This Agenda... is my gift to those who love me.
THE CONTEXT
"There is no difference between the Mother’s path and mine; we have and have always had the same path, the path that leads to the supramental change and the divine realisation."
Sri Aurobindo
The Mother with letters on The Mother
Mother’s Agenda is a continuation of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga of the Supramental Manifestation and Transformation of the Body.
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AN OVERVIEW
This AGENDA is not even a path: it is a light little VIBRATION that seizes you at any turning - and then, there it is, you are IN IT.
From the time of Sri Aurobindo's departure (1950) until 1957, we have only a few notes and fragments or rare statements noted from memory. These are the only landmarks of this period, along with Mother's Questions and Answers from her talks at the Ashram Playground. A few of these conversations have been reproduced here insofar as they mark stages of the Supramental Action.
From 1957, Mother received us twice a week in the office of Pavitra, the most senior of the French disciples, on the second floor of the main Ashram building, on some pretext of work or other. She listened to our queries, spoke to us at length of yoga, occultism, her past experiences in Algeria and in France or of her current experiences; and gradually, She opened the mind of the rebellious and materialistic Westerner that we were and made us understand the laws of the worlds, the play of forces, the working of past lives - especially this latter, which was an important factor in the difficulties with which we were struggling at that time and which periodically made us abscond. Mother would be seated in this rather medieval-looking chair with its high, carved back, her feet on a little tabouret, while we sat on the floor, on a slightly faded carpet, conquered and seduced, revolted and never satisfied - but nevertheless, very interested. Treasures, never noted down, were lost until, with the cunning of the Sioux, we succeeded in making Mother consent to the presence of a tape recorder. But even then, and for a long time thereafter, She carefully made us erase or delete in our notes all that concerned Her rather too personally - sometimes we disobeyed Her.
But finally we were able to convince Her of the value inherent in keeping a chronicle of the route.
It was only in 1958 that we began having the first tape-recorded conversations, which, properly speaking, constitute Mother's Agenda. But even then, many of these conversations were lost or only partly noted down. Or else we considered that our own words should not figure in these notes and we carefully omitted all our questions - which was absurd. At that time, no one - neither Mother, nor ourself - knew that this was 'the Agenda' and that we were out to explore the 'Great Passage.' Only gradually did we become aware of the true nature of these meetings. Furthermore, we were constantly on the road, so much so that there are sizable gaps in the text. In fact, for seven years, Mother was patiently preparing the instrument that would be able to traverse the adventure without breaking along the way.
From 1960, the Agenda took its final shape and grew for thirteen years, until May 1973, filling thirteen volumes in all (some six thousand pages), with a change of setting in March 1962 at the time of the Great Turning in Mother's yoga when She permanently retired to her room upstairs, as had Sri Aurobindo in 1926. The interviews then took place high up in this large room carpeted in golden wool, like a ship's stateroom, amidst the rustling of the Copper Pod tree and the cawing of crows. Mother would sit in a low rosewood chair, her face turned towards Sri Aurobindo's tomb, as though She were wearing down the distance separating that world from our own. Her voice had become like that of a child, one could hear her laughter. She always laughed, this Mother. And then her long silences. Until the day the disciples closed her door on us. It was May 19, 1973. We did not want to believe it. She was alone, just as we were suddenly alone. Slowly, painfully, we had to discover the why of this rupture. We understood nothing of the jealousies of the old species, we did not yet realize that they were becoming the 'owners' of Mother - of the Ashram, of Auroville, of Sri Aurobindo, of everything - and that the new world was going to be denatured into a new Church. There and then, they made us understand why She had pulled us from our forest, one day, and chosen as her confidant an incurable rebel.
S.
"It is the evolutionary transition that interests us and the resistances on which Mother worked to wrest the new species from the old. ..So we have not always been able to erase names, nor even wanted to do so - and what does it matter: these and those will pass. A great History will remain."-Satprem
(Translation in English)
We announce here the release of the cassettes corresponding to Mother's conversations as they were noted in the Agenda. To facilitate the reader's choice, we have indicated in the "Summary", at the end of the book, all the conversations or fragments of conversations from the year 1961 for which there was still a recording on magnetic tape (about 20 cassettes). We have preceded with the symbol "E." ["Enregistrement" = "Record"] all the conversations for which the recording still exists. The list of corresponding cassettes can be obtained from the Institute of Evolutionary Research.
It is worth noting the conditions under which these conversations were recorded and why many recordings or fragments of recordings, unfortunately, no longer exist.
It is only from January 22, 1961 that we have a roughly continuous series of recordings (although punctuated by numerous gaps), because it was from this time that generous friends began to regularly send us magnetic tapes (thanks to them on behalf of the entire earth). Until then, we were obliged to erase almost every conversation (after having duly noted them) in order to be able to continue recording the next one on the same tape. A few exceptions, not many, have allowed us to save a certain number of recordings (about 8 cassettes) from the years 1958-1959 and 1960 (the list of these recordings and the cassettes corresponding to volume 1 of the Agenda can also be obtained from the Institute of Evolutionary Research). But even when the magnetic tapes began to reach us more or less regularly, we quickly realized the immensity of this river, and we had to limit the use of the magnetic tapes, which were, despite everything, too few in number to be able to preserve everything. This is where we were faced with a crucial choice, because we barely knew what "the Agenda" was or what was "important" or not for the continuation of a fabulous experience whose progress we barely understood. We understand afterwards (if at all?). And never, not for a moment, until the last days of 1973, did it cross our minds for a second that these meetings could one day cease - and we were right, moreover, because Mother is AHEAD and not behind us. She will speak to us again one day, perhaps in a less restrictive language.
So we had to cut through this incomprehensible forest at a time when we were just a slightly bewildered "gold seeker," attracted by 'that' speck rather than 'this' one - and what did we know about gold? The reader, or rather the listener, will be able to measure our stupidity or our limitations by the missing pieces 5. And where to cut, what to cut? Most often, our machete fell on the pieces that were too "personal," because we still believed at that time that there was a "person" in there, when in fact there was a human representative with his particular miseries that were only the miseries of the earth. For this very reason, we cannot repeat too often how much the people or beings of whom Mother speaks in this Agenda and who escaped our machete, are only representatives of the "earthly difficulty" and in no case a particular person, as those who love and look only at the small picture would like - it is the big picture that concerns us. It is the resistance of an old species to its glorious tomorrow. Peter or Paul have no more meaning than a pterodactyl-Jacques or a salamander-Olibrius. It is the evolutionary transition that interests us and the resistances on which Mother worked to wrest the new species from the old. Wanting to eliminate this resistance to present a small golden ashram would be a historical lie as aberrant as eliminating Judas or the Mongol invasions - even Judas has his uses, even the Mongol invasions: this is how the new being is forged, by the very resistance it encounters.
So we have not always been able to erase names, nor even wanted to do so - and what does it matter: these and those will pass. A great History will remain.
SATPREM
June 12, 1978
5 The opposite case also arose, no longer of cuts, but of additions: it happened that Mother changed a word or added a whole sentence or even a whole paragraph as comments when we asked her to clarify certain points or certain ambiguous words. Most often, we have noted these added passages, but for the convenience of reading, this was not always possible or desirable, especially when it was a single word or a brief remark. The listener of the recordings will therefore understand the variations themselves. [This note is by Satprem]
When we have passed beyond humanity, then we shall be the Man.
