September 25, 1963
(Mother first reads her notation of a recent experience)
It came in English. (I want to put it in the Bulletin to fill a gap!) We should put it in French, too.
Love is … (no need to say that it’s the condensation of an experience – an experience I leave unsaid).
Love is not sexual intercourse. Love is not vital attraction and interchange. Love is not the heart’s hunger for affection. Love is a mighty vibration coming straight from the One. And only the very pure and very strong are capable of receiving and manifesting it.
Then an explanation on what I mean by “pure,” the very pure and very strong:
To be pure is to be open only to the Supreme’s influence, and to no other.
Far more difficult than what people consider purity to be! Which is something quite artificial and false.
The last sentence I wrote in French, too (the two came together):
Être pur, c’est être ouvert seulement à l’influence du Suprême et à nulle autre.
It’s simple and definite.
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Now we should translate the rest into French – I have so many papers that I am lost! (Mother rummages among a heap of scraps of paper) I am snowed under with papers!
At first I put, L’Amour n’a rien à voir avec ... [Love has nothing to do with ... ], and so on, but that’s not true. So we’ll put, L’Amour n’est pas … [Love is not ...].
L’Amour n’est pas les relations sexuelles. L’Amour n’est pas les attractions et les echanges vitaux. L’Amour n’est pas le besoin d’affection du cÏur …
It’s from Savitri, in “The Debate of Love and Death,” when Death tells Savitri, “What you call love is the hunger of your heart.”
Could we translate: “L’Amour n’est pas le cÏur et son besoin d’affection” [Love is not the heart and its hunger for affection]?
But the heart can manifest Love! No: L’Amour n’est pas le besoin d’affection du cÏur [Love is not the heart's hunger for affection]. And then, the positive side:
L’Amour est une vibration toute-puissante emanée directement de l’Un. Et seul, le très pur et le très fort est capable de la recevoir et de la manifester.
I have a whole stack of notes! (Mother shows her successive drafts of the translation)
The thing is new to me. That’s what I told you the other day: first an experience, but an experience … something that takes HOLD of the entire being, the entire body, everything, everything, like this (grasping gesture) and keeps you in its hold. And it works. It works everywhere in the cells: absolutely everywhere, in the consciousness, in the sensation, in the cells. Then it settles, as if passing through a very fine sieve, and it falls back to the other side – as words. But not always arranged in sentences (it’s very odd): two words here, three words there (Mother seems to show patches of color here and there). Then I keep very still, I don’t stir – above all I don’t think, don’t stir – silence. Then, little by little, the words start a dance, and when they form a reasonably coherent sentence, I write it down. But generally it isn’t final. If I wait a little
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longer (even while doing something else), after a time it comes: a sentence that has a far more logical and striking existence. And if I wait still longer, it becomes more precise, until finally it comes with a feeling, "Now this is it." That’s what happened with the English note: "Now this is it." Good, so I write it down.
I never had that before. Everything had to fall silent (I mean even the most active and material outer mind), I had to get into the habit, when my experience comes, of not stirring – not stirring, nothing stirring, everything like this (gesture in suspense), waiting.
Even visually, it almost looks like a fine rain of white light, and after a time, that fine rain seems to make the words grow, as if it were watering the words! And the words come. Then they start a sort of dance, a quadrille, and when the quadrille has taken a clear shape, then the sentence becomes clear.
Very amusing.
It’s already the third time that’s happened – brand new.
So when I note it all down, the result is all sorts of papers! (Mother shows the stack of drafts)
And now, with that new process, the papers will go on multiplying! Because it comes the way I told you [in successive bits]. But it has an advantage: the mind stays absolutely silent – the mind need not do anything, it’s as if someone came to look for the words in a storehouse and made all the arrangements. And that someone is impersonal: an impersonal consciousness. Almost “the consciousness of what wants to be expressed,” the consciousness of a revelation or an instruction, or the consciousness of a will, but not of a person. That someone collects the words and puts them together, then there is a dance … like a dance of electrons!
