August 1965

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04. August 1965 – Always listen to the Lord

"Always listen to what the Lord of Truth has to tell you and let your action be guided by Him."

Till then, you are forever wondering if you are doing the right thing. But it has become like that: "Do this." And when there is nothing, I do nothing. But I have noticed that when necessary, it comes, and constantly, even at night! Even when I "sleep," it becomes like that: "Do this, do that..." — not with words, but it's very clear, you can't make a mistake.

It took a long, long time for it to come like that. But that state you are referring to, I knew it for years: you sit there, wondering... Because, as I said, in order to be absolutely blank and immobile, you must be withdrawn from the world, seeing no one, doing nothing; then you can perceive clearly; but otherwise, when you are in the world and all those suggestions keep coming all the time, you must allow what is called the "personal" will to express itself when you don't receive a very precise Command.

But the aspiration always was to receive the true thing. And it comes, you reach a point when it comes clearly — clearly, very clearly — for everything, even for the very small things of everyday life: "Do this, do that...."

But I must say it is the result of years of effort — not effort: vigilance. Vigilance: not to forget that THAT is what one wants, and that the other way is simply a stopgap in the meantime.

At any rate, it is quite certain (Sri Aurobindo wrote it somewhere, I read it again just two or three days ago), quite certain that the Lord doesn't want automatons that He has to push along. That's not what He wants: He wants a conscious collaboration. Only, a point comes when the sense of the person truly disappears; you go on saying "I," because how do you express yourself? But when you say "I," you have the feeling (not the thought — for the thought, it takes a long time), a sort of feeling of the higher Will manifesting here, in this spot, with these means.

It comes after years.

04. August 1965 – Illness

But the minute you step into their hospitals, you are ill! That's right, it's as I say: it's the medical atmosphere. Jules Romains said it: "A healthy man is a man who doesn't know he is sick." So a priori you are sick — it goes without saying that you are sick. And if they don't immediately find what's wrong with you, it's because you have the knack of hiding it!

But, oh, how many little experiences I've had about this, and so interesting! Something is wrong here or there in the body, a small thing; as long as you don't pay attention to it — as long, above all, as you don't mention it to anyone — and you give it up to the Lord (if it happens to hurt, you give it up to the Lord), it's all right — it's fine, you aren't sick: it's "a disorder somewhere." If you are unfortunate enough to utter a word about it to anyone, and especially to the doctor, whoever he is, it instantly becomes an illness. And I know why, it's because the cells that are in disorder feel all of a sudden they are very important and very interesting persons! So then, as they are very interesting, they must make themselves still more interesting. If they have a movement that isn't harmonious, they exaggerate it — it becomes even less harmonious in order to assert itself more.

It sounds like a joke, but it's true! That's how it is, I know it. I have observed it carefully in my cells. So when they are told (Mother slaps her armrest), "You fools! That's not your duty at all, you are ridiculous," they keep quiet.

As a drama, it's wonderful.

That's what happened with my eye. It happened with other things too (small things, very small things, a disorder somewhere, something that went askew for some reason or other); as long as you don't pay attention to it, it carries on in its own sweet way; as soon as somebody notices it or you show it to the doctor (oh, especially when you show it to the doctor), it becomes an illness: it swells up and swells up! "Oh, I am an important person, I am receiving attention." That's how it is. So they intensify the movement. And you are lucky if it doesn't actually become serious.

You see, they must immediately be told, "No, no, No! You are taking the wrong road, you are making yourself much more ridiculous — be quiet." Then things get better.

It's very interesting.

The doctor crystallizes the illness, makes it concrete, hard. Afterwards, he takes credit for curing it... when he can!

07. August 1965 – Transformation of the material mind

It had learned to keep silent and act.

To keep silent and act.

Oh, it was lovely!

(silence)

Every time I express it, it recedes farther into the past.

Ah, I think we should take up Savitri.... (Mother looks at Satprem:) You have a question? Ask.

No, I didn't have any question, I was immersed in what you were saying.

