October 5, 1963
Yesterday I had a very curious experience which left me with a bizarre feeling….
It was a construction – a huge construction. It resembled one of those huge hotels they build nowadays, with inner courtyards and all sorts of things. And I had my room right at the top. (It called to my mind an old experience I had had…. Do you remember that “big hotel”?[[See Agenda 1, July 3, 1957, p. 104. ]] It was somewhat like that.) And everyone there was APPARENTLY full of respect, of obedience, of thoughtfulness … but everyone was going his own sweet way – that’s nothing new. At first, I was downstairs (my room was way upstairs, I don’t know how many floors there were), and there I met some people, people whom I know. But each and every detail was so revealing, it was marvelous! And it was time for me to have my bath (I don’t know what time it was!), so I wanted to go back upstairs to do so, but I needed someone to prepare the bath (it’s symbolic; I don’t know yet, I haven’t yet understood the symbol of that “bath,” because it occurs very often; but there may be some meaning hidden in that symbol). But then one person was too old (someone who had offered to prepare the bath, but he was too old), another wasn’t strong enough, another … – to be able to prepare the bath required VERY special qualities. It isn’t the first time; it has happened two or three times before: to be able to prepare that bath took absolutely exceptional qualities of courage, strength, physical power, endurance. And the people downstairs … (gesture expressing incapacity). So I said to myself, “All right, I’ll go upstairs and see what happens.”
On the way, the same thing happened again: I went the usual way – plop! cut off, nothing left, I can’t get through; I come back, start another way – plop! cut off, I can’t get through. Yet I kept going up (how, I don’t know). Then I reached a sort of square terrace-balcony, perfectly square, and ALL its doors were closed. There was no way of going farther: all the doors were closed. Then I see water rising, rising, rising in the ENTIRE building, except the places where the doors were closed. Downstairs … (I don’t know, I was very high up, maybe on the fourth or fifth floor) the doors were closed, so naturally water could not get in. All the courtyards (large, immense courtyards) were turned into swimming pools. What water! … I
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kept watching it, admiring it; I said to myself, "What wonderful water!" So clear, so clear, clearer than any I ever saw. Water that was … I can’t say, it was transparent like … like purity itself, it was marvelous. It was rising and rising and rising…. I saw in one of the courtyards on my left (a very large courtyard: it had become an immense swimming pool!), I saw a person in a bathing suit come out of the water, as if he had taken his bath in it, and wrap himself up (a very tall person, very tall, who was neither a man nor a woman), he wrapped himself up in a bathrobe, then walked away on the water (!) I was watching this till suddenly I realized that the water was beginning to reach my feet. Then I KNEW: "Ah, yes! They’ve decided to do this." I was a little upset: "They really could have told me they were going to do this!" I thought. "It’s something they must do regularly…. Did they inform some people?" (All this in my head, of course.)
And I kept admiring that water, thinking, “But it’s purity itself!” It was reaching my feet, yet I wasn’t getting wet. Then I remarked, “If I stay here …” (Because I was standing with my back against closed doors and the building extended beyond them, but in front of me there was nothing, so normally the water should have flowed out that way – how is it then that it didn’t? I don’t know – the whole thing was quite “marvelous”!) And it was rising and rising and rising, until it reached my ankles and suddenly triggered something within me – I woke up.
I was at least ten minutes later than my usual time.
I didn’t have any sense of danger – not at all. Only that slight feeling of being upset: “They ought to inform people before doing things of that sort!” And “they” were the supreme heads of the organization (there was nothing religious or spiritual about it: it was very concrete, in Matter). But that water … I kept admiring it, thinking, “Oh, they have control over that water!” It was like liquid diamond. It was a marvel, as if everything it touched were purified. And that being who came out of the huge swimming pool (it wasn’t a human being: it looked like a vital being who was neither a man nor a woman) came out in a kind of bathing suit, wrapped himself up and disappeared. But otherwise ALL the doors were closed, there wasn’t a soul – only me on my square, with the square around me and my back against a closed door, watching the whole scene from a great height. And everything was filling up with that substance – it looked like water, but it wasn’t water.
The impression lingered, as if there were something I had to understand.
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And I just felt a slight disappointment: “They really could have told me.” And together with it, a smile that understood it was better that way.
“They really ought to inform people….”
I thought it was something in the vital, because all my relationships with the people downstairs, before going back upstairs, were with their character, their vital – not with material matter but with the character, vital nature. And it was…! You could write books: an irony, a sharp perception, fine, delicate – priceless! It’s charming, you know: each one with his own little flaw – they were all people I know!
