AGENDA 1961

August 1961


02. Aug 1961 – Evolution of Inconscient to Subconscient

When one descends into the subconscient, a time comes when it’s no longer personal – the whole world is there! Then what can we do? I’m not speaking of you, but what can people like us do to change it? It’s a Sisyphean labor! Vibrations from the whole world keep coming in at each instant. How can we change it?

No, you have to approach the problem from the other direction.

Evolution begins with the Inconscient, complete Inconscience; and from this Inconscient a Subconscient gradually emerges – that is, a half or quarter-consciousness.... There are two different things here. Consider life on earth (because the process is slightly different in the universe); earth-life begins with total Inconscience and little by little what was involved within it works out and changes this Inconscience into semi-consciousness or subconsciousness. At the same time, there is an individual working that awakens the INDIVIDUAL inconscient to an individual semi-consciousness, and here, of course, the individual has control – although it’s not actually individualized because individualization begins with consciousness. The subconscient of plants or animals, for example, isn’t individualized; what we call an animal’s behavior doesn’t arise from individualization but from the genius of the species. Consequently, the individual subconscient is something already evolved out of the general Subconscient. But when one descends to accomplish a work of transformation – to bring Light into the different layers of life, for instance – one descends into a cosmic, terrestrial Subconscient, not an individual Subconscient. And the work of transformation is done within the whole – not through individualization, but through the opposite movement, through a sort of universalization.

No, what I mean is that as we progress, we automatically become universalized....

Yes, necessarily.

And we are told that we have to change the Subconscient, to bring Light into it; but being universal it has no end! New vibrations keep coming in at every instant...

No!

...vibrations from the outside, from here, there – it’s endless. How can we change it?

No, it isn’t endless – it’s limited to the earth’s atmosphere.

That’s already quite a lot!

Yes, but not endless.

Then how can we act upon it – all these vibrations that keep pouring in from all over the world, from the whole earth?

It isn’t difficult – the minute you become universalized you act upon the whole.

Even Buddha said that if you have a vibration of desire, this vibration goes all around the terrestrial atmosphere. The opposite is what’s impossible! It’s impossible to separate yourself. You can have the idea of being separate, but you can’t be separate in reality. In fact, if you are trying to eliminate the Subconscient in yourself your movement must necessarily be general; it can’t be personal, you would never get anywhere.

Yes, of course, but these vibrations are ceaselessly re-created.

No, they are not re-created.

But there are people having wrong movements at every instant, so...?

So it all keeps circling round and round in the earth’s atmosphere. But compared to the universe, the earth’s atmosphere is a very tiny thing. Well, all this keeps circling around within it. And in fact, because of the movement of evolution, there is a progress. The present Inconscient is not as unconscious as the initial Inconscient, and the present Subconscient is not as subconscious nor as generalized as it was at the beginning. This is the meaning of terrestrial evolution.

But if, as you say, it keeps circling around in the earth’s atmosphere, doesn’t this mean that vibrations are ceaselessly re-created?

Not re-created – they keep circling around, which is not the same thing!

A re-creation would mean that a new contingent of the Inconscient and Subconscient would come in from other spheres, or from the Supreme – well, this isn’t the case. We consider the Inconscient to be an ‘accident’: if it happened, it happened; but it’s not part of an infinite and eternal creation.

Then are our vibrations of consciousness effective for changing these general vibrations?

Ah, yes!

In fact, we are the first possible instruments for making the world progress. For example (this is one way of putting it), the transformation of the Inconscient into the Subconscient is probably far more rapid and complete now than it was before man appeared upon earth; man is one of the first transformative elements. Animals are obviously more conscious than plants, but WILLED (and thus more rapid) progress belongs to humanity. Likewise, what one hopes (more than hopes!), what one expects is that when the new supramental race comes upon earth, the work will go much more swiftly; and man will necessarily benefit from this. And since things will be done in true order instead of in mental disorder, animals and everything else will probably benefit from it also. In other words, the whole earth, taken as one entity, will progress more and more rapidly. The Inconscient (oh, all this comes to me in English, that’s the difficulty!) is meant to go and necessarily the Subconscient will go too.

Broadly speaking, does this mean that physical Matter will become conscious?

Yes, in a certain way. It will become receptive. The mode of life won’t necessarily change, but the form of life will change. Matter will become responsive. Do we say that in French?

Receptive?...

No, receptive is one thing and responsive is another. To respond: Matter will respond to the conscious will. Indeed, this is why there is hope – how else could there be a transformation? Things would always remain as they are! What kind of earth would it be for the supramental race to live on if no Matter gave response, if Matter did not begin to vibrate and respond to the Will? The same difficulties would always be there. And it isn’t limited: for instance, even if we imagine a power over the body making corporeal life different, this new corporeal life still has to exist within an environment – it can’t remain hanging in thin air! The environment must respond.

It’s quite obvious that the Inconscient, the Subconscient and the semi-conscient are accidental; they are not a permanent part of the creation, so are bound to disappear, to be transformed.

Years ago, when Sri Aurobindo and I descended together from plane to plane (or from mode of life to mode of life) and reached the Subconscient, we saw that it was no longer individual: it was terrestrial. The rest – the mind, the vital and of course the body – is individualized; but when you descend below this level, that’s no longer the case. There is indeed something between the conscious life of the body and this subconscious terrestrial life – elements are thrown out as a result of the action of individual consciousness upon the subconscious substance; this creates a kind of semi-consciousness, and that stays. For example, when people are told, ‘You have pushed your difficulty down into the subconscient and it will resurface,’ this does not refer to the general Subconscient, but to something individualized out of the Subconscient through the action of individual consciousness and remaining down there until it resurfaces. The process is, so to speak, interminable, even the personal part of it.

