The Mother

Agenda

Volume 5

March 25, 1964

101 – In God's sight there is no near or distant, no present, past or future. These things are only a convenient perspective for His world-picture.

102 – To the senses it is always true that the sun moves round the earth; this is false to the reason. To the reason it is always true that the earth moves round the sun; this is false to the supreme vision. Neither earth moves nor sun; there is only a change in the relation of sun-consciousness and earth-consciousness.

(long silence)

Impossible, I can't say anything.

It implies that our habitual perception of the physical world is a false perception.

Yes, naturally.

  But then, what would the true perception be like?...

Well, yes, that's the question!

... The true perception of the physical world – of trees, of people, of a stone – what would it be like to a supramental eye?

That's exactly what cannot be said! When you have the vision and consciousness of the Truth-Order, of that which is DIRECT, the direct expression of the Truth, you immediately feel something inexpressible, because all words belong to the other sphere; all images, all comparisons, all expressions belong to the other sphere.

I had precisely that great difficulty (it was on February 29): all the time while I was living in that consciousness of the DIRECT manifestation of the Truth, I tried to formulate what I was feeling, what I was seeing – it was impossible. There were no words. And immediately, merely formulating things made me instantly fall back into the other consciousness.

On that occasion, the memory of this aphorism on the sun and the earth came back to me.... Even to say a “change of consciousness”... a change of consciousness is still a movement.

I don't think we can say anything. I don't feel capable of saying anything, because all that you can say is uninteresting approximations.

But when you are in that Truth-Consciousness, is it a “subjective” experience, or does Matter itself really change in its appearance?

Yes, everything – the whole world is different! Everything is different. And the experience has convinced me of one thing, which I am still feeling constantly: that both states [of Truth and Falsehood] are simultaneous, concomitant, and there's only... yes, a “change of consciousness,” as he calls it, which means that you are in this consciousness or in that consciousness, and yet you're not moving.

We are forced to use words of movement because, for us, everything moves, but that change of consciousness isn't a movement – it isn't a movement. So then how can we speak about it and describe it?...

Even if we say “a state that takes the place of another”... takes the place... we immediately introduce movement – all our words are like that, what can we say?...

Yesterday again, the experience was quite concrete and powerful: it isn't necessary to move, or to move anything, for this Truth-Consciousness to replace the consciousness of deformation or distortion. In other words, the capacity to live in and be this true Vibration – essential and true – seems to have the power to SUBSTITUTE this Vibration for the vibration of Falsehood and Distortion, to such an extent that... For instance, the outcome of Distortion or of the vibration of distortion should naturally have been an accident or catastrophe, but if, within those vibrations, there is a consciousness that has the power to become aware of the Vibration of Truth and therefore manifest the Vibration of Truth, it can – it must – cancel the other vibration. Which would be translated, in the external phenomenon, by an intervention that would stop the catastrophe.

There is a growing feeling that the True is the only way to change the world; that all the other processes of slow transformation are always at a tangent (you draw nearer and nearer but you never arrive), and that the last step must be this – the substitution of the true Vibration.

There are partial proofs. But as they are partial, they aren't conclusive. Because, to the ordinary vision and understanding, you can always find explanations: you can say it was “foreseen” and “predestined” that the accident would miscarry, for example, and that consequently that intervention isn't at all what made it miscarry – it was “Determinism” that had decided it. And how do you prove anything? How do you even prove to yourself that it is otherwise? It's not possible.

You see, as soon as we express things we enter the mind, and as soon as we enter the mind there's that kind of logic, which is frightful because it is all-powerful: if everything has already been existing and coexisting from all eternity, how can you change one thing into another?... How can anything at all “change”?

We are told (Sri Aurobindo himself has just said it) that to the Lord's consciousness there is neither past nor time nor movement nor anything – everything is. In order to translate, we say “from all eternity,” which is nonsense, but anyway, everything IS. So everything is (Mother folds her arms), and then it's all over, there's nothing more to be done! You understand, this conception, or rather this manner of speaking (because it's only a manner of speaking) nullifies the sense of progress, nullifies evolution, nullifies... We are told: it's part of the Determinism that you should strive to progress – yes, all this is rhetorical gibberish.

And, mind you, this manner of speaking is one minute of experience, but it's NOT the total experience. For a moment you feel this way, but it's not total, it's partial. It's only ONE way of feeling, it isn't all. There is in the eternal consciousness something far deeper and far more inexpressible than this – far more. This is only the first stupefaction you have when you emerge from the ordinary consciousness, but it isn't all. It isn't all. When the memory of this aphorism came back to me these last few days, I felt it was only a little glimpse you have all of a sudden and a sense of opposition between the two states, but it isn't all – it isn't all. There is something other than this.

There is something else, which is something altogether different from what we understand, BUT WHICH IS TRANSLATED INTO WHAT WE UNDERSTAND.

