December 1968

Index

04. December 1968 – The body’s tapasya

There are many people who could kill if they had the courage to.

In their feelings, they do kill.

(silence)

The body's tapasya is something quite interesting, really interesting. The body... You know, its modesty is total; it has a keen sense of all its limitations, all its incapacities, all its ignorance, all... and at the same time — at the same time — the ABSOLUTE sense of the divine Presence, absolute; and a divine Presence that can break everything to pieces if it wants to. It's quite interesting.... A Presence with such power! A power... which is incalculable, with no possible comparison with earthly things.

The body has a very, very strong impression (a sort of awareness) that its sufferings stem from its incapacity. There's a sort of perception that it has a HABIT of turning into suffering something it can't bear.

(silence)

I saw Z just before. She was in full revolt, because long ago I had told her something she didn't understand regarding films [shown at the Ashram] (it's not exactly that, but anyway), and she slipped into a hole. So she was here (I was holding her hand), and this body felt it was all the same kind of matter — this sort of commonality and identity — and it was at once amused and very sweet. And then, there was here, like that, such an awesome Power, mon petit; the body was conscious That could crush a being to a pulp. And It remained like that (gesture of a quiet witness), not acting. The Power, which has the capacity to manifest with the vital power (It dominates the vital and has the capacity to use it), and which can dissolve things in perfect stillness. It's extraordinary.

But the body isn't mistaken, it knows what it is. It knows what it is. And it knows one thing, that it's only when (and because) it can be absolutely peaceful — peaceful like something completely transparent and still — that this Power can act. The body knows. It knows the only thing asked of it is that total, transparent stillness.

(silence)

The body is very simple, it has a child's simplicity. This morning it was assailed with visions — not "visions," I don't know what to call them... they weren't exactly recollections, but things coming and all of them expressing hatred, violence (all that side, you know), and the body saw, it saw and felt, and said so spontaneously (it continues to be in this constant communion with the divine Presence), it said to the Lord, "Why do You carry all that in Yourself?" With a child's candor and simplicity: "Why do You carry all that in Yourself?" And just when it said that, there was a sort of vision, a vision extended over the whole earth of all the horrors constantly committed on it: "Why do You carry...?" So then, the Answer is always, always the same (it's like this, it's here like this [gesture around the head]): "In my Consciousness, things are different." Or, "In my Consciousness, things have a different appearance." And there was this insistence: "Work to have the true consciousness." The TRUE consciousness that contains everything.

And this morning, the body understood: the problem was very clearly understood. (None of this is thought out, I don't know how to explain... it's not positively sensations, but... it's perceptions... I don't know [Mother feels the air with her fingers].) But the body clearly understood why division is, for a while, for the growth of the being, necessary. Because if there were from the start the perception it now has of everything within the Lord, absolutely everything, for instance all the things that even not so long ago (though in a different way) were still giving it a sort of horror — certain kinds of cruelty, certain things were really giving the body a sense of horror... Now it's no longer like that, but it still can't be happy with such things; it can be indifferent (gesture of a Witness), — but it can't be happy. And it has understood why that horror was necessary; why there was a time when the manifested world, the world of manifestation, needed to appear outside and separate from the Lord.... (After a silence) One must... one must have that immutable Peace, one must be as vast as the universe to be able to bear the idea that EVERYTHING is the supreme Lord.

And the body has understood that it's only now it has the experience because it's only now it is sufficiently conscious and surrendered (surrendered in the true sense; I might almost say "identified," but that's too high-sounding a word, it doesn't want to use it, it knows it's not like that and identification will be something else), but quite simply that it's now capable and ready to bear the idea that everything is the Lord, that there is NOTHING but the Lord. Previously, for quite a long time, it still needed to feel that all these movements (gesture forward) lead to the Lord, while all those movements (gesture backward) lead away from the Lord. For a long time, the choice was necessary. And now, now it's doing its tapasya to be able to bear this idea — but without admitting or accepting movements of degradation and cruelty.... That is, with the nascent impression that things are not what they seem to be; that we only see the appearance and they are not what they seem to be.

But the brain cannot understand. The Mind can speculate on anything, but this is something else, the mind isn't there. The brain, its capacity... (Mother remains gazing).

