March 1968

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02. March 1968 – Microbes and the cause of diseases

For three things one should be on one's guard. One is the collective suggestion of "disease" — "disease" is something that doubtless exists, in the sense that there are obviously adverse forces at work trying to disorganize and delay the work; but, for the individual, those so-called diseases... Outwardly they are based on the idea (they call it "knowledge"), on the knowledge of microbes, germs and so on, but that's taking things upside down, heels over head, because those microbes and germs and all those things are EFFECTS, not causes.

It's the effect of a combination of three things: bad will (at the worst, a refusal to follow the movement), a more or less total bad will; an ignorance of the laws and their consequences, that is, the causes and effects (a complete ignorance); and, of course, a form of inertia — it's all a form of inertia, but the greatest form of inertia is the incapacity to receive and respond. These three things combined are what creates diseases and so on, and the final effect — death. That is, the disintegration of created harmony.

But from the collective point of view, the point of view of collective influence, it's the other way around; in other words, that's what is taken to be the "cause" of disorders: instead of being the effect, it's the cause — which is absurd.

And then, from the point of view of the transformation of the cells and the organism, this collective influence is a state like a bath in which you are plunged, and when people wanted to escape from it, they would cut themselves off: they tried to isolate themselves. The result is that they would leave the material zone, because it's impossible to be like this (gesture as in a shell), like something without any connection with the whole. So they would renounce life.

In the relationship with the whole, there are roughly three... we might call them "means of defense," or attitudes one can take. The attitude of isolation, which can't be total unless you withdraw, and which is only very relatively effective. The attitude of attack: a power fighting and repulsing adversaries (that has a big drawback which is that if you use forces on the same plane, they are ineffective, or very relatively effective; and if it's supreme forces, then... the effect is rather catastrophic: it would amount to destroying in order to conquer, which is certainly not the Supreme's intention). And finally, there is the way of the contagion of the higher Force, but that implies what expresses itself here as time. That is the attitude which has been adopted. But it implies time — which is why ages go by.

The result is certain, with the least amount of damage. But that least amount is still quite considerable.

And for the human consciousness, it takes long. But as you remarked just before, it's pretty. It feels like something going like this (gesture like a tide spreading out), very slowly for the human consciousness, certainly, but quite implacable towards resistances, and so sovereignly sure of its victory.... That's pretty. And with the least amount of damage, undeniably. Not to mention that what looks like "damage" may only be, seen in the whole, a means of higher realization.

09. March 1968 – Mother’s experience

The experience was like this: the important thing is to keep the consciousness of the Presence, which means that the Presence must be concrete; then, in everything you do, everything you say — whatever you may do, whatever you may say — it's this Presence that expresses itself. And this morning's experience was to find the difference between the direct expression and the more or less veiled expression; and the difference of quality in the expression depended on the mental judgment, that is, the mind in everyone judges that difference, but that's only an individual question; from a general point of view, the things that seem to us the least transparent or expressive are sometimes the best expressions.

It's hard to explain.

There was the perception of what the mental consciousness ADDS to the action of the supreme Consciousness, and that addition, or judgment, was still something quite relative — relative to time, to the occasion, the person; it's not an absolute: in one case, a particular clothing will be a perfect expression, and in another case, the same clothing won't be.... It was a long experience of the relativity of the mental world with regard to the supreme Consciousness expressing itself.

It came in the wake of a sentence someone had written (I forget who, some writer or another), which said (I am adapting it), "When one sees how humorous the creation is, one is certain that the Creator must be smiling...." With that sentence, I saw how relative the clothing is in the human consciousness — there is no absolute, no absolute expression, the expression is always relative, and the impression it leaves is relative to the individual perceiving it.

I am trying to express it, but it was a concrete experience: the relativity of the mental clothing on the action of the higher Consciousness.

So then, the experience came to this: being as passive and translucent as possible so as to let the vibration of the Consciousness express itself with the least possible distortion in its clothing. And that was the attempt.

(Reverting to the old Playground Talk:) I would no longer be able to deliver speeches like that! I find it presumptuous! (Mother laughs)

Now all experiences, all of them, come as if to let life grow clear (it's quite interesting), to put things in their place. And all preferences, all opinions, all attractions, all distastes, all that is going away... in a kind of smile, in fact — not in indifference, but in a smile, the smile of the extraordinary relativity of the manifestation. And there begins to come the perception of what a true manifestation would be — in a sort of very supple harmony, smooth, and very vast. It's in process of formation. Very interesting.

And these things (showing the Playground Talk) are still too cut-and-dried. But I quite understand that if now I were to tell experiences like the one I had this morning, it would be almost incomprehensible — too far from [people's] consciousness.

13. March 1968 – The joy of being

It's the big quarrel now about Auroville: in the Charter I put "Divine Consciousness" ["To live in Auroville one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness"], but they say, "It brings God to mind." I said (laughing), "Not to my mind!" So then, some change it to "the highest consciousness," others put something else. With the Russians I agreed to put "perfect Consciousness," but that's an approximation.... And That — which we can't name or define — is what is the supreme Power. What you find is the supreme Power. And the supreme Power is only one aspect: the aspect concerned with the creation.

