July 24, 1965
(Satprem had written to Mother to ask her the meaning of a dream he had had, in which his brother abruptly came in and announced his son’s death. It was an extremely vivid dream. The shock of emotion woke Satprem up.)
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I have got your letter…. I don’t think it is premonitory. Do you have any news from there? If something had happened, he would have sent you a telegram.
Not necessarily…. But what kind of construction or imagination is it, then?
I will tell you.
I had a similar experience three days earlier – similar, I will tell you in what.
To begin with, last time I told you that this physical mind is being transformed; and three or four days ago, that is, before our last conversation, early in the morning I woke up abruptly in the middle of a sort of vision and activity, precisely in this physical mind. Which isn’t at all usual for me. I was here in this room, everything was exactly as it is physically, and someone (I think it was Champaklal) opened the door abruptly and said, “Oh, I am bringing bad news.” And I heard the sound physically, which means it was very close to the physical. “He has fallen and broken his head.” But it was as if he were speaking of my brother (who died quite a long time ago), and during the activity I said to myself, “But my brother died long ago!” And it caused a sort of tension (gesture to the temples) because … It’s a little complicated to explain. When Champaklal gave me the news, I was in my usual consciousness, in which I immediately thought, “How come the Protection didn’t act?” And I was looking at that when a sort of faraway memory came that my brother was dead. Then I looked (it’s hard to explain with words, it’s complex). I looked into Champaklal’s thought to find out who he meant had fallen and broken his head. And I saw Al’s face. And all that caused a tension (same gesture to the temples), so I woke up and looked. And I saw it was an experience intended to make me clearly see that this material mind LOVES (“loves,” that’s a way of speaking), loves catastrophes and attracts them, and even creates them, because it needs the shock of emotion to awaken its unconsciousness. All that is unconscious, all that is tamasic needs violent emotions to shake itself awake. And that need creates a sort of morbid attraction to or imagination of those things – all the time it keeps imagining all possible catastrophes or opening the door to the bad suggestions of nasty little entities that in fact take pleasure in creating the possibility of catastrophes.
I saw that very clearly, it was part of the sadhana of this material mind. Then I offered it all to the Lord and stopped thinking about
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it. And when I received your letter, I thought, “It’s the same thing!” The same thing, it’s a sort of unhealthy need this physical mind has to seek the violent shock of emotions and catastrophes to awaken its tamas. Only, in the case of A. breaking his head, I waited two days, thinking, “Let us see if it happens to be true.” But nothing happened, he didn’t break his head! In your case, too, I thought, “I am not budging till we get news,” because it may be true (one case in a million), so I keep silent. But this morning I looked again and saw it was exactly the same thing: it’s the process of development to make us conscious of the wonderful working of this mind.
Oh, indeed, as soon as there is a little scratch, something in the being immediately sees terrible illnesses – immediately.
Yes, that’s right. But Sri Aurobindo said it to me. I asked him several times how it was that people (who consciously, outwardly, would rather have pleasant things and favorable events) are constantly attracting and attracting unpleasant things, even terrible catastrophes. I know some women (men too, but they are fewer), women who spend their time imagining the worst: they have children – they imagine that each of them will meet with the worst catastrophes; someone goes away by car – oh, the car will have an accident; they take the train – oh, the train will derail; and so forth. Well, that’s why. That’s what Sri Aurobindo explained so well: all those parts of the being are terribly tamasic and it is the violence of the shock that awakens something in them; and that is why they attract those things as though instinctively…. The Chinese, for example, have an extremely tamasic vital and an insensate physical: its sensation is totally blunted – they are the ones who invented the most frightful forms of torture. It is because they need something extreme in order to feel, otherwise they don’t feel. There was a Chinese who had a sort of anthrax, I think, in the middle of the back (generally an extremely sensitive spot, it seems), and because of his heart they couldn’t put him to sleep to operate on him, so they were a bit worried. They operated without anesthesia – he was awake, he didn’t move, didn’t shout, didn’t say anything, they were filled with admiration for his courage; then they asked him what he had felt: “Oh, yes, I felt some scraping in my back”! That’s how it is. That’s what creates the necessity of catastrophes – of unexpected catastrophes: the thing that gives you a shock to wake you up.
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What you are saying here about those morbid and diseased imaginations, I said it myself not long ago: the imagination is instantly defeatist and catastrophic.
Yes, it’s terrible.
The whole work for a long, long time has been to heal that – to change it, change it.
