry of the human race, or its last prayer, its last call to the
beyond.... If these dozen men could be gathered somewhere, then the Miracle
would be possible. But somewhere, where? It could not be here where we are the
public target of everybody; it could not be in India where disruptive conditions
are slowly but inevitably building up; it could not be a hidden place in the
mountains; because mountains are passive and immobile and what would a dozen
men and women do in the passive seclusion of the mountains. Then it
occurred to me that the place should be near the sea an island. (...) An
island somewhere in the Pacific "Mother's Island." A place with no
Matrimandir, a place where She would be simply there, Her habitation outside the
growing chaos of the world. A place where a few men and women would make the
last attempt and find out the passage to the next species.
So, dearest Companion, Sujata and I are on our way to discover "Mother's Island" somewhere in the Pacific. If we find the right place, we will call some of the young men and women whom we know, and perhaps also unknown strangers will join. A golden thread must link, here and there, those among men who are ready for this last attempt. On February 13th, we are leaving for this unknown adventure. I have no address, I don't know where we will land I have the faith that Mother will keep our hands in Hers and lead us toward her Island of the golden Future.
February 13, 1982
Departure from Land's End.
*
(Thus Satprem went in search of his last illusion)
February 14, 1982
Madras.
The beach: the "human" ghetto.
If one wants to find a new sense, one must go into the senseless.
February 15, 1982
Madras-Singapore.
February 19, 1982
Noumea. Wallis Islands.
In search of an illusion??
February 25, 1982
Futuna ... Alofi.
February 26, 1982
Toloke (Horn Islands)
Birds know where they go
We, we do not know.
To
pain, is our path.
February 28, 1982
Tip of the pyramids
the false paradise
March 1, 1982
I would so much need to know that all that has a meaning.
March 4, 1982
Futuna.
Waiting for the "Moana."
Everything is like a big illusion.
March 5-6, 1982
Departure from Futuna aboard the Moana.
Vision: I get out of a small yellow plane (of my illusions).
*
Evening: Arrival at Noumea.
March 7, 1982
Noumea.
The end of the illusion.
March 9, 1982
Noumea
The morning of the question mark.
Return to Colombo and India, or Polynesia?
We choose Rurutu (Austral Islands).
Even if I am mistaken, I will have been mistaken courageously.
Anyway, That alone is.
March 11, 1982
Papeete
Rurutu: "Package tour."
They have eaten it too.
They have eaten the earth.
They have covered the earth with their waste.
I am leaving the shores of life.
March 12, 1982
Papeete
I have closed the geography.
There are no islands in the Pacific.
March 13, 1982
Departure
from Papeete to Colombo.
In Noumea, turned back to Singapore??
March 16, 1982
Singapore, Colombo.
March 17, 1982
Colombo. It only hangs by a thread.
*
Savitri opens by itself:
"But too often here the careless Mother leaves
Her chosen in the envious hands of Fate.... "
March 18, 1982
Colombo
At the end of hope or hopelessness.
I have no country anymore, nobody anymore.
*
I would have liked so much to do what You wanted.
I would have liked so much to understand what You willed.
And then....
*
Such
a deep and mute grief.
March 20, 1982
Colombo, Madras.
March 22, 1982
Return to Land's End.
Devastated.
March 24, 1982
My Douce: "I feel that the search is not over."
The night of March 25-26, 1982
Vision
An empty, clean bathtub, very white.
March 27, 1982
Everything is broken, inside, outside.
I no longer know where to go or what to do.
They really drop me
like an old tool that they don't need anymore.
My heart is full of pain.
In
any case, I will have tried till the end.
*
There is nothing to want, nothing to ask, nothing to expect.
There is nothing to blame, nothing to pray for.
Everything is as it must be, that's all.
One must only be what one can be in the circumstances
A speck of dust under the stars
and that's all.
If they told me something, I would do it.
But they say nothing nothing, nothing, nothing.
March 29, 1982
Ooty. Treated like a dog by the Immigration officer: "Why don't you stay out?"
I've been living for thirty years in India.
He shows me the passport photo of a missionary woman: "She has been living for fifty years in India. Such a nice lady!"
*
To go and bury myself at Belle-Isle? [in Brittany]
To find the moors destroyed by tarred roads and truck-loads of tourists as on the Cote Sauvage [Wild Coast]? is anything wild left, except the hearts of men?
*
It is the end of the illusion that is terrible: the last metres.
I am bleeding.
But it is probably very well.
*
Under my tree, like a voice: "Don't worry, all that is part of the path."
*
But
it is terrible.
I still hear Mothers last words: "I cannot say anything."
And She shook her head.
I cannot say anything.
The night of March 30-31, 1982
Vision: my old dressing gown sinks in the waters and disappears into a hole in the sand, as if sucked in.
So be it.
April 1, 1982
(Personal Letter)
Yet I must try to tell you about this journey.... I take my courage in both hands; at least, the experience must be of use.
I have mainly travelled within myself you always think that you have reached the end or the bottom, but there is something further than the end and the bottom remains unfathomable. I came back from there quite demolished, even more within than without, but it was probably necessary when you are demolished in the worst, it is not that bad, but when it is the best that collapses, it is more difficult. Yet, sometimes I think that it is "the best" that is our most invisible enemy. I don't know, I no longer know where I am. So, let's stick to outer facts.
