March 9, 1966
There’s a question I’d like to ask you. It’s in fact the question I wanted to ask you last time…. When one is in that eternal Consciousness, to be with or without a body makes little difference, but when one is “dead,” as it is called, I’d like to know if the perception of the material world remains clear and precise, or if it becomes as vague and imprecise as might be the consciousness one has of the other worlds when one is on this side, in this world? Sri Aurobindo speaks of a play of hide and seek, but the play of hide and seek is interesting if one state of being doesn’t deprive of the consciousness of the other states?
Yesterday or the day before, the whole day from morning to evening, something was saying, “I am … I am or have the consciousness of a dead person on earth.” I am putting it into words, but it seemed to say, “This is how the consciousness of a dead person is in relation to the earth and physical things…. I am a dead person living on earth.” According to the stand of the consciousness (because the consciousness changes its stand constantly), according to the stand of the consciousness, it was, “This is how the dead are in relation to the earth,” then, “I am absolutely like a dead person in relation to the earth,” then, “I am the way a dead person lives without any consciousness of the earth,” then, “I am quite like a dead person living on earth …” and so on. And I went on speaking, acting, doing as usual.
But it has been like that for a long time.
For a very long time, more than two years, I saw the world like this (ascending gesture, from one level to a higher level), and now I
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see it like this (descending gesture). I don’t know how to explain it because there’s nothing mentalized about it, and non-mentalized sensations have a certain haziness that’s hard to define. But words and thought were a certain distance away (gesture around the head), like something that watches and appreciates, in other words, that tells what it sees – something around. And today, it has been extremely strong two or three times (I mean that that state dominated the whole consciousness): a sort of impression (or sensation or perception, but it’s nothing like all that) of, “I am a dead person living on earth.”
How can I explain that?
And then, with vision, for instance, the objective precision is missing (Mother makes a gesture of not seeing through her eyes). I see through and with the consciousness. With hearing, I hear in a totally different way; there is a sort of “discrimination” (it isn’t “discernment”), something that chooses in the perception, something that decides (that decides, but not arbitrarily – automatically) what is heard and what isn’t heard, what is perceived and what isn’t perceived. It’s already there in vision, but it’s still stronger with hearing: with certain things, all that’s heard is a continuous drone; others are heard very clearly, as clear as crystal; still others are blurred, half heard. With sight, it’s the same thing: everything is behind a sort of luminous fog (very luminous, but it’s a fog, which means there is no precision), then all at once, a particular thing will be absolutely precise and clear, seen with a most precise vision of detail. The vision is generally the expression of the consciousness in things. That is, everything seems to become more and more subjective, less and less objective…. And they aren’t visions that impose themselves on the sight, or noises that impose themselves on the hearing: it’s a sort of movement of consciousness that makes certain things perceptible and keeps others as if in a very imprecise background.
The consciousness chooses what it wants to see.
There’s nothing personal – nothing personal. There is obviously the sense of a choice and a decision, but there is no sense of a personal choice and decision – moreover, the “personal” is reduced to the necessity of making this (Mother pinches the skin of her hand) intervene. With eating, for example, it’s very odd – very odd…. It’s like someone who is watching over a body (which isn’t even a very precise and defined thing, but a sort of conglomerate holding
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together), a spectator of … something happening! No, it’s really an odd state. Today, since I got up and till now, it has been very strong, dominating the whole consciousness. And there are even times when you feel that a mere nothing could make you lose contact (gesture of disconnection, as if the link with the body were severed), and that only if you remain very still and very indifferent – indifferent – can it continue.
In the consciousness of the people, the whole morning, it was translated by (all this is perceived very clearly), by the thought, “Oh, Mother is VERY tired.” But there is that sort of state of indifference, unreceptive to the vibration around, which enables you to go on, otherwise you feel that … (same gesture of disconnection) something would be seriously disrupted. Once or twice I had to draw within and become still. And it’s going on. And in fact, while it was like that something came and told me (but all this wordlessly), “When Satprem is here, you will understand.” Then there was tranquillity, because the moment was … (what shall I say?) very uncertain. And there was a sort of relaxing: “You will understand when he is here, you will have the explanation.”
