Chapter 27Undated May (?) 1960

(Letter to Mother from Satprem)

Pondicherry Mother, You sent me this flower, ‘Vital Collaboration.’ I am taking this opportunity to tell you something which has been weighing on my heart for years and which, naturally, comes back up whenever things go badly.

(the only things that have ever happened were in Ceylon or Rameswaram). I haven’t even managed to have a few slightly conscious nights.

Isn’t this reason enough to be discouraged? In any case, these questions are stirring in me – and the vital is not happy [nor the mental, nor the physical].

Excuse me if I speak too frankly.

Signed: Satprem

(Letter to Mother from Satprem)

Pondicherry, June 3, 1960 Sweet Mother, I’m a bit discouraged. Every night I slip into a black abyss from which I wake up in the morning drained. Not one second of conscious sleep. It takes me an hour to recuperate from my ‘sleep’. In fact, I am constantly ‘on edge’ and the least thing exhausts my body.

But that’s nothing. I would bear all the exhaustion quite willingly if there were at least a touch of something conscious. But nothing, as if I were as thick as a Paris concierge!

Mother, there is hardly an instant of my conscious life that I am not aspiring for ‘more consciousness’ – but there’s still this abyss I slip into at night, as if nothing existed!

Pardon my “rumblings. If only at least I knew what I could do to change all this.