February 27, 1962
The Mother
Agenda
72 – The sign of dawning Knowledge is to feel that as yet I know little or nothing; and yet, if I could only know my knowledge, I already possess everything.
So, what's your question?
You have nothing special to say?...
(Mother shakes her head)
I did prepare something, it goes like this: in sleep one can have a very exact knowledge of what is going to happen, sometimes with astonishingly accurate material details; it's as if everything were already worked out down to the least detail on an occult plane. Is this correct? What is this plane of knowledge? Is there more than one? How can one gain conscious access to it in the waking state? And how is it that serious people, who have a divine realization, are sometimes so grossly mistaken in their predictions?
Ooh, but it's a whole world! (Mother laughs) It's not one question, it's twenty!
If anything in it seems worthwhile to you....
It's very interesting, but it means at least eight pages!
Premonitory dreams....
There are different kinds of premonitory dreams. Some are immediately realized – you dream at night what will happen the next day – while the realizations of others are staggered over varying spans of time; such dreams are seen in different realms corresponding to the time they take to be realized.
The closer you approach absolute certainty, the greater is the time span, because the realm of such visions is quite close to the Origin, and a long time can pass between the revelation of what will be and its realization. But being so near the Origin, the revelation is very certain.
When one is identified with the Supreme, there is a place where all is unequivocally known: in the past, in the present, in the future and everywhere. But when they return, those who go there usually forget what they have seen. A particularly strict discipline is needed to remember. That's the only realm where you can't be mistaken.
But the links of communication are seldom all there, so one rarely remembers.
Anyway, to go back to what I was saying, depending on the plane of one's vision, one can judge approximately how much time it will take to be realized. Immediate things are already realized, they are self-existent and can be seen in the subtle physical – they already exist there, and the reflection (not even transcription) or projection of this image is what will take place in the material world the next day or a few hours later. In this case you see the thing accurately, in all its details, because it's already there. Everything hinges on the precision and power of your vision: if your vision is objective and sincere, you will see the thing as it is; if you add personal sentiments or impressions, it gets colored. Accuracy in the subtle physical depends exclusively on the instrument, the one who sees.
But as soon as you move into a subtler realm, like the vital (and the mental even more so), there is a narrow margin of possibilities. You can see the rough outlines of what is going to take place, but in the details it can be this way or that way: it is possible for certain wills or influences to interfere and create discrepancies.
This is so because the original Will is reflected, as it were, in different realms, and in each realm the organization and relation of the images are changed. The world we live in is a world of images – not THE thing itself in its essence, but its reflection. We could say that in our material existence we are merely a reflection, an image of what we are in our essential reality. And the modalities of these reflections are what introduce all the errors and all the falsifications (what is seen in its essence is perfectly true and pure, existing from all eternity, while images are essentially variable). And according to the amount of falsehood introduced into the vibrations, the amount of distortion and alteration increases. Each circumstance, each event and each thing can be said to have one pure existence – its true existence – and a considerable number of impure or distorted existences in the various realms of being. There is a substantial beginning of distortion, for instance, in the intellectual realm (indeed, the mental realm holds a considerable amount of distortion), and it increases as all the emotional and censorial realms interfere. Arriving at the material plane, the vision is most often unrecognizable. Completely distorted. To such a point that it's sometimes very hard to realize that “this” is the material expression of “that” – there's not much resemblance any longer!
This approach to the problem is rather new and can provide the key to many things.
Take the case of someone you know well and are used to seeing materially: seeing him in the subtle physical, certain aspects become more prominent, more visible, more marked; physically they went unseen because in the material grayness they had blended with many other things. Certain character traits that never showed up physically now become so marked as to be quite visible. When you look at someone physically, you see the color of his complexion, the shape of his features, his expression.... Seeing him at the same moment in the subtle physical, you suddenly notice different colors on different parts of the face, in the eyes an expression or a particular light you hadn't seen before – a strong impression of a very different overall appearance, which to our physical eyes would seem rather outlandish. But for the subtle vision it's all very expressive and revealing of the person's character, or even of the influences he's under (what I am talking about is something I observed a few days ago).