It followed a long curve.... It began with a deep disgust for its [the material mind's] habitual activity; I started catching (not now: it's been going on for weeks), catching all its routine and almost automatic activities — I have said it several times: this material mind is defeatist, always pessimistic, meddlesome, grumbling, disgruntled, lacking in faith, lacking in trust.... Even when it tends to be joyful and content, something comes and says, "Ah, stop it, because you'll get another knock." That sort of thing. It went on for weeks, and a continuous, constant work.... It always ended in the offering. There was a beginning of progress when... No, first I should tell all that happened before. To begin with, the japa, the mantra, for instance, was taken as a discipline; then from the state of discipline it changed into a state of satisfaction (but still with the sense of a duty to be done); then from that it changed into a sort of state of constant satisfaction, with the desire (not "desire," but a will or an aspiration) for it to be more frequent, more constant, more exclusive. Then there was a sort of repugnance to and rejection of all that comes and disturbs, mixed with a sense of duty towards work, people and so on, and all that made a muddle and a great confusion. And it always ended in the transfer to the Supreme along with the aspiration for things to change. A long process of development.

Recently there was a sort of will for equality towards activities that had been tolerated or accepted only as an effect of the consecration and in obedience to the supreme Will. And then, all of a sudden they became something very positive, with a sense of freedom and a spontaneity of state, and a beginning of understanding of the attitude with which the action must be done. All this came very, very progressively. And then this morning, there was the experience.

(silence)

I may express it in this way: the capacity to fall silent and to intervene only on the Impulse from above.

To intervene only when set in motion by the supreme Wisdom, for every action to be done.

And it gave the exact meaning of the purpose of this material mind; because there was always, in the background of the consciousness, that sentence of Sri Aurobindo's which said it was an impossible instrument and would probably have to be got rid of. It had remained. And I saw there was something wrong: in spite of all the criticism, all the offering, all the disgust, even all the rejection, this material mind was preserved. Only, it has been transformed slowly, slowly, and now the first step has been made, a step on the road to transformation, with the experience of the cessation of its automatic activity.

That was the experience of this morning.

I am not saying it is final, far from it, but it's much more under control. The cessation lasted perhaps an hour or two, I don't remember, but its activity isn't so mechanical anymore. You know that sort of mental silence in which everything falls flat (immobile, horizontal gesture); well, it can now be done with this material mind — it falls flat, turned upward.

But it is a beginning, just the beginning.

Only, there is a certainty. Even if it had occurred for just a few minutes, one could be sure that it would be — it occurred for much longer than that. Consequently this material mind will be part of what will be transformed.

And it gives a tremendous power! When it stops, the Vibration of Love can manifest in its plenitude.

It came this morning, in a glory.

15. August 1965 – Message

Some day surely

The world too shall be saved from death by love.

Sri Aurobindo

21. August 1965 – Moral judgements

On the 15th, at the balcony, Sri Aurobindo was there. He had come and he went out on the balcony with me. I didn't say anything to anybody, not to anybody at all. And there is a little girl, about fifteen years old now, who is considered here as a bad pupil, erratic, fanciful (they had even talked of sending her away), but once I asked her to come for her birthday, and as for me, I found her a fine girl (!) And she wrote to me two or three days ago that on the 15th, at the Darshan, she saw Sri Aurobindo on my right. And she asked (laughing), "Is it true?"

It quite amused me. I said to myself, "So much for their moral judgments on the pupils here! That's how it is."

But nowadays I don't see the children anymore; formerly I used to see them every day, or at any rate once a month regularly I would see them. When I went to the Playground, I saw them every day. But now I no longer do, except a few on their birthdays.

But I found this interesting. Maybe some others saw him too, but didn't tell me. But she wrote to me, "Well, I saw Sri Aurobindo standing beside you, is it true?"

(silence)

Since the 15th, there has been a whole work of preparation for the transformation.... What could I call it?... A transfer of power.