This AGENDA ... One day, another species among men will pore over this fabulous document as over the tumultuous drama that must have surrounded the birth of the first man among the hostile hordes of a great, delirious Paleozoic. A first man is the dangerous contradiction of a certain simian logic, a threat to the established order that so genteelly ran about amid the high, indefeasible ferns - and to begin with, it does not even know that it is a man. It wonders, indeed, what it is. Even to itself it is strange, distressing. It does not even know how to climb trees any longer in its usual way - and it is terribly disturbing for all those who still climb trees in the old, millennial way. Perhaps it is even a heresy. Unless it is some cerebral disorder? A first man in his little clearing had to have a great deal of courage. Even this little clearing was no longer so sure. A first man is a perpetual question. What am I, then, in the midst of all that? And where is my law? What is the law? And what if there were no more laws? ... It is terrifying. Mathematics - out of order. Astronomy and biology, too, are beginning to respond to mysterious influences. A tiny point huddled in the center of the world's great clearing. But what is all this, what if I were 'mad'? And then, claws all around, a lot of claws against this uncommon creature. A first man ... is very much alone. He is quite unbearable for the pre-human 'reason.' And the surrounding tribes growled like red monkies in the twilight of Guiana.
One day, we were like this first man in the great, stridulant night of the Oyapock. Our heart was beating with the rediscovery of a very ancient mystery - suddenly, it was absolutely new to be a man amidst the diorite cascades and the pretty red and black coral snakes slithering beneath the leaves. It was even more extraordinary to be a man than our old confirmed tribes, with their infallible equations and imprescriptible biologies, could ever have dreamed. It was an absolutely uncertain 'quantum' that delightfully eluded whatever one thought of it, including perhaps what even the scholars thought of it. It flowed otherwise, it felt otherwise. It lived in a kind of flawless continuity with the sap of the giant balata trees, the cry of the macaws and the scintillating water of a little fountain. It 'understood' in a very different way. To understand was to be in everything. Just a quiver, and one was in the skin of a little iguana in distress. The skin of the world was very vast. To be a man after rediscovering a million years was mysteriously like being something still other than man, a strange, unfinished possibility that could also be all kinds of other things. It was not in the dictionary, it was fluid and boundless - it had become a man through habit, but in truth, it was formidably virgin, as if all the old laws belonged to laggard barbarians. Then other moons began whirring through the skies to the cry of macaws at sunset, another rhythm was born that was strangely in tune with the rhythm of all, making one single flow of the world, and there we went, lightly, as if the body had never had any weight other than that of our human thought; and the stars were so near, even the giant airplanes roaring overhead seemed vain artifices beneath smiling galaxies. A man was the overwhelming Possible. He was even the great discoverer of the Possible. Never had this precarious invention had any other aim through millions of species than to discover that which surpassed his own species, perhaps the means to change his species - a light and lawless species. After rediscovering a million years in the great, rhythmic night, a man was still something to be invented. It was the invention of himself, where all was not yet said and done.
And then, and then ... a singular air, an incurable lightness, was beginning to fill his lungs. And what if we were a fable? And what are the means?
And what if this lightness itself were the means?
A great and solemn good riddance to all our barbarous solemnities.
Thus had we mused in the heart of our ancient forest while we were still hesitating between unlikely flakes of gold and a civilization that seemed to us quite toxic and obsolete, however mathematical. But other mathematics were flowing through our veins, an equation as yet unformed between this mammoth world and a little point replete with a light air and immense forebodings.
It was at this point that we met Mother, at this intersection of the anthropoid rediscovered and the 'something' that had set in motion this unfinished invention momentarily ensnared in a gilded machine. For nothing was finished, and nothing had been invented, really, that would instill peace and wideness in this heart of no species at all.
And what if man were not yet invented? What if he were not yet his own species?
A little white silhouette, twelve thousand miles away, solitary and frail amidst a spiritual horde which had once and for all decided that the meditating and miraculous yogi was the apogee of the species, was searching for the means, for the reality of this man who for a moment believes himself sovereign of the heavens or sovereign of a machine, but who is quite probably something completely different than his spiritual or material glories. Another, a lighter air was throbbing in that breast, unburdened of its heavens and of its prehistoric machines. Another Epic was beginning. Would Matter and Spirit meet, then, in a third PHYSIOLOGICAL position that would perhaps be at last the position of Man rediscovered, the something that had for so long fought and suffered in quest of becoming its own species? She was the great Possible at the beginning of man. Mother is our fable come true. 'All is possible' was her first open sesame.
Yes, She was in the midst of a spiritual 'horde,' for the pioneer of a new species must always fight against the best of the old: the best is the obstacle, the snare that traps us in its old golden mire. As for the worst, we know that it is the worst. But then we come to realize that the best is only the pretty muzzle of our worst, the same old beast defending itself, with all its claws out, with its sanctity or its electronic gadgets. Mother was there for something else.
'Something else' is ominous, perilous, disrupting - it is quite unbearable for all those who resemble the old beast. The story of the Pondicherry 'Ashram' is the story of an old clan ferociously clinging to its 'spiritual' privileges, as others clung to the muscles that had made them kings among the great apes. It is armed with all the piousness and all the reasonableness that had made logical man so 'infallible' among his less cerebral brothers. The spiritual brain is probably the worst obstacle to the new species, as were the muscles of the old orangutan for this fragile stranger who no longer climbed so well in the trees and sat, pensive, at the center of a little, uncertain clearing. There is nothing more pious than the old species. There is nothing more legal. Mother was searching for the path of the new species as much against all the virtues of the old as against all its vices or laws. For, in truth, 'Something Else' ... is something else.
We landed there, one day in February 1954, having emerged from our Guianese forest and a certain number of dead-end peripluses; we had knocked upon all the doors of the old world before reaching that point of absolute impossibility where it was truly necessary to embark into something else or once and for all put a bullet through the brain of this slightly superior ape. The first thing that struck us was this exotic Notre Dame with its burning incense sticks, its effigies and its prostrations in immaculate white: a Church. We nearly jumped into the first train out that very evening, bound straight for the Himalayas, or the devil. But we remained near Mother for nineteen years. What was it, then, that could have held us there? We had not left Guiana to become a little saint in white or to enter some new religion. 'I did not come upon earth to found an ashram; that would have been a poor aim indeed,' She wrote in 1934. What did all this mean, then, this 'Ashram' that was already registered as the owner of a great spiritual business, and this fragile, little silhouette at the center of all these zealous worshippers? In truth, there is no better way to smother someone than to worship him: he chokes beneath the weight of worship, which moreover gives the worshipper claim to ownership. 'Why do you want to worship?' She exclaimed. 'You have but to become! It is the laziness to become that makes one worship.' She wanted so much to make them become this 'something else,' but it was far easier to worship and quiescently remain what one was. She spoke to deaf ears. She was very alone in this 'ashram.' Little by little, the disciples fill up the place, then they say: it is ours. It is 'the Ashram.' We are 'the disciples.' In Pondicherry as in Rome as in Mecca. 'I do not want a religion! An end to religions!' She exclaimed. She struggled and fought in their midst - was She therefore to leave this Earth like one more saint or yogi, buried beneath haloes, the 'continua/rice' of a great spiritual lineage? She was seventy- six years old when we landed there, a knife in our belt and a ready curse on our lips.
She adored defiance and did not detest irreverence.
