India - the Mother

July 14, 1962

The Old World is an old world, in the true sense of the word "old." India is much older, but she is more alive. Yet now she strikes me as something so rotten! They went rotten, you know, like fruits when you put a rotten fruit next to a good one: England came and stayed much too long. It made things go quite rotten. Very, very rotten; that's difficult to heal. Otherwise, what's not rotten is really fine.

But there is a place with a little something, as there is in little children and animals, a little something that goes like this (Mother imitates a fledgling poking its beak out of the nest and peering around), almost peep-peep-peep, oh, alert and eager to know: America. They have a carapace as hard as an automobile's—it has to be hammered into pieces—but underneath there's something that wants to know ... and knows nothing, nothing, is totally ignorant, but, oh, it wants to know! And that can be touched. They may be the first to awaken.

A few in India, but a more widespread movement in America....

They are stupid, stupid! They understand nothing whatsoever, and yet ... a flame of aspiration, and suddenly something awakens. And they want to know, want to investigate, want to find, want to learn, want to ... It goes like this (Mother blinks her eyes like a fledgling waking up), vibrating and searching.

(After a silence) All this is for the next hundred years. There are going to be some changes.

1900?... Well, yes, in 2000 things will take a clear direction.

Mother's Agenda: July 14, 1962