The cells, the whole material consciousness, used to obey the inner individual consciousness — the psychic consciousness most of the time, or the mental (but the mind had been silent for a long time). But now this material mind is organizing itself like the other one, or the other ones, rather, like the mind of all the states of being — do you know, it is educating itself. It is learning things and organizing the ordinary science of the material world. When I write, for instance, I have noticed that it takes great care not to make spelling errors; and it doesn't know, so it inquires, it learns, it looks up in the dictionary or it asks. That's very interesting. It wants to know. You see, all the memory that came from mental knowledge went away a long, long time ago, and I used to receive indications only like this (gesture from above). But now it's a sort of memory being built from below, and with the care of a little child who educates himself but who wants to know, who doesn't want to make errors — who is perfectly conscious of his ignorance, and who wants to know. And the truly interesting thing is that it knows this knowledge to be quite... more than relative, simply conventional, but it is like an instrument that would like to be free of defects, like a machine that would like to be perfect.

It is a rather recent awakening. There has been a sort of reversal of consciousness.

And at night it corresponds to thoroughly strange activities: a completely new way of seeing, feeling and observing people and things. Last night, for example, for over two hours there was a clear vision — an active vision (through action, that is) — of the way in which human consciousnesses make the most simple things complicated and difficult. It was fantastic — fantastic. And then, this consciousness was spontaneously impelled by the divine Presence, but it followed the others' human movements with the clear perception of the simple thing and of the way in which it becomes complicated. It was symbolic, with images; an activity in images in the sense that it wasn't purely material, physical as we know it here, but in a symbolic, imaged physical (in which the material world is seen as clay). It was very interesting.

Only, there was a very great intensity of transformation, and (how can I explain?)... It's like a shift in the directing will. And then, there was materially, physically, a sort of surprise, and a need to identify with the new direction — it's a little difficult. It's difficult to explain, too.... It's no longer the same thing that makes you act — "act" or anything, of course: move, walk, anything. It isn't the same center any longer. And then if, by habit, you try to reconnect with the old center, oh, that creates a great disorder, and you must be very careful not to let habit, the old habit, express itself and manifest.

It's hard to express it. It is still too much just an action.

...It's a very bizarre phenomenon. At certain times I see with a far greater precision than ordinary precision, as I have never seen; at other times I have the feeling of a blanket of fog between me and the world. I can see (I KNOW things rather than see them), but it's a vision through a veil.

For hearing, it's the same thing. At times the slightest, faintest sound is distinct; but the sound isn't here anymore (in the ear), it is... somewhere (gesture around or above the head). At other times I can't hear a thing anymore. For a long time it was a question of people, of hours, of places — with you, for instance, I heard you very clearly. But now it's no longer like that, it's... I woke up with, yes, like a blanket of fog between me and the world when I got up this morning, when I emerged from all that — oh, two hours of frightful, frightful activity (and so interesting at the same time, there were lots of people and fantastic things).

The night before, I had spent more than two hours with Sri Aurobindo.... We were sitting without being seated (it's a strange thing, but so concrete), and correcting sentences (!), that is, making expressions more precise. He even had (I had asked him a question), he held his pencil or pen between his lips, like a child, almost with a child's face, and after a while he told me, No, you put it like that.... Afterwards, I wondered, "By the way, how were we seated?" There were no seats and we weren't standing, yet we were very comfortable!

Thought, here in this brain, has difficulty adapting.

Because for two days (I mean two days without stop), there was a constant aspiration: "How will this new world be when it becomes material here? How will this new world be?..." And that put me so deep "inside" that I was... I wasn't far away, but there was that blanket of fog between me and the world as it is.

It was still here today.

(silence)

This morning, for example, several times for a certain length of time (I don't know how long, but not a very short time: a quarter of an hour, half an hour, I don't know), the body's cells, that is, the body's form had the experience that staying together or dissolving depends on a certain attitude — an attitude or a will; something that has to do with will and attitude. And with the perception (sometimes simultaneously an almost double perception, one being more a memory and the other a lived thing) of what makes you move, act, know; the old way like a memory, and the new way in which, obviously, there is no reason at all to dissolve, except if you choose to do so — it's meaningless, it's something meaningless: why dissolve?

That was there yesterday a little, and very much there this morning.

