June 1967

Index

Next

03. June 1967 – Conditions to become Aurovilian

"From the psychological point of view, the essential conditions are:

"1) Being convinced of the essential human unity and having the will to collaborate in the advent of this unity.

"2) The will to collaborate in all that furthers future realizations."

That's all, it's not complicated.

Then, from the material point of view:

"The material conditions will be worked out as the realization progresses."

It's not too complicated.

Here is the letter, I find it very good:

“ It may be said generally that to be overanxious to pull people, especially very young people, into the sadhana is not wise. The sadhak who comes to this Yoga must have a real call, and even with the real call the way is often difficult enough. But when one pulls people in in a spirit of enthusiastic propagandism, the danger is of lighting an imitative and unreal fire, not the true Agni, or else a short-lived fire which cannot last and is submerged by the uprush of the vital waves. This is especially so with young people who are plastic and easily caught hold of by ideas and communicated feelings not their own — afterwards the vital rises with its unsatisfied demands and they are swung between two contrary forces or rapidly yield to the strong pull of the ordinary life and action and satisfaction of desire which is the natural bent of adolescence. Or else the unfit adhar [vessel] tends to suffer under the stress of a call for which it was not ready, or at least not yet ready. When one has the real thing in oneself, one goes through and finally takes the full way of sadhana, but it is only a minority that does so. It is better to receive only people who come of themselves and of these only those in whom the call is genuinely their own and persistent."

Sri Aurobindo

May 6, 1935

07. June 1967 – What is God?; All countries live in falsehood

I have something to add to what we said the other day about the Divine. Someone asks me, "And whatever is God?"

It's about a text from Sri Aurobindo. Here it is:

"Love leads us from the suffering of division into the bliss of perfect union, but without losing that joy of the act of union which is the soul's greatest discovery and for which the life of the cosmos is a long preparation. Therefore to approach God by love is to prepare oneself for the greatest possible spiritual fulfilment."

(The Synthesis of Yoga, XXI.III.523)

It's about the last sentence; someone has asked me, "What is God?" So I've replied (taking the word "God"):

"It is the name man has given to all that exceeds and dominates him, all that he cannot know but is subject to."

Instead of saying "to all that exceeds him," we could say, "to THAT WHICH exceeds him," because from the intellectual standpoint, "all that which" is debatable. I mean there is a "something" — an indefinable and inexplicable something — and man has always felt dominated by that something. It is beyond all possible understanding and dominates him. And then, religions have given it a name; man has called it "God"; the French call it Dieu, the English, God, in another language it's called differently, but anyway it's the same.

I am intentionally not giving any definition. Because my lifelong feeling has been that it's a mere word, and a word behind which people put a lot of very undesirable things.... It's that idea of a god who claims to be "the one and only," as they say: "God is the one and only." But they feel it and say it in the way Anatole France put it (I think it was in The Revolt of Angels): this God who wants to be the one and only and ALL ALONE. That was what had made me a complete atheist, if I may say so, in my childhood; I refused to accept a being, WHOEVER HE WAS, who proclaimed himself to be the one and only and almighty. Even if he were indeed the one and only and almighty (laughing), he should have no right to proclaim it! That's how it was in my mind. I could make an hour-long speech on this, to show how in every religion they tackled the problem.

In any case, I have given what I find is the most objective definition. And as in the other day's "What is the Divine?", I have tried to give a feeling of the Thing; here I wanted to fight against the use of the word which, to me, is hollow, but dangerously so.

I remember a very powerful line in "Savitri" which says it all wonderfully in one sentence. He says:

The bodiless Namelessness that saw God born


And tries to gain from mortal's mind and soul


A deathless body and a divine name.

Savitri, I.III.40

(silence)

I told you the other day that I had met D. before she left (in search of a Tibetan guru) and we had spoken. I spoke to her of Sri Aurobindo and his teaching. And she has been converted! Yes, really. She wrote me another letter today, which I've just received (it's the second letter she has written to me from up there), in which she says she has met that famous Tibetan sage with whom she wanted to discuss.... He seems to have made fun of her (she doesn't say so), but she says he "constantly brings you face to face with your mental formations" (he must have shown her that she was feeding on words). And then she adds, "But as for me, I feel, I do feel your love always with me, and everything is fine." — Never! It's the first time in her life she has told me this.