No later than this morning, the whole morning, there was... (what should I call it?) it has the nature of wonderment, but not the joy of wonderment, and it doesn't have the stupidity of bewilderment, it's... something... a state, yes. The body notes the way life is (or at least the way life is for our outer, active consciousness), the way life is, the way it APPEARS to be... and it's very hard for it not to say, "Why, why, why? WHY?.." And then, when it sits looking like that, it becomes sad, sad, so very sad; then it feels that's not the thing. And what's that sadness?... It must be... it must be the door that leads to something else... which it doesn't yet understand.

Why, why is this world like this, why? Why all these horrors, why?... That's how the body was this morning. And it has the impression — just as it has that very strong, very strong sensation of being within the Lord — it has the impression of what that leads to, of what is to come. And then, with TOTAL trust, total.... But it doesn't yet know.

It's all the time — constantly, unceasingly — all the time brought face to face with this experience that when you are like this (Mother tips two fingers on one side), that is, turned to the Divine, things work out miraculously — miraculously... it's unbelievable; and being like that (Mother tips two fingers on the other side) is enough for everything to be disgusting, to go wrong, to grate: a TINY LITTLE movement either of trusting opening, or of the ordinary consciousness (not at all a consciousness of revolt or negation, not at all: merely the ordinary consciousness, the consciousness of life as people have it — the ordinary consciousness), and it's enough... things become appalling; and then, like this (gesture in the other direction): miraculously marvelous. For microscopic, unimportant things, you understand, that is to say, for EVERYTHING — no question of "important" or "unimportant" things, nothing of that sort — for everything it becomes simply miraculous, yet it's the same thing! In one case you are in pain, you suffer, you are miserable, you even fall ill, and in the other case... And it's the same thing.

But it has reached the point where now the body is quite astounded that one can live the ordinary life with the ordinary consciousness and be contented! It finds that appalling, you know, appalling. And that way of living in chaos, ugliness, wickedness, selfishness, violence, oh... and cruelty and all possible horrors, and of finding it all perfectly natural.... That's when the body says to itself, "It must be... it must have been necessary as a stage in the development, and it's an effect of the Grace, so there's nothing to say, there's only to admire."

But it's absolutely certain — absolutely certain — that if the world, if the creation were as it appears to be to this bodily consciousness as it now is, there would be only one thing to do — to blot it out!... That's obviously the explanation of, and justification for, all nihilistic religions and philosophies. It takes a thoroughly unconscious insensitiveness to be able to live happily and contentedly in this horror that is the world. And all this... IS the Lord, and not only IS the Lord but is WITHIN the Lord; that is to say, it's not as we imagine it — things that were driven away, rejected — not at all, not at all: all this is there WITHIN the Lord.... So there.

You see, the body has this experience of being completely disorganized, of having a cold, a pain here, a pain there... and when it's in a certain attitude (we may call it an attitude, I don't know), at any rate in a certain state of consciousness: vanished! All that no longer exists, there's not a trace — there's no cold anymore, no pain anymore, nothing anymore, it's all gone! Though it's ready to come back.... And not only gone (which would be a psychological phenomenon), but the CIRCUMSTANCES of people and things around CHANGE! They become different: in one case, everything is like that — stubborn, twisted — and in the other...

(long silence)

So as a matter of fact, the body's advantage over the mind is that it understands very well (for it, it's natural) that all that way of seeing and speaking is only a way of seeing and speaking; you may have the opposite way and it may be just as true, and yet another way would be quite true, and finally all that one says and thinks is only... ways of seeing. The mind has difficulty with that, but the body knows it very well, very well. But...

The body knows a state in which it doesn't sleep in the ordinary way (what's called "sleep"), and instead there is a state (which we might call a state of harmony, but not active, very still) in which time no longer exists, that is to say, the body may spend two hours, three hours like that, thinking it was five minutes. Now that's how nights are. It's becoming more and more frequent. And I have an impression that's what would change your sleep (I've been thinking about it often, almost every day), like this: going into that state, which isn't at all the ordinary sleep in which you have dreams and activities and the subconscious is so active — no, nothing of the sort.

All that is something beginning. We must have patience.

11. December 1968 – The Divine deep within you

(Then Mother listens to an old Playground Talk of July 22, 1953.)

These are things I would certainly no longer write now!... But anyway, they are true on their level (gesture at ground level).