And if, when you fall back... That's not exactly the point: when the old consciousness comes back to the surface, if you aren't very attentive, naturally it results in fainting.

For... oh, a long time, for the whole time between 5 o'clock and quarter to six, that's how it was.

It gives, AT THE SAME TIME, a sense of the unreality of life and of a reality that we could call eternal: the meaning of death does not exist, it's meaningless. It is only a choice. And dislocation has no meaning, no raison d'être: it's an extravagance.

And then the entire old way of seeing, feeling, perceiving, is behind a sort of blanket — a blanket of fog — which makes the contact. woolly, imprecise.

Now, of course, I have recovered the ordinary consciousness, so I can express that; otherwise it was hard to express. And the contrast or the opposition is difficult, painful; both ways of being are complaining: the other way feels as if it is fainting, and the new one as if it isn't left in peace. When you are in one or in the other, it's all right, but when both are there together... it's not very pleasant. And there is a sort of sense of uncertainty: you don't very well know where you are, whether you are here or whether you are there; you don't very well know.

Well.

And then, the stupidity of people and things becomes cruel, because even in the ordinary consciousness, for me all those things are meaningless; but then with that need to keep two almost contradictory states together (a transitional period, of course), if you add to it a truckload of nonsense, it's not pleasant.

It's like this "gentleman" [Death in Savitri], all the rubbish he says!

25. August 1965 – On Essays on the Gita

"No real peace can be till the heart of man deserves peace; the law of Vishnu cannot prevail till the debt to Rudra is paid. To turn aside then and preach to a still unevolved mankind the law of love and oneness? Teachers of the law of love and oneness there must be, for by that way must come the ultimate salvation. But not till the Time-Spirit in man is ready, can the inner and ultimate prevail over the outer and immediate reality. Christ and Buddha have come and gone, but it is Rudra who still holds the world in the hollow of his hand. And meanwhile the fierce forward labour of mankind tormented and oppressed by the powers that are profiteers of egoistic force and their servants cries for the sword of the Hero of the struggle and the word of its prophet." (Essays on the Gita, XIII.372)

It is the exact portrait of the situation.

Last time I said how close the thing was, and then... (gesture like a ground swell) immediately the exact opposite rises: everyone goes awry, some are sick, others are nasty, yet others are furious... oh! And everything grates and cries and... Every time that something draws near, "Ah, here it is, we have caught the thing," immediately, vrrrm!

Very well.

We haven't paid our debt yet, as Sri Aurobindo says.

What can we do?... Go on. Be more enduring than the opposition.

More enduring. Sri Aurobindo said, "Victory belongs to the most enduring." That's obvious.

We only have to last.

28. August 1965 – Experience of Immortality

I said the other day that this aggregate of cells had changed its initiating power. It struck me as a unique experience, as something that had never occurred before. Unfortunately, it didn't last long. But the experience has left a kind of certitude in the body: it is less uncertain about the future. As if the experience came to tell the body, "This is how things will be."

If it stays on, it clearly means immortality.

I remember, when I told that experience, it was no longer something personal at all: if you can catch that....

31. August 1965 – Difference between material and physical Mind

How do you define this physical mind, the one that underwent the transfer of power?

That isn't the physical mind. The physical mind, it's a long time since... It is the material mind—not even the material mind: the mind OF MATTER.1 It is the mental substance that belongs to Matter itself, to the cells. That's what was formerly called "the spirit of the form," when it was said that mummies kept their bodies intact as long as the spirit of the form persisted. That's the mind I mean, that completely material mind. The other one, the physical mind, has been organized for a long time.

(In a former Playground Talk (of March 10, 1951), Mother said regarding the violation of tombs in Egypt: "In the physical form there is the 'spirit of the form,' and that spirit of the form persists for a time, even when outwardly the person is said to be dead. And as long as the spirit of the form persists, the body isn't destroyed. In ancient Egypt they had that knowledge; they knew that if they prepared the body in a certain way, the spirit of the form wouldn't go away and the body wouldn't be dissolved.")

