Chapter 4September 13, 1967

things.... Strange. Intelligent, responsible people, you understand, people who have worked for a long time – and... tomfoolery.

Oh, as soon as there comes a little power – the power of light, power of truth, power of love (the aspect of power in things) – as soon as that manifests (gesture of uprising), it causes a terrible confusion: everyone feels full of energy, and with that energy does stupid things!... Then, if you withdraw the Power... (gesture of flattening) flat out – no one does anything anymore!

Anyway...

(Still regarding Mrs. Z, the Catholic lady who hovers around the Ashram.)

I have a nasty little story to tell you.... The other day, I forget when, F. met Mrs. Z, who told her (she too was in a concentration camp), "I would like..." (word for word) "I would like Satprem to go back to the concentration camp to see if his reaction now would be different!" F. was so indignant that she couldn't help telling her, "But that is a monstrous desire to have!"

There's my story: "I'd like him to go back to the concentration camp to see!..."

But the marvel is that I feel I could be sent anywhere, anything could happen to me, even the worst

things, and... nothing would budge!

It wouldn't matter in the least, yes, that's right. And that's what upsets them! You understand, for them you can have that salvation only if you are Catholic.

Anyway, the matter is now closed.

But you know, it's not the end! I fought a battle with her.

Oh, did she write again?

A veritable battle.

When?

When I told her, "I can't do anything for you if you don't seek something else," she wrote me

another letter in which she said, "But I do seek something else," and so forth. I didn't want to reply. Then I did a little drawing, a sort of picture that came to me: a big sun in the corner, mountain (Mother laughs) And then?

Then she came to see me. And there was a veritable battle; really, for an hour it was absolutely a

battle with her. Because she kept pushing me, she wanted to know: "Why do you turn me down? Why do you shut your door? Why do you turn me down?..." Then I was driven to tell her everything: how she is imprisoned, how her religion is like a structure in which she is shut, how one can't do the yoga until one breaks out of it and so on – it all came out. Because I was really driven to it. I felt I was fighting a veritable battle, and two or three times I was very conscious of a sort of little thing going like this [gesture like the tongue of a snake], just a malevolent little vibration two or three times: "Ah," I thought, "this is it. "And at the same time, a kind of quite sincere distress in her, when she said, "I have been wanting to come to India for twenty years now, I have been waiting for this moment for twenty years now, so why do you close your door on me?"

It's difficult to break free from that grip.

Very difficult.

And how did it end?

Well, it ended up in nothing. I told her, "I am not closing my door on you, but I am putting you

face to face with what it all means." I said, "The ABC of yoga is precisely to pull down all those constructions." But she told me, "Christ is the Supermind!" l said, "No, it's not like that!"

(Mother laughs)... It didn't leave any trace?

I was a little worried because it really was a battle, then afterwards I did some good praying, and

it passed off well.

It must be after that that she told F. she'd like to see you in a concentration camp – it was out of spite!

But I really spoke to her with the truth – not with violence, but with the truth that says, "Here is

how it is, I can't help it."

That's very good, it's the happiest thing that could happen to her. Sugaring the pill would have been of no help.

We'll see. If the call is sincere, then we'll see.

But I did feel a sincerity, Mother, because what responded was like a response to a sincere call in

her. But at the same time two or three times I felt that little vibration and said to myself, "Oh, this is nasty."

It's the fear of hell, mon petit! The amount of harm that conception has done in the world is frightening, frightening: the idea that if you commit a serious fault, it means hell for ALL ETERNITY, do you hear!

It's horrible.

expiate," that would do – it's not charitable, not generous, but anyway it's acceptable; but that idea of "all eternity" – an ETERNITY OF HELL – is something monstrous! It's a wholly diabolical idea.

And that's what frightens them. Even when consciously they don't accept it, it's there in the subconscient.

(silence)

It is said... (but I am not sure about this, because it was simply repeated to me), a Catholic panjandrum to whom I spoke my mind quite plainly, answered me, "In the College of Cardinals, they are taught the truth and told this is not true." I said, "God bless the cardinals, but their first duty should be to destroy this... monstrous formation."

