January 1973

01. January 1973 – New Year Message

When you are conscious of the whole world at the same time, then you can become conscious of the Divine.

03. January 1973 – Abolition of all personal Existence

I have but one solution — always the same for anything: this (gesture, hands open). To abolish all personal existence, to be like this (same gesture), something that lets everything pass through and is… set in motion by the Divine. That’s all. Then everything is fine.

10. January 1973 – The Horror of Death

And there’s a new kind of malaise. Something new. As I was telling you, there’s a new and wonderful joy that comes! But it comes the way you disclose something, you know… (Mother dangles an imaginary lure between her fingers): “See, this is what you could have.” Exactly like that. “It could be like this,” and brrrt, it’s gone!

So really, I’d rather not talk about it.

I live in a constant contradiction — constant, constant… With all sorts of suggestions: “This way, you could die; that way, you could die…” So I simply reply, “I don’t care!” Then it calms down.

My consolation was that I thought I was doing this for everybody; that once I had done it, it would be done — but evidently a lot of people are in the same difficulty.

To comfort me, there is a kind of assurance from above, that if I reach my centenary, I will start going uphill again. But it’s still far off. How many years left? Five Years.

You (Satprem) will go to the end.

But you know, at the same time, I am aware of the divine forces going through like this (gesture through the body). I try to obstruct as little as I can. And it gives some extraordinary results: constantly, there are… what people call “miracles.”

But to me, it’s not quiet as it could be — as they SHOULD be.

The possibility of suffering, for example — suffering from pain, suffering… a purely physical fact (all the nonphysical things are: Mother makes an immutable and peaceful gesture to indicate the inner states), but something purely physical: really, the capacity for suffering must disappear. Not that I don’t want to suffer, but… it isn’t a nice gift to give people!

The years are long, long, long, long…

It’s like this: two or three hours can go by in a second, and half an hour can last for hours. Everything, but everything is upside down.

(Mother gestures: what to do? silence)

And then — oh, I haven’t told you: yesterday or the day before, I don’t remember, all of a sudden, for two or three minutes, my body was seized by the horror of death — the idea of being put like this (gesture of being tossed into a hole) in a tomb was so horrifying! Horrifying… I couldn’t have stood that more than a few minutes. It was HORRIFYING. Not because I was buried alive, but because my body was conscious. It was considered “dead” by everybody for the heart had stopped beating — yet the body was conscious.

That… that… that was a horrible experience… I was displaying all the signs of “death,” you know, the heart wasn’t working, nothing was working — but I was conscious. The body was conscious.

We must… we must warn people at least not to rush to… (gesture into a hole).

17. January 1973 – Message

Plus on avance, plus le besoin d’une présence divine devient impérieux et… inévitable.

The more we advance on the way, the more the need of a divine Presence becomes indispensable — imperative and indispensable.

20. January 1973 – Meeting with Dalai Lama

A truly benevolent man. Buddhist benevolence, you know, and he practices it marvelously.

He seems to have no… no selfishness in him (there’s no word for it in French).

I mean, a constant concern to do the right thing.

Very active [mentally] — there wasn’t much of a deeper contact.

That’s all.

He was happy with his visit, I was told.

I was told something (I don’t know if it’s true), he is reported to have said, “Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are the most important personalities in the world today” — I don’t know if it’s true.

He seems to have been pleased with his visit. He was very happy to see the school and the children.

But on the plane where I live… he doesn’t seem to be very conscious THERE… I don’t know. I don’t know, but in any case he has a very light presence, very light — he doesn’t impose himself at all.

I sensed a very strong man — very strong. And harmoniously strong; his right arm was bare, you know, it gave the feeling of a strong and quiet force. But… I didn’t have much of a deeper contact… I can’t say.

I told him Tibet would become independent again. He asked me when. I said, “I don’t know.”

Sri Aurobindo’s idea was an independent Tibet within a sort of great federation with India. But when will that happen? I don’t know.

He gave me this (Mother shows a Tibetan Buddha in brass). It’s a Buddha. Is there something written there [under the statue]?

ADDENDUM

(Account of the Dalai Lama’s visit. The Dalai Lama’s questions were put to Mother by Kireet, the Registrar of the Centre of Education, who in turn conveyed Mother’s answers back to the Dalai Lama.)