(silence)

The experience is continuing and becoming increasingly conscious and almost practical. When someone comes, I seem to see... almost to measure the quantity of veils preventing him from seeing and feeling the supreme Consciousness. It has become very interesting: someone is in front of me, I look at him or her, concentrating and concentrating and concentrating until the contact with the supreme Consciousness is established, and I can measure the reaction: with some, when they are here, it's very difficult to make contact; with others (and it's very unexpected, it has nothing to do with what one may think — it's extraordinary, extraordinary!), with some others, instantly it goes hup! like this (gesture of piercing a veil) and contact is made — sometimes with quite unexpected people; with others who do the sadhana, who are quite consecrated, who... it takes such labor! It's really interesting. Really interesting. But then, some people, once contact has been made, won't budge anymore! (I doubt they are aware of what it is, but they won't budge anymore.) Others, on the contrary, start going like this (tremulous gesture), they wouldn't mind leaving! (Mother laughs) It's hugely interesting!

I remember the time when I used to speak of a "bath of the Lord" which I gave [people] — that business seems to me quite outdated, it's not that! It's... The Lord is there, everywhere and always! (I say "the Lord" so as to avoid making lengthy sentences, but sometimes I say "the supreme Consciousness" to be less — what shall I say? — less childish, because all that is childish, everything we say.) But the experience is becoming more and more wonderful.

How far away I was when I spoke like that [the 1953 talk]! How far away I was.... It was a mental transcription. Well, it doesn't matter; it amuses people. They understand that; what I may do now, they don't understand. And then...

There still remains the habit of saying "I," but I think that's because otherwise, expressing oneself would become very difficult. But I don't think like that, I don't know what that "I" is; what speaks is... it's the consciousness which is specially concerned with the work of this body. You see, this body is used for a work, and there is a Consciousness delegated to be specially concerned with that — that's it a bit more precisely, but we can't always be making sentences!

But how interesting it is!... At times, oh, it becomes so beautiful! And at other times it's so difficult! It takes such a labor, and sometimes (laughing) with people who have the finest reputation!... It's really interesting. I am myself surprised.

(silence)

As soon as one speaks, the consciousness goes down. But that's not necessarily to make itself understood, it's because the consciousness is too subtle for the words at our disposal.

(long meditation)

I don't know if I'll ever be able to say things in an expressive way... for the time being, words are terrible veils.

The body is something very, very simple and very childlike, and it has that experience so imperatively, you understand, it doesn't need to "seek": it just has to stop its activity for a minute and... it's there. So then, it wonders why people haven't been aware of that since the beginning? It wonders, "Why, why have they sought all kinds of things — religions, gods... all kinds of things — when it's so simple!" So simple, for the body it's so simple, so self-evident.

All those constructions — religions, philosophies... all those constructions — are a need of the mind to... "play the game." It wants to play the game well. While the body is so simple, so simple, so obvious! So obvious, so simple: "Why," it wonders, "Why, why have they been seeking all kinds of complications... when it's so simple?" The very fact of saying, "The Divine is deep within you"... (it remembers its own experience, you understand) is so complicated, while it's so simple!

It can't explain, can't express, there are no words, but it has a sort of conscious perception of... (Mother makes a slight twisting gesture with the tips of her fingers) what distorts and veils. And that's what has become reality for all human consciousnesses.

It's hard to express.

For the body it's becoming such an obvious fact.... It wonders how one can think otherwise, feel otherwise? It's so obvious.

(silence)

You can't imagine the impression I got while listening [to the 1953 Talk]! I felt as if I were going back many lives in time!...

Oh, above all it's this "I," this huge I in everyone, which comes — comes to falsify everything. But the body is beginning to wonder how, how one can... how? It's not a thought, it's a sort of sensation, I don't know, of perception (language is BELOW its consciousness; it says "I" out of habit; maybe out of need to make itself understood, but mostly out of habit), and the "I"...? It's so conscious that there's ONE I (gesture with one finger pointing above).

(Mother smiles, shakes her head and remains silent)

Very well. We must wait — patience, patience — until everything is ready.

14. December 1968 – Mother’s message

They came in succession. It's the experience I had at that moment:

"When one lives in the Truth, one is above all contradictions."

The other two came afterwards:

"Living in the Truth means being above all contradictions."

Then:

"He who lives in the Truth is above all contradictions and all oppositions."

It's completely silent here (gesture to the forehead); I just turn (gesture upward) and wait, and I think what comes first is the purest, that is, the least mixed with activities; afterwards, it's as if here in the atmosphere it got mixed with mental vibrations.

