December 4, 1968
(Mother still has a cold)
What’s new? Nothing?
Yes: V.[[The disciple who had for the first time seen that mitered prelate repeating mantras. ]] saw the photo of the Vatican man, and he confirmed, he said, “This is the man.”
This is the man … (Mother looks at the photo)
Oddly, he’s an intelligent man. But these people are hypocrites; they think in one way and act according to another principle.
He isn’t obtuse, he’s a man who can understand.
As for me, he strikes me as a cruel man.
Cruel …
V. also said, “He can kill.”
He can kill … maybe.
It’s the other side of his nature. There are many people who could kill if they had the courage to.
In their feelings, they do kill.
(silence)
The body’s tapasya is something quite interesting, really interesting. The body … You know, its modesty is total; it has a keen sense of all its limitations, all its incapacities, all its ignorance, all … and at the same time – at the same time – the ABSOLUTE sense of the divine Presence, absolute; and a divine Presence that can break everything to pieces if it wants to. It’s quite interesting…. A Presence with such power! A power … which is incalculable, with no possible comparison with earthly things.
The body has a very, very strong impression (a sort of awareness) that its sufferings stem from its incapacity. There’s a sort of perception that it has a HABIT of turning into suffering something it can’t bear.
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(silence)
I saw Z just before. She was in full revolt, because long ago I had told her something she didn’t understand regarding films [shown at the Ashram] (it’s not exactly that, but anyway), and she slipped into a hole. So she was here (I was holding her hand), and this body felt it was all the same kind of matter – this sort of commonality and identity – and it was at once amused and very sweet. And then, there was here, like that, such an awesome Power, mon petit; the body was conscious That could crush a being to a pulp. And It remained like that (gesture of a quiet witness), not acting. The Power, which has the capacity to manifest with the vital power (It dominates the vital and has the capacity to use it), and which can dissolve things in perfect stillness. It’s extraordinary.
But the body isn’t mistaken, it knows what it is. It knows what it is. And it knows one thing, that it’s only when (and because) it can be absolutely peaceful – peaceful like something completely transparent and still – that this Power can act. The body knows. It knows the only thing asked of it is that total, transparent stillness.
(silence)
To come back to this man from the Vatican, he belongs to the type of people who have principles of action and can kill their dearest friend (or have him killed) like that, out of conviction. That’s clear.
It’s the type of the “Grand inquisitors.”
Yes.
If we want peace and quiet, it’s best not to attract their attention!
But he’s watching P.L.: in V’s vision, he was watching your
symbol around P.L.’s neck.
Is P.L. wearing it?
I don’t know. V. saw P.L. with your symbol around his neck,
and this man was looking at your symbol.
But I don’t think P.L. wears it?
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I think he does, but hidden, of course, not on the outside!
Hidden doesn’t matter.
Yes, but anyhow this man is watching, he’s keeping his eye on it.
P.L. would do well to be on his guard.
I told him.
They’re going to be on the same committee! [[For the reforms of the Church. ]] That’s very interesting! (Mother laughs) Very interesting.
But … (how can I put it?) I’ve left this whole affair [of the Church reforms] in the hands of the Grace. And I expect interesting things to occur, because there, we don’t know … What people don’t know is the miraculous power of the Grace, even over the worst disbeliever, even over the worst enemy.
(silence)
The body is very simple, it has a child’s simplicity. This morning it was assailed with visions – not “visions,” I don’t know what to call them … they weren’t exactly recollections, but things coming and all of them expressing hatred, violence (all that side, you know), and the body saw, it saw and felt, and said so spontaneously (it continues to be in this constant communion with the divine Presence), it said to the Lord, “Why do You carry all that in Yourself?” With a child’s candor and simplicity: “Why do You carry all that in Yourself?” And just when it said that, there was a sort of vision, a vision extended over the whole earth of all the horrors constantly committed on it: “Why do You carry…?” So then, the Answer is always, always the same (it’s like this, it’s here like this [gesture around the head]): “In my Consciousness, things are different.” Or, “In my Consciousness, things have a different appearance.” And there was this insistence: “Work to have the true consciousness. The TRUE consciousness that contains everything.
And this morning, the body understood: the problem was very clearly understood. (None of this is thought out, I don’t know how to explain … it’s not positively sensations, but … it’s perceptions
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… I don’t know [Mother feels the air with her fingers].) But the body clearly understood why division is, for a while, for the growth of the being, necessary. Because if there were from the start the perception it now has of everything within the Lord, absolutely everything, for instance all the things that even not so long ago (though in a different way) were still giving it a sort of horror – certain kinds of cruelty, certain things were really giving the body a sense of horror … Now it’s no longer like that, but it still can’t be happy with such things; it can be indifferent (gesture of a Witness), – but it can’t be happy. And it has understood why that horror was necessary; why there was a time when the manifested world, the world of manifestation, needed to appear outside and separate from the Lord…. (After a silence) One must … one must have that immutable Peace, one must be as vast as the universe to be able to bear the idea that EVERYTHING is the supreme Lord.
And the body has understood that it’s only now it has the experience because it’s only now it is sufficiently conscious and surrendered (surrendered in the true sense; I might almost say “identified,” but that’s too high-sounding a word, it doesn’t want to use it, it knows it’s not like that and identification will be something else), but quite simply that it’s now capable and ready to bear the idea that everything is the Lord, that there is NOTHING but the Lord. Previously, for quite a long time, it still needed to feel that all these movements (gesture forward) lead to the Lord, while all those movements (gesture backward) lead away from the Lord. For a long time, the choice was necessary. And now, now it’s doing its tapasya to be able to bear this idea – but without admitting or accepting movements of degradation and cruelty…. That is, with the nascent impression that things are not what they seem to be; that we only see the appearance and they are not what they seem to be.