So it gave me the idea of writing down what I told her about Sri Aurobindo's teaching:

"In order to understand and follow Sri Aurobindo's teaching, one must learn to rise above all possibility of contradiction."

That is, to reach the region where contradictions no longer exist. That's true. You understand, if you take quotations from Sri Aurobindo on a particular subject, you can put side by side things that are just the opposite of each other: he says one thing, then its opposite, then again something else. So, to understand him and not keep saying to yourself, "But why does he constantly say the contrary of what he has said!" you must learn to rise up above — up above, it's quite fine(!) There, it's... very interesting. Once you are above, it's very interesting.

And from the practical point of view, the remarkable thing is that in that region, which is beyond all possible contradictions, there lies the source of the true Power.

But I mean that we could find in Sri Aurobindo a sentence saying, for instance, that "God" is a word empty of meaning into which man puts whatever he likes, and then a description similar to the one I gave of the Divine. And throughout all his writings, it's like that for everything.

(silence)

And then I would like to publish this quotation from Sri Aurobindo:

"The traditions of the past are very great in their own place, in the past, but I do not see why we should merely repeat them and not go farther. In the spiritual development of the consciousness upon earth the great past ought to be followed by a greater future."

January 14, 1932

"All the countries live in falsehood. If only one country stood courageously for truth, the world might be saved."

(silence)

Towards the end of the day, when I was alone, I began asking Sri Aurobindo precisely what he meant.... Naturally, his hope is that the country that "stood for Truth" will be India — for the moment, she is very far from it. But... And since the subject was before me, I asked him how he saw the terrestrial possibility, in a harmonious future.

Then he said to me — it was very simple, very clear: "A federation of all nations and countries without exception, all continents. A single federation: the federation of all human nations of the earth." And a group — a governing group — consisting of one representative from each country, the most able man from the standpoint of political and economic organization. And nothing of the proportional question that would give large countries many representatives and small ones only one — one representative for each country. Because each country represents one aspect of the problem. And they would sit in rotation.

It was a vast vision, not so much with words as with a vision.

14. June 1967 – The taste for drama

A great battle.... I have learned a great many things.

And it's going on.

I've made discoveries.... Diseases, accidents, catastrophes, wars, all that, is because the human material consciousness is so small, so narrow that it has a rabid taste for drama. And of course, behind there is the vital being having fun, influences too... anyway all that enjoys an opportunity to delay the divine Work and make things difficult. And all that takes pleasure in that naturally encourages drama. But the seed of the difficulty is that pettiness, extreme pettiness of the physical consciousness — the material physical consciousness — which has an absolutely perverse taste for drama. Drama — the slightest thing has to make a drama: if you have a toothache, it becomes a drama; if you bang against something, it becomes a drama; if two nations quarrel, it becomes a drama — everything becomes a drama. The taste for drama. The slightest upset in the body, the least disorder, which should go completely unnoticed, oh, it makes a big fuss, a drama. The taste for drama. I was thoroughly disgusted.

Everything, everything... Like the loud buzz at a fair.

The attack was apparently violent, so violent that after studying and observing it I was forced to think that some people were amusing themselves doing black magic.... Everything took on fantastic proportions. The same teeth I've had for such a long time (in the same state for such a long time, that is!), which for years hadn't given me any trouble, suddenly fancied they too had to make a drama! So, a raging toothache, swelling — absolutely ridiculous, absolutely. And you know, this discovery of drama wasn't thought out, it wasn't an observation: it was an acute experience, caught hold of as you would catch a thief. I caught it. And it's universal, all over the earth.

