Today, some twenty-five years later, when I recollect those events, I am mainly struck by what amounts to our own responsibility in the birth and growth of the “Satprem phenomenon.” When I say “our,” I refer of course to the small group of individuals mentioned earlier, which expanded and contracted in the course of time, and made, as it were, Satprem as we know him today — as if he fed himself month after month, year after year on our adherence, on our enthusiasm for a cause we knew to be a complex, difficult and radical one.
It is the curious attraction which Satprem exerted on people that I would like to examine here. And since I can only talk of what I felt myself, I will try to describe and analyze the nature of this magnetism as it affected me. This is what I called earlier the “cage of illusions.”
To be affected by magnetism, one has to be conductive, sensitive to the magnet, otherwise it does not work. The power of the magnet is in finding the opposite pole in you which will respond to its attraction.
I know of no one who has approached Satprem, especially for the purpose of a specific work, without thinking under his breath that, in doing so, he or she was getting nearer to Mother and the Divine. This is the source of the magnetism, and hence of the illusion.
The spiritual aspiration, which shines at our very core, is our strength and our true self. And yet history — even recent history — is strewn with pathetic instances in which this aspiration is lead astray, bogged down in ludicrous or sometimes disastrous experiences, from which it comes out disfigured or even completely stifled.
But, with Satprem, none of this was likely to happen. The Agenda is teeming with Mother’s praises for him. Was he not practically the only disciple capable of understanding the physical revolution involved in Mother’s experience? To be sure, the Agenda is also teeming with Satprem’s own questions and doubts, but that only brings him closer to us — a human brother with whom we can more easily identify. It must be said, though, that some Agenda conversations will never see the light of day and remain tightly sealed under plastic protection. These were what Satprem called “Personal Agendas” — probably far more piercing comments and estimations made by Mother about him personally, which he felt went beyond the scope of the Agenda. In fact, Satprem has never claimed to be a saint; on the contrary, it is his willingness to assume his share of “ordinary” humanity, together with a stated ambition to go beyond the human, which always set him apart and drew people to him.
Thus, this man who had spent all these years within Mother’s intense crucible, listening to her progress in man’s future, could only be a perfect, caring, and delicate mentor toward the young people who approached him as a big brother and a role-model…
Well, not exactly. Behind impeccably cordial manners of hospitality, the newcomer soon perceives that a sort of test is under way: the test of an unconditional and exclusive adherence. In a flash, he senses that a complete and unequivocal commitment is a necessary prerequisite in order to pursue this relation any further; that he must make a personal sacrifice of fidelity and allegiance, as if he were entering holy orders.
Without a word of definition, a clear-cut choice is being presented: “Here is the Adventure knocking at your door. Open this door in total and absolute acquiescence, disregarding the pettiness of naked reason and of cheap criticism, sensible though it may seem to be. If you can’t or won’t renounce your little self and open up to this greater dimension offering itself before you, then be gone — but know that you would be renouncing the one opportunity to make your life something other than this grey amorphous thing people call existence.”
Such were the words, as I transcribe them today, that I heard more than thirty years ago, at the beginning of my relationship with Satprem. It was a barely perceptible breath, hardly defined, whose stakes were unknown to me. Yet it was there, very real, and wholly determining of future events.
As I was perceiving this “choice” before me, I was also quite aware of the somewhat heretical quality of the world that came with it. I was openly courting controversy, perhaps even scandal, by going counter to the proper, established ways. I was enjoined to trample a community of elders underfoot — the Ashram — to which Sri Aurobindo and Mother had devoted the best parts of their lives and efforts — in the name of a “higher” truth that I was to accept without a word or adequate comprehension.
In my shoes, others might have wavered and argued, but, on the contrary — and this is where the immature human “vital,” as Sri Aurobindo would say, came into play — all these obstacles and negatives suddenly appeared to me as irrefutable proof that this WAS the real adventure, the one that bypasses grey, boring neutralities to tread the rugged paths full of pitfalls. I was mistaking adventure for controversy, the battle against oneself for the battle against others. Not to mention that all these “enemies,” real or imagined, seem to present an all the more serious picture; they made the whole issue more exciting, credible, and genuine.
