August 1971

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04. August 1971 – Deep in Transformation

I am deep in transformation, that’s why I’ve lost control. What I could do before I can’t do anymore. I see, I clearly see the direction it will take, but it’s not there yet. So now I am good-for-nothing.

My voice is completely ruined.

It’s interesting only from a documentary standpoint [the present conditions], because when this experience ends, and the supermind really starts coming, things will change and it will have a mere historical value.

It’s the most unpleasant moment… The Power is here, you see, but the means of expressing it have not yet been created.

The old control is slipping away. It’s quite irksome for me — especially for eating, for instance, it’s very hard to swallow, to… oh!

The body has simply a kind of… perception — a distant perception — of what the true supramental control will be, but it’s only like this (gesture into the distance), almost like a promise, nothing more.

Truly a transition between two worlds.

07. August 1971 – A Web envelopes the Earth

I have a curious impression of a kind of web — a web with… like very loose threads, I mean not tightly meshed, connecting all events, and if you have power over one of these webs, there’s a whole field of circumstances that apparently have nothing to do with each other but which are linked together there in such a way that one necessarily implies the existence of the other… And I have the impression it’s something that envelops the earth.

And it’s not mental. They are circumstances that depend on one another, in a completely invisible way outwardly, without any mental logic, and yet as though connected to each other.

If you are conscious, really conscious of that, that’s how you can change circumstances.

If you had the power to replace one of those webs with another one, you could change all circumstances that way.

(Mother shakes her head)

It’s inexpressible.

They’re webs that are around the earth.

There’s one… I see… Why, every little circumstance of life is on it, and when I look like this (gesture looking from above), I see it extends over the whole country, and not just over the whole country but over the whole earth.

11. August 1971 – One Remedy against Falsehood

It’s as if you asked me, “What will it take for humanity to become disgusted with its falsehood?”

It’s terrible!

There is only ONE remedy — there is only ONE remedy — to rely only on the Divine Grace.

August 1971 – Message

(First version) The task of giving a concrete form to Sri Aurobindo’s vision has been given to the Mother.

(Second version) The task of completing Sri Aurobindo’s vision has been given to the Mother. The creation of a new world, a new humanity, a new society expressing and embodying the new consciousness is the work she has undertaken. By the very nature of things, it is an ideal because the state of Nature that makes it necessary must be surpassed.

We aspire for the time when Sri Aurobindo will no longer have to die.

14. August 1971 – Only the Divine Consciousness

The body is beginning to… I could say to have the true attitude. I mean it increasingly feels in a concrete manner and, I could say, ACUTE manner that there is only ONE way to exist — in the Divine Consciousness. All the rest seems… seems to it dangerous, unknown.

To remain as though constantly bathed in the Divine Consciousness seems to the body the only way to exist. There is no other. That’s the attitude of the body. It feels… you see, it’s more than an impression, it’s… I don’t know, almost an acute sensation, that one can exist only in the Divine and be constantly concentrated upon the Divine. And that such is the transition to go towards something that is still… I wouldn’t say a dream, but a wonder. THAT…

It likes less and less to speak.

All words seem childish to it.

It has no need to know anything: it has a need of being entirely molded, set in motion and used in every way [by the Divine], and it has but one dream — to forget that it exists — to become spontaneously the expression… (Mother has a blissful smile) of something… of something it calls the Divine, which is the only true thing.

I don’t “see” Sri Aurobindo — I feel his presence.

Recently I read some of his letters about me…. How? It’s really a miracle that I survived [his passing]… My whole… [being collapsed]. He was such a marvelous protection and support!

The inner being wasn’t affected because that remained the way it was — the closeness, the intimacy remained the same — but the physical being… It’s a miracle it survived.

That wasn’t necessary because I was there. But I know he was interested, in the sense that he thought money should come very freely and abundantly. He always thought that people should give all they had — for him that was an absolute rule. One shouldn’t have to ask — they should spontaneously give all they had.

The body has only one ambition, I could say, that only the Divine exist and that it be like… like something the Divine uses and is absolutely malleable and expressive. That’s all. Until such time when it will exist only in the Divine.

There’s a kind of prescience of a state in which there is only the Divine Consciousness. That… (Mother intently closes her eyes with an ecstatic smile.)

Only the Divine Consciousness.

18. August 1971 – Replacement for the Mantra

The body has the impression that it has to learn a new way to live, and it is learning new things all the time. But they’re tiny little things, that is, there’s a kind of secret to be found, an attitude that must be steadfast, making circumstances as good as they can be.

It’s something equivalent to the mantra. For the time being the body repeats the mantra, but it knows that it’s… There’s something to be learned that physically replaces the mantra.

These last few days (and quite strongly this morning) I have had the impression: the Divine is all things, and we are born so that each one makes a choice and manifests one of those things — one or several… And so comes the question of deciding on the choice, but that’s just where one must surrender entirely and leave the choice entirely to the Divine. We have been created as we are, and that’s the reason for all this wavering, these complications — but what we have to learn is to leave it to… that is, have no desire, no preference, and leave the choice entirely to the Divine.

21. August 1971 – Entering a New World

Now I am having some activities at night, completely new as I have never had before, extremely concrete and in which living people are mingled with those we call dead — and they are the SAME, they are the same there. For example, last night there was a very long activity with many people, and among those people was Purani (I see him very often)...

And one thing after another… And I was like one of them, wearing strange clothes.

I am discovering a world I didn’t know, which is the world… I wonder if it’s not the vital physical? There were dances, movements… That is, to put it in ordinary words: I have dreams such as I have never had before; only it’s not dreams, it’s an activity. It’s a world I was totally unaware of, and which is like this (Mother interlaces her fingers to show a sort of interpenetration of the physical and that world).