(original English)

(Dalai Lama:) It is my dream to have the perfect economic development of Tibet, the perfect organization, the efficiency that we find in Communism, but all this based upon, founded upon the Buddhistic qualities of Compassion and Love, so that the people in power do not degenerate into corruption. What is Mother’s view of this dream, and whether such a thing will be realized in Tibet?

It is not a dream. It will naturally be. But the time it will take, I do not know. This is something like what Sri Aurobindo has said about the Supramental.

Truth, Love, Compassion will give a basis to the new creation. It is not birth but the value of men that should give the right to authority.

If the teaching of Sri Aurobindo can spread over the world, and if there is the full manifestation of the Supramental, then the Supramental will be the power of the liberation of Tibet.

It is bound to come, it will come; but if it goes as it is going now, it will take hundreds of years. But if the Supramental is manifested, it may come quick. Quick does not mean ten or twenty years — that would be almost miraculous.

(Kireet:) But the Supramental is now working very powerfully.

It is, it is working. It will be manifested with enough power when the right people have the authority.

For the moment, it seems that the opposition, the falsehood attacks with full power before dying. Never, never have men lied as much as they are doing now. It seems the old habit comes spontaneously. But it must be broken.

We are at a very… what we could call an unpleasant moment of the history of the earth. It is interesting because the action is very powerful, but I can’t call it pleasant.

But I have told you that already; I wrote it.

(Kireet:) Yes, Mother. The Mother has given the message.

(Dalai Lama:) As for myself, I have no desire to continue in power in the Government. For I feel that the Government involves so much of conflicts of parties, and the necessity of taking sides with one party against the other…

One can govern without taking sides. That is the mistake of all the governments; they reduce their capacity tremendously.

But beyond the mind, there is a higher and deeper consciousness — they would find a Consciousness in which one can make use of all the capacities. It is a question of the consciousness being broad enough, so that each capacity can be put in its place in order to make a general harmony.

(Dalai Lama:) There is good will, there is sincerity among people all over the world, but the number of such people is not large. Will they be able to have an effect to change the conditions of the world?

It is bound to change; it is bound to change. Only, if the people are sincere it will shorten the time; it will go faster if the people are sincere.

The first and indispensable step is to stop all falsehood. Falsehood is all that contradicts in us the Presence of the Divine.

24. January 1973 – Our Values are worthless

No, not impossibilities — it probably means you have to go deeper or higher to their meeting ground. That’s how it works: the opposites get increasingly vehement until we find the point where they… where unity is established.

One must go deeper and deeper, or higher and higher — it’s one and the same thing. It’s the same thing.

All our old ways of understanding things are WORTHLESS — worthless.

All, all our values are WORTHLESS.

We are on the threshold of something truly marvelous, but… we don’t know how to keep it — it comes like this (gesture imitating a passing bird)… We just don’t know.

Never, never before have I had such a sense of ignorance, of impotence, of… of being a jumble of frightful contradictions, and I know, I KNOW — deep down, beyond speech — that it’s because I don’t know how to find the place where they… they harmonize and unite.

I can do absolutely nothing, I know absolutely nothing — in fact, I am nothing but a… false appearance, that’s all.

I don’t remember anything, I even forget what I have said before… Everything is… (gesture of crumbling).

And strangely, almost at the same time, there’s torture and bliss — almost at the same time. There you are.

Only, what’s odd is that human nature as it is constituted seems to understand torture more readily than bliss.

There’s a curious phenomenon: because books [by Mother] are published, I am put in contact with things I said before, and of course when I said them I was very convinced, but now… I tell myself: how could you say that!

There is only one, one will left: may the Divine express Himself without deformation through this body. This is constant, constant, constant, constant…

31. January 1973 – A wonderful Presence

The same identical circumstances, occurring at the same time, can cause a marvelous bliss — marvelous, as I have never felt before — or sheer hell. The very same circumstances, and at the same time.

For hours on end it’s enough to drive you mad, and for a few… (maybe hours, maybe minutes — the sense of time isn’t the same, but anyway…) a wonder. A wonderful Presence.

It doesn’t really depend on circumstances: the circumstances are always the same, and yet…

And in this new consciousness, time has a completely different value: I feel I have spent a few minutes, and I am told it’s been almost an hour. That’s how it is.