Actually, enthusiasms followed by dramatic reversals are the mark of the human “vital.” My life flowed like a quiet — perhaps too monotonous – river. But all of a sudden I am seized with a sort of internal frenzy; I feel myself plunging into a world I had not even envisioned an instant earlier, which induces in me a complete reversal of my ways of thinking and feeling. This is obviously the sign that a great force has penetrated and is driving me. While the ways of the mind revolve around reflections, procrastinations, hesitations, and time is an essential factor in the process through which it derives its conclusions, “vital” time is almost instantaneous, and hence fraught with all the risks and vagaries that go with this brusqueness.
Furthermore, my vital “enthusiasm” concealed from me all the contradictions of my new situation. It prevented me from seeing the narrow Manichean nature of the world I was joining. Without batting an eyelid, I was about to unleash a whole string of muted resentments toward everything that conflicted with my new-found religion, all the while claiming to draw from Sri Aurobindo’s vision that embraces everything in its scope. From one day to the next, I had become a staunch little Jihadist : the causes of problems were to be sought (and found) in others, outside myself. I remained forever untouchable within the cocoon of my superior certitudes.
In the end, the few objections that a more mature and thoughtful mind might have raised were completely swept away by another vital illusion: the unwritten promises of spiritual enlightenment implicit in my new status. Indeed, was this not a marvelous opportunity to get closer to the real Work of Mother and Sri Aurobindo on earth, with all the associated booty of personal accomplishments? Ultimately the hope was that of reaching beyond the anonymity of the average seeker, and of entering the charmed circle of the Chosen Ones…
Before this unexpected Grail, what human “vital” would be pure enough to hesitate and mature enough to draw back and take the time of reflection?
But there is better (or worse, depending on the point of view) and more to this “vital” trap. Now that the cage has closed on me and possesses me, with my full consent and participation, I make a kind of psychological U-turn and reverse the terms of the contract by pretending to own it myself. In order to hide the cowardice and servility of my condition, I integrate and take possession of the mechanism that binds me. Henceforth, I will defend it obstinately against all those who would challenge it in any way. Not only am I ready to offer my life to serve my cause — and this may include a physical commitment — but I am also prepared to rise up against those who voice the slightest misgivings or veiled objections against its foundation, that is, Satprem himself.
As the first volumes of the Agenda were being published, a renowned French literary critic, André B., who had praised Satprem’s books in the Parisian press, suddenly wrote to me to convey his “great distress” before some of Satprem’s plethora of comments about the “horror and darkness of the world,” in which he saw mainly a bout of paranoia. I immediately wrote back to reassure him and convey an informed denial about his diagnosis based on “my profound knowledge of Satprem” etc. In the back of my mind, I was shocked that someone so “intelligent” could question Satprem.
Now if I set my mind on the two “revolutionary” encounters in my life — the first with Mother, the second with Satprem — a drastic contrast between them appears. After the first few seconds of bewildered stupefaction in Mother’s presence, under her intense gaze, and the sort of stupefied state I experienced afterward for several days, I can see today that this first encounter with Mother could well have ended up as it began, with nothing more than this stupefaction. In other words, it was UP TO ME to make it into something else, for the simple reason that NOTHING was demanded or expected of me, no commitment of any kind. More precisely, the “demand” would have to come from me, from my own depths, or else it would not exist at all. In Mother’s presence, I was not confronted by a specific “context” or by life’s “contingencies”; I was confronted by myself.
In my encounter with Satprem, on the contrary, I was not asked to take a stand toward myself but toward him and his inner world, toward his quarrels with the Ashram, toward his history of dissent and rebellion. Right there and then, I was summoned to accept unconditionally this whole “package” — or be on my way. At bottom, the real “fault” with Satprem may be that he lead you AWAY from yourself — ultimately to replace yourself with him.