India - the Mother

August 16, 1969

From every side it comes like that (gesture of waves of onslaught). Now they want to force me into politics ... and it's an unspeakable mud pit! I've never seen it as I now do, because now I SEE : I see people, things, reactions, what goes on.... It's so disgusting!... Sri Aurobindo had always told me, "We must keep out of politics," and I kept out of it.

From every side they're asking me for blessings ... and I give blessings to everyone!⁶³ (Mother laughs) But I warn them, I tell them, blessings TO DO THE WORK. Each of them is asking for himself to be victorious, but "that" doesn't budge. All that I've done (because I have been dragged into it) is to ask for what happens to be the best for the country's future—it has already had enough difficulties! I mean, there were two centuries of servitude under the British: that has left them com-plete-ly rotten. So it's enough. They would need to pull through. Oh ... unimaginable, it's unimaginable.

... I think democracy ... Already at the age of ten, I found democracy to be idiotic (there, in France), but anyway ... It's idiotic there, in France (but that doesn't matter), but at any rate I don't think democracy is AT ALL, at all an organization in accord with India's spirit—not in the least. And the proof is that it's not at all the collectivity of people that controls things, it's a few scoundrels who push themselves forward, saying, "I represent this, I represent that...."

(After a silence) Unfortunately, the new invader would be China, and that ... that would be frightful.

But you know that in "The Ideal of Human Unity," Sri Aurobindo says in black and white that the next battlefield would be India?

Yes, yes.

*That the conflict would take place in Asia, with India as the first battlefield.⁶⁴

Yes, I know very well, we spoke about it together before he wrote it. I know very well.

(After a silence) There's a Chinese in Shantiniketan [Tan Yunshan] who once came to see Sri Aurobindo; I know him, he spoke to me. He is a philosopher. He had properties in China (he lives in India) and gave everything to the Communists, saying, "I give it to you so you don't have to take it"!... He told me personally [in 1939], "China is a very intelligent country; they would be able to understand Sri Aurobindo's writings, and I see NOTHING ELSE that could save the world from confusion."

And they're cutting off the heads of all the intellectual there,⁶⁵ they're demolishing a whole generation—stultifyin a whole generation.

Yes.

(After a long concentration) When one is assailed by the vision of this disorder and this confusion, there is only one thing to do, it's to go into the consciousness in which one knows that there is only ONE Being, ONE Consciousness, ONE Power—there is only ONE Oneness—and all those things take place within this Oneness. And that all our petty vision, our petty knowledge, our petty judgments, our petty ... all of it is nothing, it's microscopic in comparison with the Consciousness that rules over the Whole. And then, if one has the least sense of why separate individualities exist, maybe it's only to enable aspiration—the existence of aspiration, of this movement, this movement of self-giving and surrender, of trust and FAITH. The faith that there lies the raison d'être of the make-up of individuals, and the aspiration to become THAT in all one's intensity and all one's sincerity.... That's the only thing needed.

That's the only thing needed, the ONLY thing; the only thing that subsists. All the rest ... phantasmagoria.

It's the only thing effective in every case: when you want to do something, when you cannot do something, when you act, when the body can no longer act ... In EACH and EVERY case, that alone—that alone: make conscious contact with the Supreme Consciousness, unite with it, and ... wait. There.

Then one receives the exact indication of what one has to do every minute—to do or not to do, to act or to remain still. That's all. Even to be or not to be. And it's the only solution. More and more, more and more this certitude is there: it's the ONLY solution. All the rest is childishness.

I feel, I feel that agitation, like this (Mother feels the air), phew! It whirls about in the atmosphere!

Poor humanity.

Mother's Agenda: August 16, 1969