Chapter 75Meeting the Mother · Making Pranam at a Distance

struggle of the day we could turn a little more inward and have her soothing touch.

The difficulty is that apart from the slight incident to the eye that has happened, Mother badly needs a rest from the storm she has undergone physically so long and I don’t think it would be wise to disregard the need any longer — for the storm has been there a long time. I hope that after a period of rest, things can be renewed but at present meditation is the only way, for there is no strain on her.

3 February 1937

* In regard to the proposed change which would vary Pranam with Meditation — not stop pranam altogether. It had nothing to do with the temporary rest taken by the Mother — that was absolutely indispensable. I had often asked her to take some rest before but she had refused because it might disturb the sadhaks too much — what happened made the break physically indispensable. The sadhaks ought to concede that much to her after she has laboured night and day for so many years without giving herself any real rest even at night. You yourself wrote asking her to take the rest she needed. Even so she did not fail to begin going down morning and evening and renewing interviews as soon as it was physically possible.

10 February 1937

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X feels the stopping of pranam so profoundly that he is depressed. But to make one’s sadhana or life depend on the Mother’s touch is to have a vital sadhana and a vital life, transient and superficial.

It is only if one can feel the inward touch of the Mother without the necessity of the physical contact that the true value of the latter can be really active. Otherwise there is a danger of its becoming like a mere artificial stimulant or a pulling of vital

2 March 1937

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