January 21, 1967
(Regarding the English translation of extracts from recent
conversations published in the Ashram’s Bulletin under
the title "A Propos.")
… What they especially lack is the sense of a FORCE in the language.
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What makes things very difficult is that, in fact, there is no one who has the experience I have. That’s what is missing. You understand well only what you have experienced. If you try to understand all that mentally, you can’t, it’s not possible; a keen way of feeling has gone.
I read this “A Propos” to A. and Pavitra (you can’t find people better disposed and more eager to understand), but all the subtlety was gone! – They didn’t understand. They tried (they “understood,” they were very interested), but I know, I saw their state of consciousness: there was something completely closed, because there is no equivalent in them. But what can be done?… Oh, I gave up very long ago the idea of being really understood – maybe in a few hundred years people will understand, that’s all.
It doesn’t matter.
***
(Then Mother shows two notes on Auroville.)
"At last a place where one will be able to think of
nothing but the future."
“Auroville is doing well and growing more and
more real. But its realization is not progressing in
the habitual human way, and it is more visible to
the inner consciousness than to the outer vision."
***
Soon afterwards
Something rather indefinable as yet is happening.
The body was in the habit of fulfilling its functions automatically, as something natural, which means that for it, the question of their importance or usefulness did not arise: it didn’t have that mental, for instance, or vital vision of things, of what’s “important” or “interesting” and what isn’t. That didn’t exist. But now that the cells are growing conscious, they seem to stand back (gesture): they look at themselves, they begin to watch themselves act, and they very much wonder, "What’s the use of all this?" And then, an aspiration: "How, how should things truly be? What’s our purpose, our usefulness, our basis? Yes, what should our basis and our
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’standard’ of life be?" To put it mentally again, we might say, "How will we be when we are divine? What will be the difference? What’s the divine way of being?" And what speaks there is that whole kind of physical base entirely made up of thousands of small things absolutely indifferent in themselves, whose raison d’être lies only in their totality, like a support to another action, but which in themselves seem devoid of any meaning. And then, it’s again the same thing: a sort of receptivity, of silent opening to let oneself be permeated, and a very subtle perception of a way of being that might be luminous, harmonious.
That way of being is still quite indefinable; but in this seeking there is a constant perception (which translates as a vision) of a multicolored light, with all the colors – all the colors not in layers but as though (stippling gesture) combined in dots, a combination of all the colors. Two years ago (a little more than two years, I forget), when I met the Tantrics, when I came into contact with them, I started seeing that light, and I thought it was the “Tantric light,” the Tantric way of seeing the material world. But now I see it constantly, associated with everything, and it seems to be what we might call a “perception of true Matter.” All possible colors are combined without being mixed together (same stippling gesture), and combined in luminous dots. Everything is as though made up of this. And it seems to be the true mode of being – I am not yet sure, but at any rate it’s a far more conscious mode of being.
I see it all the time: with eyes open, eyes closed, all the time. It gives a strange perception (with regard to the body), a strange perception at the same time of subtlety, permeability (if I may call it that), of suppleness of form, and not exactly a removal but a considerable lessening of the rigidity of forms (the rigidity is removed, not the forms: a suppleness in the forms). As for the body, the first times it felt that in some part or the other, it felt … when it happens it’s a bit lost, with the sense of something eluding it. But if one remains very quiet and waits quietly, it’s simply replaced by a sort of plasticity and fluidity that seems to be a new mode of the cells.
It might probably be what, on the material level, must take the place of the physical ego; that is to say, it seems the rigidity of the form must give place to this new way of being. Of course, the first contact is always very … surprising. But the body is getting used to it little by little. What’s a little difficult is the moment of transition from one way to the other. It’s done very progressively, yet at the moment of transition there are a few seconds that are … the least we can say is “unexpected.”
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In that way, all habits are undone. It’s the same with all the functionings: blood circulation, digestion, breathing – all the functions. And at the moment of transition it’s not that one abruptly takes the place of the other, but there is a state of fluidity between the two which is … difficult. It’s only because of that great Faith, a perfectly still, luminous, constant, immutable faith in the real existence of the supreme Lord – in the SOLE real existence of the Supreme – that everything goes on apparently as it is.
There are kinds of great waves of all ordinary movements, ordinary ways of being, ordinary habits: they are thrown back, come back again, try to engulf and are thrown back again. And I can see that for years the body and the whole body consciousness used to rush back into the old way to seek safety, it used to find its safety in flight; but now, the body has been persuaded not to do it any longer and on the contrary to accept: “Well, if it’s dissolution, let it be dissolution.” It accepts what will be.
Mentally, when that happens in the physical mind (it happened years ago, but I had observed that), it’s what gives people the feeling that they’re going insane, and they get frightened (and with fear things happen), so they rush back into ordinary common sense to escape. It’s the equivalent – not the same thing, but the equivalent of what happens in the material: you feel all the usual stability is vanishing. Well, for a long time – a long time – there was that retreat into habit, and then you are quite at peace and you start all over again. But now, the cells no longer want that: “Come what may, we’ll see soon enough!” The great adventure.
How will we be? – How will we be? How … You understand, it’s the cells asking, “How should we be? How will we be?”
It’s interesting.
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