May 18, 1968
(Satprem expresses his surprise at the speed with which
Mother has been cured of the swelling, without
a trace. Mother laughs.)
I know the knack!
Then … there’s something else. The pupils, we’re trying to knock the rough edges off them! They’re given subjects to study and research, and I was asked to give a subject for them. I gave, “What is death?”
One class took it up, and they sent me the pupils’ notes – four of them.
(Mother holds out four sheets,
which Satprem reads:)
Rita:
"The actual fact of death evokes in me an
experience in which one is thrust into space
and soars up."
Amusing! I found it very amusing. She is the only one, besides, the others are quite practical. [[This young girl, to whom death looked so graceful, was to die four years later. ]]
Dilip:
"A cessation of all physical activity caused by
the absence of a source of energy (or soul)."
Page 132
It’s not clear…. The other two are quite practical (!)
Anand:
"When the brain stops functioning and the
body starts decomposing, it’s death."
(Mother laughs heartily)
The last one is quite matter-of-fact.
Abhijit:
"Blood circulation in the brain cells stops
completely."
That’s death.
As for me, I’ll tell them this (Mother reads with difficulty):
“Death is the phenomenon of decentralization and scattering of the cells making up the physical body.
“Consciousness is, in its very nature, immortal, and in order to manifest in the physical world, it clothes itself in material forms that are durable to a greater or lesser degree.
“The material substance is in process of transformation to become an increasingly perfect and durable multiform mode of expression for that consciousness.”
I am going to send it to them. But I appreciated their notes…. The interesting thing (for me) is that when I opened these four notes yesterday evening and read Abhijit’s first, “When circulation stops … ,” then, I don’t know, there certainly was a special grace over me, because I read those words and was instantly put in contact with the most objective, calm and detached scientific spirit – that was its way of seeing and describing the phenomenon: no emotion, no reaction, simply like that. And I saw (I understood and saw infinitely more than the boy put into it) a whole wisdom there, a scientific wisdom. And at the same time, the perception of the remedy in the evolutionary course of things. The most material remedy.
It gave me a whole series of experiences in the night and the
Page 133
morning, certainly far exceeding the field covered by their four reflections…. With the little girl [Rita], there was the impression, the vision of all those to whom death is a gateway to a marvelous realization.
It all came so spontaneously and naturally that I felt as if it was THERE. Now that you’ve read it back to me (laughing), I realize it’s not there! But it came so spontaneously: I sat there, reading those four notes, and it came one after another. Especially Abhijit’s, this completely objective, or anyway completely detached vision of the phenomenon: “Circulation stops …” As if you were looking at a small instrument or tool (Mother gestures as if fingering a small object), and you remarked, “Oh, it’s stopped now … that’s why it no longer works.” Like that. In other words, none of those uncertainties or anxieties or aspirations…. All that was emotions, sentiments, psychological phenomena – it was all completely absent…. A very simple little contraption (same fingering gesture) which you look at as you would a machine, and the machine stops “because it no longer goes like that.” There. And as a result, this body was completely detached from all human anguish – from everything: not only from anguish, but from the habit, the whole human formation about death – it was all gone. As if I were all the way up above, like that, and looking all the way down – hup! it went away.
It’s what we might express as perfect detachment from the phenomenon.
And then, after that, without trying or thinking or anything, this note came. It came in such an impersonal way that you saw the difficulty I had reading it: I didn’t remember one word of what I had written. It came, I wrote it down, and that was that. “I” wrote, that is, I was made to write it down so as to send it to them.
I’ll make a decent copy of it (Mother looks for a paper and goes on)…. So then, it put everything in perspective…. Ah, I must add something to let you understand. I saw D. yesterday, and as she had written to me that she “didn’t know how to meditate, but that anyhow she would keep quiet so as not to disturb me” (!), naturally I started talking! But then, I said things to her that I had never said before (and which I wouldn’t be able to repeat – neither would she, because she understood only very, very little of what I said). I told her that from the standpoint of the manifestation (I didn’t speak about beyond the manifestation), from the standpoint of the manifestation, there is only one thing that is true: Consciousness. And that all the rest is the APPEARANCE of something,
Page 134
but not the thing; that THE thing is Consciousness, and all the rest is a sort of play in which everyone has the illusion of being a personality, but it’s an illusion…. While I was speaking, I had the perfectly sincere and spontaneous experience of it. And I realized that this experience of the SINGLE Consciousness playing through innumerable forms … (Mother breaks off)
But one cannot express that, words can’t. While I was speaking, it was that Consciousness which spoke…. And the two experiences together (the children’s notes, I read them yesterday evening; as for D., I had seen her in the morning), the two together gave me the detachment (it’s not detachment: it’s a liberation) from the phenomenon of death in such an absolute way that I was able to look throughout History, far into the past, at the whole human tragedy…. That is to say, death is a natural phenomenon in the creation on earth, but as a means of TRANSITION – I clearly saw why it had become necessary, how, with the human consciousness and mental development, it had been turned into a tragedy, and how it was becoming again merely a means of transition (a clumsy means, we might say), which was now becoming unnecessary again.
