October 13, 1965
There is sand in the gears, everywhere. It grates.
(silence)
It seems there is a new disease in Pondicherry, which doctors from various parts of India are coming to investigate here, and it’s a sort of paratyphoid – everyone is ill. You haven’t caught it, have you? You did well! (To Sujata:) Neither have you? Good.
It is one way of grating. There are other ways of grating, but they are very usual: one’s ego scraping against another’s – it always produces grating.
The result: very busy nights, and not pleasantly busy.
(silence)
But the Lord is smiling, so I don’t think it’s serious.
He is smiling…. He has taken the opportunity to make a practical and very effective demonstration: a demonstration of the same totality of vibrations (resulting in outer and inner circumstances) with and without the consciousness of His Presence – conscious of His Presence and oblivious of His Presence. And then, it’s tremendous, incredible! Exactly the same thing – starting with thoughts, feelings, sensations, circumstances and the general state, the totality of vibrations – conscious of this Presence and oblivious of it; not that it is sent far away, nothing like that: simply forgotten (that’s the usual state of the world, of course), forgotten. It’s incredible, incredible!
It lasted long enough (gesture showing a very swift alternation from one state to the other: conscious of His Presence and oblivious of His Presence), like a demonstration. And with this Smile … You know, when I say, “The Lord is smiling,” it means something; it’s not that I see a face smiling, but it’s a … a sunny vibration … You know, the sun is dull and drab and cold and almost black in comparison. And then with “that” gone … (same alternating gesture) with that here, with that gone. Which means that those who will come and manifest, who will exist when everything is changed, they will lack the sense of wonder at the opposition.
You know, you can only be filled with wonder! (How can I
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put it?…) A sort of laughter – of sunny laughter – which is full of an intensity of love and … Yes, this must be the Ananda, the true Ananda.
(Same alternating gesture) Like this, like that, like this, like that …
So I told you just now that “everything grates”: that’s the state the world is in WITHOUT the consciousness of this Presence. Even when people find that things are fine and they are happy, that anyway circumstances are supposedly favorable, and that everything is fine and they are in good health and, humanly, everything sorts itself out – it grates dreadfully in comparison with the other state.
Then you can only smile. Instead of being affected because this one is in a bad mood and that one got angry and things go wrong and people fight each other and the elements cause hurricanes, instead of being saddened, you can only smile. You can only smile, because everything, but everything is the same – the good and the bad, the luminous and the dark – everything is the same and everything grates in comparison with “that.” And you see, the experience you have when you climb up there to find Him isn’t the same thing, because you feel, “Yes, up there everything is like that, it’s very fine,” but when you come down here, it’s horrible. But that’s not what I am referring to: it’s the experience RIGHT HERE – right here – in other words, what the world MUST be. What it must be, what obviously it will be … when men permit it.
They are very attached to their grating, very attached, they cling to it. They don’t feel alive when it doesn’t grate.
But they don’t know.
Sometimes, in the individual or collective evolution, there are phases when you have emerged from the grating, that is to say, you no longer believe in it, no longer believe in the truth and importance, the reality of those things, but you don’t have the other thing yet, so in between the two … it’s austere, dull and cold. You no longer have the excitement of one thing, and not yet the joy of the other; you are in between the two and it’s a little arid. But only a small, limited number of individuals have reached that stage. They are the people who say, “I don’t want this world.” And then they go away.
But as for the other thing …
One does realize that if the other thing were constant, established, oh! …
And it can be felt only when you are not turned in on yourself, that is, when you DON’T FEEL YOURSELF FEELING IT. And that is the great difficulty, because as soon as it comes, something wants to
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feel it, and then instantly you fall back into the grating. And it cannot be felt: if you feel yourself feeling it, it’s already no longer the thing.
Oh, it’s already spoilt.
(silence)
There is a line in Savitri which freely translated is:
Annule-toi pour que seul le Divin soit.[["Annul thyself that only God may be." (Vll.VI.538) ]]
A very free translation, but the idea is there. And that’s the state in which “that” can exist. And it is evident that the body doesn’t dissolve (Mother touches her own body), it’s here, isn’t it? You can see it!
(silence)
And it is the only – the only – infallible way to establish harmony in the body [this Smile of the Presence]. All the rest, all the precautions, all the remedies, all that seems so futile, so futile … and so inadequate. The only way – for everything, everything.
I do not yet have proof of the reconstruction of something that had disappeared (that had been amputated or broken), I can’t say, but logically it’s the same thing.
We’ll talk about it again when we have the proof.
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