Chapter 3April 13, 1966

be seen but the force of the vibrations coming up like a storm: he had his back to the wall, there was a sort of gale, and a chasm in front.

And that vision of mine struck such a deep chord that every time I hear "Sannyasin," I see it. It’s strange.... With his back to a wall: here, the sky; here, a chasm; and here, the clamor and the wind and the storm – like whirlwinds gathered over the earth by a storm. That and the wind blowing the robe and... he throws himself into the void.

His back to the wall, on top of a hill. Not a high mountain: a hill. On top of a hill: I can see the ground rising in a slope like that, and the wall of the monastery.

This vision is still living and clear, clear.... I could almost make an illustration for the cover of your book!

It’s quite symbolic, besides: the storm of revolt, of course, the revolt OF THE EARTH against the principle of the Sannyasin. Quite symbolic. And it’s a magnificent image in the sense that there is great majesty in the appearance.

(About Satprem’s new book, "The Sannyasin.")

This morning again I got up more than half an hour late because of you!

Why is it so difficult?

(Laughing) That’s what I don’t understand! It shouldn’t be. Don’t you have an "idea" that it’s going to be difficult? Didn’t you start with the idea it was going to be difficult?

Yes.

There you are, then.

And also I have great difficulty getting rid of the old form.

Yes, yes.

It hampers me a lot.

Yes, all the old habits.

And also the old way of working, that’s the difficulty.

I realize it immediately, because right away I feel it’s "literature."

Yes, that’s right.

But for this book, we meet in quite a new place, mon petit, quite new, and then so wonderful! It’s a wonderful place that has nothing of the necessities and compulsions of this earth here. It is so luminous, so new, and so precise at the same time, so exact. Last night, it was in shades from a certain silver blue to pearl gray, and it had such precise forms, but at the same time with nothing of the hardness and commonplace quality of earthly things. And we were working so simply, effortlessly.... I get up every day at the same time, half past four; well, for the second time (I told you the other day), instead of half past four it was ten to five. And I came from exactly the same place. And since that is the time when you are sleeping, it seems to me it must necessarily be getting in, no? When one is awake, it may not touch, but here... And then, there is a thoroughly conscious part of you there. So what prevents you from being influenced by that must be a whole layer of old things.

Yes, the whole old form of the book is there.

That’s it.

It will get in – "get in," it has to get in since you are there, in that world, and when you wake up that part enters you; only, the ordinary activity prevents its influence from being felt. But it’s slowly taking place; the difference is that instead of your having a revelation, it takes place slowly like a progressive influence.

It will act.

There is another thing, it’s that in the transition between the two consciousnesses, there is a moment when you feel you are quite stupid – you feel you can’t think anymore, you can’t do anything anymore, you have become useless, you have no contact with things. There is always a difficult transition then. Even now for the body, each part, when it changes (what I used to call the "change of master"), there is a transition when it becomes absolutely useless, you feel it’s finished. The first few times, you are worried; afterwards, you become used to it and keep still; then the light suddenly shines.

* * *

(Sujata gives Mother a recently named flower: "Material power of healing."33 )

I would like that to be permanently established. When someone tells me, "I have a pain here," I pass my hand like that and it’s over.

The hands feel, they feel it’s possible. They are so conscious of the Vibration – they feel that 32This book should normally have been written four or five years earlier, and at the time Satprem saw it in the form of a Greek tragedy.