Chapter 6December 25, 1968

I met X.125 Oh!

Yes, by chance. I didn’t intend to see him, then I forgot he was here and walked by his street. And he was on his doorstep. I didn’t turn back, I went and saw him.

What did he tell you?

Kind... But I had the feeling that what had been there in the past was no longer there.... I always had the impression of a blue light around him (that was my impression in the past), but I didn’t have that sensation of power or force....

Maybe it was something you had put there? I did wonder.... Because the impression I had of him THROUGH YOU was far better than he is, far superior to what he is. So I wondered if that power didn’t come AT THAT TIME because it was necessary to pull you out of your difficulties.

And I carried out two or three "tests" with him. For example, he boasted he could get me all the money I needed; so I told him, "I need; make it come." (He spoke of "lakhs and lakhs, crores of rupees."126 ) I said, "Very well, I need this much, make it come." – It never came.... You understand, I felt he had boasted of having powers. He had been living there (still is) in the midst of quite a primitive population that was wonderstruck by the least expression of power; he was used to being regarded as quite a "powerful and superior being," and as soon as he came into contact with us and with people accustomed to Sri Aurobindo’s visions and to being in another world than this purely vital world, he found himself quite at sea.... He stayed away for three years, I think, or two years. He’s coming for his birthday (I’ll see him on the 29th), but the last times I gave him meditation, it was... well, there are lots and lots of people like that in India. He has a power that only acts in a very ordinary vital. And nothing really superior.

And as regards the quality of vision, there was quite a curious story. K.’s mother had come here with a married daughter who had just lost her son (a young man who died suddenly). They came here, she was quite unhappy, and when she came to see me, I saw her son in her own atmosphere. I told her, "Your son is with you. If you have the true attitude, you can come into contact with him and feel his 125A Tantric whom Satprem followed in the past.

all confidence in me, because I don’t tell her things with a dogmatic authority, while he spoke like that, with assurance; so she felt sure he was right!... There may be a small part of her son that went into a shepherd (!), I have no idea; as for me, what I saw was the psychic part. But she’s lost all confidence, she’s never come to see me again. So that’s troublesome. It proves he’s quite shut inside himself and inside his own conception.

Never mind..... Didn’t he ask you if you were continuing your pujas?

No, nothing. He understood it was over.

(silence)

And then... You know that from every side I’ve been trying to get Sri Aurobindo published [in France], in particular The Human Cycle. At last I got a letter from a certain J. B., who writes: "For a long time now, a publisher (F.) has been asking me to create a collection in his publishing house. I thought of a few books, mostly foreign ones, grouped around a title such as ‘Towards the spiritual mutation’ and focused on the present researches, individual and clumsy, often dangerous, but sincere and undertaken in a spirit quite different from that of the former generation, the spirit of a certain youth I am in contact with. The idea is to show these ‘young people’ that their attempts and aspirations are legitimate, even if they have discovered them through drugs, since in many cases drugs alone have been able to unmoor them from the Cartesian rationalist bedrock, to put before them experiences that, at least, are positive, and to offer them directions and models. In other words, the aspect of amateurism and exoticism found in Z [another publisher] would be replaced here by a practical and technical side, wide open to all spiritual researches, whatever they may be, to all duly controlled ‘metapsychical ‘experiments, serious psychedelic experiments (I have T. Leary in mind, for instance), new theologies... Naturally, there would be room, a major place, for the Oriental endeavor. In sum, it would involve all researches and attempts to crack open that sort of corset within which the Western mind has been going in circles for such a long time. That does not in the least rule out, on the contrary, certain scientific works – of pure science – in which, out of intrinsic necessity, this Cartesianism has already been singularly shaken. Of course, all that would make for quite an ill-assorted backdrop for Sri Aurobindo’s thought, a backdrop you will regard as unworthy of it.... The planned Collection might be called ‘Spiritual Adventures’...."

We can try.

In the middle of all that?

It doesn’t matter. We can try.

Because it can touch people, you understand, that’s what is important. We can try.

* * *

Finally there’s a letter from P.L. "...My stay in Spain was prolonged more than I had thought....