Chapter 2November 9, 1966

launching the battle: he had an inner call to a Power, so there was an identification [with Mother’s power], and that’s what I remembered and what came back. If I said (as the Theosophists tell you), "I was Murat," it would be stupid. But it was a consciousness coming back. It was so strong! The impression lasted long enough, with the sense of the battle but above all the sense of that POWER making you invincible. It was interesting, because at the time (it was just in the beginning, I was beginning to take interest in these things and I had just come across the "Cosmic" teaching), I was convinced that a woman’s psychic being was always reincarnated in a woman and a man’s psychic being was always reincarnated in a man (many schools teach that; Théon too believed so, he insisted on it). So it came as a surprise, because it wasn’t in conformity with what I thought (!). Afterwards (long afterwards), I realized that naturally all those dogmas were nonsense, but...

It fits with what I told you last time: the STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS are what reincarnate, evolving, developing, growing more perfect. That’s rather how it was, that’s how that memory came. It’s like that with many memories. And I know that to say "states of consciousness are what reincarnate," to adopt that as the "sole" explanation would be incorrect – it’s absolutely incorrect – but it’s one way of looking at the question beyond the sense of the little personality. It broadens the consciousness: one has in oneself things far more universal and far less limited than personal experiences. Just as in life some people have an exceptional life, in the same way they also have exceptional moments in their life, when they no longer are one single little person: they are a force in action. That’s how it is.

Ultimately, this question (I read the question, it has been published somewhere and it was read to me) is a question asked by ignorant people. They ask you something, but they are ignorant. They should begin by studying the subject in the first place and learn something about it, then they would be able to understand the proof we can give them. Otherwise they won’t understand it.

I was asked the question (by someone who sent me the article in the hope I would answer), I said, "No! They aren’t ready for the answer; let them do their homework first, then we’ll answer them."

They are ignorant people who want to be taught things – the ready-cooked dinner! (Laughing) That won’t do.

(Satprem reads Mother a few excerpts from "The Sannyasin," in particular the scene in which the Sannyasin is standing with his back to the temple door, having lost both his "spiritual heaven" and the

earth in the form of the one he loved.)

This image [of the Sannyasin with his back to the bronze door] was so strong, you know!... Every time narrow path between the temple and the precipice, and a roaring crowd surging up, coming up the path, and then...

And I always, always see the same thing. It MUST have existed, because it has the intensity of something that was physical.

In fact, in my first idea of the book, it was this child who was to die, and that’s precisely what caused the people to riot and pursue this Sannyasin. Then I tried to present things without her dying.

Yes, that’s better. It’s better without the mob’s pursuit, otherwise it may suggest that fear is what drives him to the wall, and then it doesn’t have the same force anymore.

The vision was a memory, that is, something which exists in the "earth memory." But that’s no reason to make a story out of it. It’s better for your book to have a deeper basis.

So then, is that when he has the reaction against asceticism?

Yes, because he has lost her. Not physically, but he loses her since she refuses. She says, "But now you are a Sannyasin, so it’s over." He has fallen from his heaven to go to the other extreme and lead an ordinary life with her. And she says no. She says, "That’s not what a new life is."

But won’t it look like hankering after sexual enjoyment? Because that would bring the whole thing down to a very low level. Ill-disposed people would say, "Ah, of course, sexual desire is stronger than spiritual life."

It depends on the way it’s put. This woman... she isn’t a woman, she is almost a girl. There has never been a love relationship between them; she is a twelve- to thirteen-year-old child and there is an ancient relationship. Even the word "love" hasn’t been uttered between them. There is only a need to be together, a need for union. She feels a oneness between this Sannyasin and her, it’s a being together, and she feels that being together doesn’t mean to "marry." But she feels the union, the oneness with him.

Ah, it would be such a good thing from the general point of view if people could be made to understand that true love has nothing to do with sexual relationship, with vital attraction, even with sentimental relationships, that none of this has anything to do with true love.73 But people don’t understand. Even when they use the word "love," they immediately think of sexual union, and that’s disastrous, it completely warps the idea.

I don’t know, I haven’t read Pavitra’s book On Love. Have you? Is the point clear in his book?

(Satprem makes a face)

It’s not clear?

72See Agenda I, November 20 and 22, 1958.

73Satprem found the following note among Mother’s papers: "When people speak of sexual desire, instead of giving it the False?