21. December 1968 – The body’s experience

"While describing her experiences of last August and September, the Mother refers to the 'exclusion of the mind and vital.' Why do they have to be eliminated for a rapid and effective transformation of the body? Doesn't the supramental consciousness act on them too?"

Certainly it acts! It's ALREADY been acting, for a long time. It's because the body is used (was used) to obeying the vital and especially the mind, so it's to change its habit, to make it obey the higher Consciousness alone. That's why. It's to make things go faster. In people, That acts through the mind and vital — and as I said, it's safer that way. As an experience it's rather risky, but it makes things move considerably faster, because normally you must act on the body through those two, whereas in that way, with them absent, That acts directly. That's all.

As questions go, this one is innocent.

The process isn't to be recommended! Every time I have an opportunity, I say so: people mustn't imagine they should try to do that (they couldn't, but that doesn't matter), it's not recommended. One should take the time needed. But that was because of the number of years... to make things go faster.

(silence)

The strange thing is that there are kinds of demonstrations of the body's natural tendency (I suppose it's not the same thing for all bodies: it depends on the way it was built, that is, father, mother, antecedents, and so on), a demonstration of the body left to itself. This one, for instance, has a sort of imagination (it's something odd), a dramatic imagination: it constantly feels it's living catastrophes; and then, with its faith, which remains there, the catastrophe is turned into a realization; things of that sort, absurd. So for a while it's left to that imagination (that's what happened these last few days), and when it's sufficiently tired of that idiotic activity, it prays, you know, with all its intensity it prays for it to cease! Instantly, hup! the thing just goes like this (gesture of reversal), it turns around at one stroke, and the body is in a contemplation (not a faraway one, very close) of this wonderful Presence which is everywhere.

It goes like this, and like that (Mother abruptly turns over two fingers): it takes no time, there's no preparation or anything, it goes hup! hup! like this (same gesture), as if to show the body's stupidity. It's something perfectly idiotic, like a factual demonstration of the stupidity of the body left to itself, and then of this wonderful Consciousness which comes and in which all that vanishes like... something that has no consistency, no reality — it vanishes. And like a demonstration that it's not just in imagination but in the FACT: a demonstration of the Power at work for all this... vain dream of life as it is (which, for the consciousness of this body, has become something so frightful), for it to be turned into a marvel, like that, simply through the turning around of the consciousness.

The experience is repeated in every detail, every field, like a demonstration through fact. And it's not a "long process" of transformation: it's like something turning around all at once (Mother turns over two fingers), and instead of seeing ugliness, falsehood, horror, suffering and all that, the body suddenly lives in bliss. And all things have remained the same, nothing has changed, except the consciousness.

So there remains the question (this is something ahead, it's probably coming): how is the experience to express itself materially?... For the body itself, it's perfectly obvious: for, say, an hour, or two, or three, it suffered a lot, very miserable (not a moral suffering: a wholly physical suffering), then all of a sudden, brrff! all gone.... The body has apparently remained the same (Mother looks at her hands), in its appearance, but instead of an inner disorder that makes it suffer, everything is fine, and there's a great peace, a great tranquillity — everything is fine. But that's for ONE body — how does that act on others?... It's beginning to perceive the possibility in other consciousnesses. On the moral level (that is to say, the level of attitudes, character, reactions), it's very visible; even sometimes on the physical level: something suddenly disappears — as we had the experience when Sri Aurobindo would remove a pain (Mother shows a hand of the subtle physical coming and taking away the pain), we would wonder... "Ah!" Gone, vanished, like that. But it's not constant, not general, it's only to show it can be like that through the fact that it happens in one case or another — to show that things CAN be like that.

We might put it this way: the body has the sense of being shut inside something — shut in, yes — shut as if inside a box, but it can see through; it sees and can also have an action (though limited) THROUGH something that's still there and which must disappear. That "something" gives a sense of imprisonment. How is it to disappear?... That I don't know yet.

There must be found the relationship between the consciousness in ONE body and the consciousness of the whole. And the extent of the dependence, and the extent of the independence; that is, how far the body can be transformed in its consciousness (and, necessarily as a result, in its appearance), how it can be transformed without... without the transformation of the whole — how far? And to what extent is the transformation of the whole necessary to the transformation of the body? That remains to be discovered.

