August 30, 1967
The last few nights, I have spent almost the whole night, several hours of it, in a place which must certainly belong to the subtle physical and where material life is being reorganized. It’s immense – immense – and the crowd innumerable; but they are individualities, not a crowd, which means that I deal with each of them. And there are also kinds of documents and writing tables, but there are no walls! It’s a strange place. A very strange place.
I have often wondered if the memory of physical forms is what makes me see that world like that, or if it REALLY is like that. Sometimes there is no doubt because it has its own specific character, but at other times I have a doubt and wonder if it’s not in the active memory. Because when I am there I am very conscious, everything is extremely natural, you understand; and it’s permanent: I find the same things in the same places again, sometimes with slight differences, but differences made necessary by action. Which means it’s a coherent world, not wild imaginings. But to what extent are those forms the reflection of material forms? To what extent are they REALLY like that, or do we SEE them like that? I am not quite sure yet. I had the same problem in the past when I used to go into the Overmind and see the Gods: I always had a kind of hesitation as to whether they really are like that, or we perceive them like that because of our physical habits…. There, after a time I reached a conclusion, but here, physically? …
Strangely, there are no doors, no windows, no ceiling or floor, all that is self-existent and does not appear to be subject to the law of gravity, that is, there isn’t the earth’s magnetic attraction, yet what you write with (laughing) looks like a fountain pen! What you write on looks like paper; the documents are placed in what looks like filing cabinets…. You do feel that the substance isn’t the same, but the appearance is very close. And I am still wondering about that appearance: is it something we add on because of our ordinary brain working, or are things really like that?
I meet almost everyone there. I told you that you are there quite regularly, and we do work. As for you, you don’t remember. Others remember, but their memory is … (Mother makes a slight twist with her fingers) just slightly off, that is, not identically what I saw. And when they tell me, I clearly feel it’s because of, yes, the transcription in their brains…. The objective reality of the
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material world stems from the fact that when you see the same object again ten times, it looks ten times like itself, with differences that are logical, for instance differences of wear and tear – but there too it’s like that! If you study carefully, even in the physical world no two people see things in exactly the same way. There, it may be more pronounced, but it seems to be a similar phenomenon….
The explanation becomes very simple and very easy when you enter the consciousness in which it’s the material reality that becomes an illusion – it’s illusory, inexact: the inner reality is truer. Then, in that case, it’s simple. Maybe it’s only our mind that finds it surprising?
Take writing, for instance: I haven’t noticed in detail, but when you write there, you seem to write much more easily…. I don’t know how to explain it … it takes much less time. And things are noted down on paper, but is it paper? It looks like paper, but things are noted down much more directly…. It’s perhaps only a similarity, like when, for example, you use a fountain pen or a pencil: it’s not exactly a fountain pen or a pencil, it’s something that looks like it and is … (what should I say?) the prototype or principle of that object. But what I mean is that if we were still at the time of the goose quill or the twig that you dip into ink, I would probably see it like that! … It’s the ESSENCE or principle of the thing, which, in the memory, is translated as a similarity.
But it’s an action. I am aware of the time only on my return, because I have formed a habit of looking at the time when I come back to the material consciousness (there is a watch beside my bed and I look so as to know), and that’s how I can say, “It lasted an hour” or “It lasted two hours.” But there, you don’t have the sense of time at all, it’s not the same sense at all – what matters is the CONTENT of action, and during those hours, many, many things are done, very many. I meet you very regularly, but many others too, and I am at many places at the same time! And when someone tells me, “Oh, I saw you last night, you did this and that,” then somewhere up above I say, “Oh, it’s true indeed.” There’s a tiny (same gesture of twist), tiny little difference, but the essence of the thing is the same.