All the same, it was quite a shock when Sujata told me a few days ago, when we received your telegram: "Yes, I think that the search is not over." As for me, I thought that the illusion was over and that I had explored the end of my illusion (or at least this particular end). So?...
In
any case, the illusion of the Pacific is settled once and for all: it is a
Gangsters' paradise. And on top of it, a false paradise. Yet, I assure you, all
appearances are there: seen from slightly afar, only two hundred metres off the
coast, it is paradisiacal strings of islands surrounded by turquoise blue
lagoons as I had never seen before, a flow of emerald fringed with foam, and the
great violet-blue of the Pacific. And those sheer coasts which fall away down
into the sea in a frenzy of vegetation; dream creeks to shelter dream sailing
boats. As a matter of fact, lots of navigators in search of their dreams wash up
here and there, as pen pushers in a government office or barmen, just long
enough to earn a little money to go further in their dreams, the best one of
which is perhaps to live a beautiful true shipwreck. But it is also a sign of
the times. Then you approach the pretty dream coast.... First Alofi let's
speak of this one, on which I had my eye uninhabited and at the same time
close to a bigger island (Futuna) for supplies. I took out my binoculars (I was
the perfect explorer, you see) and scanned those perfect coasts with their
volcanic summit covered in lush vegetation falling away into an aquamarine sea
... then a Cross, an enormous, white cross, standing like a sentry: "Beware,
this land is
ours." This "ours" is the private property of the Missionaries. The
entire Pacific is the property of priests, and what priests! To begin with, they
have managed to make the indigenous people take their gods for demons, to the
extent that they tell you: "Don't go into the bush, you might meet Matsuku (or I
don't know who)" their god of yesterday turned into a
man-eater.70 But the new god is not the Sacred Heart of Jesus one
sees everywhere, but whisky, beer and frozen chicken (there were ten tons aboard
the Moana, on which Sujata bravely experienced the sea for the first
time; but the big pitching and tossing of the Pacific was nothing).
Then you focus your binoculars a little closer on the Paradise
and you land Well, there we can speak of Wallis, Futuna, the Fijis or all the
rest of the Pacific, it is all the same with various degrees of "piggishness" or
"yoyo-yeye" wiggling of more or less fat hips from Papeete to Colombo. Yes, the
pig is the number one inhabitant of the Pacific ubiquitous black pigs, masters
of beaches, huts and coconut groves, and more numerous than men, who, besides,
look astonishingly like them. If you are odd enough to want to walk, they tell
you kindly (for people are very kind): "But you are going to bother your legs."
Of course, you immediately discover the mosquitoes and endemic elephantiasis
that "bothers" their legs, but the best position is to stay lounging, leaning on
one elbow, waiting for the fruit to fall into your lap you can't find fruit:
again you must be odd enough to go and pick them. On the other hand, the whole
island shows up when it comes to welcoming, with garlands, the cartons of whisky
and beer and the famous chicken that nobody has the courage to raise. If you
want an egg, it will be imported from Noumea. Meals are another problem: you
have the choice between pork and mackerel but not so much choice, and in any
case you must hurry, because the flies are faster than you are: it is a fight to
know who is going to eat. And Sujata through all that, stoic, somewhat pale,
fanning the flies away and trying to eat a bit of cooked banana. I must say that
she has been stoic from the beginning to the end, especially when she had to
relieve herself publicly on the beach (please excuse these details, but for an
Indian, and what's more a Jain, it's not bad) and to fight with the impatient
pigs.... Really, I've obliged this modest and excessively clean India to do a
hard tapasyβ she never lost her smile, rather she tried to cheer me up a
little. As for me, I spent entire days looking at the walls in a concrete
latticework house (sign of wealth) belonging to the royal family of Toloke,
asking myself what all that meant.
For the outward dirtiness was nothing (at least for me)
and one can conceive of the pig as a currency, in the same way
as the dollar and I am not sure that the dollar is cleaner than the pig. But
that climate, oppressive, heavy, thick, which empties you of all of your energy,
as if you really had to drag your legs; and that sea a sea that is not the
sea! A sea that is not alive and does not give, does not fill you; a lifeless
sea that comes and laps against oppressive shores and what shores! I had not
foreseen that, I should have consulted my geology more attentively: the Pacific
is volcanic do you understand what it means? Black basalt, black rocks, ragged
creeks with cliffs and black reefs that look like vomited monsters or pigs lying
high and dry. Sujata told me that it was like "coagulated mud" (I tried to
explain to her that in French the word was feminine) ["la vase" = mud not "le
vase" = vase]. Then you sat down on a bit of rock, fanning flies away and
swatting mosquitoes, and it was so pretty when viewed from afar, but really
pretty, unbelievably so and it was completely false. A false paradise. And
vulnerable, fragile: the pretty "Longo-asi" (our already fat landlady), with a
multicoloured "sarong" (who religiously crossed herself while passing in front
of each church) spoke only of ghosts and nasty foreigners who threw bottles into
the sea with crocodile eggs inside, in order to eat the country but
fortunately the "Sacred Heart" was there along with the Pope. I listened to all
that and told myself that all it would take was but one Missionary, whispering
in their superstitious ears that we were suspicious atheists.... So, to go to
Alofi by ourselves? (where, besides, they had already installed a Virgin's
grotto with miracles) and to do what? suspicious evolution? I think we would
have had an "accident" very quickly.
