Chapter 7March 25, 1961

What use is a bad mood?

I’m a little overloaded by... too many things.

Too much work. No, you shouldn’t have to do this work.114

Who can do it, then? There is no one here. That’s why I wish greater attention would be paid in publishing translations of Sri Aurobindo....

Yes, it’s a problem. That’s why I don’t categorically tell you not to do it, because after all, he shouldn’t be massacred!

Yes, I can’t do it superficially, you understand. I can’t, it’s impossible for me.

No, but.... Well, we will try.

You can’t imagine how difficult things are now! You have to hold on tight: everything is difficult, everything. It’s not an individual problem: everything is grating everywhere, as though there were sand in all the gears. And things are reaching a kind of climax now.

We simply have to hold on and endure – no movement. The remedy is the same as for an illness: no movement.115

It will pass. I’m putting everything I can into your food – except my cold!

(On the previous day, Satprem had written a letter to Mother complaining of never having any

concrete experiences.116 After a meditation together, this is what Mother replied.)

It’s not that you don’t have experiences! You even have access to regions where people very rarely go; you are capable of receiving light, intuitions, revelations – but this is probably so normal for you that 114Satprem was trying to patch up some French translations of Sri Aurobindo done by well-meaning but not very gifted disciples, who of course wanted ‘to publish’ at all costs.

115This ‘massive immobility’ Mother spoke of earlier.

inside a statue.

It seemed made of transparent alabaster – hard, harder than stone. It was the result of an individualization – that was my impression – an individualization that has become very... hardened. It has tried to become entirely transparent but has no tangible contact with things – things enter only through the higher regions, through intellectual perceptions (not intellectual, a sort of mental vision). And I began to bang on it!

It was mainly on your right side – I banged on it. But strangely enough, it didn’t break... it became supple, but then it lost its beauty. (It was so beautiful, as though sculptured!) I tried to pass through it, but to do so (this is what I found interesting), instead of passing through at this level (the chest), the psychic plane – the level of the soul’s vibration – I had to climb up above and then descend; and finally, without even realizing it, I found myself inside – I had entered through sheer force of concentration. There, at the vital level, the emotional vital (solar plexus), I put two flowers: one very large Endurance in the Most Material Vital [zinnia] and another flower like the one X just gave me [cosmos] but bigger and pure white (it concerns sexual movements, light in sexual movements). But curiously enough, I passed inside through a trance; I was quite busy trying to make it more fluid when all at once, poof! I found myself inside. But since I entered through a trance it became completely objective: no more thought, nothing. And I saw I had put these two flowers there (at the levels of the abdomen and chest), one more active, a very large, dark purple Endurance flower, and another much smaller, pure white, slightly lower down. While I was watching this I think the clock must have struck – something pulled me and it all faded away.

And I found it interesting that when I received your letter yesterday evening I concentrated for a moment, almost out of curiosity: ‘Why doesn’t he ever feel he has an experience? Why doesn’t he feel anything?’ I wanted to know precisely what type of experience would give you the feeling of having an experience!

If I could receive the Light: if I could SEE this Light; if I could see the vastness opening before my eyes....

Then it’s in the realm of visions, of conscious perception.

Yes, conscious perception, vision – otherwise, nothing ever happens!

I understand! But yesterday when I was concentrating, I seemed to be sitting right in front of you again; and in the same way, with my left side, I was banging, banging on that absolutely rigid thing on your right. I was astonished: ‘Why am I banging?’ (I had no intention of banging!) It was strange. The left side isn’t like that, it’s the right.

But now I have done some damage!

(silence)

Strangely enough, I’ve received the same complaint from S. He says, ‘I don’t have any experiences.’ ‘What kind of experience do you have?’ I asked. He replied, ‘I sit in meditation and what comes is peace, peace, peace... it’s always the same thing!’(Some people would be very happy with that, but him....) I asked him, ‘What experience do you want?’ ‘To be conscious,’ he told me, ‘to be conscious of the Divine, conscious of the divine Presence!’ And I always answer him, ‘It’s because your mind is