Chapter 170July 9, 1959153

During my last existence, the monk succeeded in making me a sannyasi, and when my wife came to plead with me, I told her, ‘Too late, now I am a sannyasi.’ So she threw herself into the void, and horror-stricken by the sudden revelation of all these dramas and of my wife’s goodness (for it seems she was a great soul), I threw myself in turn into the void.

As for this last existence, you already know.

X told me, ‘Now it is your last birth. I have received ORDER to deliver you.’ So be it. ‘I shall give you a white cloth,’ he added, ‘with my own hand.’

X gave me a new mantra. My body is exhausted from too much nervous tension. I am living in a kind of cellar with four inches of filth on the floor and walls, and two openings, one onto the street of the bazaar the other onto a dilapidated courtyard with a well. On my right lives a madwoman who screams half the day. There is only my mantra which burns almost constantly in my heart, and who knows what hope that some day the future will be happy and reconciled. There is also Sujata and you.

Your child,

Signed: Satprem

7.9.59 Kalki 153This handwritten note bore only this word and the date. Kalki is the name of the last Avatar who comes on a white winged horse to destroy the ‘barbarians’ (yavan) at the end of the Iron Age or the Kali Yuga, which is the period we are