But there are some beings that have been in two or three persons: for example, a vital being that went from one person to another (a being I know very well, so I know it happened that way), and what I saw was the BEING, not the different persons. A vital, female-looking being (they take on a sexual appearance when they have been in human beings: they retain the female or male appearance), a female-looking being, and just when the question of preparing my bath arose (always that “bath” … I’ll have to find out what it means), she had something very urgent to do, went into her room, then (laughing) came out again a minute later with a dress … a sort of green dress – grass green but bright – with an immense train! And she walked past so proudly: “Yes, I wanted to show them who I am.” What an admirable comedy! If I had the time to write, it could make utterly charming stories.
But I’ll have to find out what that bath is which comes repeatedly.
One person was so anxious (I know who it is, I know him very well), so anxious to prepare the bath, but he didn’t have the strength, he couldn’t do it: “Oh, how I would like to prepare the bath!” So I looked at him, I didn’t want to say no; but I thought, “It’s not possible, he can’t, he doesn’t have the strength.”
(silence)
I kept going up, but all the ways I knew stopped short. First I had started up a very large staircase, a magnificent staircase of pink marble, that was the way I had to go upstairs, but just as I turned on the landing – plop! impossible to get through. (But how is it…? Impossible to get through, yet I went up just the same?..) And I find myself on another landing, I try again to go up from there – plop! stopped, impossible to get through. I try again and find myself on the third landing (but in fact I was on a
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higher floor, because I had already climbed two flights before I was stopped), I reach the third landing and find myself on a square – a perfect square – edged with a parapet of pink marble, but with reddish veins, very beautiful: very beautiful, it was chiseled – magnificent. Then a door, a sort of bronze door behind me, which was closed. So I watched and saw the water rising and rising (it wasn’t water, but it was liquid like water). And in front of me: an immensity. No limits. I seemed to be above all the other houses; there were no trees, no mountains, nothing – an immensity, like a perfectly cloudless sky; and it wasn’t white, but there was light in it. I was looking down and I saw the water rising and rising and rising – like the Flood. But it wasn’t water.
It will come back until I understand.
It didn’t appear catastrophic?
No.
But in that consciousness, there aren’t any “catastrophes,” so I can’t be sure.
There was only that: “Why? … They could have informed people just the same!” But it was “they” in the plural: “They should have.” They were the “all-powerful masters” or the “supreme masters.” But there was nothing religious in the feeling, nothing spiritual either.
It wasn’t in the vital – the supreme beings of the vital?
No, no!
It was what corresponds to the “owners” – they were the owners, in the sense that they had built everything and everything belonged to them – built and organized everything. Maybe they are gods?
I had no consideration for them (I don’t know how to explain this), not only no respect, but no consideration: they were just owners. Only, I lived at the very top of the house. And in that house, everyone obeyed me (“obeyed,” well, in appearance). They were the owners or the management. But they weren’t responsible to me, they didn’t take orders from me; they didn’t need to ask me before doing something – nor was I responsible to them. But I didn’t have the feeling of being any more at home there than anywhere else; yet I had undeniably my room there, at the very top of the house.
Maybe they were gods?
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The world’s construction as they built it?
But then, that water rising and rising and rising??…
And everything was very well organized, because all the doors were closed and the water didn’t enter where it wasn’t supposed to – I saw no one drowned, no one in danger. There was no danger for anyone. And there was only one being, a vital being (he wasn’t like the others I had seen downstairs). He had had great fun in that water! And he was leaving.
I remember that when the water touched my feet, it was … (how can I explain?) it wasn’t a sensation, I had no sensations, but around my feet it was like sparkling diamonds. Obviously I didn’t intend to be fully immersed in it. And when I felt the water around my feet, I had an odd sensation (a perception, not a sensation), not the sensation of being wet, but clearly like: “I shouldn’t stay here.” And I woke up very abruptly.
(silence)
Before the water reached my feet, while I was watching it rising and rising, I thought, “Still, they really could have told me” (no, it wasn’t “me,” it was “they really could have ANNOUNCED the thing”). And at the same time I felt: “Why, but it’s something they do regularly (recurring gesture), they do it regularly, but they should really inform people.” But not strongly, simply like something passing [in Mother's thought].
Not for a second the sense of a danger, not at all. Not for a second.
I don’t know …(silence)
It has a meaning. Something will come back to give me the explanation.
In the old traditions they often mention “waters of immortality”; could there not be a connection? Waters that had the power to give immortality.
Maybe.
That made you invulnerable.
Invulnerable … maybe that’s it.
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I always have to take my bath: I have to take a bath and no one is able to prepare it for me.
I have a bathroom.
I always go to take my bath, but someone has to prepare it. And either they aren’t strong enough, or they think of other things, or they don’t care about it, or … And once (I told you this), I opened the door and found someone trying to take a bath, but I arrived just in time. [[See conversation of September 25. ]]
We’ll see.
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