Chapter 7June 28, 1967

It comes perhaps a hundred times a day, but it doesn't stay.

Regarding an Italian disciple who has just come:

...Her family wanted to baptize her child and they were beginning to quarrel (because I said, "We do not want baptism"), so they wrote to me in despair, saying, "We don't know what we should do, because the whole family is against us and they're constantly picking a quarrel with us." So I wrote: "If they really want freedom, let them come and give birth to the child in Auroville!..." Oh, they were enthusiastic, she left right away!

Here, see the register! (Mother laughingly shows the notebook in which she noted a few days ago the first birth in Auroville.)

(About an Indian disciple from South Africa who has been jailed for a few months in Syria under the

pretext that his banknotes were counterfeit.)

...They have no government to protect them. Before India's independence they had a British passport, but now the government of South Africa doesn't recognize them, the government of India doesn't look after them, so they're like that, neither fish nor fowl, and with no one to protect them. It's rather peculiar.

There are a few here [in the Ashram] who still have a British passport, and they don't know what to do. They're neither this nor that, they're nothing I

To those who are nice I say, "Never mind, you will become Aurovilians." That saves everything. Because the principle has been recognized by UNESCO, they've recognized the idea: everyone becomes Aurovilian, no more separate nationality. So it's very good.