May 31, 1962
So, how was your night? The same?
Not so great.
The same.
I had a symbolic dream (quite symbolic!) – that’s all I could recall this morning…. I was wearing a very cumbersome sort of garment, full of big thorns …
Oh, horrible!
… so I couldn’t find a comfortable position.
That’s how you woke up….
There’s a strange thing that happens to me all the time, at least fifty times a day (and it’s particularly clear at night). In its most external form it’s like moving from one room to another, or from one house to another, and you go through the door or the wall almost without noticing it, automatically…. Being in one room is reflected outwardly by quite a comfortable condition, a state where there’s no pain at all, no pain anywhere, and a great peace – a joyous peace, a state of perfect calm … an ideal condition, at any rate, which sometimes lasts a long, long time. It’s mainly at night, actually; during the day people interrupt me with all sorts of things, but for a certain number of hours at night this state is practically constant. And then suddenly, with no perceptible or apparent reason (I haven’t yet discovered the why or the wherefore of it), you seem to … FALL into the other room, or into the other house, as though you had made a false step – and then you have a pain here, an ache there, you’re uncomfortable.
Obviously it’s the continuation of the same experience I told you about,[[ May 18: Pain, the symbol of life in the Ignorance. ]] but now it has come to this. I mean the two states are now distinct – noticeably distinct; but so far I haven’t found either the why or the wherefore…. Is it something coming from outside or just an old rut: yes, it really feels like an old rut, like a wrinkle in
Page 176
a piece of cloth; you know, you iron it out again and again, and the wrinkle comes back. That’s more the feeling it gives me – not at all a conscious habit, just an old rut. But might something from outside also be provoking it…?
And the dreams it gives me! Oh, there’s a whole series of them, with particular styles and categories…. You start down a flight of stairs – no more stairs; you want to take a certain road – the road closes; you want to catch someone – you can’t. All kinds of things. And although these dreams (I have a whole collection of them, in fact) recur with certain minor outward differences, they are all of the same type. It’s a well-known type which I now classify as self-imposed troubles. When I get out of it and look, I see very clearly that it’s only this nasty habit we have of fretting over nothing! (Laughingly) Oh, whatever we want to do, immediately there’s a complication, a difficulty….
Yes, these dreams arise from the subconscient; they are primarily subconscious habits…. But the pain, the thorns in the garment – it’s so clear! (Mother laughs) And no way to get comfortable!
In the past, a dream like that would nag me for hours, I would worry, wondering what calamities were going to befall me (this was long, long ago – ages ago). But that was idiotic, as I later understood; it’s a certain something in the subconscient, a symbolic form of … well, of certain bad psychological habits we have, that’s all. And I used to torment myself: “How can I get rid of this?” (We’re all loaded with a multitude of such weaknesses built into the body.) And then through experience I understood – I saw it was merely certain bad habits.
The only thing to do is not torment yourself and to say to the Lord (in all sincerity, of course), “It’s up to You. Rid me of this.” And it is very effective. Very effective. At times I have had old things like that dissolved in a flash; certain inveterate little habits – so stupid, but so ingrained you can’t get rid of them. Then, while doing japa or walking or meditating or whatever, suddenly the flame flares up and … (you have really had enough of it; it disgusts you, you want it to change, you really want the change) and you say to the Lord, “I can’t do it on my own.” (You very sincerely know you can’t do it; you have tried and tried and tried and have achieved exactly nothing – you can’t do it.) “Well then, I offer it to You – You do it.” Just like that. And all at once you see the thing fading away. It is simply wonderful. You know how Sri Aurobindo used to take away someone’s pain? It’s exactly the same. Certain habits bound up with the body’s formation.
Page 177
One day I will certainly use the same method on those “room changes,” but for that it will have to become very clear and distinct, well defined in the consciousness. Because that change of room (intellectually you would call it a “change of consciousness,” but that means nothing at all; we’re dealing here with something very, very material) … I have sometimes gone through it without experiencing ANY CHANGE OF EFFECT, which probably means I was centered not in the material consciousness but in a higher consciousness dwelling and looking on from elsewhere – a witness consciousness – and I was in a state where everything flows … flows like a river of tranquil peace…. Truly, it’s marvelous – all creation, all life, all movements, all things, and everything like a single mass, with the body in the midst of it all, blending homogeneously with the whole… and it all flows on like a river of peace, peaceful and smiling, on to infinity. And then oops! You trip (gesture of inversion [[Mother later specified: "It's like inverting a prism." ]]) and once again find yourself SITUATED – you ARE somewhere, at some specific moment of time; and then there’s a pain here, a pain there, a pain…. And sometimes I have seen, I have witnessed the change from the one to the other WITHOUT feeling the pains or experiencing the thing concretely, which means that I wasn’t at all in the body, I wasn’t BOUND to the body – I was seeing, only seeing, just like a witness. And it’s always accompanied by the kind of observation an indulgent (but not blind) friend might make: “But why? Why that again?” That’s how it comes. “What’s the use of that?” And I can’t catch hold of what makes it happen….
It will come.
It is very interesting because it’s very new.
What’s happening? What’s happening, what’s going on?!