(Soon afterwards, regarding another passage from the same Talk, in which someone asked Mother if the Divine could "withdraw from us.")

You answer, "It's an impossibility. Because if the Divine with drew from something, it would immediately collapse, because it wouldn't exist. To put it more clearly, He is the sole existence."

Now I would have answered, "It's like asking if the Divine could withdraw from Himself!" (Mother laughs) That's the hitch, you say "Divine" and they understand "God"!... There is ONLY That: That alone exists. That, what? — That alone exists!

(silence)

This morning again, I spent some time looking, seeing, and I seemed to ask the Divine, "Why do You enjoy denying Yourself?..." You understand, for our logic to be satisfied, we say, all that is dark, all that is ugly, all that isn't living, all that isn't harmonious — none of that is divine. But how could it be so?... It's only an attitude for action. So putting myself in the consciousness of action, I said, "But why do You enjoy being like that!" (Mother laughs)

It was a very concrete experience of the cells, with the feeling (not "feeling" — neither feeling nor sensation), a sort of perception of being on the very edge of the great secret.... All of a sudden, a group of cells or a bodily function finds it amusing to go wrong — why? What meaning does that hold? And the answer was, it's as if all that helped break limits.

But why, how?

Mentally, we can explain everything, but that doesn't mean anything at all: for the body, the material consciousness, it's abstract. When the material consciousness catches hold of something, it knows it A HUNDRED TIMES BETTER than we can know it mentally. When it knows, it has the power: knowing gives it the power. That's what is being slowly, slowly worked out. For an ignorant consciousness it's slow and painful — but for the true consciousness, it's not that! Pain, joy, all that is... such an absurd way of seeing things — of feeling and seeing things.

There is an increasingly concrete perception that everything — that there is nothing that doesn't hold its own joy of being, because that's THE way of being: without joy of being, there is no being. But it's not what we mentally understand by "joy of being." It's... something which is hard to express. And this perception of suffering and joy (almost of evil and good), all of that is necessities of the work to enable it to be done in a certain field of unconsciousness. Because true consciousness is something entirely, totally different. That's what the consciousness of the cells is now learning, and learning through a concrete experience; and all those appreciations of what is good and what is evil, of what is suffering and what is joy, all that seems misty. But the "thing" — the Truth — the concrete thing still hasn't been caught. It's on the way, one feels it's on the way, but it's not there yet. If one had it... one would be the all-powerful master. And possibly one cannot have it until the world in its totality, or to a sufficient extent, is ready for the transformation.

That's speculation, what we might call an inspiration. But it still belongs to the upper realm.

Now and then, one feels as if within an hair's breadth of all-powerfulness: one is just on the verge... ah! (Mother makes the gesture of catching the thing)... But then it fades away.

When one has got hold of that, the world will be able to change. And when I say "one," I don't mean a person.... There may be something equivalent to THE Person, but that... That too, I am not sure it's not a projection of our consciousness onto something eluding us.

Sri Aurobindo always said that if you go far enough beyond the Impersonal, once you go beyond, you find something we may call "the Person," but which has nothing at all to do with what we imagine the "Person" to be.

And there, all that remains... all that remains is That! And That is what has the power. But even when we say, "All that remains is That" (laughing), we situate it WITHIN something else!... Words and language are unsuited to express something that exceeds the consciousness. As soon as you formulate it, you bring it down.

(silence)

A little farther [in this Talk], you say, "Many people who realized the Divine never spoke about it and never knew it." How can that be? Can one realize the Divine without knowing it?

It's the same thing again. We could add, "and MENTALLY never knew it." They didn't say, "I have realized the Divine," because it didn't correspond to any mental conception.

16. March 1968 – The fusion of division for the true consciousness

This is "Happy Heart."[Ravenalia spectabilis]

I am discovering the secret of it.

(long silence)

You feel you are constantly — constantly — on the way to a great discovery, then you make that discovery, and then you realize it had always been made!... It's only (laughing) that you look at it in another way.

This morning, there was an experience; it seemed an extraordinary revelation, and... it's something that was always known. So you mentalize it — the moment you mentalize it, it becomes clear, but that's no longer it! You see, we say this creation is "the creation of equilibrium,"[^2] and that in fact it is mental error which makes us want to choose one thing and reject another — that all things must be together: what we call "good," what we call "evil," what we call right and what we call wrong, what we find pleasant and what we find unpleasant — all that must be together. And this morning, there was the discovery that through Separation — this Separation which has been described in all kinds of different ways, sometimes pictorially, sometimes simply in an abstract way, sometimes philosophically, sometimes... all that is just explanations, but there is something, which probably is simply Objectification (Mother gestures as if to push the universe forward, out of the Non-manifest)... But that's still one way to explain. This so-called Separation, what is it exactly? We don't know (or perhaps we do, after all). It in fact created (to put it in colors) black and white, night and day (that's already more mixed — but black and white too are mixed), it's the tendency to create two poles: the pleasant or good thing, and the unpleasant or bad one. And as soon as you want to return to the Origin, the two tend to merge together again. And it is in perfect equilibrium, that is, where no division is possible anymore and the one has no influence over the other, where the two have become one again, it's there that lies this famous Perfection which we are trying to rediscover.

