April 23, 1965
Every night now, almost without exception, I spend a part of the night in someone else, who seems to be me – it’s “me,” but the circumstances are completely different, the relationships are completely different. And last night, I don’t know how (oh, it was a long story), I saw myself: I was wearing a sari and my hair was loose, and it was white! It was white with some black streaks that had remained black; and suddenly I saw my face in a mirror, and that’s how I knew it was someone else.
And it seems to be quite a daily occupation, a very regular occupation, with people totally different from one another, totally different, but all of them in contact with Sri Aurobindo’s thought or Sri Aurobindo’s Work. Some I know very well, with people around them whom I know very well; some others I don’t know so well.
The previous night, it was difficult because I was (“I was” – who was I? I don’t know) harassed and attacked by someone who didn’t want to leave me alone and whom I found totally repugnant, who was to me an embodiment of falsehood and hypocrisy. It was a symbolic being (the whole thing was symbolic) and he represented something, almost like one of the human vices, something symbolic and very widespread, and what a nuisance it was, oh! … I called on everything to get rid of it. But I didn’t find out who I was – it was “me,” but outwardly I don’t know.
But last night, as it happened, in the course of all the circumstances, I was with someone whom I know very well (not materially) and I had white hair, and that person told me, “Oh, it’s very fine, just go ahead like that….” Then I saw my face…. I had a pale face, but not white, and white hair falling onto the neck, very white (the white of black hair), with a few black tresses in it – white hair. And I said, “But no! When one has white hair …” (I don’t know what language I was speaking because one doesn’t hear any sounds, one understands inwardly) … “white hair like this isn’t pretty.” So (laughing) when I came back to my usual state, I thought, “Oh, but what a strange face I had!”
It’s a little tiring. Every time there’s a new difficulty to be overcome, a problem to be solved, something to be set in order….
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