And usually my nightly activities are never in the material, they are always in the subtle physical, its densest part, if I may say so. Maybe I haven’t even had in my life half a dozen visions with the material reality as it is: I saw the room as it is and heard the sound of Champaklal’s voice clearly. Then I understood it was this physical mind dreaming, having an activity, and that it was to show me that attraction … You understand, the door opening abruptly, the man coming in and telling me (Mother takes on a tragic tone), “I am bringing very bad news,” and that tense atmosphere, and then, “He has fallen down and broken his head.” Then I tried to know who the he was, and little by little … and so on.
With this sort of work to establish perfect equality, I never drive something away immediately, saying, “No, that’s not possible.” One must be calm and collected in the face of all things. I was calm and collected, thinking, “Let us see, let me wait for two days, and if he has really broken his head (laughing), I’ll find out!” Of course, nothing happened. And when I got your letter, I had the feeling it was the same thing, but I thought, “Let us see, let us wait….” I looked, and didn’t see anything. Through your letter and your words I looked, but didn’t see anything. And I had the feeling it was this same physical mind that made contact with a formation – a malicious formation, because such is the habit of the physical mind.
Now that the work is to rectify our way of being, we realize what it is! … It’s really disgusting. It works constantly and is constantly defeatist. As you say, you feel a little pain – oh, is it going to be a cancer?
And you can catch yourself ten times a day.
Yes, yes, that state is almost constant.
But this mind itself is making effort, anyway it has become aware, it has realized; it has understood that that condition wasn’t very praiseworthy (!), and it’s trying to change. Once the problem is identified, it goes fairly fast. Only, the difficulty is that most of
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our material movements are mechanical; we don’t concern ourselves with them, and that’s why they always remain as they are. But for some time now I have made it a habit to concern myself with them. It’s no fun, but it must be done, that must be rectified.
It is a constant, constant work, for everything, but everything. It’s odd: if the question is food, it thinks the food is poisoned or that it won’t be digested, or this or that, or that the whole functioning will be upset; you go to sleep – immediately comes the suggestion that you will be agitated, unable to rest, that you will have bad dreams; you speak to someone – the suggestion that you didn’t say what you should have said or that it will cause the person harm; you write something – that it wasn’t exactly right. It’s frightening, frightening.
It will have to change.
Sri Aurobindo told me that it wasn’t so strong in Indians as in Europeans, because Europeans have concentrated in Matter a lot and are much more bound there.
Anyway …
And that prayer I told you the other day was after that; not immediately afterwards, but a day later. As though having had that experience in the physical mind and seen exactly what it was, the nature of this mind, had permitted a progress.
And what gave me an indication of the falsity of that consciousness and its activities was when I made that effort – a tremendous effort – to recall that my brother had died years earlier; from that I saw the distance between my true consciousness and the consciousness I was in for that dream. I saw the distance of falsity of that consciousness. It gave me a very clear indication. Instead of that quiet and peaceful consciousness which is like an undulation – an undulation of light that always goes like this (gesture of great wings beating in the Infinite), a very vast, very peaceful movement of the consciousness, yet which follows the universal movement very quietly – instead of that, there was something strained (gesture to the temples), it was as hard as wood or iron and strained, tense, oh! … Then I knew how false it was. It gave me the exact measure.
(long silence)
These last few days I have had a very strong impression that … I don’t know if you remember (were you even born?) when Emile Zola said, "Truth is on the march." You weren’t born. He told the court-martial a few home truths and it caused quite a row, and he
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was advised to leave France because he would have been put in jail. And once he reached England, he said, "It doesn’t matter, Truth is on the march." It caused a resounding stir. And I still remember the impression – I was young, but still I was twenty…. There is more than twenty years’ distance between us – how old are you? Forty?
Forty-one.
Yes, the difference is forty years – more than that: forty-five years…. I was twenty, and it impressed me very much. That affair had a great repercussion. And it came back to me these last few days precisely with the whole perception of that catastrophic and defeatist habit. I had known it for a long time but it appeared to be quite beyond my control; while now it’s under control. Not only that, it’s disapproved of and deliberately rejected [[By the body-mind itself. ]]! It’s as I said: “I am tired of our unworthiness.”
So, conclusion: Truth is on the march.
(silence)
There is a lot to do, a whole lot. But it may go relatively fast. When you observe, you realize that what takes the most time is becoming conscious of what must be changed, having a conscious contact that enables it to change. That’s what takes the most time. The change itself … There are recurrences, but it’s growing much less intense. It all depends on the amount of unconsciousness and tamas in the being; as it grows less, the experience grows stronger.
***
Mother takes up the translation of “Savitri,” the Debate of Love and Death:
… And from the universal standpoint, it is this inertia, this unconsciousness that made the existence of death necessary – the “existence” of death!!
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