Chapter 1December 2, 1964

...Letters are piling up in fantastic numbers, and I haven't answered. People should learn to receive: I answer very forcefully, very clearly, even with words, a precise sentence. If they learned to receive mentally, it would be good. I always answer. And when it's something important and I have some peace, when I have no external action, I even repeat my answer by making a very precise mental formation – they should receive it.

(Mother picks up at random a letter from a Western disciple who asks to change her work or stop her

external work, because, she says, it doesn't correspond to her nature. She also complains about her relationship with others and their "hostility." She feels the need for a new way of being and acting.)

She is struggling much more with her old personality than with others. She had a certain kind of extremely personal and superficial relationship with others, and slowly, slowly she is emerging from it, but with the impression that it's others who are hostile to her, while she is truly trying to do her best.

It's a phase. But I have noticed, especially for those who have had a Western education, that they shouldn't change their external occupations abruptly. Most people tend to want to change their environment, to want to change their occupation, to want to change their surroundings, to want to change their habit, thinking that will help them to change inwardly – it's not true. You are much more vigilant and alert to resist the old movement, the old relationships, the vibrations you no longer want when you remain in a context that, in fact, is habitual enough to be automatic. You shouldn't be "interested" in a new external organization, because you always tend to enter it with your old way of being.

It's very interesting even, I made a very deep study of people who think that if they travel things are going to be different.... When you change your external surroundings, on the contrary, you always tend to keep your internal organization in order to keep your individuality; whereas if you are held by force in the same context, the same occupations, the same routine of life, then the ways of being you no longer want become more and more evident and you can fight them much more precisely.

Basically, in the being, it's the vital that has difficulty; it is the most impulsive part and has the greatest difficulty in changing its way of being. And it's always the vital that feels "free," encouraged and more alive during travels, because it has an opportunity to manifest freely in a new environment in which everything has to be learned: reactions, adaptations, etc. On the contrary, in the routine of a life that has nothing particularly exciting, it strongly feels (I mean, if it has goodwill and an aspiration for progress), it strongly feels its inadequacies and desires, its reactions, repulsions, attractions, etc. When one doesn't have that intense will to progress, it feels imprisoned, disgusted, crushed – the whole habitual refrain of revolt.

(silence)

When she came here, she was living exclusively in the vital – exclusively and violently. So there's a long way to go.

(sometimes "all at once," sometimes slowly), it feels that the impulse, the inspiration must come from within, that nothing must come from outside anymore and excite it. And then, if it has goodwill, it turns within and begins to ask for the Inspiration, the Command and the Direction; and after that, it can start doing work again.

For some people, it takes years; for others, it's done very quickly – it depends on the quality of the vital. If it's a refined vital, of a higher quality, it goes quickly; if it is something very brutish, which goes like a bulldog or a buffalo, it takes a little more time.

Anyhow, there's a long way to go for a vital that had the habit of governing everything and thought it was in possession of the truth – that what it felt was the truth, what it wanted was the truth and that truth had to dominate and govern others and life – well... when one was born with that illusion, it takes a long time. What saves is if the vital is somehow SEIZED inwardly, if it feels inwardly that there is something greater than it; then it goes much faster.

For those who run away from the necessary change, it may mean several more lives. Those who have learned to bear up (who generally have enough higher intelligence to govern), those who have endurance, who have learned to bear up and not to worry about the vital's lack of collaboration, for them, it can be done relatively quickly.

That's what generally takes the greatest time.

* * * A little later:

Have you seen the latest Illustrated Weekly? You know that the Pope is here, in Bombay, for the "Eucharistic Congress" – but what's the Eucharist, mon petit?

It's the Communion.

Ah, that's just what I thought!... There is in the Illustrated Weekly the history of those Eucharistic Congresses, and it seems a French lady was behind the origin of the first Congress (not so long ago, in the last century, I believe). And then (Mother smiles), there's a magnificent portrait of the Pope with a message he wrote specially for the Weekly's readers, in which he took great care not to use Christian words. He wishes them... I don't know what, and (it's written in English) a celestial grace. Then I saw (he tried to be as impersonal as possible), I saw that in spite of everything, the Christians' greatest difficulty is that their happiness and fulfillment are in heaven.

Instead of a celestial grace, they read to me, or I heard, a terrestrial grace! When I heard that, something in me started vibrating: "What! But this man has been converted!" Then I had it repeated and heard it wasn't that but really a celestial grace.

This is the whole point.

Exactly.

They believe in a divine realization, but the divine realization isn't terrestrial, it's somewhere else, in a celestial world, that is, immaterial. And that is their great obstacle.

supramental realization previously, that is, before historical times (because historical times are extremely limited, of course). Naturally, the question always corresponds to one of the things that are shown to me in moments of concentration. So I answered very spontaneously that there hadn't been a collective realization, but that there might have been one or several individual realizations, as examples of what would be and as a promise – a promise and examples: "This is what will be."

I've had some very precise memories – lived memories – of a human life on earth, quite primitive (I mean outside any mental civilization), a human life on earth that wasn't an evolutionary life, but the manifestation of beings from another world. I lived in that way for a time – a lived memory. I still see it, I still have the image of it in my memory. It had nothing to do with civilization and mental development: it was a blossoming of force, of beauty, in a NATURAL, spontaneous life, like animal life, but with a perfection of consciousness and power that far surpasses the one we have now; and indeed with a power over all surrounding Nature, animal nature and vegetable nature and mineral nature, a DIRECT handling of Matter, which men do not have – they need intermediaries, material instruments, whereas this was direct. And there were no thoughts or reasoning: it was spontaneous (gesture indicating the direct radiating action of will on Matter). I have the lived memory of this. It must have existed on earth because it wasn't premonitory: it wasn't a vision of the future, it was a past memory. So there must have been a moment... It was limited to two beings: I don't have the feeling there were many. And there was no childbirth or anything animal, absolutely not; it was a life, yes, a truly higher life in a natural setting, but with an extraordinary beauty and harmony! And I don't have the feeling it was (how can I explain?) something known; the relationships with vegetable life and animal life were spontaneous ones, absolutely harmonious, and with the sensation of an undisputed power (you didn't even feel it was possible for it not to be), undisputed, but without any idea that there were other beings on earth and that it was necessary to look after them or make a "demonstration" – nothing of the sort, absolutely nothing of mental life, nothing. A life just like that, like a beautiful plant or a beautiful animal, but with an inner knowledge of things, perfectly spontaneous and effortless – an effortless life, perfectly spontaneous. I don't even have the feeling that there was any question of food, not that I remember; but there was the joy of Life, the joy of Beauty: there were flowers, there was water, there were trees, there were animals, and all that was friendly, but spontaneously so. And there were no problems! No problems to be solved, nothing at all – one just lived!

An uncomplicated life, definitely.

But it's far, very far into the past. Because there wasn't at all the feeling of having grown up from below: it was like having landed there, just like that, for fun.

It must have been before the first man born of Nature – not after: before.

They were human forms, but I can't say I remember: if, for instance, I were asked whether they had nails on their fingers, that I wouldn't know! It was very supple and luminous. But anyway, they were like humans.

(silence)

The Pope announced he was going to publish a message for non-Christians; I have asked to see it. Because in my mental conversations with him, two things have remained very precise.... He has a sort of political attachment. He is a very political man, in the sense that he does things for a reason, with a precise goal calculated according to his own understanding so as to make him most effective towards that goal – a political man.