All the Clocks Had Stopped!

One of the most common activities of these naughty little entities which are in the human physical atmosphere and amuse themselves at men’s expense, is to blind you to such an extent that when you look for something, and the thing is staring you in the face you do not see it! This happens very often. You search in vain, you turn everything over, you look into all possible corners, but you don’t find the thing. Then you give up the problem and some time later (precisely when “the hand over the eyes” is removed), you come back to the same place and it is exactly there where you had looked, quietly lying there, it had not stirred! Only you were unconscious, you did not see. This is a very, very frequent amusement of these little entities. They also take pleasure in removing things, then they put them back, but at times they also don’t put them back! They displace them, indeed they have all sorts of little diversions. They are intolerable. Madame Blavatsky made much use of them, but I don’t know how she managed to make them so amiable, because generally they are quite unpleasant.

I had the experience, I could give you innumerable instances… but precisely, I shall give you two very striking examples of two opposite things, only it was not the same beings… There are little beings like fairies who are very sweet, very obliging, but they are not always there, they come from time to time when it pleases them. I remember the time I used to cook for Sri Aurobindo; I was also doing many other things at the same time, so I often happened to leave the milk on the fire and go for some other work or to see something with him, to discuss with somebody, and truly I was not always aware of the time, I used to forget the milk on the fire. And whenever I forgot the milk on the fire, I felt suddenly (in those days I used to wear a sari) a little hand catching a fold of my sari and pulling it, like this. Then I used to run quickly and would see that the milk was just on the point of boiling over. This did not happen just once, but several times, and very clearly, like a little child’s hand clutching and pulling.

The other story is of the days Sri Aurobindo had the habit of walking up and down in his rooms. He used to walk for several hours like that, it was his way of meditating. Only, he wanted to know the time, so a clock had been put in each room to enable him to see the time at any moment. There were three such clocks. One was in the room where I worked; it was, so to say, his starting-point. One day he came and asked, “What time is it?” He looked and the clock had stopped. He went into the next room, saying, “I shall see the time there” the clock had stopped. And it had stopped at the same minute as the other, you understand, with the difference of a few seconds. He went to the third room… the clock had stopped! He continued walking three times like that — all the clocks had stopped! Then he returned to my room and said, “But this is impossible! This is a bad joke!” and all the clocks, one after the other, started working again. I saw it myself, you know, it was a charming incident. He was angry, he said, “This is a bad joke!” And all the clocks started going again!

2 April 1951