No, She was not the 'Mother of the Pondicherry Ashram.' Then who was She? ... We discovered Her step by step, as one discovers a forest, or rather as one fights with it, machete in hand - and then it melts, one loves, so sublime does it become. Mother grew beneath our skin like an adventure of life and death. For seven years we fought with Her. It was fascinating, detestable, powerful and sweet; we felt like screaming and biting, fleeing and always coming back: 'Ah! You won't catch me! If you think I came here to worship you, you're wrong!' And She laughed. She always laughed. We had our bellyful of adventure at last: if you go astray in the forest, you get delightfully lost yet still with the same old skin on your back, whereas here, there is nothing left to get lost in! It is no longer just a matter of getting lost - you have to CHANGE your skin. Or die. Yes, change species. Or become one more nauseating little worshipper - which was not on our program. 'We are the enemy of our own conception of the Divine,' She told us one day with her mischievous little smile. The whole time - or for seven years, in any event - we fought with our conception of God and the 'spiritual life': it was all so comfortable, for we had a supreme 'symbol' of it right there. She let us do as we pleased, She even opened up all kinds of little heavens in us, along with a few hells, since they go together. She even opened the door in us to a certain 'liberation,' which in the end was as soporific as eternity - but there was nowhere to get out: it WAS eternity. We were trapped on all sides. There was nothing left but these 4m2 of skin, the last refuge, that which we wanted to flee by way of above or below, by way of Guiana or the Himalayas. She was waiting for us just there, at the end of our spiritual or not so spiritual pirouettes. Matter was her concern. It took us seven years to understand that She was beginning there, 'where the other yogas leave off,' as Sri Aurobindo had already said twenty-five years earlier. It was necessary to have covered all the paths of the Spirit and all those of Matter, or in any case a large number geographically, before discovering, or even simply understanding, that 'something else' was really Something Else. It was not an improved Spirit nor even an improved Matter, but ... it could be called 'nothing,' so contrary was it to all we know. For the caterpillar, a butterfly is nothing, it is not even visible and has nothing in common with caterpillar heavens nor even caterpillar matter. So there we were, trapped in an impossible adventure. One does not return from there: one must cross the bridge to the other side. Then one day in that seventh year, while we still believed in liberations and the collected Upanishads, highlighted with a few glorious visions to relieve the commonplace (which remained appallingly commonplace), while we were still considering 'the Mother of the Ashram' rather like some spiritual super-director (endowed, albeit, with a disarming yet ever so provocative smile, as though She were making fun of us, then loving us in secret), She told us, 'I have the feeling that ALL we have lived, ALL we have known, ALL we have done is a perfect illusion ... When I had the spiritual experience that material life is an illusion, personally I found that so marvelously beautiful and happy that it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, but now it is the entire spiritual structure as we have lived it that is becoming an illusion! - Not the same illusion, but an illusion far worse. And I am no baby: I have been here for forty-seven years now!' Yes, She was eighty-three years old then. And that day, we ceased being 'the enemy of our own conception of the Divine,' for this entire Divine was shattered to pieces - and we met Mother, at last. This mystery we call Mother, for She never ceased being a mystery right to her ninety-fifth year, and to this day still, challenges us from the other side of a wall of invisibility and keeps us floundering fully in the mystery - with a smile. She always smiles. But the mystery is not solved.
Perhaps this AGENDA is really an endeavor to solve the mystery in the company of a certain number of fraternal iconoclasts.
Where, then, was 'the Mother of the Ashram' in all this? What is even 'the Ashram,' if not a spiritual museum of the resistances to Something Else. They were always - and still today - reciting their catechism beneath a little flag: they are the owners of the new truth. But the new truth is laughing in their faces and leaving them high and dry at the edge of their little stagnant pond. They are under the illusion that Mother and Sri Aurobindo, twenty-seven or four years after their respective departures, could keep on repeating themselves - but then they would not be Mother and Sri Aurobindo! They would be fossils. The truth is always on the move. It is with those who dare, who have courage, and above all the courage to shatter all the effigies, to de-mystify, and to go TRULY to the conquest of the new. The 'new' is painful, discouraging, it resembles nothing we know! We cannot hoist the flag of an unconquered country - but this is what is so marvelous: it does not yet exist. We must MAKE IT EXIST. The adventure has not been carved out: it is to be carved out. Truth is not entrapped and fossilized, 'spiritualized': it is to be discovered. We are in a nothing that we must force to become a something. We are in the adventure of the new species. A new species is obviously contradictory to the old species and to the little flags of the already-known. It has nothing in common with the spiritual summits of the old world, nor even with its abysms - which might be delightfully tempting for those who have had enough of the summits, but everything is the same, in black or white, it is fraternal above and below. SOMETHING ELSE is needed.
'Are you conscious of your ceils?' She asked us a short time after the little operation of spiritual demolition She had undergone. 'No? Well, become conscious of your cells, and you will see that it gives TERRESTRIAL results.' To become conscious of one's cells? ... It was a far more radical operation than crossing the Maroni with a machete in hand, for after all, trees and lianas can be cut, but what cannot be so easily uncovered are the grandfather and the grandmother and the whole atavistic pack, not to mention the animal and plant and mineral layers that form a teeming humus over this single pure little cell beneath its millennial genetic program. The grandfathers and grandmothers grow back again like crabgrass, along with all the old habits of being hungry, afraid, falling ill, fearing the worst, hoping for the best, which is still the best of an old mortal habit. All this is not uprooted nor entrapped as easily as celestial 'liberations,' which leave the teeming humus in peace and the body to its usual decomposition. She had come to hew a path through all that. She was the Ancient One of evolution who had come to make a new cleft in the old, tedious habit of being a man. She did not like tedious repetitions, She was the adventuress par excellence - the adventuress of the earth. She was wrenching out for man the great Possible that was already beating there, in his primeval clearing, which he believed he had momentarily trapped with a few machines. She was uprooting a new Matter, free, free from the habit of inexorably being a man who repeats himself ad infinitum with a few improvements in the way of organ transplants or monetary exchanges. In fact, She was there to discover what would happen after materialism and after spiritualism, these prodigal twin brothers. Because Materialism is dying in the West for the same reason that Spiritualism is dying in the East: it is the hour of the new species. Man needs to awaken, not only from his demons but also from his gods. A new Matter, yes, like a new Spirit, yes, because we still know neither one nor the other. It is the hour when Science, like Spirituality, at the end of their roads, must discover what Matter TRULY is, for it is really there that a Spirit as yet unknown to us is to be found. It is a time when all the 'isms' of the old species are dying: 'The age of Capitalism and business is drawing to its close. But the age of Communism too will pass ... 'It is the hour of a pure little cell THAT WILL HAVE TERRESTRIAL REPERCUSSIONS, infinitely more radical than all our political and scientific or spiritualistic panaceas.
This fabulous discovery is the whole story of the AGENDA. What is the passage? How is the path to the new species hewed open? ... Then suddenly, there, on the other side of this old millennial habit - a habit, nothing more than a habit! - of being like a man endowed with time and space and disease: an entire geometry, perfectly implacable and 'scientific' and medical; on the other side ... none of that at all! An illusion, a fantastic medical and scientific and genetic illusion: death does not exist, time does not exist, disease does not exist, nor do 'scar' and 'far' - another way of being IN A BODY. For so many millions of years we have lived in a habit and put our own thoughts of the world and of Matter into equations. No more laws! Matter is FREE. It can create a little lizard, a chipmunk or a parrot - but it has created enough parrots. Now it is SOMETHING ELSE ... if we want it.
Mother is the story of the free Earth. Free from its spiritual and scientific parrots. Free from its little ashrams as well - for there is nothing more persistent than those particular parrots.
