Chapter 9March 26, 1955

(Letter to Mother from Satprem)

Pondicherry, March 26, 1955 Mother, once more I come to ask you for Mahakali’s14 intervention. After a period when everything seemed much better, I again awake to impossible mornings when I live badly, very badly, far from you, incapable of calling you and, what’s more, of feeling your Presence or your help.

dissociate myself from these vital waves.

Mother, without Mahakali’s grace, I shall never be able to get out of this mechanical round, to shatter these old formations, ever the same, which keep coming back. Mother, I beg of you, help. me to BREAK this shell in which I am suffocating. Deliver me from myself, deliver me in spite of myself. Alone, I am helpless; sometimes I cannot even call you! May your force come and burn all my impurities, shatter my resistances.

Signed: Bernard15

(Letter to Mother from Satprem)

Pondicherry, April 4, 1955 Mother, for more than a year now I have been near you and nothing, no really significant inner experience, no sign has come that allows me to feel I have progressed or merely to show me that I am on the right path. I cannot even say I am happy.

convinced that all this is my own fault. Undoubtedly I have not known how to surrender totally in some part of myself, or I do not aspire enough or know how to ‘open’ myself as needed. Also, I should rely entirely upon the divine to take care of my progress and not be concerned about the absence of experiences. I have therefore asked myself why I am so far away from the true attitude, the genuine opening, and I see two main reasons: on the one hand, the difficulties inherent in my 14Mahakali: the eternal Mother in her warrior aspect, She who severs the heads of the demons.

15Such was our old, meaningless name (except for its Germanic root: ‘hard bear’) until a certain March 3, 1957, when