There was that whole, overall vision of the history of the creation. It was really interesting. Interesting because … whew! you felt so free! So free, so peaceful, so smiling! And at the same time, with such a certitude that everything is moving towards a more harmonious, less chaotic, less painful manifestation … and that there is only one more step to be made in the creation.
What I admired (I often admire this) was that it’s often apparently mediocre or rather unimportant things (all that people regard as insignificant), it’s generally what brings on the most considerable progress. In the course of yesterday, and apparently (I know it’s only an appearance), apparently through D.’s visit and those children’s answers, that entire phase of the manifestation became clear, found its place and lost all its power of influence and all its grip on the consciousness. It was as if the consciousness rose wholly free and luminous, joyous, above all that.
Very small things.
(silence)
This morning, after I wrote this, I happened to look back on this body’s history, just like that, its whole history at a glance (gesture like a beacon), with bewildered eyes…. How many emotions, experiences, discoveries, oh … (I can’t say dramas, because it was never much inclined to drama), but how many “experiences,” “discoveries”
Page 135
(Mother speaks in a grandiloquent tone), “revelations” it has gone though … (laughing) to rediscover what was always known!
It’s amusing.
The concluding state (after having written this note): first there was that completely spontaneous, natural, evident perception of the Consciousness using a thing and then leaving it, letting it fall apart when it can no longer be used – but it wasn’t that: it wasn’t even taking a thing, utilizing it, making use of it until it becomes unusable; it was a CONTINUOUS movement (supple gesture like an immense wave) within a single substance, with, as it were, moments of concentration and utilization of something to its utmost possibility, and then, moments not of rejection but of expansion, of immensity of peace – of return to a state of immensity of peace so as to take a new shape. A continuous thing, like this (same gesture like an immense wave), but then without real loss, without real waste: death is a mere appearance, you no longer even understand how one can live in this illusion. And THE Consciousness, ONE Consciousness – not this and that and this (gesture showing an addition of separate individualities), no, no: ONE consciousness … playing.
(silence)
There was still somewhere the notion of effort so as to be equal to the task that had been given; there was still, yes, the notion of effort, the notion of struggle. And that’s gone. It was gone – it is gone.
It almost started with a question put by the body; it asked, “Why, why are you anxious to keep me? It’s no great shakes” (it was very familiar with itself), “it’s not in such a remarkable state.” (But it wasn’t suffering, it wasn’t at all miserable, not at all: it was looking at things with a smile.) And then there was that response…. I can’t say there are even any questions left: things are what they are, spontaneously so, in a perpetual smile and a vibration … such a light, luminous vibration!… Without any contradiction. A vibration of expansion and progress. I could see the picture: expansion and progress.
Especially effort, struggle, and even more so, suffering, pain, all of that – gone! Gone … really like an illusion.
I might say it was (I say “was” because now I can talk about it; at the time of the experience I couldn’t have), it’s the state in which death has no reality – death and all that goes together with it and all that made it necessary in the course of evolution.
Page 136
(Mother begins making a
fair copy of her note)
I don’t know who wrote it. Now I constantly write things without really knowing who writes them. Sometimes I clearly know it’s Sri Aurobindo, but at other times I don’t know in the least. But it’s someone who isn’t on earth, that I know.
Look, I’ll give you an interesting example (Mother goes over a paragraph of her note again). You see, in my state of consciousness, I would have said (as the nearest approximation to the thing): “Consciousness is, in its very nature, immortal, and in order to manifest in the physical world, it CONDENSES into material forms, etc. And there came insistently, No, CLOTHES ITSELF in forms.