And I have noticed that with those things that are very close to the physical, if you wake up abruptly, still more if you move when you wake up, if you stir or turn over, they go away. It’s only if later I have a very quiet moment and go within myself that I can slowly make contact again with that state. So I am not surprised that most people don’t remember. Experiences in the vital, in the mind, are much more easily remembered, but that, which is very close to the physical …
And its character is such that if you kept consciousness of it
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when you woke up, you’d look a little mad. I had that experience two days ago, and it taught me a lot – I looked, studied and studied until I had understood. It was during the afternoon rest (I don’t sleep at all in the afternoon, but just enter the inner consciousness), and I had decided beforehand that I would “wake up,” that is, get up, at such and such a time. When the time came, I was still very much in my action and it went on, the state of consciousness went on with open eyes; and in that state of consciousness there was … (I can’t say “I” because it’s not the same “I,” you understand; at such times I am many people), but the “I” of that time was in the habit (not here materially but “up there”) of wearing a gold watch (gesture to the wrist) and had forgotten to put that watch on; and it looked and noticed it: “Ah, I forgot to put my watch on, what’s happened to it? Why did I forget?” Like that. So then, when I woke up (I don’t wear any watch here, as you know), when I came back, the two consciousnesses were simultaneous, and I said aloud, “Where is my watch? I forgot to put my watch on.” And it’s only when I had said that (laughing) that I realized! So it left me thinking, I studied carefully, looked carefully, and clearly saw that at that moment the two consciousnesses were absolutely (Mother closely superposes her two hands), but absolutely simultaneous.
It’s very interesting. Oh, all kinds of problems have been solved with that experience. For instance, the problem of many people who are called mad, and who are simply in that subtle consciousness (same superposed gesture): at certain times it prevails, which makes them say things that are meaningless here but have a very clear meaning over there, and so the consciousness is like this (superposed gesture, almost merged). That accounts for many cases of so-called madness. Certain cases of apparent insincerity are also like that, because the consciousness sees clearly in that region, and that region is so close that you can give things the same names (they seem to have the same shapes or very similar ones), but it’s not what is conventionally called here “tangible reality”: materially, outwardly, things aren’t exactly like that. And so, there are cases of so-called insincerity that are simply too close a mingling of the two consciousnesses – too close for an active discernment.
Oh, a whole region has been clarified, and not only clarified but with the key to the cure or the transformation. From the psychological, internal point of view, a huge amount of things has been explained – a huge amount. Which considerably brings down the number of cases of real mental derangement and cases of real lies, that is, the cases when one deliberately and consciously says the contrary of what is – that mustn’t be as frequent as we think. Many people say incorrect things like that (floating, dangling gesture), but
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they have perceptions in another world than the purely material world, with too close a mingling and without enough discernment to be aware of the mingling…. Sri Aurobindo used to say that real bad will, real hostility and real falsehood are rare enough cases (“real” in the sense of absolute in themselves, and conscious, deliberate – deliberate, absolute, conscious); that’s rare. And that, he said, is what is described as hostile beings. But all the rest is a sort of illusion of the consciousness, consciousnesses that interfere with each other (Mother intertwines the fingers of her two hands to and fro), but without a precise discernment between the different consciousnesses, which are like this (same gesture), intermingled, each going in and out of the other.
(silence)
So the result has been to see the immensity of the problem to be solved, of the path to be walked, of the transformation to be worked out…. When you look at it from the purely psychological standpoint, it’s relatively easy and swift, but when you come to this (Mother touches her body), to the outer form and so-called matter, oh, it’s a world! Each lesson … it’s as if you were given lessons, and it’s so interesting! Lessons with all the consequences and explanations. You spend one or two days over a tiny little discovery. And you see that after it, after that day or those hours of work, there is a change in the body consciousness: the light is there, it’s changed – changed, the reactions are not the same. But … (Mother gestures to express a world of work).
And the Presence – the Presence grows more and more intimate, more and more concrete, and at such times … at times (Mother makes a gesture of swelling) it’s so concrete as to be almost absolute. Then (gesture of being covered again) another state of consciousness comes and everything has to begin all over again.
Interesting.
And it’s so clearly to teach you … High-sounding words, great attitudes, remarkable experiences are all very fine up above, but here … nothing spectacular – everything is very modest, very quiet, very unassuming. Very modest. And that’s the condition for progress, the condition for the transformation.
There, mon petit.
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September