December 31, 1966
Mother gives Satprem a red rose:
The red rose is the order of the “knights of the Truth.” Don’t you know this?… I began placing it when Colonel Répiton came here, the one who made the Africa march during the war. Every morning I would give him a red rose, and with him I instituted it. Since then, when I give any man a rose (I give them a red rose), it’s so he becomes a knight of the Truth.
But I don’t tell him.
***
(Soon afterwards, Satprem proposes he might himself translate
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a certain text in order to save Mother’s time. Mother smilingly refuses and wants to do it herself:)
If I listen, Sri Aurobindo will say it to me, so it will be better! All of a sudden he tells me what I should write – it’s so clear! So clear, so evident. Sometimes there’s even a word I don’t hear well; I say, “What?”, like that, and he repeats it!
I think that’s why I am becoming deaf! It’s because I am constantly listening there (gesture turned upward), all the time. So I am not listening enough here.
It’s the same thing with my eyes…. I have started seeing things with my eyes open, and, oh! … People’s state, their thoughts, and especially the state of their vital (because it’s a vision of the physical, a very subtle, very vitalized physical, and it’s a representation of things in pictures). And their state shows itself as … if you knew (Mother laughs) the things one can see!… A myriad of forms, faces, expressions. You’d think it’s an album by the sharpest humorist imaginable. It’s extraordinarily humorous and sharp in the perception and the sense of how ridiculous people are. Then, in the middle of all that, suddenly a beautiful form, a beautiful picture, a beautiful expression appears; something so beautiful, so pure, so wonderfully noble! And it all turns round and round, constantly. It’s very amusing, really.
I had always complained it was a realm in which I didn’t see. I mostly saw (in the past), I mostly saw mentally – mental visions – and also, naturally, I saw all the way up (but that was organized), and to some extent in the vital, especially at night, but anyway … The vision was highly developed, very clear and precise, but physically (“physically,” I mean in the subtle physical and physically), I had never seen with open eyes: I always saw the stark reality as it is, never anything else, and I had always complained about it. Until suddenly it came: one day I started seeing, and then…! (Mother laughs) Now I am obliged to calm it down, because (laughing) it’s too much. But it’s unbelievable – unbelievable how full of forms the air is, and such expressive forms! It’s as if, yes, a humorist, a caricaturist, even, were constantly making the subtle representation of what goes on materially.
And I think that’s what people see when they have what medical science calls “hallucinations,” when they have a fever, for instance. But I already knew this because I once had such a high fever that I was in the state in which, according to doctors, you “go off your head.” Then I saw (with the material vision), I had the vision
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of all the hostile beings rushing to attack me from every side – it was frightful! You understand, it’s the support of the material consciousness that’s no longer there, you are wholly in that vision, and that’s why you generally get frightened, while others believe it’s a “hallucination.” I remember (Sri Aurobindo was there), at the time I told him, “Ah, now I know what hallucinations caused by fever are.” – It has nothing to do with hallucinations! But it’s not pleasant, it’s the vision of a world that’s not pretty.
But now, it’s not the result of fever, it’s simply the vision I have. But then…! As I said, there’s anything and everything there, all possibilities; and probably because of the quality of the aura [of Mother], I haven’t seen anything really unclean or ugly. But it must exist – it must exist, but it doesn’t get in.
But what one sees is the work of a priceless humorist! Things … like men’s great ambitions, for example, also their self-satisfaction, the opinion they have of themselves, oh, it’s all so comical! Those lives are shown in relation to (and, so to speak, in contact with) the Truth-Light, and then the difference between people’s movement (or thought or attitude or action, or state of consciousness) and the Truth, the state of Truth, becomes plain to see, oh, if you knew! … But it’s not seen by someone severe or harsh, no, no! It’s seen by someone very sharp – very sharp – with a wonderful sense of humor and a charming irony.
It swarms and swarms….
Then, the other day (yesterday or the day before), I said to Him, “All right, that will do! Now I’d like to go into silence and peace and a luminous immensity” (you remember, like during that meditation we once had here; that’s far more pleasant!). Then it calmed down.
***
(After Satprem has read to Mother the conversation of September 30, in which she envisaged the transition from man to the new being.)
My feeling (it’s a sort of feeling-sensation) is that intermediary stages are necessary.
And then, when you see how man has had to fight against all of Nature in order to exist, you get the feeling that those who will understand and love those beings will have with them a relationship of devotion, attachment, service, as animals have with man; but those who won’t love them … will be dangerous beings. I
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remember, I once had a very clear vision of the precarious situation of those new beings, and I said (this was before 1956, before the descent of the supramental power), I said, “The Supramental will first manifest in its aspect of Power, because that will be indispensable for the safety of the beings.” And it was indeed Power that descended first – Power and Light. The Light that gives Knowledge and Power.
That’s something I feel more and more clearly: the necessity of intermediary phases…. It’s perfectly obvious that something is going on, but it’s not the “something” that was seen and foreseen and will be the ultimate outcome: what’s going to take place is ONE of the stages, not the ultimate outcome.
Sri Aurobindo also said, “There will first come the power to prolong life at will” (it’s far more subtle and marvelous than that). But that’s a state of consciousness which is now being established: it’s a sort of constant and settled relationship and contact with the supreme Lord, which abolishes the sense of wear and tear; it replaces it with a sort of extraordinary flexibility, an extraordinary plasticity. But the SPONTANEOUS state of immortality isn’t possible – at least not for the time being. This structure must be changed into something else, and judging from the way things are going on, it will take a long time before it’s changed into something else. It may go much faster than in the past, but even assuming that the movement is speeding up, it still takes time (according to our notion of time). And the rather remarkable thing is that to be in the state of consciousness in which wear and tear no longer exists, you must change your sense of time: you enter a state in which time no longer has the same reality. It’s something else. It’s very peculiar … it’s an innumerable present. I don’t know…. Even that habit we have of thinking ahead of time or foreseeing what’s going to happen or … it hinders, it reconnects you with the old way of being.
So many, so many habits that have to be changed.
Voilà.
So I wish you a happy new year.
***
(In the afternoon, Mother sent the following note to Satprem,
like a continuation of the morning’s conversation, meaning
that the integral realization, that of the new being, will
only be possible when …)
Oh, to be spontaneously divine without watching oneself be, having gone beyond the stage where one wants to be divine.
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