But the brain cannot understand. The Mind can speculate on anything, but this is something else, the mind isn’t there. The brain, its capacity … (Mother remains gazing).
No later than this morning, the whole morning, there was … (what should I call it?) it has the nature of wonderment, but not the joy of wonderment, and it doesn’t have the stupidity of bewilderment, it’s … something … a state, yes. The body notes the way life is (or at least the way life is for our outer, active consciousness), the way life is, the way it APPEARS to be … and it’s very hard for it not to say, "Why, why, why? WHY? .." And then, when it sits looking like that, it becomes sad, sad, so very sad; then it
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feels that’s not the thing. And what’s that sadness?… It must be … it must be the door that leads to something else … which it doesn’t yet understand.
Why, why is this world like this, why? Why all these horrors, why?… That’s how the body was this morning. And it has the impression – just as it has that very strong, very strong sensation of being within the Lord – it has the impression of what that leads to, of what is to come. And then, with TOTAL trust, total…. But it doesn’t yet know.
It’s all the time – constantly, unceasingly – all the time brought face to face with this experience that when you are like this (Mother tips two fingers on one side), that is, turned to the Divine, things work out miraculously – miraculously … it’s unbelievable; and being like that (Mother tips two fingers on the other side) is enough for everything to be disgusting, to go wrong, to grate: a TINY LITTLE movement either of trusting opening, or of the ordinary consciousness (not at all a consciousness of revolt or negation, not at all: merely the ordinary consciousness, the consciousness of life as people have it – the ordinary consciousness), and it’s enough … things become appalling; and then, like this (gesture in the other direction): miraculously marvelous. For microscopic, unimportant things, you understand, that is to say, for EVERYTHING – no question of “important” or “unimportant” things, nothing of that sort – for everything it becomes simply miraculous, yet it’s the same thing! In one case you are in pain, you suffer, you are miserable, you even fall ill, and in the other case … And it’s the same thing.
But it has reached the point where now the body is quite astounded that one can live the ordinary life with the ordinary consciousness and be contented! It finds that appalling, you know, appalling. And that way of living in chaos, ugliness, wickedness, selfishness, violence, oh … and cruelty and all possible horrors, and of finding it all perfectly natural…. That’s when the body says to itself, “It must be … it must have been necessary as a stage in the development, and it’s an effect of the Grace, so there’s nothing to say, there’s only to admire.”
But it’s absolutely certain – absolutely certain – that if the world, if the creation were as it appears to be to this bodily consciousness as it now is, there would be only one thing to do – to blot it out! … That’s obviously the explanation of, and justification for, all nihilistic religions and philosophies. It takes a thoroughly unconscious insensitiveness to be able to live happily and contentedly in this horror that is the world. And all this … IS the Lord, and not only
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IS the Lord but is WITHIN the Lord; that is to say, it’s not as we imagine it – things that were driven away, rejected – not at all, not at all: all this is there WITHIN the Lord…. So there.
You see, the body has this experience of being completely disorganized, of having a cold, a pain here, a pain there … and when it’s in a certain attitude (we may call it an attitude, I don’t know), at any rate in a certain state of consciousness: vanished! All that no longer exists, there’s not a trace – there’s no cold anymore, no pain anymore, nothing anymore, it’s all gone! Though it’s ready to come back…. And not only gone (which would be a psychological phenomenon), but the CIRCUMSTANCES of people and things around CHANGE! They become different: in one case, everything is like that – stubborn, twisted – and in the other …
(long silence)
So as a matter of fact, the body’s advantage over the mind is that it understands very well (for it, it’s natural) that all that way of seeing and speaking is only a way of seeing and speaking; you may have the opposite way and it may be just as true, and yet another way would be quite true, and finally all that one says and thinks is only … ways of seeing. The mind has difficulty with that, but the body knows it very well, very well. But …
(long silence)
Inexpressible.
(silence)
How are your nights?
Not good.
The same?
Yes, not up to much.
Unchanged? … Very well.
The body knows a state in which it doesn’t sleep in the ordinary way (what’s called "sleep"), and instead there is a state (which we might call a state of harmony, but not active, very still) in which time no longer exists, that is to say, the body may spend two hours, three hours like that, thinking it was five minutes. Now
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that’s how nights are. It’s becoming more and more frequent. And I have an impression that’s what would change your sleep (I’ve been thinking about it often, almost every day), like this: going into that state, which isn’t at all the ordinary sleep in which you have dreams and activities and the subconscious is so active – no, nothing of the sort.
All that is something beginning. We must have patience.
I’ve been wondering…. All these last few weeks I have been
waking up in the morning with aching eyes. I’ve been wonde
ring where it came from?
Do you work a lot in the evening?
I work normally. But the strange thing is that as the day goes
by, it gets better. Then, in the night, my eyes start aching
. What’s going on?… I’ve been wondering if there wasn’t some
thing subtle bothering me? [[These strange night difficulties were going to last for a long time and may have been linked to the intrigues around P.L. This Agenda will mention them again in 1969. ]]
(Mother remains looking)
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