Chapter 8March 30, 1963

I am inundated by a horde of mental questions... flat, superficial – everybody asks me questions in order to publish my answers! So I refuse. K.G. sent me five or six questions for his journal, each one more stupidly mental than the other, in connection with the supermind. I am asked to say whether it's "this way" or whether it's "that way" – the kind of questions you ask a good pupil to see if he has learned his lesson well!

It turns out that he had already sent me his questions, at the same time last year, and that I had already sent them back. But they put it all down to my so-called illness, so he sends the same questions again, now that I am "in a fit state to answer"! So again I return them with the same answer: not possible. We were joking the other day: Nolini was reading me the questions, and to every question I answered (tone of a pupil at fault), "Don't know, don't know...!"

(Mother laughs)

Last time, you said, "As that Security was taking root more and more, more and more firmly, and was spreading..." Do you mean that Sri Aurobindo's very presence...

Yes. Yes.

Yet, the world was in quite a turmoil?

That's just what I mean: the world wasn't ready, and there was... (what shall I say?) the paradox of a center of Security in total contradiction with the general world condition.

He himself said it: "The world is not ready." So... That's what I meant, his physical presence was the sign of Security taking root, but the world wasn't ready. So, as the effect of his presence kept increasing, it brought about an increasing contradiction – an increasing OPPOSITION.

* * * Soon afterwards:

We're really going through such a dull period! Dull, dull.

(silence)

me all the points in the body's cells that were contrary to or unprepared for the reception of the divine Forces. All that comes up in the form of lived memories – things I had more than forgotten (I could have sworn they no longer existed), but which come back. Un-be-liev-able. And it's not an ego's or a person's memory, but the memory of a force in motion in the general vibrations. So I see... fantastic things!

But it's erased immediately; as soon as I wake up, my first movement (gesture of offering) is to present it all to the Lord: the cause, the effect, the image, the sensation – everything. When it's all seen, I tell Him, "Now it's Yours." And then I forget – fortunately, thank God!

It goes on every night. It takes the form of all sorts of scenes, of symbols, of memories, from words to images. It comes in groups and categories of tendencies, it represents the various human tendencies in detail – it's infinitesimal. It's only because they are multiplied millions of times that they can have some importance – but they're nothing! Mere nothings. Yet that's just what blocks the way.

It really isn't of interest.

(silence)

After YEARS of it, there may be a tangible result, who knows?... Even then, I am not sure it won't be limited. If it were a terrestrial result, it would be worthwhile, but it may also be very limited.

It gives me the impression of a miniature painting done with a magnifying glass and tiny dots – miniatures are painted with a very fine brush, very pointed, and you make tiny dots with a big magnifying glass. It gives me the impression of that work. And it takes many, many, many tiny dots to paint just a bit of cheek.

(silence)

Tiny dots, tiny dots.

But it's so dull! So dull, so lackluster, so unchanging, so – uninteresting, really dull – that the slightest light shines like a bright star! The smallest, slightest, tiniest progress seems like an extraordinary thing. Like, for example, the attitude in certain cells towards a physical disorder which, naturally, like all physical disorders, tends to recur. The attitude in the cells changes – not the disorder (!), the disorder changes only because of the cells' reaction, that's what makes it change; but it recurs with clockwork regularity – that's its job. It is the way it's received by the cells, their reaction to it, that brings about the change. And there is now a difference in the cells' reaction. The result of my observation (an impersonal, general observation) is that there are two types of change (I can't call it "progress"), two types of change in the reaction: a change that goes on improving, in the sense that the reaction grows less sharp, the cells are less affected and become not only more conscious but more IN COMMAND of the reaction (something people are not generally conscious of, but which is what brings about the cure). And, on the other hand, deterioration: under the unrelenting attack, the cells panic, become more and more affected and afraid, and it eventually results in a terrible mess and a catastrophe. Well, the whole thing is observed, studied, experienced; but... (laughing) in ordinary medicine it's explained away in two words! You see, what I see now is the process – they don't know the process, only the result. And, well, I notice that as the consciousness grows, the cells panic less and less and a sort of mastery develops. Of course, it's a pleasing observation, if I may say so, but it doesn't even make me happy! It seems rather obvious.... Also the proportion is such that to get a really telling result, it would take years and years and years! Oh, how many years! How slow things are....