Chapter 21Undated 1956

have had the opportunity to live concretely, the hard way, many of the questions that others ask themselves. Thus all my past experiences appear to be a living demonstration of a teaching to which Sri Aurobindo is the key. What has already been said abstractly or philosophically, I can say in the form of a living and moving novel. I think that I feel in me the power to express these things.

Sweet Mother, perhaps I am deceiving myself, but I am writing you explicitly so that you may enlighten me. I am not telling you all these things for you to approve of my need to write, but for you to tell me what is your will. I do not want to be ‘a writer,’ but your child, your instrument. Only, there is something in me that has to be liquidated.

The problem poses itself practically, for I would need a rather long period of uninterrupted work to be rid of all this. Yet I have carried this book in me for so long that it is ready in every detail – I could finish it in six months. Here, I am too occupied with other things to finish it quickly. Furthermore, I feel the need to redefine my presence here from an outside perspective. I thought of going to Brewster’s lodge in the Himalayas. There, I could continue some of the work I have been doing with Pavitra. It seems to me that I would come back freed and refortified in my purpose for being here.

Sweet Mother, am I deluding myself? What is your will? It is your will that I want, not my desire, and I am sure you will give me the strength to follow your directives, whatever they be. Enlighten me.

Signed: Bernard P.S. Can this book serve You?

(Letter to Mother from Satprem)

Pondicherry Sweet Mother, here is what has been happening in me almost every evening: I am literally like a bundle of compressed force that somehow can neither explode nor settle down and dissolve. The heaviness in my chest is such that I breathe with difficulty, as though all the blood in my body were converging there, oppressing me. In my head, the pressure at times is so intense that I dare not even close my eyes or concentrate further, for I feel it could crack. My entire being is so tense and filled with force that it seems it could break physically.

Is this perhaps a dangerous state? Or else is it normal? I would like to know whether this feeling that it could physically crack is a good sign or a bad one. If it is a bad sign, what can be done?