The Mother

Agenda

Volume 7

May 14, 1966

I have queer eyes.... They have become peculiar.

This eye [the left] sees extremely clearly – extremely clearly – almost more clearly than before, but in the entire corner here, in the very corner, there is a sort of little fog, very, very small like a needle point – no, a pinhead. So that I can't read with it. With this one [the right] I can read, there's nothing, but it's dimmed: there isn't half the clarity of the other. But the left is fantastically clear! Very well. So I am accustomed to reading with a magnifying glass [with the right eye], and it has become that way; but when I look at a photograph with a magnifying glass, the photo starts having three dimensions (gesture as if the photo were surging forward), so that I see the person not in colors but alive, the picture is alive. It has three dimensions and the person moves. So I look at the photo with my magnifying glass – and I see the person moving!

With the left eye, oh, it has extraordinary precision, but I can't read because... (and still I could read, it's an idea, just an impression), there is a sort of very, very small cloud in the corner, here. There's nothing (laughing), I have no cataract! There was a time when it was fairly widespread in that corner, and I showed it (long ago, two years ago), I showed it to the doctor, who told me it was inside: it's not on the surface of the eye, it's inside. He told me, “It won't go.” I told him, “Ah, won't it!” – in six months it was gone, completely gone. It came back just a little – it has come back, but it will go!

But these are queer things, as if someone were having fun doing experiments with my eyes.

I see in a strange way – very strange.

And the magnifying glass is beginning to be useless.

(silence)

But everything, absolutely everything is becoming strange. As if there were two, three, four realities (superimposed gesture) or appearances, I don't know (but they are rather realities), one behind another or one within another, like that, and in the space of a few minutes it changes (gesture as if one reality were surging forward to overtake and replace another), as though one world were just there, inside, and emerged all of a sudden. When I have peace and quiet, there is a slight... not a movement, I don't know what it is: it might rather feel like pulsations, and depending on the case, there are different experiences. For instance, customary things take a usual amount of time when nothing abnormal happens, and then you have an exact sense of the time they take. So then, I am “given” the following experience, of the same thing done in the same way, accomplished a first time in its normal duration, and another time, when I am in another state, that is, when the consciousness seems to be placed elsewhere, the thing seems to be done in a second! – Exactly the same thing: habitual gestures, things you do absolutely every day, quite ordinary things. Then, another time (and it's not that I try to have it, I don't try at all: I am PUT in that state), another time I am put in another state (to me, it doesn't make much difference, they are like very small differences in the concentration), and in that state, the same thing, oh, takes a long, long time, an endless time to get done! Just to fold a towel, for instance (I am not the one who does it), someone folds a towel or someone puts a bottle away, wholly material and absolutely simple things devoid of any psychological value; someone folds a towel that's on the floor (I am giving that example): there is a normal time, which I perceive internally after a study; it's the normal time, when everything is normal, that is, usual; then, I am in a certain concentration and... without my even having the time to notice it, it's done! I am in another state of concentration, with absolutely minimal differences as far as the concentration is concerned, and it's endless! You feel it takes half an hour to get done.

If it occurred just once, you'd say, “Never mind,” but it takes place with persistence and regularity, as when someone is trying to teach you something. A sort of insistence and regular repetition as if someone wanted to teach me something.

Also, I spend a part of my nights in a certain state of consciousness (generally, more often than not, almost every night it's with Sri Aurobindo). But it's not “just like that,” it's not by chance or as if out of habit, that's not it: it's a teaching, and things are presented in one way or another as if to make me understand something. But (laughing) I am extremely stupid! Because the mind doesn't work, so I don't understand anything – I just note the fact. I note and note and note, but I don't draw any conclusions, so I am shown the thing yet again. And it follows, yes, it follows a sort of curve of experience. In fact, I might say it's a repeated demonstration given to someone stupid like me to show me the difference in consciousness between being in this body and being without a body.

It seems to me to be that.

But then, down to the last details and with persistence – you know, like when you have to teach something to an animal or to a very small child (!), that's how it is, by repetition.

The other day, for example, the day before yesterday (not last night, but the night before), I was with Sri Aurobindo, and Sri Aurobindo had taken on the appearance of the photograph of him in which he is young, with long hair: that full-face photograph in which he has a fair complexion and very dark hair. He was like that – he WAS like that, it wasn't a picture: he WAS like that. And we were looking at certain things, talking about certain things (we don't talk much, but anyway), looking at some things – when I suddenly see his face all tormented like this (gesture as if the face had shrunk). He usually always has a very calm and very smiling, quiet face; but all of a sudden, it was quite tormented, and then he abruptly sat back on that sort of seat, a sort of couch. So I looked at him, and he told me, “Oh, how they are distorting things. Look at this fellow, how they are distorting things.” Almost immediately afterwards, it was time and I woke up, I got up. And I said to myself, “I thought one wasn't tormented in that state!” Then I heard today that A., who was here and left to be a political activist there [in Bengal], is speaking in Sri Aurobindo's name, mon petit! And he issues political declarations. That's what I had seen. It wasn't that Sri Aurobindo was annoyed: the image of his face was the image of what the others were doing!¹ (Mother laughs)... How can I explain it? It's very strange, you know. It was the image of what those people did with his teaching, it wasn't the expression of his own feeling. You know, what goes on here, what we describe, is so blunt, devoid of fineness, crude, like a rough-hewn statue: it's rough, crude, exaggerated; and it's distorted by the sense of separation given by the ego. While there, I don't know how to explain, there, all is one, there is one single thing taking on all sorts of forms like that (Mother turns her two hands together, one wrapped inside the other) in order to express something, but not with one center that feels and another center that sees and another center that understands; it's not like that, it's... (same gesture), it's all ONE substance with inexpressible suppleness, which adapts itself to all the movements of all that happens, which expresses all that happens, without separation. So then, it leaves me in a state that goes on for hours in the morning, in which I am in this world [here], yet without being in it. Because... I don't feel things the way the world feels them. It's a very strange phenomenon.