Because EVERYTHING was creating drama — the loud buzz of a fair, the tumult, all of it, a big fuss. Like those people over there when they fought each other, the same fuss (gesture expressing the seething turmoil of the war). What a to-do they make! What with "rights" and "duties" and "honour," oh!... Then, as things were pretty bad (I was almost completely incapacitated), I asked what it meant (Mother laughs), and he showed me the picture! Then I understood.

The minute I understood, things started calming down (the raging toothache as well as the raging war in Palestine).

It's profoundly ridiculous, and unhealthy, moreover.

You understand, once the thing had been seen — seen and felt and lived completely — they started slowing down there. I can't say things are quite all right as yet, far from it, but anyway I think the worst of the catastrophe has been averted.

Grotesque.

Things are somewhat better. There is still some friction.... "Traitors," "enemies," oh!... Now they say that Indonesia and Pakistan are up to something.... And with EVERYTHING, you know, from the biggest to the smallest, from what seems the most important (what disturbs the most things, at any rate) to the least little physical discomfort, it's like that: a very small, such a very small consciousness, petty and limited like that, and narrow, which makes a mountain out of a molehill.

There you are.

(silence)

Because what took place is nothing new, it has happened so many times before, but the body's experience was different.... Previously, the consciousness of all the other inner beings was there and would fortunately counterbalance this idiotic tendency: even the vital, the vital being which also loves grand effects, but provided at least they are great, vast, powerful enough to be on a large scale and save it from being ridiculous; and then, positively above all that, all the rest, with a smile. But this time, this body was left TO ITSELF, to learn. And it has learned.

But death too, is the result of the taste for drama — what a pretty drama, ugh!

(silence)

Well, there you are.

And as, naturally, it became impossible to eat, another consequence was that it became impossible to do anything.... The doctor made me take proteins that don't need to be digested, those that are directly injected into the blood, but he made me swallow them. Then I was able to resume some work — I could no longer speak, no longer eat, no longer...

It went on worsening nicely, till the day (I forget which) when I said with "great indignation" (Mother takes on a dramatic tone), "What is this creation in which..." (I said it in English) "in which living is suffering, dying is suffering, everything is suffering...." (Mother laughs) As soon as that was uttered, it was enough. And the consciousness was there, saying, "There is only one remedy, but the world rejects that remedy." So I was put in the presence of the fact, face to face with it, the thing staring at me — oh, what a pretty drama!

(silence)

I wondered whether it was peculiar to the earth and if the other planets and suns weren't in this idiotic situation?... On an external level it would be interesting to know. But I am practically certain that death, for instance, is something that belongs exclusively to earth life — death as we FEEL it, as we understand it. Yet animals take part in it, but they don't have man's mental deformation.... But the taste for drama is exclusively human, because those animals that live with man catch the malady, while those that don't live with man don't have it at all.

For two days the impression of not knowing whether you are alive or dead (but these are words on the surface), of not being very sure of the difference it makes.... And then, the body asking this question: "But everyone has his theory: one says [death] is like this, another says it's like that, another one says something different again, but what is our OWN experience like?..." And it was like that (gesture of hanging between two worlds).

Then the body suddenly remembered (that was rather interesting; it's more recent, it was yesterday or the day before), the body suddenly remembered that it had once been brought back to life. It said, "But you knew at that time, you knew since you brought me back to life." Then I recollected what I used to know (and had stopped knowing because the knowledge was quite incomplete — it was entirely external and lacked the higher knowledge), I recollected the experience, and the two things came together (the old knowledge and the new). "Now," I said, "this is interesting!"

You know, the story of the soul "leaving the body," is childishness! Because I had that experience too, of leaving (not the soul! It's entirely independent, always and in everyone), of leaving the psychic being, the individual psychic being. When I left here in 1915, I left my psychic being here deliberately. I left it here, I didn't take it with me. Consequently, the body can live without the psychic being (it was rather sick, by the way, but that wasn't the reason — it's again the taste for drama!... Oh, always the taste for drama!).

There we are.

So the problem narrows down more and more.... If your most material vital being goes out, it doesn't make you die — it puts you in catalepsy, but it doesn't make you die. What makes you die?...