The most terrible thing is that she believes she is free!

Of course!

She believes she is luminous, or enlightened. So I told her, "Of course, if you are inside a box and

there is light in the box, you have the fullness of light in a box!"

(Mother laughs) Oh, that's very good!

I told her everything, there came a lot of things like that. In the end she was frozen. It was a real

battle.

You did good work.

But you understand, the idea is, "Christ is the Supermind.... Christ is already risen from the dead,

he already has a glorified body, he is already transformed...."

(After a silence) No, he went back, he didn't stay. He doesn't have a glorified body, he went back. He went back to the higher regions, he doesn't have a glorified body.... He may be glorified up there, that's his business (laughing), but here... He went back. Of course, Sri Aurobindo himself said Christ was an Avatar. An avatar in the line of Krishna, the line that represented... yes, goodness, charity, love, harmony. He belongs to that line.

* * * Regarding humility:

It's very simple: when you say to people, "Be humble," they immediately think of "being humble towards others," and that humility is bad. True humility is humility towards the Divine, that is, the precise, exact, LIVING sense that you are nothing, can do nothing, understand nothing without the Divine, that even if you are an exceptionally intelligent and capable being, that is NOTHING in comparison with the divine Consciousness – and one must keep that constantly, because then one constantly has the true attitude of receptivity. A humble receptivity that sets no personal pretension (Then Mother talks about young R. and the coincidence between Paul Richard's death and the birth of

this child.)

I saw this child when he was hardly two months old, they brought him to me. He was quiet, peaceful, in his mother's arms. She put him on my lap, and I looked at him – I looked at him, and also put a little Force, like that. Then he gave a start and began to scream and scream.... They had to take him away. But I very clearly felt that if I spoke to him... It seems that when he is spoken to, he listens: his eyes open, he looks and listens eagerly, and when he is told about Auroville he shows great interest. And I saw that his consciousness is as if centered in the mind; you understand, what I wanted to see was his reaction to the silent pressure of the Force (I told you: he started screaming), but if he is spoken to (and I knew it, I saw it), if he is spoken to he listens and is very interested.

The next time they bring him to me, I'll give him a speech, a long speech! (laughing) We'll see what happens.

The other baby, A.F., has poor health, but if you recite poems of Sri Aurobindo to him, he becomes blissful! Neither of these two are ordinary children, obviously.

But I'll try the next time I see R.... It's a "coincidence" – but is there such a thing as a "coincidence" in the world? I don't believe in that.... In the past (I don't know what became of him afterwards), in the past Richard had some occult knowledge, I mean I had given him enough occult knowledge for him to be able to leave his body and enter another. So did he try to do it?... I know he wanted to come back here; especially after Sri Aurobindo's departure, he took it into his head to come here.

We can't say, we'll see that later.

* * * At the end of the conversation, Mother gazes at Satprem for a long time:

Did I tell you something?

Friends of F.'s, French people, who had come here once and have come again, wrote to me asking to see me. The young man wrote to me, saying, "Last-time, you looked at me for a long time and I was terrified by your look, is it necessary for me to come again?" (Mother laughs) I had given him an appointment before reading his letter, so naturally I didn't look at him! But it made me see something. Because of that (or through that), I saw a whole thing. And the same day, the very same day, I got a letter from an Indian, perhaps a forty-year-old man, who wrote to me, "When I was sitting in front of you, you looked at me for a long time and I felt that your eyes were burning all impurities in me." So naturally, he expressed gratitude.

You know, when I go there [to the music room] to see people, I simply concentrate and there is a sort of invocation to the Lord's Presence. And when He is there, when I feel the whole room full of Him, then it's good. That is the sole will (still, passive gesture turned upward). I translated it when I said to someone, "I give them a bath of the Lord"! And that's indeed how it is: His Presence, His Action... His Presence, His Action... That's all. And when I look at them, there is no more person: there