Yesterday, I remained like that the whole morning, in a very strange state, and the state seemed to want me to remember, to have the memory, and it left me only when I said (I “said,” I don't know, I didn't say it to anyone, I just said) that I would tell you about it today. Then I was allowed to resume contact with everyday life.

There is something like the influence of a mentor, someone who knows, or a consciousness that knows and teaches me things; yet I don't see anyone, I don't feel anyone, but that's how it is. It's very, very strange.

Ah, let's take up Savitri.

Do you want to tell me something? (Laughing) I seem to have put you in a complete daze!

No, you say you don't draw conclusions, but I try to!

Oh, conclusions, I don't know.

In short, it's the consciousness of Eternity learning to enter into Time, into Matter?

Yes, that's an idea, maybe that's it!

Surely we'll see one day, we'll understand.

*
*   *

(Mother reads a few lines in which Death derides all human beliefs, concepts, philosophies, inventions....)

And sciences omnipotent in vain

By which men learn of what the suns are made,

Transform all forms to serve their outward needs,

Ride through the sky and sail beneath the sea,

But learn not what they are or why they came....

(X.IV.644)

It's really charming!

I like this:

Ride through the sky and sail beneath the sea,

But learn not what they are or why they came

He's a monument of pessimism.

But it's true, that's the trouble, it's true! Only, something is missing: what she is going to say. Or does she say nothing?

Certainly, she is going to answer.

But she doesn't shut him up.... It's difficult.

But that's because it's “He”!²

The other day I had an extraordinary experience, in which all the pessimistic arguments, all the negations and denials came from all sides, represented by everybody. And then, those who believed in the presence of a God or something – something more powerful than they and ruling the world – were in a fury, a dreadful revolt: “But I want none of him! But he spoils all our life, he...” It was a dreadful revolt, from every side, a truckload of abuse for the Divine with such force of asuric reaction from every side. So I sat there (as if Mother sat in the middle of the mêlée), watching: “What can be done?...” You know, it was impossible to answer, impossible, there wasn't one argument, not one idea, not one theory, not one belief, nothing, nothing whatsoever that could answer it. For the space of a second, the impression was: it's hopeless. Then, all of a sudden... all of a sudden... It's indescribable (gesture of absolute abandon). There was that violence of revolt against things as they are, and, mixed with it, there was: “Let this world disappear, let nothing remain, let it not exist!” All that, which at bottom is a revolt, all that nihilist revolt: let nothing remain, let everything cease to exist. It reached a height of tension, and just at the height of tension, when you felt there was no solution, suddenly... surrender. But something stronger than surrender – it wasn't abdication, it wasn't self-giving, it wasn't acceptance, it was... something much more radical, and at the same time much sweeter. I can't say what it was. It had the joy and flavor of giving, but with such a sense of plenitude!... Like a dazzling flash, you know, suddenly like that: the very essence of surrender, the True Thing.

It was... it was so powerful and marvelous, such sublime joy that the body started quivering for a second. Afterwards it was gone.

And after that, after that experience, all of it, all the revolt, all the negation, all of it was as if swept away.

If one could keep that, that experience, keep it constantly – it's there, it's always there; it's there, of course, but I have to stop in order to feel it. I have to stop – stop speaking, moving, acting – in order to feel it in its plenitude. But if it were here, ACTIVE... it would be All-Powerfulness. It means becoming “That” instantaneously.

There were two days recently (since I saw you last time), two days... especially Thursday, the day the peacock³ was there.... The peacock crowed victory the whole day (I saw it in the evening, it came and saw me on the terrace, it was so sweet!).... Two very, very difficult days. After that, a sort of solidly established feeling that nothing is impossible – nothing is impossible (Mother points to Matter). What thought has long known, what the heart has long known, what the whole inner being has long known, now the body too knows: nothing, nothing whatever is impossible, everything is possible. Here inside, here inside, in this (Mother strikes her body), everything is possible.

All the impossibilities created by material life have disappeared.

One must have the strength – the strength to carry it in oneself always.

¹ Let us recall that vision of Mother's in which she saw Sri Aurobindo with a truss (!), and the truss was all the cuts the Ashram's editors were making in his works.

Back

² Satprem means that Death is a mask of “Him,” of the Supreme.

Back

³ A disciple's peacock had escaped and spent the whole day in the tree above the Samadhi and on the Ashram's terraces. (The peacock is the symbol of victory.)

Back