Chapter 10April 4, 1955

(Letter to Mother from Satprem)

Pondicherry, March 26, 1955 Mother, once more I come to ask you for Mahakali’s14 intervention. After a period when everything seemed much better, I again awake to impossible mornings when I live badly, very badly, far from you, incapable of calling you and, what’s more, of feeling your Presence or your help.

dissociate myself from these vital waves.

Mother, without Mahakali’s grace, I shall never be able to get out of this mechanical round, to shatter these old formations, ever the same, which keep coming back. Mother, I beg of you, help. me to BREAK this shell in which I am suffocating. Deliver me from myself, deliver me in spite of myself. Alone, I am helpless; sometimes I cannot even call you! May your force come and burn all my impurities, shatter my resistances.

Signed: Bernard15

(Letter to Mother from Satprem)

Pondicherry, April 4, 1955 Mother, for more than a year now I have been near you and nothing, no really significant inner experience, no sign has come that allows me to feel I have progressed or merely to show me that I am on the right path. I cannot even say I am happy.

convinced that all this is my own fault. Undoubtedly I have not known how to surrender totally in some part of myself, or I do not aspire enough or know how to ‘open’ myself as needed. Also, I should rely entirely upon the divine to take care of my progress and not be concerned about the absence of experiences. I have therefore asked myself why I am so far away from the true attitude, the genuine opening, and I see two main reasons: on the one hand, the difficulties inherent in my 14Mahakali: the eternal Mother in her warrior aspect, She who severs the heads of the demons.

15Such was our old, meaningless name (except for its Germanic root: ‘hard bear’) until a certain March 3, 1957, when Furthermore, instead of helping me draw nearer to the divine consciousness, my work in the Ashram (the very fact of working – for to change work, even if I felt like it, would not change the overall situation), diverts me from this divine consciousness, or at least keeps me in a superficial consciousness from which I am unable to ‘unglue’ myself as long as I am busy writing letters, doing translations, corrections or classes.16 I know it’s my own fault, that I ‘should’ know how to be detached from my work and do it by relying upon a deeper consciousness, but what can be done? Unless I receive the grace, I cannot ‘remember’ the essential thing as long as the outer part of my being is active.

When I am not immediately engrossed in work, I have to confront a thousand little temptations and daily difficulties that come from my contact with other beings and a life that does indeed remain in life. Here, even more, there is the feeling of an impossible struggle, and all these ‘little’ difficulties seem to gnaw away at me; scarcely has one hole been filled when another opens up, or the same one reappears, and there is never any real victory – one has constantly to begin everything again. Finally, it seems to me that I really live only one hour a day, during the evening ‘distribution’ at the playground.17 It is scarcely a life and scarcely a sadhana!

Consequently, I understand much better now why in the traditional yogas one ‘settled’ all these difficulties once and for all by escaping from the world, without bothering to transform a life that seems so untransformable.

it, but I believe I should employ other means – which is why I am writing you this letter.

By continuing this daily little ant-like struggle and by having to confront the same desires, the same ‘distractions’ every day, it seems to me I am wasting my energy in vain. Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga, which is meant to include life, is so difficult that one should come to it only after having already established the solid base of a concrete divine realization. That is why I want to ask you if I should not ‘withdraw’ for a certain time, to Almora,18 for example, to Brewster’s place,19 to live in solitude, silence, meditation, far away from people, work and temptations, until a beginning of Light and Realization is concretized in me. Once this solid base is acquired, it would be easier for me to resume my work and the struggle here for the true transformation of the outer being. But to want to transform this outer being without having fully illumined the inner being seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse, or at least condemning myself to a pitiless and endless battle in which the best of my forces are fruitlessly consumed.

In all sincerity, I must say that when I was at Brewster’s place in Almora, I felt very near to that state in which the Light must surge forth. I quite understand the imperfection of this process, which involves fleeing from difficulties, but this would only be a stage, a strategic ‘retreat,’ as it were.

Mother, this is not a vital desire seeking to divert me from the sadhana, for my life has no other meaning than to seek the divine, but it seems to be the only solution that could bring about some 16For a long time, Satprem took care of the correspondence with the outside, along with Pavitra not to mention editing the Ashram Bulletin as well as Mother’s writings and talks translating Sri Aurobindo’s works Unto French, and conducting classes at the Ashram’s ‘International Centre of Education.’

17Every evening at the Playground, the disciples passed before Mother one by one to receive symbolically some food.

18In the Himalayas.