May 1, 1971
(Mother is late by more than an hour.)
An avalanche….
So what do you have to say?
Nothing special, Mother.
And me neither!… I only have people quarreling.
Anyway … it will straighten itself out, maybe.
I have sent many messages … (Mother looks for some papers). A government minister came,[[From the state of Andhra Pradesh. ]] who has 400,000 workers on strike; they wrote me to ask him to have pity on the poor people (God knows what the story is!), but the gentleman came, gave me flowers, took my flower, and then ran off! I didn’t have a chance to do anything.
I wanted to tell him this:
(Mother hands Satprem a note)
Most of the suffering is due to men’s ignorance.
We must have compassion and help them.
But I didn’t have a chance to tell him. He seemed to be a man … (gesture like iron). I don’t know what’s happening, but it’s like that everywhere, everywhere.
Yes, everywhere. One really gets the feeling that the world is in
complete turmoil .[[Satprem was thinking in particular of the students in Sri Lanka who had just been massacred while the whole world, including India, acquiesced in total silence. ]]
Yes, oh, yes!
And people also.
(silence)
It’s been like that since this morning, strikes and…. The school
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in Delhi is closed….[[The Sri Aurobindo School in Delhi, known as The Mother’s School, was closed by Mother following a strike by teachers protesting the dismissal of one of them. ]] And then the impression that order has to be restored BY USING THE VERY ONES WHO HAVE CREATED THE DISORDER. It came to me very strongly. That’s what I am trying to do in Delhi, by using the man who triggered the teacher’s strike. He came to see me, and I said to him (his dismissal from the school started the whole thing): “I am putting you back in the school so you can restore order!” And he accepted. I think it can be tried out. He left today.
(Text of Mother’s message to the teacher:)
“We (human beings) are not living for the satis
faction of our ego; we live to fulfill God’s will. Bu
t to be able to perceive and to know the will of God,
we must be without desires and preferences. Other
wise we mistake for God’s will our own limited
ideas and principles.
It is in the wide peace of an absolute and devoted
sincerity free from fixed ideas and preferences that
we can realize the conditions required to know
God’s Will and it is with a fearless discipline that
we must execute it."
April 30, 1971
And that is what has to be done. Instead of resting on the foundation of ordinary goodwill and all the moral and social rules — all that, brrm! fizzled out — we must rise above, we must have the Divine Will and the Divine Harmony, that is what we want; and as for those who are rebelling against the ordinary order of things and the ordinary social conventions: well, prove that you are in touch with a higher consciousness and a truer truth.
It’s the time to make a …(gesture of a leap upward).
As for the power of organization, it’s … an extremely powerful power that has come — I feel that just by doing this (Mother quietly closes her hand), I can crush things. It’s quite surprising. And so, if this power is put at the service of a higher order, of the truer consciousness … something will be achieved.
We must … we must take a leap upward.
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All those who seek to restore order pull back towards all the old ideas — that’s why they are unsuccessful. But that’s all over now. It’s over. We are going upward. Only those who can go upward are able to accomplish something.
(long silence)
You don’t have anything? Nothing to ask?
No, Mother.
Everything is all right?
Yes, Mother…. I don’t understand very well the direction I’m
going in.
There’s only one direction — toward the Divine. And as you know, it’s as much inside as outside, above as below. Everywhere. It’s in this very world that we must find the Divine and cling to Him — to Him alone, there’s no other way. It’s not here or there, it’s everywhere, but….
(Mother goes into trance
holding Satprem’s hands in her right hand
while her left hand remains turned upward,
in midair, then her arm slowly
comes down to rest.)
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