November 21, 1964
Mother looks weary. She is holding her palms on her eyes.
… They stupefy me with material, mechanical things to be done, and as they’re all in a hurry and disorganized, they come at the last minute and the thing has to be done “immediately.” All this to explain to you that I am completely stupefied.
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If you like, we can do some translation, because then it’s you who’s working, not me!
But do you have anything to say? … If you do, tell me.
Oh, there are always things to be said, but…
Ah! Tell me, then.
They’re personal things.
Yes, fine, tell me.
I don’t quite understand my position now. I have the feeling that my existence has grown thin, thin, thinner and thinner – it has thinned down to almost nothing.
Oh, very good!
Except for mechanisms, there’s nothing.
It’s good, it’s a very good sign, it means you are becoming free from your ego.
But if at least, in this nullity, there were experiences…
Listen, yesterday or the day before (anyway after I saw you last time), for a whole day I had exactly the sensation you’ve just told me. I suddenly remembered sensations or impressions or experiences I had when I was here or there, in France, in Japan, and I had that impression … yes, of a thinning down, a shrinking to the point of nonexistence.
Yes, exactly.
Absolutely nonexistence. And I wondered, “But where is that person I used to call ‘me’?… Where is she, what is she doing?” – It had evaporated (Mother blows air between her fingers), absolutely evaporated. Oh, how I laughed, mon petit, how delighted I was! For half an hour I laughed within. I said to myself, “Well, it’s a success!” Then I looked at that poor body and thought, “If this too could be changed into something else, it would be magnificent!”
(Looking at Satprem out of the corner of her eyes) It’s very good -
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it’s very good, it’s a sure sign that one has emerged from one’s ego.
Yes, but in that nonexistence, only things without any interest remain: the body, the mechanisms.
Because that’s what remains. But what to do? … I tell you, the impression was that there only remained what directly concerns this.
Well, yes!
In other words, nothing; it’s almost nil.
So the problem arose: “How can THIS change?”
Of course, I had the answer…. I have a calendar with quotations from Sri Aurobindo, and I had the answer in the evening. I don’t remember the exact words, but he said, “The Spirit will change this human body too into a divine reality.” That was the answer; he said, THE SPIRIT. I said to myself, “Obviously, but how can THIS be transformed?…”
That’s the problem.
And the answer is always the same: it CANNOT depend on our effort. Naturally, it goes without saying that we must make ourselves as plastic and well-disposed as possible (I am speaking of the body), but the change CANNOT depend on it, it doesn’t have the knowledge and it doesn’t have the power; therefore, the change can only depend on the divine Will.
That’s exactly it. This has been the experience of the past few days.
But you get a feeling that even aspiration … I can’t say it disappears in that nonexistence, but there’s nothing, there’s almost nothing left.
Mon petit, that’s because what you call "aspiration" is a movement of your psychic consciousness, mentally formulated and supported by the vital – but it ISN’T YOUR BODY. And it’s only if you are very attentive to the vibration of the cells, if you are accustomed to observing them and feeling them that you can see. Well, I don’t know, but I can’t complain about my body’s cells…. You know, it isn’t a perception, it isn’t a sensation, it is … a LIVED FAITH in the existence of the Supreme alone – you know, a faith that it’s the only Reality and the only Existence. Just that, and everything seems to
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swell up, as if all these cells were swelling up with such joy! … Only, it doesn’t take the form of a feeling, not even of a sensation, even less of a thought; so if you aren’t very attentive, you don’t notice it. But, for instance, when I repeat the mantra, it’s repeated by that famous physical mind, which is so stupid (the mantra is the only thing that can keep a rein on it), and now it has become so identified that the mantra is its whole life, it is like a pulsation of its being; but then when I come to the invocation (there is a series of invocations: each one has its own effect on the body), when I come to "Manifest Your Love," I see a sort of twinkling of a golden light, which represents an intense joy in all the cells.
It isn’t easy to observe, you must be very, very, very detached from the movement of thought, otherwise you don’t notice it. But if you see it, you see that even those cells are there waiting for the Thing.
I don’t think that much more can be expected of them, except, perhaps, to get rid little by little of wrong habits and false vibrations (which, naturally, are the cause of what we call “illnesses”).
But we can say, looking at it from an external standpoint, that ours is a rather thankless task! … The glory will come afterwards, but will these bodies see it? I don’t know. There is such a huge, tremendous difference between what must be and what is. These are poor things, you know, there’s no getting away from it, they are poor things.
One may say, along with popular imagination, the taste for the marvelous and all the legends, one may say, “Yes, a sudden transformation,” but, but, but … it’s just words.
(silence)
I remember having written somewhere, some ten years ago, that I would take it as a sign if my back became straight again. [[See Agenda 1, March 19 and 20,1956. ]] At the time, it wasn’t much, but it disgusted me deeply, and I did it as a challenge. Naturally, now it’s very far away from my consciousness and my thought, I find it childish, but I remembered it a few days ago also, and I said to myself that now I didn’t care a bit about that, because to me it’s nothing! All the rest … rail the rest is equally inadequate, incomplete and miserable, you know – miserable. If you think about a divine life, it’s miserable.
And curiously, everything comes and presents itself as images and possibilities; so I say to myself, "But if after a time all this
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suddenly stops functioning, what will have been the use of doing all this work?" And there is always something – something that comes from a very absolute region – which makes me feel or understand or grasp the uselessness of death.
