Page 23 - All India Magazine Feb-2025

though there was the sense of being able to do anything, if the
need arose). Till the age of twenty or twenty-one I spoke very little,
and never, never anything like a speech. I wouldn't take part in
conversations: I would listen, but speak very little.... Then I was
put in touch with Abdul Baha (the "Bahai"), who was then in Paris,
and a sort of intimacy grew between us. I used to go to his gath-
erings because I was interested. And one day (when I was in his
room), he said to me, "I am sick, I can't speak; go and speak for
me." I said, "Me! But I don't speak." He replied, "You just have to
go there, sit quietly and concentrate, and what you have to say
will come to you. Go and do it, you will see." Well then (laughing),
I did as he said. There were some thirty or forty people. I went and
sat in their midst, stayed very still, and then ... I sat like that, with-
out a thought, nothing, and suddenly I started speaking. I spoke
to them for half an hour (I don't even know what I told them),
and when it was over everybody was quite pleased. I went to find
Abdul Baha, who told me, "You spoke admirably." I said, "It wasn't
me!" And from that day (I had got the knack from him, you un-
derstand!), I would stay like that, very still, and everything would
come. It's especially the sense of the "I" that must be lost—that's
the great art in everything, for everything, for everything you do:
for painting, for ... (I did painting, sculpture, architecture even, I
did music), for everything, but everything, if you are able to lose
the sense of the "I," then you open yourself to ... to the knowledge
of the thing (sculpture, painting, etc.). It's not necessarily beings,
but the spirit of the thing that uses you.
The Mother: Conversation with a Disciple, February 18, 1967

Great formative power
I've had this great formative power ever since my earliest
childhood, but I had channeled it and stopped it because I consid-
ered it useless. But it came back recently, along with the sure sign

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