Works of Sri Aurobindo

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September

September 4, 1963

An avalanche of letters!

Someone disappears, people ask me where he is, whether he’s dead or alive. Someone else has worries: he wants to see me. Someone … People I don’t know at all! A stack of letters! They ask me for success in their business, for good health, for a child (a boy!), a good job…. Anyway everything that people are capable of wanting, they write and ask me. Oh, there are also those who ask me to tell their fortune! Many ask me, but I answer them bluntly, “I am not a fortuneteller, I don’t read tea leaves”!

(Mother scribbles a note)

Here is an answer I’ll have sent to all those people whom I don’t know and who ask me for things: What have you given to the Lord, or done for Him, that you ask me to do something for you? – I do only the Lord’s work! (Mother laughs)

You know, it’s clearly millions and millions of miles away from their thought, so …

It’s funny, no? Even Nolini would be shocked! (Mother laughs heartily) But I find it funny.

Basically, their idea of the divine is something that’s at their service – that knows a little more than you do (!) and is at your service to give you whatever you desire.

***

After a meditation with Satprem

I again saw a square shape, like last time, in front of you, but this time it was different: there was a bright golden light, and that square shape was here (gesture between the throat and the solar plexus), in front of you, then it rose and rose and rose like that, slowly, very slowly, above your head, and there it spread out into a great light … a very quiet light.

I think it’s the symbol of your meditation. A square – a perfect square, I mean, about this size, from there to there (from the top of the head to the solar plexus): that’s you when you meditate. It’s quite established, like something firmly established, and then

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slowly, very slowly, it rose and rose and rose above your head, and there … not violently, of course, it didn’t burst out, but it spread out into an Immensity of light.

The symbol of your consciousness.

It’s always a square shape.

Last time, I told you there were those Tantric lights; this time, there was a pale gold, very luminous, very tranquil, and the shape [of the square] was like a somewhat more golden vibration, a little darker (but not “dark”), and it stayed still a very long time, till suddenly I felt in your consciousness as if something were opening out, relaxing and opening out, like a sort of well-being in your consciousness. And no sooner did that happen than the square began to rise and rise and rise above your head, and there …

Is it the symbol of your meditation or the symbol of your consciousness? … – The symbol of your consciousness.

Did you feel, towards the middle of your meditation, a kind of sudden relaxing, an inner well-being?

Yes, I felt it.

Then that’s it.

As soon as you felt it, it started rising until … as though it merged into an infinite.

But it’s good.

Very good.

Do you have anything to tell me? We still have a quarter of an hour.

What?

Some things have been very present in my consciousness lately – death.

Death?

Very present.

It’s because … yes.

And you’re wondering what it means?

I sense a threat, something lying in wait; like a Fate lying in wait, very close, and as the end of the year draws near, it becomes heavier and heavier.

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(silence)

Sujata also felt it these last few months – but I’ve been feeling it for a long time. I sense something lying in wait, something hanging over her and over me – I don’t know which of the two. In the past I didn’t often think of death, but now it comes to my mind constantly.

But what do you call death?!

I mean, leaving this body.

As a thing personal to you?

It expresses itself personally, though it may be something more general, I don’t know.

(Mother remains silent) Two years ago I used to see it over you very much – much more than now. It seems to have moved away, so that’s strange.[[In fact, the physical blow will come a year later and Satprem will nearly die from it. ]]

Two years ago, when I was still going downstairs, when I used to see you in Pavitra’s office.

There was a time when I intervened (it was the time of the Swami’s activities and all that). It was over you at that time. But lately … I haven’t seen anything special – attacks do come periodically along with the suggestion of all kinds of catastrophic possibilities: nothing more particular to you than to others. It’s part of the work, I don’t pay any attention to it.

But as for a quite personal threat to you, things seem much better now than they were two years ago.

Only, it may be that because of the work I am doing, you are brought into contact with a certain layer of possibilities and so you become more conscious of that…. As for Sujata, she must be unknowingly under your influence, so what you feel she feels too – that’s my impression.

I’ll look, but I haven’t seen anything lately. On the contrary, that thing I used to see over you at that time and drive away deliberately, since the beginning of this year in particular I haven’t seen it – I’ll look.

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I rather feel that a work is going on in the field of your consciousness, something which is awakening, which was less conscious before – it’s more that than an impending danger.

How does your body feel? Still tired?

Not too brilliant. Oh, you know, I’ve always thought that ’63 would be a very important date for me. Why, I don’t know.