There are so many, so many things to learn.

Only those with a physical body have the kind of reactions — pleasure, displeasure — we have in physical life. The others no longer have it. That seems to disappear with the purely physical consciousness.

More and more I get the feeling we know nothing. That’s all. That there is an infinite variety of things, and we know nothing.

I think it’s the mind that gives meaning to things; without the mind, things ARE, without their being given a meaning — they are because they are. So then for us, for the consciousness as it has evolved here, it is perfectly idiotic. While there it seems perfectly natural.

That must be what makes people become “unhinged.” If they don’t have inside what we could call the “divine support,” a kind of unshakable faith in the Truth and divine Grace, if they don’t have that…

25. August 1971 – Impression about Death

All mental notions seem artificial to me… At times there is terrible anguish; at times there is perfect peace.

It’s strange, at times I have the impression that death makes much less of a change than we think, and at other times it’s totally incomprehensible… Strange, it’s like the two extremes: sometimes, it barely makes a difference; the next time it’s a… something… what does death really mean?

I told you about those activities at night (I have no impression of sleeping, and yet the body is perfectly at rest), in which there are people who are living and people who are “dead” in ordinary language — and they are absolutely alike. Except that the living seem still to have egoistic reactions, which the others don’t have. But it’s… (fluid gesture)… What to us is real doesn’t exist anymore. And it’s very concrete.

It’s the transition from the old way of being, which is becoming more and more distant, to… the Divine does everything. For instance, even food has become pretty difficult, because the old way of eating seems more and more remote, and it is replaced by something… inexpressible. It’s inexpressible.

It’s as if you were standing on a ridge (gesture) and the least misstep would pitch you into a hole.

Everything seems different, all the… everything seems so different. The nature of the relations with people is changing, the nature of everything is changing, but what? What?

It’s like being on the brink or point or… hanging in balance — a tremendous Power (there’s a tremendous power, I have some examples), and at the same time, an incredible helplessness.

I don’t even know where I am going — whether I am going towards transformation or towards the end. The consciousness is there (gesture above), it isn’t affected… I don’t know…. But I am kept in this body (gesture of being held down strongly), as though it were willed that I remain in this consciousness. And then, all these cells become conscious, but… Does it depend on having a form or not? I don’t know.

I am not in a condition where I can help others outwardly.

At times the body feels it can last an eternity like this; at times it feels it may get dissolved any moment… And all, all, is like that.

Well, we’ll see.

The Force, the Power is greater and greater, but… (I don’t know how to say it) but it’s not a personal power, not at all.

28. August 1971 – Tremendous Power

First of all, I am convinced that the need to see things, to think them, is purely human and is a transitory device. It is a transitory phase, which seems terribly long to us, but in fact is rather short.

Even our consciousness is an adaptation of the Consciousness — THE Consciousness, the true consciousness is something else.

And so the conclusion for my body is… (as best as I can translate it): to curl up in the Divine. Not to try to understand, not to try to know: try TO BE… And to curl up. So I spend my time like that.

Not “try”: only one minute like that is enough (gesture of stepping backward), and time doesn’t matter anymore. It’s very curious, I make experiments for every little movement of life, like meals, for example; well, when I curl up like this (gesture of interiorization), everything seems instantaneous. There isn’t any time. When I am in the outer consciousness (what I call outer is a consciousness that witnesses the creation), then things take more or less time depending on the attention given it. And so everything, everything seems… nothing seems to be (what’s the word?) absolute, in the sense of real — real, a concrete reality — nothing seems to be like that. Except unpleasant things in the body such as, for example, some functioning that goes wrong; that, you recognize as imperfection. The imperfection is what makes you feel the thing, otherwise it’s like this (same gesture of interiorization, curled up in the Lord). And “like this,” the Power is tremendous, in the sense that… for instance, for some people, a particular illness vanishes (without my doing anything outwardly in fact, without my even speaking to anyone, absolutely nothing — it’s cured); for still another person… it’s the end, he goes over to the other side. But then that other side has become both quite familiar to me and… totally unknown.

I remember a time when the memory of past lives, the memory of night activities was so very concrete; the so-called invisible world was totally concrete — now… now everything is like a dream — everything — everything is like a dream veiling a Reality… an unknown Reality, and yet appreciable. I seem to be talking nonsense.

Then curiously enough: at the same time — at the same time — not one in the other or one with the other, but one AND the other, at the same time (Mother slips the fingers of her right hand between the fingers of her left) it’s marvelous and dreadful. Life as it is, as we feel it in our ordinary consciousness — as it is for men — seems something… but so dreadful that one wonders how it can be lived even a single minute; and the other, AT THE SAME TIME: a marvel. A marvel of light, consciousness, power — wondrous. And a power, a power!… And not the power of a particular person (Mother pinches the skin of her hands), it’s something… it’s something which is everything… And you are left without words.

So, quite naturally, the most interesting thing is to find That. Quite naturally, whenever I have nothing to do… (gesture of interiorization, curled up in the Lord). That’s why I am forever asking you if you have questions or something, because there is no longer any “person” to be active, it’s only the things which… (gesture indicating the movements and vibrations of people or things triggering Mother’s activity). So when that’s not there, it’s… (gesture in suspense, silence)… Very far, far off… quite close, quite close to the other Consciousness, there are moments (Mother speaks in a deep, solemn voice): OM Namo Bhagavateh… That’s the most material thing. It’s already… it seems so… lifeless. It gives the impression that a piece of wood might give us. And yet it’s… So at one and the same time one can be in a painful and incomprehensible and absurd life and absolutely at the same time… unutterably marvelous.

So naturally I can’t speak to anyone anymore, I can say it only to you, because people would think I am going nuts.