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.

In a letter written in 1981, Satprem again addresses the issue of the footnotes :

I can say in all humility that it is quite possible that today I would write certain notes differently, and it is quite certain that I would not write any of the books I have written now — because I change; otherwise, I would not be a man but a fossil. That is what Mother said about the painter Gustave Moreau: he spent his time redoing his paintings — which is silly; it is better to do another one.

So let's leave these notes as they were written, and honestly written, at the time. If they are outdated, too bad, we'll write other books. And Mother would certainly say that all these Agendas are "old stuff" – of course, because she is already far ahead.

The main thing is to do the work honestly and, through it, allow ourselves to be imbued with this Current that carries us toward something else.

(Translated from Lettres et Messages Au Nouveau Monde, September 28 1981)

Admittedly, it is hard not to squirm each time a revered name from the Ashram appears in Satprem’s line of fire. But when is the shot really fired? Except in the acute phase of crisis and during occasions when this painful chapter was invoked even decades later - people by their names are hardly mentioned as Satprem seems to have very little interest in settling any score with anyone in the Ashram. For in moments of calm, his is only a vast, impersonal, all encompassing gaze looking at what seems to be a regrettable clash of personalities but in reality a very poignant clash of cosmic forces.

One cannot even say that the samples around her were especially bad, no: they were simply the earth, the earth’s state, the earth’s breathing, the earth’s habit. The earth’s pettiness, the old catastrophic habit.

The Mutation of Death

—

I was one of those samples. involuntarily—and if I mention the kind of sample I was, it is merely to give some idea of the collection of negations that surrounded Mother. Each one was a particular negation. A particular form of death, actually.

The New Species

—

And the little world around her was the exact reflection of the big world, with denser shadows and a few rare lights, as is usual under the light source. It was the evolutionary laboratory under pressure. Everything was taking place there, on a small scale. There were no “disciples or “non-disciples,” not faithful or unfaithful ones, no good or wicked people: there were only small terrestrial samples, the old ingredients of a strange evolutionary concoction boiling at a high heat⎯was it to succeed or not? It was a little how things were. One felt that everything was there, every possibility and every marvel were there, poison and Falsehood were there (how much so!), the old terrestrial calamity, clinging death, and the Miracle … if one wished. She was there, so fragile, so vast and tranquil⎯without a shadow of a person in that small body: a formidable, quiet active witness who welcomed everything, looked at everything, good and evil, poison and nectar, who embraced all in her great, immobile white Fire, without any difference, without pluses and minuses. It was the world, her world. These were the data of the problem, and each piece of data had its immense, absolute sense, as if that small black whirl that entered her room brought all the miseries of the earth in its wake⎯everyone was one misery⎯and that sudden, mute little flame all the hope of the earth. And it was like that, each day like a great, silent Act whose actors did not know the stakes. They climbed up the stairs with their obscure little business, their microscopic quarrel out of a million quarrels of the world, their tiny pettiness out of the general pettiness everywhere⎯and who prayed for the earth? Who had that single little cry within for a true earth at last, that flame which forces the Moment and breaks the door open? ...

Was the Moment to be missed? As in 1950. The Moment of the earth?

No. What has to be will be in spite of everything, or BECAUSE of everything. [March 6, 1971] Oh, because, yes, because of all this misery, this pettiness, this ugliness, because of all that which rends our hearts and strangles us. It has to be. It has, it has to be…. It is not possible otherwise, it is monstrous otherwise. A true little prayer to trigger the Moment and open the Door. I used to go to her place as if counting the heartbeats of the earth.

The Mutation of Death

A revolutionary in a condemned cell had once said: “When the Fate of a nation is being decided, the Fate of individuals should be forgotten.”

Could he have imagined that when the decisive moment arrives, when the destiny of an entire species is to be determined, when the fate of the whole edifice of an Incarnate’s Work hangs in the balance - individual name, deed, prestige of human egoes would seem to matter so much that it clouded everything, including the issue in question?

And what is the issue in question? It is a change of species - and not about making idle speeches on a Supramental race or ‘holding space’ in paid workshops for the fragile human ego. It is instead about fighting a merciless war against each grain of falsehood in the present human species and accepting a complete annihilation of the old way of being a ‘human specimen’.