And That we cannot say. We cannot say what it is because... it's inexpressible – inexpressible.

It amounts to feeling that all that, in our ordinary consciousness, becomes false, distorted, crooked, is ESSENTIALLY TRUE for the Truth-Consciousness. But how is it true? This is precisely something that cannot be said with words, because words belong to the Falsehood.

Does this mean that the materiality of the world wouldn't be canceled by this Consciousness, but would be transfigured?... Or would it be another world altogether?

(silence)

We should be clear on one point.... I am afraid that what we call “Matter” is precisely the world's false appearance.

There is something that CORRESPONDS, but...

You see, this aphorism would eventually lead to an absolute subjectivity, and only that absolute subjectivity would be true – well, it's NOT like that. Because that means “pralaya,” it means Nirvana. Well, there isn't only Nirvana, there is an objectivity that's real, not false – but how can you say what it is!... It's something I have felt several times – several times, not just in a flash: the reality of... (How can we express ourselves? We are always deceived by our words)... In the perfect sense of Oneness and in the consciousness of Oneness there is room for the objective, for objectivity – one doesn't destroy the other, not at all. You may have the sense of a differentiation; not that it isn't yourself, but it's a different vision.... I told you, all that we can say is nothing, it's nonsense, because the purpose of words is to express the unreal world, but... Yes, that may be what Sri Aurobindo calls the sense of “Multiplicity in Unity” (maybe that corresponds a little), just as you feel the internal multiplicity of your being, something of that sort.... I don't at all have the sensation of a separate self anymore, not at all, not at all, not even in the body, yet that doesn't prevent me from having a certain sense of an objective relationship – well, yes, it leads us back to his “change in the relation of sun-consciousness and earth-consciousness.” (Laughing) Maybe that's really is the best way of putting it! It's a relation of consciousness. It isn't at all the relationship between oneself and “others” – not at all, that's entirely canceled – but it might be like the relation of consciousness between the various parts of one's being. And it gives objectivity to those various parts, obviously.

(long silence)

To come back to that very easily understood example of the aborted accident, we may very well conceive that the intervention of the Truth-Consciousness had been decided “from all eternity” and that there isn't any “new” element; but that does nothing to alter the fact that this intervention is what stopped the accident (which gives an exact image of the power of this true consciousness over the other one). If we project our way of being onto the Supreme, we may conceive that He enjoys carrying out many experiments to see how it all plays (this is something else, it doesn't follow that there isn't an All-Consciousness that knows all things from all eternity – all this with utterly inadequate words), but that does nothing to alter the fact that, when we look at the process, this intervention is what was able to make the accident miscarry: the substitution of a true consciousness for a false consciousness stopped the process of the false consciousness.

And it seems to me it occurs often enough – much more often than people think. For example every time an illness is cured, every time an accident is avoided, every time a catastrophe, even a global one, is avoided, all that is always the intervention of the Vibration of Harmony into the vibration of Disorder, allowing Disorder to cease.

So the people, the faithful, who always say, “Through the Divine Grace this has happened,” aren't so wrong.

I only note the fact that it is this Vibration of Order and Harmony that intervened (we're not concerned with the reasons for its intervention, this is only a scientific observation), and of this I've had a fairly large number of experiences.

So that would be the process of transformation of the world?

Yes.

An increasingly constant embodying of this Vibration of Order.

Yes, exactly, that's it. Exactly.

Even from that point of view, I have seen... You know, the ordinary idea that the phenomenon [of transformation] must necessarily occur first in the body in which the Consciousness is expressed the most constantly seems to me quite unnecessary and secondary. On the contrary, it occurs at the same time wherever it can occur the most easily and totally, and this aggregate of cells (Mother points to her own body) isn't necessarily the most ready for this operation. It may therefore remain a very long time as it apparently is, even if its understanding and receptivity are special. I mean that this body's awareness, its conscious perception is infinitely superior to the one all the bodies it comes into contact with can have, except for a few minutes – a few minutes – when other bodies, as if through a grace, have the Perception. While for it, it's a natural and constant state; it's the effective result of this Truth-Consciousness being more constantly concentrated on this collection of cells than on others – more directly. But the substitution of one vibration for another in facts, in actions, in objects, occurs wherever the result is the most striking and effective.

I don't know if I can make myself understood, but it is something I have felt very, very clearly, and which one cannot feel as long as the physical ego is there, because the physical ego has the sense of its own importance, and that disappears entirely with the physical ego. When it disappears, one has a clear perception that the intervention or manifestation of the true Vibration doesn't depend on egos or individualities (human or national individualities, or even individualities of Nature: animals, plants and so on), it depends on a certain play of the cells and Matter in which there are aggregates particularly favorable for the transformation to occur – not “transformation”: the substitution, to be precise, the substitution of the Vibration of Truth for the vibration of Falsehood. And the phenomenon may be very independent of groupings and individualities (it may happen in one part here, another part there, one thing here, another thing there); and it always corresponds to a certain quality of vibration that causes a sort of swelling – a receptive swelling – and then, the thing can occur.

