Works of Sri Aurobindo

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-78_November 7_1964.htm

November 7, 1964

Mother looks very pale.

For the past three days there has been a constant phenomenon: something … I don’t know what it is … as if the whole head were being emptied (Mother shows the blood going downward). Physically, that’s what you feel before fainting, as if all the blood were leaving the head: the head empties, and then you faint.

The first time it came was the day before yesterday; I was resting (after lunch I rest for half an hour), and at the end of my rest, suddenly I see myself - I see myself standing near my bed, very tall, with a magnificent dress, and with someone dressed in white beside me. And I saw this just when I seemed about to faint:

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I was at once the person standing and the person on the bed who was watching, and at the same time I felt that thing flowing downward, flowing downward from the head – the head empties completely. And the person standing smiled, while the person in the bed wondered, "What! I am fainting – but I am in my bed!" There. And as it was time for me to "wake up" (that is, to return to the outer consciousness), I came back.

And I was left with this problem: who was standing there?… Very tall, with a splendid dress, and then a person (who was a human person, but much shorter), a white person beside me, all white. And just when I become conscious of this, when I see this, the head empties completely of something, and the face of the person standing (who was me) smiles. And then, the other part of me that was lying down in my bed said, “What! It’s odd, I am fainting; how is it that I am fainting? – I am in my bed!”

I got up and didn’t feel anything physically, it didn’t correspond to anything.

I haven’t had any explanation. I don’t have any clue. What does it mean? I don’t know.

Obviously, it’s something!

But since then it has been like that, and particularly last night when it was terribly cold [monsoon + windstorm], I was completely still in my bed, with an almost constant feeling of that “something” flowing downward – of the head emptying.

It continued this morning, a very bizarre impression. Yet, physically, I feel fine, I took my food, I …

But you look very pale.

Very pale?

Yes, it struck me. You’re very pale, as if you didn’t have much blood.

But in the beginning when you arrived and I sat down, it came very strongly – very strongly, as if everything … vrrt! were going away.

So I’m pale, am I?

Yes, you were more so ten minutes ago.

Because I have concentrated.

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It’s always the same thing, you know: I strongly feel that the explanation, or even the physical phenomenon, is the translation of something going on elsewhere. But I don’t know what it is…. It is a new process.

But once, you had a similar experience with all the symptoms of fainting: when the center of your physical consciousness left you.

Yes, but that’s not …

(long silence)

I feel it as something linked to the circulatory system, but …

(Mother goes into a meditation, looking for the real cause)

I don’t understand. And those things keep recurring until you have understood … So that’s troublesome.

* * *

At the end of the conversation, Mother consults her appointment book:

There’s a crush of people…. I ought to have some peace.

When I have some peace, I am perfectly well. But …

There’s obviously something going on, but I don’t know what it is…. It seems to be going quickly now, a little more quickly.

But the mind (if we can call that “mind”), the physical stupidity cannot understand the process: what’s happening, what’s going on, it doesn’t understand. The body only has, as soon as it is at peace, the feeling of bathing in the Lord. That’s all. But in the body (not in its attributes, I mean when neither force nor energy nor power or any of that is there), in it there is, not something powerful, but a very gentle tranquillity. But not even the feeling of a certainty, nothing. It’s negative, rather: the sensation of an absence of limits, something very vast, very vast, very tranquil, very tranquil – very vast, very tranquil. A sort of – yes, like a gentle trust, but not the certainty of transformation, for instance, nothing of that kind.

It’s strange, it isn’t a passivity; it isn’t passive, but it’s so tranquil, so tranquil, with a sort of – yes – gentleness.

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I don’t know. We’ll see, maybe by the next time I will have found out?

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