Page 9 - All India Magazine Feb-2025

I am THAT
Also when I was eleven or twelve, my mother rented a cottage
at the edge of a forest: we didn't have to go through the town. I
used to go and sit in the forest all alone. I would sit lost in reverie.
One day (it happened often), one day some squirrels had come,
several birds, and also (Mother opens her eyes wide), deer, looking
on.... How lovely it was! When I opened my eyes and saw them, I
found it charming — they scampered away.
The memory of all these things returned afterwards, when I
met Théon — long afterwards, when I was more than twenty, that
is, more than ten years later. I met Théon and got the explanation
of these things, I understood. Then I remembered all that had hap-
pened to me, and I thought, "Well!..." Because Madame Théon
said to me (I told her all my childhood stories), she said to me, "Oh,
but I know, you are that, the stamp of that is on you." I thought
over what she had said, and I saw it was indeed true. All those
experiences I had were very clear indications that there were cer-
tainly people in the invisible looking after me! (Mother laughs)
Interestingly there was nothing mental about it: I didn't know
the existence of those things, I didn't know what meditation was
— I meditated without the least idea of what it was. I knew noth-
ing, absolutely nothing, my mother had kept it all completely ta-
boo: those matters are not to be touched, they drive you crazy!
The Mother: Conversation with a Disciple, March 9, 1963

The Divine Presence from childhood
And experiences!... I have had the most contradictory experi-
ences! Only one thing has been continuous from my childhood
on (and the more I look, the more I see how continuous it has
been): this divine Presence — and in someone who, in her external
life, might very well have said, 'God? What is this foolishness! God
doesn't exist!' So you understand, you see the picture.

All India Magazine, February 2025 9