(silence)

The vision is very clear of the collective progress (our field of experience is the earth) which has taken place on earth; but if we go by the past, a tremendous length of time would still seem to be necessary for the whole to be ready to change.... Yet there is almost a promise that... there is going to be an abrupt change — what, in our consciousness, is expressed as a "descent," an action "taking place": something that wasn't acting until now and which is beginning to act (that's how it's expressed in our consciousness).

We'll see.

As for the body itself, there is a growing experience, that is, increasingly precise, AT THE SAME TIME of its fragility (extreme fragility: a tiny little movement may put an end to its present existence), and at the same time — both at once, simultaneously — the sense of an eternity! the sense of having eternal existence. Both at the same time.

It's really a transitional period!

(silence)

Once or twice, when its... what we might call its "anguish of knowing" was very intense, when it had the full sense of the Presence — the sense of the Presence everywhere, within, everywhere (Mother touches her face and hands) — it wondered how (not even why, no such curiosity), HOW COME the present disorder? Well, when that was very intense, very intense, once or twice it got the impression: once that is found, it means immortality.

So it's constantly pushing, pushing like that to catch hold of the secret; you feel you're about to find it, and then... Then there's a sort of lull in the aspiration: peace, peace, peace.... You know, once or twice, the impression: "Ah! It's going to be understood" ("understood," that is, LIVED; it's not "understood" with the thought — lived), and then... (gesture of eluding). And a Peace coming down.

But the impression: "It will be for tomorrow." But "tomorrow"... what tomorrow? — Not tomorrow on our scale.

We'll see.

But the experiences are innumerable, with all aspects. It would take hours to tell — even then, you always feel that speaking, yes, warps something. It's no longer as simple, no longer as beautiful, no longer as clear. It becomes complicated.

The body has absolutely wonderful moments — and HOURS of anguish. And all of a sudden, a wonderful moment. But that moment can't be expressed.... If we are to judge the degree of development from the proportion of time, well... the wonderful moment lasts for a few minutes, and there are hours of anguish. There are even hours of suffering. So if, from that, you judge the proportion, there's still a very, very long, extremely long way to go....

But what can we do? We can only keep going, that's all.

28. December 1968 – The universal box

(Then Mother listens to the conversation of December 21: the "universal box.")

It's going on, day after day after day.

And the same thing never happens twice: either it's another spot in the body having the experience (another activity, another movement in the body), or it's an unresolved detail, or else... There's a whole field—a huge field—of studies and observations, precisely about the relationship with other bodies and the extent to which this body does work for other bodies. It's very interesting—oh, very interesting! Because all that is taking place without the intermediary of thought. So the body has a sensation or an experience, or it perceives a disorder, or... and it acts on that; then, after a while, it notices it's not about itself, it's another [body]. That's how it acts.

All that still seems to be in a limited field, but I am not sure it's not far more general. All the time (almost all the time), there seems to be an intervention of the psychic, as if the psychic made the body remember (I don't know how to put it), made the body remember its universality, and as if it weren't only for itself that the body is expressing movements of consciousness — the movements of the higher Consciousness that it expresses: the effect is general.

We'll know that. We'll know all that... later, in...

But the body has a strange sensation, really strange, of being as vast as the earth, even vaster (it can't be expressed, because that's not the true way of saying it), but there's something like this: a sort of inner identity expressing itself in the plane... (Mother searches for words)... In the higher Consciousness, it has an effect. I don't know how to put it.

And in that consciousness, the strange thing is the importance of one minute, which to our consciousness is nothing — there it has an importance.... In one minute, something... general can be done. Naturally, all words are stupid, but that's how it is. One minute.

In one minute... To such a point that the body perceives that one minute like this (Mother slightly rotates two fingers) is a victory; and one minute like that (Mother rotates her two fingers the other way) is a catastrophe. And not only for itself (for itself, it's on a small scale and concentrated, it's not the same thing), but it's general.

It's an observation that began today (for hours, you know), and quite acutely. But it's new — new in its ASPECT; it's the continuation of all that preceded, but in the aspect it has taken on, it's completely new. In other words, the body consciousness may be becoming aware of it in a new way.

All that is an approximation. After some time, maybe it will be more precise.

It's the quality of time that's changing.

There's a sort of intensity of consciousness that alters the value of time (I don't know how to put it).

It's a beginning.

We'll see.