Chapter 9January 29, 1964

(B.) I am going to Calcutta. There they will ask me one question regarding the present situation – communal riots.18 What is the solution?

The solution is, of course, the change of consciousness. I know those other people [in Pakistan] behaved badly, like animals – even animals are better than human beings – but if people here also do the same, they would be playing in the hands of the forces that make people do evil and would only strengthen the hold of these forces. Retaliation like this is no remedy.

(B.) People there feel frustrated, they see no remedy, do not know which way to go, whom to look up to. They are going the wrong way, following the wrong lead. Isn't the division of the country responsible for much of these troubles?

Yes, division of religion, of country, of interest! If people felt like brothers – not brothers who quarrel but brothers conscious of their common origin...

(B.) When are you coming?

Don't be under the illusion that I am not there. I am there, the force, the consciousness are there, but there is no receptivity. During the Chinese trouble, I was in those places in the front, concretely, but I am sorry to say that the only people who were receptive were the Chinese. The impulsion to come forward disappeared. That is receptivity. No one knew why they withdrew! On the Indian side a few were touched and they told me of terrible conditions.

Since World War II, I have been keeping Kali19 quiet, but she is restless! Times are critical, anything may happen. If people will only give up their ego!

(B.) I shall suggest a simpler way – to turn to you.

Perhaps the time has come to tell what I have told you. You may talk if an occasion arises. Keep your faith and go like a warrior.

18It may be recalled that at the time a continuous flood of Hindu refugees from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) was pouring into Bengal, sparking off numerous reprisals against the Muslim communities there.

I have here three quotations on difficulties.... They apply so marvelously now! Sri Aurobindo wrote them in... 1946, '47, '48 – the dark hours. And things are repeating themselves now:

"The

Mother's

victory

is

essentially

a

victory

of

each

sadhak over himself. It can only be then that any external form of work can come to a harmonious perfection."

Then this one, which is very interesting:

"I know that this is a time of trouble for you and everybody. It is so for the whole world. Confusion, trouble, disorder and upset everywhere is the general state of things. The better things that are to come are preparing or growing under a veil and the worse are prominent everywhere. The one thing is to hold on and hold out till the hour of light has come."

(XXVI. 168, June 2, 1946)

This we could repeat to people endlessly, but it is extraordinarily true just now!

To hold on and hold out.

Till the hour of light has come.

So be it!

(Laughing) Things have never been so bad! And strangely – strangely enough – there is behind all that a kind of SOLIDITY that has never been there before. I have noticed this since yesterday. Outwardly, things have never been so confused, so complicated, so unpleasant, so difficult, yet there is somewhere (as if underneath or within, I don't know how to explain) a solidity, something that has a solid evenness... like a base that NOTHING can shake. This I have never felt previously. I have felt it for the last two days.

As though something were established that is UNSHAKABLE. And outwardly, things have never been so catastrophic. I find this interesting.

And then, even from the point of view of light, there was (till the last few days) a sort of bright light of a more or less childlike trust and a more or less childlike hope (especially among the people here), which... (it's rather comical to say) suddenly went out when the food supplies were cut at the dining room!

(Satprem, in disbelief:) No!

I assure you, it sounds like a joke, but it's true! The supplies were cut – more as a demonstration than as a necessity, that is to say, it didn't save much money: it made a lot of noise, a big hoo-ha, a lot of changes, but it didn't save in proportion; but D. felt that the demonstration was necessary – very well. But what an effect it had!... That sort of childlike trust, like a light of childlike unconcern which was stability... as I had never seen before, as if it were decided (Mother brings her hands down in a sovereign gesture), "This is now established."

