Chapter 49April 22, 1957

(Letter to Mother from Satprem)

Pondicherry, April 22, 1957 Sweet Mother,

The book is finished.39 I would like to give it to you personally, if it would not disturb you, whenever you wish.

Your child,

Signed: Satprem

(Extract from the Wednesday class)

First, I could tell you that to do a collective yoga, there has to be a collectivity! ... And I could speak to you about the different conditions required to be a collectivity. But last night (smiling), I had a symbolic vision of our collectivity.

This vision took place early in the night and woke me up with a rather unpleasant feeling. Then I fell back to sleep and forgot about it; but a little while ago, when I was thinking of the question put to me, it returned. It returned with a great intensity and so imperatively that now, just as I wanted to tell you what kind of collectivity we wish to realize according to the ideal described by Sri Aurobindo in the last chapter of The Life Divine – a gnostic, supramental collectivity, the only kind that can do Sri Aurobindo’s integral yoga and be realized physically in a progressive collective body becoming more and more divine – the recollection of this vision became so imperative that I couldn’t speak.

Its symbolism was very clear, though of quite a familiar nature, as it were, and because of its very familiarity, unmistakable in its realism ... Were I to tell you all the details, you would probably not even be able to follow: it was rather intricate. It was a kind of (how can I express it?) – an immense hotel where all the terrestrial possibilities were lodged in different apartments. And it was all in a constant state of transformation: parts or entire wings of the building were suddenly torn down and rebuilt while people were still living in them, such that if you went off somewhere within the immense hotel itself, you ran the risk of no longer finding your room when you wanted to return to it, for it might have been torn down and was being rebuilt according to another plan! It was