April 14, 1964
(All of Satprem’s letters to Mother having disappeared, as we already said, under lock and key in Pondicherry, we thought it fit to throw light on this journey to France by publishing, along with Mother’s letters, a few fragments of Satprem’s letters to Sujata.)
(From Satprem to Sujata)
Paris
For the past three days, I don’t know how I’ve lived; I feel somewhat like a sleepwalker jostled about here, there and everywhere, walking, walking without quite knowing how, in a thick darkness – all I know is the Force, which I hold on to like a drowning
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man…. All that is left is the feeling of being far from home, far from all that is true, good, restful, the feeling of living in a hallucination – and yet, marvelously, the Force is there every minute, I breathe with it, live with it, otherwise I would drop dead, or simply go mad.
This is the last time in my life I’ll return to the West, unless I receive an Order from Sri Aurobindo and Mother to do so – I cannot live here anymore, I feel as if I were going back to the prehistoric age of caves.
… Then they all rushed at me, one on the heels of another – family, friends, etc. I was completely bewildered. I had just enough strength to go into my room from time to time and rest on my bed, wrapping myself in the Force to hold out.
… How empty the days are – they are full of empty things, of empty people and empty movement. You feel you must constantly pull down the Force in order to fill up this enormous Emptiness, or else you would be utterly crushed. I keep my watch by Indian time, so that I always know where you are, although I never know what time it is in France! I have to make a complicated calculation and subtract four and a half hours: it’s now 2:30 P.M. in our garden, therefore … 10 A.M. here, and I have an appointment. I will probably see Corréa [[A publisher for Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness. ]] tomorrow. My friend M. tells me that they definitely agree to publish the book, but they would like to “cut” certain passages! … So I will have to argue to try and keep my book more or less whole! What a world! I will write to Mother tomorrow, once I know what the publisher’s demands are.
I have to see a doctor day after tomorrow … but no doctor can close the hole in my heart.
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