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251

3 March 1971

I have the feeling that your look has changed much. [Mother nods approvingly.] For more than a year, and more and more, it is like that of Sri Aurobindo.

Yes?… [Mother smiles] Possibly!

Before, your look was a “diamond look”, a look… it was yourself, powerfully yourself. Now it is becoming like that of the infinite.

Oh! But my way of seeing is not the same.

Yes, just so, I wanted to ask you: when you look at people in this way, what is it that you see?
I believe I see… most exactly, it is their condition, the state in which they are. Especially, there are some who seem as though closed, who, as far as I am concerned, do not see, who are altogether in their outward consciousness; and then there are those who are open—there are… some children, a remarkable thing, who were as though entirely open [gesture as of a flower to the sun], ready to absorb. It is particularly the receptivity of people which I see, the state in which they are: those who come with an aspiration, those who come with a curiosity, those who come… as though with a kind of obligation, and then there are those who thirst for light—there are not many of them, but there are quite a few children. Today I saw one who was charming! … Oh, wonderful!

And I see only that. Not what they think, what they say (all that appears to me superficial, uninteresting); it is the state of receptivity in which they happen to be. It is that particularly which I see.

252

[Silence]

I believe really that it is among the children that will be found those who can begin the new race. Men are… crusted over.

Well, I am constantly struggling against people who have come here so that they may be comfortable and “free to do whatever they like”, so… I tell them, “The world is big enough, you can go out”—there is no soul, no aspiration, nothing.

You know my feeling? They are all, all old and I am the only one to be young! It is that, yes, this flame, this will… what they call “push”. To be satisfied with petty personal satisfactions… which take you nowhere, busy with what they are going to eat, oh!…

I have the feeling that now there is a sort of “display” (you know, “display”?), a show of all that should not be.

Yes.

But the flame, the flame of aspiration [Mother shakes her head], there are not many who bring it.

Provided they are what they call “comfortable”, it is all they need—and free to do some nonsense which they would not do in the world!… On the other side, one feels that to hasten the coming—one could hasten it if one were… if one were a conqueror!