Chapter 2December 4, 1965

(Note from Mother to Satprem)

Satprem, The passage concerning sanctioned marriages must be cut, and so must the entire reference to the Ashram's composition. All that is too "private" to be published.

And along that line you may find here and there other sentences that are better omitted.

I would like us to go over that again carefully next Saturday.

Tenderness

Signed: Mother

(Mother was quite unwell the day before, and still looks very tired.)

Yesterday was a very difficult day. And I am not quite all right yet.

I can't hear, can't see, I am in an awful state.

(Satprem persuades Mother

not to work – long meditation)

I can remain like this indefinitely.

Once I am in it, it's fine, it's comfortable. But anyway, we can do our translation.... The difficulty is that I can't see and can't hear – I am not there!

Because as for me, I have no reason to get out of it [the meditation]. This way I feel the world is 109Mother is referring to the conversation of November 27 which Satprem wished to publish at least in part in the Ashram's

(Mother takes up her first

A savage din of labour and a tramp Of armoured life and the monotonous hum Of thoughts and acts that ever were the same

(X.IV.641)

There you are! That's it.

* * * Towards the end:

This is my great remedy. Yesterday I stayed like that [in meditation] for most of the day. Everybody thought I was asleep (!) and they took great care not to wake me up (so much the better, that was kind). This way, it's all right, everything is fine. And the body too is better, it's the only cure; for me, it's the only cure: bringing down that Peace, that Light – a vast, vast light, and calm, calm – then the cells get used to being a little more harmonious.

Otherwise, everything goes wrong. I don't believe in doctors. Try as I might, in spite of all my goodwill, I don't believe in treatments and I don't believe in doctors. When I am in that state the doctor gives me medicines – I observe the medicines: they cause as much disorder as they do good. They do good to one thing and harm to another. So afterwards that has to be set right. You never get out of it. And what's more, they do me the favor of giving me children's doses! If I were given adults' doses, I think... It's interesting, very interesting (!)

Basically, in order to feel at home in the world as it is today, one must belong to the category I spoke of the other day, of those who have established a harmony with all the human faculties, who are satisfied, and also who are egocentric enough not even to notice that things aren't that way for others. Then it's fine; otherwise... Sri Aurobindo very much belonged (in his outward being) to the category of those who want things to change, who push for progress, who want to move on, who want to reject the past... very much so. He had to make a great effort to be satisfied with things and people; it was his compassion that made him accept people around him as they were. Otherwise he used to suffer a lot.

And that's what wears out and tires and disorganizes.

I am made to learn that all the time.... You see, it's a long time since that blissful contentment stopped existing (I never had it much, if it did exist at a given time, it's a very long time since it stopped holding on), but I am taught to pass on to a higher stage in which one is sufficiently free from all external vibrations to be able to live in the true, harmonious Vibration. But for the body it's difficult, because every time you eat, you absorb disorder; every time you breathe, you absorb disorder – you live in disorder. So it's a work of clarification, organization, harmonization, and everything becomes very still, absolutely still: there (gesture to the forehead), absolute silence and light – the light of an unmoving light; and then, to make that come down here (the body). Very still... Yet the blood is