According to him, there are two paths: the "outward path" and the "return path." The outward path is people going away from the Lord, living the life of the world, being husband, wife, etc. Then the return path is the "true path," the path of the return to the Lord, in which all those things are a hindrance.... So, to me, that’s a falsehood.

Naturally!

Because what’s this "outward path" going far away from the Lord and this "return path" in which human relationships are merely a hindrance?... The return is, on the contrary, when one has gone all the way up...

Yes, and one brings the Divine back down.

Exactly.

Yes, that’s the return.

But for him the return is climbing back to the Lord – and then?...

Then it’s the end of life!

I was very shocked when I read it. I felt like telling him, then I kept silent... [Mother approves]. As for me, I had always seen the return as the descending path.

It’s the Lord coming down.

It’s the Truth coming down. The return isn’t climbing up, it’s not that; that’s the outward path, on the contrary.

But of course, that’s the outward path. It began with the stone – the stone – and one sees very clearly the difference between the stone and plants, plants and animals, animals and men. One sees quite clearly all Matter striving and striving and striving towards the Lord – that’s the outward journey. It has been like that since the beginning. It climbs up with all its errors, all its confusion, all its falsehoods, all its distortions – but it’s EVERYTHING that climbs up. And the return is what is described in the "message" I am going to give on 4.5.67 [May 4, 1967]: "the prison changed into a divine mansion."74

As a matter of fact, in the book I am writing I show that when one has touched that Light, it’s the turning point before coming back down; that the truth isn’t the end up above – up above, it’s one half.

Yes, (laughing) it’s the beginning of the end!

74"Earth-life is the self-chosen habitation of a great Divinity and his aeonic will is to change it from a blind prison into his That’s very important. Because all those who begin by being disgusted with life, their first movement is to get away – all of them. I receive truckloads of letters: as soon as they are disgusted with life, as soon as it stops being something marvelous, "Oh, enough! I want to get away, I want to get away." That’s indeed the first movement: you climb up above, but it will be to come back down and change things HERE – it’s not to abolish them, but to change them.

Buddha represented the height of abolition. He led to abolition and represented the height of abolition. Very well, but... That’s when the summit was reached, when the summit was seen. But we must come back down.

They don’t understand, they are still up above, all of them.

Yes, that’s what I am saying. His entire book is like that: the outward path leads away from the Lord, and on the return path, you climb back to the Lord. [Turning to Sujata:] It’s put like that in his book, isn’t it?

(Sujata:) That book... I don’t know, I found it a little odd.

Going back to the Divine, yes, that’s Nirvana.

Only, as soon as you are there and in contact with the Divine, he tells you, "Go down! Don’t stay here, it’s not your place!"

But, you know, I am desperately struggling against all those who conceive of spiritual life as... brrt! you go off. That’s just the beginning. As for me, I always answer with the story of Buddha: as he was about to enter Nirvana, he suddenly realized that the earth had to be changed... and stayed on.

I remember, once, it was with Madame David-Neel. It’s very interesting. She came to give a lecture (I wasn’t acquainted with her, that’s where I met her for the first time), I think it was at the Theosophical Society (I forget). I went to the lecture, and while she was speaking, I saw Buddha – I saw him clearly: not above her head, a little to the side. He was present. So after the lecture, I was introduced to her (I didn’t know the kind of woman she was!), and I said to her, "Oh, Madam, during your speech I saw Buddha present." She answered me (in a furious tone), "Impossible! Buddha is in Nirvana!" (Mother laughs) Oho!... "Better keep quiet!" I thought.

But he really was there, whatever she thought!

That’s what it is: going away.

I didn’t understand why Pavitra, who is here, wrote like that.

No, I understand his thought quite well: he see things too closely, mon petit! He sees that all the effort of the earth must be towards the Divine, towards union with the Divine; he sees... (how should I put it?) what precedes, and sees it too closely, not from a sufficient distance. So then, for him, the return is the return towards the Divine.

But if he were told, "Abolition, Nirvana," he would say, "No, no! not at all." Only, he doesn’t see that.

In reality, it’s a threefold movement: the creation, which was the "flight from the Divine" (according, of course, to the ordinary conception which says that the creation "fell," it "wandered away" from the Divine and men "wandered away" from the Divine); that was the first movement. But