February 1963

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19. February 1963 – The Creation as a whole

(An experience Mother had the day after the last conversation, on February 16:)

It was really very interesting. Afterwards it's just a memory, no longer the thing.... It concerned the creation of the material world, the material universe, in the light of the conception of the Supreme in love with His emanation. But the vision was all-embracing, as if I were on the other side – the side of the Supreme, not of the creation – and saw the creation as a whole, with the true sense of progress, the true sense of advance, of movement, and the true way in which all that doesn't belong to the future creation will disappear in a kind of pralaya (it can't really "disappear" but it will be withdrawn from the Manifestation). And it was very interesting: all that doesn't collaborate (in the sense that it is a sufficient experience, an experience that has come to its end) was reabsorbed. It was like the true vision of what was rendered as the Last Judgment. It is something going on constantly, that mighty "gust" of manifestation, and there are things that have been, according to our vision of time, but that live on, that continue to exist in the future; there are things that exhaust themselves (that's in the present), and there are things that have no more purpose, that cannot keep pace with the movement (I don't know how to explain this) and enter the Non-Being – the pralaya, the Non-Being, the unmanifest – of course, not in their forms but in their essence; that is to say, the Supreme in them remains the Supreme but unmanifest.

But it was all a living, palpable experience which lasted for a day and a half. The entire universal movement was LIVED and sensed. Not merely seen but lived – and in what light! What stupendous power! With that kind of certitude at the core of everything – something very odd. It's very difficult to express. But the experience lasted so long that it became perfectly familiar. To translate it into words I might say: it is the Supreme's way of seeing – of feeling, of living. I was living things the way He does. And it gives a power of certitude of realization. In the sense that what we are heading for is already here; the road we look back on, the road we have traveled and the road yet to travel, it all lives simultaneously. And with such logic! An eternal, wonderful superlogic which makes it obviousness itself – everything is obviousness itself. Struggle, effort, fear, all of that, oh, absolutely, absolutely nonexistent. And together with this, the explanation of the feeling we have of not wanting certain things any more: they leave the Manifest. You see, it's like a sieve into which everything is thrown and where He... to Him, everything, but everything is the same, but there is the vision of what He wants, and also of what is useless for what He wants or would prevent the fullness and totality of what He wants (contradictions of sorts, I don't know how to explain it) – so with that He just goes this way (gesture of reswallowing) and it goes out of the Manifestation.

At the time I could have said it in a more understandable language, while now...

I don't know how to explain it.... Putting it like this implies an arbitrary fiat, but there's no such thing: it isn't a "gentleman" who decides to withdraw certain things he no longer likes! It's not that way. They are things which, owing to their own propensity (what we might call their essential truth), had at a given moment their place in the Manifestation, and which, once they have lost their purpose, quite naturally leave the Manifestation – I could put it in fifty different ways just as poorly, I can't see how to explain it properly. But the fact was evident. It was part of such a wonderfully complete and harmonious Whole – that Harmony is beyond us, we cannot understand it, caught as we are in the sensation of opposites. But there, "opposites" do not exist, there are only things that... Like the fact of the Supreme seemingly dominated by His creation, wholly obedient to His creation – as though He had no power, no knowledge, no vision, so things follow their course in the chaos we know. Well, when we put it like this, there is something unbelievable and shocking about it, yet it was so very natural, so very true, and part of such a perfect whole!

Only, you cannot see it unless you see the whole. At the time, everything was preexistent, although unfolding in time for the Manifestation. But it was preexistent. Not preexistent as we understand it, not everything "at a given moment".... Oh, how impossible! It's impossible to express it. I still feel what I could call the "warmth" of the experience – the reality, the life, the warmth of the experience are there. You know, I have lived in a Light! A Light which isn't our light, which has nothing to do with what we call light, a Light so warm and powerful! A creative Light. So powerful!... Everything was so perfectly harmonious: everything, everything without exception, even the things that appear to be the very negation of divinity. And a rhythm! (gesture as of great waves) A harmony, so wonderful a TOTALITY, where the sense of sequence... Sequence doesn't mean things being like this (chopping gesture), one being abolished by the next, it is... At the time I might have been able to find or invent the words, I don't know, now... now, it's only the memory of it. The memory, not the presence itself.

The experience lasted long. It started in the night, lasted through the whole day, and last night there was still something of it lingering, but then... (laughing) I seemed to be told, "So then, aren't you going to move on? Are you going to stay with this experience, are you stuck there?!" It is so true: things move fast, fast, fast, and run as you may, you're still not going fast enough.