Every night, you know, I continue to see more and more astounding things emerging from the Subconscient to be transformed. It’s a kind of mixture – not clearly individualized – of all the things that have been more or less closely associated in life. For example, some people are intermingled there. One relives things almost as in a dream (although these are not ‘dreams’), one relives it all in a certain setting, within a certain set of symbolic, or at any rate expressive, circumstances. Just two days ago I had to deal with someone (I am actively at work there and I had to do something with him), and upon seeing this person, I asked myself, ‘is he this one or that one?’ As I became less involved in the action and looked with a more objective consciousness, the witness-consciousness, I saw that it was simply a mixture of both persons – everything is mixed in the Subconscient.... Already when I lived in Japan there were four people I could never distinguish during my nighttime activities – all four of them (and god knows they weren’t even acquainted!) were always intermingled because their subconscious reactions were identical.

In fact, this is what legitimizes the ego; because if we had never formed an ego, we would have lived all mixed up (laughing), now this person, now another! Oh, it was so comical, seeing this the other day! At first it was a bit bewildering, but when I looked closely, it became utterly amusing: two little people with no physical resemblance, yet of a similar type – small and... in short, a similarity. It’s like the four men I used to see in Japan: there was an Englishman, a Frenchman, a Japanese and one more, each from a different country; well, at night they were all the same, as if viewed one through the other, all intermingled – very amusing!

But individualization is a slow and difficult process. That’s why you have an ego, otherwise you would never become individualized, but always be... (Mother laughs) a kind of public place!

In the end, individualization – and the consequent necessity for the ego – exists for the return to Divine Consciousness to be conscious and willed, with full, conscious participation.

Speaking of individualization, there’s a question I’ve been wondering about: when one speaks of the ‘central being,’ this central being is not something here in physical life, is it?... It’s above.... It is above and within and everywhere! (Mother laughs)

No, unless you learn to think at all times with the fourth dimension, you will never understand anything.

But Sri Aurobindo says that this central being is ‘unborn.’ I would like to know whether it is something individual – whether each person has a central being.

The one is not separate from the other.

The one is not separate from the other? In what sense? The central being isn’t separate from the Divine, it’s one with the Divine. But does each person have a particular, individual central being, or is there one central being for everyone?

It becomes personal in our consciousness. It is a phenomenon of consciousness. But it’s not separate – never separate.

Yes, it isn’t separate, but does it have an individuality?

It’s never separate, neither from the Center (if it can be called a ‘center’!) nor from the whole. And as soon as one is in touch with it, this problem no longer arises: it’s plain that it can’t be otherwise!

Because when one loses his ego and finds this central being, Sri Aurobindo says that an individuality remains – it isn’t a dissolution – one retains a personality.

Yes, a personality remains.

Then this is the personality of the central being, the True Personality.

Yes.

Then after all, it’s an individual, not an impersonal self.

Individual in action, in manifestation.

This is where the problem arises. Sri Aurobindo says it’s permanent, while all the ancient traditions say it disappears with the body.

A permanent individual self?

Otherwise there could be no permanent material life – for this [individuality] is the very nature of materialization. Were it destined to disappear, then the phenomenon of physical dissolution would become permanent, and there would never be physical immortality; because, after exhausting a certain... basically, a certain number of illusions or disorders or falsehoods, one would return to the Truth. But according to Sri Aurobindo, it isn’t like that: this individualization, this individual personalization is the Truth, a real, authentic divine phenomenon – the only falsehood is the deformation of consciousness. Well, when we rediscover the true consciousness of Unity – that Unity which is both in and above the manifest and the non-manifest (‘above’ in that it contains both the manifest and non-manifest equally), well, this Truth includes material personalization, otherwise that could not exist.

But each individual has a different personality.

Yes... perhaps not in the present state of disorder! But in principle.

Every conscious being?

Yes, in principle – each TRUE soul.

True, meaning formed?

Yes, ‘formed’ if you consider it from below. But if you consider it from above... (Mother laughs).

Each individual represents something of the Divine?

It could be expressed like that, but it’s still a separative way of putting it.

But then what is this ‘personality’!?

It’s a mode of being.

It’s what makes one being different from the other.

A mode of being, yes, in a way, in its essence – in its essence, because in the manifestation all this is destined to disappear. Yes, they are modes of being – like those first four modes of being created at the first manifestation.

But in our case, would there be innumerable modes of being, each representing one particular aspect?

Yes, the multitude – otherwise there can be no Play.

I just translated a passage where Sri Aurobindo speaks of the enjoyment and possession of the One by the multitude, of the multitude by the One, and of the multitude by the multitude. Such a play must then involve an innumerable diversity – innumerable!

Then why have those who had realizations in the past, who found the true Self, all said it meant the dissolution of the individual, that no personality remained?

Not all! only those who went off into Non-existence said this.

In the Vedas, for example, it’s plain that the ‘forefathers’ spoken of were men who had realized immortality upon earth. (Who knows, they may still be alive!) Their conception of things was similar to Sri Aurobindo’s.

