Chapter 4June 20, 1961

There have been times when I did things for people and they sensed exactly what I had done. It has happened. It is rather rare, but still it has happened.

But I see more and more that the realm where my experience is situated is.... Well, it only worked with Sri Aurobindo!

* * *

(At the end of the conversation, Satprem complains to Mother of the tiresome task of eating, and asks

her if he couldn’t cut it down drastically.)

The time has not yet come when we can stop eating. Never in my life has food interested me; there have been long periods when I ate almost nothing. One day I said to myself, ‘Why lose so much time eating?’ And the reply was, ‘Don’t stop yet, wait; that’s not your look-out.’

After that I decided I would encourage everyone to eat!

(Following a meditation with X.)

We’ve been having these meditations for four days now and this is the fourth day of total silence – motionless, soundless (I don’t know if there is sound outside or not; I don’t know anything). A complete immobility right to the end.

When all is immobile like that and nothing seems to happen, is something happening?

Something happening? I don’t know. But that state IN ITSELF is something. When the body is conscious of that it means precisely that it has come out of its narrowness – it is the same Infinite as the one you get when out of the body.

What I do now when X comes is take it all (gesture from below to above) and do like this (gesture of offering up), in an aspiration – and then I let it go. Then all the Immobility, the Silence, the Light, the Peace comes down from above into everything and doesn’t move. But that in itself is... very difficult for the body to have, very difficult: something is always vibrating and moving.

It’s as if it put everything back in order, but nothing is moved.

Yesterday, when I was in that immobility, suddenly I felt something obliging me to turn my head. I didn’t turn my head, but the consciousness turned (gesture to the left), and then I saw myself standing dazzling. My own clothing seemed to be made of golden-pink light. I was standing very straight and carrying this globe (gesture above the head). When I saw that I said to myself, ‘Now why on earth is he making me see this?’ And that was all. Nothing else happened except that. But near me there was a figure I didn’t know, and it reminded me of X’s great guru,165 whom I had already seen once. There he was by my side, a tall figure, and he seemed to be the one who had tugged at me to make me see that vision.

It was a large globe. Although no distinct rays could be seen, it appeared to be projecting innumerable rays like flashes of lightning. It was sparkling all over.

What does it mean?

Don’t know. I didn’t bother much about it. He certainly wanted to make me see it – but what is it? What does it mean? Don’t know.

It was the dress I wear when I go out. Why? It must have had a meaning, although I must say I didn’t exert myself to understand! I simply saw, smiled (it made me smile), and that was all. It was just before the meditation ended.

At any rate, it’s the fourth day of this same silence (Mother clenches her fists, as if to show a compact mass). Not only silence – immobility (same compact gesture), WITHOUT TENSION, without tension, effortless, without anything; like a kind of eternity – in the body.

I have no trouble getting out of it – I don’t get ‘out’ of it, to tell the truth; it’s not like a trance you have to pull out of, it’s not that. This state seems quite natural to me: I hear the clock chime.

* * *

(Satprem remarks on the gap between the inner realization of certain yogis like X and their outer

behavior, which doesn’t always seem up to the mark.)

I truly have the impression of a kind of abyss between the X I can sense, who attracts me, and the outer man.

I don’t know the outer X, I have been very careful not to enter into contact with him! But from the first day I sensed a gap.

It’s odd!

No, it’s the old tradition – you step back from Nature and Nature does whatever she wants. It doesn’t concern you, you have no responsibility, ‘you are not that.’ It’s the old idea.

Sri Aurobindo was completely against it. Somewhere he makes fun of a man who said he was the Supreme and that whatever he did, it wasn’t he himself doing it – and then he was angry when his meal was late! But of course it wasn’t him: the stomach-nature was angry!166

It’s one of the most ironic things Sri Aurobindo has written.