Last night or the night before, I was in Sri Aurobindo's house and he was telling me, "Some things are going wrong." And he showed me around his house. There were some pipes – big pipes – that had burst. "You see," he told me, "people have been careless." In some places they had taken away all the furniture and were cleaning up in a stupid way: "See," he said, "they don't do things the proper way." Then I understood it was the reflection of the way things happen here. And he was... (not angry, he is never angry), but people gave him a lot of bother, they were preventing him from doing his work: I would come in a room and try to arrange a corner because he wanted to write, but it was impossible, the whole setup made it impossible for him to have even a decent corner where he could write – then at other times, it would be quite fine. Because it changes continuously. The layout of rooms has an inner meaning – it MEANS something – so it always stays the same as if the setting stayed unchanged (because it's not a house built from an architect's plan! It's his own house, which he has arranged according to his taste, so it stays that way). But people seem to have unrestricted entry there, and everyone wants to do something, to make himself "useful," (laughing) so it's terrible! This is what erased my experience or pushed it back into the realm of memories. As though he were saying, "Don't be too concerned with universal things, because over here (laughing) things aren't too smooth!"

21. February 1963 – Message

(Message given by Mother for February 21:)

The boon that we have asked from the Supreme is the greatest that the Earth can ask from the Highest, the change that is most difficult to realise, the most exacting in its conditions. It is nothing less than the descent of the supreme Truth and Power into Matter, the supramental established in the material plane and consciousness and the material world and an integral transformation down to the very principle of Matter. Only a supreme Grace can effect this miracle.

The supreme Power has descended into the most material consciousness but it has stood there behind the density of the physical veil, demanding before manifestation, before its great open workings can begin, that the conditions of the supreme Grace shall be there, real and effective.

A total surrender, an exclusive self-opening to the divine influence, a constant and integral choice of the Truth and rejection of the falsehood, these are the only conditions made. But these must be fulfilled entirely, without reserve, without any evasion or presence, simply and sincerely down to the most physical consciousness and its workings.

Sri Aurobindo

23. February 1963 – How to remember dreams?

Simply for want of training. If you train yourself, you remember quite well. There are small holes in the consciousness, gaps, and when you go through such a gap you forget. You may suddenly get a fleeting impression of something, and then it eludes you – oh, it's gone! Only, it takes a long time to train yourself; you shouldn't be in a hurry or too busy. I went through it at a time when I was bedridden for five months. I had nothing to do. (You can't keep reading all the time – during those five months I read some eight hundred books... no, nine hundred and fifty! But it tires the eyes.) So the rest of the time (you can't sleep too much either when you're in bed all the time), I trained myself: that was when I learned to have completely conscious nights. But it's a discipline. When you wake up, either in the middle of the night or in the morning, don't budge, stay absolutely still, concentrated, very silent, and PULL the memory back. For one month, two months, you seem to get nowhere; after six months it begins to work; and eventually you remember everything. At the end, you do the opposite movement, in the sense that whenever you have an interesting dream, you wake up: you learn to wake up in the middle of the night every time you have a vision or a dream, or some activity (there are various cases), so that you can remember, and then you repeat it to your consciousness (once you're awake, you repeat it to yourself two or three or ten times, till you're certain not to forget), and then off you go again.

But you can't do that if, when morning comes, you have to leap out of your bed and attend to fifty thousand pressing matters. It isn't indispensable for the yoga, not at all. It's a hobby, rather, something to amuse yourself with.

23. February 1963 – An IMMENSITY of Power

Yesterday evening (was it yesterday?... No, the day before), when I went out on the balcony- terrace, the difference in perception between the consciousness I have now and the one I had before felt enormous! Before, as I have always said, I would stay there, call the Lord, be in His presence, and only when He withdrew would I come in again – that's how it was. And I had a certain relationship with people, things, the outside world ("outside," well, not outside – anyway, the world). The day before yesterday, when I went to the balcony, I wasn't thinking of anything or observing anything, I simply went – I didn't want to know what was going on, it didn't interest me, I wasn't observing.... The other experience [of the previous balcony, one year ago] seemed to go back centuries! It was so much OTHER! And so spontaneous, so natural, and so immense too!... The earth was tiny. Yet it was very much here: I wasn't "over there," the BODY itself was feeling that way. And at the same time (I was two floors above people), every time I looked, I recognized scores and scores of people, they seemed to leap to my eyes – a crystal clear vision, much sharper (the vision I had before was always a bit hazy because what I saw wasn't entirely physical: I saw the movement of forces), and yesterday, it was as if... as if I had risen above the very possibility of haziness! It was far less physical – FAR MORE accurate.

Formerly too, I used to sense the Force, the Consciousness, the Power concentrated in a particular point and then spreading out. While here, there was an IMMENSITY of Power, of Light, of Consciousness, of perception, concentrated in a tiny point: the people gathered there.

So colossal a difference that I didn't expect it – I wasn't thinking about it nor was I expecting it. I stayed there as long as it lasted, then at a certain point someone said, "That's enough, they are getting tired." (It wasn't I who said it.) "Enough, they can't take any more." So I came back inside. That's what made me come inside. It lasted five minutes. In five minutes, they were full to bursting.

I think this body has become another person, it's not the same any more. It's no longer what it used to be. Yet the memory of its earthly existence hasn't gone, it isn't another body. Yet it is another person. I am referring here only to the material consciousness (Mother touches her body). The other thing up there (gesture above) is all very easy to explain, the work was done long ago, that's not what I mean – no, it's here. The change is HERE. It's odd.