The other tradition – Théon said it was the origin of both the Kabbala and the Vedas – also held the same concept of divine life and a divine world as Sri Aurobindo: that the summit of evolution would be the divinization of everything objectified, along with an unbroken progression from that moment on. (As things are now, one goes forward and then backwards, then forward and backwards again; but in this divine world, retrogression won’t be necessary: there will be a continuous ascent.) This concept was held in that ancient tradition – Théon spoke to me very clearly of it, and Sri Aurobindo hadn’t yet written anything when I met Théon. Théon had written all kinds of things – not philosophy, but stories, fantastic stories! Yet this same knowledge was behind them, and when asked about the source of this knowledge he used to say that it antedated both the Kabbala and the Vedas (he was well-versed in the Rig-Veda).

But Théon had no idea of the path of bhakti, none whatsoever.

The idea of surrender to the Divine was absolutely alien to him. Yet he did have the idea of the Divine Presence here (Mother indicates the heart center), of the immanent Divine and of union with That. And he said that by uniting with That and letting That transform the being one could arrive at the divine creation and the transformation of the earth.

Théon was the first one to give me the idea that the earth is symbolic, representative – symbolic of concentrated universal action allowing divine forces to incarnate and work concretely. I learned all this from him.

In this respect, you say somewhere that the gods too must incarnate to become fully conscious.

Yes, because....

How is this possible? Aren’t the gods already fully conscious?!

No, they have no psychic being, so that whole side of life does not exist for them.

In all the traditions here in India (and in other countries and other religions as well), most of the time these gods behave impossibly! This is simply because they have no psychic being. The psychic being is the one thing belonging specifically to terrestrial life; it has been given as a grace... to repair, to undo what had been done.

Yes, but aren’t the gods conscious of the Divine?

Listen, mon petit, they are conscious of their own divinity, and of that above all!

They are connected with the Divine, yes, but I know from experience that they haven’t the faintest notion of what surrender is!

02. Aug 1961 – Mother’s experiences with the old Gods

I had a VERY interesting experience – it was last year or the year before, I don’t recall, but after I retired to my room upstairs.... You know that during pujas these goddesses come all the time – they don’t enter the body and tie themselves to it, but they do come and manifest. Well, this time – I think it must have been for last year’s puja – Durga came (she always arrives a few days in advance and remains in the atmosphere; she is present, like this – gesture as if Durga were walking up and down with Mother). I was in touch with her during my meditations upstairs, and this new Power in the body was in me then as it is in me now, and... (how to put it?) I made her participate in this concept of surrender. What an experience she had, mon petit! An extraordinary experience of the joy of being connected with That. And she declared, ‘From now on, I am a Bhakta of the Lord.’

It was beautiful.

This formidable Power, you see – a universal Power, an eternal and formidable Power – well, she had never had such an experience before, she had only experienced her OWN power. She was used to receiving and obeying Commands, but in an automatic way. Then all at once, she felt the ECSTASY of being a conscious instrument.

Truly... it was truly beautiful.

I knew how it was with her because I remember the days when Sri Aurobindo was here and I used to go downstairs to give meditations to the people assembled in the hall. There’s a ledge above the pillars there, where all the gods used to sit – Shiva, Krishna, Lakshmi, the Trimurti, all of them – the little ones, the big ones, they all used to come regularly, every day, to attend these meditations. It was a lovely sight. But they didn’t have this kind of adoration for the Supreme. They had no use for that concept – each one, in his own mode of being, was fully aware of his own eternal divinity; and each one knew as well that he could represent all the others (such was the basis of popular worship, and they knew it). They felt they were a kind of community, but they had none of those qualities that the psychic life gives: no deep love, no deep sympathy, no sense of union. They had only the sense of their OWN divinity. They had certain very particular movements, but not this adoration for the Supreme nor the feeling of being instruments: they felt they were representing the Supreme, and so each one was perfectly satisfied with his particular representation.

Except for Krishna.... In 1926, I had begun a sort of overmental creation, that is, I had brought the Overmind down into matter, here on earth (miracles and all kinds of things were beginning to happen). I asked all these gods to incarnate, to identify themselves with a body (some of them absolutely refused). Well, with my very own eyes I saw Krishna, who had always been in rapport with Sri Aurobindo, consent to come down into his body. It was on November 24th, and it was the beginning of ‘Mother.’

Yes, in fact I wanted to ask you what this realization of 1926 was.

It was this: Krishna consented to descend into Sri Aurobindo’s body – to be FIXED there; there is a great difference, you understand, between incarnating, being fixed in a body, and simply acting as an influence that comes and goes and moves about. The gods are always moving about, and it’s plain that we ourselves, in our inner beings, come and go and act in a hundred or a thousand places at once. There is a difference between just coming occasionally and accepting to be permanently tied to a body – between a permanent influence and a permanent presence.

These things have to be experienced.

But in what sense did this realization mark a turning point in Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana?

No, the phenomenon was important FOR THE CREATION; he himself was rather indifferent to it. But I did tell him about it.

It was at that time that he decided to stop dealing with people and retire to his room. So he called everyone together for one last meeting. Before then, he used to go out on the verandah every day to meet and talk with all who came to see him (this is the origin of the famous ‘Talks with Sri Aurobindo’ ... – Mother is about to say something severe, then reconsiders – anyway...) I was living in the inner rooms and seeing no one; he was going out onto the verandah, seeing everyone, receiving people, speaking, discussing – I saw him only when he came back inside.

After a while, I too began having meditations with people. I had begun a sort of ‘overmental creation,’ to make each god descend into a being – there was an extraordinary upward curve! Well, I was in contact with these beings and I told Krishna (because I was always seeing him around Sri Aurobindo), ‘This is all very fine, but what I want now is a creation on earth – you must incarnate.’ He said ‘Yes.’ Then I saw him – I saw him with my own eyes (inner eyes, of course), join himself to Sri Aurobindo.

