Chapter 4July 17, 1971

Day before yesterday I was almost cured, I thought it was over, but then yesterday there was an avalanche of things... oh, bad will, quarrels and... it was so dreadful that the cold started up again. That’s why it won’t go away. I see that when things quiet down here and I can get back into my normal atmosphere, it’s as if everything vanished – I don’t have a cold anymore, I am not in pain anymore. But back it comes from outside like a ferocious attack: people quarreling, squabbling, circumstances going awry, everything. And all that is thrown on me, so....

So it started up again last evening. It was over, you know: my nose and throat were clear, it was all gone. It really isn’t me, it comes from outside. It’s relentless. And naturally they all hold me responsible! I tell them one thing, they do another; I write them one thing, they twist it and make it into something else, and then afterwards, they say it’s my fault. That’s how it is. (Mother starts to cough)

Thoroughly charming. In a way, it was like a demonstration – like a stage play, you know, showing how people behave with the Divine. It was really comical!

You may get angry and say, “How shameful!” – but it was comical. It was laughable: everything is the Divine’s fault! That’s how people are commonly: it’s the Divine who ill-uses them, the Divine who does not spare them, the Divine who arranges circumstances wrongly.... That’s how it is. They’re all like that.

And it’s a kind of half-conscious malice: you do this, they just do that (slight twist), they twist it a little, and everything becomes distorted; you say one thing, they add a word or take one out and it’s all distorted. Even what is written they read in their own way. It’s stunning.

And it’s on a large scale, you see, almost a world scale, at least a national one, in this country, but... it has repercussions in China, Russia, Europe, America. They’ve made... such a mess, you know, with this whole [Bangladesh] affair, it’s dreadful – dreadful. Now, they’ve found a solution: the Americans are trying to come to an agreement with the Chinese – that’s the last straw! – to help Pakistan massacre people.

Yes, one has the impression that America is doing the politics of the adverse forces. You’d say

they’re working for the adverse forces....

(silence)

Do you know that the President of the United States [Nixon] is going to China?

Yes, can you beat that!

And they’re not trying to make a rapprochement with the Russians, far from it.

Yes.

(silence,

then Mother raises her arms

in a gesture of helplessness)

Did you bring something?

Yes, there’s your April message, which has to be translated into French for the Bulletin:

We are at one of these “Hours of God,” when the old bases get shaken...

That’s exactly it.

...and there is a great confusion; but it is a wonderful opportunity for those who want to leap forward, the possibility of progress is exceptional.

Will you not be of those who take advantage of it?

* * * Z wants to bring her children back here.73

Yes, she told me you had told her to stay.

Oh!... No, that’s just appalling!... She said to me, “Could my children come back here?” That’s typically her. (And there’s also something she is not saying.) And so naturally at once I told her yes. I said, “If you like, you can stay.” She said, “Oh, I really would like to stay.”

It’s like this (gesture of twisting), everyone is that way.

Yes, everything is twisted.

(then the conversation moves on

to the disciple in the Vatican)

Z says that P.L. did not behave well at all, that he is caught up in a world of money, power,

women and... I don’t know what – that he is completely under Monsignor R.’s thumb, you know, the one who is handling millions.

Yes, he was supposed to come here.

I must tell you that occultly I had seen that a lot of money could come here through P.L. So naturally I increased his rapport [with the Force]. And normally it should come.

Deep down his attitude has remained what it was.

Yes, Mother, that I’m sure of! Even if appearances are at present like that, I’m convinced that in

fact he is doing your work, or he’s going to do it, or the ground is being prepared.

Yes, that’s it. Exactly. I feel he can do an enormous work.

I feel that too.

Only not openly.

(silence)

There’s an onslaught of Falsehood. And you feel that only what is really true has the power to resist – a bit above the mind.

But that [Z’s words] gives you an example of how things are – it’s really a sort of derailment. Did she really say, “Mother asked me”?

Yes: “Mother told me to stay.”

She said “told” or....

She said, “Mother told me.” Well, anyway the way it is said means... “Yes, Mother told me to

stay,” as if it were an order or advice that you gave her.

Yes... that’s it.

(silence)

Oh, if you knew the experiences.... Just this kind of things [Z’s words], everywhere, everywhere, all the time, from everyone-everything, everything is like this (gesture of twisting) oh!... And so my body, the body, said, “But I am like that too!” It saw its.... Oh, my God... (Mother clasps her hands together) I understood that if for a single minute the Supreme Consciousness had the kind of consciousness men have, the world would be dissolved. Quite spontaneously, our reaction, our spontaneous reaction to conflicts, to what seems bad to us, is: let’s dissolve the Falsehood. It’s a spontaneous reaction. Not transform – dissolve. You see, there’s a gulf between the two.

Yes.

And it’s spontaneous, it’s the idea of doing away – doing away with the Falsehood. But if for a single second the Supreme Lord had that movement, there would be no more world!... And so I think the body has understood that. I think it understood, it was extraordinary.... What are we anyway! What are men! They think they’re, my God (Mother makes a gesture of puffing herself up), they think they’re... oh!...

Somewhere Sri Aurobindo wrote that when you touched the Divine Consciousness, it suddenly gave you the sense of... how laughable the world is in its self-conceit – men’s self-conceit. But even (I’ve had contact with animals), even in animals it begins. Vanity, vanity, vanity, vanity....

Indeed, there’s really nothing to brag about.

Oh, no!

That’s for sure.

Oh, no! – no, it’s not so much that they brag, but they are SELF-CONCEITED.

(silence)

You know, almost everywhere deception and attempts at deception are taken for goodwill. As for those who don’t seek to deceive anybody but only deceive themselves, they are already exceptional beings.

These aren’t discoveries, they are things I used to see; but you see them only occasionally, by way of exception, in one instance or another, whereas there I had the vision of the whole world, of the entire earth, of all human effort, of all peoples, all... we live in a deception. It’s frightful!

And what’s more, we deceive ourselves more than we try to deceive others.

(silence)

In short, we see NOTHING as it is.

Yes, yes.... Yes.

(silence)

At night I go walking on dirt roads which collapse.

Oh!

Yes, total collapse.

The old conceptions.

(long silence)

There’s only one salvation: to cling to the Divine like this (gesture with two fists).

Not clinging to what one thinks of the Divine, not even to what one feels of the Divine... to an aspiration... an aspiration as sincere as possible. And cling to that.

(silence)