Day after day, for seventeen years, She sat with us to tell us of her impossible odyssey. Ah, how well we now understand why She needed such an 'outlaw' and an incorrigible heretic like us to comprehend a little bit of her impossible odyssey into 'nothing.' And how well we now understand her infinite patience with us, despite all our revolts, which ultimately were only the revolts of the old species against itself. The final revolt. 'It is not a revolt against the British government which any one can easily do. It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature!' Sri Aurobindo had proclaimed fifty years earlier. She listened to our grievances, we went away and we returned. We wanted no more of it and we wanted still more. It was infernal and sublime, impossible and the sole possibility in this old, asphyxiating world. It was the only place one could go to in this barbed-wired, mechanized world, where Cincinnati is just as crowded and polluted as Hong Kong. The new species is the last free place in the general Prison. It is the last hope for the earth. How we listened to her little faltering voice that seemed to return from afar, afar, after having crossed spaces and seas of the mind to let its little drops of pure, crystalline words fall upon us, words that make you see. We listened to the future, we touched the other thing. It was incomprehensible and yet filled with another comprehension. It eluded us on all sides, and yet it was dazzlingly obvious. The 'other species' was really radically other, and yet it was vibrating within, absolutely recognizable, as if it were THAT we had been seeking from age to age, THAT we had been invoking through all our illuminations, one after another, in Thebes as in Eleusis as everywhere we have toiled and grieved in the skin of a man. It was for THAT we were here, for that supreme Possible in the skin of a man at last. And then her voice grew more and more frail, her breath began gasping as though She had to traverse greater and greater distances to meet us. She was so alone to beat against the walls of the old prison. Many claws were out all around. Oh, we would so quickly have cut ourself free from all this fiasco to fly away with Her into the world's future. She was so tiny, stooped over, as if crushed beneath the 'spiritual' burden that all the old surrounding species kept heaping upon her. They didn't believe, no. For them, She was ninety-five years old + so many days. Can someone become a new species all alone? They even grumbled at Her: they had had enough of this unbearable Ray that was bringing their sordid affairs into the daylight. The Ashram was slowly closing over Her. The old world wanted to make a new, golden little Church, nice and quiet. No, no one wanted TO BECOME. To worship was so much easier. And then they bury you, solemnly, and the matter is settled - the case is closed: now, no one need bother any more except to print some photographic haloes for the pilgrims to this brisk little business. But they are mistaken. The real business will take place without them, the new species will fly up in their faces - it is already flying in the face of the earth, despite all its isms in black and white; it is exploding through all the pores of this battered old earth, which has had enough of shams - whether illusory little heavens or barbarous little machines. It is the hour of the REAL Earth. It is the hour of the REAL man. We are all going there - if only we could know the path a little ...
This AGENDA is not even a path: it is a light little vibration that seizes you at any turning - and then, there it is, you are IN IT. 'Another world in the world,' She said. One has to catch the light little vibration, one has to flow with it, in a nothing that is like the only something in the midst of this great debacle. At the beginning of things, when still nothing was FIXED, when there was not yet this habit of the pelican or the kangaroo or the chimpanzee or the XXth century biologist, there was a little pulsation that beat and beat - a delightful dizziness, a joy in the world's great adventure; a little never-imprisoned spark that has kept on beating from species to species, but as if it were always eluding us, as if it were always over there, over there - as if it were something to become, something to be played forever as the one great game of the world; a who-knows-what that left this sprig of a pensive man in the middle of a clearing; a little 'something' that beats, beats, that keeps on breathing beneath every skin that has ever been put on it - like our deepest breath, our lightest air, our air of nothing - and it keeps on going, it keeps on going. We must catch the light little breath, the little pulsation of nothing. Then suddenly, on the threshold of our clearing of concrete, our head starts spinning incurably, our eyes blink into something else, and all is different, and all seems surcharged with meaning and with life, as though we had never lived until that very minute. Then we have caught the tail of the Great Possible, we are upon the wayless way, radically in the new, and we flow with the little lizard, the pelican, the big man, we flow everywhere in a world that has lost its old separating skin and its little baggage of habits. We begin seeing otherwise, feeling otherwise. We have opened the gate into an inconceivable clearing. Just a light little vibration that carries you away. Then we begin to understand how it CAN CHANGE, what the mechanism is - a light little mechanism and so miraculous that it looks like nothing. We begin feeling the wonder of a pure little cell, and that a sparkling of joy would be enough to turn the world inside out. We were living in a little thinking fishbowl, we were dying in an old, bottled habit. And then suddenly, all is different. The Earth is free! Who wants freedom?
It begins in a cell.
A pure little cell.
Mother is the joy of freedom.
Joyous Agenda!
Nandanam Deer House August 19, 1977
This first volume is mostly what could be called the "psychological preparation" of Satprem. Mother's confidant had to be prepared, not only to understand the evolutionary meaning of Mother's discoveries, to follow the tenuous thread of man's great future unravelled through so many apparently disconcerting experiences - which certainly required a steady personal determination for more than 19 years! - but also, in a way, he had to share the battle against the many established forces that account for the present human mode of being and bear the onslaught of the New Force. Satprem - "True Love" - as Mother called him, was a reluctant disciple. Formed in the French Cartesian mold, a freedom fighter against the Nazis and in love with his freedom, he was always ready to run away, and always coming back, drawn by a love greater than his love for freedom. Slowly she conquered him, slowly he came to understand the poignant drama of this lone and indomitable woman, struggling in the midst of an all-too-human humanity in her attempt to open man's golden future. Week after week, privately, she confided to him her intimate experiences, the progress of her endeavour, the obstacles, the setbacks, as well as anecdotes of her life, her hopes, her conquests and laughter: she was able to be herself with him. He loved her and she trusted him. It is that simple.
The course of 1961, the year of the first American voyage in space, arrives at the heart of the great mystery– "It is double! It is the same world and yet it is.... what?" In one world, everything is harmonious, without the least possibility of illness, accident or death – "a miraculous harmony" – and in the other, everything goes wrong. Yet it is the same world of matter - separated by what? "More and more, I feel it’s a question of the vibration in matter." And then, what is this "vertical time" which suddenly opens up another way of living and being in the matter, in which causality ceases to exist – "A sort of absoluteness in each second"? A new world each second, ageless, leaving no trace or imprint. And this "massive immobility" in a lightning-fast movement, this "twinkling of vibrations," as if Mother were no longer experiencing her body at the macroscopic level, but at the level of subatomic physics. And sixty years of "spiritual life" crumble like a "far more serious illusion" before.... a new Divine... or a new mode of life in matter? The next mode? "I am in the midst of hewing a path through a virgin forest." Volume II records the opening up of this path.
The course of the year 1962.... the year of the Kennedy-Khrushchev confrontation over Cuba and the first Sino-Indian conflict: "Could it be the first sign of something really.... momentous? It seems to have profoundly disrupted something central." The entire earth is disrupted. It is the year when Mother, in her body, emerges into a "third position", neither life nor death as we know them, but another side of the "web" where the laws of our physics no longer hold, and which strangely resembles the quantum world of Black Holes: time changes, space changes, death changes. Could this be the material place, in the body, where the laws of the world - which exist only in our heads - become inverted and where evolution opens out into an unthinkable body freedom, a third position, that of the next species on earth?.... "The body is beginning to obey another law. The sense of time disappears into a moving immobility.... A mass of infinite force, like pure superelectricity..... An undulating movement of corporeal waves, as vast as the earth.... All the organs have changed, they belong to another rhythm. Such a formidable power, so free! It's something else.... something else! I don't know if I am living or dead.... The nature of my nights is changing, the nature of my days is changing.... The physical vibration is becoming porous.... No more axis - it's gone, vanished! It can go forward, backwards, anywhere at all.... Ubiquity, or something of the sort." And then this cry: "Death is an illusion, illness is an illusion! Life and death are one and the same thing. It's merely a shifting of consciousness. Why, it's fantastic!" And then this simple discovery in the flesh: "The closer you draw to the cell, the more the cell says, 'Ah, but I am immortal!' "A third cellular position in which you become incapable of dying because death no longer has any reality." Has Mother, at the age of 84, discovered another material reality? "There, behind, it's like a fairy tale....Something very beautiful is in preparation, ineffably beautiful - a lovely story that Sri Aurobindo was trying to bring onto earth, and it is sure to come!"