There are two things that make you die. One (the one that precedes the dramatic human existence) is wear and tear. What does wear and tear come from? From Ignorance, obviously. From Ignorance and the incapacity to renew forces; and that means the whole lower life: it decomposes, recomposes, decomposes again.... But it's only with animality and the beginning of a mental functioning that (Mother takes on a grandiloquent tone) "death" comes, such as we conceive it. But that is when the vital element that gives life (what we call "life") breaks down. There are innumerable reasons for that, all of which stem from the same source. Of course, taken together, it is the incapacity to follow the movement of progress: the need to remix everything together in order to start all over again. But for those who are beginning to think, that no longer has any reason to exist.

An accident?... An accident to the material combination? But what accident, since the heart can stop and start again? It's a question of how long the accident lasts.

If, for this wear and tear, this deterioration (which comes from the Inconscient and is the result of the RESISTANCE of the Inconscient), if for this we can substitute the aspiration for progress and transformation (not with words — the vibration)... That experience has been given to me several times. For example, suppose there is something which goes wrong, there is a pain somewhere, something disorganized that no longer works properly; if there is the vision and conception in the faith (faith and consecration to the Supreme) that it's deliberate, that the Supreme has allowed it to be (how can I express it? All words are meaningless), has allowed or willed it, or wanted it to be, because to Him it seems the best way to transform the thing, to have it make the necessary progress, if the cells that are somewhat disorganized and "sick," as they say, are able to feel this... then straight away it takes a marvellous turn for the better — immediately, in five minutes, ten minutes. I could give concrete, precise examples, with all the details. So that means bringing the two extremes into contact, we could say. And if that can become the normal life of the elements which make up this outer form, then there is no reason why... No, there is no need to die, no need whatsoever. There comes a point when death loses all meaning.

And one learns in the smallest detail, in the little cell or the faint sensation (and when it comes down to feelings, there is something which is the embryo of thought — oh, then...), the taste for drama. Ah, then everything is explained.

The taste for drama, the need for catastrophe.

That's what was there, pressing and pressing on the earth to bring about all the conditions for a resounding grand finale (Mother shrugs her shoulders).

And only one remedy: a widening into eternal peace... To break limits, become immense.

About an earlier death:

it happened at Tlemcen while I was working with Théon. I had gone out in a wholly material way, the body was in a cataleptic state, and something came, something occurred that cut the link. So the link was cut.

The experience was that... (laughing) impossible to get back in there! But Théon was there (Théon got such a fright!), and there was at that time the knowledge of the occult (a good deal of knowledge!), the knowledge was there and then the will (Mother makes a gesture of pushing to re-enter the body), and also an inner faith (but I never used to talk about that), and a concentration. And he was capable, he knew. He knew how to "pull." And the body hadn't deteriorated, you see, it wasn't damaged, so it wasn't difficult. It was in very good condition, but the thread was cut, which means that what gives life had gone out and could not get back in.

I came back in as a result of the power and the will, because... In fact, simply because I still had something to do on earth.

It happened in 1910, I think.

It is likely that the soul resolves, having seen that the body is either unworthy or unfit or incapable or unwilling or... whatever, and so the soul decides that the body must die and it may go; but it is not the fact of the soul's going that kills the body. There are innumerable people who are without a soul — they have a soul, but their soul isn't in their body — many people. And they go on living quite well.

It's more difficult however, to live without the psychic being. The psychic being, of course, is the covering — the individualized covering — between the eternal soul and the transitory body; and it becomes formed, individualized, it becomes more and more individually conscious. When that leaves the body, the rest generally follows. But I myself have had the experience of doing it deliberately, so I KNOW. One has to know how to do it, but it can be done. My psychic being stayed here with Sri Aurobindo, and I left with my mental, vital and physical beings. It was a... slightly precarious condition. But as I also kept the contact quite consciously, it could be done.