And this debilitating climate: 30° day and night.
Of course, there are various degrees of piggishness in
the Pacific and degrees of flies and a few differences of degrees centigrade
but the illusion is tenacious and I said to myself that perhaps "elsewhere,"
perhaps at a lower degree of latitude, we would fathom the mystery. In fact, I
had not made such a bad choice when I put my finger on Futuna and
Alofi, because it was still "the back of beyond," a true beyond in that entire
Pacific polluted by tourists and multimillionaires. But we were soon going to
discover the true pigs, omnipotent electronics and "yoyo-yeyes" who spread out
from Hong-Hong to Hawaii and Papeete in order to sip whisky ... by a swimming
pool. And this striking picture that lingers on among a thousand futile trifles:
ten in the evening, a deserted swimming pool lit by a blue neon nobody, not a
soul about, but a half-naked little girl wearing a bikini bottom, perhaps twelve
years old, with her growing breasts, who slid over the blue tiles without seeing
us, all alone, carrying in her hand a small black object which she was looking
at intensely the thing emitted a "beep" and she vanished like a sleepwalker
into the corridors of the hotel.
All the same, I still had my illusion I knew that
Noumea was like that, that Papeete was like that, I knew very well (although the
French vulgarity surpassed all that I could have imagined: true pigs with
neckties, who stay for their bank account and the 75% cost-of-living allowance;
Germany is not so vulgar, the American is not vulgar like that French
vulgarity is frightening). So, I was harbouring my last illusion, which I had
caught aboard the Moana. In the evening, Sujata had asked me whether I
intended to go to "mass" there was no point explaining to her that this word
was masculine and I stoically went down to the mess in order to swallow a pork
chop [in French, messe (mass), and mess (mess) have the same
pronunciation, but different genders] while she was stoically pitching on her
berth (the only one aboard). The crew was talking on and on and I was cutting
the thing, when the second mate began to speak of
Rurutu Austral Islands, latitude 22° and 12° centigrade in winter
"you can wear a light pullover." Ah! I told myself: that's it. A "marvellous,
wild" island, the navigators' dream at last (it is even where Eric de Bishop is
buried, one of the first solo navigators of the beginning of the century)
through that whole inanity, that oppressive heat,
those nauseous basalts, I said to myself: "But there is Rurutu! We are going to
Rurutu, in the Austral Islands you cannot dream of anything more remote." So,
I took my courage in both hands (and I assure you, it took a lot of courage
after all that if I was mistaken, at least I will have been mistaken
courageously) and I resigned myself to crossing Papeete, as there was no other
direct access to the Austral Islands, which are six hundred kilometres to the
south of Tahiti. Sujata and I arrived exhausted at Papeete after a thirty-day
journey, our poor suitcases stuffed with Agendas that we lugged around
from one place to the other without having even the time to open them (the
toothbrush alone was no small affair). It was six or seven o'clock in the
morning on a day that was the day before or the day after and of an hour that
began to be as much a sleepwalker as the little girl in Noumea. We took a taxi
to look for a hotel (I spare you the eternal stories of immigration and police);
on the way, I had the unfortunate idea, after three or four jam-packed hotels,
with no rooms, to stop at an agency "Tahiti Travels" to ask for information
about communications with Rurutu: "Ah, that's fortunate", a matron named Phoebe
told us, who looked like a brothel owner dressed in a pareo "that's fortunate,
we have just discovered Rurutu, I have a package tour for you, it's 12,000
francs per day, the most luxurious hotel of Polynesia, which we have just opened
it's called "Chez Madeleine," at Rurutu, and there is even a swimming pool." I
went on listening, astounded, while she filled in the package tour form in
triplicate. Then I must have stood up, very pallid, and I told her that I was
getting out of there. I don't know if I felt like crying or shouting I must
have shouted because she told me kindly (they are all very kind): "You must be
exhausted by the journey, have a rest and we will speak of it later." We took
the taxi again and went round all the hotels in Papeete for four hours full
up. At 1 or 2 p.m., we drove back to the airport: a total of 2.000 francs worth
of taxi fare, and not one room in Tahiti. I felt like lying down on the ground
and really, had Sujata
not been there, I would have left my body there in a corner. At last, at 2 p.m.,
the "Tourism" lady found us a room by telephone and we went to "The Princess
Haiatea": a glass cage with air-conditioning beside the eternal swimming pool.
And the television under our noses while we tried to eat something. I swallowed
the whole programme, dumbfounded and completely hypnotized: there was the latest
exhibition of Adolf Hitler's paintings, with photos and panegyric of the fellow,
followed by a sequence on torture in Guatemala (or I don't know where), followed
by a slot on heroin traffic; then an arrangement of Beethoven (the Pastoral
Symphony) for Oceanian music with Polynesian "yoyo-yeye" it was a grace if I
did not go insane.
But I was completely devastated. Even Hitler had not devastated me to such an extent.