The year of Kennedy's assassination; the beginnings of the Sino-Soviet split. While the destructive giants respond faster and faster and science calls in question the laws of the universe, Mother is slowly hewing out the path to the next species on earth. "The path I seek is ever descending," into the consciousness of the cells. Will it be global death then, or, just as the birds followed the reptiles, the beginning of a new world? "I am on the threshold of a stupendous realisation, which depends on a very tiny thing." She is 85 this year. Will it be a more "intelligent" species within the framework of our physics, or one endowed with another kind of intelligence capable of changing the laws of physics, as the frog changes the laws of the tadpole in its fishbowl? In the course of this descent towards the self, Mother suddenly veers into another physical universe: "Everything looks as though you were seeing it for the first time, even the motion of the earth and the stars… There is no distance, no difference, there is not something that sees and something that is seen.... You become a mountain, a forest, a house.... You see simultaneously thousands of miles away and at very close range" - a kind of cellular ubiquity. And then, too, this astounding realisation: "The body is everywhere!" Is the next species ubiquitous? For what happens to the laws of the old physics when the fishbowl is shattered, when distance and "elsewhere" are abolished? "All the usual rhythms have changed.... a universal movement so tremendously rapid that it seems motionless.... A true physical that lies behind." And where is death for one who escapes the wear and tear of time inside the fishbowl? "If this condition becomes a natural thing, death can no longer exist!.... It would be a new phase of life on earth." And there is no need to look far for it: "The field of experience is right here, at every second.... people strive to enter into contact with something that is right here." A new cellular consciousness that will be a new kind of physics and perhaps the earth's next biology?
"The only hope for the future is a change in man's consciousness. It is left to men to decide if they will collaborate to this change or if it will have to be imposed upon them by the power of crushing circumstances." As the new post gradually infiltrates Mother's body it is the earth one wonders about. How is the earth going to absorb "this vibration as intense as a superior kind of fire"? "I see very few bodies around me capable of bearing it.... So what's going to happen?" It is the year of the first Chinese atomic bomb. Mother is 86. "A tiny, infinitesimal, stippled infiltration - the miracle of the earth!" A catastrophic miracle? Isn't that butterfly some sort of catastrophe to the caterpillar? "Death is no solution, so we are here seeking another solution - there must be another solution." Imperturbably, Mother descends deeper into the cellular consciousness and deeper still: "A kind of certainty, deep in matter that the solution lies there.... It is at the atomic level that a change must take place; the question concerns the state of infinitesimal vibrations in matter." Time veers into something else: "Perhaps it is into the past that I go, perhaps the future, perhaps the present?...." And even the laws of matter change: "As soon as you reach the domain of the cells, that sort of heaviness of matter disappears. It becomes fluid and vibrant again. Which would tend to show that happiness, thickness, inertia have been added on - it's false matter, the one we think or feel, but not matter as it really is." So what, then, would true matter be, the matter of the next species? "I am on the threshold of a new perception of life, as if certain parts of my consciousness were changing from the caterpillar state to the butterfly state...." And the earth groans and protests.... at what? "The whole youth seems to be seized by a strange vertigo...." Are we going to move on to a next species or not?
"A whole world is opening up." It is the year when Mother reaches "the mind of the cells", buried under the old genetic coding that seems to want to keep men forever harnessed to death: "There, there is such a concentration of power.... as if you had caught the tail of the solution." Another power of consciousness in matter capable of undoing the old program: "A kind of memory being elaborated from below" - a new cellular memory which is no longer the memory of decay, illness, death, gravity and all our "real" world? At the same time, at that cellular level, freed from the old laws, Mother discovers "two worlds one inside the other: a world of truth and a world of falsehood, and that world of Truth is PHYSICAL; it is not up above: it's MATERIAL. And that's what must come to the forefront and replace the other: the true physical." Mother called that replacement the "transfer of power". Is it really conceivable that a marvel of physical freedom lies concealed within our cells, while we strive and toil outside with illusory panaceas: "If even a tiny aggregate of cells were to succeed in experiencing the total transformation, all the way, that would be more effective than any big upheaval. But it's more difficult.... You must overcome death! Death must cease to exist, it's very clear." Is the entire earth not in the process of living through this "transfer of power", just as one day it passed from the reign of the animal to the reign of the mind? "Everything is escaping, there's nothing left to lean on, it is the passage to the new movement.... and for the old, that always means a dangerous disruption of equilibrium."
Humanity is not the last rung of terrestrial creation. Evolution continues and man will be surpassed. It's up to each one to know whether he wants to participate in the adventure of the new species." This was 1966, the year of the Cultural Revolution in China. A far more profound revolution was taking place in a body which, on behalf of all the little bodies of the earth was seeking the one solution that would change everything: "We are seeking the process that will give the power to undo death.... The mind of the cell is what will find the key." it is the perilous transformation from a human body moves by the laws of the mind to the next body moved by a still nameless law buried in the heart of the cell: "A coagulated vibration, denser than air, extremely homogeneous, of golden luminosity, with a fantastic power of propulsion.... Everything is becoming strange, everything.... The body is no longer dependent on physical laws…" Isn't this the sensation the first vertebrate must have had when it emerged from the watery milieu into another nameless one in which we breathe today? "Each part of the body, at its moment of change, feels the end has come.... All the supports have been taken away.... I have no path to follow!" For what is the path to the next species? "A few have got to open it up." At times, though, the other "milieu" suddenly appears: "An instant marvel.... A state in which time no longer has the same reality, it's very peculiar.... an innumerable present. Another way of living." 80 years earlier, a little girl had undergone her first revolution of matter: "When I was told that everything was made up of "atoms", it caused a sort of revolution in my head: Why. nothing is real, then!" A second revolution takes place at the level of the cellular consciousness: the old matter and its apparent laws change into a new world and a new way of being in the body.
This year, all the features of the yoga of the cells become clear: "A growing conviction that a perfection achieved in matter is a far more perfect perfection than any other. The consciousness expressed in transformed cells is a marvel: it legitimises all these ages of misery. Oh, what a fuss all those gods make." This year marks the discovery of "true matter".... without fuss: "In that cellular limpidity, there are no more problems: the solution precedes the problem. That is, things arrange themselves automatically." It's another mode of life on earth - "such a natural way of being" - in a body freed from its mental shackles and the laws of false matter: "The extraordinary impression of the unreality of suffering the unreality of illness.... It does not cure illness: it annuls it - it makes it unreal.... And then you see: as the functioning gradually grows perfect, it necessarily, inevitably means victory over death." And meanwhile, Surveyor is digging the ground of the moon with its mechanical arms, while our own secrets remain buried in a little cell: "We can travel anywhere, we know what's going on anywhere.... and we don't know what's going on inside ourselves." War is raging in Biafra, the Israeli troops are marching toward Suez, American planes are bombing Haiphong, China explodes its first thermonuclear bomb.... and so on. "A tremendous conflict over earth." At stake is a new earth, or a return to the old fiasco: "A local and momentary manifestation is not ruled out, but what is needed is a collective transformation sufficient to create a new species on earth.... This fact is certain." Will we understand where the real way out is, and the Marvel concealed in a human body?
