Chapter 51October 19, 1960

Of course, I don’t say, ‘All right, now let’s meditate! ...’ So on his birthday I’ll have to sit down and tell him, ‘Now we are going to meditate’ – that way he’ll feel sure. What childishness!

It’s so funny – the thing in itself doesn’t exist for people. What’s important to them is their attitude towards the thing, what they think of it. How odd!

Each thing carries within itself its own truth – its absolute truth, so luminous and so clear. And if you are in contact with THAT, then everything falls into place so wonderfully; but men are NOT in contact with that, they are always in contact through their thought: what they think of something, what they feel about something, the meaning they attach to it (or sometimes it’s worse) – but the highest they go is always the thought they have of it. That’s what creates all this mixture and all this disorder – things in themselves are very good, and then they get confused.

(The day before ‘Kali Puja,’ the ritual festival devoted each year in India to the goddess Kali, the

warrior aspect of the universal Mother)

She has already been here for two days and ... Oh, yesterday especially, she was so ... in such a mood! – like a warrior. I said to her, ‘But why not change them through ... through an excess of love?’

So then she answered (I remember how she put it), ‘First a good punch in the chest (she didn’t say ‘in the nose’!), a good punch in the chest, and then when they’re down, gasping for air, they’re ready.’

That’s one opinion!

* * *

(Concerning a tantric)

Those people deny the reality of all physical needs.

It’s quite all right when you’ve come TO THE END, when you have totally mastered the body by means of the spiritual consciousness. But until then, I don’t agree – I do not at all agree.

It’s the same as when X tells people, ‘I am feeding you, so eat!’ And he serves you ten times more than you can put in. If you tell him, ‘My stomach can’t digest it,’ he answers that this is nonsense: ‘Eat, and you will see!’ And in fact, up above – that is, once you’ve mastered it – it’s perfectly true. But we aren’t there yet, far from it! He himself is sick all the time.

Then he would answer,’ Everyone is sick.’ – But that’s no reason.

mustn’t boast. And to say, ‘Oh, it’s all the same to me,’ is a way of boasting. It SHOULD NOT be all the same to you. This body is not meant for us – it wasn’t for us that it was given, it’s for the Work, so consequently it must be in working order.

That’s what annoys me sometimes. Why not have this mastery? We SHOULD be masters of it. With consciousness, we should be able to be the masters of our bodies.

Yes, this was precisely the extraordinary thing Sri Aurobindo had. He made no effort ... But then he didn’t use it on himself!

But for humans, this is something UNTHINKABLE.

He wanted to go. You see, he had decided to go. But he didn’t want me to know that he was doing it deliberately; he knew that if for a single moment I knew he was doing it deliberately, I would have reacted with such a violence that he would not have been able to leave!

And he did this ... he bore it all as if it were some unconsciousness, an ordinary illness, simply to keep me from knowing – and he left at the very moment he had to leave. But ...

And I couldn’t even imagine he was gone once he had gone, just there, in front of me – it seemed so far away ... And then afterwards, when he came out of his body and entered into mine, I understood it all ... It’s fantastic.

Fantastic. It’s ... it’s absolutely superhuman. There’s not one human being capable of doing such a thing. And what ... what a mastery of his body – absolute, absolute!

And when it came to others ... he could remove an illness like that (gesture, as if Mother were calmly extracting an illness from the body with her fingertips). That happened to you once, didn’t it? You said that I had done this for you – but it wasn’t me; he was the one who did it ... He could give you peace in the mind in the same way (Mother brushes her hand across her forehead). You see, his actions were absolutely ... On others, it had all the characteristics of a total mastery ... Absolutely superhuman.

One day, he’ll tell you all this himself.224 Now I understand it. It’s tre-men-dous.

Ah! That can’t be told.

(long silence)

without leaving his body, that is – what he had to do, well ...

(silence)

We can put it this way: the world was not ready. But to tell you the truth, it was the totality of things around him that was not ready. So when he SAW this (I only understood this afterwards), he saw that it would go much faster if he were not there.