But my spontaneous impulse was to say “condenses into forms,” because I saw that movement: a movement of condensation, manifestation, and, when that is over, of expansion. A continuous movement condensing and spreading, condensing and spreading … (gesture like the pulsation of an ocean). But it was imperative: it had to be “clothes itself.” So it’s quite certain it’s written by someone else. But there’s no sense of being “someone” and that “someone else” wants to write or speak – it’s not that! Similarly, when I say (I feel and know) it’s Sri Aurobindo, it’s not that I see him materially and he takes my hand and makes me write – nothing of all that. It’s something fluid that concentrates and causes to write. And it’s the quality of that fluidity that lets me know who it is. It’s quite odd. There’s a sort of complete disappearance of the sense of separation, yet a sense of diversity remains – diversity of modes of being – but it’s no longer demarcated, as if cut off and separate (Mother draws small cubes): it’s like vibratory modes of perception and action (and the quality of the vibration is different), vibratory modes of perception and action succeeding one another, intermingling, superposed on one another. A sort of fluid play: no longer separate little puppets.
My nights are ENTIRELY like that. During the day, there is still something of the old habit, but in the night, it’s instantly like that.
Yet, by analogy (it’s not an analogy, it’s a correspondence), I can tell it has to do with what we call "this one" or "that one," this or that other person. Last night, for instance, I spent a long time with M. and G. who were frantically calling me (they left from here and have reached England), I spent a long time with them, but they were no longer "persons," the puppets we are, it wasn’t that! Yet it was them. The contact was very accurate, very precise, the
Page 137
vibratory qualities were very clear. And there were forms: forms can be seen, but it no longer has the same quality. There’s something hard, opaque and clumsy that disappears.
It’s the same thing in the transcription (pointing to the note). When it comes down, there is a will to write, and somewhere there, something might have said as I told you: “But it’s a condensation of the consciousness.”
It wasn’t explained, but it was clearly conscious: the time for that hasn’t come.
This consciousness is extremely, extremely conscious, not only of the thing, not only of the goal, not only of the means, but even of the conditions: all of it together. In this unfolding immensity, when That looks, It knows exactly that, at this moment, this is how things must be and how they must be done.
It’s free in an absolute way – spontaneously free. Spontaneously. All action is spontaneous. It’s like a vision. A vision expressing itself.
(Mother finishes copying her note)
It’s more and more interesting. There’s absolutely no thought, you know, nothing: one second before, I don’t know, and then it comes in an absolute way. Sometimes when it comes, something sits up and says, “For my part, I would put it this way, my experience is like this” (as I told you earlier). – “No, it IS like that.”
Yesterday, I saw someone whom I don’t want to name and I started talking to her. I didn’t know, there wasn’t any thought or anything before. I started speaking, and I said, “There we are, we are at the time when we are going to see things….[[This is the time of the students' revolt in Paris - May 1968. ]] There are long, long, very long periods during which things are prepared; there is, afterwards, a very long, very long period during which things develop, organize, settle and bear consequences; but between this and that, there is a moment when things are done, when they happen. It’s not always very long (sometimes it is, at other times it’s very brief), but that’s when something happens. And that “something” is what will give the world a new development. Well, we are just – as it happens, we are just at such a moment. Which means that if we are (people, most of the time, are blind), if we aren’t blind, if our eyes are open, we WILL SEE, we will see things.
The occasion for all that (to place the thing) was that I said, "The U.S. president will go to Russia to sign a peace treaty with
Page 138
Vietnam…."[[It is in January, 1973, that the cease-fire will come into force in Vietnam. ]] There are two similar circumstances at the same time, so that three peace treaties are going to be signed at the same time.
When events start following such a trend, it show-e we are going to see things.
(silence)
Some people are in the night, in the past, in falsehood up to here (gesture to the eyebrows), they see nothing, nothing, nothing – they will go right to the end without seeing anything.
But those whose eyes are open will see.
* * *
(Towards the end, Mother asks Satprem about
a sore on his back.)
Does it prevent you from sleeping?
No, it’s nothing, only it’s growing bigger. It’s been there for two weeks.
Oh! … What a queer idea … It may be the same thing as with me [the attack of magic]. It’s not always easy to prevent these things from touching you. [[The day after Satprem mentioned it to Mother, the sore had healed. ]]
Oh, it’s a very special quality of vibration: when you are used to noting vibrations, it’s unmistakable; you can’t mistake one for another. When it comes from that [magic], you know it instantly. It’s very special … (Mother makes a piercing little gesture, like a snake’s tongue or a tiny flash of lightning vibrating and striking).
I feel powers passing by, like that, in response to those attacks.
There was a time when I still felt indignation; now it’s beginning to be impossible. [[Refer to "I don't care" in the preceding conversation. ]]
Page 139