What people call "death"... I see lots of people who to me are living dead (they are those who are without their psychic being, or even those who have no contact with their soul). But to know that, one must have the inner vision. But what people call "death," that is, the decomposition of the cells and dissolution of the form, is when the most material "vital sub-degree," which brings into contact with Life — with the vital force, life — goes out. That is how death occurs in animals, for example. And that vital sub-degree generally goes away when the external organism is unable to continue — when, for instance, it's cut in two or the heart has been removed, or anyway when something quite radical has happened to it! Because some people have met with accidents and had many parts missing, yet they lived on. But even cardiac arrest I can say, even that doesn't necessarily mean death, since after stopping, the heart can start up again. Those who have the material knowledge tell you that during a few... I don't know if it is a few seconds or a few minutes, the heart can start up again; after that, decomposition sets in. With decomposition it's over, naturally.

Therefore, we could correctly say that there are kinds of GRADATIONS in death. Gradations in life and gradations in death: there are beings that are more or less alive, or if we want to put it negatively, there are beings that are more or less dead. Oh! But for those who know, and who know that this material form can manifest a supramental light, well, those who don't have the supramental light in them are already a little dead. That's how it is. So there are gradations. What people are accustomed to call "death" is just a purely external phenomenon, because it's something they can't deny: it falls to pieces.

But I have seen people who were supposedly dead (not many in my family because it wasn't the custom to let the children see them, and once I was grown-up there were only very few occasions), but I have seen a few here. And they weren't all in the same state at all — not at all.

(silence)

There was the case of Sri Aurobindo. "He is dead," the doctors decided — he was absolutely alive. Absolutely living. And even after five days, when they put him into... it was because of (how should I put it?) the pressure of the outside world, and because it was impossible to preserve him. We had to consent. But I cannot say he was dead! He wasn't at all dead, it was perfectly obvious. The body was already beginning to... (very little, but a little at the end of the fifth day), that is, the skin was losing its colour, but... (Mother makes a glorious gesture).

For the first three days, I remained standing there, near his bed, and in an absolutely — well, to me, it was absolutely visible — all the organized consciousness that was in his body DELIBERATELY came out of it and into mine. And not only did I see it but I felt the FRICTION of its entry.

Then people say, "He is dead" — that's ignorance.

All that supramental power he had gradually attracted into and organized in his body came into me METHODICALLY.

I didn't say anything to anyone because it was nobody's business, nobody's concern. I remained standing there and... (gesture showing the forces passing from Sri Aurobindo into Mother's body).

You know, people revel in high-sounding words and go on talking and talking — they don't even know what they're talking about.

Not very long ago, I saw first of all one or two photographs of someone, then he came to see me. I said, "He is dead, he's a dead man." And I don't mean dissolution at all (of course not! Since he came in and spoke — he spoke very loudly, thinking himself very alive, in fact): he was dead. So....

(silence)

Some time ago, I had said that the cells were wondering, "But what is death?" They kept wondering like that. And just yesterday or the day before, because of a certain state which came, it was as if the Knowledge that constantly comes from above was saying to them, "Why? Why do you wonder? You have had the experience, you know how it is." Then, to the small central cellular consciousness (there is a small central consciousness of the cells, which is now gradually growing and being worked out), this Knowledge said, "Don't you remember? You know how it was." Ah, then the memory of the full experience in all its details came back — it was true, they did know.

Why are we so ridiculous?

We think we are... we think we are so great, so wise, so... Oh, all the virtues we give ourselves! (Mother laughs) So courageous, so enduring, so... An act we put on for ourselves our whole life long.

(silence)

At that time, for a few moments, there was the certitude of such a simplicity!... A simplicity... (how can I put it?) whose immensity made it all-powerful.

That's still literature. It's the mind's play-acting: pretty sentences.

No words, no sentences, no wonderful gestures, no attitudes...

(Mother goes into contemplation)

Oh, for those who like definitions, here's another answer to "What is the Divine?" — a smiling and luminous Immensity.

And THERE, you know, it's there. THERE.

Ah, shall we work? Enough chattering!

