October 21, 1967
Yesterday afternoon, I had an experience in relation to a woman who has been in a coma for sixty-five days (!). After fifty or fifty-five days (the whole family was around her, but her son had gone to work), all of a sudden after fifty-five days, because her son had left, she started calling for him, shouting frantically! (Laughing) I think they all had a scare…. And the usual stupid remarks: “She was unconscious.” I said, “Good God! But why do you say she was unconscious, you know nothing about it’… She can’t express herself, but she isn’t unconscious.” She is entirely conscious, only the means of expression are damaged, she can no longer use them. And I made a long speech on the subject, but there was no one to record it and I can never say the same thing twice. It came clearly (Sri Aurobindo was there), and with the absolutely clear picture of what death is…. Now I can’t repeat it.
In reality, to put it practically (but that’s no longer the thing), what people call “death” is when the instrument of expression – the instrument of connection with the milieu, of expression – has deteriorated to the point where it can no longer be used, and so there comes a moment when the consciousness … abandons it. Probably for all sorts of reasons (there must be different reasons in each case), but the consciousness abandons it because it can no longer be used.
Page 349
But yesterday it came well; now it’s nothing. It was lived. Lived, and so clear, so concrete, so obvious, it was, “But human beings know nothing, nothing, nothing at all! …” Only now it sounds like a platitude.
(silence)
The vision was so clear (not vision: lived, the experience), it was so clear that it contained in itself the purpose of the creation. You could see the work of the consciousness to permeate the inconscient and make it progressively more capable of manifesting the consciousness (gesture like a flower rising out of the earth), with growing complications, but the complications are the result of the inability of the inconscient – of inconscient matter – which adds one device to another in the hope of reconstructing the supreme Possibility. Then, through all those complications, and as the substance becomes increasingly permeated with consciousness, the need for “devices” will diminish, and we will be able to return to the higher Simplicity.
But all that was lived, seen – seen, and so clear!
(silence)
And in each “life,” as people call it, that is to say, the use of a portion of matter organized in what we call a body, how that use aims at the greatest possibility of manifestation (reception and manifestation) of the consciousness.
Naturally, this can be done because even in the inconscient, at its very bottom, there is consciousness; but that’s philosophy. Yesterday, it was the perfectly concrete and material experience of it all.
And individualization is part of the process, it’s a necessity of the process, because it permits a more minute and direct action.
And when Matter is supple enough to be transformed under the action of the consciousness – a CONSTANT transformation – then this need to abandon here something that has become useless, or is in impossible conditions, will no longer exist. That is how it will be possible, for the requirements of the transformation, to have at will a continuity, at least, of existence for a form which was transitional.
But yesterday, the impression was that it [death] is now only an old habit, no longer a necessity. It’s only because … First, because the body is still unconscious enough to (how should I put it?), not to "desire," because that’s not the word, but to feel the
Page 350
need of complete rest, that is, inertia. When that is abolished, there is no disorganization that cannot be mended, or at any rate (the field of accidents hasn’t been studied, but let’s say in the normal course of things) no wear and tear, no deterioration, no disharmony that cannot be mended by the action of the consciousness.
It’s only this residue (a considerable one), this residue of inconscient that asks for rest (gesture of dissolution). What it calls rest is the state of inertia. That is to say, the refusal to manifest the consciousness. It’s no more than that.
There is also that FORMIDABLE collective suggestion … weighing down. That suggestion of old age … old age, wear and tear, death (“death,” anyway what they call death, which isn’t dying – what does “dying” mean? Annulment does not exist, nothing is annulled), but anyway, giving up the form because the form refuses to be transformed (that’s nearly what it is) and isn’t receptive, it accepts a progressive deterioration because of the formidable weight of the collective suggestion – the habit of millennia: “It’s always been like that, it can’t be helped.” The great argument. Which isn’t true, besides.
But there is such idiocy in this body. For instance, there is every moment (it’s every second or minute), every moment there is the choice between continuation of the old habit and progress towards consciousness. It’s constantly like that. And through … (what can I call it?) listlessness (what is it?… It’s not bad will because it’s idiotic; it’s more idiotic than bad will), there is a spontaneous tendency to choose deterioration rather than the effort of progress, and it’s only when there is something like a slightly awakened consciousness that says, “You silly fool! You’ve gone through much more difficulty than the little difficulty of making an effort of progress,” then that has some weight – not always.
There is a sort of passive knowledge (not that the body doesn’t know how it is, it knows how it is – it’s listlessness), but when it knows and makes effort, it is always, every time, translated as lights, yes, like vibratory waves, and those of progress are the ones which have all the colors, that twinkling of all the colors: a light made of a twinkling of all the colors. Those are the lights that choose the immediate little effort to reject the listlessness…. But it’s not over important events: it’s something going on every minute, for everything, all the time, all the time – for everything.
It must be a phase. I don’t know how long that phase will last, but it must be a phase because it’s obviously a transitional state. And then, when there is that inner aspiration, oh! … I have seen
Page 351
those cells, I’ve seen them saying like this, “Oh, won’t there be a possibility to be You effortlessly?” Then there comes such a marvelous Response! For a few seconds it’s … (blissful gesture), then the old routine starts up again.
But the big difficulty is mental observation: the mind observing (not a personal mind: an observing Mind). That makes things much more difficult. If one can keep the mind busy, it’s easier. Because the mind is something extremely hard, dry, positive, phew! and logical, reasonable – it’s dreadful. Dreadful. And yet, putting things at their best, the general waves are full (especially now, in our time) full of doubt – such a vile and obstinate doubt! They call all this fantastic imagination.
You are led to tell the mind, “I’d rather be mistaken this way than be mistaken in your way.”
(silence)
Then, in the psychological makeup, there are all those old things that come from human atavism: you must be reasonable, prudent, shrewd … you must take precautions, be provident, oh! … The whole web of ordinary human equilibrium. It’s so sordid. And it’s like that, the whole mentalization of the cells is like that, full of that, and not only in your own way of being, according to your own experience, but in the way of being of your parents, grandparents, the people around, and … oh!
Page 352