A fire spread across the world that year, from Warsaw to Colombia, from Nanterre to Alexandria: "There are long periods when things are being prepared, and a moment comes when something happens; and this something is what will bring about a new development in the world. Like the moments when man appeared on earth; now it is another being." This is the second turning point of Mother's Yoga. She is 90. Auroville has just been founded: "A center for accelerated evolution." Martin Luther King is assassinated, and Robert Kennedy. Russia invades Czechoslovakia - what is going on? "I have the strong impression of an attempt to make us learn something like the secret of the functioning [of man, of the earth]. The method we have learned is constantly shown to be false, it doesn't conform to reality, and there is a will to make us find the true method, but through experience." As if the earth were shut in a bowl, prisoner of a "false matter": "There is a sort of web over the entire earth, and the body is being taught how to get out of it.... Little by little the consciousness of the cells is breaking that hold." And on the other side of the web all of a sudden: "Never in my whole life have I seen or felt anything so beautiful!.... The most marvellous hours ever possible on earth - why do people go looking up above for something which is right here!" The short-lived miracle of 1968 seems to be swallowed up, while the walls of our bowl are slowly but inexorably being shattered in every country, every continent and every branch of human knowledge. "A considerable amount of time would still seem necessary for everything to be ready to change. And yet, there is almost a promise that a sudden change is going to take place." Could it be that, one fine morning, one last pressure of circumstances will throw us headlong into a new consciousness?
Now Mother has found the "passage", what she calls "the new consciousness," the one capable of opening up a new world to us, just as the first breaking of the watery mirror by an amphibian opened up a new air to us: "I don't know what is happening, there's a state of intense vibration, like waves of lightning rapidity, so rapid that they see motionless. And then I go off to America, to Europe.... This body has never been so happy: these cells, other cells, it was life everywhere, consciousness everywhere, all bodies were this body!...." And all our physiological misery vanishes by the same token: "There is a sort of dilation of the cells, the sense of boundaries lessons, fades away, and the pains vanish physically." And it isn't "another world," it is this earth, our earth but lived otherwise: "As if we had entered an unreal falsehood, and everything disappears once you get out of it - it simply does not exist! And all the artificial means of getting out of it, including Nirvana, are worthless. SALVATION IS PHYSICAL! It is here, right here. All the rest, death included, really becomes a falsehood - there is no such thing as "disappearing", no "life vs death"!...." And as she breaks through the walls of our bowl, the whole world is in revolt - including Mother's entourage - as if it were under the pressure of a new air: "A considerable number of desires for it to die [Mother's body]; everywhere, they are everywhere!.... The whole gamut of feelings around me, from anxiety, eagerness for it to be over quickly, to impatient desires: free at last!.... I don't want to be put in a box, the cells are conscious.... What is going to happen? I don't know. It runs contrary to all habits." A new species is quite contrary to the old habits of the world - will the world accept it, or wind up killing it off?
The beginning of the terrible years.... There was the feeling that Mother had found the secret of the change, conquered all she could from her own body, and that she was now sitting there, surrounded by the pack, just putting up with each and every resistance of the old species. "The change is DONE. Everything is tooth and nail, ferociously after me, but it's over." A new mode of being of the cellular consciousness had appeared on earth, as one day, in inert matter, there appeared a new mode of being called life - but this time it is "overlife": "The impression there is a way of being of the cells that would be the beginning of a new body; only, when that comes, the body itself feels it is dying." What would be the feeling of the first corpuscle to experience life? "The body feels it has reached the point of.... unknown. A very, very strange sensation. A sort of new vibration. It's so new that.... I can't speak of anguish, but it's.... the unknown. A mystery of the unknown." And there, what we call death is like the other side of the bowl for the former fish, and yet it is not "another world": "They are surprisingly one within the other! There is something there.... Is it possible? For overlife is both life and death together." And then, this cry of the breakthrough: "What appears to us as 'the laws of nature' is nonsense!...." Another world ON EARTH in which the old mortal laws of our bowl break down.... into something else? "I have just had a fantastic vision of the cradle of a future.... which is not very far. It's like a formidable mass suspended above the earth." But will the old pack let her go through to the end?
The last turning point of Mother's yoga, and she comes out of it with this cry: "I have walked a long, long time. There was nothing but a constant cry, as if everything were torn away from me. It was the whole problem of the world." And this Agenda is more and more strewn with heartrending little cries. It was not enough to have found the secret for herself, the others too had to understand, her own disciples, Nations locked in their egoistic power: "They have no faith! 'She is old, she is old', an atmosphere of resistance to the change; 'it is impossible, impossible' from all sides.... Not a single minute should be wasted - I am in a hurry.... The reign of the Divine must, oh, must come!.... If the entire Russian block were to turn to the right side, that would be an enormous support! The victory is certain, but I don't know which path will be followed to reach it.... We must cling, cling so tightly to Truth.... They don't listen to me any more." She is 93, groping her way into the unknown: "I see more clearly with eyes closed than with eyes open, and it is a physical vision, purely physical, but a kind of physical that seems more complete. The consciousness of the cells is what has to change, all the rest will follow naturally! I have the feeling I am on my way to discovering the illusion that must be destroyed so that physical life may go on uninterrupted - death is the result of a distortion of consciousness." Will she be heard? Will she be allowed to pursue her experience? "Only a violent death could halt the transformation; otherwise the body knows that the work will go on and on and on...." And this cry again: "There will be a miracle! But what, I don't know."
"Before dying falsehood rises in full swing. Still people understand only the lesson of catastrophe. Will it have to come before they open their eyes?" This is the year of Watergate, of Nixon's first trip to China, the assassination of the Israeli athletes in Munich, the first oil embargo. This is Mother's last lap. A lap strewn with heartrending little cries and stunning visions. The end of one world, the beginning of another.... whether we want it or not. "Sometimes, it is so new and unexpected, it's almost painful." And I would ask her, "But is it a state outside matter?" "I don't go outside of physical life, but.... it looks different. But it is strange. And it is PHYSICAL, that is the extraordinary thing! As if the physical had split in two.... A new state in matter. And it is ruled by something that is not the sun, I don't know what it is.... I am touching another world. Another way of being.... dangerous but wonderful." How I listened to her little breath as she gasped for air, a breath that seemed to come from another side of the world: "There is no difference between life and death. It's neither life nor death, it is.... something. It is not the disappearance of death you understand: BOTH are being changed.... into something still unknown, which seems at once extremely dangerous and absolutely wonderful." And what if "death" were merely the other, MATERIAL side of our human bowl, the sunlit shore for a species to come? A new condition on both sides of the world, in which life and death change into.... something else? "I am treading a very thin and narrow line...." And then this cry, this entreaty: "Let me do the work!" On November 17, 1973, she passed away - why?
THE APPROACH
"That is what you must find, — the state that the experience has revealed: not by following the meaning of the word, of the expression, not even by the impression, but a direct communication of this experience by a sort of revelation, of that which seems to be expressing itself, translating itself… Do not try to work things out with the mind. This surpasses everything."
