September 8, 1971

(After a long contemplative plunge.)

It's really a period of transition for the body.

The body is realizing, becoming conscious of what in it prevents it from being immortal, and at the same time of what can be immortal in it. It has had moments of agony as never before in its whole life -- in connection with death, which has never happened

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 before. And it has understood that its very constitution was causing this, and what it had to change. I am ... as though on the threshold of an extraordinary discovery, but....

(silence)

I could put it this way: the why of death has become clear, and the how of immortality is ... (silence).... You know, it's a curious thing, the feeling that there is something (Mother feels with her fingertips) TO TOUCH.

(Mother sits looking, her eyes luminously open,
then goes within for a half hour)

It can last indefinitely.... The impression of touching something and ... (gesture of something escaping).

What did you feel?

Once Sujata made me understand what I feel when I am near

 you; she said, "It feels as if the body were made to pray when

 one is near you." Well, that's what I feel, a power which seems

 to seize all the parts of the body and ... I don't know, fill them

with an intense aspiration.

Yes, but that's also what my body feels.

Yes, it makes the body pray. It fills it with a Power that.... I

 don't know, it's like a warm gold lifting everything up.

Yes, that's how my body feels all the time.

(silence)

I feel That flowing like this (gesture through herself) constantly.

Maybe that's what Divine Love in matter is?

(Mother laughs merrily)

It's so intense and warm at the same time -- warm. And so

 strong ... it's so strong that you can't really use the word "love,

" because it doesn't correspond to anything you understand.

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Yes, that goes for me too!... I am like this (gesture at the forehead): nothing, nothing, empty, empty, empty.... Here (gesture high and wide) here it's ... yes, it's a golden immensity.

Yes.

(silence)

I have the most peculiar feeling that there's a kind of ... like scales, or tree bark, or turtle shell, melting, while the body itself is not like that (Mother makes a gesture as if the body were swelling up and bursting in the sun). What seems like matter to man is ... unreceptive. And in this body (Mother touches the skin of her hands), it is trying ... it is trying to ... (same gesture of swelling or blossoming). It's really curious! It's a curious sensation.

If one could last long enough for all that to melt away, then it would be the real beginning. [[Mother had at first said, "Then it would be finished," then she changed it to "It would be the real beginning" when Satprem published this portion in Notes on the Way. ]]

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