(silence)

What makes me think that there were external adverse wills is that from every side there kept coming fine-sounding words — fine-sounding sentences, suggestions (dramatic suggestions, precisely) announcing a considerable number of catastrophes. They come from every side, like this (swarming gesture, like a rising tide), like so many snakes waiting there, kept at arm's length, rushing up as soon as they're given the opportunity to do so.... Which proves that there's clearly something the matter.

Suggestions like this one, for instance: "Oh, now you're well, you are strong and can speak — ah, but you'll see what happens to you." Suggestions and suggestions.... You understand, it can only come from rotten human thoughts. A swarm of things, each one uglier than the next one, comes like that. And you see them come (same gesture like a rising tide of snakes), you see them come like that.... From the basest to the most violent.

There was also, in relation to those possibilities of magic and also to "adverse " forces, a vision of it all as being a part of the great Play (gesture from below), but... This Immensity, luminous and smiling, an immensity... ("immensity" is a word — "infinite" too is a word), something... absolutely limitless, which simply goes like this (gesture of descent) in a movement of manifestation; then, at a certain point, It encounters a sort of movement from below that seizes hold of That and turns That into... what we see. In the higher part, it's a mixture of perverted mind and extremely powerful vital, which obviously takes pleasure in the distortion; and as That becomes more concrete it becomes all those human reactions; and when That draws near the earth, then... ah, you have the fine mess men have made of the earth's atmosphere. So this Thing, this smiling, luminous, marvellous Immensity, so...which is a living and conscious bliss... That is what it becomes.

And if by chance, by miracle, one drop falls without getting completely distorted, it becomes a miracle!

17. June 1967 – What will happen in case of a new WW?

Then I was asked another question:

"If a world-war breaks out, it may not only destroy the major portion of humanity but may even make living conditions for those who survive impossible due to the effects of the nuclear fall-out. In case the possibility of such a war is still there, will it not affect the advent of the Supramental Truth and of the New Race upon earth?"

Here is the answer:

"All these are mental speculations and once you enter the domain of mental imaginations there is no end to the problems and to their solutions. But all that does not bring you one step closer to the truth.

"The safest and most healthy attitude of the mind is like this one: we have been told in a positive and definite way that the supramental creation will follow the present one, so, whatever is in preparation for the future must be the circumstances needed for the advent whatever they are. And as we are unable to foresee correctly what these circumstances are, it is better to keep silent about them."

20. June 1967 – Muslims and Israel

"The Muslims and Israelites represent the two religions in which faith in God is the most extreme. Only, the Israelites' faith is in an impersonal God, while the Muslims' faith is in a personal God.

"Their enmity perhaps exists only because they are neighbours!...

I should add that it was a reply to a letter B. wrote to ask me all kinds of questions, in particular: "Why? These two nations being neighbours, why do they hate each other so much?"

"...That curse on the Jews is a Christian story, it has nothing to do with the Muslims.

"Violence and enmity... When brothers hate each other, they do so much more intensely than others do. Sri Aurobindo said: 'Hatred denotes the possibility of a much greater love.'

"The Arabs have a passionate nature. They live almost exclusively in the vital and its passions and desires, while the Israelites live mostly in the mind, with a great power of organization and realization, something quite exceptional. The Israelites are intellectuals with an exceptional will. They are not sentimental, that is to say, they don't like weakness.

"The Muslims are impulsive, the Israelites are reasonable.

"This is not the conflict that will decide the future of our civilization."

(Rough notation of June 15, 1967)

THE END OF THE ASURA by Satprem

If, as Sri Aurobindo announced, the supramental Power is to enter a realizing phase in 1967 and if, as Mother said, the fate of the present civilization is to be settled in 1967, it is clear that the earth's many latent diseases must come out in the open and find a focus somewhere, as an abscess is the focal point for the disease of the body, our earth body.

There are no "catastrophes." The Supramental is a force of order and harmony. Thus what may seem to us at first glance to be a catastrophe is bound to actually put things in order, work in every way and every detail towards putting the earth in order.

September-October is generally the month of wars.

There is only one place in the world where the issue is being played out really and symbolically — that is India. That is where, therefore, the disease of the earth must be focused. It is in the order of things that the last Asura should come and die at the feet of the Mother.

