Chapter 4November 13, 1960

But never before in the... (how many?) ninety years of my life have I been so occupied with someone’s death as with hers, precisely for that reason, because she wanted to give me proof of "dispersion": "No one will ever know what happened to Bharatidi...."

I didn’t tell her, "That is childishness!" because, as she no longer had a body, I treated her gently. But the moment, the transition was difficult... painful. There was a painful moment when she felt very lonely. Mentally very lonely, of course. Physically, she had her little Krishna [her servant] there. It wasn’t physical, it was mental – because of her conception.

Very well. We’ll see.

Her psychic has gone to rest.

(silence)

But if you feel in you a difference in thought, in ways of thinking, tell me! (Mother laughs)

It’s really an interminable work. It’s this certain... (what should I call it? We can hardly call it "mind"), this mind of the physical.... It seems it’s being educated. But it’s an interminable work.

For instance, its habit of building possibilities, or foreseeing (we can hardly call it "building" or "foreseeing"... it’s a sort of very dark thing deep down) possibilities and imagining events, with the whole pessimistic and dramatic side shown in all its ridiculousness. So then, I don’t know, it’s obviously to learn to control and direct that, but... At first sight, it just has to be swept away, it’s absolutely useless: you waste your time with it and make a bad job. You fill the atmosphere with a quantity of thoroughly disgusting formations with pulp-fiction imaginations.

There is an attempt at control, but all that is still very, very dark.

(long silence)

Lots of people from the United States are coming here at the moment, and they bring news of an appalling crisis over there, a crisis of discouraged pessimism.... The whole youth seems to be in a woeful state of depression and discouragement.

They’ve discovered all that was hollow, false, unreal in the old way of seeing life, and they haven’t found anything to replace it with.... A few rare individuals (we get their letters, or they come here) say that they came across Sri Aurobindo’s teaching and found it to be the salvation. But they are very few. And the majority of people don’t understand – they don’t have the intelligence needed to understand.

So everywhere they’re sinking back; there has been an effort to emerge from that exclusive search Everywhere there is still the cult of the mind, that’s the terrible thing.

In Europe it’s terrible! They would have the intelligence needed to understand, but they’re shut inside their mental fortress.112 Yes.

There’s an attempt to bring Sri Aurobindo in, but they don’t want him. They know better, they know everything!

(long silence)

The difficulty, too, is that there have been so many false prophets and charlatans of Hinduism and of "Asia’s Truth" that the true thing can’t get in. It’s full of charlatans. The atmosphere is as if rotten....

(Mother nods her head)

It’s teeming with swamis, with this and that.... So what can the Truth do in all that?

(Mother goes into

contemplation)

Interminable work, that’s all. That’s the impression this body has. It’s at peace. Interminable work.

And it doesn’t have... (how should I put it?) a clear vision of the path or the process, so... It only understands one thing: never forget, never at any time, not even for a second, what it calls "the Divine" and wants to reach. That’s all.

And then, from time to time, there are flashes, like flashes from the Grace, absolutely wonderful.... But they last for one second.

(silence)

Not very encouraging.

There’s only one thing: like a building up of force... a force that MIGHT be a Power. I do feel it’s slowly, slowly building up.... So then, maybe that’s what is vibrating... and maybe there’s an impatience to act? I don’t know.

But it’s not precise yet.

And a very clear awareness of all the obstacles, of all that’s against, of the general attitude. With the very clear perception that... one must remain veiled. Exactly. This is the time when one must remain