Then I went into Sri Aurobindo’s room and told him, ‘Here’s what I have seen.’ ‘Yes, I know!’ he replied (Mother laughs) ‘That’s fine; I have decided to retire to my room, and you will take charge of the people. You take charge.’ (There were about thirty people at the time.) Then he called everyone together for one last meeting. He sat down, had me sit next to him, and said, ‘I called you here to tell you that, as of today, I am withdrawing for purposes of sadhana, and Mother will now take charge of everyone; you should address yourselves to her; she will represent me and she will do all the work.’ (He hadn’t mentioned this to me! – Mother bursts into laughter)

These people had always been very intimate with Sri Aurobindo, so they asked: ‘Why, why, Why?’ He replied, ‘It will be explained to you.’ I had no intention of explaining anything, and I left the room with him, but Datta began speaking. (She was an Englishwoman who had left Europe with me; she stayed here until her death – a person who received ‘inspirations.’) She said she felt Sri Aurobindo speaking through her and she explained everything: that Krishna had incarnated and that Sri Aurobindo was now going to do an intensive sadhana for the descent of the Supermind; that it meant Krishna’s adherence to the Supramental Descent upon earth and that, as Sri Aurobindo would now be too occupied to deal with people, he had put me in charge and I would be doing all the work.

This was in 1926.

It was only... (how can I put it?) a participation from Krishna. It made no difference for Sri Aurobindo personally: it was a formation from the past that accepted to participate in the present creation, nothing more. It was a descent of the Supreme, from... some time back, now consenting to participate in the new manifestation.

Shiva, on the other hand, refused. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I will come only when you have finished your work. I will not come into the world as it is now, but I am ready to help.’ He was standing in my room that day, so tall (laughing) that his head touched the ceiling! He was bathed in his own special light, a play of red and gold... magnificent! Just as he is when he manifests his supreme consciousness – a formidable being! So I stood up and... (I too must have become quite tall, because my head was resting on his shoulder, just slightly below his head) then he told me, ‘No, I’m not tying myself to a body, but I will give you ANYTHING you want.’ The only thing I said (it was all done wordlessly, of course) was: ‘I want to be rid of the physical ego.’

Well, mon petit (laughing), it happened! It was extraordinary!... After a while, I went to find Sri Aurobindo and said, ‘See what has happened! I have a funny sensation (Mother laughs) of the cells no longer being clustered together! They’re going to scatter! He looked at me, smiled and said, Not yet. And the effect vanished.

But Shiva had indeed given me what I wanted!

Not yet, Sri Aurobindo said.

No, the time wasn’t ripe. It was too early, much too early.

I had it two years ago. But now there is something else – things are different now.

05. August 1961 – Subtle Physical; Sleep and Death

You see, the subtle physical extends a long way beyond the body.

Then comes what Théon called the ‘nervous sub-level,’ which lies between this subtle physical and the vital. And it acts as a protection: if it is stable, harmonious and strong, it protects you – it protects you even physically – from contagious diseases, for instance, and even from accidents. I experienced it when I was living at Val-de-Grâce. It was the year I resolved to attain union with the psychic being and I was concentrated on this from morning to night and night to morning. Every day I spent some time in the Luxembourg Gardens. They were right near the house, but to get there I had to go all the way down Rue du Val-de-Grâce and cross Boulevard Saint Michel, where there were streetcars, automobiles, buses – the whole circus. I would remain in my concentration the whole time, and once, while crossing the boulevard, I felt a shock about this far from my body [slightly more than arm’s length], so spontaneously I jumped back – just enough for the streetcar to pass by. I hadn’t heard anything; I was totally absorbed, and without that warning I would surely have been run over; instead, I jumped back just in time, and the streetcar sped by. I understood then that this nervous sheath was something entirely concrete, because what I had felt was not an idea of danger but a shock – a material SHOCK.

So it’s true that as long as this envelope is strong and undamaged, you are protected. But for instance, if you are over-tired or worried or flustered – anything that brings disorder into the atmosphere seems to make holes in this envelope, and all kinds of things can enter. Perhaps this is what Sri Aurobindo is speaking of.

But isn’t this the subtle physical?

It surrounds the subtle physical.

First there is the subtle physical and then the circum-conscient?

Yes; the subtle physical is visible – visible. You have seen heat vibrations when it’s very hot, haven’t you? That’s the subtle physical – one form of it.

The subtle physical is right here (gesture on the surface of the skin). Some people are sensitive in the subtle physical; you move your hand near them and they feel it immediately. Others don’t even notice – it depends on the subtle physical’s sensitivity. And the circum-conscient surrounds it like an envelope. If there are no tears in it, this envelope is a magnificent protection. (We are not sure, finally, if this envelope and the circum-conscient are one and the same thing, but this is how Sri Aurobindo speaks of it: ‘The first thing one sees when one has broken the barrier is the vital-physical body. It is around the physical body and with the physical it forms as it were the “nervous envelope.” The force of a disease has to break through it to reach the body – except for the attacks on the most material parts. You can then feel the disease coming and also feel in the nervous envelope the part of the body which it is going to, or intending to, attack because what is in the nervous envelope has a material counterpart in the body. Thus it is the vital-physical which is first attacked and then the force takes the form of a disease in the system. I had myself the experience of fever all around the body.’ (A.B. Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, Volume I, p. 232)

And it’s not dependent on any spiritual or intellectual rationale, but on a harmony with Nature and life, a kind of stability in the material being. People with strong envelopes are almost always in good health and succeed in what they do. It isn’t something mental – when they do a work it comes out nicely, if they want to meet someone, they meet him. Things of this nature.