So, according to the plane where you are conscious and can see, you perceive images and see events from varying distances and with varying degrees of accuracy. The only true and sure vision is the vision of the Divine Consciousness. The problem, therefore, is to become conscious of the Divine Consciousness and constantly maintain it in all life's details.
Meanwhile, there are all sorts of ways to receive indications. That exact, precise and... (what's the word?) habitual vision certain people have may stem from various sources. It may be a vision through identity with circumstances and things when you have learned to expand your consciousness. It may be an indication from some chatterbox of the invisible world, who has got it into his head to let you know what's going to happen – this is often the case. Then everything depends on your “harbinger's” morals: if he is having fun at your expense, he spins stories for you – this almost always happens to those who receive their information from entities. To bait you, they may repeatedly tell you how things are going to turn out (for they have a universal vision in some vital or mental realm); then, when they are sure you trust them, they may start telling you fibs and, as they say in English, you make a fool of yourself. This happens frequently! You have to be in a higher consciousness than these fellows, these entities (or these minor gods, as some call them) and able to check from above the value of their statements.
With a universal mental vision, you can see (and this is very interesting) how the mental world operates to get realized on the physical plane. You see the various mental formations, how they converge, conflict, combine and relate to one another, which ones get the upper hand, exert a stronger influence and achieve a more total realization. Now, if you really want a higher vision, you must get out of the mental world and see the original wills as they descend to take expression. In this case, you may not have all the details, but the central FACT, the fact in its central truth, is indisputable, undeniable, absolutely correct.
Some people also have the faculty of predicting things already existing on earth but at a distance, far from physical eyes – they're generally those who have the capacity to expand and extend their consciousness. Their vision is slightly more subtle than physical vision, and depends on an organ subtler than its purely material counterpart (what could be called the “life” of this organ). So, by projecting their consciousness, and having the will to see, they can clearly see things that already exist but are beyond our ordinary field of vision. Those who have this capacity – sincere people who tell what they see, not bluffers – see with perfect precision and exactness.
Ultimately, absolute sincerity is the great deciding factor for those who predict or foresee. Unfortunately, because of people's curiosity, their insistence and the pressure they exert (which very few can resist), an almost involuntary mechanism of inner imagination comes to add just that small missing element to something not seen with precision or exactness. That's what causes flaws in prediction. Very few have the courage to say, “Ah no, I don't know this, I don't see that, this eludes me.” They don't even have the courage to say it to themselves! So then, with a tiny drop of imagination, which acts almost subconsciously, the vision or information gets rounded out – it can turn out to be anything at all! Very few people can resist this tendency. I have known many, many psychics, many extraordinarily gifted beings, and only a handful were able to stop just at the point where their knowledge stopped. Or else they embellish. That's what gives these faculties their slightly dubious quality. One would have to be a great saint, a great sage, and completely free from other people's influences (I don't speak of those who seek fame: they fall into the most flagrant traps); because even goodwill – wanting to satisfy people, please them, help them – is enough to distort the vision.
(Smiling) Are you satisfied? Have I answered everything?
I'm tempted to ask one question.... Once events are already prepared in the subtle physical and one sees them, is it too late to alter their course? Can one still act?
There's one very interesting example I always give. The man involved told me about it himself. A long time ago (you must have been a baby), every day the newspaper Le Matin published a small cartoon of a boy dressed like a lift attendant (he told me the story in English), or a sort of bellboy, pointing with his finger to the date or whatever. This man was traveling and staying at a big hotel in some city (I don't remember which), a big city. And he told me that one night or early one morning he had a dream: he saw this bellboy showing him a hearse (you know, what they use in Europe for taking people to the cemetery) and inviting him to step inside! He saw that. And when he got ready that morning and left his room (which was on the top floor) there on the landing was... the same boy, identically dressed, inviting him to go down in the elevator. It gave him a shock. He refused: “No, thanks!” The elevator fell to the ground. It was smashed to pieces, and the people inside were all killed.
