Mechanisation

(Mother to Satprem, 1960:) “I went to inaugurate the sugar factory [New Horizon Sugar Mills] the other day. I had an amusing experience.
         From the material point of view, it's almost hellish – the noise, the smell – a nauseating smell. I had to apply all my will not to be physically disturbed – they made me climb up narrow little stairs, go down, climb back up, look into deep pits. At some places there weren't even guardrails, so I had really to control myself.
         I was watching all this sugar cane – piles of sugar cane – which is thrown into the machine, and then it travels along and falls down to be crushed, crushed, and crushed some more. And then it comes back up to be distilled. And then I saw ... all this is living when it's thrown in, you see, it's full of its vital force, for it has just been cut. As a result, the vital force is suddenly hurled out of the substance with an extreme violence – the vital force comes out ... the English word angry is quite expressive of what I mean – like a snarling dog. An angry force.
         So I saw this – I saw it moving about. And it kept coming and coming and coming, accumulating, piling up (they work 24 hours a day, six days a week – only on the seventh do they rest). So I thought that this angry force must have some effect on the people – who knows, maybe this is what creates accidents. For I could see that once the sugar cane was fully crushed and had gone back up the chute, this force that had been beaten out was right there. And this worried me a little; I thought that there must be a certain danger in doing such a thing! ... What saves them is their ignorance and their insensitivity. But Indians are never entirely insensitive in the way Westerners are – they are much more open in their subconscious.
         I didn't speak of it to anyone, but it caused me some concern. And just the next day the machine broke down! When I was informed, immediately I thought ... It was then repaired, and again it broke down – three times. Then the following night, just before ten o'clock ... I should mention that during the day I had thought, “But why not attract these forces to our side, take them and satisfy them, give them some peace and joy and use them?” I thought about it, concentrated a little, but then I didn't bother any further. At ten o'clock that evening, they came upon me – in a flood! They kept coming and coming. And I was busy with them the whole time. They were not ugly (not so luminous either!), they were wholesome, straightforward – honest forces. So I worked on them. This began exactly at 9:30, and for one hour I was busy working. After an hour, I'd had enough: “Listen, this is quite fine, you're very nice, but I can't spend all my time like this! We shall see what to do later” – for it absorbed my whole consciousness. They kept coming and coming (you understand what that means to a body?!). So at 10:30 I told them, “Listen, my little ones, be quiet now, that's enough for today ...” At 10:30, the machine broke down!
         I found out, of course, because they log everything at the factory, so when they came to inform me of the breakdown the next morning, I asked them what time it had happened – exactly 10:30.
         After that, I made a kind of pact with them – the trouble, you see, is that there are constantly new ones. If only they were the same! They are constantly coming in new floods, so there was the need of a permanent formation over there. I've tried to make this permanent formation, to take and absorb them, to calm them down and scatter them a little so they don't accumulate in one spot, which in the end could be dangerous.
         I found this quite amusing.”

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See also

• Subtle physical plane