Chapter 157May 1959

work thirty years ago, it would have been premature. The consciousness of the others also had to develop – the two are linked, the individual progress and the collective progress, and one cannot advance if the other does not advance.

Aurobindo gave none; he said that one should be able to do all the work without having to resort to external means. Had he reached the point where we are now, he would have seen that the purely psychological method is inadequate and that a japa is necessary, because only japa has a direct action on the body. So I had to find the method all alone, to find my mantra by myself. But now that things are ready, I have done ten years of work in a few months. That is the difficulty, it requires time ...

And I repeat my mantra constantly – when I am awake and even when I sleep. I say it even when I am getting dressed, when I eat, when I work, when I speak with others; it is there, just behind in the background, all the time, all the time.

In fact, you can immediately see the difference between those who have a mantra and those who don’t. With those who have no mantra, even if they have a strong habit of meditation or concentration, something around them remains hazy and vague. Whereas the japa imparts to those who practice it a kind of precision, a kind of solidity: an armature. They become galvanized, as it were.

(Letter to Mother from Satprem)

Pondicherry, May 1959 Sweet Mother,

You have rid me of my headache in a spectacular way, not to mention the beginning of an infection in a wisdom tooth. So I am writing you.

... ... ... ... opportunity to tell him about the subtle ‘détente’ that has occurred. I told him that you had wondered whether he had not done something (I am putting all this very succinctly). He replied that as soon as he returned to Rameswaram, he made a special puja of gratitude to you for three days and prayed to his divinity to repay you a hundredfold (these are my words; I am translating freely 147In December 1958, when Mother stopped the Questions and Answers at the playground and thereafter left the