May 12, 1961
Aphorism 60 – There is no mortality. it is only the Immortal who can die; the mortal could neither be born nor perish.
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The Immortal can pass from the condition of life to the condition of death (but not ‘death’ as we understand it); ‘can die’ means ‘can change condition.’ The Immortal can pass from this condition to that condition and back and forth again. We call it ‘death,’ but it has nothing to do with either life or death. They are changes of state.
(silence)
I’ve had this notebook [[The notebook of a disciple who asks questions on the Aphorisms which Mother 'must' answer regularly. ]] for days – don’t feel like answering.
You’re not well?
I think I am! I’m not sick, in any case. No, I don’t need to be concerned with my body. It’s not that…. Probably the word-machine isn’t working. Whatever I read seems stupid to me, whatever I am living seems stupid to me; as for the way others understand things, it’s dumbfounding!
No, the mind must have gone on strike.
It’s uninteresting.
(silence)
I have finished my reading of the Veda. I have really tried my best, but I cannot manage to recapture that consciousness; do what I will, it seems childish to me, I don’t know why. Or else I am in the presence of a realization so far removed from what we are capable of now – but to enter into that we have to go behind the words, which requires a mighty effort.
If they really had that experience, it is admirable.
But I don’t know. I don’t know if they had it PHYSICALLY – in the inner worlds of course, certainly! It’s all very well, one is very happy living in those worlds. But it is here – HERE! How to make of this life here, this world here, something really worth living…. Haven’t yet found the trick.
That’s all I can say. That’s what I am up against.
That’s all, I am waiting.
(silence)
Yet there are worthwhile things in the physical life. I don’t know, but I still feel a nostalgia for…
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Nostalgia for what? Have you actually known something worth being nostalgic about? What?
It goes back very far, to when I was a child: a sailboat on the sea.
Oh, such a trifle! It’s nothing, childish.
But it’s a wide physical life, and not without its beauty!
The physical life – yes, it’s nothing at all. All these things of the physical life – nothing at all, nothing at all! It’s childish, not worth thinking about for a second.
Unless one has the sense of the TRUE LIFE, of the Truth – it is nothing, nothing. All the rest is nothing, nothing – pastimes, childish amusements, the business of people who have nothing else to do. Ah, no! It’s not worth a second’s thought.
You don’t understand.
Even those momentary breakthroughs one can have in life before having found the Truth, when one is on the way and suddenly has glimpses of an immortal Consciousness, the contact with a truth, even that…. These experiences are all very fine, it’s very good, but it’s on the way. It is not THAT.
What is worthwhile is to seek the TRUE SENSE of life: to what does it really correspond? What is there behind it all? Why has the Lord created it? What is He heading towards? What does He want? What does He want to happen? That, we have not found. What does He want!!
He obviously has a secret, and He is keeping it. Well, I want His secret.
Why is everything the way it is?
It’s certainly not the way it is just to be the way it is – it’s meant to become something else. And it’s this something else that I want. What is worth seeking is the something else that He wants, but as long as I don’t have it….
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