Why am I thus made to feel the uselessness of death?…
God knows, never, not one minute in my life, even when things were the darkest, the blackest, the most negative, the most painful, not once did the thought come, “I would like to die.” And ever since I had the experience of psychic immortality, the immortality of consciousness, that is, in 1902 or 3, or 4 at the latest (sixty years ago now), all fear of death went away. Now the body’s cells have the sense of their immortality. There was also a time when I almost had a sort of curiosity about death; it was satisfied by my two experiences in which, according to the surface illusion, my body was dead, while, within, I had a wonderfully intense life (the first time, it was in the vital, the other time, way up above [[In the vital with Théon, when Mother was looking for the mantra of life and Théon, in a fit of anger, cut the "thread." Way up above, with Sri Aurobindo. ]]). So that even that curiosity (I can’t call it “curiosity”), even that question is no longer asked by the cells. But the possibility does present itself: according to the ordinary outer logic, if this isn’t transformed, it must necessarily come to an end. And always, always, I receive the same answer, which isn’t an answer with words, but an answer with a knowledge (how can I put it?…), a FACTUAL knowledge: “It’s no solution.” To say things in quite a banal way, this is the answer: “It’s no solution.”
So we are after another solution, since death isn’t considered to be a solution. And it’s obvious that it is no solution.
Yes, it’s a failure.
No, it may not be a failure if it’s the Lord’s Will. It’s no longer ours. It’s not that we run off, you understand: it’s He who decides that it’s over.
So the answer comes (not from me, it comes from very far and it’s quite ABSOLUTE as a vibration): “It’s no solution.” It means it isn’t, in the present case, considered to be the solution.
There must be another one.
Yes, certainly.
Our imagination is very poor. As for me, I can’t imagine how it
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could happen! I can imagine novels, what I call the pulp novels of spiritual life, but that’s nothing, it’s childish.
(silence)
What I had noted was indeed this: “If my back straightens up, I will understand that there is something stronger than material habit.”
Now there are quite a few other things besides my back to be straightened out! Life, seen from the external, superficial – very superficial – standpoint, from the standpoint of appearances, the life of this body is very, very precarious, in the sense that the activities are very limited – very limited – and in spite of this, I often feel that the natural need (it is a natural need) for silence and contemplative immobility (the cells have that: the need for a contemplative immobility), that that need is denied by circumstances. So, seen from outside, it’s an infirmity; in other words, ordinary human beings with the ordinary thinking would say, “She gets tired easily, she can’t do anything anymore, she …” – it isn’t true, it’s an appearance. But what is true is that the Harmony isn’t established, there is still a difference between the body’s sensation and that sort of … exhilaration … it’s like an inner glory.
(silence)
It is still a condition in which things haven’t adapted, there is a lack of adaptation, and also what may seem to be an incapacity for manifestation (?). Yet the body doesn’t have the feeling or sensation of being unable to do what it wants to do – it never has; the power to act remains, but the will to act isn’t there. And what still gives that sort of ill-being (a physically painful ill-being) is the friction between the body’s spontaneous movement and what comes from outside: the imposition of outside wills.
This ill-being is growing in acuteness. It is true that one second of isolation (not a physical one), of a break in the contact [with others], is enough to restore the Harmony; but otherwise, if you don’t take care to isolate yourself within, it creates a kind of disorganization.
And the body no longer finds pleasure in any of those things that are usually pleasant to a body: it’s perfectly indifferent to them. But slowly, something, or someone, is teaching it to have, not pleasure or anything that looks (even remotely) like excitement,
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but a comfortable vibration in certain things of the senses. But that’s very, very different from what it was before.
It is clear that in order to follow its own rhythm, the body should reduce its activities to the minimum; not exactly “reduce,” but have the freedom of choice of its movements: nothing should be imposed on it from outside – which is quite far from reality. And yet, if one looks at the whole, there is an absolute conviction, even in the body, that nothing happens that isn’t the effect of the supreme Will. Therefore, the conditions in which it finds itself are the conditions that He has wanted and wants – that He wants – at every second. So the conclusion is that there must be in the body a resistance or an incapacity to follow the Movement.
When the problem reaches that point, there is always a similar answer: “Don’t concern yourself with that!” I think this is wisdom. There you are.
We must learn to let ourselves live, that’s the important thing: “Don’t be constantly reacting against this, trying that … – let yourself live.”
In reality, the will to progress is still quite impregnated with desire: there isn’t the smile of Eternity behind it.
The answer is always the same, which can be translated like this (but there aren’t any words): “Don’t concern yourself with that.”
It is still a remnant of the old tension.
(Mother goes into contemplation)
There is, at any rate, a sort of sensation or perception that you are, for the moment, the only one here who really understands what’s happening to me. That’s something. I am very grateful, as they say, that at least, from the external standpoint, what’s going on will not be entirely useless. Because as I said, the signs of the Power being at work are increasing day by day, day by day; only, if this is crystallized around an experience made perceptible to others, I think it becomes clearer, doesn’t it, instead of being something quite diffuse. Therefore, even from this external standpoint of the external realization, you can be satisfied. In the great universal work, your existence has its place and its usefulness.
From the personal standpoint … my own feeling is that you are BOUND to have experiences after some time; they have to come, because that field is the one open. Changing this body is something new; but having experiences already exists, so it has to happen to you, it’s bound to happen to you. But I believe your experiences
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will be of a very particular character, in the sense that they will be very positive.
You have categorically refused the experiences that consist in going out of the present existence in search of another – you haven’t come for that and you don’t want that. What you want is something very concrete – it’s a little bit more difficult to have. But it will come.
I am not telling you this to comfort you, but because I SEE it this way: it will come. And what’s interesting is that there is an identity in the movement [[Mother's movement and Satprem's. ]]: what has happened to you lately, that thinning down, is yet another example; that’s precisely what I’ve been preoccupied with these last few days – that means something.
Perhaps some day we’ll be given a little goody!
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