If Sri Aurobindo’s demand that man “must be surpassed… for he is an imperfect beginning”, is to be fulfilled, then what is the purpose of this ferocious defence of a humanity that is meant to be transcended - even at its highest?

It is understandable that we shall undergo this Transformation at our own pace and in our own manner - but the END being pursued cannot be forgotten along the way : “a revolt against the whole universal Nature” - Sri Aurobindo and “We must conquer death” - The Mother.

The Goal cannot be re-calibrated to better suit our present capacities - we have to rise to its height & fulfil its requirements.

So maybe one should slay with love, but slain you will have to be O Man.

Why couldn’t Satprem tone down the aggression and be more tolerant in his reactions?

Satprem appears to have a profound empathy for human misfortune but none for human weakness & pettiness - especially when it ferociously defends itself. He was looking for a RADICAL CURE of our human malady and the ruthless surgeon of the new world could not be the gentle nurse of the old one.

Satprem himself had expressed certain reservations before The Mother in 1969 concerning his 'hardness' when dealing with the world:

And when I speak with them, very strangely, there's a sort of warrior in me, and some people give rise to reactions: I feel like striking. Sometimes it's quite brutal, I don't know why. It comes and strikes. With others, on the contrary, I am very tranquil. Some tell Me, "You're hard!"...

Has it always been like that? It's not since this new consciousness came? Since the beginning of this year?

Last year, too.

Because I've noticed that in this Consciousness there is something like that: suddenly it comes, oh! and it feels like striking.

Mother's Agenda > April 2, 1969

On a second occasion when he expressed similar reservations, The Mother replied-

As for me, I have trust. I have trust in your reaction.

Mother's Agenda > September 20, 1969

Nevertheless, his way of reacting was obviously neither common nor comfortable.

Satprem’s close aid Yolande had also perhaps hinted at being more ‘humane’ towards the rest of the world- to which he responded-

This is no longer the time for humanism; it is a time when humanity itself is at stake, its future or its death in the great Suffocation that is strangling the world. So...

So we need to know where we stand. We need to know what we want.

And have the courage to want it. The foremost quality of the New World is Courage, as Mother has said often enough. To make and create this Future, we must have the soul of a Hero, as Mother has also said. So we fight.

And if, in our hearts of hearts, we know that the Enemy itself is the Divine in hiding, if we know that the executioners and traitors and countless Liars are there to forge our own strength and our own unity and our own purity - and that even Death is there to compel us to discover what lies behind its mask - that is no reason to embrace death and lies and the various gangrenes that attack the Body of the Earth. One day Sri Krishna came to the battlefield with Arjuna and tore the Kauravas to pieces. You don't play with the Kauravas: you kill them. Only our weapons are no longer the external sword: they are the inner sword, courage, purity, transparency—and without compromise.

Everything we give to the Enemy, in thought, word, or deed, is a betrayal of the Truth of our soul. We are in the time of Battle, Yolande. That is all I wanted to say to you on this little terrace, and Mother's warriors, the rare little sparks who believe in Her, are too few in number for us to bend, to be accommodative , and to lose our blood.

If you truly understand this, if you have that courage and that understanding that comes from the heart and not from the head, then your journey will have been beneficial and we will meet again for the work.

(Translation of Lettres a Yolande, 7th July 1976)

Brutal - yes; but is this a fanatic speaking?

I am not “right” and I don’t know if I am wrong. I have no reason on my side and I don’t know if I have any excuse for what I did, wished or tried — it happened just like that. I have prayed a lot. And if I am wrong, I still pray. When I was doing the worst idiocies in my life, as I was approaching the bottom of the hole and had no longer anything to put forward as an excuse, I told the Lord, as in a cry from the depths of my soul: “Even in hell, I will love You.” Even if everything falls upon me, even if I am wrong, if I am the lowest of the low, I will keep saying I love You, I love You, I love You.

And so it is so warm that you love truly and forever. And you are at the end of all misery. It burns. Everything is burnt. [Notebooks of an Apocalypse (1973-1978)]

Yes - his fire unleashed a cascade of events whose wounds and murmurs still haunts this community of seekers. Yes - there are casualties, there is agony, there is devastation - it was a battle after all. The current terrestrial conditions govern all human endeavours - which monument has ever been sculpted without breaking stones and which arrow ever taken off without friction? And yet, we only celebrate the Goal being pursued for in THAT is the Glory - all else is sadly dispensable.

