April 28, 1965
Mother looks absorbed
… Ultimately, until one has the power to do everything, one knows nothing.
This has been my experience these last few days, increasingly clearly.
As long as you don’t have the power to do everything, that is, as long as you don’t have the supreme Power, you know nothing. And the supreme Power is … Let me make myself clearer (Mother smiles). Someone is dying from cancer in America. I said to that someone that what would happen would be the best for his soul; I said it at a time when the so-called human knowledge still imagined it could cure him. He has lost his speech, but not consciousness – neither hearing nor consciousness (it’s a cancer of the brain). The doctor (most eminent, of course, the best you could find) says he only lives on through sheer willpower – and HE doesn’t want to live! (Yet he lives on, life goes on.) He doesn’t want to live, he wants to die. But of course he can’t say so, he can’t speak anymore. And the doctor, on his part, in his ignorance, bewildered by the phenomenon, says it’s through his will that he lives on.
I received all this news this morning; for several hours I have been living through the consciousnesses with this problem: the fact that he is still living. And there is always (for consciousnesses such as those) “Death” with a big question mark – what is it exactly? What happens exactly [when one dies]? What is the change in consciousness? Is there a change in consciousness? What happens?… Because my work (the promise I gave) consists in making him, before he leaves his body, conscious of the eternal Truth. So for at least three hours this morning I was confronted with this problem (that’s why I was completely withdrawn when I came), and I said to myself, “But … until one is the master of life and death, one knows nothing!”
That’s why I was a little absorbed.
(silence)
For so many, so many years I have had all kinds of experiences. For about sixty years I have been constantly looking after people who are said to be "dying" – constantly. Well, there are almost as
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many cases as there are people – there are categories, but the cases are innumerable (and I am not referring to external cases, to the material event: I am referring to the inner cases). This is to say that I have been put in almost constant contact with the phenomenon, and yet, it remains a problem…. At least twice in this existence, I have gone through what people call "death" – and both times the experience was different. The experience was different, yet the apparent fact was the same.
And if I look at it in a certain way (explanations, of course, are meaningless), if I look at it in a certain way, I mean, to have the true key … one has it only with the Power. Well, that Power … (Mother shakes her head)
It’s hard to explain if I want to make myself understood. For instance, many times (many times, very often), people told me they wanted to die for some reason or other; and by doing a certain thing, it happened. The “thing” wasn’t always the same, but the result was in appearance always the same: the person left his or her body. I even had near me, at least twice, very clearly and precisely, people who were supposedly “dead,” who had left their body in that way, and they knew nothing about it! Therefore, for that part of their being, it made no difference.[[See Agenda III, July 4, 1962. ]] And it has also happened that I’ve “resurrected,” as it is called, someone who had been declared dead. This is to tell you that all the various possibilities (not all, but many), all that has been shown to me.
Naturally, it is always a movement of the consciousness [that brings about death] and a certain movement of the will, but …
What I was wondering about today (not “wondering” – words are always wrong – because it isn’t mental, I wasn’t wondering mentally), but suddenly there came in front of me, like this (gesture indicating a cinema screen): could what is called “death” be by chance a multitude of different things?… We say “life,” “death,” and we oppose that death to life – could it be, by chance, that what people call “death” is a multitude of different things, of different possibilities?
(silence)
What is it?
Human science answers: there is an analogous phenomenon in all cases – decomposition. But that …
We are in a constant state of decomposition – everything, all life
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is constantly in a state of decomposition and transformation; all the food we absorb is constantly in a state of decomposition. So …
It may simply be the incompleteness, I mean the limitation of our vision, our perception: we see the details too much instead of seeing the whole. You know, I had a sudden feeling with the tension of the concentration: What is the physical perception of the totality of the physical world? What is the consciousness of the totality of the physical world? Isn’t, for that consciousness, isn’t all that we call death and life a phenomenon analogous to the phenomenon of decomposition, assimilation, transformation that takes place in every living being?
It’s enough to leave you completely dazed!
It is the cellular transformation, the progressive cellular transformation which is, on the scale of the human being (of the human being, of the animal, etc.), what we call “death.”
We will talk about it again.
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