I spare you our return. And those multimillionaires' yachts oh, splendid yachts ... what for? and where to? Hundreds of yachts in Tahiti, each with its own particular little paradise surrounded by barbed wire fences all along the coast "no through road," "private way," 30,000 cars rushing as at peak hours black sand, black rocks between two private little paradises. Marlon Brando bought the last island and the last Pomarι king was buried with a cast of a gigantic steel bottle of Benedictine on his mausoleum. I don't know, brother, it's crazy, crazy, such an abominable humanity I will have known desperation. A desperation that I had not known after eighteen months of Mauthausen and Buchenwald. Something even more awful, because it was the whole of humanity that was at the end of the road, with a terrible question mark. The day after our arrival in Tahiti, on March 12 (but it was already the 13th in Tahiti) there was an entire special issue of the Tahiti Sun Press devoted to the "recent discovery of Rurutu." We had just arrived there to find this under our very noses, with an irony, or a sarcasm, I don't know, and "by chance," I came across that "Ah! you wanted the Pacific, well, here it is." And what about the next evolution, the new species?
Ah,
the urgency, brother. It is frightening. If there is no new species....
Perhaps it all was meant to make me despair so totally, so deeply, so physically that we will have to do or be something else if we don't want to die of it.
The return....
I knew, I knew all that, but I hoped that one corner of the earth had escaped at least one corner. There is no corner. Look, I send you the copy of the Tahiti Sun Press, it is edifying.
So we did not go to Rurutu.
And the first picture that is shown to me at the end of all that tour is Adolf Hitler, heroin and the torture in Guatemala, with an arrangement of Beethoven for pop music.
*
April 2
I must go to the end of my story: so that we can understand together. It is a bit as if the earth had to understand its sense.
We stayed forty-eight hours in Tahiti, just enough to
set the mechanism in motion again forty-eight hours that were somewhat
terrible. But there was still a bit of obstinacy left in me, or perhaps the last
convulsions of dying man. I said to myself: we are going back to Noumea, on the
wharfs of Noumea, a certain Coriolis has something to tell me already,
with Sujata, we had explored a gigantic, empty cargo ship which was preparing to
cast off ... for Taiwan (all that is crazy, one must be Breton and mad, or
Sujata, to do such things at the age of fifty-nine ... you realize!). But having
gone this far, why not Taiwan, and then this ship was empty, waiting for us. We
climbed aboard that huge scrap heap (which by the way was really fit for the
scrap heap, it was its last journey), wandered down the gangways, got hold of an
impassive Chinaman who led us to the Captain s cabin the Captain was snoozing,
impossible to wake him up. I pounded on the door, the Chinaman tapped, while Sujata
was looking on. Chalked up on a blackboard it was indicated that the ship was
going to weigh anchor the next morning at 8 o'clock. The Chinaman ended up
telling me that if I came at 6 a.m., things could be arranged with the Captain
dozens of empty cabins. Taiwan.... Damn it! I would willingly have gone to the
devil and Sujata perfectly quiet, always quiet; you know, never have I seen
that quiet equanimity which nothing disturbs (except the pigs to some extent),
ready for anything. Only once did I see her lose her equanimity, but then, if
you had seen that.... It was in the administrative offices of Futuna, the first
evening, when we did not know whether we were going to sleep on the beach with
the pigs or what. Suddenly, she went for the wheezy and negative administrator:
"But what are you here for? to help us or create impossibilities?" I had never
seen that. The administrator was dumbfounded, as well as the nun beside him, the
secretary was frozen in a corner. For ten minutes she gave him a dressing-down
and bawled him out it was quite a spectacle: not even Kali, but Chandi. The
administrator was silent and livid but he gave us a bedroom. Well.... So there
was Taiwan. We missed the boat bound for Taiwan, we were sound asleep at 6 a.m.,
which was goodness knows what time. I don't know if it is a pity for Taiwan or
for us.
But there was still a Coriolis somewhere in that
damned port, with a man from Belle-Ile (!!). I told myself: we are going back to
Noumea, to see the Coriolis. We bought a ticket to Noumea at double the
fare, because we had stayed less than six days in Tahiti (never seen such
"tourists"). We arrived in Tontouta: the police asked for our onward tickets,
which we didn't have onward to where? A regulation little fellow with a blue
cap pointed out that our visas were no longer valid, since we had left Noumιa
"You are going to pay your onward ticket in cash, then we will turn you back." I
argued, pleaded my case then finally sat down on the policeman's round chair,
exhausted. Thanks to a flash of inspiration, I had withdrawn my last francs in
Papeete I pulled
my money out. Let's see: onward to Singapore? But, sir, in Singapore, they will
ask you, "onward to where?" So, onward to Colombo. But, sir, in Colombo, they
will ask you, "onward to where?" Onward to Madras then. But, sir, are you
really a resident of India? Your wife, yes, but you? I was no longer a resident
of India, I was no longer anything at all nor from anywhere and I saw myself
being turned back... to Paris. Besides, I did not even have enough money to go
that far. Finally, I paid to go as far as Colombo another ticket that cost me
twice as much as a Delhi-Paris return ticket (a French airline company called
Uta reigns over the Pacific; it is a company of gangsters, which has the
monopoly and makes you pay its price no problem, since they are all either
civil servants or multimillionaires). So, no Noumea, they re-embarked us aboard
the plane that had been waiting for an hour and the captain apologized for the
delay because of some "passenger trouble" the trouble was us. We had to
swallow the whole journey: Sydney, freezing, where Sujata caught a cold,
Jakarta, Singapore. There, in transit. Two days of reflection and trying to put
the machine back in order a little. Then we were on our way back to India, and
it all seemed so crazy, so senseless.... From Roissy to Singapore-Changi to
Tontouta, the passengers slide along through electronic doors which open up onto
other electronic doors which open up ... a complete fishbowl, perfect,
organized, and you are not wanted anywhere unless you have an onward ticket to
other electronic places or a return ticket to nothing. One cannot stay there,
brother! It is not possible, not-possible. And I told myself: but in Madras,
they will turn me back just the same.... Sometimes you haven't the right to be
Indian, sometimes you haven't the right to be French.... And the French.... What
is my nationality, brother? We sent a telegram to C.P.N. who opened the
electronic doors of the Indian High Commissioner for me in Colombo, who opened
the Meen-ambakkam non-electronic doors in Madras. And there I was, having never
left and perhaps never returned. There, I began
to fall to pieces: facial cramps, as if I could not bear this mask anymore, then
constrictions of the throat. There only remained to go back to Land's End and be
done with it. This was our journey.