Yes, Mother, but it is very difficult to understand. (Mother smiles)
Yes, when you will have climbed to this stage you will understand better. And yet, all the directions are given, the steps and also the essence of what I am experiencing. But it is not put in the language that we speak or write. It is absolutely different and moulded in a sort of expression which suggests, rather than explains; and it is charged by a power which expresses and a light which illumines by itself without taking recourse to the words or their meaning. There are no sentences as we ordinarily have, with the verbs and the complement which accord with each other, with the turn of phrases and expressions similar to what we find in the books which give a precise meaning. But it is absolutely different here. It is the sound and the vibration which evoke a feeling, an emotion which give the indication of what we feel, but do not correspond to the ordinary sense — it is implied.
You see, I have stated these experiences which in fact cannot be formulated by the ordinary sentences and expressions, because it is so subtle, so sublime and suggests spiritual values which cannot be translated by these sentences and these expressions. The felicity, the joy, the aura and the spirit behind these expressions can be translated only by the projection of a state of consciousness in short sentences and appropriate expressions which are not found in our poor vocabulary. That is why for an intellectual or an erudite, this will be only a child’s babbling. They would understand nothing of what is written. The meaning is not exactly what the words stand for, that is the meaning and the explanation that the dictionaries give. But behind the words and the expressions or just beneath the lines are to be found a feeling, an effect of what I want to say but that is implied, which, in fact, projects the true meaning to the readers who are open and receptive.
You see, as in all that Sri Aurobindo has written, it is certainly not for the intellectuals to decipher, analyse and arrive at a conclusion by their logic. It surpasses all their comprehension. It is not by the intellect that one can understand Sri Aurobindo, or by the mind with its diverse faculties, — it is impossible. It is only with the help of the intuition and an inner illumination which opens the closed doors of the mind to what is above, which perceives and assimilates the true meaning,… it is in the flight of liberty, from the vastness of the regions beyond the imaginations where the Word is born that his pen describes and brings down the Supreme Knowledge. That is why each word, each sound, each expression, each vibration that they emit is charged with an ineffable force and an illumining light which can be expressed only by as many planes of consciousness that man has at his disposal. He who seeks the Truth of existence finds the highest he can reach in its true revelation. It is so, each word He has written is charged with a consciousness and an ineffable light which projects itself according to what is proper to the plane and to the level of the development of the consciousness of the reader. And at each level the meaning is different, and yet it is the same word which expresses a range of different significances. One must try to find the spirit behind the words whose value is expressed by the thousands of associations of beauty and of splendour. It is, above all, the rhythm, the cadence, the harmony, the colour, the beauty embellishing by the sound, the lucidity of expression, the subtlety of the thoughts and the spiritual ardour which He has so easily described in so simple and so profound a language, as if He has opened the celestial doors from where cascades the Divine Grace, the Grace which is accessible to all those who will take the pains to read his books.
And what I have done is to project the experiences which I have had, the words which I hear in the depths of my being, the soul-state that evokes the Inexpressible in visible forms, the perception of the Imperceptible, — not by the association of words or ideas, but by the vibration, — … a certain state produces a certain experience, a certain mode produces a certain perception. All this does not occur one after another, but it is simultaneous, synthetic and universally one, something which cannot be expressed. It is this … it acts … and it manifests. There is no mind, no formation, and it surpasses all the knowledge, conceived or expressed.
It is a new language or mode of expression where the words or the expressions express only the substance; but I was compelled to take recourse to words and sentences, just to seem to say what I wanted to express, just to guide, so that what is not written expresses itself from behind the words like an intuition. And when the expressions stop abruptly… with three points, what I want to say ought to reveal itself in what is not expressed by the words…. In the silence that follows is the great mystery to be found.
That is what you must find, — the state that the experience has revealed: not by following the meaning of the word, of the expression, not even by the impression, but a direct communication of this experience by a sort of revelation, of that which seems to be expressing itself, translating itself; it is not uttered, it suggests, and we understand without it being said or pronounced, something that beckons like a vibration murmuring in the soul, the revelation of this experience and of what follows, that which is not written. And consequently what ought to follow becomes more important and implies a whole series of revelations that develop more and more. It is as if one stands before the silence that is like a wall, and toc! one passes through and one finds oneself before the immensity from where the splendours of Knowledge flow towards you. It is like discovering the hidden treasure from where springs forth the joy of consciousness. In fact, what has not been said indicates that which has to be found. It is this….
It is this that you have to find in order to understand better what I have left unsaid. Look here…. The experience itself reveals its form and projects the all-powerful Truth that it contains without the intermediary of word or expression, Find what is behind and you have all that you want. Do not try to work things out with the mind. This surpasses everything.
Mona Sarkar > Blessings of the Grace
“And the great Door can open at any page, any line of that Agenda: there is no need to understand, perhaps it is not even necessary, but to grasp hold of that straight little vibration which goes through all appearances and opens up the new world like a sudden cascade of laugh among hopeless trivialities and most obscure contradictions.” - Satprem
We do not know how to read what is here, right here. Mother is really the One who un-covers.
She grasped every minute of her life, every circumstance, in order to un-cover. Until the end. Never did She put a definitive meaning on things, because the meaning was to walk. Nothing was ever established, fixed: it was always the next step. She walked strangely upon nothing to make the something spring up at every step. And it was alive, it was brand new, it was like perpetual dynamite in the old crust that we carry about.
And now, what was She going to blow up?
No, She would not leave behind any Gospel or system or anything one can really walk on, but I don’t know what definitive hole in the carapace of the terrestrial habits of seeing and living, and an open sesame that only waits for our becoming aware of it.
The whole evolution is meant to lead us to Matter’s last open sesame.
Satprem > Mutation of Death
FACTS VS. MISCONCEPTIONS
Announcement published by Satprem in the "Bulletin,"" February 1974 issue
The 'Notes on the Way' came to an end with Mother’s departure. Not that the path traced by Mother or her notes were finished, but it was all that She wanted to say for the moment. And indeed, it is not really a matter of saying “more,” but, for each person, of descending into one’s own heart and understanding—perhaps understanding that there is something to understand.
It seemed to us that making a selection among Mother’s words would already be to “orient” them and, in a certain way, distort the facts and the experience by giving them an emphasis and a meaning they do not have when taken as a whole. Mother always warned us against this kind of “extracts,” which would only lead to the narrow sense of our own conception.
Thus it seemed to us that the only authentic possibility was to publish the entirety of what Mother called her Agenda—The Agenda of the Supramental Action—from the beginning.
It is certain that a complete text is not yet possible, since a good number of these Agendas refer to events or circumstances too close for us to be able to speak of them in the coming years. However, to the extent possible, and when necessary without fearing certain personal aspects, we will publish everything that can shed light on or directly concern Mother’s Work.
The framework of the Bulletin did not seem suitable to us for the publication of this Agenda, for we feel that Mother would not have wanted to use an “official” organ to present such intimate experiences. Moreover, the enormous mass of these documents—of which the 'Notes on the Way' represented only a few fragments—could never have fit into a quarterly publication. The only solution that seemed practical to us was to publish this Agenda in the form of fascicles, just as Savitri had been published in fascicles as Sri Aurobindo delivered his texts—and indeed, the Agenda of the Supramental Action is in some way the epic of Mother.
It will certainly take time before we can bring order to the extraordinary torrent of this epic and weigh with full awareness what can or cannot be said immediately—although one day everything will be said, and perhaps there will no longer be any need to say it: we shall see—but the first fascicle could appear for the first anniversary of Mother’s departure, next November, and be followed by others as they are ready, without a fixed date, probably each month.