(silence)
The other day, the process was less complete, but it was something similar, a first hint: K. had sent me an article he wanted to publish somewhere with quotations from Sri Aurobindo and myself, and he wanted to make sure it was correct and he hadn’t muddled it (!) In one place, I saw a comment by him (you know how people delight in wordplays when they are fully in the mind: the mind loves to play with words and contrast one sentence with another), it was in English, I am not quoting word for word, but he said that “the age of religions was the age of the gods”; and, naturally, as our Mr. Mind loves to play with words, it made him say that, now, the age of the gods is over and it is “the age of
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God” – which means he was deplorably falling back into the Christian religion … without noticing it! And just as I saw his written sentence, I saw that tendency of the mind which loves it and finds it very … oh, charming, such a nice turn of phrase (!) I didn’t say anything, I went on to the end of his article. Then where that sentence was I saw a little light shining: it was like a little spark (I saw that with my eyes open). I looked at my spark, and in the place of God, there was The One. So I took my pen and made the correction.
But my first translation was The All-Containing One, because it was an experience, not a thought. What I saw was The One containing all. And innocently, I wrote it down on a paper (Mother shows a little scrap of paper): The All-Containing One. But just then, I saw what looked like someone giving me a slap and telling me, “Not that: you should put The One, that’s all.” So I wrote The One.
That’s how it works!
It’s really thought seen from above, from a height, and it’s very amusing. Very amusing, it all plays, it’s like little will-o’-the-wisps coming out from here and there, doing a dance, arranging themselves – very amusing.
It’s beginning to be amusing. It has been very strong lately – it’s been coming at night, in daytime, all the time.
But the night before, I was with Sri Aurobindo, who gave me a revelation. I was with him, he was reclining (not stretched out but on a sort of chaise longue) and I was supposed to bring him something to eat (not at all like physical food, it’s something else … I don’t know what it is … it’s rather different in that world – the subtle physical), and it was expressed to me … (there were no words in my consciousness; I don’t know why, no words), he told me something which I understood perfectly, not only understood but it made me very happy, a joy came into me, and I answered, “Yes, exactly! It corresponds to the experience I had today and which is …???” (Mother leaves her sentence hanging) You see, I was conscious while I was having all the activity, but it was expressed in words [there] that aren’t words [here], so I don’t know what to do! And he told me in the tone you take when expressing a definitive and overwhelming experience (his tone was one of absolute power) something that was translated like this: Now, the nourishment (it wasn’t nourishment but food) comes from the whole of Nature at once. (Mother utters those words like a riddle or an open sesame that has not yet opened the door) And he told me to bring it to him (that too was a translation): Yes, you will bring it (the it was that food coming from the whole Nature at once – it’s a seemingly silly transcription, but anyway …), you will bring it in this translucent bowl. And I replied, Yes, I knew, I knew that I had to use this translucent bowl to bring you the food…. But what on earth does that correspond to??… Yet it was so evident! There was such a joy! (Because as I was conscious, I thought, “Well, all the same, I am still following him closely in his development, it’s going on as when he was here: when he wins a victory, it is materialized in me.”) Thus I was perfectly conscious and I told him, Ah, I am glad!… (I am faltering, of course, it wasn’t that at all – it was admirable.) Oh, I am glad, I knew that I had to bring you the food in this translucent bowl…. And the translucent bowl was a marvel! I had it, you see, it was beautiful! It was like opaline, living glass, all luminous but with all the lights alive and moving, and what colors! … Pink, mauve, silver and gold, oh, it was so very beautiful. And I brought it to him.
It impressed me very strongly. Very strongly: I was under a spell, probably because the experience was still too strong and powerful for the material brain. And I saw it immediately; at the very moment of the experience, I saw it was a transcription, and an extraordinarily poor transcription, but nothing better could be done.
And such details!… There was a whole story (which lasted even more than an hour and a half) … with all the details. Because where I was with him was an upper floor and when I came down I met people, did some things and so on. It was the upper floor. And it all went on in a dazzling light, dazzling, dazzling; everything was as though in a blazing sun … much brighter than the sun – the sun is dark in such a case.
And when I came downstairs (it wasn’t like here: everyone had his own house and garden, it was a huge estate), I went straight to my bathroom. I open the door … and whom do I find there but someone (I recognized him, but I won’t name him) who was using it – “Well,” I thought, “that’s a fine thing!” And I closed the door again. All kinds of details, it lasted more than an hour. And you know, the number of things that can happen in an hour and a half at night….
Once again I was tall – I am always tall. But I hadn’t dressed as I do usually: I wore a short dress. There were lots of people there; I recognized everyone, I could hear everyone’s voice, it was very, very distinct. And there were two girls (not girls, they’re women
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now, but to me they were like girls), two girls talking to each other and saying, "How strong her legs are!" (It’s symbolic.) And at the same time, I saw my legs as if there were a mirror to show them to me! I had a short dress and I saw my legs and my two feet with shoes on – my feet had shoes on. And a short dress. Very active.
