Chapter 5August 16, 1972

(Mother laughs) It means you are still quite young!

No, Mother!

Yes, you are.

For my elder brother too, you know, he lived far away, I didn’t see him, but now that he has passed away, I know I will never see him again in the same form, so I am sad, very sad, Mother. What can I do?

Well, that’s strange!

I don’t know, it’s like a pain in the heart, Mother. I can’t get rid of it, you see. I don’t know what to do.

You must go deeper. You feel sad because you are in a very superficial consciousness – you must go deeper, into a deeper consciousness.

You mean in the waking state? When I am awake like now?

Yes, oh yes! It’s when you are awake that you must try to reach your psychic consciousness.

When you are in contact with your psychic consciousness, there’s no more sadness.

(silence)

You’re still quite young really! (laughter) How old are you?

I am forty-six, Mother.

You have a twenty-five-year-old’s consciousness.

Ah!

(Satprem protests:) No, eighteen.

It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter....

This morning I am seeing two hundred people... two hundred!

How was it yesterday?

I’d rather not say anything because....

According to what I had heard before,102 according to that, it was a big victory. But nothing was visible. I didn’t say anything to anybody. Even so, several people felt it was the beginning of something.

It’s a long story.... Some adverse forces had banded together and decided that I was going to die yesterday. And it was true, it happened, there was an attack. In that sense a real victory took place at the balcony. But it was invisible.

Now if this... (what’s the word?) this “news” is true, if it continues to be true, I should last till... I’ll be this way (gesture in suspense or between two positions) till my centenary, that is, 1978, then (still assuming this voice is true), the supramental transformation of the body will begin.

Is it true? I have no idea. That’s what I was told. I have no idea.

I am like this (hands offered upward).

(silence)

Can my body follow? That’s the question.

My body is constantly like this (same gesture): what You will, Lord, what You will.... But it must nevertheless undergo a transformation.

And you, what did you feel yesterday?

I can’t really say, Mother. There was too much turmoil in the atmosphere.103 Oh, yes!

Difficult to say.... Sri Aurobindo’s Presence, of course.

Oh, yes! Ohh, very strongly....

(long silence)

I am like this (same gesture, hands open).

(Mother plunges in 102Conversation of August 2 (the two rival “formations”).

103Ten thousand people in a carnival atmosphere amidst incense sticks and stalls reminiscent of Lourdes. Not to mention the “embellishments” to the Samadhi, the “embellishments” to Sri Aurobindo’s room, whose floor – where he had walked