After this, he said, he believed in dreams!
It was a vision. He saw the bellboy, but instead of the elevator, the boy showed him his hearse. Then, when he saw the same boy making the very same gesture (really just like the cartoon), he said, “No, thanks! I'll walk down.” And the elevator (a hydraulic one) broke. It crashed down, crushing all those inside it.
He asked me about it and my explanation was that an entity had forewarned him. The image of the bellboy indicates an intelligent, conscious intermediary – it doesn't seem to come from the man's subconscient.1 Or else he had seen it in the subtle physical and his subconscient knew – but then why did it present him with such an image? I don't know. Perhaps something in his subconscient knew, because the accident already existed in the subtle physical. Before it occurred here, the accident – “the law of the accident” – existed.
Of course, in every case there is invariably a time-lag, sometimes a few hours (that's the maximum), sometimes a few seconds. Quite frequently things announce their presence, but to come in contact with your consciousness, it may take them a couple of minutes or just seconds. I am constantly, constantly aware of what's going to happen – utterly uninteresting things, as a matter of fact; knowing them in advance changes nothing. But they exist all around us, and with a wide enough consciousness we can know it all. For example, I know that so and so is going to bring me a parcel, that someone is about to come, and so forth. And it's like this every day. Because my consciousness is spread far and wide – it comes into contact with things.
But the thing already exists, so it can't be called a premonition; it's just that to come true for us it needs a few seconds to make contact with our senses, because a door or a wall or something prevents us from seeing it.
I've had many such experiences. Once I was walking along a mountain path wide enough only for one: on one side, a precipice, on the other, sheer rock. Three children were behind me and a fourth person brought up the rear. I was in the lead. The path skirted the rock so you couldn't see what lay ahead. It was quite dangerous, besides: one slip and you fell off the cliff. I was walking in front when suddenly, with other eyes than these (yet I was carefully watching my steps), I saw a snake lying on the rocks around the bend. Waiting. I took one soft step and a snake was actually there! This spared me the shock of surprise (because I had seen it and was advancing cautiously), and as there was no shock of surprise, I could say to the children without scaring them, “Stop, be quiet, don't move.” A shock might have caused a mishap – the snake had heard us and was already on the defensive, coiled before his hole, head swaying – a viper. It was in France. Nothing happened, but with confusion and commotion, who knows?...
This type of thing has happened to me very, very often – four times with snakes. There was one incident here near the fishing village of Ariankuppam, a place where a river empties into the sea. Night had fallen swiftly, it was pitch dark, and I was walking along a road when right in the middle of a step (I had already lifted my foot and was about to lower it), I distinctly heard a voice in my ear: “Watch out!” Yet no one had spoken. So I looked, and just as my foot was about to touch the ground, I saw an enormous black cobra right where I was casually going to put my foot. Those fellows don't like that sort of thing! It slithered away and swam across the water – what a beauty, mon petit! Hood wide open, head held high, he swam across like a king. I would certainly have been punished for my impertinence!
I have had hundreds and hundreds of experiences like that – informed just at the last moment (not one second too soon) – and in very different circumstances. Once in Paris I was crossing the Boulevard Saint Michel (I had resolved to attain union with the psychic presence, the inner Divine, within a certain number of months, and these were the last weeks – I was thinking of nothing but that, engrossed in that alone). I lived near the Luxembourg Gardens and was going there for a stroll, to sit in the gardens that evening – still indrawn. I came to a kind of intersection – not a very sensible place to cross when you're interiorized! So, in that state, I started to cross when all of a sudden I had a shock, as if something had hit me, and I instinctively jumped back. As I jumped back a streetcar rushed by. I had felt the streetcar at a little more than arm's length. It had touched my aura, the protective aura (that aura was very strong at the time – I was deep into occultism and knew how to maintain it). My protective aura was touched, and it literally threw me backwards, just like a physical shock. Accompanied by the driver's insults!