*
Well. I have just spent some fairly bitter days looking at all that. I walked in the forest, sat down at the foot of my tree I have a tree friend. I walked again. I was simply a bit of a devastated body. You understand, all intuitions, all thoughts, all pretty images, "signs," the visions at night, everything-everything had become like a web of Falsehood, I was a web of Falsehood. That was all. And that enormous illusion. Yet, what I had seen with Robert, there, in front of my chimney, was so nice.... Then everything collapsed, it was only an imagination of the human subconscient. Even in 1945 in Mauthausen, when the Russians came to get me out of there, I was not so devastated there was an onward somewhere. And at the end of this mad round, I found Hitler's image again in Papeete. Then I was treated like a dog, really a dog, by the employee of the Ooty Immigration Office (a Christian) "Ah, you have come back again ... Why don't you stay out? I'll notify the government."
I won't dwell on it, I am not giving you all the details. But truly I must "get out of it" in one way or another. From 1945 to 1982, how many years?
My tree had but one answer. Suddenly, I was taken in a great bath of quiet, massive, powerful Force, and I seemed to hear: "Don't worry, all that is part of the path."
So, it is all that I can say to console myself: I have walked a bit of the path in the non-path. Truly, I have no path left. Then I saw my old dressing gown sink into the water and disappear at the bottom of a sand hole, as if sucked in. That's all.
*
Then, since everything failed me oh! not my heart, it
has become so dense, so poignant I grabbed hold of my reason,
my good old reason that I had thrown on the scrap heap for so many years, and
looked at it all objectively (if it is possible). And I said to myself: damn it,
it's not possible, you have been shown the whole scene as far as Papeete and
seen that behind an Oceanian mask what exists everywhere is exactly the same
everywhere simply under another mask. But this world is finished. It is
not possible, it will blow up. It is finished, it is dying everywhere I got my
calculations of the time and place wrong, but not the end of this degenerate
species. We are truly there like at the end of the reptiles it is sure,
obvious. And Mother was not mistaken. It is truly a question of knowing who will
survive and how?
That's what I told Sujata the other evening, with a kind of despair (I don't know, I know nothing, but all the same I know!). Then Sujata suddenly unearthed this vision [of Mother's] of 1907 (1907, do you realize, when I only set out in 1945) and she read the whole thing to me: "A great disaster is hanging over us, an appalling disaster is getting ready, I feel it, though I cannot specify its nature.... " And the twelve twelve. This boat that so much resembles what Sujata saw some twenty-five years ago, but Mother and Sri Aurobindo were not there, it was I who was at the helm. And I feel, though I know nothing. But it is here, we are right in it! I went round the Pacific, but it is part of the direct path it is not possible otherwise. Simply, I exhausted what was not to be done.
Then your telegram came: "I feel the search is not over." And Sujata, with her quiet little voice: "He is right, I too feel that the search is not over" I was staggered: I believed that I was right in the Illusion, and believed that it was the end of the Illusion....
So, I grabbed hold of my reason once more and said to
myself: "Let's see." Obviously, those stupid islands could not be the place of
refuge: there is nothing to eat, except pork, and they all depend on the outside
to survive, not to mention the oppressive climate. Besides, they are still within
the orbit of the northern hemisphere and on the pathway of conflagrations
without speaking of the thoroughly degenerate Oceanian humanity. And my reason,
my good old reason began to draw my attention not to the Kermadecs this time,
but to New-Zealand. For something rather curious happened between Noumea and
Papeete. Sujata and I thought that we were flying to Papeete, naturally, but
suddenly, they announced that the plane was going to land in Auckland it was
on March 11, I think, on this side of the line. And aboard, next to us, in front
of us and a little everywhere, there was a bunch of New-Zealanders, really very
kind, charming, who created an atmosphere so different from all those French
people I could not help myself from bringing this to Sujata's attention,
because I had not "seen" New-Zealanders like that, I thought that they were
heavy Protestants full of the Bible and sheep. But they were very simple and
charming, really unpretentious and open-minded honest and inconspicuous
people. And, above all, without that French pretentiousness and eyebrow raising
oh! the French, how exasperating they are! I was quite surprised, Sujata had a
conversation with a very charming little New-Zealand woman with a funny accent.