Yes, because we WANT it very important!

One thing has been coming back to me almost obstinately lately, it’s the memory (that’s what’s odd, it comes as a MEMORY, as though it were something I had lived), the memory of your concentration camp. Very odd. It came back to me perhaps two or three weeks ago, I don’t know, very strongly. I even looked – studied, rather – what the consequences were for your body. Studied and … well, did what was needed.

I don’t know, I can’t say, because for all these experiences I try to drive all thoughts as far away as possible, because they don’t help to get the correct perception. So that I can’t say whether or not there was a reason for that “memory” – to tell the truth, the mind always finds reasons for everything, so … You know, I am not occupied with those things, I don’t try to know, and therefore they don’t come – they come of their own accord. There was obviously a necessity: all that comes is necessary, I know that, otherwise it wouldn’t come. But that memory didn’t bring with it any sense or perception of a danger to your physical life, not in the least. I don’t have that perception, while I did have it two years ago. Now I don’t have it.

But I remember that for a few days I was occupied with that memory, as part of a vast work on certain physical vibrations, in all the physical domains with which I deal. And it came (strangely, it’s always LOCATED, located somewhere …), and the perception I have is very acute, absolutely like the perception of something that happened to me personally (but all that comes to me now comes in this way). Only, there was the knowledge that it was your own body that had gone through that experience. And then … yes, I remember, there was a certain quality of vibration … (Mother “looks” silently), and it was connected with a study on the experience the cells gain in the process of death. I remember, I was studying the cellular experiences (which the cells have more often than not semiconsciously and often unconsciously), those semiconscious experiences that stay in the subconscient and help to

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make some cells more and more receptive and prepared for the new Force. And as I was studying that, your experience of the camps came, and I saw in fact that a certain number of your cells, a rather considerable number (cells that are partly in the brain, partly in the throat center and partly here [gesture to the upper part of the chest]) have had the preliminary experience of death.

And that gives them a very special capacity of consciousness.

Could this be what gave you that sense of death? … But you say it has been there for a long time. While, for me, it’s recent (it was perhaps ten days ago), my study is recent. It was very interesting…. I can still see them now, they were as if located in certain parts of your body.

But that’s a favorable observation, not a dangerous one!

Favorable, how?

Favorable, oh, yes! Favorable in the sense that those cells are far more conscious than cells are ordinarily.

Because they had that experience?

Yes, because they had that experience and survived – because the form survived that experience.

From the standpoint of a higher receptivity, it has a very, very considerable importance – I mean receptivity to the new forces, a preparation to receive the new forces.

(silence)

But things are rather complex…. For the body in its ordinary consciousness, its absolutely normal state is when it doesn’t feel itself living. When the body doesn’t feel itself living, that means it’s functioning normally; as soon as it feels itself living in some part of itself, it means that something isn’t quite normal, and instinctively (I don’t mean the vital or mental consciousness), but its primal consciousness is alarmed, because it’s not normal (not what it calls "normal"); and then that sort of alarm (an alarm that’s not formulated in thoughts) brings it into contact with a whole world of adverse and defeatist suggestions – oh, there is an INTENSE atmosphere of pessimistic, defeatist, adverse suggestions in which human lives are bathed, as it were. It’s even very strong here, very strong – I mean in the Ashram – very strong. People who are very sensitive and whose consciousness isn’t firmly rooted in

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faith are very … (what shall I say?) very deeply … not deeply but intimately attacked by that atmosphere.

And it makes bodies very ill-at-ease.

(silence)

I will look again, [[Occultly, to see if there is a real threat over Satprem. ]] but for the moment, it seems to me, it’s a period or a stage in the integral development that brings you into contact with death. It’s an impersonal thing and I don’t see anything ominous about it, I mean I don’t consider your feeling as premonitory – except that Death is everywhere in the world, of course! Well, that’s all, it boils down to that.

There, mon petit.

That may be it, because there is an interesting work going on within you.

My impression … If you ask me, my impression is to the contrary: it’s that for the moment, I am preparing a new life for you. VoilĂ .

You should … I don’t even feel the need to tell you, but what’s necessary is to fasten one’s consciousness imperturbably to something which, in fact, isn’t personal – to the New Realization.

And if you feel those defeatist vibrations, know that things are now a battlefield, a field of action, very active. You see, the battle is being waged in the body every minute – all the time, all the time…. I don’t expect others to wage it along with me; only, if on their part they hold on to what MUST BE, that’s all that is needed.

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