Chapter 6August 19, 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 How are you?

I should be the one asking you. I was told you haven't been well.

It's not that.

There is too much confusion and disorder.... Very busy nights – too busy. And too much confusion here.

Maybe it's fatigue. It's especially (for me, for my consciousness) an avalanche of confusion on me, and not enough time to... (how can I put it?) transform it all as it falls on me. So it's a little too much.

And then, all that one reads... I've heard some things written about me, I've heard the stories people have been telling in their "seminars"64 – there's enough to bury someone.

For sure! Their seminars are ridiculous, it's a tangle of paltriness – they're teaching people Sri Aurobindo!

That's right.

They use words without consciousness, without knowledge and without power, so it's just chatter, and unpleasant chatter.

Yes, that's right.

As Bharatidi puts it, they love the sound of their own voices.

But that's exactly the point, she is perfectly right.

I have myself never stopped telling them (you understand, I see the quality of the atmosphere [Mother fingers the air]), I told them that all those people who came worsened the stupidity of the atmosphere very seriously.

Then there are the others, that World-Union – as for them, from the first day (there were five members), from the first day, they have all been quarreling among themselves, they've never stopped quarreling! I told them it was a strange beginning for a "World-Union" – individually they all agreed with this, but they all went on quarreling! And it's still going on.

This time, they decided to name me president. I didn't ask them anything, naturally – they decided. And then, M. has withdrawn. She has written to me today to tell me, "I believe I cannot do anything more in World-Union." If you put the two things together, it's rather funny: the others write to ask me to be president, and M. withdraws – "I cannot work for World-Union anymore."

Anyway, it's a mishmash – you know, like mash for chickens.

But what makes it worse is that there were too many people, and too many people asking to see me – hundreds and hundreds of people who asked to see me. I said, "It's not possible, it's materially impossible." And a minuscule work consisting in signing and signing and giving "blessings".... So last night was difficult. This morning, it wasn't brilliant.