May 28, 1959
(Letter to Mother from Satprem)
Pondicherry, May 28, 1959
Mother,
I do not want you to suffer because of me, for there is already too much suffering in this world. I shall do what you wish. I will go to Rameswaram and I will stay there as long as X wants. I have seen that there is no happy solution. So I bow before the circumstances.
1. The disciple’s tantric guru.
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If it is not too tiring for your eyes, I would like you to read what follows. I want to tell you what I have seen, very clearly.
After the wave of rebelliousness this morning, I was seized by a great sadness, a great bitterness, as though I were being confronted with a profound injustice.
There is a spiritual destiny in me, but there are three other destinies so intimately bound up with it that I cannot cut off any one without mutilating something of my living soul – which is why, periodically, these suppressed destinies awaken and call to me – and the dark forces seize upon these occasions to sow chaos within and drive me to ruin everything since I cannot really fulfill myself. And the problem is insoluble.
1) There is the destiny of the adventurer: it is the one in me that needs the sea or the forest and wide open spaces and struggles. This was the best part of my childhood. I can sit on it and tell myself that ‘the adventure is within,’ and it might ‘work’ for a while. But this untamed child in me continues to live all the same, and it is something very valuable in me. I cannot kill it through reasoning, even spiritual reasoning. And if I tell it that everything lies ‘within,’ not ‘without,’ it replies, ‘Then why was I born, why this manifestation in the outer world?’ In the end, it is not a question of reasoning. It is a fact, like the wind upon the heaths.
2) There is the destiny of the writer in me. And this too is linked to the best of my soul. It is also a profound need, like adventuring upon the heaths, because when I write certain things, I breathe in a certain way. But during the five years I have been here, I have had to bow to the fact that, materially, there is no time to write what I would like (I recall how I had to wrench out this Orpailleur, which I have not even had time to revise). This is not a reproach, Mother, for you do all you can to help me. But I realize that to write, one must have leisure, and there are too many less personal and more serious things to do. So I can also sit on this and tell myself that I am going to write a ‘Sri Aurobindo’ – but this will not satisfy that other need in me, and periodically it awakens and sprouts up to tell me that it too needs to breathe.
3) There is also the destiny that feels human love as something divine, something that can be transfigured and become a very powerful driving force. I did not believe it possible, except in dreams, until the day I met someone here. But you do not believe in these things, so I shall not speak of it further. I can gag this also and tell myself that one day all will be filled in the inner
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divine love. But that does not prevent this other need in me from living and from finding that life is dry and from saying, ‘Why this outer manifestation if all life is in the inner realms?’ But neither can I stifle this with reasoning.
So there remains the pure spiritual destiny, pure interiorization. That is what I have been trying to do for the last five years, without much success. There are good periods of collaboration, because one part of my being can be happy in any condition. But in a certain way this achievement remains truncated, especially when you base spiritual life on a principle of integrality. And these three destinies in me have their own good reasons, which are true: they are not inferior, they are not incidental, they are woven from the very threads that created the spiritual life in me. My error is to open the door to revolt when I feel too poignantly one or the other being stifled.
So you see, all this is insoluble. I have only to bow before these unfortunate circumstances. I perceive an injustice somewhere, but I have only to remain silent.
… … … …
And I was also struck when you told me that I wanted to ‘kick up a row.’ You so clearly implied that I was leaving the Ashram in a ‘shoddy’ way. So that also froze me. I thought I had done my best and, in order to serve you, repressed as much as I could the others in me.
So there. I can find no solution. X will not understand, and I will not say anything to him. But I obey you because everything is futile and there is too much pain in this world, and also someone in me needs you, someone who loves you in his own way.
Signed: Satprem
(Mother’s reply)
Friday, 5.29.59
Satprem, my dear little one,
I have read your letter in its entirety and I remain convinced that one day all the parts of your being, without excluding any, will be fully satisfied. But we shall see about that later.
For the moment, I only want to tell you, from the bottom of my heart – which is so deeply touched – thank you.
With all my love.
Signed: Mother
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I will see you tomorrow morning at ten o’clock and I hope that a few small misunderstandings may be clarified.
I am sending you forthwith the note that I had prepared for tomorrow morning.
(Note from Mother to Satprem)
I did not utter the words that you heard – I wanted to speak to you of my experience during the night, but I was paralyzed because I clearly felt that you no longer understood me. As soon as I received your letter, I concentrated on you in an effort to help you, and when night fell, just at the hour I enter into contact with X, I called for his help – whereupon he sent me this little Kali whom he had already sent once before. So I went to your house, I took you in my arms and pressed you tightly to my heart to keep you as sheltered as possible from blows, and I let Kali do her warrior dance against this titan who is always trying to possess you, creating this rebelliousness in you. She must have at least partially succeeded in her work, because very early in the morning the titan went away somewhat discomfited, but while leaving, he flung this at me as he went by: ‘You will regret it, for you would have had less trouble if he had left.’ I flung his suggestion back in his face with a laugh and told him, ‘Take that, along with all the rest of your ugly person! I have no need of it!’ And the atmosphere cleared up.
I wanted to tell you all this, but I couldn’t because you were still far away from me and it would have seemed like boasting. Also the misunderstanding created by the distance made you hear other words than those I uttered.
June 3, 1959
(Letter to Mother from Satprem, while travelling)
Rameswaram, June 3, 1959
Sweet Mother,
On your behalf, I told X that you had been worried about me.