So what is the difference between this material mind and the physical mind? How would you define the physical mind in contrast with this material mind?

The physical mind is the mind of the physical personality formed by the body. It grows with the body, but it isn't the mind of Matter: it is the mind of the physical being. For instance, it is the mind that makes one's character: the bodily, physical character, which is in large part formed by atavism and education. What is called “physical mind” is all that. Yes, it's the result of atavism, of education and of the formation of the body; that's what makes the physical character. For example, some people are patient, some are strong and so on – physically, I mean, not for vital or mental reasons, but purely physically everyone has a character. That's the physical mind. And it is part of any integral yoga: you discipline this physical mind. I have done it for more than sixty years.

But then, that mind, for instance, which is spontaneously defeatist, which has all sorts of fears and worries, which sees the worst, repeats the same things forever, is that the physical mind or the material mind?

It is the most unconscious part of the physical mind, and that's what connects the physical mind with this material substance. But that's already an organized mind, you understand? It is the most material part, the one that borders on the mind... (what can we call this mind?), we can't even call it “corporeal mind”: it is the mind of the cells, a cellular mind.

This cellular mind exists in animals, and there is even a faint beginning (but very faint, like a promise) in plants: they respond to a mental action. They respond. As soon as Life manifests, there is already the beginning, like a promise of mind, of mental movement. And in animals, it's very clear. Whereas that physical mind really began to exist only in man. That's what a very small child already has: it already has a physical mind; so that no two very small children are alike, with identical reactions: there is already a difference. And it is especially what is given you with the special FORM of your body, by atavism, and then fully developed by education.

No, the physical mind, as soon as you do an integral yoga, you are obliged to deal with it, while this material, cellular mind, I can assure you that it's absolutely new! Absolutely new.

It is the mind that was like an uncoordinated substance, with a constant, unorganized activity (Mother gestures to show a constant tremor). This is the mind which is being organized. That's what is important, because Sri Aurobindo said it was unorganizable and the only thing to do was to reject it from existence. And I was under that impression, too. But when the transforming action on the cells is constant, this material mind begins to become organized, that's the wonderful thing! It begins to become organized. And then, as it becomes organized, it learns to FALL SILENT — that's the beautiful thing! It learns to keep calm, silent, and to let the supreme Force act without interfering.

The most difficult part is in the nerves, because they are so habituated to that ordinary conscious will that when it stops and you want the direct Action from the highest height, they seem to become mad. Yesterday morning I had that experience, which lasted for more than an hour, and it was difficult; but it taught me many things — many things. And all this is what we may call the “transfer of power”: it is the old power that withdraws. But then, until the body adapts to the new power, there is a period which is, well, critical. As all the cells are in a state of conscious aspiration, it's going relatively fast, but still... the minutes are long.

But there is increasingly a sort of certitude in the cells that everything that happens is with a view to this transformation and this transfer of the directing power. And at the very moment when things are materially painful (not even physically: materially painful), the cells keep that certitude. And so they withstand, they endure the suffering without being depressed or affected in the least, with that certitude that it is to prepare for the transformation, that it is even the process of transformation and of the transfer of the directing power. As I said, it's in the nerves that the experience is the most painful (naturally, since they are the most sensitive cells, those with the sharpest sensation). But they have a very great receptivity, and very spontaneous, a spontaneously strong receptivity — and effortless — to the harmonious physical vibration (which is very rare, but still it exists in some individuals), and that physical vibration... what we could call a physical FORCE, a harmonious physical vibration (spontaneously harmonious, of course, without the need for mental intervention — like the vibrations of a flower, for instance; there are physical vibrations that are like that, that carry in themselves a harmonious force), and the nerves are extremely sensitive and receptive to that vibration, which immediately puts them right again.

It's very interesting, it explains many, many things. A day will come when all this will be explained and put in its proper place. Now isn't the time to reveal it yet, but it's very interesting.

I really have the feeling that it's beginning to be organized, that the work is beginning to be organized.

Naturally, care must be taken to avoid letting a mental organization intervene, which is why I am not trying to explain things too much. The mind comes, and then that's not it anymore.