Chapter 13September 15, 1955

Pondicherry, September 3, 1955 Mother, it seems that for weeks I have been knocking against myself at every turn, as though I were in a prison, and I cannot get out of it. Mother, I need your Space, your Light, to get out of this walled-in night that is suffocating me.

No matter where I concentrate, in my heart, above my head, between my eyes, I bang everywhere into an unyielding wall; I no longer know which way to turn, what I must do, say, pray in order to be freed from all this at last. Mother, I know that I am not making all the effort I should, but help me to make this effort, I implore your grace. I need so much to find at last this solid rock upon which to lean, this space of light where finally I may seek refuge. Mother, open the psychic being in me, open me to your sole Light which I need so much. Without your grace, I can only turn in circles, hopelessly. O Mother, may I live in you.

Your child,

Signed: Bernard

(Letter to Mother from Satprem)

Pondicherry, September 15, 1955 Mother ... suddenly everything seems to have crystallized – all the little revolts, the little tensions, the ill will and petty vital demands – forming a single block of open, determined resistance. I have become conscious that from the beginning of my sadhana, the mind has led the game – with the psychic behind – and has ‘held me in leash,’ helped muzzle all contrary movements, but at no time, or only rarely, has the vital submitted or opened to the higher influence. The rare times when the vital participated, I felt a great progress. But now, I find myself in front of this solid mass that says ‘No’ and is not at all convinced of what the mind has been imposing upon it for almost two years now.

Mother, I am sufficiently awakened not to rebel against your Light and to understand that the vital is but one part of my being, but I have come to the conclusion that the only way of ‘convincing’ this vital is not to force or stifle it, but to let it go through its own experience so it may understand by itself that it cannot be satisfied in this way. I feel the need to leave the Ashram for a while to see how I can get along away from here – and to realize, no doubt, that one can really breathe only here.

perhaps less, however long it may take to confront this vital with its own freedom. I need a vital