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He, too, had felt that things were not going well and had ‘worked’ on his side. He told me to write you immediately to tell you that ‘everything is all right.’
… … … …
Also, I explained to him that a mantra had come to you which you were repeating between 5 and 6 in particular, and I told him about this culminating point where you wanted to express your gratitude, enthusiasm, etc., and about the French mantra. After explaining, I gave him your French and Sanskrit texts. He felt and understood very well what you wanted. His first reaction after reading it was to say, ‘Great meaning, great power is there. It is all right.’ I told him that apart from the meaning of the mantra, you wanted to know if it was all right from the ‘vibrational’ standpoint. He told me that he would take your text to his next puja and would repeat it himself to see. He should have done that this morning, but he has a fever (since his return from Madurai, he has not been well because of a cold and sunstroke). I will write you as soon as I know the result of his ‘test.’
Regarding me, this is more or less what he said: ‘First of all, I want an agreement from you so that under any circumstances you never leave the Ashram. Whatever happens, even if Yama’ comes to dance at your door, you should never leave the Ashram. At the critical moment, when the attack is the strongest, you should throw everything into His hands, then and then only the thing can be removed (I no longer know whether he said’ removed’ or destroyed ). It is the only way. SARVAM MAMA BRAHMAN [Thou art my sole refuge]. Here in Rameswaram, we are going to meditate together for 45 days, and the Asuric-Shakti may come with full strength to attack, and I shall try my best not only to protect but to destroy, but for that, I need your determination. It is only by your own determination that I can get strength. If the force comes to make suggestions: lack of adventure, lack of Nature, lack of love, then think that I am the forest, think that I am the sea, think that I am the wife (!!)’ Meanwhile, X has nearly doubled the number of repetitions of the mantra that I have to say every day (it is the same mantra he gave me in Pondicherry). X repeated to me again and again that I am not merely a ‘disciple’ to him, like the others, but as if his son.
This was a first, hasty conversation, and we did not discuss things at length. I said nothing. I have no confidence in my reac
1. Yama: the god of Death in the Hindu pantheon.
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tions when I am in the midst of my crises of complete negation. And truly speaking, at the time of my last crisis in Pondicherry, I do not know if it was really X’s occult working that set things right, for personally (but perhaps it is an ignorant impression), I felt that it was thanks to Sujata and her childlike simplicity that I was able to get out of it.
In any event, since I left Pondicherry, I have been living like a kind of robot (it began in the train); I am empty, void of the least feeling for whomever it may be. I keep going by a kind of acquired momentum, but actually I feel completely anesthetized.
Excuse my handwriting. I am writing to you lying on the floor of the dharamshala’ near X’s house, for the ‘hut’ meant for me is not yet ready.
Suddenly, last evening, X went furiously on the warpath against the Indian ‘Congress’# and with an irrefutable tone, like someone who knows, began making very interesting predictions.
Before five months are over (in September, October or November), Pakistan will attack India with the help or the complicity or the military resources of the United States. And at about the same time, China will attack India because of the Dalai Lama, under the pretext that India is supporting the Dalai Lama and that thousands of Tibetan refugees are escaping into India to carry on anti-Chinese activities. Then America will offer its support to India against China and then, said X, ‘We shall see what will be the political policy of the Congress Party, which pretends to be unaligned with any bloc. If India accepts American aid, there will be no more Pakistan but rather American troops to prevent conflicts between Muslims and Hindus, and a single government for both countries.’ I pointed out to X that this sounded very much like a world war …
Then he made the following comparison: ‘When you throw a pebble into a pond, there is just one center, one point where it falls, and everything radiates out from this center. There are two such centers in the world at present, two places where there are great vibrations: one is India and Pakistan, and that will radiate all over Asia. And the other is … ‘
In any case, I had never heard him attacking the Congress as he
1. A caravansary, or Indian style shelter.
2. Indian National Congress: the formative freedom organization against the British that became India’s major political party under Jawaharlal Nehru after independence.
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did yesterday evening, almost violently.
That is all, Sweet Mother. In spite of my anesthesia, I think of you. (I am not blocked; on the contrary, it seems to me that the bond has been renewed since our last meeting, but I feel strangely empty.) I am unable to understand how you can love me. Oh Mother, I have truly to begin living, truly loving! Your child,
Signed: Satprem
(Mother’s reply)
6.4.59
My very dear child,
I received and read your very interesting letter.
As for the Sanskrit text and the mantra, I await your next letter.
For you, I fully approve of what he told you. Fervently, and with all my love, I pray that he will succeed in what he wants to do during these 45 days of meditation. This is really what I was counting on.
For what occurred here, I can say only one thing: when the Supreme Lord wants to save someone, He clothes his will in every appearance necessary.
As for the emptiness you feel (which perhaps is already better): to those who complained of this sensation of inner emptiness, Sri Aurobindo always said that it is a very good thing; it is the sign that they are going to be filled with something better and truer.
I have carefully noted X’s predictions.
Certainly his political rage is not only understandable but justified. However, when one begins looking at things from the external viewpoint of the manifestation, they are not as simple as that. I cannot speak of all this in detail, but as an example I can tell you that here in Pondicherry, those who are maneuvering (and not without some hope) to oust the Congress are our worst enemies, the enemy of all that is disinterested and spiritual, and if they come to power, they would be capable of anything in their hate.
For all these world events, I always leave it to the Divine vision and wisdom, and I say to the Supreme: ‘Lord, may Thy Will be done.’
I hope to hear from you soon.
My love is with you.
Signed: Mother
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