Was Satprem usurping the role of a Guru?

Satprem has been accused of becoming a 'Guru' by his detractors; at the same time, some of his ardent followers resented the fact that he was not being one. Both Satprem's words and deeds prove that he had never assumed the mantle of being a spiritual guide or 'Guru'.

I will be neither the new pope of a new religion nor the guru of any city whatever, even if it were Auroville — I will disappear without a trace.

But the Work will be established.

Notebooks of an Apocalypse > Dec 7, 1976

Satprem has no "interest" in life, neither in money, nor in being a celebrity; not as a "guru" nor as anything — because, would you believe it, he woke up one morning naked and dead, at the age of twenty, in a concentration camp yard. After that, we no longer want anything — we are dead once and for all to a certain world. After that, we need only one thing: a true food, or we die with our boots on. And it's because he had this need of a true food, of something that fills truly, that Satprem exists and continues to live — for nothing else. It's for that that he lived near to Mother — for nothing else.

Notebooks of an Apocalypse > Oct 11, 1979

I was not meant to be a "guru"; nowadays even a Vivekananda would be lost in the blast and glare of the TV and loudspeakers — this game is self-defeating; one wave is soon engulfed by the next one. It is all a chaos of stars for no heaven and no light anywhere.

Notebooks of an Apocalypse > Feb 11, 1982

To put things simply: I am neither a schoolteacher nor a "guru." All my life, I have fiercely refused to do that. This place is not an "ashram" and I don't have and don't want to have "disciples" — not even Pierre. The only "Master" and the only "Teaching" are the inner need or inner thirst which leads to the Source naturally, and it is the Source itself that gives you all the “explanations" and directions to follow. The only "teaching" is the one that you will find in The Agenda with the great Force that lies behind and will lead you, if you are sincere.

Notebooks of an Apocalypse > Apr 16, 1983

And even a decade later we find the same refusal from Satprem:

The work that is done in the body is difficult — it is a wonderful grace and... a little overwhelming. And then, it is no longer the time of "gurus" — I have always wanted to follow the future, change, the unknown to be embodied. No guru can put you in touch with that. Only the Supreme Mother can give you what is necessary for you, what you can bear.

(Translated from Lettres et Messages Au Nouveau Monde, August 1992)

Satprem was neither a theorist nor a propagandist - he was a WORKER intending to build the bridge to the New World. And to hew the way through an unknown forest, one does not need disciples - one needs only a machete.

And perhaps a few collaborators.

What right did Satprem have to do the things he did, to say the things he said?

Finally, a very persistent question can still haunt our minds - What vain-glorious assumption led Satprem to believe that he solely was an heir to the Work of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother? What official position did Satprem have to challenge those in authority?

The answer to this is found by probing our terrestrial history - Who has ever attempted to change the course of Destiny with a notarised copy of a legal certificate?

What right did Vercingetorix have to challenge Caesar and Demosthenes to rouse Athens? What right did Patrick Pearse have to disturb the peace of Ireland and Bobby Sands to inflame its prisons? What right did Joan of Arc have to hold the banner of France and De Gaulle to pick the fallen sword of honour? What right did Gambetta have to impose the Republic and Jean Moulin to die defending it?

And yet, what of value remains in this miserable saga of the two-legged worm called man, if such names and deeds are erased from its History?

Yes, Satprem had no right to make this solemn promise to the Divine on behalf of the human race - We shall conquer, Mother - and neither to repeatedly assure Her that - It is possible.

Yes, this was revolutionary audacity - but what is Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga if not the most audacious REVOLUTION ever dreamt of upon Earth? And humanity ought not canonise this dream to rob it of its SUBSTANCE. Hallowing Their Names only to convert Them into passive icons blunts the revolutionary edge of this endeavour.

Sri Aurobindo must have held no illusions about the travesty that men and time would one day make of the Divine Truth He embodied and hence he described in detail the expected Fate of Avatars in Savitri:

Their sun-thoughts fading, darkened by ignorant minds,
Their work betrayed, their good to evil turned,
The cross their payment for the crown they gave,
Only they leave behind a splendid Name.

How to ensure that the Work of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother doesn’t meet the same bleak end is the one question none of us seem to be asking and we have already reached the end of the trial of Satprem.

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The Last Stand

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