But it's not all. Our plane landed in Auckland, it was around midnight. We got
down into the transit room, lined with an immense corridor and there was quite a
strange atmosphere ... so different from what we had breathed, or badly
breathed, for nearly thirty days. We wondered if we were not going to bump into
Anne and Robert in the corridors! (in fact, they had not yet left India). Then,
I don't know what happened to Sujata, but she went out into the corridor ... and
began doing gymnastics, dance steps and a 100 metre dash, at midnight... in
Auckland (we did not know what was in store for us the next day in Papeete!). It
was really strange. It was her body that suddenly felt joyous and breathing.
Afterwards, she was as surprised as I was.
So, what does it mean? In that whole mad journey that
soulless journey, we could say it was the only time that something
vibrated and smiled. At midnight, in Auckland.
Furthermore, my old reason told me (as I looked back on all that again with Sujata yesterday or the day before): but this New-Zealand, after all, is a fertile, rich country, far from all the possible whirls that could seize the northern hemisphere a fresh country, with no conflicts at all, while the rest of the world is in conflict: no stories of social classes, of races they unpretentiously make butter, milk, wool, and that's all. A clean, kind humanity in a climate that does not debilitate you. Why not? Exactly at the opposite point of the globe at the opposite point of their destructive madness and their big cerebral balloon. Perhaps Anne was not so crazy with her fjords!
There I am.
April 2, 1982
L: New-Zealand?
One more turn in the fishbowl.
April 3, 1982
I am no longer anywhere.
The wound is deeper than I thought.
Am I dying?
If they told me: "Do this, go there," it would be so simple. But....
It is this "but" that is mortal.
April 4, 1982
But
in spite of everything I love You. The only place is in You.
The night of April 4-5, 1982
Vision
Vision: an old pot, very battered and chipped, and I, saying in a somewhat ironic or sarcastic tone: it must be undergoing the transformation.
This old pot was me.
*
At the foot of my tree:
"We are always there,
it is only you who forget...
at times."
April 6, 1982
(Vision of Sir C.P.N. Singh's, originally in English)
At about 4.30 a.m., I had a dream.
I saw that I was somewhere at a place where there were some tall, some medium-size trees. There were no buildings. On the whole, it was open space.
I had ordered two small aeroplanes to be sent to fetch the Mother.
While I was there, a small plane appeared to be coming.
So, I was going to look toward the open space in the hope that the plane would
land there. Instead there was hardly any
time to think a small plane with tremendous speed was seen coming down
in-between the trees, and it landed there.
Then in a container something tub like I see something a pinkish mass which is transparent. On the top, there is a small narrow head, having resemblance of the Mother, but not quite clearly a figure or a face.
I was very surprised and I began to think: what is it? What is the matter? Could this be the Mother? For the mass, which was pinkish, was something of jelly-like substance.
Suddenly this disappeared, and it was replaced by a long stretcher, and there I saw a white figure, which was dressed and this was obviously the Mother. She was not standing but lying.
Then I said to myself: some people are waiting at some distance.
In the meantime, the small plane had disappeared, and I saw the big one carrying the Mother.
I ran to the open place where She was to land. I was full of perplexity and I was wondering what to do. I said to myself: I have no flowers, I have no materials for the βrati.71 And the Mother will come and I am to receive Her.
When I saw other people with thβlis and βratis, etc... I said: I am to receive Her and I have nothing.
It was raining. And there was a thunder.
And I woke up.
April 7, 1982
Sujata: Mother left you a gage.
April 14, 1982
Journey
to
Lucknow.
C.P.N: "Your proper place is in India, in the North right where Krishna and the Pandavas72 were Narad73 is very active in Uttarakhand [Himalayan foothills]."
April 16, 1982
Satprem: I don't want to write anymore.
C.P.N.: You will write and play "a prominent part in the next three years" (or in three years?) I'm not tempted at all by the "prominent."
April 17, 1982
C.P.N.: You are the link.
April 22, 1982
Departure from Lucknow.
April 23, 1982
Delhi, I meet Chattopadhyay74 (Debi Prasad).
Departure
from Delhi to....
April 26, 1982
Let me drown in your love,
Then there will be nothing else
om
April 27, 1982
I start asanas again.
The night of April 30-May 1, 1982
Vision
Indira in a black car, on an absolutely black and muddy road, apparently all in black too, and her car is drawn by "something" (or someone) that I cannot see. There is a cable which is pulling her car.75
*
To consciously aspire to cross this human barrier. Like an obsessed man. Let at least one human being try.
The night of May 1-2, 1982
Vision
Sujata
sees fire in one of the Ashram buildings. (It is the past that is burning.)
The impression that something is going to happen in India (or in the world) this month.
May 4, 1982
Arrival of Agenda III in English.
May 6, 1982
The aspiration in the physical consciousness. Everything is contained there.
May 13, 1982
Yes, to pull the tale of the future down upon earth.
I listen to a music that comes from the distant edge of the universe.