Unfortunately, as I said at the beginning, all words belong to the world of appearances.

(silence)

This has repeatedly been my experience lately, with a vision and a conviction, the conviction of an experience: the two vibrations are like this (concomitant gesture indicating a superimposition and infiltration), all the time – all the time, all the time.

Maybe the sense of wonder comes when the quantity that has infiltrated is large enough to be perceptible. But I have an impression – a very acute impression – that this phenomenon is going on all the time, all the time, everywhere, in a minuscule, infinitesimal way (gesture of a twinkling infiltration), and that in certain circumstances or conditions that are visible (visible to this vision: it's a sort of luminous swelling – I can't explain), then, the mass of infiltration is sufficient to give the impression of a miracle. But otherwise, it's something going on all the time, all the time, all the time, continuously, in the world (same twinkling gesture), like an infinitesimal amount of Falsehood replaced by Light... Falsehood replaced by Light... constantly.

And this Vibration (which I feel and see) gives the feeling of a fire. That's probably what the Vedic Rishis translated as the “Flame” – in the human consciousness, in man, in Matter. They always spoke of a “Flame.”¹ It is indeed a vibration with the intensity of a higher fire.

The body even felt several times, when the Work was very concentrated or condensed, that it is the equivalent of a fever.

Two or three nights ago, something like that occurred: in the middle of the night, early morning, there was a descent of this Force, a descent of this Truth-Power; and this time it was everywhere (it's always everywhere), but with a special concentration in the brain – not in this brain: in THE brain.² And it was so strong, so strong, so strong! The head felt as if it were about to burst – yes, as if everything were going to burst – so that for about two hours I simply had to keep calling for the widening of the Lord's Peace: “Lord, Your widening, Your peace,” like that, in the cells. And with the consciousness (which is always conscious, of course [gesture above]) that this descent into an unprepared brain would be enough to drive you completely mad or absolutely daze you (at the very best), or else you would burst.

This experience, like the other one,³ hasn't left.

It's everywhere, you understand.

And I saw (because I wanted to see, and I saw) that the other experience was still there but it was beginning to be almost habitual, almost natural, while this one was new. It was the result of my old prayer: “Lord, take possession of this brain.”

Well, that's what is happening – happening everywhere, all the time. So if it happens in a large enough aggregate, it gives the appearance of a miracle⁴ – but it is the miracle of the whole EARTH.

But one must hold out, because it has consequences: it brings a sensation of Power, a Power which very few people can feel or experience without their balance being more or less upset, because they don't have an adequate basis of peace – a vast and very, very, VERY quiet peace. Everywhere, even here at the School, children are in a state of effervescence (I was informed that the best-behaved and generally most regular children had become like that). I said, “There is only ONE answer, one single answer: you must be still, still, and even more still, and increasingly still. And do not try to find a solution with your head because it cannot find any. You must only be still – still, still, immutably still. Calm and peace, calm and peace.... It is the ONLY answer.”

I am not saying it's the cure, but it's the only answer: to endure in calm and peace, endure in calm and peace....

Then something will happen.

(silence)

But this experience (this is between ourselves) is an experience I had never had in my life. I always had the impression of a sort of control over what was going on in the brain, and that I was always able to answer with the “blank,” you know, the calm, still blank – the still blank. This time (laughing), it wasn't that! And it became so formidable that even the mantra (the words of the mantra) were shooting past like cannonballs! (Laughing) It all seemed like a frightening hail of bullets!

There was only this to be done: I kept perfectly still, calling – calling for the Lord's Peace and Calm, that ever-widening Peace. The Infinite of the Lord's Peace.

Then it became possible to bear the Vibration.

Now, what it does, its work – that's not our business, it's His. We cannot understand. But that it is at work goes without saying.

But without a doubt, if at that moment there had been a doctor to take my temperature, he would have found there was a tremendous fever – though nothing even remotely like an “illness”! No, it was miraculously wonderful, it gave the feeling that... it was something the earth did not know.

That's how it always expresses itself: something the earth did not know, something new. It is new to the earth. That's why it's hard to bear! Because it is new.

Even now (Mother touches her skull), it feels all swollen, and with a vibration inside (gesture of a trepidation) as if the head were twice as big as before.

(Mother feels her head) I am trying to see if my bumps have gone – they haven't yet!

¹ Agni.

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² It may be pertinent to stress again that Mother's experiences are not individual experiences, but experiences of the earth-consciousness.

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³ The experience of the Ananda of progress in life (conversation of March 7).

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⁴ We cannot help thinking of what was going to happen in France in 1968.

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