And it's connected to February 29. For a long time people have been like bubbling champagne, you know, always wanting to know, "What's going to happen? What can we expect?" A big to-do. I answered, "I don't know." I don't know – I am not trying to know, I am not looking at it, I am not concerned with it: when it comes, it will come. Then, several times (while I was writing birthday cards or letters), several times, it was as if clearly dictated to me, "Prepare yourself for the Truth-Light that is descending." And it's clearly this: the Truth-Light that is going to manifest... the Truth-Light that is descending... the Truth-Light that is preparing its manifestation – all sorts of sentences kept coming to me like that, but always "the Truth- Light." Then I understood that this was what was going to happen.

And now... it's something as solid as cement (which means it's material) and ab-so-lute-ly EVEN, you know, even, not one ripple of form, absolutely flat as a slab of marble, and without beginning or end – limitless, you can't see its end: it's everywhere. Everywhere, and everywhere the same. Everywhere the same. A color... like a sort of gray (a gray, the gray of Matter) that would contain a golden light, yet doesn't shine: it doesn't shine, it doesn't have a luminosity of its own, but it contains light. It doesn't radiate, it isn't luminous, yet it's a gray with a golden light in it – the gray of the most material Matter, of stone; gray, you know. But it contains that light: it's not inert, not insensitive, not unconscious, yet it is MATTER.

I have never seen that before.

It has been there for two days. What is it going to be? What is it going to bring about?... I don't know.

Listen, Sujata had a dream that's exactly what you've just described.

Oh, but she's wonderful, your Sujata!

She was looking at the sky, then she started seeing stars falling down everywhere, like a rain of stars over the earth. And then the ground had turned into an even mass of ice, like at the poles: it wasn't bright, but it was like ice everywhere on the ground. And a sort of ship rose on it, with a slightly gray color, with passengers, whose color was also... not bright, but slightly gray, slightly blue, as though they had escaped from old things – as though they had escaped from some catastrophe or were coming out of some catastrophe....20 Really!

And everywhere, like at the poles, there was that ice.

That's it. Well, it's odd. And the rain of stars... Oh, it's interesting.

(silence)

20Sujata added: "The stars started falling into the sea, but there wasn't any more water! It was a solid surface, it was ice, a sea of ice like at the poles. And that ice was not dazzling white, but rather gray-white, somewhat like frosted glass, not As if... Inertia transformed into its conscious principle of immortal stability.

It is evidently a change in Inertia itself.

* * * Then Mother reads another letter by Sri Aurobindo:

"The extreme acuteness of your difficulties is due to the yoga having come down against the bed-rock of Inconscience which is the fundamental basis of all resistance in the individual and in the world to the victory of the Spirit and the Divine Work that is leading toward that victory. The difficulties themselves are general in the Ashram as well as in the outside world....

The description follows. You would think it was happening now:

"Doubt, discouragement, diminution or loss of faith, waning of the vital enthusiasm for the ideal, perplexity and a baffling of the hope for the future are the common features of the difficulty. In the world outside there are much worse symptoms such as the general increase of cynicism, a refusal to believe in anything at all, a decrease of honesty, an immense corruption, a preoccupation with food, money, comfort, pleasure, to the exclusion of higher things, and a general expectation of worse and worse things awaiting the world. All that, however acute, is a temporary phenomenon for which those who know anything about the workings of the world-energy and the workings of the Spirit were prepared. I myself foresaw that this worst would come, the darkness of night before the dawn; therefore I am not discouraged. I know what is preparing behind the darkness and can see and feel the first signs of its coming. Those who seek for the Divine have to stand firm and persist in their seeking; after a time, the darkness will fade and begin to disappear and the Light will come."

(XXVI.169-170, April 9, 1947)

Very appropriate.

Very well, we have to stand firm. Oh, it doesn't even make a slight dent! All those things are exactly like... watching a spectacle.

(silence)

It has become absolutely concrete, you know, as concrete as can be.

And yet, difficulties pour in from everywhere, not only with regard to health (which is still linked to moral things: the mood, the state of consciousness, the thoughts and mental formations, etc.), but to money, the "paper money" which refuses to come! And in this connection, lately I have seen in a fairly interesting way the difference in the material mental atmosphere: there was a sort of certainty that all