The circum-conscient must be that.

Is it through this envelope that we come into contact with others?

Ah, yes, I should think so! When you are sensitive, mon petit, it becomes almost unbearable to be in a tightly packed crowd – it’s all mixed up, and it’s horrible. There is a suffocating sense of intrusion, as if you were inside things you hadn’t chosen to have near you!

Is that all?

Another detail. Is there a difference between sleep and death, or are they the same?

Death and sleep? Oh, no!

They are not the same.

No.... Are you thinking of Buddha? (Ah, I thought of this two or three days ago; it came suddenly and I wondered why!) I remembered that before Buddha left his home, he passed through the rooms of the palace and saw his wife and parents sleeping and it felt to him as though they were dead. That’s where we hear of sleep being like death.

But isn’t it like death?... When you are asleep, you aren’t in your body: everything else goes out just as it does at the time of death, doesn’t it?

Oh, no! Not at all. No. The cataleptic state of trance is like death, yes, except for the link that remains – only a link remains, but otherwise one has entirely gone out. Actually, the body becomes cataleptic only when one has entirely gone out; otherwise everything that is most material in the vital remains.

I mean, aren’t the places you go to in sleep the same as the ones you go to in death?

No, no, no. Most of the time in sleep, with very few exceptions, one is in contact with all that rises up from the subconscient: a cerebral subconscient, an emotive subconscient, a material subconscient; this is what produces ninety-nine percent of the dreams people have. Sometimes – usually – the mind goes wandering, but ninety-nine and a half percent of the time, one remembers nothing when it returns, because the link is not properly established.

The purpose of sleep is to re-establish contact with the consciousness of Sachchidananda. But I don’t think one person in a hundred does so! They enter into unconsciousness far more than into Sachchidananda.

Yet no two sleeps are the same, mon petit! And it’s the same with deaths, no two are the same. But sleep and death are different because... they are different STATES. As long as you have a body, you are not in the same state as when you are ‘dead.’ There is a period of seven days after the doctors declare you ‘dead’ when you are still in an intermediary state; but the actual state of death itself is completely different BECAUSE there is no longer this physical base.

Once when I was at Tlemcen with Théon (this happened twice, but I’m not sure about the second time because I was alone), my body was in a cataleptic state and I was in conscious trance.... It was a peculiar kind of catalepsy in the sense that my body could speak, though very slowly – Théon had taught me how to do it. But this is because the ‘life of the form’ always remains (this is what takes seven days to leave the body) and it can even be trained to make the body move – the being is no longer there, but the life of the form can make the body move (in any case, utter words). However, this state is not without danger, the proof being that while I was working in trance, for some reason or other (which I no longer remember, but obviously due to some negligence on the part of Théon who was there to watch over me), the cord – I don’t know what to call it – went snap! The link was cut, malevolently, and when it was time and I wanted to return, I could no longer re-enter my body. But I was still able to warn him: ‘The cord is cut.’ Then he used his power and knowledge to help me come back – but it was no joke! It was very difficult. (Satprem remembers that a few years earlier Mother had told him about the circumstances of this incident: during her work in trance, Mother discovered the location of the ‘mantra of life’ – the mantra that has the power to create life (and to withdraw it, as well). Théon, an incarnation of the Asura of Death, was of course quite interested and told Mother to repeat this mantra to him. Mother refused. Théon became violently angry and the link was cut (the link that connected Mother to her body). When he realized the catastrophe his anger had caused, Théon grew afraid (for he knew who Mother was) and he then, as Mother recounts, made use of all his power to help her re-enter her body. Later, Mother gave this mantra to Sri Aurobindo... who let it quietly sink into oblivion. For it is not through a mantra that the secret of life (or death) is to be mastered, but through knowledge of the true Power – in other words, ultimately, knowledge of the reality of Matter and the mechanism of death: it is the whole cellular yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Mother.)

And this is when I had the experience of the two different states, because the part that had gone out was now without the body’s support – the link was cut. Then I knew. Of course, I was in a special state; I was doing a fully conscious work with all the vital power, and I was in control not only of my surroundings but.... You see, what happens is a kind of reversal of consciousness: you begin to belong to another world; you feel this quite distinctly. Théon instantly told me to concentrate (I was finding it all interesting – Mother laughs – I was making experiments and getting ready to go wandering off, but he was terribly scared that I would die on him!). He begged me to concentrate, so I concentrated on my body.

When I re-entered, it hurt terribly, terribly – an excruciating pain, like plunging into a hell.

Into a...?

Into a hell (Mother laughs).

It was frightful. It doesn’t last long.

He made me drink half a glass of cognac (he always made me take some every day after the trance because I would work in trance for more than an hour, which is generally a forbidden practice). Still, I am quite sure that with anybody but me and him, this would have been the end. I would not have re-entered.

So I know a little bit, even in my outermost consciousness. A little bit, that’s all.

No, sleep is something else. Yes, something else. It’s more like a relapse into Inconscience – a sort of invasion of tamas.

We all know, of course, that the Divine Consciousness is there in the depths of the Inconscient; but even so, sleep appears to be a fall, and there are people who fall almost completely back into the Inconscient and come out of their sleep far duller than when they entered it. But for some reason, probably due to the necessities of the Work, I have never to my knowledge had a fully unconscious sleep.

