Chapter 5November 27, 1963

And that submissiveness, you know, that acceptance of the worst, with the idea that it comes from the Lord! Not only that, but almost imagining the worst as a trial, as a test to find out if you're really surrendered – that's another stupidity! If you need to imagine such things in order to find out if you really haven't revolted, it means there is still somewhere the germ or residue of revolt.

And the fear of being selfish, the fear of being rebellious – it means it's still there, otherwise you wouldn't have that fear.

(silence)

We are so small, so small. The smaller we are, the more we revolt. We want to break everything because we are so small – when you are vast, you don't need to break anything. You only have to be.

AWAKE AND WILL I spent the whole night with Sri Aurobindo, all night long, it was really very interesting.... But I don't remember now.

It stays, but not as a mental memory, not at all: as the feeling of an atmosphere – very interesting. There was something about China, something about America, something about... all the time, everywhere, everywhere. As though he had realized a certain thing through my experience on earth; and there is an action which he does accordingly, and then the result everywhere.

A mass of things – very interesting.

(silence)

People want me to talk about Kennedy's death – I refused.

There was a poor Negro here, very nice, who did all his studies in America, and who used to send me letters, sometimes as many as two a day. His country has just been liberated, it's one of those countries... Nigeria, I think, and his ambition is to work so that his country will be one of the first ready for the transformation – a great ambition. And I received a cable from him the day Kennedy was shot, praying for my help. It's very touching.

But it has triggered all kinds of things – in fact, that's in part why I had that long presence of Sri Aurobindo and that long work. As though it had served to trigger one of the movements of transformation of the earth.

There are landmarks of that kind.... I had told you, you remember, how that great Asura (who in milestone, opening up the road. Well, Kennedy's assassination is one of those signs, one of the landmarks – I've been told this.

(silence)

I remember having asked, "But the earth, the human earth, is it really still so tamasic that it needs tragic events of the sort to awaken its consciousness?..." And I was answered, "Still far more tamasic than you think."

The intelligences that have emerged into a higher light are like stars scattered over a perfectly dark sky – perfectly dark.

But this "trigger" you mention, Kennedy's death, will it precipitate things in the sense of a "shake-up"?

Yes. Its effect is like an electrical discharge that shakes up the tamas, shakes up inertia.

It's like in Savitri, when he speaks of the "consciousness that fell asleep in the dust"... the divine Consciousness that fell asleep in the dust of its creation (I am embroidering). The divine Consciousness, the eternal Mother, that is, fell asleep in the dust of her creation; somebody wakes her up, and She realizes (this isn't from Sri Aurobindo!), She realizes (laughing) that it's the supreme Lord who shook her! So She does everything, all sorts of extraordinary things, anything to stop Him from

She reposes motionless in its dust of sleep.

(II.VI.180)

Then:

For

him

she

leaped

forth

from

the

unseen

Vasts

To move here in a stark unconscious world.

And then:

In

beauty

she

treasures

the

sunlight

of

his

smile.

Ashamed of her rich cosmic poverty....

Splendid!

And

woos

his

large-eyed

wandering

thoughts

to

dwell

In

figures

of

her

million-impulsed

Force.

Only

to

attract

her

veiled

companion

And

keep

him

close

to

her

breast

in

her

world-cloak

(II.VI.131)

(silence)

You know, that Russian woman who went up into the stratosphere136 (she went around the earth several times, I don't know how many), anyway she came on a visit to India and gave a lecture somewhere about her journey. And she said (in a very lovely way, it seems, I don't know her exact words) that she saw the earth from up there and that it was so beautiful, so magnificent! And she made this reflection: "From up there, there are no demarcations between countries, it makes so harmonious a unity that it seems unthinkable men should fight among themselves." That's lovely....

Of course, as soon as you go high enough, there's a unity, a whole, which is so beautiful and without divisions – "Why do men fight?"

It struck people very much.

(silence)

People still need death, drama, illness – it's a shame.

* * * A little later:

For some time, I had been encountering in N. a sort of resistance to the Action. Whenever he entered the atmosphere (Mother makes the gesture of banging against a wall), it resisted terribly. And I didn't have any intention other than to make it give way, in other words, I confined myself to the inner action (gesture indicating the Force at work). Then, as it happened, he fell ill. Yesterday, he came as every day, but he wasn't well. So I told him, "Listen, go downstairs, shut yourself up in your room, enter Sachchidananda and don't move from it." (He is quite capable of doing it.) In the evening, the doctor came and told me that N. had a very high fever: He is restless. The fever was too high. I thought, "The resistance is even stronger than I thought." At night, when I went to bed, I began to concentrate on him to see, and I saw him surrounded by a kind of black crust, which obviously comes from the fact that he isn't used to purifying himself as things come onto him from outside (me too, for example, I would be surrounded by a black cuirass, absolutely coal black, if I didn't do my work of purification all the time, all the time, all the time). So I saw this, and did what was needed. And this morning, the fever had dropped. But the interesting thing is that when he came this morning, he told me this: "Last night I had a vision: I suddenly found myself entirely surrounded by coal, a thick crust of coal, and I wanted to get rid of it and get out of it. I looked at my hands, I had nothing in them, so I thought, 'How can I do it? I have nothing to do it with.' And instantly, I saw the crust begin to crumble and crumble and crumble into dust and... gone! And this morning, I feel weak and tired, but it's over."

It's a minimum of distortion.

From time to time, I have examples like that, where the experience corresponds almost exactly. I