End of volume II
1 My mother's brother was called Victor.
2 Pomegranate flower.
3 Micheline was the one who would finally purchase Land's End. A royal gift.
4 The lowest of the four traditional castes of India, that of the workers and menial servants.
5 One lakh = 100,000 rupees.
6 Sir C.P.N. Singh, a former Indian ambassador to Nepal, then to Japan, was a close collaborator of Pandit Nehru's and an intimate adviser of Indira Gandhi. After Mother's departure, he helped greatly to protect Satprem against the attacks of the Ashram trustees. He immediately understood the inestimable value of this unpublished and threatened document, Mother's Agenda, which had been entrusted to Satprem s care.
7 A trust newly created to help Auroville free itself materially from the hold of the Sri Aurobindo Society (S.A.S.).
8 A poem by Sri Aurobindo, "A God's Labour" (1935)
"I have been digging deep and long
Mid a horror of filth and mire
A bed for the golden river's song,
A home for the deathless fire.... "
9 "Shola": tropical forest of the mountains in South India.
10 A cardiologist surgeon-friend, who recommended an operation for the phlebitis of my leg.
11 A famous French writer and film-maker. Carole was his foster daughter.
12 A "great" French journalist who wanted to interview me.
13 Society of Men of Letters.
14 Satprem's younger brother, who committed suicide in December, 1973.
15 The Gold Digger: a novel by Satprem.
16 Note from Sujata: "That is what he did in fact. He seriously burnt two of his fingers."
17 "Yours" in Latin.
18 The photocomposing machine.
19 President Zhivkov's daughter, princess of Bulgaria and Minister of Culture. Following a car accident (a fractured skull), visions began to pour into her. She came to India in order to find the "explanation" and was sent to me by Sir C.P.N. Singh.
She was murdered two years later, in 1981. She had given me a small white handkerchief, which I still keep.
20 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the President of Pakistan, imprisoned then hanged by the chief of the army, General Zia-ul-Haq, who took his place. It was the latter who saw that an "open war" with India would fail and who launched a whole plan of terrorist infiltration in Kashmir (to begin with).
21 Harijan, an invention of Gandhi's, now called "dalits" or "backward classes" and now everyone in India is fighting for the political and financial benefits of the said class, with the result that the whole of India, from top to bottom, is manipulated and governed by illiterates of their own culture.
22 The Director of France-Culture, a French radio station.
23 Morarji Desai, the Prime Minister of India since 1977. For India, it was perhaps the last opportunity to take a direction other than that of Nehru-Gandhi. The "derailment" of this government was to bring about general elections and Indira Gandhis return to power in January, 1980. She would take a disastrous path (probably influenced by her crook of a guru): propagation of an immense corruption, violence, mounting terrorism in Punjab (at first fed by Indira, for political ends) .. In June, 1980, her favourite son, Sanjay, who had become her right-hand man, dies in a plane accident. In November, 1984, Indira is assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards (more than 2,000 Sikhs are slaughtered in India in the following days); her elder son, Rajiv, who succeeds her, is in turn assassinated in May, 1991....
24 A "tale" (literally "The Stranger"). The successive tales of an outlaw in various climates and through various centuries until he reaches the Law and the "Country of everywhere."
25 A so-called "reincarnation" of Mother.
26 See Notebooks of an Apocalypse, vol.1, February 16, 1974. This Turban (Auropress) was then publishing a rag called The Near Future.
27 Fifteen years later, in 1999, we would reach the sixth billion
28 In fact, for years the knell has always been tolling for me and I have spent my time snatching Life from this Death. And it was always "urgent."(!)
29 Indira Gandhi, at the head of the Congress party, had just won the national elections with spectacular success.
30 Edward M. Kennedy (John F. Kennedy's younger brother).
31 Frιdιric de Towarnicki; it became Sept Jours en Inde avec Satprem fin English, My Burning Heart).
32 I did not know at the time that Navajata contemplated being not only the ruler of India, but of the world: it was revealed a little later that he had shown to a few close relations his great plan of a "World Government," of which he would have been the leader, of course, in the name of Sri Aurobindo.
33 The death of her son Sanjay a month earlier: the plane he was piloting crashed in Delhi.
34 See Notebooks of an Apocalypse, Vol. 1, January 6, 1978
35 Exactly like the mountain below the window of my room. It was flattened on its own like modelling clay under the pressure of an invisible Hand. It took me a long time to understand the full meaning of this decisive vision which shows the way or announces the terrestrial journey of the last twenty years of the millennium. It is the New Power, supramental, which is silently, implacably crushing all the old terrestrial human System, and perhaps even its geology, to make way for the new Being and the new species the era of Mother and Sri Aurobindo.
36 Extract from the leaflet: "Experience has shown that excessive sedation is not always necessary to cure the symptoms of psychopathies such as agitation, illusions and mythomania, hallucinations or delirium. Siquil facilitates enormously the home treatment of emotionally perturbed patients who otherwise should be hospitalised. The patient adopts a more realistic comportment, is easier for the family to handle and is more tractable when one wants to discipline or re-educate them. Siquil is particularly appropriate in the treatment of serious, chronic or acute mental disorders such as schizophrenia, madness, depression, senile psychosis and psychosis due to organic cerebral illness."
37 The first place that resurfaced in my memory(!). Probably in remembrance of Gauguin, who died there miserably, while the bishop of the place was lighting an auto-da-fe with the twenty nude pictures that he found "shameless." Derisively, my brother Franηois used to call me "the little Gauguin".... Finally I burnt all my paintings one day in Pondicherry, including my landscapes of Almora and the Nanda-Devi, and a portrait of my Mother (which I regret).