(silence)
Several times (because I am almost never alone in my room, though there may be many other reasons), I have noticed a slight change, a small movement in the consciousness of the person or persons in the room. But I always hesitate to throw the responsibility onto something external, because that takes three-quarters of the possibility of control away from you.
If only the mechanism could be found! …
It is plainly something hooked up with other people and reacting to them. But this hook-up is something I cannot undo – it’s the
Page 178
product of years of work, years of universalization, and I am not going to spend my time undoing it now! I don’t want to. I don’t want to find anything for myself alone; I have no personal interest whatsoever. I haven’t stayed on for that. I have to find the mechanism. Moreover, I have been doing just the opposite: every time I am in that state I spread it around, I pass it on. But that may be why these old habits come in….
***
(The talk turns again to the book “like a fairy tale” on Sri Aurobindo:)
Did our meditation have any effect?
Did you feel anything?
(negative gesture)
Nothing.
All right.
We will try.
Oh, for a long time after you left the other day, for more than an hour, I kept on telling that story. I saw myself standing in the midst of a big crowd of children. Something was coming down to me (not that I was pulling at it or thinking about it – I wasn’t thinking about it at all); I was just standing there telling the story, talking on and on and on, and it kept on coming – it was delightful!
I passed it on to you but (laughing) I am not sure you received it.
Something done with a very light touch, with no importance attached to it, but coming from a new world – oh, nowadays I constantly make a distinction between (what shall I say?) … the straight-line, right-angle life and the undulating life. One life I might describe like this (Mother makes chopping gestures, showing crisscrossing lines): everything is sharp-edged, hard, angular, and you’re constantly bumping into things; and then there’s an undulating life, very sweet, with a great charm – VERY charming – but not … not too stable. Strange, it’s a completely different kind of life. Well, my story belonged to that world…. There was nothing here (Mother touches her forehead), and not even anything here (above the head); it was something like … like waves. And it was very joyous, very joyous and carefree.
Page 179
(silence)
Would you like us to be quiet a little while? If you feel like it. Or if you want to tell me something, go ahead.
No.
If you want to ask a question, just ask. If you want to be silent, we can be silent. Whatever you like – till eleven o’clock I am at your disposal!
Nothing? You have nothing to tell me? There’s nothing you would like to say?
Well – everything is a bit confused…. I feel that everything is being cut away from me, on all sides; the feeling of being pushed onto a path where I’ll end up regarding the world as an illusion.
That’s your thorny garment again!
On my part, well…. What I saw for you, what I’ve been seeing since the day before yesterday, is just the opposite: it is something being loosened up. Only I plainly see that … there’s also a worthless road that must not be followed; and both roads are very close together. Why so close! It’s like those two rooms: why are they so near each other? If only there were some distance! But no, it’s all intertwined.
And it’s the same thing: what’s needed is the path of vastness, widening, relaxation, ease, of BLOSSOMING in the vital – not so much a censorial vital as … as gentleness, a certain sweetness. The vital blossoming into beauty: sweetness and beauty. I don’t want to speak of “sentiments” because … oh, that lands us right in a quagmire! No, but … a sweetness and charm and beauty – but not there (in the head): here. And then rest – not a stiff and stony and stagnant rest, a rest within the undulation…. You let yourself float.[[ Mother is entering into a sort of trance and, almost to the end of this conversation, will be speaking slowly, as if from far away. ]]
(silence)
The art of letting oneself be carried by the Supreme, within Infinity.
Page 180
(silence)
But it is within the Infinity of the Becoming. And with none of the harshness, none of the shocks that are ordinarily experienced in life.
The art of letting oneself be carried by the Supreme (Mother clasps her hands together) within the Infinite Becoming.
(long silence)
Whatever comes from here (Mother touches her forehead, her face) … from here onwards it’s all harsh, dry, crumpled up – it’s violent, it’s aggressive. Even goodwill is aggressive, even affection, tenderness, attachment – all of that, it’s all terribly aggressive. Like the blows of a stick.
All mental life is harsh, actually.
(silence)
That’s it, that’s what we must catch hold of – a sort of cadence, a wave movement, and it has such vastness, such power! It’s tremendous, really. And it doesn’t disrupt anything. It doesn’t displace anything, it doesn’t clash with anything. [[Interestingly enough, physicists also say that the wave movement does not displace matter. For example, the concentric ripples caused on the surface of a pond by the fall of a pebble do not carry the water molecules along with them: a cork floating on the water rises and falls with the undulatory rhythm without traveling on the pond. ]] And it carries the universe in its undulatory movement – so smoothly!
(silence)
I don’t know if it’s the same for others (it probably isn’t), but for me it is incontestably the one truly effective thing: this sense of not existing, and that the only thing existing – I mean, what one customarily calls oneself – is something that grates and resists.
But with a very simple movement, you can easily eliminate that from the consciousness; this movement can be formulated in an almost childlike way: “You alone, Lord, You alone can act…. You alone, Lord, You alone can act.” And then that easing off (it’s relaxation, actually): you just let yourself melt, let yourself melt. This (the head) keeps still, it doesn’t stir; you are wholly in the sensation, you let yourself melt. And … with a sense of boundlessness.