I leapt back just in time, and the streetcar passed by.
There are loads of stories I could tell – but I don't remember any more right now.
It can happen in different ways. Quite often I was informed by a small entity or some being or other. Sometimes the aura protected me – all sorts of things. My life was rarely limited to the physical body. And this is useful, it's good. Necessary also – it enhances your capacities. Théon told me right from the start: “You people deprive yourselves of the most useful kind of senses, EVEN FOR ORDINARY LIFE.” If you develop your inner senses (he gave them fabulous names), you can.... And it's true, absolutely true, we can know infinitely more than we normally do, merely by using our own senses. And not only mentally but vitally and even physically as well.
But what is the method?
Oh, the method is quite easy! There are various disciplines. It depends on what you want to achieve.
It depends. Each thing has its method. But the primary method is to want it, to make a decision. Then you are given a description of all these senses and how they function – that's a lengthy process. You choose one sense (or several), perhaps the one for which you have the greatest initial aptitude, and you decide. Then you follow the discipline. It's similar to doing exercises for developing muscles. You can even manage to create willpower in yourself.
For the subtler senses, the method is to create an exact image of what you want, make contact with the corresponding vibration and then concentrate and practice. For instance, you practice seeing through an object, or hearing through a sound2 or seeing at a distance. As an example, I was once bedridden for several months, which I found quite boring – I wanted to see. I was staying in one room and beyond that room was another little room and after that a sort of bridge; in the middle of the garden the bridge changed into a stairway going down into a very spacious and beautiful studio built in the middle of the garden.3 I wanted to go see what was happening in the studio – I was bored stiff in my room! So I stayed very still, shut my eyes and gradually, gradually sent out my consciousness. I did the exercise regularly, day after day, at a set hour. You begin with your imagination, and then it becomes a fact. After a while, I distinctly sensed my vision physically moving: I followed it and saw things going on downstairs I knew absolutely nothing about. I would verify it in the evening, asking, “Did it happen like this? Was that how it was?”
But each of these things must be practiced for months, patiently, almost stubbornly. You take the senses one after another: hearing, sight, and eventually even the subtle aspects of taste, smell and touch.
It's easier with the mind because we are more used to concentrating there. When you want to reflect and find a solution to something, instead of using mental deduction, you stop everything, focus on the idea or problem, and then concentrate, concentrate, intensifying the crux of the problem. You stop everything and wait until, through sheer intensity of concentration, a response comes. Learning that also demands a little time; but if you were ever a good student you have something of the aptitude – it's not so very difficult.
There's a kind of extension of the physical senses. In American Indians, for instance, the senses of hearing and smell are far more extended than ours (in dogs too!). When I was eight or ten years old, I had an Indian friend who came with Buffalo Bill in the days of the Hippodrome – that was a long time ago, I was around eight. He was so sharp that he could put his ear to the ground and tell, from the intensity of the vibrations, how far the sound of footsteps was coming from. All the children immediately said, “I'd really like to know how to do that!” And so you try....
That's how you prepare yourself. You think you're just having fun, but you are preparing yourself for later.
Voilŕ.
1 Mother elaborated “What makes me think it was an entity is the image, normally, the subconscient would have simply forewarned him of the fact itself.”
2 “Hearing behind a sound,” Mother explained, “means to make contact with the subtle reality behind the material fact: behind the word or the physical sound, or behind music, for example. You concentrate and then hear what is behind. It means contacting the vital reality behind appearances (there can also be a mental reality, but usually what is immediately behind the physical noise is a vital reality).”
3 The studio on Rue Lemercier in Paris, in 1898.
English