05. August 1961 – Stories when Mother was a young girl

There was another thing (laughing): even as a young child, I would all of a sudden, right in the middle of an action or a sentence or anything at all, go into trance – and nobody knew what it was! They would all think I had gone to sleep! But I remained conscious, with an arm raised or in the middle of a word – and poof! No one there (Mother laughs). No one there outwardly, but inwardly quite an intense, interesting experience. That used to happen to me even when I was very young.

I remember once (I must have been ten or twelve years old at the time), there was a luncheon at my parents’ house for a dozen or so people, all decked out in their Sunday best – they were family but all the same it was a ‘luncheon’ and there was a certain protocol; in short, one had to behave properly. I was at one end of the table next to a first-cousin of mine who later became director of the Louvre for a while (he had an artistic intelligence, a rather capable young man). So there we were, and I remember I was observing something rather interesting in his atmosphere (mind you, although the faculties were already there, I knew nothing about occult things; if someone had spoken to me of ‘auras’ and all that.... I knew nothing). I was observing a kind of sensation I had felt in his atmosphere and then, just as I was putting the fork into my mouth, I took off! What a scolding I got! I was told that if I didn’t know how to behave, I shouldn’t come to the table! (Mother goes into peals of laughter)

It was during this period that I used to go out of my body every night and do the work I’ve spoken of in Prayers and Meditations (I only mentioned it in passing). Every night at the same hour, when the whole house was very quiet, I would go out of my body and have all kinds of experiences. And then my body gradually became a sleepwalker (that is, the consciousness of the form became more and more conscious, while the link remained very solidly established). I got into the habit of getting up – but not like an ordinary sleepwalker: I would get up, open my desk, take out a piece of paper and write... poems. Yes, poems – I, who had nothing of the poet in me! I would jot things down, then very consciously put everything back into the drawer, lock everything up again very carefully and go back to bed. One night, for some reason or other, I forgot and left it open. My mother came in (in France the windows are covered with heavy curtains and in the morning my mother would come in and violently throw open the curtains, waking me up, brrm!, without any warning; but I was used to it and would already be prepared to wake up – otherwise it would have been most unpleasant!). Anyway, my mother came in, calling me with unquestionable authority, and then she found the open desk and the piece of paper: ‘What’s that?!’ She grabbed it. ‘What have you been up to?’ I don’t know what I replied, but she went to the doctor: ‘My daughter has become a sleepwalker! You have to give her a drug.’

It wasn’t easy.

I remember once.... She scolded me quite often (but it was very good, a very good lesson), she scolded me very, very often – for things I hadn’t even done! Once she came down on me for something I had done but which she hadn’t understood (I had done it with the best of intentions); I had given something to someone without her permission, and she reproached me for it as though it were a crime! At first I stiffened and said, ‘I didn’t do it.’ She started to say I was lying. Then all at once, mutely, I looked at her and felt... I felt all this human misery and all this human falsehood, and soundlessly the tears began to fall. ‘What! Now you’re crying!’ she said. At that, I became a bit fed up. ‘Oh, I’m not crying about myself,’ I told her, ‘but about the world’s misery.’

‘You’re going mad!’ She really believed I was going mad.

It was quite funny.

It’s strange.... I say ‘strange’ because it’s due to her that I took birth in this body, that it was chosen. When she was very young she had a great aspiration. She was exactly twenty years older than 1; she was twenty when I was born and I was her third child. The first was a son who died in Turkey when he was two months old, I think – they vaccinated him against smallpox and poisoned him, (laughing) god knows what it means! He died of convulsions. Next was my brother who was born in Egypt, at Alexandria, and then me, born in Paris when she was exactly twenty years old. At that time (especially since the death of her first child) she had a kind of GREAT aspiration in her: her children had to be ‘the best in the world.’ It wasn’t an ambition, I don’t know what it was. And what a will she had! MY mother had a formidable will, like an iron bar, utterly impervious to all outside influence. Once she had made up her mind, it was made up; even if someone had been dying before her eyes, she wouldn’t have budged! And she decided: ‘My children will be the best in the world.’

One thing she did have was a sense of progress; she felt that the world was progressing and we had to be better than anything that had come before – and that was sufficient.

It’s strange, but that was sufficient.

Did I tell you what happened to my brother? No?... My brother was a terribly serious boy, and frightfully studious – oh, it was awful! But he also had a very strong character, a strong will, and there was something interesting about him. When he was studying to enter the Polytechnique, I studied with him – it interested me. We were very intimate (there were only eighteen months between us). He was quite violent, but with an extraordinary strength of character. He almost killed me three times, but when my mother told him, ‘Next time, you will kill her,’ he resolved that it wouldn’t happen again – and it never did. But what I wanted to tell you is that one day when he was eighteen, just before the Polytechnique exams, as he was crossing the Seine (I think it was the Pont des Arts), suddenly in the middle of the bridge... he felt something descend into him with such force that he became immobilized, petrified; then, although he didn’t exactly hear a voice, a very clear message came to him: ‘If you want, you can become a god’ – it was translated like that in his consciousness. He told me that it took hold of him entirely, immobilized him – a formidable and extremely luminous power: ‘If you want, you can become a god.’ Then, in the thick of the experience itself, he replied, ‘No, I want to serve humanity.’ And it was gone. Of course, he took great care to say nothing to my mother, but we were intimate enough for him to tell me about it. I told him, ‘Well (laughing), what an idiot you are!’

That’s the story.

At that moment he could have had a spiritual realization: he had the right stuff.

Three years later I had that experience – I’ve told you about it – of the Light piercing through me; I physically saw it enter into me. It was obviously the descent of a Being – not a past incarnation, but a Being from another plane. It was a golden light – the incarnation of a divine consciousness. Which proves that she succeeded for both her children.

But she...

She was down on her knees before my brother. My mother scorned all religious sentiments as weakness and superstition and she absolutely denied the invisible. ‘It’s all brain disease,’ she would say! But she could say just as well, ‘Oh, my Matteo is my God, he is my God.’ The devil knows why, but in Alexandria she gave him the Italian name Matteo! And she truly treated him like a god. She left him only when he married, because then she really couldn’t continue to follow him around any longer.

But what’s interesting, for instance, is that when her father died she knew it; she saw him. She thought it was a dream – ’a stupid dream.’ But he came to let her know he was dead and she saw him. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, ‘a dream!’ (Mother laughs)

When my grandmother died.... My grandmother had the occult sense. She had made her own fortune (a sizeable fortune) and had had five children, each one more extravagant than the other. She considered me the only sensible person in the family and she shared her secrets with me. ‘You see,’ she told me, ‘these people are going to squander all my money!’ She had a sixty year old son (she had married in Egypt at the age of fifteen, and had had this son when she was quite young). ‘You see this boy, he goes out and visits impossible people! And then he starts playing cards and loses all my money!’ I saw this ‘boy,’ I was there in the house when he came to her and said very politely, ‘Good-bye, mother, I’m going out to so-and-so’s house.’ ‘Ah, please don’t waste all my money, and take an overcoat – it’s getting chilly at night.’ Sixty years old! It was comical.... But to return to my story, after my grandmother died (I took a lot of care over her), she came to my mother (my mother was with her when she died; they embalmed her – she had gotten it into her head that she wanted to be burned, and since she died at Nice they had to embalm her so she could be burned in Paris). I was in Paris. My mother arrived with the body and told me, ‘Just imagine, I’m constantly seeing her! And what’s more, she gives me advice! “Don’t waste your money!” she tells me.’ ‘Well, she’s right, one must be careful,’ I replied. ‘But look here, she’s dead! Dead! How can she talk to me! She’s dead, I tell you, and quite dead at that!’ I said to her, ‘What does it mean, to die?’

It was all very funny.

There was another reason.... My father was wonderfully healthy and strong – well-balanced. He wasn’t very tall, but stocky. He did all his studies in Austria (at that time French was widely spoken in Austria, but he knew German, he knew English, Italian, Turkish...), and there he had learned to ride horses in an extraordinary manner: he was so strong that he could bring a horse to the ground simply by pressing his knees. He could break anything at all with a blow of his fist, even one of those big silver five-franc pieces they had in those days – one blow and it was broken in two. Curiously enough, he looked Russian. I don’t know why. They used to call him Barine. What an equilibrium – an extraordinary physical poise! And not only did this man know all those languages, but I never saw such a brain for arithmetic. Never. He made a game of calculations – not the slightest effort – calculations with hundreds of digits! And on top of it, he loved birds. He had a room to himself in our apartment (because my mother could never much tolerate him), he had his separate room, and in it he kept a big cage... full of canaries! During the day he would close the windows and let all the canaries loose....

And could he tell stories! I think he read every novel available, all the stories he could find – extraordinary adventure stories, for he loved adventures. When we were kids he used to let us come into his room very early in the morning and, while still sitting in bed, tell us stories from the books he had read – but he told them as if they were his own, as if he’d had extraordinary adventures with outlaws, with wild animals.... Every story he picked up he told as his own. We enjoyed it tremendously!

But one day when my brother had disobeyed him (Matteo must have been ten or eleven, and I perhaps nine or ten), I came into the dining room and saw my father sitting on a sofa with my brother across his knees; he had pulled down his trousers and was spanking him, I don’t know what for. It wasn’t a very serious spanking, but still.... I came in, drew myself up to my full height and said, ‘Papa, if you ever do that again, I am leaving this house!’ And with such authority, mon petit! He stopped and never did it again.

11. August 1961 – The participation of all the body’s cells

But on the lowest plane, some interesting things: suddenly (not from time to time, but all the time, or almost all the time), all the body’s cells suddenly seem to participate in a movement of force, a sort of circular movement containing all the vibrations – physical vibrations – right from the most material sensation (Mother touches the skin of her hands) to all the feelings of strength, power and comprehension (especially from an active standpoint, the standpoint of actions, movements, influences). It’s not at all limited to the body; it’s like that, like that, like that... (Mother makes a gesture stretching to infinity). It has neither beginning nor end. The body itself is starting to feel how Energy behaves.

It’s very interesting.

At any moment, if I just pay a little attention, it’s like that. And then the body has no more limits – more and more, they seem to disappear.

And for the least little things, the least little things; and... all taking place within the Supreme, with the ecstasy of His Presence. For the tiniest, tiniest little things: how the Force behaves when you’re arranging objects, when you’re moving something... for everything, for food, for....

And it is strangely indifferent to any scale of values or circumstances. Sometimes when I am meeting and speaking with someone, when I am seeing someone, this great universal Light of a perfect whiteness comes streaming in. Well, I must admit, this also occurs for the merest trifles, when I’m tasting some cheese somebody has sent me, for example, or arranging objects in a cupboard, or deciding what things I’m going to use or have to organize. It doesn’t come in the same massive way as when it comes directly. When it comes directly it’s a mass, passing through and going out like that (Mother shows the Light descending directly from above like a mass and passing through her head in order to spread out everywhere). In these small things it’s pulverized, as though it came through an atomizer, but it’s that same sparkling white light, utterly white. Then, whatever I’m doing, there’s a sensation in the body that’s like lying on a sea of something very soft, very intimate, very deep and eternal, immutable: the Lord. And all the body’s cells are joyously saying, ‘You, You, You, You....’

That’s my present condition.

The moments of forgetting are brief – plunk! A knock from someone or something – the shock of the ordinary vibration. It’s unimportant, you turn your head and push it away. But I don’t want that either, it [the movement of rejection] must go away entirely.

From a practical, concrete, effective standpoint, there are some results. Even when they don’t write, people are beginning to receive my response very clearly, very precisely. People I don’t know at all have written, and they receive my reply even before I write back (they tell this to intermediaries). I had another example only today. It’s having results.

The earth is tiny.

18. August 1961 – Mother talks about a yesterday's experience

Yesterday I had an experience. It didn’t last long, no more than an hour or an hour and a half, but it was interesting.... Experiences always take place here for me now, on the completely material plane. Well, in action, in relation to the world and things (it was quite a general feeling, in any case terrestrial – not universal, terrestrial), there was no more center. From the standpoint of sensations and reactions, exchanges – no more center. Everything was dispersed like that, everywhere. There was only ONE center, the highest Center (highest or deepest) – the sole Center. All sensations, all contacts, all exchanges – everything was like that.

It was rather interesting in that I wasn’t expecting it; it came suddenly when I was walking in my room in the evening – the feeling... not positively that the body no longer existed, since it kept walking, but that there was no more center. I can’t put it any other way – there was no more center. There was only one Center. It was all, all the same thing, and from the absolutely material standpoint, the standpoint of sensations – material sensations, exchanges, vibrations – everything. At one point it even became so strong that something laughed and said, ‘Ah! So that’s how to no longer exist!’

It was very interesting. However, the experience could not last because... after a while I wasn’t alone anymore. Actually, it was dinner time. Not that I couldn’t eat in that state – it makes no difference (I can eat very easily through others, for instance: it has happened quite frequently that someone else eats and I am satisfied; there’s no need to put anything inside, it’s very convenient! These are experiments.) But this was... it was the almost total annihilation of the center. It didn’t last because of the people (four, as always) bringing in dinner, serving the plates, etc. – their concentration weakened the experience: it faded. The feeling of ‘I’m eating’ returned a little – not ‘I’! That notion disappeared a long time ago! Not my true ‘I’ – my true ‘I’ has been settled up above for a very long time, and it doesn’t move from there. But ‘this body is eating’; this body which has been put at the disposal of the work is eating (it didn’t come in so many words and sentences, but still!). In short, the experience faded with the sensation of eating and I was unable to know its effect.

But I would like to know the effect it must have on the body’s functioning. It would be interesting to know if the functioning becomes wholly harmonious or... what?... We will probably see. But the experience must last; it must last for at least one day, or even two or three – then the result would be interesting to see.

25. August 1961 – In the Realms of Expression

Nowadays I always spend a part of the night in the realm of expression, a realm where generally I never used to go at all. It’s a very lovely place, very human in the sense that it’s not a scene from Nature: there are huge rooms and great, highly intellectual arrangements; yet it’s very lovely, with such a clear and limpid atmosphere – all in clear shades... (Mother gives up trying to describe it). Oh, it’s so luminous and lovely, very well organized, as far as the eye can see; it seems as big as the earth. The rooms are roofless, just imagine! Huge roofless rooms flooded with light, and transparent partitions. And the people inside seem very, very aware – not a lot of people, but extremely studious and attentive, and they are creating arrangements of things. They must be people writing books. They are making compositions – oh, if you knew how lovely it was! It’s as if they were taking colors and more or less geometrical forms and placing them in relation to one another. There are huge pigeonholes where everything is in order, and yet without doors, not closed up – wide open and still completely protected. An interesting place. I don’t usually go there – I’ve gone maybe two or three times in my life, without paying much attention – but lately, because of this book you are writing, Sri Aurobindo is taking me there all the time.

And there are people with no country – he takes me to a place where the people have no country, no race, no special costume – they seem very universal. And they move around harmoniously, silently, as though they were gliding – and with precision, everything is extremely precise. Some of them have even shown me things: there were some lovely colored papers! But these colors are unearthly, somehow transparent. They were arranging it all, demonstrating and explaining to me how it has to be arranged to give the maximum effect.

I have seen you there several times. You were wearing something similar to what you are wearing now [dhoti]: not European – they wear the costume of no particular country. It’s usually white, but not made of cloth. It’s all on a VERY luminous, very orderly, very clear mental plane-no objects lying around, only things like sheets of paper, which seem to be ideas or compositions of ideas, but no clutter. It’s vast, vast, so vast you can see no end to it! And up above it’s wide open, and a light is constantly descending. What you walk on is a little more solid, but not much more. It’s an interesting place.

I go there almost every night for half or three-quarters of an hour, and Sri Aurobindo shows it all to me. Some people are waiting for him – in certain corners everything is ready and waiting and when he comes they show him what they have done. Then he explains: a word, a gesture, not much, and then, ah! It takes a form. It’s an interesting place. I am putting you in touch with it all the time, all the time, every day – it doesn’t matter if you don’t remember, it’s not important....