Chapter 34July 12, 1960

(Letter to Mother from Satprem)

Pondicherry, June 1960 Sweet Mother,

This is to tell you that the proofs of L’Orpailleur are being sent off this morning at 11 o’clock ...

planned?

Your child,

Signed: Satprem P.S. Please protect ‘my’ Orpailleur!

(Mother’s reply)

6.17.60

My dear little one, Don’t worry, all will go well. In a confident peace and joy.

Signed: Mother Last night something happened to me that I found quite amusing. I was awakened by a Voice, or rather it roused me from one trance to put me into another. It happened at about 11 o’clock. Not a human Voice. I don’t exactly recall its words any longer, but it had to do with the Ashram – its protection, its success, its power. And what was interesting was that when I woke up, I was in a concentrated here which sets everything in motion (as always, it is always the same, a Power in motion). It was a dazzling white light. But then, what I found funny was that there I was, quite in my natural state, and this, the Ashram, was a tiny, tiny part of myself. And throughout the whole experience, it remained like that – a very tiny part of myself. Everything else was ... I can’t say deconcentrated, but an entirely general, overall activity, as it normally is every night. And I saw the Ashram quite clearly – it was something special, made for special reasons, but whereas I seemed to have an immense body, that was very small, very small. It went on for an hour. That’s what I found amusing; the other things just happen, and they may be interesting, but this was so spontaneous; I was watching it (I don’t know where my head was), I was looking down from above ... so tiny, so tiny.

What was me was up above, and the Ashram was ... It began just here (the navel) and went that way (downwards), and it was encircled, to show that it was a special formation – encircled in the inconscience of the terrestrial creation. And I was everything else, with the usual vibrations of power and light. And then one current and another current and another were passing into it, into this formation, and they kept going in and in and in, accumulating. They kept going in, and yet they did not come out, they did not leave. It was not an undulatory movement, but rather a pulsating movement – it had no beginning, it didn’t go out, and yet it kept moving. It’s very difficult to describe.

The formation represented by the Ashram was located approximately here, at the height of the navel in relation to what I was – but although the body was not delimited, it had certain attributes or undefined forms, each one of which was situated in relation to the other as though each represented one part of the body; each was symbolic of either an activity or a part of the world or a mode of manifestation. So the formation started from about here, near the navel, and went down towards the appendix ... Here, I’ll draw you a sketch:

It’s form was elongated, slanting downwards (it always has this form). At the top it looked like a head, then the lines disappeared down below. It had no openings. And then, it was surrounded by various dark sheaths, a very dark purple which is the color of protection. A sparkling light was cascading stream whose waters neither flow on nor disappear, but accumulate: an accumulation of energies, a condensation. And they accumulate without taking up any more space through a kind of compression. And inside, it’s moving, vibrating, vibrating, vibrating, it keeps coming and coming – you don’t know where it comes from, but it keeps coming and accumulating.

It was a force with a sparkling white light at its center, the light which is the force of the Divine Mother, and as soon as it was well packed and concentrated inside, or condensed, it took on all the colors – vibrations of every color ... Like a materialization – these colors were like a materialization of the Divine Force when it enters matter. (Just as matter is a condensation of energy, well, this seemed to be a condensation of Divine Force. That’s really the impression it gave.)

It reminded me of tantric things. I have seen tantric formations and how forces are systematically separated by them – each vibration, each color. It’s very interesting. They are all one, and yet each is distinct. That is, they are separated in order to be distinguished and for each one to be used individually. Each one represents a particular action for obtaining something in particular. This is the special knowledge the tantrics have, I believe. Or it’s the reflection of their knowledge. And my impression is that when they do their pujas or say their mantras, what they are trying to do is recombine all that into the white light. I’m not sure. I know they use each one separately for a separate purpose, but when they speak of their puja ‘succeeding,’ it may mean that they have been able to recombine the light. But I say this very guardedly. For I would have to see X do his puja one day to really know – from afar I’m not so sure. It’s merely an impression.

This is what I am constantly seeing now, but along with this Divine Force or this Divine Consciousness that Sri Aurobindo speaks of when he says, ‘Mother’s Force is with you.’ When it comes, it is sparkling white, perfectly white and perfectly luminous. And as it accumulates inside, it makes living vibrations of every color. And it goes on and on and on. Sometimes it lasts half an hour, three-quarters of an hour, an hour – nothing goes out. And it keeps constantly entering. And it piles up. It’s as if it is all being accumulated or compressed together.

So, the observing mind, the intelligence that watches, looked at all this – ‘Ah, that’s what it’s like’ (an intelligence that watches without interfering in the least). It’s like a spectator talking to himself.

So in my vision, my body was as big as the universe, and that (the Ashram) was so tiny, so tiny.

* * *

(Soon afterwards, regarding an old ‘Question and Answer’)

Heaven and hell are at once true and false. They exist and don’t exist. I’ve seen various people go to heavens or hells after their death, and it’s very difficult to make them understand that it is not real. Once it took me more than a year to convince someone that his so-called hell was not hell, and to get him out of it.

But there is something else – the psychological condition that you yourself create, the asuric hell you live in when you cultivate an asuric nature within you.

* * *

If no vibrations ever disappear, then what happens with all these horrible things coming from every corner of the world? Don’t they pile up? Don’t the bad vibrations take on a more and more enormous volume in the end?