38 In 1975, Indira had proclaimed the "state of emergency" in India, then in 1977 she called for fresh elections, which she lost.
39 Note that Kissinger, Nixon's advisor nine years before, in 1971, had not only been the architect of the rapprochement with China, but had also convinced Nixon to support Pakistan against India (during the Bangladesh war) and even to send American warships to threaten India. Kissinger had then encouraged China to attack India (which China did not do), while the latter was fighting Pakistan.
40 As a matter of fact, since Nixon and Kissinger, the American press is virulently hostile to India.
41 An American disciple who had lived in the Ashram for a long time. She accepted to join the translation team but shortly after, faced with a virulent attack from the Ashram officials, she gave up. She was to leave her body a few years later.
42 The place of the great battle in the Mahabharata epic, which brought into conflict the Kauravas and the Pandavas, the five brothers supported by Krishna.
43 Sujata's sister, who lives in the Ashram.
44 One year later, on February 21, 1982, Nolini, the oldest disciple and Secretary of the Ashram after Mother's departure, would officially declare to the Governor of Pondicherry: "The Agenda presents no real aspect of the Mother. It gives only some distorted and scattered and out of focus snaps of her most external life".
45 The trust that would be officially created one month later for the distribution of the Agenda in India.
46 Later, I would understand that it was the beginning of this "supramental descent."
47 It was the beginning of this work in the body, or at least I was beginning to realize that "it" was working. In fact, since 1973, "it" had not stopped working, without my being exactly or physically aware of it, until the difficulties became too acute.
48 It was typically the passage of the supramental Power through the "big meridians." I would see things clearly little by little. But what is described here is exactly the schema of what was to continue, intensifying and becoming more precise, for ... X years.
49 It is the exact picture of the work in matter. You don't know how to cross, but you cross all the same (!).
50 A tantric attack.
51 One of the many articles that the Ashram published at the time in the Indian press to slander Satprem
52 It is exactly the "breathing" route of the Supramental Power through the "meridians" which would last for years and years It takes time to understand....
53 In Sanskrit: time is going by (or time is short).
54 Periwinkle shell. I had suddenly visualized a real-life tale, which would be written ... sixteen years later (!), in 1997.
55 Note written on the back cover of the second volume of the English Agenda, which had just been printed in the United States.
56 The unreadable Swiss translator of The Life Divine.
57 Date of the creation of the French Institut de Recherches Evolutives.
58 Our age of darkness and falsehood, at the end of a cycle that sees the truth increasingly diminishing before the advent of a new age of truth.
59 See Notebooks of an Apocalypse, volume I, August 30, 1977.
60 Seeing the increasing "human" onslaught on Land's End, cruelly targeted by Tantric forces, surrounded by the active hostility of the Pondicherry "disciples," under the threat of a court case and blacklisted by all the Indian printers, distributors and booksellers, and eventually disgusted by the reigning lethargy of India, I had nothing else to do than to disappear from the scene and I made a "plan" to isolate myself from all those bad wills on a Pacific island, as deserted as possible (with a nice litde sailing boat).... But it was exactly what those monstrous Forces wanted. Mother had another "Plan."
61 Kalki, the last Avatar (for us, Sri Aurobindo), mounted on a formidable white horse.
62 The distributor of my books published by Laffont.
63 See Mother's Agenda XI, March 25, 1970
64 Sujata spent her nights near my bed, lying on the carpet.
65 An Indian doctor who had studied in England. He was one of those who tended Sri Aurobindo when he had that "accident" to his leg before the Hitlerian invasion, and until the end of his life. He wrote several books on Sri Aurobindo. I don't really know why he attacked me, except that he was with the Ashram managers. It is true that, in the Agenda, Mother spoke of the "treatment" prescribed by the doctors who "tortured" Sri Aurobindo. In fact, the only one who resisted the grip of the Ashram was Champaklal; he was also the only one Sri Aurobindo embraced when he said his farewells.
66 Shiva with a blue throat, for having swallowed the poison of the world.
67 When Vivekananda went to Cape Comorin to meditate, he heard a divine voice which said to him: "Go West." As I was there with my can of beer, I received another message... from policemen: "Don't stay there.,." Methods change, depending on which century you live in.
68 Unfortunately, almost all my letters to Carmen have disappeared.
69 A residence that C.P.N. Singh offered to me.
70 Once, Sujata, as a good Indian, asked one of the islanders: "But who are your gods?" Horrified, the woman answered: "Oh, they are devils."
71 Βrati: ceremonial rites to the divinity, with lamps. Thβli: a metal tray where one puts the ingredients (flowers, incense, coloured powders, etc...) necessary for the ceremonial rites.
72 The Pandavas were the five brothers who fought by Krishna's side during the Great War of the Mahabharata.
73 Narad is a demi-god who often comes on earth to deliver the messages of heaven or reveal the decrees of Fate.
74 A Bengali philosopher turned to Sri Aurobindo.
75 Obviously, Indira is dragged along toward something that is very unlucky, if not tragic. She left the golden thread of Mother's Mantra for this black cable. Everyone chooses. She was to be assassinated in October, 1984.