Those experiences are always preceded by the Supreme Presence drawing near in a very intimate and inner way, with a sort of suggestion, “Are you ready for anything?” (that was two nights ago). Naturally I answered, “Anything.” And the Presence takes on such a wonderful intensity that there is a sort of thirst in the whole being for it to be constantly like that. Nothing but That exists anymore, nothing but That has a raison d’être anymore. And in the middle of it comes this suggestion: “Are you ready for anything?”
I am talking about the body. It’s not the inner beings, it’s the body.
And the body always says yes, it does like this (gesture of surrender). No choice, no preference, no aspiration, even: a total, complete surrender. So then, things of that sort come to me; yesterday, all day long, it was: “A dead person living on earth.” With the perception (not a very pronounced perception yet, but clear enough) of a vast difference between the way of life [of this body] and that of other people, of all the others, the people who talk to me, the people with whom I live. It isn’t clear-cut yet, or sharp or very precise, but it’s very clear – very clear, very perceptible. It’s another way of life.
One would tend to say that it’s not a gain from the standpoint
of consciousness, since things become blurred. I don’t know, is
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that way of being a gain?
It can only be a transition. It’s a transitory mode.
From the standpoint of consciousness, it’s a tremendous gain! Because all slavery, all bonds with external things, all that is finished, it has completely fallen off – completely fallen off: there’s absolute freedom. In other words, That alone remains, the Supreme Master is the master. From that point of view, it can only be a gain. It’s such a radical realization…. It seems to be an absolute of freedom, something that’s considered impossible to realize while living the ordinary life on earth.
It corresponds to the experience of absolute freedom one has in the higher parts of the being when one has become completely independent of the body. But the remarkable point (I lay great stress on this) is that it’s the consciousness OF THE BODY that has those experiences … and it’s a body that’s still visibly here (!)
Of course, there is nothing left of what gives human beings “trust of life.” There doesn’t seem to be any support from the outward world left; there is only … the supreme Will. To put it into ordinary words, well, the body feels it lives only because the supreme Lord wants it to live, otherwise it wouldn’t be able to live.
Yes, but it seems to me that a state of perfection should embrace everything, so that one can be in the supreme state without its abolishing the material state.
But it doesn’t abolish it.
No, but still you say it’s “far away,” “behind a veil,” that it no longer has its exactness and precision.
That’s a purely human and superficial perception. I don’t at all feel that I have lost anything, on the contrary! I have the sense of a state much superior to the one I had.
Even from the material standpoint?
What the Lord wants is done – that’s all; it begins there and ends there.
If He told me … Whatever He wants the body to do, it can do; it no longer depends on physical laws.
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What He wants to see it can see; what He wants to hear it can hear.
Undeniably.
And when He wants to see or wants to hear materially, it sees perfectly and hears perfectly.
Oh, perfectly! At times the sight is more precise than it ever was. But it’s fleeting: it comes and goes; probably because it’s only as an assurance of what will be. But, for instance, the perception of people’s inner reality (not what they think they are or what they pretend to be or what they appear to be – all that disappears), the perception of their inner reality is infinitely more precise than formerly. If I see a photograph, for example, there’s no question anymore of seeing “through” something: I almost exclusively see what the person IS. The “through” decreases to such a point that at times it no longer exists at all.
Naturally, if a human will wanted to exert itself on this body, if a human will said, “Mother must do this” or “Mother must do that,” or “she must be able to do this, she must be able to do that … ,” it would be totally disappointed, it would say, “She has become useless,” because this body wouldn’t obey it anymore. And human beings constantly exert their will on each other, or they themselves receive suggestions and manifest them as their own will, without realizing that it’s all the external Falsehood.
(silence)
There is a sort of certitude in the body that if, for the space of just a few seconds, I lost contact (“I,” meaning the body), if the body lost contact with the Supreme, it would die that very moment. It’s only the Supreme that keeps it alive. That’s how it is. So naturally, to the ignorant and stupid consciousness of human beings, that’s a pitiable condition – and to me, it’s the true condition! Because for them, instinctively, spontaneously and in a so to say absolute way, the sign of perfection is the power of life, of ordinary life…. Well, that no longer exists at all – it’s completely gone.
Yes, quite a few times, several times, the body did ask the question, "Why don’t I feel Your Power and Your Force in me?" And the answer was always a smiling answer (I am putting it into
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words, but it’s wordless), the answer is always: "Patience, patience, you must be READY for that to be."
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