journal d'une transition

245

and a pressure was put on me that I must begin to repeat SSJ’s name; I had wakened up from the sheer pain of it, all my nerves crying, and C.E. had had to give me some milk and to hold me for a long while… And this seems to be a typical

tell-tale effect of certain uses of mantras… This review is like cold water on the head. What is the point, then, of searching for a common ground?

Yet there may also be the possibility that these people do this in “good faith”, that is, with some self-serving justification, seeing us as some obscure beings obstructing the advent of truth… But then I wonder: are they so undeveloped within? We work all afternoon on the towers, dismantling them beam by beam; a weird land wind has risen, hot and tiring… The police are stationed under the Banyan tree, the group of carpenters and company nearby; a full busload of tourists are looking at us as at some monkeys or acrobats… *28-9-1979, Auroville: Mid-morning we are called down to meet the sub-Collector again. He had got “information” that we were planning to take over Bharat Nivas and wished to gave it confirmed with us; we tell him that we hadn’t even thought of it, but yes, why not in future… He laughs with us… This man is smart and quite fine; there is a sense of integrity about him… This afternoon, exhausted from the nasty wind and feeling empty, wrapped in a sticky fog, I stay at home, weaving beads: Jacq comes: she is so straight in her movements… and I am not! I fear she may get attached, even though I have come to treasure our friendship… This shows me how proud I still am… We learn that the Pondy police, following a case of theft and violence, has caught a man who confessed to having attacked both Christiane and Rhonda; he is part of an eight-member gang; we do not yet know if they were also responsible for the attack on Piero. Tonight, I cleansed myself thoroughly. C.E, I found, is waiting for me very tenderly… *29-9-1979, Auroville: We are at work on the towers, in the afternoon, when something happens that calls back all the unease of the previous days…: we see red Peter arrive, just back from Germany; both P.G and G.M dislike him and they start commenting on his relationship with “SSJ’s group”; I become tense when I see that he is heading for our tower and climbing it… P.G talks to him straight, though, in a fair and humorous way, to explain to him how and why we must refuse access to anyone working with SSJ, for the time being; red Peter makes a visible effort then, and says that he wants to stay and work with us… But then Patrice goes down and G.M grumbles and… the whole thing strikes me as dishonest… I do not want to belong to any group!;, I do not want to judge anyone by their friends! I have more than enough with my own ego! I burst out at them, saying what I sense and what I refuse; everyone goes quiet. We soon leave. I walk down to the Nursery to gather a big bunch of flowers…

*30-9-1979, Auroville: