June 1961

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02. June 1961 – Not repeating past mistakes

(Regarding an earlier ‘Questions and Answers’ – March 13, 1957 – where Mother says: ‘And finally, isn’t the Divine the best friend one could have? The Divine to whom one can tell all, reveal all, because here is the source of all mercy, of all power to efface error when it no longer recurs....’Surprised, Satprem blurts out.)

But there’s no more problem when the error no longer recurs! Isn’t it when the error recurs that it needs to be effaced?

When one does not repeat one’s past mistakes, the divine power, the power of the divine Grace, abolishes their consequences – their karma – in the being. But as long as mistakes are repeated nothing can be abolished, because one re-creates them at every minute. When a person has made a serious error, say, a serious mistake (it can be serious or not, but we are concerned primarily with the serious ones), such mistakes have their consequences in life, a karma which has to be exhausted. The divine Grace, if you call upon it, has the power to abolish that karma, to cut short the consequences – but the Grace can only do this when you, within yourself, don’t begin all over again, when the mistake committed is not renewed. The past can be completely purified and abolished, on condition that one does not keep making it into a perpetual present.

I have said it there in one sentence, but I didn’t want people to believe that they can continue making the same stupid blunder indefinitely and have the Grace indefinitely annul all the consequences. It isn’t like that! The past can be cleansed to the point where it has no effect of any kind on the future, but only on condition that you stop the wrong vibration in yourself, that you don’t reproduce the same vibration indefinitely.

I know why I gave no explanations as I was speaking: because of the intensity of the experience. There is something like it in Prayers and Meditations. I remember an experience I had in Japan which is noted there.... (Mother looks through ‘Prayers and Meditations’ and reads a passage dated November 25, 1917:)

... After that experience the decision was taken to come back to India – only then could I manage to return. There were all sorts of projects and things... we were even on the point of going to China and, oh!... But after that it was decided to come back to India.

D. asked me if changing the time of her japa had much importance. I told her she can change the time if she has to, provided she remains sincere – that’s the most important thing.

These are small details. I myself am unable to do it at fixed hours; I had always hoped to do it between 5 and 6 in the afternoon, but I usually can’t manage to go upstairs before ten to six! So... so I do it from 6 to 7.

Fundamentally, I have noticed one thing: if you yourself are in the right state, the right atmosphere is immediately created. And in addition, I am always in a sort of... not even a conviction – an ABSOLUTE perception that all that happens is the Lord’s doing. When He makes me late going upstairs it’s because He wants me to be late, and consequently, if I take it well – if instead of closing myself and getting annoyed I say, ‘Good, that’s fine’ – immediately a very interesting atmosphere is created, because at the same time I see all the advantages of this change. But this movement must not be mental – it has to be spontaneous.

Therefore, I have told her (to put it simply): provided you are sincere in your attitude, all is well.

(silence)

What is necessary is to abandon EVERYTHING. Everything: all power, all comprehension, all intelligence, all knowledge, everything. To become perfectly nonexistent, that’s the important thing. But the very atmosphere makes things difficult — what people expect of you, what they want of you, what they think of you — it’s very bothersome. You have to spend all your time fanning it away.

06. June 1961 – The True Mechanism

What is bewildering is the subtlety of the problem.

Take absolutely identical circumstances: the same outer circumstances, the same inner circumstances – the ‘psychological condition’ is the same; circumstances of life, the same; events, the same; people, no appreciable difference. Identical circumstances, a few hours – not even a day – apart. And in one case, the body – that is, the cellular consciousness – feels a sort of eurhythmy and general harmony, everything dovetails in such a marvelous way, without rubbing, without friction – everything functions and organizes itself in a total harmony. It’s a peace and a joy (without the vital intensity, of course – it’s something physical). All, all is so harmonious and truly you feel a sense of the divine organization of everything, of all the cells – all is marvelous and the body feels well. Then in the other case... everything is the same, the consciousness is the same and... something escapes – the perception of harmony is no longer there. For what reason? One doesn’t understand anymore. And then the body begins to function wrongly. Yet everything is absolutely identical – mental conditions, vital conditions, physical conditions, all identical – and suddenly it all seems... meaningless. One still has the consciousness, the full consciousness of the divine Presence, and... one senses somewhere something escaping, and all becomes... it’s like running after something that escapes. Things become meaningless. In absolutely identical conditions – even the movements of the body (functional movements, I mean) may be identical, but they are felt to be disharmonious (these words are much too crude, it’s more subtle than that), meaningless, disharmonious. And what escapes? You can’t make it out. What is it?

Yesterday it was all so marvelous! Yet everything was identical, absolutely identical, down to the least detail.

Strangely, it happened after reading that first chapter of On Himself; while reading I felt a sort of malaise in my body, so slight that it was almost imperceptible, but still a malaise – and it lasted through the night. Why? Nothing had changed in the consciousness.

More and more I have the impression of – what? How can it be explained? A question of vibrations in Matter. It’s incomprehensible, completely eluding all mental law, all psychological law: a self-existent something.

So many question marks!

The more one goes into it in detail, the more mysterious it becomes. One always thinks one has grasped it; when one talks about such things one is being very nice, one seems to know something, one talks... but when it comes to putting it into practice!...

It’s so subtle! It could almost be.... It’s almost like being on the border between two worlds. It’s the same world and it’s – is it two aspects of this world? I can’t even say that. Yet it’s the SAME world; all is the Lord, He and nothing but He, only it’s.... And so subtle, so subtle: if you go like this (Mother tilts her hand slightly to the right), it’s perfectly harmonious; if you go like that (Mother tilts her hand slightly to the left), oof! It’s... it’s at once absurd, meaningless, and laborious, painful. But it’s the SAME thing! It’s all the same thing.

What is it?

There is such a strong impression of facing something which completely escapes comprehension, reason, intelligence, everything mental or intellectual (even the most elevated); it’s not that, it’s.... And then truly, if you stand back from it and employ big words, you would say, ‘All this (Mother tilts her hand to one side) is Truth, and all that (she tilts her hand to the other side) is Falsehood’ – but it’s the SAME thing! In one case, you have the sense of being carried – not only the body but the entire world, all circumstances – carried, floating in a beatific light towards an eternal Realization; and in the other case, it’s like this (Mother makes a gesture of being burdened), deadening, heavy, sorrowful – exactly the same thing! Almost the same material vibrations.

And it’s so subtle, so incomprehensible – there’s a distinct impression of it TOTALLY eluding even the highest conscious will. What is it? What is it?

If we found that, perhaps we would have it all – the total Secret.

That must have been how Truth became Falsehood. But ‘how’ – what is that ‘how’?

(silence)

And why did reading that book [On Himself] give me this malaise?

Oh, it was so lovely yesterday! The whole day – and all, all, all was the same as now – all the circumstances, the condition of the body, everything. It can’t even be said that in one case the body was well and in the other it wasn’t – it isn’t true, it was all the same thing, all was the same. But in one case you float – you float in a beatific light which carries you for all Eternity; and in the other case you seem to be walking through shifting sands... without seeing clearly, without understanding – deadened, absolutely deadened.

That’s why I had difficulty listening to you just now [during the work], because since last night I have been constantly facing this problem, and all morning long I’ve had to... you know, do like this (Mother clenches her fist, as though getting a grip on herself) in order to come here and listen. I didn’t feel like seeing anyone, doing anything... only staying like this (Mother keeps still, her arms at her sides) until that problem is willing to explain itself.

But if you had seen me yesterday.... I would probably have said nothing, but it was so lovely! Exactly the same thing, the same people, the same circumstances, the same conditions in the body. Everything, everything was the same.

But wasn’t it universal waves – wasn’t this malaise something cosmic rather than personal?

Yes, of course! It’s the universal Problem. That is my sole concern.

Something that veils?

I am up against this fact: how did Truth become Falsehood? I am not asking myself intellectually – that doesn’t interest me at all! It is here, in Matter, that the thing must be found.

It is double, it is double.

How did it happen? (But not just ‘how’ as in a story: the MECHANISM). And how will we get out of it?

You see, all the things that have been told, even all the things Sri Aurobindo has said (he has said the most in Savitri), all that is necessarily... (what can it be called?) mental, the super-intellectual spiritualized mind. But it is not THAT! It’s a form, it’s an image, it’s not... the concrete fact.

(silence)

And with a sort of prescience I see that only the body can know – that’s the extraordinary thing!

(silence)

And when the body makes this movement (gesture of stepping back from physical appearances) – what to call it? This movement of fusion (is it ‘fusion’?), of no longer being a separate body, of being the Divine – there is something which.... There is a sort of abstraction of something (and even that is putting it too concretely). And sometimes it succeeds, the body floats in the Light; sometimes it’s only partial. Sometimes all the inner consciousness is there, full and total – but HERE things remain as they are, stupid, stupid, utterly stupid! Blind, in shifting sands, painful (and it’s not a thought, it’s not even a sensation; I don’t know what it is).

And THERE the conscious will can do nothing. Nothing. All it could do it has done, and it continues to do all it can at each minute, and it’s nothing, it is not THAT – what is it??

That is a true Secret. How splendid it will be when it is found.

And at the same time there’s a kind of prescience, like a sensation beforehand, of an omnipotence – the TRUE Omnipotence. And nothing but THAT can satisfy you, nothing else – all the rest is... nothing.

24. June 1961 – Mother's work: helping people to leave their bodies

As I said, I have done nothing, neither one way nor the other. So don’t do anything. You know, from time to time when people are very sick, something comes out of them to indicate their will. But one has to be present, one has to hear it.

(silence)

There was an experience like that quite recently. A.’s mother was ill – old and seriously ill. Seeing her declining, A. wrote to me: ‘If the time has come, make it happen quickly – don’t let her suffer.’ Then I saw very clearly that there was still something in her which didn’t want to go; and when I applied the Force for the best to happen she suddenly began to recover! It must have coincided with a kind of inner aspiration in her – no more fever, she was feeling well. And A. began preparing to come back here. ‘If she’s recovering,’ he said, ‘there’s no longer any point in my staying!’ The same evening she had a relapse and he sent me a telegram. Meanwhile (it was evening) I had gone upstairs to ‘walk’; suddenly The Will came (which is a very, very rare thing), The Will: ‘Enough, now it must finish – it’s enough as it is.’ Within half an hour she was dead.

These things are very interesting. They must form part of the work I have come on earth to do. Because even before encountering Théon, before knowing anything, I had experiences at night, certain types of activities looking after people who were leaving their bodies – and with a knowledge of the process; I didn’t know what I was doing nor did I seek to know, yet I knew exactly what had to be done and I did it. I was around twenty.

As soon as I came upon Théon’s teaching (even before meeting him personally), and read and understood all kinds of things which I hadn’t known before, I began to work quite systematically. Every night, at the same hour, I was working to construct – between the purely terrestrial atmosphere and the psychic atmosphere – a path of protection across the vital, so that people wouldn’t have to pass through it (for those who are conscious but without knowledge it’s a very difficult passage – infernal.) I was preparing this path, doing this work (it must have been around 1903 or 1904, I don’t remember exactly) for months and months and months. All sorts of extraordinary things happened during that time – extraordinary. I could tell long stories....

Then, when I went to Tlemcen, I told Madame Théon about it. ‘Yes,’ she told me, ‘it is part of the work you have come on earth to do. Everyone with even a slightly awakened psychic being who can see your Light will go to your Light at the moment of dying, no matter where they die, and you will help them to pass through.’ And this work is constant. Constant. It has given me a considerable number of experiences concerning what happens to people when they leave their bodies. I’ve had all sorts of experiences, all kinds of examples – it’s really very interesting.

Lately it has increased, become more precise.

There is a boy here, V., who is especially interested in what happens at the moment of death (this seems to be one reason why he has reincarnated). He’s a conscious boy, a remarkable clairvoyant, and he has a power. And we have had (how to put it?) some quite interesting correlations of experiences concerning people who pass away here. Extremely interesting and extraordinarily precise: he sends word to me, I reply, and at night when the disincarnated person comes he says, ‘Mother has done this and says to do that,’ and the person does it. And we don’t need to speak – such precision!

This happens in sleep?

He might do this work in sleep, or sometimes in meditation, or in a kind of trance he enters into – it depends on the case.

I will give you a concrete example, then you’ll understand. When I.B. was killed, I had to gather up all his states of being and activities, which had been dispersed by the violence of the accident – it was terrible, he was in a dreadful state of dispersion. For two or two and a half days the doctors fought in the hope of reviving him, but it was impossible. During those two days I gathered up all his consciousness, all of it; I collected it over his body, to the point where, when it had come and formed itself there, such vitality, such life was coming back into his body that after some hours the doctors believed he would be saved. But it couldn’t last (it wasn’t possible – a part of the brain had come out). Well, when not only his soul but his mental being, his vital being, and all the rest had been properly collected and organized over his body and had realized that the body had become quite unusable, it was over – they gave up the body and it was over.

I was keeping I.B. near me because I already had the idea of putting him immediately back into another body – his soul was not satisfied, it had not finished its experience (there was a whole combination of circumstances) and it wanted to continue to live on earth. Then, that night, his inner being went to find V., lamenting, saying he was dead and hadn’t wanted to die, that he had lost his body and wanted to continue to live. V. was very perplexed. He let me know about it in the morning: ‘Here’s what has happened.’ I sent word to him of what I was doing, that I was keeping I.B. in my atmosphere and that he should stay very calm and not get excited, for I was going to put him back into a body as soon as possible – I already had something in view. The same evening I.B. again went to find V., with the same complaint. V. told him very clearly, ‘Here is what Mother says, here is what she is going to do; come now, be calm and don’t torment yourself.’ And he saw in I.B.’s face that he had understood (the inner being was taking on I.B.’s physical appearance, naturally); his face relaxed, he became content.

He went away and he never came back. That is, he stayed tranquilly with me, until I was able to put him into C’s child.

This correlation in the work is very interesting because it has quite practical effects – V. was able to communicate exactly what I had to say to I.B., and I.B. understood better through him than through me directly (because I do the work, but don’t have time to deal with all the details, to tell each individual what to do).

I was telling you the other day how vexing it is that we are all on different planes all the time, but on that particular plane it works very well with this boy – on this one point, this tiny, precise point concerning the moment of leaving the body. We can do interesting work this way.

Is one snatched up by the vital zone upon leaving the body?

No, it depends.

It depends entirely upon the way people die: on the way they leave their bodies, on what is around them, on the atmosphere created for them.

If they call me, then it goes well.

There have been very, very few cases, a quite minimal number, when people have called (not very sincerely) and their call hasn’t had much effect. But even these people have a protection. There was a woman here, an old woman who was not very sincere (she didn’t live here – she only came to visit) and the last time she visited she fell ill and died. Then I saw that she was completely dispersed into all her desires, all her memories, all her attachments... and it had all been scattered here and there, into all sorts of things (one part of her was seeking, seeking where to go and what to do); anyway, it was rather pitiful. Afterwards I was asked, ‘How did it happen? She was calling all the time.’ I replied that I had not heard her call – it must not have been very sincere, only a formula.

But it’s very rare that people get no response.

Not long ago M.’s sister died (psychologically, she was in a terrible state – she had no faith). Well, on that day, just when I came to know that she was passing away, I remember being upstairs in the bathroom communicating with Sri Aurobindo, having a sort of conversation with him (it happens very often), and I asked him, ‘What happens to such people when they die here at the Ashram?’ ‘Look,’ he replied, and I saw her passing away; and on her forehead, I saw Sri Aurobindo’s symbol in a SOLID golden light (not very luminous, but very concrete). There it was. And with the presence of this sign the psychological state no longer mattered – nothing touched her. And she departed tranquilly, tranquilly. Then Sri Aurobindo told me, ‘All who have lived at the Ashram and who die there have automatically the same protection, whatever their inner state.’

I can’t say I was surprised, but I admired the mighty power by which the simple fact of having been here and died here was sufficient to help you to the utmost in that transition.

But there are all sorts of cases. Take N.D., for example, a man who lived his whole life with the idea of serving Sri Aurobindo – he died clasping my photo to his breast. This was a consecrated man, very conscious, with an unfailing dedication, and all the parts of his being well organized around the psychic. The day he was going to leave his body little M. was meditating next to the Samadhi when suddenly she had a vision: she saw all the flowers of the tree next to the Samadhi (those yellow flowers I have called ‘Service’) gathering themselves together to form a big bouquet, and rising, rising straight up. And in her vision these flowers were linked with the image of N.D. She ran quickly to their house and – he was dead.

I only knew about this vision later, but on my side, when he left, I saw his whole being gathered together, well united, thoroughly homogenous, in a great aspiration, and rising, rising without dispersing, without deviating, straight up to the frontier of what Sri Aurobindo has called ‘the higher hemisphere,’ there where Sri Aurobindo in his supramental action presides over earth. And he melted into that light.

Some time before his heart attack he said to his children: the gown is old, it must be thrown away. (silence)

But people are so ignorant! They make such a fuss over death, as if it were the end – this word ‘death’ is so absurd! I see it as simply passing from one house into another or from one room to another; you take one simple step, you cross the threshold, and there you are on the other side – and then you come back.

Have I told you about the experience I had the day I suddenly found myself in Sri Aurobindo’s home in the subtle physical? Well, it’s as if I took a step and entered a far more concrete world than the physical – more concrete because things contain more truth. I spent a good while there with Sri Aurobindo and then, when it was over, I took another step and I found myself back here... slightly dumbfounded. It took me quite some time to regain my bearings here, because it was this world that seemed unreal to me, not the other.

But it’s simply that – you take a step, and you enter another room. And when you live in your soul there is a continuity, because the soul remembers, it keeps the whole memory; it remembers all occurrences, even outer occurrences, all the outer movements it has been associated with. So it’s a continuous, uninterrupted movement, here and there, from one room to another, from one house to another, from one life to another.

People are so ignorant! That’s what irritates those who have passed to the other side – people don’t understand, they shoo them away: ‘What does he want? Why does he bother me? He’s DEAD!’