Page 181
And no more distinctions.
No more distinctions. And also, even physically, something with no beginning; there is no sense of “from this moment on, from that point on” – that no longer exists. It’s like … like relaxing into an indefinite past.
I am speaking now of a BODILY sensation.
That, in any event, is how what’s speaking to you here manages to get to … the true room.
It seems to take time, the way I am telling it now, but actually … a minute or two of silence and it’s done.
(silence)
The body has been cradled by three Words….
Words that repeat themselves automatically, with no effort of will (but the body itself is quite aware that although these three particular Words happen to have been given to it, it might also have been something else – it was originally the choice of a higher Intelligence). This has become an automatic accompaniment. It is not so much the words in themselves as what they will represent and bring with them in their vibration…. I mean it would be quite inaccurate to say, “Only these Words are helpful,” no, not that. But they provide an accompaniment, an accompaniment of subtle, physical vibrations, which has built up a certain state or experience, a sort of association between the presence of those words and this movement of eternal Life, that undulating vibration.
Obviously, another center of consciousness, another (how shall I put it?) … another concretization, another amalgam, might – would of course – have another vibration.
In ordinary language, the vibration of the mantra is what helps the body to enter a certain state – but it is not particularly THIS mantra: it is the particular relationship established between a mantra (it has to be a true one, a mantra endowed with power) and the body. It surges up spontaneously: as soon as the body starts walking, it walks to the rhythm of those Words. And the rhythm of the Words quite naturally brings about a certain vibration, which in turn brings about the state.
But to say it’s these particular Words exclusively would be ridiculous. What counts is the sincerity of the aspiration, the exactness of the expression and the power; that is, the power that comes from the mantra being accepted. This is something very interesting: the mantra has been ACCEPTED by the supreme Power as
Page 182
an effective tool, and so it automatically contains a certain force and power. [[Mother is not speaking here of only her mantra but of all mantras. As she later added: "No mantra has any effect unless it is ACCEPTED by the Power being addressed. When (like the Tantrics, for example) you do a mantra for a certain deity, if this deity accepts the mantra, that gives it power; but if the deity doesn't accept your mantra, it has no power at all. This isn't something I got out of a book, I know it from my own experience - but I believe it has been explained in Tantric texts." ]] But it is a purely personal phenomenon (the expression is the same, but the vibrations are personal). A mantra leading one person straight to divine realization will leave another person cold and flat.
What is your experience when you say your mantra? You once told me you felt good saying it….
I generally find it restful.
Yes, that’s it; that’s very good.
But I don’t know what it represents.
It represents what you put into it – your aspiration, mon petit. No, to me it can represent only ONE thing…. I call it “the Supreme,” because you have to call it something, but that Something is the farthest limit of our aspiration, our aspiration in every sense, in all directions, on all occasions. Something that is the supreme summit of our aspiration, WHATEVER that aspiration may be, in whatever direction, in whatever realm – beyond, really beyond, Something beyond any form of activity.
For me, the most concrete approach to this is through the vibration of pure Love; not love for something, a love you give or receive, but Love in itself: Love. It is something self-existent. And it is certainly the most concrete approach for me. (But it isn’t exclusive – it contains everything else within itself; it doesn’t exclude all the other approaches, all the other contacts.)
You see, throughout my childhood and youth and the whole beginning of my yoga, there was a sort of refusal in my being to use the word “God,” because of all the falsehood behind that word (Sri Aurobindo rid me of that; in the same way he got rid of all limitations, he rid me of that one too). But it’s not a word that comes to me spontaneously.
But Love…. At the moment of contact, when it goes like this (gesture) – at that moment something surges up….
Page 183
But the words don’t matter, they’re unimportant.
And yet I have noticed that to associate a certain state and a certain aspiration with a certain sound helps the body. No one told me the mantra; I had begun doing japa before we met X (it had come to me when I was trying to find a means of getting the body to take part in the experience – the body itself, you know: THIS). And this help was certainly given to me, because the method imposed itself very, very imperiously – when I heard certain Words it was like an electric shock. And then, disregarding all Sanskrit rules, I made myself a sentence; it isn’t really a Sanskrit sentence, or any kind of sentence at all – a phrase made up of three Words. And these three Words are full of meaning for me. (I wouldn’t mention it to a Sanskritist!) They have a full, living meaning. And they have been repeated literally millions and millions of times, I am not exaggerating – they surge up from the body spontaneously.
It was the first sound that came from the body when I had that last experience [April 13]. Along with the first pain, came that first sound – so it must be quite well rooted. [[In the substance of the body. ]] And it brings in exactly that vibration of eternal Life: the first thing I felt, all of a sudden, was a kind of strong calm, confident and smiling.
Oh, I am sure it is very good, very helpful.
Voilà, mon petit. Nowadays I have nothing to say – I chatter away quite uselessly. But … I like to see you. And I think it’s worthwhile.
Good.
I have asked that you be given good things to eat, but I don’t know if it’s being done. I want you to enjoy eating. If nobody else does it, I’ll start doing it again myself….
Page 184