Chapter 5August 15, 1964

And it's done almost openly. For instance, they have millions and millions to spend, given them by the Americans – they've forbidden the Americans to give A SINGLE CENT without their permission! And they will give their permission only if they have complete control over the spending. Here, at the Ashram, the Americans have expressed several times not only a will, but a very great desire to give a large amount, several million rupees, for the work – opposition from the government. So we're trying to find a way, but they give answers of this kind: "So long as the Mother has absolute authority, we cannot allow you to receive money, because we cannot give advice to the Mother"! In an official letter, mon petit!... That's how it is, that's where we are – an official letter. It's unbelievable.

Anyway... it means the Moment is going to come, and then...

One thing is obvious, it's that if everything had gone very well, with good results, the need for a higher Help would never have occurred to them; they would have become puffed up with statistics and with satisfaction with their capacities.

(Message for Sri Aurobindo's birthday)

Avoid the imagination that the supramental life will be only a heightened satisfaction of the desires of the vital and the body; nothing can be a greater obstacle to the Truth in its descent than this hope of glorification of the animal in the human nature. Mind wants the supramental state to be a confirmation of its own cherished ideas and preconceptions; the vital wants it to be a glorification of its own desires; the physical wants it to be a rich prolongation of its own comforts and pleasures and habits. If it were to be that, it would be only an exaggerated and highly magnified consummation of the animal and the human nature, not a transition from the human into the Divine.

Sri Aurobindo