But India, supposed to embody the forces of truth, is herself prey to the same Falsehood as is the rest of the earth. The Asura is also in India, perhaps more dangerous there as it is masked behind a veil of false truth.

The awaited conflict will thus have to put the house of the Mother in order to begin with, at the same time as it will put the other houses of the earth in order.

The devil will unmask himself and fall headlong into his own trap.

India's Falsehood will necessarily attract like falsehoods: those of China and of Pakistan. The communist troubles on Bengal's borders are preparing the way for China's aggression, and the falsehood of Tashkent has left an open wound in Kashmir. Here India shall receive the blessed blow that will liquidate her untrue government and will give way to a military government that will prepare a more truthful government. Here China shall receive the blow that will free her from her Maoist Asura, while at the same time bringing Russia and America closer together against the common danger. Here Vietnam will lose its two untrue henchmen, in the North and in the South, and will put its own house in order. Here Pakistan will have set its own trap by allying itself with China and will lose its rights over Bengal and the eastern part of India. Left only with its western unit, which cannot be economically self-sufficient, Pakistan will be obliged to form a confederation with India and to understand that its destiny is inseparable from that of India. Here a wiser Russia and a wiser America, and a frightened earth, will become aware that they too must form a confederation of the nations of the earth and that the fate of any one nation is inseparable from that of all the others.

And order will be restored in the house. Man will be able to prepare himself for a vaster adventure.

Ultimately, everyone commits the errors that will help towards the larger triumph of the Truth.

24. June 1967 – The New Being

The near totality of the body's movements are movements of habit. Behind, there is the consciousness of the physical mind (what I call the "cellular mind") which is constantly conscious of the divine Presence and anxious to allow nothing but That; then a whole work is going on to change, to shift the origin of movements. I mean that instead of them being just automatic; out of habit, the divine Consciousness and Presence automatically makes the movements (Mother makes the gesture of forcing the consciousness into the body).

But it's quite... quite inexpressible, that is, as soon as you try to express it, it becomes mentalized, it's no longer the thing. That's why it's very difficult to express. I can't speak of it.

But I think I told you not long ago about that habit and that taste for drama in the most material consciousness. That was the starting point. As soon as that part became conscious, that habit became alien, so to say, alien to the true consciousness, so the transfer is now taking place.

It's a very delicate and difficult work.

It means fighting against a millennial habit, you understand. It's the automatism of the material consciousness which is, yes, dramatic, almost catastrophic; sometimes dramatic and dramatic while imagining a conclusion that undoes the drama. But as soon as you express it all, it becomes much too concrete. It's better not to talk about it.

As soon as it's said, it becomes artificial.

It's as if, in order to replace that habit, there was a kind of effort to create another one(!) which is only an approximation. Does that state of consciousness, that way of being, that way of existing, reacting, expressing, does it strive towards the Divine Manifestation? Is it in conformity with the tendency towards the Divine Manifestation?... The thought is silent, immobile, so the imagination doesn't function (all that is deliberate), and the movement is trying to be as sincere and spontaneous as possible under the influence of the divine Presence.... Words distort too much.

From time to time, now and then, all at once — the concrete experience, as in a flash: the experience of the Presence, of identification. But it lasts for... a few seconds, then things revert to their former state.

It can't be expressed.

(Then Mother turns to the translation of two texts by Sri Aurobindo which she wants to publish.)

"That is a great secret of sadhana, to know how to get things done by the Power behind or above instead of doing all by the mind's effort."

That's exactly the point.

Then:

"The importance of the body is obvious; it is because he has developed or been given a body and brain capable of receiving and serving a progressive mental illumination that man has risen above the animal. Equally, it can only be by developing a body or at least a functioning of the physical instrument capable of receiving and serving a still higher illumination that he will rise above himself and realise, not merely in thought and in his internal being but in life, a perfectly divine manhood. Otherwise either the promise of Life is cancelled, its meaning annulled and earthly being can only realise Sachchidananda by abolishing itself, by shedding from it mind, life and body and returning to the pure Infinite, or else man is not the divine instrument, there is a destined limit to the consciously progressive power which distinguishes him from all other terrestrial existences and as he has replaced them in the front of things, so another must eventually replace him and assume his heritage."

