June 20, 1961
(Following a meditation with X.)
We’ve been having these meditations for four days now and this is the fourth day of total silence – motionless, soundless (I don’t know if there is sound outside or not; I don’t know anything). A complete immobility right to the end.
Page 228
When all is immobile like that and nothing seems to happen, is something happening?
Something happening? I don’t know. But that state IN ITSELF is something. When the body is conscious of that it means precisely that it has come out of its narrowness – it is the same Infinite as the one you get when out of the body.
What I do now when X comes is take it all (gesture from below to above) and do like this (gesture of offering up), in an aspiration – and then I let it go. Then all the Immobility, the Silence, the Light, the Peace comes down from above into everything and doesn’t move. But that in itself is … very difficult for the body to have, very difficult: something is always vibrating and moving.
It’s as if it put everything back in order, but nothing is moved.
Yesterday, when I was in that immobility, suddenly I felt something obliging me to turn my head. I didn’t turn my head, but the consciousness turned (gesture to the left), and then I saw myself standing there in the corridor (that kind of corridor separating the hall and Sri Aurobindo’s room) in my usual outdoor dress [Indian shirt and light trousers]. I was standing up very straight and holding a globe of light above my head – and such a light! It was shining brighter than those strong electric bulbs – dazzling. My own clothing seemed to be made of golden-pink light. I was standing very straight and carrying this globe (gesture above the head). When I saw that I said to myself, ‘Now why on earth is he making me see this?’ And that was all. Nothing else happened except that. But near me there was a figure I didn’t know, and it reminded me of X’s great guru, [[X’s deceased guru. See Agenda 1, October 4, 1958, pp. 200-201. ]] whom I had already seen once. There he was by my side, a tall figure, and he seemed to be the one who had tugged at me to make me see that vision.
It was a large globe. Although no distinct rays could be seen, it appeared to be projecting innumerable rays like flashes of lightning. It was sparkling all over.
What does it mean?
Don’t know. I didn’t bother much about it. He certainly wanted to make me see it – but what is it? What does it mean? Don’t know.
It was the dress I wear when I go out. Why? It must have had a
Page 229
meaning, although I must say I didn’t exert myself to understand! I simply saw, smiled (it made me smile), and that was all. It was just before the meditation ended.
At any rate, it’s the fourth day of this same silence (Mother clenches her fists, as if to show a compact mass). Not only silence – immobility (same compact gesture), WITHOUT TENSION, without tension, effortless, without anything; like a kind of eternity – in the body.
I have no trouble getting out of it – I don’t get ‘out’ of it, to tell the truth; it’s not like a trance you have to pull out of, it’s not that. This state seems quite natural to me: I hear the clock chime.
(Satprem remarks on the gap between the inner realization of certain yogis like X and their outer behavior, which doesn’t always seem up to the mark.)
I truly have the impression of a kind of abyss between the X I can sense, who attracts me, and the outer man.
I don’t know the outer X, I have been very careful not to enter into contact with him! But from the first day I sensed a gap.
It’s odd!
No, it’s the old tradition – you step back from Nature and Nature does whatever she wants. It doesn’t concern you, you have no responsibility, ‘you are not that.’ It’s the old idea.
Sri Aurobindo was completely against it. Somewhere he makes fun of a man who said he was the Supreme and that whatever he did, it wasn’t he himself doing it – and then he was angry when his meal was late! But of course it wasn’t him: the stomach-nature was angry! [[See the poem entitled Self (Last Poems, Cent. Ed., Vol. V, p. 151). ]]
It’s one of the most ironic things Sri Aurobindo has written.
I’ve known that and have always taken great care to avoid it, for it opens the door to all deformations. Lele [[The tantric guru Sri Aurobindo met in 1907 and from whom he received mental silence. ]] was like that – Lele did
Page 230
the same thing: he behaved like a lout; he said it wasn’t himself, it was Nature – he had nothing to do with it. This is all very well, but still there’s a sort of affinity between your physical comportment and what you are inside, isn’t there?!
Sri Aurobindo didn’t accept this tradition at all.
For instance, X is completely caught up in all his family affairs; he said to Amrita, ‘In August the girls will go back home to their husbands, the boy will be at college, and I’ll be able to live tranquilly.’ But there will be something else! There is always something else, naturally!
Anyway, it doesn’t matter – I assure you that for the half-hour he is here with me he is splendid.
Oh, he is splendid! There is such a sweet warmth in him, so good, and a mastery (mastery of inner movements, of the vital movement) and the ability to bring into the physical this peace, this absolute immobility. It’s splendid! I have been doing this for something like forty years and you can’t imagine how difficult it is, how much effort it takes to achieve it! With him it comes all by itself. That’s the tantric mastery.
And to a certain extent it has a healing power (to a certain extent). But it’s not that supramental thing Sri Aurobindo had: he would pass his hand like this (gesture), and the disorder would be gone completely!
I have never seen anyone but Sri Aurobindo do that.
Page 231