Chapter 7January 25, 1964

please (you must pretend to obey, that's all). And if you're denied a convenience, you start grumbling – Yoga is simply out of the picture! It's a hundred thousand miles away from their consciousness (their mouths are full of words, but it's only lip service). Sometimes you have a little scruple in order to appear to be doing some work. And some have grown very old or come here because they have become unfit for life outside... so we can't send them away! (It was wrong to accept them – I must say I have little to do with that acceptance: I'll say no, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they'll pretend they heard yes, but anyway... that's life.) So I can't send them away. But I am going to make life ascetic for them: one won't be here to be comfortable anymore – then for what?

Well, we'll see. We have started restrictions – oh, they're not very serious, but anyway...

In the Illustrated Weekly they have published photographs of the Pope's visit to Palestine, and there is one in which he is prostrating himself: he is kissing the ground on the Mount of Olives, where Christ, as the story goes, was informed that he would be crucified.

It put me again in contact with that man.

And his intention is clear: to make religion quite real, in the sense that it isn't a myth, it isn't a legend – it's truly God who came, and so on. So, to him, this is "human greatness" prostrating itself before the "divine sacrifice."

There is another photograph in which he is embracing the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church – heretics formerly, now they embrace each other.

And all the people around him (they are well-dressed, you know, with modern suits) look like puppets, mon petit! Oh, it's awful!... Awful. He at least has a force – or a will, at any rate. And he has a plan, he knows what he wants.

(silence)

He is also the first Pope to travel by plane, so they took his photograph in the plane – he gives a "broad smile," he looks very happy.

(long silence)

In sum, it is the glorification of physical suffering as a means of salvation.

I must say I kind the whole story repugnant – that crucifixion being flaunted everywhere. There's nothing so clever about Christ! There are millions others who died without making such a fuss!

Yes, it certainly did bring something. But they just remain there.

Ah, the Falsehood is to remain stuck there, yes.

* * * A little later:

We'll have to revise some of these aphorisms [by Sri Aurobindo] little by little. Do we still have quite a few ready?

Not many. But at the rate we're commenting on them, we still have at least a year to go!...

(Mother laughs)

I haven't yet had the time to prepare the "Bulletin": I'm catching up with my work.

It doesn't matter. Besides... people are arriving by the hundred. Next month is going to be a bit difficult... although I'll see as few people as possible. But still...

See (Mother takes out an appointment pad), all these are people announcing their coming and asking for appointments – just look! (an endless list)

I could speed things up and prepare the "Bulletin" earlier?

No. I'll be better also (Mother still has her cold), it will give me some time to get better.... Not that the ideas aren't clear (!), on the contrary... there's a sort of very precise and sharp vision of things, but speaking is difficult.

But what I say is hard for people to understand, I find.... I gave that text from the Agenda to A. – he didn't say anything. Which shows that he didn't understand anything. As for Pavitra, he clearly didn't understand anything.

To them it's platitudes, mon petit! They take it just on the surface.

But when Sujata reads it, she understands! Yet she didn't listen to you.

But mon petit, Sujata is trained, she has typed it all, she has gone through it all.

Anyway, I don't care.

Personally, I'm very reluctant to touch up what you say under the pretext of making it more "readable."

Oh, no! It would become absolutely useless.

I'm reluctant to do that – and I don't do it. I could easily make it more "literary."