Thus the 'Notes on the Way' lead into The Agenda of the Supramental Action on Earth.
Source: Lettres et Messages de Satprem au Nouveau Monde
Satprem received no response from the Ashram Press regarding his above mentioned proposal. From his conversations with the senior authorities at the Ashram, Satprem deduced their apprehensions about an ‘uncensored’ version of the Agenda. Satprem felt convinced about going ahead with the publication of The Agenda in a book form. On 11th February, 1967 The Mother had told him in reference to The Agenda- “It will be a monument! It's better to leave it as a monument, not to publish it in bits”.
Satprem made another attempt to publish the Agenda at the Ashram: this time at All India Press in Pondicherry which rejected the proposal. It becomes clear to Satprem that the Ashram authorities will not authorize the complete, uncut publication of the Mother’s Agenda.
Satprem made a final attempt to publish the Agenda at Auro-Press and met with the same “reluctance.”
Satprem replies to the manager of Auropress:
“You know, or should know—you should have understood—that these 13 volumes entrusted to me by the Mother represent a revolution for the Ashram itself, which must either be REBORN or fall back into the past.”
The Managing Trustee writes to Mr. Robert Laffont, Satprem’s publisher in Paris, “inviting” him not to publish Satprem’s conversations and sending him “the first volume of the Mother’s Agenda already printed by us”: a 71-page booklet, printed by the Ashram Press on August 30, 1977.
The Managing Trustee publishes a circular, distributed among bookstores, publishers, and newspapers in India, concerning the Agenda: “The writings, books, or conversations of the Mother can only be considered original or authentic if they are published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry.”
Robert Laffont replies to the Trustees that: “Under French law, Satprem is legally the author of these conversations and, consequently, fully qualified to assume responsibility for their publication.”
In 1977, Satprem founded the Institut de Recherches Évolutives (IRE) in Paris. The Agenda was first published in French through the IRE with the first volumes appearing around 1978. By 1982, all 13 volumes were published in French. English translations followed thereafter.
NO.
- Mother's Agenda → transcripts of the audio tapes of The Mother's conversation running into 13 volumes with 6000+ pages - Notes on the Way → edited presentations for the Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education - only 332 pages.
During the years 1961 to 1973 the Mother had frequent conversations with one of her disciples - Satprem - about the experiences she was having at the time. She called these conversations, which were in French, l’Agenda.
Selected transcripts of the tape-recorded conversations were seen, approved and occasionally revised by the Mother for publication in the Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education; they appeared regularly from February 1965 to April 1973 under the titles "Notes on the Way" and "A Propos".
Notes on the Way was selective and pedagogical, meant to make the material accessible. It was NOT a literal transcript and hence it has textual discrepancies with the corresponding conversations in Mother's Agenda.
Edited compilations are not merely abridgments — they reflect interpretive choices that often exclude precisely those elements that reveal the depth, difficulty, and totality of the Mother’s work.
In recent years, there has been a growing demand for an “Essential Agenda” that removes “incidental, personal, or departmental” material. While abridgment of large works can be legitimate, several critical issues arise:
No — the Mother did not prohibit the publication of the Agenda. What she expressed was a conditional approach: the Agenda was to be preserved and published, but at the right time, in its totality, and as a whole monument — not in fragments or prematurely.
She actively envisioned its publication:
It will be my parting gift… IF I GO. And I don’t intend to.
Mother's Agenda > March 13, 1962
It will be a monument! It's better to leave it as a monument, not to publish it in bits: massive, a thick volume like this, and then... (laughing) crush people underneath! Then they won't ask anything anymore..... When I have caught hold of the end, we'll publish it.
Mother's Agenda > February 11, 1967
Her reservations were about timing and context, not prohibition:
Certain remarks were marked "unpublishable for the time being" or kept strictly for the Agenda — particularly personal observations about individuals around her. This was a distinction between what goes into the Agenda and what gets circulated in the Bulletin, not a ban on the Agenda itself.
It is unpublishable for the time being.
Naturally, this mustn't be published, but it's to be kept.
Mother's Agenda > August 27, 1969
"What I told you last time is not to be published — it's all right for the Agenda. I mean what I said about the people around me." "Everything personal is for the Agenda."
Mother's Agenda > July 29, 1972
The phrase "it's all right for the Agenda" is particularly telling — even what she considered unpublishable in general, she explicitly sanctioned for inclusion in the Agenda. The Agenda was the rightful, protected space for even her most 'private comments'.
No.
Mother's Agenda is a transcript of the recorded conversations The Mother had with Satprem.
Some parts where Satprem has added content are: 1. Mother's Agenda (1951-1960) containing some of Satprem’s letters 2. Mother's Agenda (1972-1973) contains Satprem's comments and addendums.
If one compares Satprem's additions with The Mother's own words, it is evident that Satprem has a MINIMAL presence in the 13 volumes. Mother's Agenda therefore comprises primarily of The Mother's own recorded words.
Editing ≠ distortion
After the Mother’s departure, Satprem transcribed and edited the recordings into publishable volumes.
This implicitly involves:
When compared with the available audio recordings, there is no evidence to suggest that Satprem altered meanings or fabricated content.
For conversations where no audio recording exists, any assessment must be made in light of the overall context and recurring themes of The Mother’s Agenda. In many instances, similar ideas or lines of thought can be found in other recorded conversations, providing internal consistency.
It is also important to note that publishing unrecorded conversations with The Mother and Sri Aurobindo has long been an accepted practice. For example, no audio recordings were required to authenticate the evening talks of Sri Aurobindo recorded by Nirodbaran or A. B. Purani, nor the conversations documented by Mona Sarkar, Anilbaran Roy, or Huta.
1. The Mother’s Agenda is not based on memory or reconstruction. It rests on:
Anyone who knows French can listen and verify line by line.
The claim about cuts and disjointedness has simple, technical explanations:
No credible source provides:
On the contrary, in response to this suspicion raised in an online discussion, a participant named Robert offers first-hand testimony, stating that he has listened to the tapes extensively and compared them with the French text, finding them consistent. [Link]
Hence, the claim remains speculative and baseless unless proven otherwise.
Audio recordings for ~75% of the long conversations (more than 2 pages) are available. Please refer to the following graph for a year-wise breakup.
NOTE ON DATA RATIONALISATION
All audio tapes were NOT preserved due to practical constraints at the time.
As noted in the editor’s Notes on the Recording, limited access to recording equipment and shortages of tapes meant some recordings were erased after transcription. In addition, audio tapes for many brief conversations and sessions largely consisting of Satprem reading his manuscript drafts (e.g., On the Way to Supermanhood, 1970–71) were not preserved.
Please refer to next question for more details.
Yes.
Most of the conversations arousing strong reactions or generating controversy are preserved in The Mother’s own recorded voice. Attributing them to Satprem’s distortions is therefore factually unfounded. A number of such instances — especially those with significant implications — can be directly verified through dated audio recordings.
Some links to online community debates on Mother's Agenda are provided below. It is followed by an AI-generated summary of these discussions covering diverse points-of-views, claims, contentions & controversies.
These analyses show that the controversy around Mother’s Agenda is not grounded in demonstrated evidence of distortion, but in differences of interpretation, belief, and trust.
A perspective on Satprem and The Mother’s Agenda based on The Mother’s words in the Agenda and Satprem’s written works, letters and notes.
Image credit: Sketch used in cover image (at the top of the page) was drawn by André Hababou
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