[^2]: We may recall Agenda 4 of November 13, 1963: "Traditions tell us that a universe is created, then withdrawn into pralaya, and then a new one comes; and according to them, ours is the seventh universe, and being the seventh universe, it is the one that will not return to pralaya but will go on progressing, without retreat." See also Agenda 7 of March 4, 1966, and Agenda 8 of May 6, 1967

Rejection of the one and acceptance of the other is childishness. It's ignorance. All mental translations, like that of an Evil eternally evil, giving birth to the idea of hell, or that of a Good eternally good... all that, all of it is childishness.

(silence)

It may be (maybe, because as soon as you try to formulate, you mentalize, and as soon as you mentalize, it gets shrunk, diminished, limited, it loses the power of truth — but anyway...), it may be that in this universe as it is constituted, perfection is... (Mother remains absorbed for a long time). It eludes words.... We might put it this way (but it's dry and lifeless): it's the perception (is it only "perception"? It's not just "perception"; it's neither perception nor knowledge nor awareness...), it's the awareness of the oneness of the whole — a oneness perceived, lived, realized in the individual. But that's nothing, mere words.... The universe seems to have been created to realize this paradox of the awareness of the whole, an awareness lived (not just perceived but lived) in every part, every element making up the whole.

So in order to give form to those elements, it all began with Separation, and it was Separation that gave birth to this division between what we call good and evil; but from the point of view of sensation — sensation in the most material part — we may say it's suffering and Ananda. And the movement is to put a stop to all separation and to realize the total consciousness in every part (which mentally speaking is absurd, but it's like that).

That's far too philosophical for my taste, not concrete enough. But this morning's experience was concrete, and concrete because it stemmed from extremely concrete sensations in the body, from the presence of this constant duality which looks like an opposition (not only opposition, but mutual negation) between... we may take the symbol of suffering and Ananda. And the true state (which for the moment appears impossible to formulate in words, but which was lived and felt) is an all-containing totality; but instead of containing everything as clashing elements, it's a harmony of everything, an equilibrium of everything. And once this equilibrium is realized in the creation, the creation will be able... (if you put it into words, it's no longer that)... we might say, able to go on progressing without break.

But that's not it.

These last few days, seen again in the present imperfect consciousness, there repeatedly came (but it's all methodical and organized by an overall organization infinitely superior to anything we can imagine) a state which is the state causing a break in the equilibrium, that is, the dissolution of the form — what's usually called "death." And that state went up to the extreme limit, like a demonstration, with at the same time the state (not a perception — the state) that prevents the break in the equilibrium and allows progress to go on without break. The result, in the body consciousness, is the simultaneous perception (so to speak simultaneous) of what we might describe as the extreme anguish of dissolution (though it's not quite that, but anyway) and the extreme Ananda of union — the two simultaneously.

So if you translate it into ordinary words: the extreme fragility (more than fragility) of the form, and the eternity of the form.

And the Truth is not just the union, but the fusion, the identification of the two.

When you mentalize it, it becomes clear for everyone — but it loses its essential quality, the something that cannot be mentalized.

Not divided. It's the union of the two states that constitutes the true consciousness; the union of the two ("union" still implies division), the identification of the two states is what constitutes the true consciousness. Then you get the sensation that it's this consciousness which is the supreme Power. You understand, Power is limited by oppositions and negations: the most powerful power is the one that dominates the most — but that's a complete imperfection! There is an all-powerful Power made up of the fusion of the two — that's the absolute Power. And if That were realized physically... probably it would be the end of the problem.

In fact, during the few hours I lived in that state this morning, there was the impression of having mastered everything and understood everything — "understood," I mean this sort of understanding that constitutes absolute power. But naturally, it can't be expressed.

That's what people who must have had the experience or a hint of it expressed by saying that this world was the world of equilibrium: in other words it's the simultaneousness, without division, of all opposites. As soon as there is any divergence — not even divergence, any difference — it's the beginning of division. And anything that isn't that state cannot be eternal; it's only that state which... not "contains," but expresses (or how else to put it?) eternity.

There have been all sorts of philosophies which tried to explain it, but it's in the air, it's mental, speculative. While this is lived — lived, I mean BEING it.

27. March 1968 – Physical education

On April 1st, the sports season opens, and I've given an... appropriate message.

I started with a paradox:

"The first condition for acquiring power is to be obedient.

"The body must learn to obey before it can manifest power; and physical education is the most thorough discipline for the body.

"So be eager and sincere in your effort for physical education and you will acquire a powerful body."

It's logical. That's all.