(The Life Divine, XVIII.231)

I understand! I have been preoccupied with this all the time.

(silence)

But Sri Aurobindo's conclusion is that it isn't this (the body) that can change: it will be a new being.

That one body can change?... It does seem very difficult — though not impossible. It's not impossible, but... it's such a formidable labour that life is too short. So even there, something needs to change, that habit of wear and tear is a terrible thing.

It won't come that way (Mother laughs), it will obviously come in a similar manner that man came from the animal. But we lack the stages between the animal and man, they are missing — we may think about them, imagine them, they have found some things, but to tell the truth we weren't there to see it! We don't know how it happened. But that doesn't matter.... According to some, the transformation can be consciously begun inwardly by forming the child. That may be, I am not saying no. It's possible. Then he will have to form another, more transformed, and so on — several stages, which will disappear just as the stages between the ape and man disappeared?

We can call it what we like, of course. But a NEW BEING... We can imagine, as you say, a new being coming down ready-made from start to finish!... But that's soap opera.

After two or three — or four or ten or twenty, I don't know — intermediary beings, there would come the new way, the supramental way of creating.... But will it be necessary to have children? Will it not do away with the need to have children in order to replace those who go, since they will now live on indefinitely? They will transform themselves sufficiently to adapt to the new needs.

I am trying to do it — not out of an arbitrary will, not at all: there is simply "something," or someone, or a consciousness or whatever (I don't want to talk about it) which uses this (Mother's body) to try and do something with it. This means that I do the work and am a witness at the same time, and as for the "I," I don't know where it is: it's not inside, it's not up above, it's not... I don't know where it is, it's for the requirements of language. There is "something" that does and witnesses the thing at the same time, and is at the same time the action being done: the three things.

Because now, the body itself really collaborates as much as it can — as much as it can — with an ever-increasing goodwill and power of endurance, and the self-observation is truly reduced to a minimum (there is still some, like something touching lightly now and then, but not even for a few seconds). Self-observation, oh, that means a thoroughly disgusting, repugnant and catastrophic atmosphere. It's like that, FELT like that. And it's becoming increasingly impossible, I see that, it's visible.... But there is still the whole weight of millennia of bad habits, which we could call pessimistic, that is, anticipating decay, anticipating catastrophe, anticipating... well, all those things, and, ugh! that's the most difficult thing to purify, to clarify, to remove from the atmosphere. It's so INGRAINED that it's absolutely spontaneous. That is the great, great, great obstacle — that sort of sense of inevitable decay.

Naturally, from the mental standpoint, the entire earth atmosphere is like that, but in the mind it hardly matters at all: one ray of light and it's swept away. But it's INSIDE (pointing to her body), that habit — that catastrophic habit — which is terrible, terrible to contradict. And it's INDISPENSABLE that it should disappear so the other can settle in.

So it's a battle each and every minute, all the time, all the time.

And of course, the being isn't isolated, the body isn't isolated: it is something of a multitude, with varying degrees of proximity; but very near, there are all those who are here, and it's the same problem — the same problem. Because all that has been gained in the consciousness of this being hasn't been gained at all in the consciousness of others. So that increases the work.

The problem of mental, even vital, contagion is solved, so to speak, but the problem of material contagion remains.

And in this material consciousness, there is this material mind which has so marvellously responded here (in Mother), but it doesn't yet have the power to assert itself spontaneously against what comes from outside, that never-ending contagion, constant, constant, every minute.

(long silence)

When, all at once, the Contact is conscious and the sense of Identity comes (for a few seconds, as I said), when it comes... it's like a hosanna in all, all the cells, they say, "Oh, so it's true! It's true indeed!..."

And that's all-powerful.

It comes perhaps a hundred times a day, but it doesn't stay.