807. ‘Shut up’

Mother calls our body the noblest of instruments. At the same time, it is stupid, She says. Body is docile. It wants to obey. Its faith and humility are touching. That is what Mother says of Her body. Its obedience is unquestioning. Whatever the mind says, the body does. And the mind is often perverse. Obeying mind's perverse orders, body falls ill, is Mother's definition. So, when there is any ailment, She advises us to speak to the body, "You idiot, shut up!"  several times. When spoken strongly to the body, overcoming its earlier behaviour of utter obedience, it begins to keep quiet. The ailment disappears. People laugh at hearing this, but also out of fun practise it a few times. Invariably the ailment vanishes. It is surprising, but they forget it.

Because of the novelty of the method, we do not stick to it, even when in our experience we have seen the results. For us to follow any such method, we need social sanction - everyone around us should be following that. Otherwise, there is no incentive for us to be doing anything. We are to that extent social creatures. Ladies well equipped in English, capable of speaking it fluently, in spite of a desire to speak, speak only in Tamil if they are in a rural town. Nothing in them feels comfortable in doing what others are not doing. Everything Mother advises us to do is totally strange in the society. An aristocratic lady in Paris had a weird disease. She desired to take Mother's advice. Mother asked her to buy a bunch of grapes, climb through her window into the road, go on eating the grapes on the road as she walked along. The idea is we are socially conditioned. Our problems and diseases are social conditionings. Break that conditioning, the problem disappears. It is too much for any of us.

On Darshan days, Her disciples sometimes had work elsewhere. They would be baffled. Mother's usual answer was, "Work first, Darshan next. Go and do the work." To Her, the Darshan She gives is of paramount importance. She looked at each person on the road below her balcony, collected his aspiration into Her own, offered them all to the Lord. Still, She knew many of us went there routinely and received no spiritual benefit out of it. When we go and attend a work on a Darshan day, our minds will be concentrated on Her.  One devotee SAW Her in his work spot in Her spiritual golden splendour. Surely, had he come to the Darshan, he would not have had that vision. She said, "Seeing me physically is useless." It is like having a great book on the table. Its knowledge will not reach us unless we read it. ‘Shut up, you idiot!' is one of Mother's humourous ways of drawing our attention to our long accumulated layers of Mind that are steeped in superstition. Man has a genius of converting anything he is given into the particular type of his own stamp. To Mother it is superstition.