Voilà.
(silence)
Last night was less pleasant…. There were again those things collapsing. I was below, you see, trying to go back up to my room, and every time I tried to go back up, all the means to do so disappeared or were done away with. Now I’ve chased it all away because it was tiring. But one thing I do remember: I was climbing up a sort of … not stairs or a ladder, it was a very queer thing, like blocks of dark red stone, and they were all crumbling – and coming apart. It ended up annoying me, and I had a movement not of anger, but of self-assertive will – and everything vanished…. You feel it’s adverse formations trying to harass you, until I can’t say I lose patience, but something gets angry (is it “angry”? Asserts itself, rather: “Ah, no! Enough!”) and instantly, pfft! it all goes away. But then I found myself on a road I knew very well, but there was such a crowd! A crowd, a crowd: all the schools of the world were coming there for their holidays. There were troops of kids led by matrons and teachers, myriads and myriads of them! … And also children who stopped and played on the ground; but all those children knew me very well, and when I arrived, they would take their things out of the way to let me through – weeny little kids this high. Then I met a symbolic person (not a human person) whom I know very well, she was pale blue (that is to say, a being of the higher mind, a force of Nature in the higher mind), I know her very well, she is very often with me. She explained to me her difficulties and I explained to her what she should do; I told her, “I’ve already told you several times, it’s like this and like that….” She stayed beside me a very long time, and she asked me, “Why do I always have to leave you?” I answered her, “Don’t worry; everything is fine now.” It went on for a long time. But it was interesting, a very pleasant, very refined contact: a beautiful girl – that is, a beautiful thought or a beautiful idea. A beautiful girl. And she had in her charge an innumerable amount of kids (Mother laughs), so she was somewhat worried at times, and I explained to her what she should do.
I feel a sort of tenderness towards that person.
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And all those children! Even the tiny little ones who could hardly walk, when they saw me arrive they would push their toys aside and make way for me.
It wasn’t on the ground, it wasn’t in the physical world.
But a swarm, you know! … It’s certainly some mental world or other.
(silence)
But that experience [of the crumbling stairs], I know what it corresponds to, because I know the experience I had when I went to sleep: it’s always when I am confronted with the Problem…. I could put it this way (but that diminishes it a lot), “Why is the world the way it is?” Then there comes to me that sort of … it’s an INTENSE state of compassion – intense, almost painful – for the condition of the world and humanity. When that comes, I have those difficulties at night. And then I ask, I want to know the REAL secret – not all the things people have told (which all seem to me just like a story to … to comfort children), but the REAL thing. When I go into deep rest with that tension, it’s always translated by those things collapsing: I try to climb and crunch! crunch! crunch! all the time, all the time everything crumbles under the weight of my ascent. Until I see that ill will trying to stop me from finding what I want to find, so I get angry and it stops instantly – is “angry” the word? I don’t know: I refuse, I refuse the situation. Then it stops short.
And I awake saying to myself, “You see, it’s all your fault: as long as you accept, you cannot know, you are in the dark; when you really refuse, you will know.”
So I answer, “When the Lord wants me to know, I will know; when it’s necessary for me to know, I will know.”
Probably for the time being …
It’s like Sri Aurobindo’s “translucent bowl”…. There’s nothing that corresponds to it.
To tell the truth, we always want to go too fast. But that’s because the notion of time is in everyone’s mind – they’re wearisome.
***
(Before Satprem leaves, Mother gives him the latest issue of “World-Union,” a magazine launched by some Ashram disciples.)
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It makes me uneasy.
I know what you mean! It even makes some people here furious. Because it’s published from here (most of those people are here), but there’s never any mention of the Ashram, any mention of Sri Aurobindo, nothing.
What’s worse is that when they do speak of Sri Aurobindo, they put him on a level with everybody else.
Exactly! Exactly!
You know, Sri Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin, Schweitzer and so on and so forth.
Yes, a mishmash.
As for me, I would have rejected it [World-Union] altogether, but there are in it those who started the whole affair: there are three persons through whom I do something – not this! (the issue of “World-Union”) Something else, of which they themselves are very little aware. (They are very interested in this [the “World-Union” brochure!, not me!) So I didn’t quite declare, “I don’t want to have anything to do with that,” but when people ask me, I say it has nothing to do with the Ashram, absolutely nothing.
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